Lessons for Survivors

by Charlie Cochrane

  “I’m afraid that, as I understand it—and I may have got it wrong—you wouldn’t be eligible to inherit, owing to the timing.” Jonty was sure he’d got that right, even though the workings of the law were as befuddling to him as Boolean algebra. If Peter had died before the inheritance was claimed, then he couldn’t pass it on to his widow.

  “Really?” The tears, if there had been any, soon disappeared. “We’ll have to see what the courts say about that!” Rosalind made as if to return to her cab, then turned back. “Maybe they’ll have to think again when I tell them Mr. Bresnan was here the day my Peter died. I call that highly suspicious.”

  And having delivered a parting shot that left Jonty both speechless and with his brain about to implode, she got into the car and left.

  He watched her go, momentarily so stunned he couldn’t remember what he’d actually come to Thorpe House for. When he’d eventually knocked his brain back into shape, he strode up the drive once more, hoping that the housekeeper would be an easier prospect.

  Mrs. Hamilton answered the door, saw who was calling, and looked down her nose; she was a tall woman and could give Jonty a good three inches, towering over him like the governess he’d imagined her as the first time they’d met. “I’m afraid you’ve just missed Mrs. Priestland.”

  “I was able to catch her on the drive, thank you,” Jonty said, guessing that Mrs. Hamilton had probably witnessed the whole scene from the house. “We had family business to discuss.”

  “I’m not sure I can help you with anything like that.” The housekeeper looked defiant, as if daring Jonty to ask her something impertinent so she could beat him with a broom.

  “I appreciate that. But I hope you’d help me clarify something about the day Peter Priestland died.” He lowered his voice. “It may be germane to an inheritance case.”

  Mrs. Hamilton looked puzzled. “German?”

  “Germane.”

  “You’d better come in.” She let Jonty through the door but no further than the hall. “I suppose you want me to confirm that his nephew was lurking about that day? I’m afraid I can’t, as I didn’t see him.”

  “Oh.” Jonty had expected chapter and verse about witnessing the man acting suspiciously.

  “I saw Simon, though, despite the fact he told everyone he didn’t return here until he’d heard of Peter’s death.”

  “And was that why you asked Billy to tell me about the man in the garden?”

  “Yes. Although I suppose that might have been Mr. Bresnan, as everyone says he was here too.”

  Everyone? Was there some gossiping hotline between here and Hampshire, or did “everyone” just mean Mitchell and Rosalind herself? “Could either or both of them have come to see Peter? I mean, could they actually have spoken to him, when you were busy going through the house?”

  “Not through the front door, as it was on the chain. The outside door to the conservatory was closed, although the windows were open. It was the only part of the house didn’t need treating. But all doors throughout the house were shut. All part of the treatment to get rid of those wretched insects.” She sniffed.

  “The door was closed? Was it locked?”

  Mrs. Hamilton stopped to think. “I don’t know. It’s usually locked because of the orchids, as we don’t want anyone to steal them, although it might have been left unlocked because of the general hoo-ha that was going on.”

  Jonty remembered what he’d been told regarding the hoo-ha about the wasps in St. Bride’s porters’ lodge and could believe it. Maybe someone had seen it as an ideal time to cause chaos. But which someone? “Thank you. I’d appreciate your confidentiality in this matter. It’s a very delicate case.”

  “You’ll have it. I wouldn’t want my mistress to be deprived of anything she’s due. She could do with some happiness.” Clearly the matter of Alice Priestland’s jewels was another matter of Downlea gossip.

  “She must miss her husband greatly.” Jonty had become certain Mrs. Hamilton spoke in good faith. Unless, of course, he’d lost all ability to sniff out a lie. “You can tell her from me she’s too young to mourn him forever.”

  “That’s just what I’ve told her already, sir. And the vicar.” Mrs. Hamilton’s face softened in a smile at the mention of Mitchell. “He says it would be selfish of her not to consider marrying again.”

  “Sensible advice.” Especially sensible on Mitchell’s part if he was in the frame. “Mrs. Priestland’s not taking it, I assume?”

