A Presumption of Death

by Dorothy L. Sayers

  ‘Look, Helen, I do see that the situation gives you an interest in how Peter and I raise our children. But it doesn’t put you in charge. I think a child is far too young for boarding school at seven. But I’m not making decisions about that kind of thing without Peter.’

  ‘You may have to,’ Helen said.

  Harriet let silence lengthen between them.

  Then: ‘I only thought, since your own background was rather different, you might like a little help and advice.’

  ‘I am half my children’s background,’ said Harriet, ‘and the other half is not the Duke of Denver, but the wildly unconventional younger brother.’

  ‘Well, I’ve said my piece,’ said Helen, rising abruptly. ‘I must be going. I’ve got a lot of work to do. I’ll just say a word to Mrs Trapp. I must get her recipe for omelette with dried egg – that was absolutely first class. My friend in the Ministry of Food is urgently seeking palatable recipes.’

  She strode down the hallway and into the kitchen, where she found the children, with the addition of Sam Bateson, all happily eating chocolate custard.

  Mrs Trapp, straight-faced, gave her a recipe for making an omelette with reconstituted dried egg. Then Helen left, saying as she went, ‘I hope that other child brings a ration-book when he eats here!’

  Charlie thumbed his nose at the back of his departing aunt. Both Harriet and Mrs Trapp saw him do it, but neither of them reproached him.

  ‘Where did those eggs come from?’ asked Harriet, when Helen had departed. ‘Ought I to ask?’

  ‘Miss Twitterton let me have two dozen of her bantams’ eggs the day before yesterday, m’lady.’

  ‘Did we pay for them? I didn’t notice them in the accounts for the week.’

  ‘Fair exchange,’ said Mrs Trapp. ‘She had bought a beautiful silk blouse at a WVS sale, which was far too big for her, and she wondered if it could be taken in. Ivory crêpe-de-chine – gorgeous to wear, but slippery to work with.’

  ‘You managed it for her?’

  ‘She’s thin as a stick, that woman. I had to cut each piece of the shirt out of the seams, and make it again.’

  ‘So we won’t be short of eggs for a while? All completely against the regulations, Mrs Trapp.’

  ‘People who make regulations,’ Mrs Trapp observed, ‘should have a firm grasp of human nature.’

  And Harriet couldn’t argue with that. She looked forward to seeing Miss Twitterton resplendent in ivory silk. But whatever Miss Twitterton had wanted the gorgeous shirt for, it wasn’t to wear to church on Sunday. She appeared as usual to play the organ at the communion service, wearing her navy Viyella dress.

  An inquest held by Mr Perkins, the coroner, and featuring evidence of the cause and time of death given by the local pathologist, Dr Craven, was bound to take Harriet’s mind back to the inquest that had interrupted her honeymoon. This one was not likely to be as lively as the earlier one, surely. But perhaps there is a pattern to village inquests, for, as on the previous occasion, the back room at the Crown was packed. Somehow a lot of people had contrived to be available to attend in the middle of the working morning. A hum of excitement filled the room, and Mr Perkins had to hammer hard with his gavel to obtain the necessary silence. There were some similarities in the proceedings. Evidence of identification was given by Rita Smith, working at Bateson’s farm for the Women’s Land Army. The murdered girl’s next of kin, Superintendent Kirk told the jury, lived a distance off, and were understandably too distressed to make the identification. Rita Smith had lived and worked with the deceased for some months. Miss Smith gave evidence in a firm voice, although she was visibly distressed herself.

  Harriet thought that many people in the room were for the first time perceiving Wendy as a real person with grieving parents and friends; her reality had been masked in the eyes of many by the miasma of disapproval which surrounded her dashing conduct. Harriet herself had once been wrapped in notoriety – admittedly much more extreme. Nobody had been able to see her clearly through the fog of condemnation. It had seemed to most people that a woman who would live in sin with a man would do anything, even murder him. Only Peter had seen her clearly, and he had done so on first sight! She wrenched her attention back to the present moment.

