“True enough, sir. I wish they’d pick that bleedin’ Vauxhall up and walk with it.” This was addressed to the old, green car before them, whose two ancient, chicken-necked occupants were driving at twenty miles per and making Pluck’s life hell. He fumed and hunched down in the seat, apparently afraid to perform one more death-defying feat in the presence of his superior.
Long Piddleton took the shape of a mounded row of limestone cottages to Jury’s left, a field full of cows to his right, then another row of cottages, these with thatch, and across the road a water splash through which one solitary duck meandered. Jury noticed, as they turned left, a woman coming hurriedly out of a small gate overgrown with creepers, shoving her arm into a Burberry. So intently was she watching their car, he half-expected her to thumb a lift.
• • •
“Must have thought, in London, we were going bonkers up here when you learned the circumstances,” said Superintendent Pratt.
“Quite honestly, I thought someone was kidding us.” Jury continued reading the statement made by the vicar, Denzil Smith. “What’s this about a girl named Ruby Judd?” According to the vicar, his housemaid had not returned from a visit to Weatherington, where her parents lived.
“Ruby Judd. Ah, yes. I don’t think it’s anything to do with these murders. The thing is, Miss Judd is given to these, ah, extended vacations. Men, you know.”
“I see. Only it says here her parents haven’t seen her at all. Is she still missing?” Pratt nodded.
“I suppose,” he said, “she’d got to tell the vicar some place respectable she’s going. I don’t know the girl, but —”
“Cor! I do!” said Pluck, with a lewd smile. “I think the superintendent’s right there, Inspector.”
“I see.” But Jury didn’t. The girl had been gone for nearly a week. “Now, what about the identification of this man Small?”
Pratt shook his head. “Nothing, yet. Small came in by train, got off at Sidbury, took the Sidbury-Dorking Dean bus. The stationmaster remembered him, but only vaguely, when we showed him Small’s picture, and could only tell us that he got off the eleven A.M. from London. But that makes stops everywhere along the way, and we’ve not been able to get any leads as to where he got on. But if the man comes from London, Inspector—” and the superintendent spread his arms rather hopelessly.
“And the other one, Ainsley?”
“Came in by car. We traced the car back to a lot in Birmingham. You know the story. Buy the car, you’ve got the plates. The dealer was playing terribly, terribly dumb. ‘Ah, come on, guv, what’s a businessman loike me to do? This chappie walks in with two hundred quid and wants the old banger . . .’ et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, we’re nowhere with the car and nowhere with the name. I assume it’s not his own. Certainly no Ainsley at whatever bogus address he gave the dealer.”
“So you’ve got nothing there, either?”
Pratt blew his nose. “That’s right. You know, of course, the Home Office has one of its labs set up in Weatherington. Everything there in case you need it.”
Jury found it hard to believe that with the expertise and scientific methods of the lab, they’d come up with nothing. They didn’t need footprints in the sand or blood drops on the sill. “There must have been something — fiber, hair — the killer must have left something behind.”
Pratt shook his head. “Oh, there were hairs, for instance, those of the waitress and the fellow Small was having drinks with — Marshall Trueblood, I think — if you can tie them in. But no motive seems evident, none at all. We picked up marks, yes. But all elimination prints. People who had legitimate access to Small’s and Ainsley’s rooms, like the landlords and maids. As to the people there at the inn for dinner the night Small was killed, the bureau turned up prints of two already on file.” Pratt took back the folder he’d given Jury and adjusted his glasses. “This Marshall Trueblood and a woman named Sheila Hogg.” Pratt looked at Jury with a smile: “Pouf and a prostitute. Not prostitute, exactly. ‘Actress’ might be more the way to put it. Blue movies, that sort of thing. Darling of the Dirty Squad.”
“Trueblood?”
“A bit of drugs here and there. But nothing big. Just supplied his friends. His digs got raided in Belgravia.”
Pratt was looking so tired that Jury suggested he go home to bed.
“Thanks, Inspector. I could use a bit of a rest.” He was still shuffling through the folder. “We know the signature on the register was Small’s because he signed his dinner check, so we could compare. Someone could have written in Ainsley’s name on the Jack and Hammer’s register, though.”
