“I’m afraid we want to bother you too,” said Flecker. “I’ll admit that the mills of justice grind at an irritatingly slow pace, but they do grind, provided people like you help by answering our seemingly idiotic questions.”
Veronica blew her nose. “All right, you’d better come in then,” she said. “I’m sorry about the mess,” she added, looking helplessly at the hall; “Lucy’s developed a passion for tearing up newspapers. I must just rescue the fish. I’m in the middle of cooking the supper, and I’ve only just got the babies off to sleep. Look, you go and wait in the sitting-room, I’ll come in a minute.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier if we came and talked to you as you cooked?” suggested Flecker.
“Oh, anything you like,” cried Veronica in exasperated tones, for she caught the sound of fish frying furiously. She darted through to the kitchen, followed more sedately by the detectives.
The forge itself had been turned into the kitchen and it made an attractively shaped room with windows on the two long sides. At the far end stood a dining table and chairs, but the most striking feature of the room was its incredible confusion. Heaps of washing lay in corners; bundles of ironing occupied the windowsills, outdoor coats the chairs; coverless picture books, bent cardboard boxes, tiny boots and shoes littered the floor, and intermixed with everything were toys—dozens and dozens of them—mostly little cars. Veronica retrieved the fish slice from among the miscellaneous objects on the kitchen table and bent over the cooker. Flecker leaned against the washing machine and studied his envelopes, and Browning began to collect toy cars from the floor.
“Oh, don’t bother,” cried Veronica in tones of horror, “I’ll do it later.”
“I’m a family man myself, madam,” Browning told her. “I know what kiddies are.”
Veronica’s face brightened. “How many have you?” she asked.
“Just the two, Clifford and Marilyn,” said Browning, clearing a space on the windowsill and beginning to park the cars in orderly lines.
“And are you married too?” Veronica looked at Flecker.
“Mm, but it went on the rocks,” he answered in noncommittal tones.
“Oh.” Veronica’s views on the inviolability of marriage were shown plainly in her disapproving face. Browning spoke up hastily. “Of course, the Chief Inspector was very young; it was one of those youthful indiscretions as you might say. I’m no believer in divorce myself, but there are times when the deed is done and it’s as well to legalize the position. Whatever one thinks of the other party’s conduct, one doesn’t want their kiddies brought up with a stigma.”
Flecker pushed back a lock of hair and said, “Let’s leave my murky past. We haven’t much time, Mr. Sinclair will be here in a minute and demanding his supper. Please will you tell us about Miss Schmidt? All we know at present has been gathered from the aliens people. Apparently she was brought to England six years ago by an Army of the Rhine family for whom she had worked in Germany. She was twenty-eight this year and had been employed by you for the past six months.”
Veronica cleared a small space on the kitchen table for herself to sit on; Browning abandoned his tidying up and opened his notebook. “I don’t really know very much about her background,” began Veronica, “except that both her parents were dead. They were killed in the war: her father fighting in Russia, her mother in an air-raid on Munich. I suppose Hilda wasn’t a frightfully nice person really, somehow one never made a friend of her, but she had a lot of good points: she was sensible and hardworking and good with the children. Mother disapproved of her and poor Aubrey couldn’t bear her, but that was all to the good; I mean one’s always hearing about people’s husbands going off with foreign girls. It happened to Lesley Carlson; she lives in the Old Rectory flat and she was left to bring up Anthony practically without a bean. I wouldn’t have a glamorous Italian for anything.”
“Miss Schmidt wasn’t glamorous?”
“No, not a bit.”
“Did she have men friends?”
“She never produced one, but she used to sort of hint about her wonderful love-life and when I suggested that she ought to get married she just laughed, so I decided that either she was inventing it or else he was a married man.”
“Married man, I expect,” said Flecker, chewing his pencil. “Now, on Saturday she told you that she was going to London, but not which bus or train she was going to catch?”
