The Hangman's Row Enquiry

by Ann Purser

  There was a knock, and Ivy said, “That’ll be Roy. I said I’d be back around now, and he always pops in for a cuppa.”

  Does he, indeed! thought Deirdre. Romance among the oldies? It had been known to happen. Marriage even. She remembered reading recently in the local about a couple in their nineties who’d got wed. The picture showed them beaming out at the photographer, and she had thought, well, why not, even if it means only a couple of years’ companionship and happiness.

  Another cup was brought up by the ever-willing Katya, and Ivy debated whether to go over Deirdre’s horrible afternoon again. She decided not, not yet, anyway.

  The conversation turned to other things. Roy said he had had a visit, the first in three years. A young great-nephew who was driving through on his way to London had called in. “He asked tenderly after my health, when I know he’d rather have been asking tenderly after my bank balance.” Roy chuckled. “But it was nice to see a young face. Our Katya was very attentive, dear little thing,” he added with a smile.

  Then he asked if Deirdre had had a nice afternoon up at the Hall, so the story had to be told once more, this time in an edited version. Roy was horrified, and said the sooner this whole business was cleared up the better.

  GUS LOOKED OUT of his kitchen window and wondered if Deirdre had arrived safely back at Tawny Wings. He had tried hard to persuade her to stay, but she had insisted that she would be fine, and had to get back home. He had even settled Whippy on her lap, remembering that stroking a dog was supposed to comfort people and might encourage her to stay. But she had put Whippy down on the floor, saying she would be fine, and went off, wobbling slightly, to get into the car and disappear down Hangman’s Lane.

  The episode had shaken him considerably. Although he had not said as much to Deirdre, he knew now that they were up against something very nasty. Once more he thought of contacting the police, but after thinking about it for some time, he decided that this could precipitate more than a violent attack of sickness. If Beattie really did intend to get rid of her rival, a visit from the police might prompt her to panic and have another immediate go at Deirdre, and next time making sure of success. But if he did not tell the police, he was certain now that they had to move fast. They were close. He was pretty sure of that. The Bentalls and the Jessops were linked in a way they now understood, and the root of it all was back in another generation. If they could find out who had first made Beattie’s mother pregnant and caused so much unhappiness, then the rest would fall into place.

  He remembered suddenly with some excitement that Ivy and Roy had had that invitation to tea with Mrs. Bentall. That was it, he decided, and picked up the phone. He would cheer up Deirdre by telling her this, and then think of a way of discovering the connection between the Roussels and Beattie Beatty. He was sure now that she did not turn up at the Hall all those years ago out of the blue. There must have been a reason which had been kept quiet.

  No answer from Tawny Wings. Gus frowned. Deirdre should be home by now, surely? Perhaps she had called at the shop. Yes, that would be it. He would ring again in half an hour or so.

  As he watched, Miriam emerged into her garden next door, and walked up the path to her salad bed. She bent down, pulled up a lettuce, and turned. She was too quick for him to back away, so he waved. She returned his wave enthusiastically and mimicked opening the window. “Come in and have supper with me this evening,” she shouted. “I’m having ham and salad. Got some nice rhubarb to make a fool,” she added.

  It’s me that’s the fool, he thought, but was so tempted by the idea of a good supper, that he yelled back that he would be delighted. Oh God, he thought, as he watched her skip girlishly back into her house. Why on earth did I ever decide on this village? Because it seemed quiet and remote, people getting on with their own lives and allowing you privacy if you wanted it. Ha! That was a joke.

  Forty-eight

  BEATTIE RETURNED FROM tea with Miriam to a silent Hall. Theo’s car had gone, and she did not need two guesses to decide where it might be. Not too far away, and at a house with a stupid name!

  She noticed that the light was fading outside in the stable yard, and thought with a sinking heart of lonely hours spent in the kitchen, when buried memories would return to haunt her.