“I assume not. That was the same name he used to rent the car, wasn’t it?”
“True. I was just thinking that the murderer didn’t want us to identify the two.”
“He hadn’t time to do anything about the car, apparently.” Jury lit up a cigarette from his crumpled pack of Players. “What do you think?”
Pratt put his feet up on the desk and leaned back. “Look at it this way. Say this man Small comes in from London; maybe he’s got himself a spot of bother there. Chummy follows him, arranges to meet him in this godforsaken village, sees his opportunity when Small is stopping at the inn —”
“Did anyone else get off the train at Sidbury?”
“Several people. We’re following that up.”
“So he follows Small and then kills Small and Ainsley?”
Pratt held up his hand. “I know. I know. Okay. Then Chummy lives here in Long Pidd, or close by. The two of them — Small and Ainsley — converge upon Long Pidd for the purpose of . . . well, we know not what. Some danger to Chummy, who gets wind of them and quickly dispatches them.”
Jury nodded. “That certainly makes more sense. It’s conceivable that Ainsley was a stranger who happened through, since he was in a car. But Small? No one takes a bus from Sidbury to Long Piddleton who just happens to be passing through.’ ” Pratt agreed. “So Small knew someone round about here, he must have. Or, at the very least, he must have meant to come here. Would it be jumping the gun to say they had a connection with one another?”
“I shouldn’t think so. They both got themselves killed, now didn’t they?”
• • •
After Pratt left, Jury sat at the desk studying the statements of the witnesses who had been present that evening at the Man with a Load of Mischief. His concentration was broken abruptly by the door to the small antechamber swinging open and the appearance of Pluck and an elderly woman. She wore a Burberry, and he recognized her as the woman he had seen as they were coming into Long Piddleton. There appeared to have been a brief scuffle with Pluck, who thought, rightly, that the villagers oughtn’t to be allowed to burst into the inspector’s office.
“Sorry, sir —” Pluck began. “It’s Lady Ardry, sir.”
“You needn’t apologize, Sergeant,” said Agatha. “The inspector will want to talk with me.” And she turned to Jury. “Inspector Swinnerton, is it?”
Swinnerton? “No madam, Inspector Richard Jury. You wished to speak with me?”
Her face fell when he told her his name, but she quickly recovered. “Obviously, Inspector, I haven’t been wrestling with your dogsbody here for the fun of it. Certainly I wished to speak with you. Or rather, it’s you who should wish to speak with me. Who’s taking notes? No need to sigh, Sergeant Pluck. If you and that Chief Constable what’s-his-name in Northampton had your wits about you, there might have been no need to call in the Yard. The inspector here wants to hear my testimony, I’ll wager.”
Jury instructed Pluck to ask Wiggins to come in and take notes, feeling a bit as if he’d received a reprimand from a rather severe old auntie. “Do go on, Lady Ardry.”
She sat down, smoothed her skirt, and cleared her throat. “I was the one to discover the body. Along with that girl, Murch,” she added, as if it were of no consequence, as if “that girl” were deaf, dumb, and blind. “I was on my way to the, ah, conveniences, when Matchett’s girl, this Mu
rch, burst from the cellar looking as chalky as the Seven Sisters and making noises and pointing downstairs — absolutely beside herself — and then she collapsed on a chair and moaned into her apron and I had to take matters into my own hands, while the others were rushing about, doing nothing but trying to cheer up Murch. I trooped downstairs and there he was, this Small person, and the absolute reek of beer everywhere —”
“Did you recognize him, Lady Ardry?”
“Recognize? Certainly not. His head was in the beer keg. I didn’t pull it out to have a look at his face, dear man. Didn’t touch anything at all. I know one isn’t supposed to. I’ve some knowledge of these matters, after all —”
Jury noticed that Wiggins, who had come in and seated himself, was washing down two-toned pills with tea. He smiled and said, “Go on, madam.” Jury already had the details supplied by Lady Ardry from Pratt’s report — except for the embroidery of the waitress’s hysterics and Lady Ardry’s lack of them, neither of which he believed. “What did you do then?”