“Well, no. You see both the five-thirty and six o’clock buses to Crossley catch London trains, but the five-thirty only gives you two minutes, so if it’s the least bit late you’ve got half an hour’s wait and could have gone on the six o’clock bus. On the other hand if you do catch the earlier train it’s a fast one.”
“I see, so it was a last-minute decision which one she would catch.”
“Yes, we had tea early and when she’d helped me wash up, she went upstairs to change. Aubrey and I took the babies into the sitting-room and then Paul came over and I never heard Hilda go.”
“Where’s the bus stop?” asked Flecker, shuffling through his envelopes.
“At the corner of the Old Rectory garden; the Church Lane corner, not the green side.”
“On the way to Well Cottage?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“She took an overnight case,” said Flecker musingly. “Was there a later bus?”
“Oh yes, there’s a bus every half hour until eight, then there’s one at nine and the last one goes at ten.”
“And there are plenty more trains to London, I suppose?”
“Well, they get rather few and far between as the evening goes on, but there are trains.”
Flecker rearranged his envelopes thoughtfully. “Do you subscribe to the family idea that the murders are the act of a homicidal maniac?” he asked. But Veronica, hearing the gritty scrunch of tyres on gravel, gave a cry of “Aubrey, and I’ve forgotten the soup.” She plunged her head into a cupboard and reappeared with a tin of soup; a frantic search through a drawer of kitchen cutlery produced an old-fashioned tin opener; she began to struggle with the tin.
Flecker watched for a moment or two, then he said, “You’re making heavy weather of that; let me have a try,” and took the tin from Veronica despite her protests. Almost at once there was a spurt of blood. “Hell and damn,” said Flecker, ruefully surveying his thumb.
“Oh, you muggins,” cried Veronica. “It’s simply pouring.”
“I should hold it under the cold tap, sir,” advised Browning, taking over the tin.
“I’ll get a bandage,” said Veronica, and rushed out of the room.
Aubrey Sinclair, having garaged the car, came in at the front door as his wife ran downstairs clutching an assortment of first-aid equipment. “Oh, darling,” she said, “one of the policemen’s cut himself trying to open the soup. They really came to see you. He’s simply pouring blood all over the kitchen; they’re Scotland Yard ones this time and much nicer.”
“What are you talking about?” Sinclair’s voice was cross and impatient.
“Oh, darling, I can’t stop to explain now, he’s bleeding all over the kitchen.”
“It’s not fair,” Sinclair complained angrily. “I come home tired and find the kitchen full of bleeding policemen. Why didn’t you get rid of them? You know I don’t want to be worried and bothered the minute I get in.”
Flecker, to whom most of this was audible, judged it diplomatic to appear at that moment. “Good evening, sir,” he said in his most placatory tones. “We thought we would save you the trouble of going down to the police station to make a statement. I am afraid we are rather the last straw at the end of a day’s work, but two murders in the family are bound to disrupt things.” He turned to Veronica. “I’ve staunched the flow,” he said, exhibiting a handkerchief-bandaged thumb, “and my sergeant’s mastered the tin.”
“We’d better go into the sitting-room,” said Sinclair. “You do behave in the most extraordinary way, Veronica, taking everyone into the kitchen.”
“That was our idea,” said Flecker; “we didn’t want to disorganize the supper.”
Browning joined them. “I’ve put the soup in a suitable saucepan, madam, and consigned the tin to the dustbin before it does any further damage,” he told Veronica.
“Oh, you are an angel,” she said without thought. Flecker grinned and Browning objected. “Hardly that, madam, just a well-trained family man.”
Frantic efforts had been made to give the sitting-room, mainly furnished in Barclay cast-offs of the large, dark Victorian sort, a contemporary look. There was the usual one odd wall; a straggle of ivy dangled on either side of the window; there was a low modern coffee table and a heap of vivid cushions; the solitary picture was an abstract.
“Darling, look at this mess! I don’t see why the children have to come in here at all.” Sinclair turned on his wife again.
“I’m sorry, darling,” she answered in a flat, tired voice, “but I can’t do the cooking and the housework and watch the children all at once. I’ll go and dish up while you make your statement.”
