Death of an Unsung Hero

by Tessa Arlen

  “I do hope he has not, m’lady, I really do.” Mrs. Jackson had not quite finished with her notes. Clementine craned her neck and saw that there were quite a few pages covered in her tidy, upright handwriting. “I have spoken to most of the staff at the hospital about where they all were yesterday up and until about half past two, and it is quite possible that Captain Bray might very well have been alive at half past twelve. Shall I read what I have, m’lady?” Clementine sat forward, pencil poised over her notebook, and nodded for Mrs. Jackson to begin.

  “Of the people in the hospital, the last person to have seen Captain Bray alive, apart from the murderer, of course, appears to be Mary Fuller when she went to pick beans for Cook. She saw the captain when she came into the kitchen garden at twelve-fifteen; this would have been after Sarah Ellis had delivered the captain’s luncheon basket. He was standing outside the potting shed in the kitchen garden, sharpening his spade. She told me that he helped her pick beans until she left him a little after half past twelve to be back at the kitchen by a quarter to one. So Captain Bray must have been murdered between about twenty-five minutes to one—I added a couple of minutes there for safety—and when his body was found at half past two.”

  “How can we be sure that Mary Fuller’s story is accurate?”

  “I checked with Cook: Fuller was told to go and pick beans a few minutes after twelve o’clock. She got back to the kitchen at a quarter to one with enough beans for everyone for luncheon. She would have had to have some help gathering enough beans for both upstairs and downstairs luncheon.” Another pause as she considered. “For the time being, m’lady, until we have a clear idea of the time of the captain’s death, Fuller might have been the last person to have seen him alive at twenty-five minutes to one.”

  “Twenty-five to one,” Clementine wrote in her book. “And then Lieutenant Phipps discovered the body at half past two. Two hours.” She looked up. “Well, that narrows down the field a bit, doesn’t it? Something bothering you about Fuller, Jackson?”

  An almost imperceptible shrug of her shoulders—How she dislikes conjecture, Clementine thought. “Impressions can be most enlightening sometimes, Jackson.” This seemed to throw her assistant sleuth into a rash of indecision.

  “It’s just feelings really.”

  “Go ahead with them. Feelings, as Major Andrews says, are often the key to revelations.”

  “I am not sure I would agree with him, m’lady. I sometimes think that feelings can be very messy and unreliable.”

  “Well then let’s just talk about your impression of Fuller’s account of her time in the kitchen garden with Captain Bray.”

  “She was upset, quite naturally. She knew I was going to ask her about her trip to the garden: Ellis gave her a little nudge as she left my office, a sort of warning. But I felt that a lot of her account was like something from a stage play. Perhaps I am reading too much into things.”

  Clementine laughed. “I am quite sure you are not. This young Fuller sounds like a complicated sort.

  “Do you have any information about our officer-patients who were still in the hospital that day?” Mrs. Jackson evidently did, Clementine thought, and did not look particularly happy about that either.

  “After breakfast Captain Martin and Lieutenants Fielding and Phipps spent the morning hours in the medical wing in consultation with Captain Pike and Major Andrews, and if they weren’t with them Sister Carter gave all three their monthly physical check-up. She occupies the old anteroom to the salon and the tapestry room, which are now the doctors’ offices, and whichever officer was not with a doctor was with her, or waiting to be seen by her. Major Andrews and Sister Carter both say they were all in this area right up until luncheon. I am telling you this because Lieutenant Phipps was the only one of the three officers who left the hospital building before luncheon.”

  Clementine looked up, her eyes wide. “Phipps left the house before luncheon—what time did she say he left?”

  “Sister Carter thinks at half past twelve and Major Andrews also mentioned it. Lieutenant Phipps said he was going to the orchard to bring apples up to the kitchen courtyard for the cider pressing. The rest of them—Sister Carter, Major Andrews, Captains Pike and Martin, and Lieutenant Fielding—walked together from the medical wing to the officers’ mess, arriving in time for luncheon at one o’clock.”

  Clementine was writing as fast as she could. “Lieutenant Phipps … went to orchard … gone from hospital … half an hour or maybe longer … before luncheon,” she said as she wrote, and then she looked up. “So at the moment our suspects must include both Fuller and Phipps, and even perhaps Ellis. What about the other members of staff?”

  “I saw Corporal Budge off and on throughout the morning as we went about our duties. He spent some time with me in my office going over his requisitions for the week, and then I saw him again in the kitchen before he joined us for luncheon with the other staff belowstairs. After that he went off to the kitchen courtyard with the officers on cider detachment. I am not sure he would have had the time to go to the kitchen garden at all during the morning.”

  Clementine’s right hand was beginning to ache. “To get to the kitchen garden from the hospital—what sort of time would that take, didn’t you say earlier ten minutes?”

  “On foot between ten to fifteen minutes at the very most, m’lady, but on a bicycle…” She paused. “It takes me about five minutes, but if you were riding at speed, two, maybe three minutes, it would depend on age and strength I suppose.

