by Charles Todd
She moved her other hand, and I saw there was a stone in her lap. Next to it was a crumpled twist of paper.
Pushing the stone away as if it burned her, she held out the scrap of paper.
I smoothed it out across my knee and looked at the figure drawn in heavy black ink.
It was a crude sketch of a man hanging from a gallows. The face was black, the eyes white and staring, the tongue grotesquely hanging down the chin. Very ugly, but very effective.
Printed in rough letters at the bottom of the sketch were two words:
VERY SOON.
“It was the shock. I shouldn’t have picked it up—the thing was lying just there, a few feet from the wall.” Angry, she pointed to a clump of pinks, now just a mat of tiny silvery green stalks. “I shouldn’t have touched it, I should have walked by and left it there. It’s what it deserved. But before I quite knew what I was doing I picked it up. And I couldn’t miss the drawing. It hurt. As it was meant to do.” She shook her head. “Well. At least they couldn’t see my pain, could they? That’s my only satisfaction.”
Taking a deep breath she started to tear the ugly thing into bits, but I put out my hand to stop her. “It must go to the police. It’s evidence,” I said.
“I don’t want anyone else to see it. I won’t have people staring at it and wondering how I felt about it.”
“Still. You must give it to Mr. Groves, if not to the police. You’re being harassed by someone, and perhaps it will count, a little, toward showing that there must be more to this business than the police want to believe.”
“They tried to burn us alive. If the police won’t believe that happened, then this drawing won’t move anyone,” Mrs. Ashton said bitterly. “No. Better that whoever sent this wonders if it was ever seen.” And she ripped the drawing into halves, then half again and again until bits were the size of confetti. She turned and dropped them into the fishpond, watching them soak up the water, the black ink blurring, vanishing in rivulets that had no shape or form. Finally the wet bits began to sink with the weight of the water, vanishing one by one.
“There. I shouldn’t have shown even you. Promise me you won’t say anything to Mark or Clara.”
“No, of course not,” I said. “If that’s what you want.”
“Thank you, my dear.” She gave me a smile that wavered and then steadied. “Did you see Miss Rollins? Or perhaps I should ask, did she let you in the door?”
“She did. Much to my surprise. She talked about an old grievance—how her ancestors had been cheated after the abbey had been pulled down. I can’t think she’s always believed such a thing, but then the question is, who told her the Ashtons had profited at her family’s expense? That they had done Henry’s dirty work? Or that the Ashtons were connected with the Boleyns?”
Mrs. Ashton frowned. “I’ve heard that before. Now, where? Was it Philip who told me? Or perhaps his mother. No, it wasn’t like her to boast about such things.” Her face cleared. “I have it now. It was in an article in the Canterbury newspaper, oh, years and years ago. 1906? The Astors were living at Hever at the time and there was a lavish party to show off what had been done with the gardens. Mention was made of a local connection with the Boleyns and Hever. Only it wasn’t the Ashtons, it was another family. Philip’s mother had kept the cutting for the descriptions of the gardens, thinking we might wish to do something similar here at the Hall.” She smiled wistfully. “There was no place on the grounds for a lake and mazes. Although we did put in the borders under the windows there by the abbey wall using some of the same perennials. Mary, bless her, lived to see the first blooms.”
“Still, someone else must have seen the same story, and either confused the names or purposely changed them.”
“But why stir up envy in the Rollins family?”
“In the hope of preventing Sergeant Rollins from speaking out on behalf of Mr. Ashton?”
“Oh, I find that hard to believe. Although I wouldn’t put it past Agatha Rollins to do something of the sort. Not telling him the whole story, of course, but leading him to think that we had always been liars and cheats.”
“Where did they find the money to build the extra rooms on the cottage?”
“I shouldn’t be surprised if Freddy Rollins and his father before him indulged in a bit of smuggling. It used to be a cottage industry here in Kent. Philip was a magistrate for many years, and while he didn’t actually turn a blind eye, he left it to the police to decide when and where to bring charges. If Freddy or his father came up before him, he set the fine, and there was an end to it for a few weeks. The Rollins father and son had a boat built by the Craig family, and it was faster than most.”