  She picked up the telephone, and dialled a number that she knew by heart. “Hello? Okay to talk? Right, well, here’s the latest.” She then relayed what had happened this afternoon, adding that she thought this was one battle she had won. “What? . . . Oh, some stuff I had lying around. . . . No, probably not. We shall see. . . . When? Oh, in due course. What about you? . . . Well, make it a better job next attempt. Miriam Blake thinks he’s a mystery man, but then, all men are a bit of a mystery to Miriam. Yes, you were right! I have a feeling time is running short. Yes . . . what? . . . Oh, yes, but take care. Bye.”

  She replaced the receiver and began to prepare supper. Not that she expected Theo to be home for supper, but on the chance that he might be, she took a pheasant from the marble shelf in the larder and began to wrap it in bacon and herbs. She thought about her telephone call, and wondered if they hadn’t perhaps got themselves in too deep.

  Miriam had definitely said there was something mysterious about Halfhide, and had hinted that he was some kind of investigator. It sounded ridiculous, of course, but if she was halfway near the truth it could be an unforeseen and possibly dangerous development. On the other hand, why should anybody want to investigate them? Self-protection was all they were aiming for, and also, she had to admit, an insurance policy for the future.

  Another thought struck her. How much did Miriam know about the past? From her conversation, it seemed her mother had kept her in the dark about a lot of it. She was a bit of an innocent, for all her reputation in the village. So was there more to it than being man mad? It might not mean much more than that she tried to lure every man she met into her bed and some she won, some she lost. She seemed confident that Gus Halfhide had already swallowed the hook. If this was so, would it be a good idea to bring Miriam into their confidence, and use her as information gatherer?

  No it would not, Beattie decided. The more conspirators involved, if that is what they were, the more likely it was they would be discovered.

  She put the pheasant in a slow oven, sat down in the sagging armchair by the Aga, and began to read the evening paper.

  MIRIAM SET UP the small table squeezed into a corner of the living room, and spread a cloth embroidered by her mother. She had been good with her needle, and at each corner was a cutout butterfly which seemed to flutter as she smoothed out the creases. Miriam sighed. In some ways she missed her mother, but in others her death had been a huge relief.

  She shut her mind to such thoughts, and switched on a dim reading lamp on the corner of the mantelpiece. The overhead light was much too bright. She switched it off. Next, she brought in home-cured bacon from the shop, bread that she had made earlier in the day, farm butter, and a fresh salad. She mixed English mustard from dry powder and vinegar, put it in the centre of the table and stood back to admire her handiwork. Paper serviettes! She opened a drawer in the sideboard and took out two. Gus probably wouldn’t notice the holly and mistletoe theme, left over from a long-past Christmas. If he did, he would make a nice joke about it. He was kind that way.

  But there was the matter of Mrs. Bloxham and the shawl. Miriam intended to get that cleared up straightaway, and then they could enjoy the meal. There was a tap at the door, and she opened it to let him in.

  “I’m just collecting for the down-and-outs of Barrington,” he said with mock humility. “Can you spare a bit of dried bread, or a bruised apple?”

  Miriam collapsed. All her suspicions and anxiety vanished, and she roared with laughter, a real hearty bellow such as she had not produced for years.

  “I can do better than that,” she stuttered as guffaws continued to emerge. “Come on in, and have a drink. I’ve found some primrose wine that mother made a while ago, so it should be
really mature.”

  Oh, goody, said Gus to himself, as his stomach protested in advance. A glass of primrose wine, well matured. He hoped it wouldn’t have the same effect as Beattie’s biscuits.

  Miriam had started a tape of Frank Sinatra love songs, turned down low, and by the time they finished they had eaten every crumb and Miriam removed the plates to the kitchen. “Coffee, Gus?” she called. It was all going so well, with her telling him all about her early life—well, nearly all—and describing how her mother had changed from quite a jolly woman into a carping old dragon in her last years.

  “How about your mother, Gus?” she said. “Were you an only child like me?”

  “Goodness!” said Gus, looking at his watch. “Is that really the time? How it flies when you’re enjoying yourself! D’you know, Miriam, I think I’ll skip coffee and be off next door. It has been a really pleasant evening, and an epic meal. Bless you, my dear,” he added, and waving a grateful hand exited from the front door and shut it gently behind him.