  Dr Craven described the results of the post-mortem he had carried out. There had been a sequence of hard blows which had overpowered and killed the deceased: a blow to the front of the throat which had crushed the vocal cords, a hard blow to the side of the neck, sufficient to interrupt the flow of blood through the jugular vein, a blow to the kidneys from the back, probably caused by the assailant’s knee, minor injuries consistent with falling to the ground as the attack concluded.

  ‘In your experience as a pathologist, have you ever encountered injuries such as these before?’ enquired Mr Perkins.

  ‘Never. A killing without a weapon of somebody who resists is usually a prolonged and messy affair. This was expertly and rapidly done.’

  ‘Can we draw conclusions as to the identity of the assailant, do you think, Dr Craven?’

  ‘Hardly, Mr Perkins. May I draw your attention to the training booklet for unarmed conflict that was issued to Home Defence instructors last year? There must now be many people with the requisite knowledge.’

  Dr Jellyfield gave evidence of the warmth of the body when he knelt to take the pulse of the deceased as the crowd dispersed from the Crown. The corpse had been warm to the touch. His own hands had been cold from the chill of the underground vault, and he had experienced the woman’s wrist as warmer than his own fingers. He concluded that she had been dead only for a very short time; a conclusion which was consistent with the body temperature taken by thermometer half an hour later in the police cell to which the body had been taken.

  Police Constable Jack Baker gave evidence that he had been at the scene of the crime very quickly, since he and his wife were among those taking shelter in the vaults of the Crown. He had come forward in the crowd, and had reached the body while Dr Jellyfield was still holding the victim’s wrist, and trying to take a pulse. He had asked the crowd to stand back, and he had telephoned Superintendent Kirk at Pagford who was senior enough to take charge. Then he had stood beside the body until he could hand over to the Superintendent.

  Superintendent Kirk gave evidence confirming Constable Baker’s account, and embarking briefly on the investigation that he had conducted. Because of the dance at the Crown the village had been full of strangers on the evening in question. The first thing he had put in hand was interviewing the commanding officers of all the air-bases whose men had attended the dance. He had satisfied himself that all the air force personnel had arrived and departed in official transport, and that nobody had failed to return in the truck in which he had left the base.

  ‘That is to say,’ interposed Mr Perkins, ‘that although many men in uniform attended the dance, they had all departed upon the sirens announcing the practice air-raid, and are all accounted for?’

  ‘Quite so, Mr Perkins. The enlisted men cannot leave their bases without signing themselves out with the duty sergeant at the gates, and they have to sign in when they return. The times are given in the books, and this is all in order for the evening in question.’

  The coroner proceeded to interview Fred Lugg as to what he had seen from his vantage point on the church tower, which led to the calling of Mrs Spright, who had been seen walking around during the air-raid practice.

  ‘Why were you walking about after dark?’ enquired the coroner. ‘Were you on your way to one or other of the shelters?’

  ‘I was just looking around.’

  ‘Late at night?’

  ‘I’m not the only one who walks about at night in this village. You should ask Miss Twitterton what she is doing, up and down the lane all the time.’

  ‘I am interviewing you at the moment. Did you encounter any other person in the streets while you were looking around?’ asked Mr Perkins.

  Mrs Spright had encountered several. The
party from Talboys, for example. She had also observed a young woman, whom she now knew to have been Wendy Percival, running down the street in a great hurry towards the Crown. She had not seen what happened to the deceased, because she had crouched down behind the garden wall of a nearby house so as not to be seen.

  ‘And from this vantage point, while you could not see anything, you might easily have heard something? A cry, for example?’

  ‘I heard her stop running. Those silly high heels she was wearing made a tap-tap sound. And I heard her say, “Great heavens, what are you doing here?”’

  ‘And then? What was the reply?’

  ‘Not another thing. She didn’t get an answer, as far as I could hear.’

  ‘You didn’t see who she was talking to?’

  ‘As I told you, no.’

  ‘You didn’t see what it was that someone was doing that occasioned the deceased such surprise?’

  ‘No, I kept my head down.’

  At this point the foreman of the jury raised his hand. ‘Can the witness be asked, Mr Perkins, what she was doing, hiding in the bushes in the middle of the night instead of joining in the air-raid practice?’

