The Poison Pen

by Evelyn James

  “I shall worry about my own reputation,” Clara said firmly, but nicely, endeavouring to be the peace-maker of the three. “I have no intention of abandoning Oliver because his father is a tad eccentric. After all, some might say that by being friends with me, he is damaging his own reputation.”

  “That’s different!” Annie interjected sharply.

  “Is it? Many would say I am an unnatural woman for running a business and investigating crimes. I would hate to think of people I call friends distancing themselves from me because of my choice of career. I would expect better than that from people I considered friends,” Clara gave Annie a very pointed look and the whole matter was very rapidly dropped.

  “I’ll get the bread and butter pudding,” Annie said quickly, turning away in a fluster.

  “I can’t believe…” Tommy began as she vanished down the hall.

  “She is just being protective,” Clara reassured him. “Think no more on it.”

  Tommy met her eyes slowly.

  “Oliver’s father isn’t, ahem, dangerous… is he?”

  “I doubt it,” Clara said stoutly. “Now who is questioning my judgement?”

  “I just want to be sure you are safe.”

  “And I am,” Clara smiled. “Really, a woman almost coughs her last due to a bout of influenza and everyone thinks she is as dainty as a glass flower!”

  “Old girl, you are the only family I’ve got left,” Tommy pulled a sad face. “Can’t have you dying on me.”

  “Same applies to you,” Clara reached out for his hand. “Same applies to you.”

  Chapter Eight

  Clara couldn’t find a bicycle to borrow the next morning, so she set out on foot for White’s farm. Along the way she managed to beg a ride from a man driving a cart full of winter fodder. He knew White’s farm and was good enough to drop her near the farmyard. It was a cold, crisp day. A slight mist hung over the fields, and there were still patches of frost and ice along the roads. Clara pulled her coat around her tighter and wedged her hat on her head firmly. She wondered how all those girls who had had their hair cut outrageously short managed to keep their ears warm in this weather.

  White’s farm was reasonably successful and looked well maintained as Clara entered the yard. The war had been kind to Mr White. He had been subsidised by the government to turn more of his land over to arable food production, and had even managed to acquire a few more acres in the process. Clara recalled Mrs Hampton’s remarks on her brother and his successful expansion of the family farm. It looked as though Mr White was enjoying similar success. Of course, whether that would continue now Britain was able to import goods safely again, was another matter.

  Clara walked past a large plough, clearly in the process of being repaired, and knocked at the farmhouse door. There was a long silence and Clara wondered if Mr White was still out in the fields. She glanced at her wristwatch (a decadent Christmas present from Tommy) and noted it was growing close to ten o’clock. Perhaps the farmer was out working?

  Almost as she thought about turning around to explore the buildings about the farm, the door opened and a small, round woman, with a face like uncooked dumpling dough, peered at her.

  “Good morning,” Clara said. “I was hoping to speak to Mr White? I am looking into the matter of an accident that occurred behind your farm last year?”

  The woman blinked at her rapidly.

  “Accident?”

  “The one involving Police Constable Brompton? I am looking into the matter on behalf of the family,” Clara braced herself for a lie. “The police offer certain forms of compensation and the family believe their son may be due some money, as he was injured in the line of duty. But they need a few details confirmed first. I believe Mr White was first on the scene of the accident?”

  “Yes, my husband was,” Mrs White still looked anxious. “I just cooked his breakfast. He has been up since five, had a problem with the sheep. He got back in only ten minutes ago, or thereabouts.”

  As she spoke she moved back and allowed Clara into the house. The Whites’ farmhouse was extremely old, with low ceilings and timber beams stretching across the uneven plasterwork. A large, plain grandfather clock ticked down time in the corner. When Mrs White closed the front door, the hall became extremely dark. There were no lights on in the house at all, despite the dull winter morning.

  “This way,” Mrs White gave Clara another strange look and then led her through to the kitchen.