  “Bugger it!” Miriam said. She scarcely ever swore, but now felt perfectly justified. In a few seconds she had scuppered all hopes of getting him to open up. Ah well, at least they had parted good friends, and next time she would be more careful.

  THE HOUSE NEXT door was chilly and damp smelling, as usual. Gus turned on the lights and wondered whether it was worth lighting the fire. Probably best to fill his hot water bottle and go to bed with a whisky and a book. The primrose wine had been unexpectedly good, and he planned to ask Miriam to give him a bottle, if she had plenty. It had a wonderfully flowery aroma, and there was no doubt it packed a punch. All those years in the cupboard under the stairs must have given it real strength.

  BED, HE DECIDED, and with his comforting fluffy hot water bottle he climbed the stairs.

  Before he went to sleep, he reviewed the evening’s conversation. Miriam had given him very little useful information that he did not already know. Her nostalgic ramblings had been mostly about working at the telephone exchange, past romances and friends, and how much she had loved her hen-pecked father. Totally under her mother’s thumb, apparently, poor soul. He thought of his ex-wife, and remembered her sharp tongue, and was reminded that he hadn’t heard from her lately. Dare he hope that she had finally given up trying to get blood out of a stone?

  As his eyelids drooped, a puzzling image floated by. While Miriam had been in the kitchen dishing up rhubarb fool, he had noticed a small photograph tucked behind the clock on the mantelpiece. The gilded frame caught the light, and he peered closer. Was it Theo Roussel? Not quite, he decided. But there were strong similarities. This was a man from another generation, wearing, as far as Gus could see, a tweed jacket and camel hair waistcoat. He was smiling, and he had Theo’s smile. When Miriam returned to the table, Gus had asked her who it was, and she had said it was just a friend of her mother’s and then changed the subject.

  Forty-nine

  IVY AND ROY had already arrived at Tawny Wings when Gus came panting up the drive. Deirdre opened the door to him, and he apologised for being late. “Blame it on the primrose wine,” he said, though in fact the lovely stuff had had no ill effects. He had merely overslept, probably the result of a good supper and, touch wood, relief that his ever-loving ex seemed to have given up dunning him for money.

  As they made for the stairs, he said, “You’re looking very chipper, if I may say so.”

  “Feeling good,” Deirdre said, with a smile.

  “Ah. Visit from the squire on Saturday? Lots to tell us?”

  “Wait and see,” she said, ushering him into her office, where Roy greeted him enthusiastically and Ivy looked obviously at her watch. “Can we get going?” she said. “I have things to do later this morning.”

  Gus refrained from asking what an old lady living in a retirement home with all her wants supplied could possibly have to do that was so urgent. “Obviously no apologies,” he said, “so shall we have the minutes of the last meeting?”

  “Oh, for goodness sake, Augustus,” Ivy said. “We can get straight down to business. Now Deirdre, it was reported to me that Theo Roussel’s filthy Land Rover was parked outside your house on Saturday night until the small hours. And yes, before you say it is none of my business, I say it is. He is a prime suspect in our first case in my opinion, and being too intimate is unprofessional.”

  There was a stunned silence, and then Roy began to laugh. “Ivy, you are a gem,” he said. “Who else could bring us back to order in such a wonderful way?” He reached out and patted her on the back of her hand, and she shook him off. “Well, Deirdre?” she said.

  Deirdre was trying hard to be serious, and professional. “Ivy,” she said, “I would never dream of telling you to mind your own business.” For one thing, she said silently to herself, it would be a waste of time, like old Canute at the seaside. “No, I can assure you that any association I may have with Theo is purely in the interests of our investigation.”

  Roy once more laughed. “So what happened, Deirdre?” he said. “Apart from a spot of the other, I mean.”

  Finally Deirdre gave them an edited account of her return home after seeing Ivy, when Theo had turned up at Tawny Wings, again full of apologies for not being able to let her know that Beattie had not gone to market. “Apparently she told him just before she was due to go. He’d tried, but by that time I was already out in the drive, unloading shopping I’d done in the morning and ready to set off for the Hall. The old witch must’ve worked it all out very efficiently. Theo says she is a tough adversary, and I begin to see what he means.”

