“I’ll let the two of you sleep and we’ll be back on the case in the morning.”
Chapter 25
Beryl awoke as the door behind her opened and left her unsupported. Crumpet ran over her lap and scampered down the hall, his toenails clicking on the polished wooden floorboards.
“Did you spend the night sitting here?” Edwina asked.
“I couldn’t sleep in my bed wondering if someone was going to try to make another attempt on your life, Ed. I feel like no matter what you said last night that you wouldn’t have become involved in all this if it weren’t for me telling whoppers at the post office.”
“You sound like Dr. Nelson. If I didn’t want to be involved I would have said so. I am a grown woman with a mind of my own. One needn’t go cavorting about the globe in men’s trousers to develop opinions and the moral strength to express them.” Edwina stepped over her friend and started down the hallway. She paused at the top of the stairs. “But if you really want to make it up to me you can be the one to fix the breakfast this morning for a change.”
* * *
Edwina regretted her request almost immediately. Toast was beyond Beryl’s ken. What she had done to the eggs was best left unmentioned. She certainly couldn’t be trusted in future with the making of tea. Edwina had tried to explain there was more to the process than thrice dunking a scantly filled tea ball in tepid water but Beryl couldn’t hear her over the spattering from the stove. What had become of the sausages was crueler than the fate of the pigs from whence they came. Edwina took one look at her plate and claimed her injuries had left her without an appetite.
Beryl cracked a kitchen window in an effort to clear the acrid smell of smoke by the time they returned home. Edwina accepted a lift to the center of the village. While she prided herself on following through with her commitments and putting on a brave face, the truth was her head was still pounding and the trees and buildings along the way looked a bit wobbly.
Beryl took no notice of Edwina’s discomfort as she whizzed along the county lane. Edwina could just imagine what her friend would have been like seated behind the wheel of an aeroplane, the propeller beginning to spin and the sound of the engine filling the cockpit. She imagined Beryl was in her element at such times and she felt the creeping dread that the delights and intrigues of Walmsley Parva would not hold Beryl’s interest for very long. Despite the whirlwind she stirred up round her, Beryl was great company and Edwina felt slightly queasy at the thought her friend might jet off once more.
“Just here will do, thank you. I should not like it getting round that I required a lift if we are to put about the story that I am uninjured and back on the case in top form,” Edwina said. Beryl pulled over to the side of the road just out of sight of the village proper. “I’ll meet you back at the Beeches.”
“Delightful.” Beryl fished into her pocket and drew out a fistful of coins and notes that she handed to Edwina. “What if you use some shopping as a cover for being in the village? You could buy yourself a new hat.”
“What would I want with a new hat?” Edwina asked.
“Didn’t I mention?” Beryl asked. “The hat you were wearing yesterday was rather badly done by during the attack. It was positively bashed in. I don’t think it will look well on you anymore.”
“I can pay for my own hats, Beryl.”
‘Don’t be so prickly. It isn’t as if I came by the money by honest hard work.”
“How did you come by it then?” Edwina wasn’t entirely certain she wanted to know once the question popped unbidden and ill considered from her lips.
“I bested a vulgar man who was a fellow guest at my hotel at a game of cards. He was a liar and a cheat and he deserved his losses.”
“You won the money by gambling?” Edwina felt a bit light-headed. She liked to think she was broader minded than many women in her social position but gambling with unsavory men was not something she felt she could condone.
“The car, too,” Beryl said. giving Edwina a wicked grin. “The poor fellow was so vexed at being beaten by a woman as well as a foreigner at that that he couldn’t stop doubling the bet. In the end he was left sitting at the card table with nothing but his smalls. I don’t suppose you’d like to make a gift of a very handsome newfangled wristwatch to your Mr. Jarvis by any chance? They’re all the latest thing now. Inspired by pilots, you know.”
There could be no doubt; Edwina felt a bit faint. She told herself it was the bump on her head, not her shocked sensibilities. If smalls meant in American what it meant in British English she was not sure she could look Beryl in the eye. The very idea of it made her feel peculiar. She took a calming breath and forced herself to respond.
“I believe he has a rather fine pocket watch already. And he’s not my Mr. Jarvis,” Edwina said as she opened the motorcar door.
“Just as well. We may need to pawn it before long,” Beryl said. With that she peeled off, leaving Edwina standing in a swirl of dust contemplating how she would live down the shame of anyone knowing Beryl had pawned anything, let alone a nearly naked man’s watch. She leaned up against a nearby walnut tree and gathered her wits.
She would miss her hat but truth be told it had become a bit of an eyesore. A new one would be a delightful luxury. And it wasn’t as if she had engaged in any immoral card dealings. Besides, she told herself, if Beryl called the man a cheat then it was a certainty that he was one. Perhaps he deserved to lose his motorcar and his finery. He might have gained them by swindling someone else out of them.
With a new spring in her step and the idea of a cheekily fashionable hat filling her thoughts, she made her way into the village. Up ahead the smell of fresh bread drifted from the bakery. Horses pulling wagons filled with coal and pumpkins and sacks of grain trundled past, their hooves clopping against the cobblestone street. Her head began to throb with the noise of it all. Before she could decide where to stop she saw young Jack the newsboy standing at his usual corner calling out the headlines. She had meant to buy a newspaper when she reached the village, and her conversation with Beryl had driven the thought straight out of her mind.