  Farmer White was sitting at a well-scrubbed kitchen table, hunched over a plate of sausages, bacon and eggs. A big farm dog lay at his feet, snoring to itself, as it absorbed heat from the nearby kitchen range. Mr White had been a farmer all his life and he was now nearly sixty. In all that time he had kept to a very rigid routine. He rose early and tended the animals, then he came home and ate a good breakfast (always three sausages, two eggs, four slices of bacon and several rounds of bread and butter) before beginning the various chores he had set himself for the day. At lunchtime he had cheese and bread, washed down with cider, then he worked on until the light began to fade, (or in summer, when his stomach began to rumble) and returned home to a hearty dinner, before sitting before the fire for an hour or two smoking a pipe and then up to bed, ready to start again the next day. Few things disrupted this routine, the war had been one of them, and now Clara arriving on his doorstep was another. Mr White stared at his breakfast, having this feeling at the back of his mind that eating in front of a visitor was somehow rude, yet also knowing his bacon would be cold soon. He was torn between carrying on as normal or dealing with this very unusual interruption. Clara decided to solve the riddle for him.

  “Carry on with your breakfast Mr White, I know you are a busy man with lots to do.”

  Mr White gave a grunt of thanks, then started on his sausages. The farm dog at his feet gave a contented snuffle and rolled over.

  “I’ve come to ask about the accident that occurred behind your farm last summer. The one involving the policeman?” Clara accepted a cup of tea and some bread and butter offered her by the anxious Mrs White. Much like her husband, Mrs White wasn’t used to unexpected visitors. “If you could tell me everything you remember about that night it would be most helpful.”

  Mr White swabbed his plate with a thick slice of bread and managed to consume it in two bites. He dropped his fork and knife on the plate and leaned back with a sigh of satisfaction. When he looked up at Clara his smile was welcoming, if a little reticent.

  “That was a nasty bit of business.”

  “Yes,” Clara could only concur.

  “How is the young lad?” Mrs White asked suddenly. “I think of his mother sometimes, how she must have been sick with worry. We have a son and I worry about him so.”

  Clara recognised Mrs White as one of the world’s natural worriers, her anxiety on the doorstep had not been due to anything suspicious, as Clara had initially wondered, but a normal response from a woman who saw trouble everywhere.

  “PC Brompton is quite recovered. He works at the hospital now. Sadly, his injuries prevent him from being a policeman any longer.”

  “How sad,” Mrs White looked genuinely disheartened by the news.

  “Nasty bit of business,” Mr White repeated quietly.

  For a time no one said anything. Clara broke the silence.

  “What first alerted you to the accident?” she asked Mr White.

  The farmer gave another grunt, it seemed his habit, and scratched at his thick, curling hair.

  “I suppose it was the car,” he said at last. “We don’t get many cars hereabouts, the lane is pretty narrow and it is just dirt, not that fancy tarmacadam stuff. Hearing a car roaring along that lane got my attention, no one in their right mind would drive fast down there. You could hit anything. Back when my father was alive, there was a very unpleasant accident in that lane when some young fellow drove his car too fast around the corner. The young lady with him lost her head. We found it in the hedge.”

 
Mr White fell silent again, his mind returning to another night twenty years ago when he had heard a terrible squeal followed by a crash, and had raced out with his father to see what had occurred. He had never desired to own a car after that gruesome scene. The driver was bad enough, a mangled mess of bones and flesh, but the woman… there had been her body, all neat in her best dress, but everything above the neck was missing. The interceding years had faded the image in his memory; he was, after all, a man who spent time around animal carcasses. Then there had come that terrible roaring engine last summer, and all in an instant the nightmares about that horrid accident two decades before came flooding back.

  “I said to my wife ‘damn fool driving that fast down a lane’.”

  “He did,” Mrs White nodded eagerly. “I said I was just very glad our John had no interest in cars.”

  “What happened next?” Clara asked.