  The coroner thought about it. ‘Is that to the point?’ he mused aloud.

  ‘The witness has a reputation for odd behaviour, sir. It might help us assess her evidence.’

  ‘Very well, I shall put the question.’

  Mrs Spright replied, ‘I was keeping a watch out for spies. If the authorities won’t act on information, then the private citizen has to. It’s a scandal – and it ought to be in the papers. Some people need showing up for what they are. Fifth columnists everywhere, and it’s no good telling that Superintendent Kirk what is going on, because—’

  ‘That will do, thank you,’ said Mr Perkins.

  ‘Oh, it will, will it?’ cried Mrs Spright. ‘I have family and friends in Norway, and I can tell you that there must be enemies among us everywhere. Half the upper classes are fascists, like that man Oswald Mosley. And there’s someone walking around this very village that you can tell isn’t who he says he is, every time he opens his mouth. When someone came asking for him, I sent him packing right away. “Gone to Cornwall,” I said. “You won’t find him still here.” I thought, why should I help a couple of spies make contact with each other—’

  ‘I take it that you have nothing further to tell us that is to the point?’ Mr Perkins interrupted. His voice had taken on the unmistakable timbre of saintly patience.

  ‘You don’t want to hear me out, either, I see,’ said Mrs Spright, flouncing out.

  ‘Members of the jury, I should advise you to weigh carefully what witnesses say, without prejudice, as far as you are able,’ Mr Perkins said. To Superintendent Kirk he said, ‘Do you wish to request an adjournment while you pursue further enquiries?’

  ‘With respect, Mr Perkins,’ said Superintendent Kirk, ‘in present circumstances I think it would be helpful if we got as far as we can this morning. Things being unpredictable, and manpower short, sir. And the witnesses – the young airmen who were present in the village for the dance, for example, or any local man who is liable to be called up, or directed into war work somewhere else – may be scattered to the four winds before we are in a position to resume.’

  ‘I take your point. Very well, the jury must do what they can with what evidence they have.’ Scrupulously Mr Perkins proceeded to tell the jury that a charge of murder would require the Crown to prove malice, intention, and the sanity of the accused. In the absence of any evidence as to the identity of the killer, let alone of his state of mind, the useful verdict of unlawful killing would be available, which would represent the present state of knowledge of the affair.

  The jury would have none of it. They took less than an hour to bring in a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown.

  ‘Well, Superintendent Kirk, if you take Mrs Spright seriously you should be looking for a Nazi spy,’ said Mr Perkins, pulling on his coat as the public dispersed, most of them heading to the bar downstairs. Harriet, who overheard this remark, judged from Superintendent Kirk’s expression that he was not inclined to take Mrs Spright seriously. Very far from it.

  It was a week after the inquest that Bunter presented himself at Talboys. He arrived from the station in John Bateson’s horse-drawn farm cart, and Harriet noticed the moment she saw him descending that he had two very large suitcases with him, made of brown leather and liberally covered with the destination labels of a much travelled man.

  ‘Leave those in the hall, and come and talk to me in here, Bunter,’ she said, leading the way to the sitting-room. ‘And please sit down.’

  ‘You have no word from his lordship, my lady?’

  ‘None, Bunter. Have you?’

  ‘No, my lady.’

  ‘You have come with your luggage, I see.’

  ‘With your ladyship’s permission I have come to resume my employment with Lord Peter’s household.’

  Harriet hesitated. It would be wonderful to have Bunter smoothing her path in every detail, as he had done in the past. ‘Oh, Bunter, that would be splendid, but—’

  ‘It seems to you that to have a gentleman’s gentleman in the middle of a war, even if the gentleman himself were here to be served, would be extravagant, my lady?’

  ‘Exactly. You understand me perfectly.’

  ‘May I attempt to put your mind at rest on that point? Since you saw me last I have made repeated and very urgent attempts to enlist in the services. I have almost unscrupulously used every contact that years of service with his lordship have given me. I have not succeeded. My age is against me. It has been strongly suggested to me that I would best be employed in some rural district assisting the local authorities in the organisation of Home Defence. And since at present my family are residing in a rural district, I am putting myself at the disposal of the Pagford district war committee, and of you, my lady.’