And where had they found the money for that?
As if she’d heard the thought, Mrs. Ashton said, “One of the Craig boats was damaged in a storm. Beyond repair, it was thought. Rollins bought it for the wood—he said—and made it seaworthy again. Alex Craig’s father wasn’t best pleased by that. Nothing he could do of course, but it didn’t sit well for a Rollins to be tooling about in a boat that others paid hundreds of pounds for.”
She began to walk toward the house door. “Mark should be home very soon. We’ll have tea in the sitting room, shall we, and wait for him there.”
But the pot was barely lukewarm by the time we heard Mark’s footsteps in the passage.
His face was grim as he opened the door, and that was the first thing I saw, looking up.
Glancing over his shoulder just as he closed the door, he said, “Clara has gone up to take off her coat. I must tell you. Groves had finally got the name of this new witness everyone has been so secretive about. Her name is Florence Benning. She lost her husband in the explosion. She’s also the sister of one of the women who worked in the mill. And the sister’s husband was one of the men who died. Tate, George Tate. I’ve tried to persuade Groves that her testimony must be tainted, but he tells me that she appears to be an honest woman and the jury will probably believe her.”
His mother’s face lost its color. “Mark—what could she have seen?”
“She claims she saw my father hand the foreman a packet of cigarettes. And later she watched as my father struck a match on his thumbnail and dropped it where he stood. I don’t know why Groves feels she has no ulterior motive.”
“He hasn’t looked very hard, has he? After the explosion her widowed sister came to live with her, with five little ones. I expect it has been overwhelming for Florence Benning to have six more mouths to feed, in addition to her own three. And the house is hardly large enough for so many children. A house damaged by the explosion. They’ll be under each other’s feet. By now I should think Mrs. Benning could be persuaded to blame the archangels for her circumstances, much less my husband. Her life must be wretched.”
“I haven’t told Clara, by the way. She’s already upset. She’d said good-bye to her friend, and unaware that Groves had kept me waiting, she came to his chambers. When his clerk told her I was still closeted with him, she decided on her own to see if she would be allowed to visit my father.” He hesitated. “They refused, of course. But then one of the men in the room, she’s not sure who it was, told her that it was likely that my father would be sent to London, that Canterbury doesn’t have facilities to hold him until his trial.”
“Dear God. Mark, we mustn’t let that happen. He must stay here, where we can at least see to his needs. Surely Mr. Worley is pushing for an early trial?”
“He tells me he has been.” Mark ran a hand through his hair. “I’ve never been involved in a murder trial before. There’s much I don’t know about such things. It just seems to me that not enough has been done toward preparing Father’s defense. When I ask about interviews, I’m told it’s difficult to convince people to talk to Groves’s clerks. I’m told Worley doesn’t intend to interview you, since you were at home that morning. He feels that a statement from our bank manager wo
uld only appear to reinforce the position that my father was pressing the Government for more money out of greed. Moneygrubbing, he called it.”
“It was nothing of the kind,” Mrs. Ashton said, outraged.
“I’ve suggested calling on an expert who can speak to the explosion and the fire. This isn’t the first blast in a powder mill. The Americans have had some experience with that as well. But Worley feels that under cross-examination, the expert might well express a view that would serve the prosecution. With no survivors to tell us what happened, it would be guesswork on his part, not based on interviews and fact. I reminded him that granaries and flour mills have been known to go up, even with those machines designed to control the dust. He tells me there’s no comparison.”
I could read the frustration in his face. And I had to agree with him. But people often needed someone to blame, to explain the sudden deaths of so many people. And from all I’d learned, Philip Ashton wasn’t the sort of man who drew people to him, not the way Mrs. Ashton did. It would be easy to cast him in the role of villain.