  “It was one of those things. You couldn’t help but listen. I didn’t want to, in case the worst happened, but somehow I couldn’t stop. I heard the car take the corner down the bottom of my field,” Mr White pointed to the far side of the kitchen, indicating where, should they be able to see through the wall, his field ended. “He took that all right, though I cringed as I heard him brake. Then he was roaring up this long stretch at the back. You could hear he was going faster and faster. Then there was a cry and a terrible thudding sound, but the car just carried on. Never stopped.”

  “You didn’t hear him even attempt to brake?”

  Mr White shook his head.

  “Sure as sure I was that something had been hit. I have sheep out and it crossed my mind one had stumbled into the lane and he had hit it. I grabbed up the big storm lantern and ran outside, shouting to my wife to rouse John from his bed and send him out too. I ran across the big field, I am not ashamed to say there was bile in the back of my throat. I was dreading what I might find. The car had vanished, but when I jumped over the hedge there was the lad lying in the road. He looked dead. His legs were smashed. I could see bone through his uniform. His head was in a pool of blood. I thought to myself, this boy has had it. Then I crouched down to look at his badge and found out who he were, and suddenly he gives this gurgle. Sort of a groan, I suppose, and just then John appears and I send him running to the nearest telephone to get a message to the police.”

  “Had you met Constable Brompton before?”

  “No. I knew the police sometimes sent a man to walk the lane, but most times when it is dark I am indoors or in the middle of a field tending a sick animal. There isn’t much time for talking to folk.”

  “And, have you ever heard this car since?”

  “Never,” Mr White said stoutly. “If I had I would have gone out and had a word with the driver. I imagine he scared himself with that incident. Ghastly that he didn’t stop though. The doctor who came out said if we had not sent for him as quickly as we did, the lad would have been done for.”

  Clara imagined that was what the driver of the car had hoped.

  “Thank you for your time Mr White, and for the bread and tea Mrs White. I shan’t impose on you any longer.”

  Mrs White escorted Clara to the door. Just in the hall she paused and went to a small ornamental bowl she kept on a side table.

  “I kept this silly thing,” she picked up something shiny in her hand. “I don’t know what it is, but I found it in the road. I suppose, I always thought it might be important.”

  She pressed the object, which was a piece of chromed metal, into Clara’s hand. It had a shape to it, somewhat like the edge of a bird’s wing. It might have come off a car, Clara supposed. Clara thanked her again and then went on her way. She glanced up and down the road outside the farm in the vain hope there might be another cart coming along that could take her back to Brighton. Failing that, she set out on foot. At least, she consoled herself, the exercise would do wonders for her waistline.

  Chapter Nine

  Tommy was in the Post Office looking up an address for Colonel Fairbanks, when he bumped into Agatha the writer again. She was posting several letters and looked rather in a hurry, but she stopped to talk nonetheless.

  “How does the investigation go?”

  “Oh, it’s just the start and things are always slow at the start,” Tommy replied. “How goes your research?”

  “Dreadful! I am at a dead end. Brighton has just not been as inspiring as I had hoped.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “Look, Tommy, come have a pot of tea and a chat with me. I could do with someone to bounce ideas off, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  Tommy said he didn’t. He left a message for Annie with the postmistress, letting her know where he had gone. Then Agatha pushed him to the nearest tea shop and ordered a plate of small cakes and a large pot of tea.

  “The problem is,” she began as soon as they were settled, “getting the character of the detective just right. They have to be believable and people have to like them, or the readers simply won’t care if they solve the crime or not. And it would be even worse if they hated the detective so much they actually wanted the criminal to get away with the crime!”

  “Yes, I could see that being a problem,” Tommy smiled.

  “And then there is the dilemma of how you deal with your detective’s relationship with the police. Unless he is a policeman himself, he is going to be unwelcome to the officials. Worse if you make him a woman! Gosh, imagine what the police would make of a little old lady interfering in crimes! Oh, heavens, and what if she solved the case before them! They would be appalled.”