She squared her shoulders and leaned her chin on her walking stick. “Took in every detail I could, because I thought it might be important later.” Then, silkily, she said, “Being a writer, I’ve quite good powers of observation. The man was not large, but then it is difficult to judge sizes when a body’s dangling that way. He was strangled, wasn’t he?” She clasped her own neck in her hands as if to wrench it from her neck. “Wearing a houndstooth-checked suit, a bit racetrack-toutish, and a bit the worse for beer.” She smiled broadly at her little joke. “After observing the room and making my mental notes, I returned to the others.”
“That would be the people in the dining room and bar? There were quite a few there, I understand. Would you like to give me a kind of sketch of those people who were present?”
She would like nothing better. Hitching her chair closer to the desk, she drew from her leather shopping bag a sheaf of foolscap. “I’ve just made a few notes.” She adjusted her glasses. “Now, besides myself and the servants — that’d be Murch and Twig — silly young girl and the old waiter, quite palsied, senile, not a proper suspect, I shouldn’t think. Then there’s my nephew, Melrose Plant. He lives at Ardry End. You may have heard of my family. Descended from Baron Mountardry of Swaledale — that would be about sixteen hundred or thereabouts — and Ardry-Plant (family name shortened to ‘Plant’), Marquess of Ayreshire and Blythedale, Viscount of Nithorwold, Ross and Cromarty; Melrose’s father was the eighth Earl of Caverness, married to Lady Patricia-Marjorie Mountardry, second daughter of the third Earl of Farquhar. Father was Squadron Leader Clive D’ardry De Knopf, fourth Viscount of —”
Jury interrupted. “I’m getting lost, Lady Ardry. My, that is an impressive lineage, madam, it really is. Makes my head spin.”
She nodded curtly. “I know. And all handed to my nephew straight on a silver platter. Lord Ardry, eighth Earl of Caverness, and all the rest. A title given him without his so much as lifting a finger. And then the silly man gave it back.”
“Gave it back?”
“Turned in his ticket, or however you do things like that over here.”
“Well, one seldom hears of anyone’s doing that — even here. What reason did he give?”
“Reason? Oh, he said he didn’t want always to be going down to London to sit in the House of Lords as he should have done — leaving Ardry End there for vandals and squatters and the like to be getting into. I offered to look after it for him and he said . . . oh, I don’t know what he said . . . something silly. One never knows what Melrose is talking about.” She lowered her voice. “I think he’s quite mad, sometimes.” She gripped her walking stick as if she might thrash Plant’s image, risen before her. “Anyway, now he’s just plain Melrose Plant. Family name.”
“And the rest of the guests?”
“There’s Oliver Darrington and Sheila Hogg —”
“Darrington. The name sounds familiar. Isn’t that the chap who writes mystery books?”
“Rubbishy thrillers, yes. Sheila’s his secretary — another one of those artsy-tartsy types, you know, blood-red fingernails and necklines down to there. Or I should say she calls herself his secretary; I believe we know just about how often she sits down to a typewriter. Lives right in the house with him.” Agatha sniffed. “Then Vivian Rivington. A poet. Bit of a stick. Subdued, and long brown sweaters with pockets she’s always got her fists in. Probably sexually repressed. That quiet type is always suspicious, don’t you think? I know she’s sweet on Melrose, though they say she’s going to marry Simon Matchett. He’s the owner of the Man with a Load of Mischief, and a dear boy. They’re supposed to be nearly engaged, but I can’t credit that. Vivian’s not Simon’s type at all. Nor is she Melrose’s, if it comes to that. She’s nobody’s, far as I can see.”
“Where was Mr. Matchett when you found the body?”
“Upstairs with the others. When the Murch girl set up such a howl, of course Simon was the first downstairs. After me, that is. You can imagine his reaction to find one of his own guests murdered.”
“Yes. Now, were there any other guests?”