“Good morning. Jack. I’ll take one please,” she said stopping before him. Jack always seemed to her to be the sort of boy that would rise above his circumstances given a bit of a chance. He made her think of the novels in which a poor child with no connections rises up through a series of strange fortunes to become the owner of a thriving factory empire. “Anything interesting in the news today?”
“You are, if you don’t mind me saying so, miss. Everyone is talking about you.” He bobbed his head and snatched off his cap when she dismissed his offer of change for the amount she’d paid for the paper. If Beryl had provided her with ill-gotten gains to spend, she was most definitely going to use the money in ways that soothed her conscience. Jack would do nicely as a first attempt.
“Whatever for?” Edwina asked.
“Folks say you took a nasty thump to the head and the doctor had to bring you back from the very brink of death. All the while a blood-thirsty murderer prowled your house waiting for the chance to finish you off.” Edwina wasn’t pleased with the look of glee on Jack’s face as he shared the tale of her difficulties. In fact she worried a little about his moral centre. Were all boys his age so gleeful when confronted by the possibility of intrigue and violence?
“As you can see I am no worse for the wear no matter what people are saying.” Edwina held out her gloved hand for the paper. “Which people were saying that I had been at death’s door?”
“The butcher, Mrs. Mumford. Miss Rathbone, of course. Everyone will be by teatime, I should think.” He jammed his cap back onto his head and started to turn his back before changing his mind. “If you don’t mind me asking, Miss Davenport, are you working on the case with your friend, Miss Helliwell?”
“We are collaborating on an investigation. Why do you want to know?”
“It’s just that I met her the other day and she said that there might be som
ething I could do to help with the investigation. I see lots of goings-on all day here at the corner and more besides. I’m out all hours.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other excitedly.
“What would a young man who is as hardworking as you be doing out all hours instead of heading home to rest up for the next day?” Edwina asked.
“Like I told Miss Helliwell, I fetch me dad from the pub at closing time. Mum worries he won’t find his way home on his own so she sends me. He’s there most every night.” Edwina looked at Jack’s dark eyes the color of her nightly cup of cocoa and felt a wave of sadness at the life he was leading. She was even gladder she had given him a little over the amount for the newspaper. “I see plenty of things on the way home from there. I’d like to help Miss Helliwell any way I can. And you too, of course.”
“Did you happen to walk up the street past the cinema four nights ago about the time the pub closed?”
“Like I said, I fetch him every night. Four nights ago would have been the night Polly Watkins died, wasn’t it?” he asked. “I saw her, you know.”
“You did?”
“Sure I did. I see her all the time.”
“Do you remember what was she doing?”
“The same thing she does several times each week. She was getting into that cab Michael Blackburn drives.”
“She took rides from Michael Blackburn several times each week?”
“Sure. She had been taking them for a while.”
“Are you sure Michael was the one driving the cab?”
“I saw him clear as day. He was parked just past the corner where the cinema is. Right under a street lamp. And he got out and opened the door for Polly like a gentleman when she came down the alley.”
“Did you see where she was coming from?”
“I didn’t. If she was leaving the cinema she would have been round the other side of the street, wouldn’t she? I don’t know what business she would have had coming round from behind the building.”
“Was anyone with her besides Michael?”
“I didn’t see anyone else that night. I think she was all by her lonesome but Dad and me were getting off home as quick as we could so I might have missed someone, I suppose.”
“Did she have anyone with her any other night?”
“Not with her, no. But sometimes Norman Davies, the man who delivers the fruit and veg to the greengrocer, would be hanging around trying to talk to her just before she got into the cab. Only a few days ago they were arguing and he grabbed her by the arm before Michael Blackburn pulled him off of her.”
“Are you quite certain about all of this, Jack? It is very important that you tell me only the exact truth. Miss Helliwell will not be impressed by lies to increase the dramatic quality of your story.”
“I swear on my sister’s life.” Jack drew an X with his finger across his chest. “Will you tell Miss Helliwell what I said? Will you make sure she knows I’m the one who told you?”
“I will make sure she hears about it straightaway. This may be very important. I am very grateful that you told me.”
“I’ll keep my peepers peeled for anything else then, shall I?”
“Only if it is safe to do so. I shouldn’t like to hear you too had been thumped on the head and brought to the very brink of death by a blood-thirsty madman.” She gave Jack a nod and turned on her heel. The delights of a new hat would have to wait. She needed to speak with Michael Blackburn.
Chapter 26
Mr. Mumford kept late hours. Beryl knew he didn’t head to the cinema until at least noontime, based on her conversation with Eva the ticket seller. It was easy enough to track him down to his small but comfortable house on a lane that ran parallel to the high street. She knocked on the door of the cottage and waited briefly for the door to open.
“Miss Helliwell, what a surprise,” he said, looking up and down the lane. “Are you here without Miss Davenport?”
