The Hangman's Row Enquiry
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two
Thirty-three
Thirty-four
Thirty-five
Thirty-six
Thirty-seven
Thirty-eight
Thirty-nine
Forty
Forty-one
Forty-two
Forty-three
Forty-four
Forty-five
Forty-six
Forty-seven
Forty-eight
Forty-nine
Fifty
Fifty-one
Fifty-two
Fifty-three
Fifty-four
Praise for Ann Purser’s Lois Meade Mysteries
“First-class work in the English-village genre: cleverly plotted, with thoroughly believable characters, rising tension, and a smashing climax.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Well paced, cleverly plotted, and chock-full of cozy glimpses of life in a small English village.”
—Booklist
“Purser’s expertise at portraying village life and Lois’s role as a working-class Miss Marple combine to make this novel—and the entire series—a treat.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch
“Fans of British ‘cozies’ will enjoy this delightful mystery with its quaint setting and fascinating players.”
—Library Journal
“A strong plot and believable characters, especially the honest, down-to-earth Lois, are certain to appeal to a wide range of readers.”
—Publishers Weekly
“The characters are fun. The setting is wonderful . . . Anyone who delights in an English village mystery will have a good time with this book.”
—Gumshoe Review
“[Lois Meade is] an engaging amateur sleuth.”
—Genre Go Round Reviews
Titles by Ann Purser
Lois Meade Mysteries
MURDER ON MONDAY
TERROR ON TUESDAY
WEEPING ON WEDNESDAY
THEFT ON THURSDAY
FEAR ON FRIDAY
SECRETS ON SATURDAY
SORROW ON SUNDAY
WARNING AT ONE
TRAGEDY AT TWO
Ivy Beasley Mysteries
THE HANGMAN’S ROW ENQUIRY
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
THE HANGMAN’S ROW ENQUIRY
A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / May 2010
Copyright © 2010 by Ann Purser.
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eISBN : 978-1-101-18722-7
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One
“IF YOU ASK me,” said Ivy, lifting the teapot lid and peering inside, “he’s got something to hide. Moved into Hangman’s Row, so they say, and living on his own. A bit smarmy. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.”
“That’s not very far, then,” said her cousin Deirdre, with a smile, knowing that Ivy belonged to a generation of country families whose first reaction to a newcomer was suspicion.
Ivy scowled at her. Anybody would think she was having tea with the Queen, she thought acidly, observing Deirdre, well groomed from top to toe.
Former lifelong scourge of the village of Round Ringford, Ivy Beasley had moved, under considerable pressure from Deirdre, to Springfields luxury retirement home in Barrington, in the county of Suffolk.
As Ivy had yet to admit, Barrington was a beautiful village, each house a jewel, with its ornamental plasterwork and ancient timbers, originally built to serve the folk at the Hall. It was an estate village, and had all once belonged to the squire, but recently Theodore, the latest in a long line of Roussels, had raised much-needed money by selling off most of the houses. He told friends he felt a traitor to his ancestors and vowed his descendents would always own and live in the Hall itself. As he was a bachelor with no apparent intentions of marrying, the village was sceptical.
“They say Theodore Roussel has upped the rent for this new man,” Deirdre said. “What’s his name, anyway?”
Ivy shrugged. “Don’t ask me,” she answered. “I’m not one for gossip, as you know.”
Deirdre swallowed a sharp retort, and said, “He won’t have much fun with his neighbours.” She helped herself to another biscuit from Ivy’s tea tray. “You can’t get much drearier than old Mrs. Blake and Miriam. Sometimes you can see Miriam peering out from behind the curtains. I feel sorry for her. She’s not that old, and had a good job once, so they say.”
“I’ve seen her in the shop,” Ivy said. “Only time she gets out.”
“She should take a stand,” said Ivy, pushing back into place a strand of iron grey hair that had had the temerity to stray from under her “invisible” hairnet. Her sharp, beady eyes behind steel-rimmed glasses clouded as she added, “My own mother was similar, and I left it too late. Had me under her thumb until she passed away. And even then she used to come back and haunt me. I don’t think she approves of Barrington, though. Haven’t heard from her since I arrived.”