  ‘Bunter, I am very touched that you should regard us as your family. But shouldn’t you be with your own wife and baby?’

  ‘The powers that be have elected to move Mrs Bunter,’ he said. ‘She has been sent to work not far from here, at Lopsley Manor. I am hoping to see her from time to time.’

  ‘She is working as a photographer?’

  ‘Her talent is being employed in the interpretation of aerial reconnaissance photographs, my lady.’

  ‘You must be glad that she is out of London. But surely, with a baby to look after she isn’t in the category they are describing as “a mobile woman”?’

  ‘Her mother is happy to continue looking after our little boy, my lady. I believe the work Hope is engaged on is technical and urgent and they are very short of trained people.’

  ‘Well then, Bunter, the only question is where we are going to put you. You need to be private and comfortable. Queenie has left us to work in a munitions factory in Stevenage, but her room was very small . . .’

  ‘This house has extensive attics, my lady. I shall make myself quarters.’

  ‘Adequate for Hope to come and join you when she has leave? The ideal, really, would be to find you somewhere independent but nearby. But the village is packed with evacuees. Although when I come to think of it there is a cottage which should be available before very long. I can ask about it.’

  ‘I shall be quite comfortable here,’ he said.

  ‘Bunter, I don’t know if I am being tactful in saying this, and I am sure that your little son Peter is well cared for by his Fanshaw grandparents. But we are looking after five children here already, and Harriet Parker must be roughly the same age as your son. I can’t think that one more child about the house would make any difference; as far as keeping the peace is concerned, all is already lost. In short if you would like to have him here with you it would not be any bother to us at all.’

  ‘Thank you, my lady. I will consult my wife at the earliest opportunity.’

  ‘Mrs Trapp will be glad to have you back. She told me you would return to u
s, but I didn’t see how she could be right.’

  ‘Mrs Trapp is a woman of very sound views.’

  ‘Quite so, Bunter. Oh, and Bunter – welcome home.’

  Ten

  ‘What’s that, young sirs? Stole a pig?

  Where are your licences?’ said the policeman.

  Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Pigling Bland, 1913

  A household with Bunter in it appeared to run on wheels, even in war-time.

  Mrs Trapp could take an afternoon off, leaving supper in capable hands. Sadie could have a break from looking after children, while Bunter firmly whisked Charlie and Polly off to catch rabbits, or construct a look-out post, and Harriet looked after the toddlers. Suddenly her working time was restored to her; at odd hours, it was true, but reliably. Bunter got Rita and Muriel to plough up a plot at the nearer end of the field beyond the outhouses, and planted lettuce and beans and carrots. Harriet could sit down in the afternoon to write an account of the inquest and add it to the piles of unposted letters to Peter. Whatever, she wondered, writing it down, had Mrs Spright meant about not helping spies get in touch with each other? She had thrown another pot-shot at Aggie Twitterton, too. What an unpleasant woman!

  When the account was written down as clearly and fully as she could, Harriet wandered into the kitchen in search of a cup of tea, and offered Mrs Trapp a helping hand. Bunter, she understood, was in the village, at the blacksmith’s.

  ‘What is he doing there?’ asked Harriet, picking up the paring knife she had been offered and sitting down to the task of peeling carrots and turnips.

  ‘He’s getting a new tyre on one of the wheels of a little cart he found, parked in the garage, m’dear,’ said Mrs Trapp. ‘He’s fixing it all up.’

  ‘Mysteries all around,’ said Harriet. ‘Why do we need a cart? I didn’t know carts had tyres. A tyre goes to a garage, doesn’t it?’

  ‘There’s no mystery about any of that,’ said Mrs Trapp. ‘Now mind you get that peel off very thin; the best bit of the veg is just below the skin. We need a cart to bring sensible amounts of firewood out of his lordship’s wood, to save coal. Cart wheels do have tyres, m’lady, I’m surprised at you for not noticing that. And the tyres they have are bands of iron, so it’s the forge, and not the garage that’s wanted.’