“Edwina was otherwise engaged this morning and I had a few questions I wanted to ask. Hope it won’t be a problem that I came on my own?”
“Not so long as you aren’t here to pay a call upon my wife. Minnie has gone out on her errands. She is always busy with one thing or another.”
“She must have a lot to keep her busy with her business, I shouldn’t wonder,” Beryl said, stepping over the threshold and following Mr. Mumford through a door right off the front hallway. The same sensibility that filled the Silver Spoon Tearoom could be seen in the chintz festooning every available surface of the Mumford home.
In fact, Mr. Mumford, with his craggy face and angular appearance overall, seemed at odds with his surroundings. He offered Beryl a chair and then folded down onto a dainty wingback clearly designed for the far more diminutive Mrs. Mumford and positioned right next the window overlooking the street.
“We are both busy, busy people. She with the tearoom and I with the cinema. In addition, we have our pastimes like her Women’s Institute involvement and my cinematography group.” He reached out to the curtain with a knobby finger and twitched it out of the way to view the street. “So since you aren’t here to visit with Minnie, what brings you to see me?”
“I wanted to ask you about your cinematographer’s organization. I understand you often encourage aspiring actors and actresses to join. Is that true?” Beryl leaned back into the chair and appeared to be prepared to stay for a while. She gave herself a mental pat on the back as he squirmed slightly in his chair. She didn’t want to distress Mrs. Mumford unnecessarily or cause undue marital discord but putting him ill at ease might convince him to be expeditiously forthcoming with the information she requested.
“Were you thinking about joining the group? We would be flattered to have you but I’m afraid you might find our efforts amateurish compared to your experience on camera.”
“I don’t know that I would say that. Yes, it’s true I’ve been on a variety of newsreels but I’ve never turned my hand to any sort of acting. I simply show up and do whatever it is that I do. I simply perform as myself and it seems to work just fine for the journalist’s purposes. What you do is completely different.”
“How do you know so much about my organization?” he asked, peering out the window once more.
“Polly Watkins told me all about it when I first met her. She was very enthusiastic about her involvement.”
“That was not my understanding of how things stood with her. In fact, she had not participated for some time.”
“I’m very surprised to hear it. She made it sound like she was very active and that there were all sorts of benefits to being a member.”
“Like what?” Mr. Mumford’s tone grew wary and he glanced out the window again.
“She mentioned the encouragement you gave to women to keep trying to get jobs as actresses. She said you were happy to take photographs of them to use in their portfolios.” Beryl noticed Mr. Mumford visibly stiffen. “I understood you even generously provided the club members with free admission to the cinema in order to stay up with the latest trends in film.”
“What of it?” Beads of sweat welled up above Mr. Mumford’s salt and pepper colored eyebrows.
“I wished to compliment you on this wellspring of generosity. It isn’t every man who would be so giving of his time and energy to help out struggling young women in the pursuit of their dreams.”
“I like to think of myself as a sort of quiet benefactor. A benevolent uncle type if you will.”
“A great deal of the credit should go to Mrs. Mumford too, should it not? It isn’t every wife that would be so understanding of the time you freely spend with a variety of attractive young ladies.”
“What are you implying?”
“I am merely supposing that your wife is an extraordinary woman and that she must hold you in the highest regard if she has no compunction about your involvement in an organization such as yours. I should like to congratulate her on her bighearted attitude. I should very much like to know I have her approval
before I could consider joining.”
“I can’t see any reason for you to go to the trouble to do that. Minnie is, as you say, a bighearted sort of person and you would only embarrass her by making a fuss over her generosity.”
“The very least I could do would be to thank her in advance for all the money you would be saving me on cinema tickets. Considering all the times Polly visited for free I can’t imagine that wasn’t a monetary sacrifice on Mrs. Mumford’s part as well as your own.”
“I’d really rather you didn’t say a thing about it to her.” Mr. Mumford shifted forward in his chair and planted both hands on his trouser-covered knees. “Now that I come to think of it, I’m not sure we have any openings at this time for new members of the cinematographer’s club.” He stood and gestured toward the door.
“I must say, I’m surprised at your attitude, Mr. Mumford. I should have thought you’d be eager for new members. Not to sound callous, but shouldn’t there be an opening recently vacated by Polly?” Beryl crossed one long leg over the other and slouched even farther down in her chair. “This really is a comfortable room. I shall tell Mrs. Mumford when she returns and finds me sitting here how much I have enjoyed speaking with her husband in her delightfully welcoming front parlor.” Mr. Mumford sat back down across from her.
“What is it that you want?”
“I want to know if you killed Polly Watkins.” There was no sense beating around the gooseberry bush. Mr. Mumford was too eager to get rid of her. Beryl was certain no matter how bright her smile, Mrs. Mumford was at least a bit suspicious of her husband. If he had her complete faith he’d have no reason to be so distressed to think of his wife finding out about Beryl’s visit or about the details of his cinematographer’s club. His eyes bulged from his head most satisfactorily at her question and the beads of sweat that had gathered on his brow tumbled down his cheeks and ran along the sides of his nose. He was far too uncomfortable for her to think he had nothing to hide.
Murder in an English Village Page 16