“That’s one good thing, then,” said Deirdre promptly. She was finding her plans for caring for her elderly cousin more tricky than she had supposed, and her daily visits to Springfields were more of a duty than a pleasure.
HANGMAN’S ROW, A small terrace of three cottages, was still in Roussel hands. In spite of its gruesome name, the lane was leafy and shade dappled. It was half a mile or so from Barrington Green, where the local gibbet had once stood as a warning to transgressors. A young farmworker, his wife and baby, lived at one end of the row, with widow Blake and her spinster daughter in the middle cottage. The new tenant was at the far end of the terrace, and had yet to be seen long enough for the locals to pronounce judgement.
Rumours of Roussel’s rent increase were true. A few new coats of paint had smartened up the cottage, and Theodore had found at the local dump a surprising supply of little-used bathroom and kitchen fittings to bring the place up to standard. Satisfied with this, he had advertised the cottage for what he regarded as a more realistic rent than the other two.
It had taken a while to find a tenant, but then curious eyes had seen a tall, middle-aged man with sparse, sandy hair and a hunted look, appear with his grey whippet and a small amount of furniture in a Thrifty self-drive van.
Augustus Halfhide had so far avoided Miriam Blake, though she had made several approaches to him over the garden fence. Now he watched her return from a visit to the shop. He sighed. She peered into his window and gave a little wave, accompanied by a hopeful smile. “Oh, God,” he said to his little dog Whippy, “it’s just my luck to move in next to a predatory female.”
It looked as if his hopes of having a period of peace and quiet were under threat.
Recently, after his wife had finally left him, he had taken a hard look at himself and decided to begin again. After a life so far filled with action-packed missions in foreign lands, nothing, he had decided, would be better than a remote village, in a community that would not regard him as one of their own for at least twenty-five years. He could spin them a good story, and they would leave him alone to adjust to a different way of life.
Augustus Halfhide, Gus to his friends, could not have been more mistaken.
Two
GUS MET IVY Beasley in church. It was an unlikely place for him to be, but he had felt a sudden urge to observe some of his fellow villagers without necessarily being accosted. He planned to slip into the back pew in the darkened interior and indulge himself by inventing identities for the people in front. Although he wouldn’t admit it, even to himself, he was missing congenial company.
There were very few in church for the service, and among the mostly elderly parishioners his eye was taken by a woman in a solid black coat covering her broad shoulders, and topped with an extraordinary black felt hat like an upturned pudding basin, reminiscent of photographs of his grandmother in a distant past.
When the service finished, he hung back until nearly all had gone, and saw with alarm that he was being approached by the vicar, who held out a welcoming hand.
“New to the village?”
Gus nodded, and said he had moved in a few weeks ago, and was beginning to find his way around. The vicar said how good it was to see him in church, and began a lengthy history of the ancient building. “We have our very own martyr, you know,” he said with a keen smile. “Taken away by the Roundheads in the civil war. The village never saw him again.”
“And you’ll never see our visitor again, if you don’t let him get home to his lunch,” said a sharp voice behind the vicar.
Gus peered gratefully at the figure emerging, and saw that it was the woman with the black hat. She was not smiling, and had a stern and disapproving expression. Now, here was a challenge! Gus prided himself on his way with women, and judged this one was much too old to be predatory. He could safely practise his charm, sadly unused for too long.
“Good day, madam,” he said and bowed his head in greeting.
“Not good. It’s raining,” Ivy Beasley said flatly. “And I’ve forgotten my umbrella.”
“Allow me,” Gus said, stepping forward and offering his arm. In the church porch he put up his city umbrella, picked up from habit at the last minute before leaving home. “Now, which way? And do tell me your name, Mrs. . . . um . . .”
“Beasley. And it’s Miss. I go up that way, past the shop.”
As they stepped out briskly, Gus discovered that Ivy had come from the village where his old school friend Richard Standing lived.
“Fancy that,” Ivy said caustically. “They were above me, of course. Lived up at the big house. We’d see them driving about in one of them limousines.”
