Death Is in the Air

by Kate Kingsbury

  For a moment or two, Elizabeth was unable to move either. Whatever sight had met Rita’s eyes, it was enough to stop the avenging woman dead in her tracks. Elizabeth couldn’t imagine what could be dreadful enough to achieve that miracle, and right then she wasn’t prepared to conjecture what Rita might have seen inside the windmill.

  The shriek of rage shook her out of her stupor. The agonized sound had come from Rita, who had now disappeared inside the dark depths of the rotting building.

  Galvanized into action, Elizabeth pounded forward as fast as her sensible shoes would allow. She skidded to a stop when she reached the silent group and thrust her way past them to the door. Peering inside, she half expected to see Rita dead on the floor. The sight that met her eyes, however, shocked her to the core.

  Rita stood immobile, apparently staring into the dark shadows in front of her. Elizabeth could just make out the two figures inside. One was the German pilot, his back pressed up to the wall. Standing protectively in front of him, a half-eaten loaf of bread in her hand, defiance in every line of her young body, was Lilly Crumm.

  “Apparently Lilly had been feeding him for the past two or three days,” Elizabeth told Violet when she returned to the Manor House later. “Her mother had no idea, of course. She was totally flabbergasted. She was all set to tear the poor boy apart with her bare hands. Luckily, George and Sid arrived to take him into custody before anyone could do him any damage.”

  Violet looked up from the stove, where a pot of soup sat bubbling. “Lord knows what Rita Crumm will get up to next, but mind you, she’s got her hands full with that Lilly.”

  “Like mother, like daughter, I’m afraid.” Elizabeth dropped her handbag on the table and sank onto a chair. “They are both very strong-willed women.”

  “Well, I know someone else like that.” Violet coughed and hurried on before Elizabeth could protest. “Anyway, I’m so glad they caught that German. Now we don’t have to worry about a murderer running around the woods, and everything can get back to normal. Polly can go back to riding her bicycle home instead of bothering that nice American officer.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Elizabeth murmured.

  “Well, I’ll make sure she doesn’t bother him,” Violet said, giving the soup a vicious stir with her wooden spoon.

  “No, I mean that we don’t have to worry about a murderer running loose.”

  Violet gave her a sharp look. “How’s that? George and Sid are going to keep him a prisoner, aren’t they? They’re not going to turn him loose? After all, he is a German bomber pilot. The same kind who dropped the bomb on London that killed your parents, remember?”

  Elizabeth gave her a wry look. “I’m not likely to forget that. And no, they won’t turn him loose. In fact, the last I heard, George was telling everyone that the prisoner would be hung for murder. What I meant was, I don’t think he killed Amelia Brunswick.”

  “Then who did?”

  Elizabeth met Violet’s curious gaze. “I’m pretty sure I know, but I can’t prove it. I really don’t want to say anything until I’m certain I’m right. At this point I’m afraid it’s all conjecture.”

  Obviously disappointed, Violet shrugged. “Well, if you feel like that.”

  “The thing is,” Elizabeth said slowly, “I keep getting the feeling that I know how to prove it. I just can’t quite pull it out into the open.”

  Violet’s eyes narrowed with interest. “Something you saw, perhaps?”

  Elizabeth thought about it. “No. It’s more like something someone said, I think. Darn, I wish I could remember.”

  “Stop trying. It will come to you in a flash, you’ll see. Happens to me all the time. I wake up in the night sometimes shouting the answer. Good job I never married. I’d scare a husband to death.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “I suppose you’re right. Thinking so hard about it makes my head ache anyway.” She sniffed the air. “The soup smells good.”

  “Oxtail. Lucky to get it. Jack Mitchem didn’t have much in the shop today-just some scrawny-looking chickens and some fatty pork. Maybe you could ask your Major Monroe if he can bring us some more steak.”

  “He’s not my major,” Elizabeth muttered, relieved that Violet couldn’t see the way her heart jumped at the mention of his name.

  “You never did tell me why he’s wearing a bandage on his head.”

  “His plane went down in a field, and they had to get a lift back to base.”