I remembered suddenly how Mrs. Ashton had stood in this very room and dared someone to touch her family.
She had told me afterward she feared it was a widow, jealous that her husband was still living, who was behind what was happening. Now, in a sense, Mrs. Ashton was proved right. But there were a hundred grieving widows out there. Had that been no more than a convenient answer when I’d pressed her? It occurred to me that it was Mark who had attended all the conferences with Philip Ashton’s solicitor and K.C. Alone. And Mrs. Ashton hadn’t trusted either of them. Was this why she was unwilling to speak up, knowing she would be ignored? As strong a woman as she was, she just might be biding her time, waiting to find out who had told this twisted pattern of lies, before taking matters into her own hands. It was an unsettling thought.
Not ten minutes later, there was a loud knocking at the door, and Mrs. Byers hurried up from downstairs to answer the summons.
She came to the sitting room, where we were waiting with some anxiety to discover who it was. The last time there had been such a knock, the police had taken Mr. Ashton away.
It was Constable Hood. Mrs. Byers announced him with the same formality with which she’d have announced a duke, but there was a coolness in her voice that told me—and no doubt the constable as well—that she was not pleased to be the one who let him cross the Ashton threshold.
Nan had risen from the hearth rug, the ruff around her neck bristling a little, but she didn’t bark.
Constable Hood said, “Ah, there’s the creature.”
He started forward, and Mrs. Ashton rose, saying, “What brings you here today, Constable?”
“The dog, ma’am. I’ve come to take it away.”
“Have you indeed?” she asked coldly, stepping between the man and the dog. “And why is that, pray?”
“She was running wild this afternoon, and got into the pen where Mrs. Branch keeps her chickens. She got three of them before Mrs. Branch could chase her out of the pen. It’s not the first time, I’m told. She went after the goat that Mrs. Hailey keeps.”
“Nan?” Mrs. Ashton asked. “Surely you’re mistaken. She doesn’t leave the house without one of us walking with her.”
“Mrs. Branch has registered a complaint. I shall have to take her away. She wants the animal destroyed.”
We stared at him.
People depended on their chickens for meat and for eggs in this time of austerity. Losing part of a flock could mean going without.
Still, this was Nan.
I was the first to recover.
“I’m afraid you can’t do that, Constable,” I said as he made another move toward the dog. Nan didn’t care for him, and I worried that she might bite if he tried to force her to come with him. “I was walking Nan on a lead this afternoon. And a number of people can vouch for that. Mr. Craig, for one. Miss Rollins, for another. I have no idea where this Mrs. Branch lives, but I can assure you that we met no chickens on our way.”
I wasn’t certain that either of my “witnesses” would confirm the fact that Nan was on a lead, but I could see that this gave Constable Hood pause.
“Mrs. Branch says—” he began after considering me for a moment, as if weighing whether I was telling the truth or not.
“Forgive me, but I should like to speak to Mrs. Branch. Shall I come down to the station with you, and wait while you bring her there? It would be no trouble. I can vouch for Nan. I should like to question Mrs. Branch about what she actually saw. I expect you’ve inspected these dead chickens for yourself?”
It was obvious that he hadn’t.
“I’m sure Mrs. Ashton would reimburse her for them, if it had been Nan. But if Mrs. Branch is expecting payment for the loss of her hens, she will have to produce the chickens and identify the animal.”
Flustered, he said, “Mrs. Branch came to the station not half an hour ago. She described the dog in question. She said she recognized her.”
“Of course she would know Nan,” Mrs. Ashton said tartly. “She’s seen her with my husband I don’t know how many times. And she lost her brother and her son in the mill explosion, poor woman. But I’m afraid Nan has had nothing to do with her hens.”
“There aren’t that many liver-and-white spaniels in Cranbourne,” the constable said, trying to find firmer ground to stand on. But it was evident that he hadn’t investigated the claim, he’d simply taken Mrs. Branch at her word. Because he was eager for an excuse to harass the Ashtons again?