  “I need to do more checking on Corporal Budge’s morning,” Mrs. Jackson said, and wrote a note before she went on. “To continue, m’lady. After luncheon when the cider detachment left the hospital, Major Andrews, Captain Pike, and Sister Carter had a meeting to discuss the next Medical Board review. I think they are all in the clear, as they were together right up until the time Captain Bray’s body was found.”

  “Corporal West is the only one you have not yet mentioned; where was he?”

  “He was…” Mrs. Jackson turned to the next page, and after a quick glance at what she had written there: “He had been on duty the night before and so he had the day off yesterday. After breakfast I saw him sitting outside the scullery door on the top step, polishing his boots. Then, according to the cook, he sat in the servants’ hall with his newspaper and then left just before eleven o’clock, saying that he was going to walk down to the village to buy some tobacco. He was back just in time for luncheon at one o’clock. From two o’clock on he was asleep in his quarters.”

  Clementine clapped her hands together and her mouth widened in a smile. “You see, Jackson? You see? He says he went down to the village for tobacco at eleven o’clock and was back in time for luncheon at one o’clock. But even walking slowly he had all the time in the world to get there and back, perhaps dropping off at the kitchen garden to murder Captain Bray between the time Fuller last saw the captain at twenty-five minutes to one and luncheon.” She got to her feet and paced up and down with her left forearm folded under her bosom and her right forefinger tapping her chin in thought. “If he cut through Crow’s Wood and the cart track to the south-gate entrance into the kitchen garden, no one would have seen him. If Captain Bray was bent over to pick up a few potatoes he could have taken the spade and hit him on the head. If Fuller saw the captain alive at twenty-five to one, West could have been hiding down at the other end of the kitchen garden, waiting for her to leave.”

  Mrs. Jackson listened with her head ever so slightly tilted to one side.

  “Does Corporal West have a bicycle?” As Clementine asked this seemingly ordinary question, Mrs. Jackson dropped her pencil on the floor, and then when she had straightened up after retrieving it she shook her head. “No, m’lady. The cook and her kitchen maid bike up from the village every morning for work and they keep their bicycles locked up in the coal shed next to the scullery, but I keep mine right outside the scullery door under the porch.” And she disappeared off into a world of her own
for a few minutes before she said, “I thought I would go down to the village before I return to the hospital. I could go to the tobacconist and check with Mrs. Diggory when Corporal West came into her shop. And as it was his day off, so he might have stopped for a pint at the Goat and Fiddle, or even gone to the post office.”

  “We seem to have four possible suspects then, Jackson: the unfortunate Lieutenant Phipps; VAD Fuller, who might have been the last person to see Captain Bray alive, other than his murderer; and Corporal West, who, so far, has no alibi at all for the time of the captain’s death. Then there is VAD Ellis and her rather cagey account of her morning.”

  Clementine made some notes in her notebook before she looked up, her face bright with intention. “We have things to do, Jackson! See if you can dig up some more information on Lieutenant Phipps and his trip to the orchard before and after luncheon—Mr. Thrower might have seen him there.” She threw her pencil onto the desk with all the heedless delight of a schoolgirl when she has finished her lessons. “And while you are doing that, I will talk to Lady Althea about the farm-detachment officers. Perhaps she can vouch for them being at their farms all day, though we might have to do some checking ourselves, just to make sure, because it seems that not all of her attention was engaged on the harvest yesterday. And I will simply ask Colonel Valentine when the coroner thinks Captain Bray was killed, and whether the spade was used as a murder weapon.” After all, she thought, the old boy is quite used to my interfering by now. He might even welcome some help.

  Mrs. Jackson closed her notebook as Agnes arrived to beg her ladyship’s pardon for the interruption but Colonel Valentine was waiting in the morning room hoping to talk to her as soon as she had the time, and that Lord Montfort was also asking for her as Sir Winchell Meacham had come to call. “His lordship says would you spare him a moment or two with Sir Winchell, m’lady?”

  “Sir Winchell? Oh dear me, is he here now?” On being assured that he was, Clementine’s heart sank. She felt tremendous sympathy for their neighbor, Sir Winchell Meacham, whose life had been emptied quite tragically by the death of both of his sons. His eldest had been shot by a sniper at the Battle of Loos and the youngest, a pilot in the Royal Naval Air Force, had gone down in flames and his body never recovered during the Battle of the Somme. Unfortunately, their nearest neighbor was naturally of the sort of disposition Clementine described as agitated, and the death of his sons had made him even more high-strung than he had been before the war.

  I simply don’t have time for Sir Winchell today, she thought with exasperation. And certainly not this morning; Ralph must fend for himself. She lifted her hand in acknowledgment of Mrs. Jackson’s sympathetic look that she had to deal with Sir Winchell, whose prickly reputation was well known.

  “Off I must go, Jackson. Perhaps we might finish our conversation tomorrow, unless something interesting occurs in the meantime.” And with that they parted company.

  Chapter Nine

  Clementine took a few moments in front of the looking glass to tidy her hair before going downstairs to join Colonel Valentine in the morning room. How very nice it is, she thought as she went down, that one’s chief constable for the county does not think twice about coming to consult on matters of murder. And with this agreeable thought she crossed the threshold of the library and said, with the right degree of gravitas, her good-morning to the elderly colonel, who courteously rose from his chair and bent his head in his customary bow to her.