  “Clara has managed to develop a working relationship with our local Inspector. Though, perhaps that is as much due to him being a very forward-thinking man. She tries not to tread on too many toes.”

  “That is just it! How to ensure they work together and not against each other. And it has to be believable!” Agatha sighed. “My husband thinks I fret too much over my writing.”

  “Nonsense,” Tommy assured her. “You merely want to write the best story possible. All good artists fret over their work.”

  The doorbell of the teashop rang, as it had done a half-dozen times since Agatha and Tommy had sat down, but this time Tommy found himself looking up, and he saw Annie in the doorway. She looked displeased. Her eyes went to Agatha sitting in her neat dress and jacket, eating her cake in very refined, small bites. Annie was not a naturally jealous woman, but she didn’t like the way Tommy had been absorbed so immediately into the aura around this writer. They could talk about crime in a way Annie never could. She grimaced at suggestions of poisonings or shootings, far too grim for polite conversation in her mind. Yet, here was Tommy eagerly discussing just those matters with this new, handsome woman – in a teashop! They were eating cake and chatting like old friends and all she had was a message slipped to her by the postmistress!

  Annie didn’t usually feel like a servant around Tommy. They were friends and, if not quite equals, that was only because Annie tried to keep a certain detachment. Yet, suddenly, here she was feeling like little more than a… a… a maid!

  Annie stormed into the teashop and straight up to the table. She was trying to hold in her outrage, but suspected it showed on her face.

  “Annie this is Agatha, a writer,” Tommy introduced them, not noticing the strange tension in the girl.

  “Morning,” Annie said as politely as she could to the usurper.

  Agatha smiled politely back.

  “Do you work for the Fitzgeralds?” she asked without meaning anything by the comment.

  Annie, however, perceived it as an insult. Had Tommy not interceded she would have said something regrettable.

  “Annie is a friend, a very dear friend,” Tommy smiled. “She may do the housework, but it would be unfair on her to imagine her role is that of a mere servant. Isn’t that right, old girl?”

  Tommy’s light-humoured grin flashed up at Annie and she felt her anger disintegrating. It was hard to stay angry when Tommy threw his charm on a pe
rson. She felt her righteous indignation eluding her and with it evaporated her confidence. Annie was not good around people she perceived as her social betters. They made her nervous. Her anger had temporarily overridden her unease. Now it returned as she anxiously wished to flee the teashop as fast as she could. Instead she heard Tommy inviting her to sit down and join them. Annie’s stomach flipped unpleasantly. She glanced at Agatha who looked very smart in her mink stole and new season hat. Annie fingered the buttons on her own well-worn woollen coat. Yet her mouth had dried up on excuses.

  “Agatha is trying to find inspiration for her new novel,” Tommy explained. “Do sit down Annie and have some cake.”

  Annie obeyed, trying not to meet Agatha’s eye.

  “Annie can be quite a good detective in her own right,” Tommy added.

  Annie felt this was going too far.

  “I only help when asked too. Crime is for the police to solve,” she said, a little more sharply than she intended. “Clara gets herself into all manner of mischief.”

  “You don’t think she performs a valuable service as a private detective?” Agatha asked her directly.

  Annie was stumped. She felt her speech elude her. She wanted to run away as fast as she could. Instead she coloured and somehow mumbled.

  “I suppose.”

  “I really must meet your sister Tommy,” Agatha said. “She sounds really quite incredible.”

  “I think that might be over-stating her achievements,” Tommy responded modestly. “But I see no reason not to introduce you. She is usually home for teatime. What have we got tonight Annie?”

  Annie felt flustered as attention focused back on her. She blinked rapidly.

  “Cucumber sandwiches,” she said without thinking.

  “Heavens, where have you found cucumbers at this time of year?” Agatha enquired.

  Annie wanted to kick herself.

  “No, no, I meant cold meat sandwiches,” she said hastily. “And some homemade pickles.”