  “She says she’ll reconsider come Christmas. That’s a decent amount of time.”

  And by then all the hullabaloo about the wills would be cleared up. “That sounds reasonable. She’ll have plenty of suitors, I’d warrant?”

  “Bless you, sir, she won’t have a man in the house, except on business. Except the vicar. On parish business,” Mrs. Hamilton clarified, with a tone of voice implying he didn’t quite count as a man.

  “Most respectable.” Jonty turned his hat in his hands but couldn’t think of anything else to ask that wouldn’t risk him being hit with one of the umbrellas in the hallstand. Maybe Orlando would be able to get some more tittle-tattle straight from the horse’s mouth.

  Orlando eyed the vicarage with suspicion. He wasn’t happy in the vicinity of a church at the best of times, and even the thought of getting his detecting teeth stuck in wasn’t a great incentive. He wasn’t convinced he’d get much from Mitchell, although he had his list of questions. Had Mitchell seen either Simon or Bresnan on the day Peter died? Had he visited Thorpe House on that same day? Why did he think someone had lied to him about whether Peter or Simon was the eldest? Did he have so much of a liking for rich widows that he went around creating more? What did any of it matter?

  It felt like they were missing something terribly obvious—maybe more than one thing—and nothing Mitchell was likely to tell them, short of a confession, would help.

  In any event, Orlando only got a fraction of an answer. As he came up the path to the vicarage, somebody in a clerical collar, who had to be Mitchell given his resemblance to Jonty’s description, came scurrying out of the door.

  “Hello, can I help?” Mitchell asked, slowing down but not stopping. “If so, you’ll have to walk with me. Got an urgent visit to make.”

  Orlando fell into step and got straight down to business. “I wanted to talk about Peter Priestland. We’ve been asked to clarify the circumstances of his death, as it’s relevant to an inheritance.”

  “Dr. Coppersmith, is it? I had your colleague here recently and wondered when you’d follow.”

  Curse The Times and the notoriety those articles about them had brought.

  “I’m here now. Anything you can tell us to clarify events that day would be useful.” Orlando quickened his pace to keep up.

  “As I told your colleague, there’s little I can offer. Talk to Billy Waller, the grocer’s lad. He saw things that day.” Mitchell kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, down the road.

  “Billy’s on my list. But he isn’t an intimate of the household, is he?”

  Mitchell stopped, and turned on his heels. “What do you mean by that?”

  “He’s a delivery boy, not a friend of the mistress,” Orlando said, innocently, fascinated at the reaction his choice of words had provoked. “I was hoping you might have some special insight you could share.”

  Mitchell worked his mouth up and down, maybe debating giving Orlando a mouthful. In the end he said, “Dr. Coppersmith, I don’t need to tell you that I am bound by my vocation. There are things I can say and things I can’t. Talk to Billy. I have to go.” He span on his heels again and set off at a pace.

  Orlando watched him go, then headed for Mr. Houseman’s cottage, more convinced than ever that the insistence they talk to Billy was deflecting attention from the vicar’s relationship with Mrs. Priestland.

  He approached the killer of the ladybirds with a similar story to the one Jonty was using. They needed a consistent front, given the Downlea gossip network.
/>   Houseman, helping to clarify the time of Priestland’s death, confirmed that he and Billy had left Thorpe House before lunchtime, and that they’d both seen someone lurking around the shrubbery at the bottom of the garden around the time they were finishing off the job.

  “And Peter Priestland was alive when you left?” Orlando wasn’t sure how the answer to that would help, apart from neatening things up.

  “Alive and well, if a bit wheezy,” Houseman replied, nodding. “Up to making jokes, as well. He was teasing Billy that he’d seen a red kite over the house earlier that day. Poor Billy thinks every honey buzzard or the like he sees must be a red kite.”

  Orlando still couldn’t hear mention of honey buzzards without shivering, but he smiled bravely. “If he was so full of beans, did his death surprise you?”

  “Lor’, no.” Houseman shook his head. “Poor Mr. Priestland had barely got over the flu. He looked and sounded like a breath of wind would blow him over.”