Sinclair switched on the electric fire and stood with his back to it; somehow he contrived to make even his silence ill-tempered. Of medium height, lightly built, red-headed and bespectacled, there was nothing remarkable about his appearance, except perhaps that his face was surprisingly boyish for his twenty-nine years.
“Saturday,” said Flecker, sitting down on the arm of the sofa. “Could we have your movements, please?”
“As I hold a miserably junior position in my late father-in-law’s firm, I have to go to town on Saturday mornings,” said Sinclair, bitterness twisting his lips. “I left the office at twelve and reached here about one-thirty. After lunch I assumed the role of an urban paterfamilias and washed the car. Then I played about with the children. My brother-in-law dropped in after tea and when he’d gone I read the papers. After supper I listened to a programme on the Third until my mother-in-law raised the alarm. It sounds a deadly dull sort of day; I suppose it was; we can’t afford to go anywhere or do anything worth while.”
“What did your brother-in-law want to see you about?” asked Flecker.
“Oh, nothing special, he just dropped in for a chat.”
“He must have been in a social mood,” said Flecker. “He had tea with Colonel and Mrs. Barclay and then came to see you.”
“Yes, Paul is the sociable type,” agreed Sinclair, but his pink and white face darkened under Flecker’s level gaze.
“Right,” said Flecker briskly, “so your brother-in-law talked about nothing special until when?”
“We weren’t sure of the time he left, but a consensus of opinion puts it at sixteen, I believe.”
“Yes, but Mrs. Dawson and Mrs. Willis were working on the presence of his Land Rover outside, which did not necessarily imply that the owner was inside.” Aubrey Sinclair flushed indignantly. “You can wash that idea right out,” he said. “Whatever time Paul left, he left in the Land Rover. That’s absolutely definite.”
Flecker grinned. “Thank you,” he said. “Now, have you any ideas on the subject of Miss Schmidt?”
Sinclair shook his head. “If Hilda had been the only victim I should have suspected the old story—baby on the way and married or otherwise occupied male—but Hilda and my father-in-law; I just don’t see the connection.”
Flecker shuffled through his envelopes. “Did you know that the rabbits were back in the plantation?” he asked.
“Rabbits in the plantation?” asked Sinclair. “Look, I’m nothing to do with the farming side of the family; I didn’t know the plantation existed until Saturday night.”
“Do you shoot?”
“No, neither do I fish and least of all hunt.”
“Perhaps I should have said, Can you shoot?”
“Yes.” Sinclair looked a little apprehensive. “Like most males of my age, I can.”
“Right,” said Flecker getting to his feet, “that’s the lot, then; we’ll leave you to your supper.”
“Now the question is, do we get any?” said Browning, as he started the car.
“Get any what?” asked Flecker.
“Supper. We had sandwiches for lunch and no tea; if we don’t get a decent supper, the Police Federation’s going to hear from me.”
“Well, Miller looked reliable, he’ll have fixed up something,” said Flecker in preoccupied tones.
“What’s the betting it’s a private and commercial of the worst kind, with high tea already off and lumpy mattresses?” asked Browning gloomily. But his fears weren’t realized. A note waiting at the police station told them that they were staying at the Swan in East Street and they were directed there by the constable on duty.
Small and unselfconsciously Tudor, the Swan was kept by Inspector Miller’s cousin, a stout, good-natured widow, and offered comfort without frills. The detectives dined on duck; as Browning said, the only good point about living on one meal a day was that you could blow your entire subsistence allowance on it. His good humour, restored by dinner, became unbounded when he learned that there was a television set in the residents’ lounge. “And there was me thinking I was going to miss ‘What’s Your Past’ and ‘The Baxters’,” he told Flecker in tones of triumph.
“You and your wretched goggle box,” complained Flecker. “Can’t you leave the thing alone for one night?” But, instead of writing up his notes he, too, remained glued to the set for the rest of the evening.
Chapter Six
The weather changed overnight. The bitter eastern blast gave way to a south-westerly breeze, the morning sky was a hazy blue and the sun shone for the first time for several weeks.