  “Oh, my!” Violet clutched her throat. “Poor man. What about the rest of them? Are they all right?”

  “Just bruises and cuts, Earl said.” His name had slipped out without her thinking.

  She saw Violet’s eyes widen with understanding. “Earl now, is it,” she said softly.

  Elizabeth sighed. “I decided it was time to join the modern world, that’s all. Everyone seems to be on a first-name basis nowadays. Must be the war, I suppose.”

  “The war changes a lot of things.” Violet tilted her head to one side. “I just hope you know what you’re doing, Lizzie.”

  “I’m not doing anything, so you can stop looking at me like that.” Elizabeth sought to change the subject. “I left Polly to finish entering the notes from the council meeting into the ledger. Do you know if she finished them?”

  Violet looked frustrated at being robbed of what promised to be an interesting conversation. “I don’t know if she finished them or not. The last I saw of her she was looking for the vacuum cleaner. Said she’d lost it. How can you lose a vacuum cleaner, I ask you?”

  “It isn’t lost,” Elizabeth murmured, only half paying attention. “I saw it standing at the end of the great hall last night, so I put it back under the stairs where it belongs.”

  Violet sniffed. “Well, isn’t that just like that young lady. The last place Polly would ever think of looking for something is the very place where it should be.”

  Elizabeth stared at her. “That’s it,” she said at last. “Violet, how long will it be until the soup is ready? I have an important visit to make, and I need to do it as soon as possible.”

  An hour later Elizabeth arrived at the Macclesby farm.

  Maisie hailed her as she crossed the yard to the farmhouse.

  Elizabeth returned the greeting. “Is Mrs. Macclesby in the farmhouse?” she asked as Maisie turned away.

  “No, your ladyship.” Maisie hooked a thumb in the direction of the cowsheds. “She’s in there, shredding up mangolds. Kitty was supposed to do it, but she took sick. Something she ate, I think.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I hope she soon feels better.” Elizabeth hurried over to the sheds, where she could hear the sound of the hopper. Inside one of them she found Sheila, busily turning the handle of the large wooden box, while the beets bounced and rattled around before the blades shredded them to pulp.

  Sheila looked surprised to see her and immediately let go of the handle, brushing her hands down her stained apron. “Lady Elizabeth! You always seem to catch me when I’m looking my worst. Can I offer you a cup of tea or cocoa?”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “I don’t want to interrupt your work.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that.” Sheila waved a hand at the hopper. “It’s almost done, and one of the girls can finish it off later. I don’t want you standing around a drafty old shed. It’s getting really cold out there. Come inside, and I’ll make a nice cup of tea.”

  Elizabeth followed the farmer’s wife into the house and accepted a seat on the armchair Sheila offered her. “Please, don’t bother with the tea just now,” she assured her. “There’s something rather important I want to talk to you about.”

  Sheila’s face immediately turned wary, and she sat down on the edge of the settee, twisting her hands in her apron. “What about, your ladyship? No trouble, I hope?”

  Elizabeth sighed. “Sheila, the first day I was here, after Amelia’s body was discovered in the woods, Maisie told you she’d left a spade outside the night before, and when she’d gone to retriev
e it the next morning, the spade had vanished.”

  Sheila violently shook her head. “I don’t remember-”

  “You told her it was back in the shed where it belonged,” Elizabeth continued. “Later on that day Maisie thanked you for cleaning the spade for her. You denied doing so.”

  “Did I? I can’t recall-”

  “The medical examiner believes that the killer might have used a spade to kill Amelia. A spade that was probably left out overnight…”-she deliberately paused-“and later cleaned.”

  Sheila’s hand closed over her throat. “So that’s how that German killed that girl. He used one of my spades and cleaned it off afterwards-the murdering sod. Beg your pardon, m’m.”

  “That’s quite all right.” Elizabeth looked down at her gloved hands. “There’s just one thing I don’t understand. You said you heard Amelia arguing beneath your window, but you decided not to go down to investigate.”