  “What else did he say?” Ivy said sourly.

  “Well, quite a lot, really. For one thing, I was able to ask him where Beattie had come from, and why to the Hall. He told me where she’d lived, but not why she had arrived to housekeep for his widowed father. I suspect he’d not give me the real reason why, if he knew it.”

  “Glad you didn’t swallow everything he said wholesale,” Ivy muttered.

  Deirdre continued: “Theo said he supposed she had answered an advertisement, and had got the job. She came from Oakbridge, and had good references, so his father said. Theo did not particularly like her from the start, and after his father died she gradually took over, not only the running of the estate, but Theo himself.”

  “He was hardly bound hand and foot, was he?” said a sceptical Ivy.

  “It was a clever, gradual process, Theo said. He even came to believe he was ill. Not seriously, but enough to curtail his activities. In the end, he gave up and left everything to her.”

  “Until you came along,” said Gus generously. “I hope he’s duly grateful.”

  “He is,” said Deirdre, with a dreamy smile.

  “I wonder what was the real reason she came all the way across the county for a job, when all her family were back in Oakbridge?” Roy said.

  “Didn’t he give any hints, Deirdre?” Ivy asked. She considered that the Land Rover had been outside Tawny Wings quite long enough for dozens of questions and answers in the interests of the investigation.

  Deirdre frowned, thinking back. It had indeed been a lovely evening with Theo. He had lit a fire for her in the long drawing room, tucked her up on the sofa under a soft rug, and sat with his arms around her, sympathising with her and making her feel like she hadn’t felt for years. If ever!

  “Not really,” she said. “Theo did say something about Beattie spending a lot of time up at Springfields before it became an old folks’ home.”

  “Less of the ‘old folks,’ if you don’t mind,” said Ivy. “Anyway, why would she have done that? Didn’t you say it was lived in by a recluse lady with her companion, Roy?”

  He nodded. “Never seen. Even the companion came and went in a car and hardly ever ventured into the village. People just let them alone, in the end. Villagers are like that. If a person wants to be left alone, that’s fine with us.”

  “Even if they are living lives of quiet desperation?” asked Deirdre, remembering some
of the isolated, lonely people she visited in her volunteer work.

  “Nothing to do with us, if that’s how they want it,” Roy said cheerfully. “Up to them, isn’t it?”

  “So do we know any more about Beattie’s association with Springfields in those days?” Gus had a familiar feeling, almost like Whippy when she got an interesting sniff and wouldn’t leave it, that they were getting near something vital, something definitely central to the mystery.

  “No, ’fraid not,” Roy said. “Maybe when me and Ivy go to tea with Mrs. Bentall, she will be able to help us with that.”

  “Of course!” Deirdre said. “That’s it, Roy. When are you going?”

  “Tomorrow,” said Ivy. “And don’t offer to take us. We’ve already booked a taxi, so you’ll have to wait until we get back to see what we’ve gleaned.”

  Deirdre’s face fell, and Ivy felt a pang of guilt. Perhaps she was being unfair to her cousin, who, after all, had been a widow for a good many years, and deserved a bit of fun before she was too old. Just as long as she didn’t get hurt by smarmy Theo at the Hall.

  “Anything else, then?” Gus said.

  “How about supper with Miriam?” Deirdre said, in a belated attempt at revenge.

  “Good cooking, primrose wine, lots of girlhood reminiscences, but nothing useful to us. She’s not so green as she’s cabbage looking,” he added. “Knows what not to tell, I reckon.”

  “Nothing else?” Deirdre asked.

  “Well, I’m not sure it has any bearing on the murder, but I noticed a small photograph tucked away behind the clock on her mantelpiece. At first I thought it was Theo, which would have made sense, since Miriam had a fling with him years ago. But then I could see it wasn’t him. Old-fashioned clothes, and a different look about him. Could’ve been the moustache, but not just that.”