The dining-room of the Swan was stuffy and over-warm and Flecker bolted his breakfast, thanking the fates which had sent him to the country to witness the first appearance of spring.
He hurried Browning, who was inclined to read out startling items from his newspaper instead of eating, and then, having despatched him to extricate the car from the cramped garage space behind the hotel, Flecker telephoned the hospital and arranged an appointment with Dr. Hedley, the pathologist, at two.
The Rectory seemed the obvious place to start the search for Edward Harris and so they drove to Winmore End. There they found the Green looking greener and the birds singing lustily; the cottage windows had all been flung wide open and a yellow butterfly explored the Rectory garden in delicate dancing flight.
Gillian Willis, a dark, sullen child of thirteen, opened the Rectory door, but, before she could answer Flecker’s question as to whether the Rector was in, her mother appeared, aproned and rubber-gloved, and thrusting Gillian aside, answered, “The Rector’s not at home at the moment, but I expect I can help you. Oh, come in,” she went on, when Flecker had explained who they were, “come in. The rector’s seeing the churchwarden about Colonel Barclay’s funeral—three o’clock this afternoon. I don’t suppose he’ll be long, but I expect I can tell you anything you want to know. Sugdens, the florists, tell me there are going to be no end of flowers. I wouldn’t have expected it really; I mean one wouldn’t have thought that he was a man to have a great many friends, but then of course he was on all the committees, I daresay that’s got something to do with it. We’ve only just moved in, you know,” she went on as she opened the sitting-room door; “everything’s in a muddle, but I don’t suppose you mind, do you? Most men don’t, but my husband does, he’s got an orderly mind.”
In the few rooms of the Old Rectory they had inhabited, the Willis furniture had seemed sparse but adequate, but at the new house it was subjected to the cruelly revealing light which poured in through the wide modern windows, showing up the threadbare carpet, the patched, washed-out chintzes, the sad shabbiness of everything but a very new hearthrug.
“Sit down, won’t you?” said Joan Willis. “Would you like some coffee? Gillian can put the kettle on.”
“No, thank you very much. You’re our first port of call, we’ve only just had breakfast,” Flecker explained.
“I believe you employ a Mr. Harris as a jobbing gardener,” he went on, “and I wondered whether you could tell us where he’s working today?”
“Harris? So you’re after him too, are you? Well, he should be at Miss Yates’s place today. Her father was rector here. Not the last one, that was Dalkin, but before that. She’s one of those golfing women; well, I hope she gets more work out of Harris than we do, considering what one pays them nowadays . . .”
“Miss Yates,” said Flecker. “And where does she live?”
“Oh, straight on through the village, towards Crossley. It’s just past the post office, a small red-brick house with diamond-paned windows; you can’t miss it, there’s a yew tree by the gate cut in some fancy shape, a cock or something it’s supposed to be, but it doesn’t look much like it.”
The detectives got up to go and then Flecker asked, “You said just now that you wouldn’t have expected Colonel Barclay to have many friends. Wasn’t he popular in the village?”
“The Colonel popular? Well, he was and he wasn’t, if you know what I mean. He fancied himself as squire and yet he was feeling the pinch like everyone else and hadn’t the money to throw about; president of this and vice-president of that, it soon mounts up you know. Of course he led his family a life, poor Mary Barclay had her cross to bear, and then there was this business of ploughing up Church Field.”
“Yes, I gathered there had been some trouble over the field, but the Colonel had acted within his rights, hadn’t he?”
“Well, legally he had, because when his father gave or loaned the field to the village the silly ninnies didn’t get anything in writing, so when the Colonel simply said that he wanted it back there was a terrible hoo-ha. Mind you, I don’t think he would have got away with it; no end of people were signing my petition and Dr. Felton had got in touch with the playing fields people and Crocker, who’s captain of the village cricket team, had written a pretty stiff letter to the local rag. I think the colonel would have had to climb down.”
They Died in the Spring Page 7