Anxious not to seem patronising, Gus hastened to assure her that he had known the Standings only casually—a lie—and he himself had been in very much lowlier circumstances. By the time they reached Springfields, Ivy had warmed up a little, and Gus was intrigued by her past life in Round Ringford. He asked if he could visit her at some time convenient to her. “You could tell me things about Richard that I’m sure I don’t know,” he said jovially. “And anyway, it must be dull in there for you, missing all your old friends,” he added.
“All dead,” Ivy replied bluntly. “Anyway, please yourself. I’m always at home—if you can call it home. Thanks for keeping me dry.” With that, she disappeared, and Gus returned home, feeling unaccountably cheered.
Three
THEO ROUSSEL LOOKED out of the window. He was still a handsome man, neatly put together and with a good head of pepper-and-salt grey hair. But he had a gloomy air, as if his life had become a sad disappointment, as in some ways it had. Rain fell steadily across the park, and his prize Manx brown sheep were huddled under one of the big chestnut trees planted by his ancestors. Roussels had lived in Barrington for generations, going back, so they said, to the Norman conquest. Others said half the village had Roussel blood in them as a result of Theo’s grandfather merrymaking his way around the girls of the village, some willing and others obedient, but most in time producing offspring with a remarkable resemblance to the squire.
“There must be some way,” he muttered to himself. He had been examining his accounts, and was depressed. The Hall and its estate cost far more to maintain than ever the farm could support. He had to find some way of increasing his income, and whichever way he took would, he knew, have to meet with approval from Beatrice Beatty. She had been with him for years now. When she first came, she had acted as housekeeper and kept her place. Now, he realised too late, she had taken over. Was he frightened of her? Only in small matters, he comforted himself, turning away from the window. At this moment, Beattie came into the room with coffee and a handful of letters for Theo.
“All junk,” she said. “I’ve been down to the post office to collect them. I’ve opened all except for the one from the bank. I’ve left the bad news for you. And,” she continued, “we really must get round to doing something about the Blakes. I have a plan, but you’d better know about it before I take action.”
“Better get your breath back first. Did you hurry? Anyway, fire away when you’re ready, Beattie,” Theo said, reflecting that it wouldn’t make the slightest difference what he said, she would go ahead with her master plan anyway. The only thing he had been able to resist was her often hinted at desire to become his wife. He knew that she could probably hold out longer than he could, but so far he had managed to deflect all her attempts.
After she had told him what she intended to do about the Blakes, and he had recovered from shock at her hardheartedness, he sat at his desk and
found the rent books of the three cottages in Hangman’s Row. It was true that the new tenant with the ridiculous name had been quite willing to pay the increased rent, and so the Blake cottage with new tenants could in theory produce the same. He should probably have moved out Miriam Blake and her appalling old mother long ago.
The late John Blake had been one of the estate workers, and a pretty idle one, too, but Theo had a vague notion that the law might step in if they summarily ejected his widow and daughter. But what would happen when the old woman died? It shouldn’t be long now. They would surely not be morally obliged to allow Miriam to remain there at such a peanut rent?
Young David Budd, his farmworker, lived in the remaining cottage in the Row. He and his wife and small child were a breath of fresh air on the farm. He was a good worker, and vital to the running of the estate, so nothing to be done there, except perhaps creep the rent up bit by bit.
The telephone on his desk rang, and Theo swore. Somebody wanting to be paid, no doubt. He would leave it to ring, and Beattie would answer it.
Sure enough, Beattie was by the telephone in the kitchen in seconds. “Mr. Roussel’s residence,” she said. “Who is it speaking?”
It was a policeman who announced himself as Detective Inspector Frobisher, and his voice was solemn. “I would like to speak to Mr. Roussel, please,” he said.
“I’m afraid that is not possible at the moment. I am his assistant, and shall be happy to give him a message.”
“I must insist, Miss, er . . .” Frobisher had heard of Miss Beatty, and was not to be fobbed off that easily.
Beattie sniffed, and said if the inspector would hold on, she would see if Mr. Roussel was receiving calls. She walked through to the study, and saw that Theo was pretending to be asleep.
“No good, Mr. Theo,” she said flatly. “It’s the police. You’d better speak to them.” She picked up the receiver and handed it to him, then retreated hastily to take up her listening post on the extension in the kitchen.