“Isabel Rivington, Vivian’s step-sister. Older than Vivian, by fifteen or more years, but looks as young. Or maybe it’s that Vivian looks old. Pale, Mousy. That sort. You’ll see. Isabel’s been taking care of Vivian ever since she was small. She’s trustee of Vivian’s estate. But it’s Vivian who’s got the money, or will do when she’s thirty or when she gets married. I’m not sure exactly how much—” She paused here as if hoping the chief inspector might be able to fill her in. “Well, anyway, she’s an heiress . . . if she means to marry, I’d say she’d better be getting on with it, wouldn’t you? But that sort, well, men don’t take much notice of. Except, of course, for the money. Her father died in an accident. Vivian’s father, that is. She doesn’t like to talk about it. I think it rather unhinged Vivian’s mind.”
“Any others?”
“Lorraine and Willie Bicester-Strachan. Not the most devoted couple in Long Pidd. Willie must be a century older than Lorraine, and rather dull. Pots around with the vicar a lot, reading old books and talking local history. Oh, yes, the vicar was dining there too that night. Frankly, I think men of the cloth should go a bit easier on the wine, even if it is the holidays, don’t you? The vicar is our local mole, burrowing into everything. Hobby is local history. Well, that’s the lot. . . .” She paused and slapped her knee. “Oh, dear me, no. How could I forget our antiques dealer, Marshall Trueblood. Dear Marsha, as we call him. You know what I mean. Pink shirts and tinted glasses.”
“Hmm. Now, according to my information, there was a broken lock on the cellar door. Did you notice it by any chance?”
She paused. “I ought to have done,” was her ambiguous reply.
Jury let that go. “William Small came into the dining room while your party was in progress, didn’t he?”
“I think I remember seeing him. Wasn’t someone standing drinks for him? Marshall Trueblood?”
“Umm. Do you remember what time that was?”
She hesitated, seeming to search Jury’s face for a time — any time — to which she might pin Small’s appearance. “Not . . . precisely. Before dinner, certainly. And that was nine-ish. I remember feeling fiendishly hungry. Had prawn cocktail for starters, not really fresh —”
“You didn’t see Small again until you went to the cellar?”
“No.” She was quick to add, “No one did. Must have gone up to his room . . . ah, yes! Didn’t Marshall Trueblood mention he’d — Small, that is — got a bit tiddly —”
“Perhaps Mr. Trueblood can fill me in on that.” Jury doubted very much she remembered with more than fleeting accuracy anything that transpired before her grisly discovery of the body. Jury changed the subject. “About this man Ainsley —”
“Oh, him.” She shrugged. Jury assumed that since she hadn’t been personally involved with its discovery, that particular corpse needn’t be accounted for.
“Were yo
u in the Jack and Hammer that evening?”
“No. But I did pop in for a word with Scroggs in the afternoon —”
“So there’s nothing, really, you can add . . . ?”
“No.” Her tone was grudging.
“Thank you, Lady Ardry.” Jury rose, and Wiggins snapped shut his notebook and requested a cup of tea. Pluck honored him with the leavings of the pot.
“I’m sorry, Lady Ardry. It was remiss of us not to offer you tea,” said Jury.
She dusted her skirts and planted her stick squarely in front of her. “Quite all right. I haven’t time to be lollygagging about over tea, not with all this business going on. And where are you staying, Inspector?”
Sergeant Pluck, who was unwrapping a package of digestive biscuits, put in, “I got you digs at the Load of Mischief, sir. Thought you’d like to be right on the spot.”
As Jury was steering Lady Ardry to the door, she plucked at his sleeve and whispered, “If I could have just one word with you in private —”
“Yes, of course.” They stepped into the small chamber that debouched onto the street.
“Inspector, will you be talking to my nephew, Melrose Plant, about this business?”
“I shall want to question anyone who was there.”
“Thought so. The thing is — I might as well say it straight out — there’s a bit of bad blood between us.”
“You mean he might try to implicate you?”
Agatha crushed her walking stick to her bosom. “Me? Me? How could he possibly?”
“I merely thought —”
“If he dares do a thing like that, if he in any way tries to twist the facts —” Her right hand strangled her cane as her left grappled with Jury’s lapel. Then, nervously, she whispered: “Everyone in Long Pidd will tell you how horribly ‘clever’ he is. Clever, my foot! He fools around at University teaching one course. Couldn’t land a full-time job. And just because he can do the Times crossword in under fifteen minutes —”
“Fifteen minutes!”
The Man with a Load of Mischief Page 5