  “I am really here to see Mr. Bray, Lady Montfort; I know I must not take up too much of your time. Last night he was in such a state of shock and grief that I was quite alarmed for his health.”

  “Yes, Lord Montfort told me that Mr. Bray was most distressed.”

  The chief constable made tutting noises and shook his head as he stared down at his feet. “But I also wanted to see how you were faring this morning after the shock of finding Captain Bray’s body, and also,” he paused and looked apologetic, “whether anything had occurred to you about that time after the fact, so to speak. If now would be a good time and it would not upset you too much to think about it.”

  Thoughts? She had had a hundred of them and all before breakfast, and she was enchanted by the colonel’s invitation to share them. “Please tell me what I can do to be of help,” she said, looking as modest as she could as she waited to be consulted.

  “Oh, there is nothing you can really do, I am afraid, Lady Montfort. I was just wondering if there was anything you might have remembered about…” He left the words hanging as he looked everywhere in the room but at her, and then, brightening: “I spent quite some time with Major Andrews at the hospital this morning. What he is accomplishing there is most impressive.”

  It was important for her to be patient. Why is it that some men have such difficulty in accepting that not all women faint at the sight of blood, especially these days?

  “We have so much respect for Major Andrews and Captain Pike. They work incredibly hard, and have been most successful with their patients. Captain Bray was doing so well under their care,” she said, and the colonel nodded in agreement: an apparent convert to the cause of treating neurasthenia.

  “Do you have any idea yet at what time of the day the captain was murdered, Colonel?” She slid this question in as a sign that she was his willing ally in this investigation.

  There was a long silence as Colonel Valentine struggled with what he evidently felt was her unseemly interest. Rank sometimes has its advantages, she thought as she smiled at him until he gave in. “Certainly we do, Lady Montfort. Since Captain Bray was found so soon after his death we can say with reasonable certainty between the hours of half past eleven in the morning and about half past two in the afternoon. Give or take a few minutes, as he was in a shady part of the garden.” She suppressed a smile of triumph. So we were quite right: he was killed between twenty-five to one—that is, if Fuller was telling the truth—and when Phipps came through the kitchen garden at half past two.

  “Poor Lieutenant Phipps, he was most shaken-up. I am quite sure he still is.” This was the closest she dared come in asking if the lieutenant was a suspect.

  Valentine cleared his throat and, hands clasped behind his back, stared down at the carpet as if he might find some message written there in its pattern, and Clementine realized with a painful shaft of understanding that his asking for her thoughts was, just as his conversation had been with Major Andrews, the colonel’s way of appeasing all involved. Her earlier buoyant mood began to dissolve. Does this mean that he has already arrested Lieutenant Phipps and put him in Market Wingley jail?

  “I saw Mrs. Jackson leave the house as I was waiting for you.” There was the slightest note of censure here: Colonel Valentine was quite familiar with Clementine and Mrs. Jackson’s several successful inquiries into wrongdoings and it seemed to Clementine that the old man was nowhere near closer to accepting their help, and was as disapproving of their involvement as he always was—unless of course they were successful.

  He knows we are already discussing things so it’s best to be absolutely straight with him. “Yes, she was here to let me know, with her customary efficiency and eye for detail, that she is aware where all our officers were from just after breakfast until well after the time the body was discovered. There are some stray odds and ends out there that make one wonder … such as who might have visited the kitchen garden—off schedule, so to speak. This rather makes me think that perhaps Lieutenant Phipps simply had the misfortunate to find Captain Bray and that it might very well have been someone else who murdered him.”

  Colonel Valentine cleared his throat again and they both gazed thoughtfully out the window, she to a lawn that needed cutting and he no doubt to ponder the many gallons of missing petrol.

  “I am sure you are aware, Lady Montfort, we are operating with at least half of our original number of police officers, but we are quite sure that all intelligence presently points to Lieutenant Phipps.”

  “Not actually arrest
ed then?”

  “Well, not exactly … but the Defense of the Realm Act does not require us to obtain a warrant for arrest these days.”

  She decided to delay if she could the young lieutenant’s arrest. “Mrs. Jackson possesses a most disciplined and observant mind, Colonel. I think her opinion would be of immeasurable help in this investigation—if you would talk to her…” She did not add “leaving Inspector Savor free to return to his petrol investigation” but she prayed that this would be the outcome.

  “That is very generous of you, Lady Montfort.” He got to his feet. “I am hoping that we will be able to sew this one up quickly, and for the time being we must pursue an avenue that as I say points … very … significantly … And shorthanded as we are…” As Clementine’s quizzical expression turned to naked distress, he coughed and tried not to meet her gaze. “Well now, I think I had better meet with Mr. Bray. I am sure he has questions for me, last night he was most troubled.”

  And Clementine realized with a mixture of both alarm and annoyance that however willing Colonel Valentine was to outwardly approve of the work Major Andrews was doing at Haversham Hall, the murder of a man with shell-shock by another man “while of unsound mind” was of lesser importance than recovering stolen government property. There was just one more question she needed an answer to and she asked it before the colonel managed to make his exit.