It took ten minutes of argument before Constable Hood beat a retreat, leaving without the little dog.
As the housekeeper saw him to the door, I said, “Perhaps I shouldn’t have taken Nan out.”
“On the contrary, it’s as well you did. The nerve of that woman! But who put her up to it? If a word of it had been true, she’d have brought the dead hens to the station with her, demanding justice straightaway. She’d have followed the constable to our door, ready to quarrel with me. But she did none of these things. She was lying, start to finish. They aren’t satisfied with Philip. They want to kill his dog as well.”
Mrs. Ashton was very angry. I understood that feeling. Nan was too well behaved to have attacked chickens or anything else. And she had never left my side. Even when her lead was wrapped around the boot scraper at Miss Rollins’s cottage, she was in full view. Had someone seen her waiting for me on Miss Rollins’s doorstep and decided to make trouble? But who could it have been?
“I’m going to fetch my hat, Bess. And my purse. I want to see these dead chickens for myself.”
With that she smoothed Nan’s silky ears and hurried away upstairs. Not two minutes later she was back, and we left the Hall, walking briskly along the abbey’s wall, retracing my steps a little earlier.
“Is Mrs. Branch one of those who has fed the rumor mill?” I asked as we turned the corner of the wall.
“I shouldn’t at all be surprised. She wasn’t a very pleasant woman to start with, and her loss has made her bitter.”
“Did she come up with this story about Nan on her own, do you think? Or did someone put her up to it?”
“I expect someone had only to drop a word in her ear. She would like nothing better than to cause trouble.”
“But who could have been that mean-spirited? I mean to say, Nan!”
She shook her head. “My dear, the list would be unpleasantly long. It’s all of a piece with Philip’s arrest.” She fell silent until we had turned into the lane that ran by the Rollins cottage, but the Branch cottage was farther along, toward the sea.
It had seen better days. The roof needed repairs and the garden by the door had gone to seed a year ago, if not two.
Mrs. Ashton went ahead of me up the path and tapped briskly on the door.
A woman opened it, recognized the person on her doors
tep, and would have shut it smartly if Mrs. Ashton hadn’t shoved her foot into the opening.
“Yes, Mrs. Branch, I have come to see your dead chickens.”
Flustered, Mrs. Branch stared at us.
She was in her late thirties, I thought, with thinning hair and the red face and hands of a woman accustomed to working in all weathers. There was dirt beneath her nails, and her apron wasn’t the cleanest. I realized she must have had a rough time of it since the deaths of her son and her brother. There was a tightness in the line of her mouth that spoke of bitterness and disappointments.
“Mrs. Branch? The dead chickens?” Mrs. Ashton pressed when the woman in the doorway didn’t move.
“I gave them away,” she said finally, daring Mrs. Ashton to disprove it. “What was I to do with three dead ’uns, and only me to feed? I couldn’t take them to market, the way they looked.”
“I’m sure they haven’t been plucked. Give me the names of the people you gave them to. You’ve accused my husband’s spaniel, Mrs. Branch. You sent Constable Hood to my door to put her down as a rogue animal. I have a right to see the chickens.”
Her eyes lit up. “The constable came and took her away, did he?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement in the house behind her. Someone standing in the back of the room, in the shadows by the stairs to the upper floor. I couldn’t tell who it was, and before I could say anything, whoever it was had stepped into deeper shadow.
“Give me the names, Mrs. Branch,” Mrs. Ashton said firmly. “I shall need to see the evidence if I’m to offer you compensation.” She held up her purse, and Mrs. Branch’s gaze was riveted on it. I thought for an instant she would turn and ask the person behind her what to do now.
Was it Constable Hood I’d glimpsed? But then I realized that he would have had to tell her that the spaniel was safe. And she hadn’t known that.
Who then?
She wavered, then gave us two names. “I kept the smallest one for myself. It’s in the sink. Dead as dead can be.
“I shall have to see that one too.”