  “That’s right, your ladyship. How glad I am now that I didn’t. I could have walked right into a murder and been struck down myself. Lucky escape, that’s what I had.” Sheila started fanning herself with the skirt of her apron.

  “If I remember, you told me you hadn’t been out of the house the next morning when I arrived. Yet you knew that the spade that had been left out overnight had been put back in its proper place in the shed. How could you have known the spade was back in the shed, unless you saw it there after Amelia was killed?”

  Sheila appeared to have no answer to that question. She sat as if turned to stone, staring at Elizabeth without a flicker of expression in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Sheila,” Elizabeth said gently. “I think you heard Amelia arguing with your son right under your window that night. By the time you got down there, it was too late. He’d killed her. You took the body into the woods and hid it, hoping to put the blame for her death on the German pilot. Then you cleaned off the spade, put it back in the shed, and later burned Maurice’s bloodstained reefer jacket.”

  Sheila’s voice sounded strangled when she spoke. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said hoarsely. “My son isn’t capable of killing anyone. You know that. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. He liked Amelia-he would never have hurt her.”

  “He probably didn’t mean to,” Elizabeth said, her heart aching for the poor woman. “Maybe Amelia was teasing him, and he just wanted her to stop. People whose minds have not fully developed are not capable of reasoning like normal people. Maurice was just trying to defend himself.”

  “He would never have hurt her. Never.”

  Elizabeth leaned forward and patted the trembling hands. “Sheila, you know I have to tell the constables. There’s no guarantee that something like this won’t happen again. I came to you first, because I wanted to give you the chance to prepare Maurice for what will happen to him. I’m quite sure, given the circumstances, that he won’t be put in prison. The jury will most likely find him insane, and he’ll be sent to an asylum where he can be watched and protected for his own sake. You’ll be able to visit him-”

  “No!” The words were wrung from Sheila’s lips. She leapt to her feet and walked over to the window, where she stared out at the shadows creeping across the farmyard. “Maurice didn’t kill Amelia,” she said bleakly.

  “Sheila-” Elizabeth rose just as the farmer’s wife turned to face her.

  “My son did not kill that woman.” Her voice was stronger now, with a note of defiance. “I did.”

  CHAPTER17

  Elizabeth stared at the white-faced woman, unable to comprehend what she’d just heard. The possibility that Sheila Macclesby had committed murder had never occurred to her. “Why?” she asked at last.

  Sheila came back to the settee and sat down. She had lost all her defiance now and looked unspeakably tired. “Maurice was… fond of Amelia. He followed her around like a little lost sheep, practically begging her to notice him. She either ignored him or shouted abuse at him.” Sheila shivered. “How I hated that girl. She was so cruel.”

  She sat staring down at her hands for several seconds. When she looked up again, tears glistened in her eyes. “Lady Elizabeth, do you have any idea what it’s like to watch your son being constantly tormented and bullied? All through his school years, my Maurice had to put up with it. I’d find him sitting on the front doorstep, crying his heart out because he couldn’t understand why all the other kids hated him. I tried to explain that he was different, and that made him special. That the other kids just didn’t understand him, that was all.” She shook her head. “I could tell I wasn’t getting through to him.”

  Elizabeth swallowed past the lump in her throat. “It must have been difficult for both of you.”

  “Difficult?” Sheila lifted her hands and let them drop in her lap again. “It was heartbreaking, m’m. That’s what it was.” She paused for several more painful seconds before continuing. “I thought that once he left school and I could keep him here on the farm with me, that it would all be over. That nobody would ever torment Maurice again. But then Amelia came, with her blond hair and her blue eyes and that soft laugh of hers-as soon as my Maurice set eyes on her, he was smitten. I could tell.”

  “So he followed her around.”

  “Yes.” Sheila sighed. “I tried to stop it, of course, but the more I tried, the more determined he got. I’d never seen Maurice like that… It frightened me. I knew there would be trouble.”

  “So it was Maurice you heard arguing with Amelia that night.”