  Orlando came out of the grocer’s shop with half a pound of Peace Babies in lieu of answers. He’d never thought anything could replace liquorice allsorts in his affections, but these little blighters had. Just as well, seeing as he’d discovered that Billy was out on deliveries, so his original purpose for visiting the grocer had gone west. He popped one in his mouth and wondered how he was going to explain his lack of success to Jonty. He was on his third one (and feeling like he could do with scoffing the lot) when investigational deliverance appeared in the form of a shop boy on a bicycle. This had to be Billy, given the word picture Jonty had painted.

  “Billy!” Orlando waved and smiled, standing to one side as the bicycle was brought to a stop next to him.

  “Yes, sir?” Billy returned the smile, full of trust.

  Orlando held out his hand. “My name’s Doct . . . Professor Coppersmith.” That still wouldn’t stick in his mind. Maybe when the dreaded inaugural lecture was behind him, the title would flow more easily from his tongue.

  “The detective?”

  Orlando nearly dropped his bag of sweets. “Yes. How—”

  “I thought Mrs. Hamilton was having me on. She said that officer I’d met up by Thorpe House, the one who’d seen the red kite same as I did, wasn’t just a soldier and a teacher but helped the police as well.” Billy puffed his chest up. “I’d love to help the police.”

  “That’s a very patriotic attitude to take,” Orlando replied, overcome with emotion. He’d had lads like that in his platoon. Many of them still lay under a French sky.

  “Thank you. She told me to remember your name, which wasn’t hard, it being such an odd one, in case you came to Downlea. You’ll be wanting to hear about the man I saw in the bushes, I guess.”

  “If you can give me an accurate account of him, then yes.”

  “He looked just like Mr. Priestland.”

  Orlando wondered whether Billy had been primed to say just that, but the lad didn’t seem as if he was repeating lines he’d been taught. Maybe he’d been persuaded he’d seen someone looking like Peter Priestland, just as he’d been persuaded he’d seen one of those wretched red kites. “How extraordinary. You must have got a good look at him, then.”

  “I did,” Billy replied, seeming to swell with pride. “My mother always says I’ve got the best eyes in the family.”

  “Glad to hear it.” So the problem lay in his perceptions rather than his eyesight? “Was he old or young?”

  Billy considered for a moment. “Older than me but younger than Mr. Priestland.”

  Bresnan, then, rather than Simon? Assuming, Orlando reminded himself, that the man was more real than the red kite had been. “Thank you for clearing that up. Did you see anyone else around that day? Someone who shouldn’t have been there?”

  “No. I’d have remembered. I had to get away to do my deliveries. I had a lot to catch up on and I wasn’t supposed to hang around skiving.” Billy fiddled with his handlebars. “Is that all, sir?”

  “Pretty well.” Orlando smiled. “What do you think of the vicar?”

  “Mr. Mitchell’s a nice man, but he’s not as much fun as Mr. Evans. He warned me about the red kites.” Billy had looked puzzled, but seemed to relax as he got onto his favourite topic.

  Orlando ploughed on, ignoring matters ornithological. “I suppose he’s a great comfort to the ladies at Thorpe House?”

  “I think so. My mother says he’s dipping his bucket in the well, there. I didn’t know they had a well, but I guess he’s helping the ladies out.”

  Dipping his bucket in the well? Orlando bet Mitchell hadn’t intended that to come out when he’d insisted they talk to Billy. But as the lad seemed to believe what he’d said, Orlando didn’t seek to disabuse him. “It sounds like it.”

  Billy nodded, and worked the handlebars of his bike again. “Would you tell your friend I said hello? He must have been a real hero with a scar like that!”

  “He was. He is. He always will be to me.” That last bit was out before Orlando realised he’d given voice to his thoughts, but Billy hadn’t seemed to notice how much emotion had been loaded into the phrase.

  “Did you serve out there too?”

  “I did.” But Orlando wasn’t going to go around displaying his scar. Not to anyone but Jonty.

  Billy looked appropriately concerned. “I don’t understand why some folk have to do it, cover the face of a dead body I mean, but I suppose they feel it’s right. I’ve only seen it the once, but you must have seen loads of dead men. Did they cover the faces of the dead in France? It must have been a heap of work.”

  Was this another obsession, along with the red kites? Something to do with the gruesome tales the parish assistant had told?

  “We . . . we couldn’t always manage to do everything we wanted for them. Not the services they might have received at home.” Orlando took a deep breath. He needed a pint and a bit of a think. “I’ll let you get away to your lunch. Thank you.”

  “You look like you could do with a beer.” Jonty was already drawing on a pint, in the garden of the pub they’d visited last time. “You sit down and I’ll get one in. Enjoy what’s left of this year’s nice weather.”

  Orlando arranged himself to best benefit from the sunshine. Out of the breeze, it felt almost like a summer’s day. So much so that he’d almost succumbed to a touch of great tiredness by the time Jonty returned bearing beer and rolls.

  “Sorry it took so long. Dolly’s niece has had her babies and yes, it was twins.”

  “Whose niece?” Orlando roused his brains. “Oh, yes. Dolly. The landlord’s wife. What did they call them?”

  “Jonty and Orlando, of course.” Jonty steadied the glass in his friend’s hand. “Only joking. Faith and Charity. Nice touch, seeing as the world always needs more of both.”

  “The world could do with a bit of clarity, at present.” Orlando sipped his beer. “Is there a possibility that Ian Bresnan has been leading us on an even merrier dance than we’d considered?” He gave an account of his morning’s discoveries.

  “In terms of Billy? He may have been geared up to talking to us, but he strikes me as fundamentally honest. Or as honest as he can be. He tells us what he believes to be true.”

  “I agree. Unless he’s one of the best actors it’s been my privilege to see. There were far too many nuances about what he said to me, and what he said to the housekeeper. I know we’ve been taken in before by what seems to be innocence.”

  Jonty shivered. “That first case. Those other cases.”

  “I should say we’ve encountered the most unlikely of murderers at times.” Orlando remembered them well.

  “Well, if the last few years have done anything, they’ve knocked any vestiges of naïveté from me. The ladies of Thorpe House knew he’d seen someone, knew he could be trotted out as a witness independent of the household, knew he could be beguiled into thinking and saying it was a particular person, and pointed him in our direction. QED.” Jonty grinned and took a bite from his roll.

  �
�Don’t be so hasty with your so-called proof. It’s time we talked this through. Suspect number one.” Orlando held up a solitary finger, just in case Jonty had forgotten what the number was. “Bresnan.”

  “Why’s Bresnan suspect number one?”

  “Cast in order of appearance. I’d have thought you’d appreciate that.”

  “I do. In that case, suspect number two is Rosalind, and three—”

  “Can we not concentrate on one at a time?” Sometimes all Orlando’s efforts to keep Jonty on one part of a discussion rather than fifteen at once came to nought. If it weren’t for blind adoration of the man, he’d have given up by now. “This application of an entirely logical style may be alien to you dilettantes, but it’s meat and drink to a scientific mind. You might learn something.”

  “I’m not sure that’s anything I’d like to learn, thank you, but I’ll undergo the experiment. Just for you.” Either the sunshine or the beer was working its mellowing magic.

  “Bresnan would stand to gain if he killed Peter, then fobbed the murder off on Rosalind. Assuming he knew about the convoluted wills beforehand. He could have copped the lot, Grandmother Priestland’s jewels and all. He best matches the man Billy says he saw.” Orlando tried to keep his mind focussed as the sun lit up his friend’s hair; silver threads now among the gold, but no less fine.

  “I suppose he does. Then he conveniently gets us in to prove Rosalind the killer? And locate those jewels at the same time? ” Jonty smiled, which was even more distracting. “Do you honestly believe he thinks we’re so thick we wouldn’t consider him? In that case, he’s either very clever—too clever for us, somehow—or very stupid, and I can’t believe either.”

  “And what about the fact he’s misled us consistently?”

  “That I’ll concede, but lying and murder are worlds apart.”

  Orlando laughed. “Very true. Think of the number of times you’ve wound me up with some cock-and-bull story that I’ve believed, only to find it was all cock-and-bull.”