  Sheila nodded. “He must have been waiting for her to come home. As soon as I heard them I rushed downstairs and out the door. I heard her as I came around the corner. She was yelling at him. Terrible things.” Sheila shuddered. “She called him filthy names, told him he was never to come anywhere near her again. Told him he wasn’t fit to be around girls. I won’t repeat everything she said to him, but I could see what it was doing to him. When I got to him, he was crying. Big tears just rolled down his face.”

  The silence in the room grew more ominous as Sheila relived the memory of that night. Elizabeth could hear her own heartbeat thudding in her ears. Part of her ached with sympathy for the mother who’d had to watch her son suffer so much. Yet she couldn’t condone the murder of a young woman, no matter how provoked.

  “When I saw my son cowering like a beaten puppy,” Sheila said, her voice cracking with the effort to speak, “something inside my head seemed to snap. I just couldn’t take it anymore. The spade was leaning against the wall. I picked it up and I smashed it into that cruel, cruel face.” She raised her hands and covered her face. “I didn’t mean to kill her. I just wanted to shut her up. But the spade slipped in my hands, turned sideways and sliced into her head. As soon as she went down, I knew she was dead.” She began to cry-softly, like a baby kitten mewing for food.

  Elizabeth waited until the pitiful sound stopped then asked gently, “So you took the body to the woods?”

  Sheila nodded and wiped her eyes with a large handkerchief she’d taken from her apron pocket. “When Amelia fell to the ground, Maurice held her in his arms. He was crying so hard I felt sure he’d wake everyone up. His coat was soaked in blood, and I knew I’d have to get rid of it. I took it off him and made him go to bed. Then I put Amelia into the wagon, hitched up Daisy, and went to the woods.”

  “And you burned Maurice’s jacket.”

  Sheila nodded. “I’d already told the girls to burn the sacks. I put the jacket inside one of them, then I went and bought him a new one.” Her face crumpled again. “I don’t think he’ll ever forgive me for what I did.”

  Elizabeth reached out a hand, then drew it back. “I’m sure he will,” she said. “In time.”

  Sheila let out her breath in a long sigh. “What happens now?”

  “I’ll have to notify the constables.” Elizabeth rose. “I’m sorry, Sheila. If there was any other way-”

  “No, Lady Elizabeth. I know I have to accept my punishment for what I did. It’s Maurice I’m wor
ried about. Who’s going to take care of him?”

  “I’ll see what I can arrange.” Elizabeth paused at the door. “Try not to worry about Maurice. You have to think of yourself now.”

  Sheila’s smile was filled with sadness. “I’ll always worry about him. He’s a good boy. He can’t help being different.”

  It was with the greatest reluctance that Elizabeth paid a visit to the constabulary. George and Sid were shocked, and although they tried hard not to show it, suitably impressed that Elizabeth had uncovered the real murderer.

  “I don’t know how you worked that one out, your ladyship.” George smoothed a hand over his bald head, a sure sign that he was embarrassed at having accused the wrong man. “Much less have her confess the whole story.”

  “There really wasn’t much else she could do once I presented her with the evidence,” Elizabeth said modestly. “I think she was mostly concerned that Maurice might be blamed.”

  “Well, m’m, Sid and I certainly appreciate your efforts in this matter.” He raised a warning finger. “I must advise you, however, that it is not a good idea to go poking around where a murder has been committed. You could very well get yourself into hot water that way.” He glanced self-consciously at Sid, as if suddenly realizing whom he was lecturing. “If you’ll excuse me, your ladyship. It’s just that we wouldn’t want anything happening to our lady of the manor, now would we, Sid?”

  “Oh, no, George. Can’t have that.” Sid beamed at Elizabeth. “Don’t know what we’d do without you, m’m.”

  “Well, that’s very reassuring to hear.” Well pleased with herself, Elizabeth got up from her chair. “One thing I do want to impress upon both of you. I promised Sheila I would make arrangements for someone to look after Maurice. I want to be sure that’s taken care of before you arrest her.”

  George nodded. “Don’t you worry about that, m’m. Under the circumstances, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Wally was sent home to take care of his son until something better can be arranged.”