by Dean James
“Not even then,” Giles said, his voice firm with certainty.
“Then let me ask you this,” I said. “The other day, when I met you in Trevor’s shop, I overheard what Trevor said to you when I was coming down the stairs. What he said could easily have been construed as a threat to you. And to Abigail Winterton.”
Giles thought for a moment, trying to recall the incident. Then his face cleared, and he laughed. “Oh, that! Simon, that’s evidence more in Trevor’s favor than against him. He had already told me that Abigail Winterton had been trying to get money out of him but that he refused to pay her anything. She had dug up something about him, something that happened when he was right out of university, in his first teaching post. Something scandalous, evidently, though Trevor wouldn’t tell me just what it was. And apparently she kept trying to wheedle money out of him, but he told her where to get off.” Giles eyed me speculatively, but I gave nothing away.
“Trevor flatly refused to give her any money,” Giles repeated when I remained silent.
“And what was the context of his remark to you? It wouldn’t get you anywhere, either, or words to that effect?”
Giles glanced away for a moment; then he faced me, turning on every ounce of his charm. “Well, Simon, there I have a confession to make. That play that I submitted to SMADS? Trevor helped me with it, but when I presented it to the group, I just happened to leave Trevor’s name off the page.”
“And Trevor was insisting that he get proper credit?” I asked. So Giles was something of a gold digger, after all.
“Yes,” Giles said. He heard the sudden coolness in my voice, and he shrank back in his chair.
“I knew it was wrong of me, Simon, you have to believe that. But something just came over me when I told my mother about the play. She was so thrilled to know that I had actually written something. I tried to tell her that I had written it with Trevor, but she got so carried away with the notion that her darling son had written a play, she didn’t give me much chance to explain. And then I let the misunderstanding continue.” The self-mockery in his voice lessened my disappointment in him.
“I confessed to my mother that night, when we got home. She took it better than I expected, actually. Though she wasn’t too keen on my having much to do with Trevor.”
“I can understand your wanting to avoid a scene with your mother, Giles,” I said dryly. “But you simply cannot go around taking credit for other people’s work. At least not if you want to have anything to do with me.” No matter how appealing he was, he had committed one of the cardinal sins of writing, and I wouldn’t let him do that to me.
Either Giles was a consummate actor, a true loss to the ongoing success of theater in the West End, or he was horribly stricken by the thought that I might cease to be his employer and putative mentor. He stood, eyes abjectly on the floor. “Please, Simon, if you’ll give me another chance, I promise I won’t do anything underhanded. I’ll make it up to Trevor as well. You can trust me. I’ve learned my lesson, believe me. Please.”
I invested my voice with every ounce of menace that I could muster. “If I ever discover that you have been dishonest with me over anything like this again, you will not enjoy the consequences.”
Giles shivered where he stood. His eyes wide with surprise, he stared at me. Perhaps I had gone too far. I forget just how frightening I can be when I make the effort. “No, Simon, I’m sure I won’t.” His voice held the slightest quaver. Then, quickly, his natural buoyance asserted itself. “But you won’t have to doubt me, ever again. I swear it.”
“Then you’d best get on with your work, hadn’t you?” I smiled, and he happily gathered up several files from my desk and started putting them back into order.
I thought I had best clear out of the office for a while and let him have some time to himself. He needed a chance to ponder our conversation, and frankly, so did I. I needed some physical distance in order to think clearly.
“I almost forgot,” Giles said, reaching for his satchel. “I stopped by the post office this morning and picked up your mail for you.” He pulled his hand out of the satchel and brandished a fistful of envelopes of varying sizes. I hadn’t the stomach to deal with correspondence just then, so I told him I’d look through it when I returned from my walk.
I chose a hat from the hall tree, put on my sunglasses, and headed out the door. I needed a good ramble to clear my head. Like the late Abigail Winterton, I generally preferred to take such walks during the middle of the night, when there was little chance of encountering anyone else. Instead of heading down the High Street into the main part of the village, I turned in the opposite direction, ambling past the few cottages on the other side of mine. My destination was just down the lane, a public footpath leading through the nearby countryside. I had walked it a couple of times in the dead of night (I do love unintentional puns, don’t you?), and I might as well see what it looked like with the benefit of sun.
Clambering over the stile, I paused on the other side for a moment to get my bearings. The footpath meandered along the edge of a wood, through a field overgrown with grass and brightly colored wildflowers. Once upon a time it had been used as pasture for livestock, but now it stood quiet and empty of visible animal life. The sun dallied behind a light cover of clouds, so the light was muted, and the air was noticeably cooler than that of the day before. I sniffed at the wind. Perhaps we were in for some much-needed rain; this had been rather an unusually warm and dry summer. I was delighted to know that it wasn’t typical. I had had more than enough of hot and humid back in Houston.
I moved slowly, savoring the fresh smells of the natural world around me, plodding down the footpath in the shade of trees on my left side. My mind emptied as I gazed around me. The tranquility of the setting could have mesmerized me had my mind been capable of being still for more than a few seconds.
Sighing, I kept walking while my thoughts returned inexorably to the murder of Abigail Winterton. Pathetic though she may have been in some respects—I couldn’t help thinking of what Jane and I had seen of her very private self in her bedroom—she nevertheless seemed to have been a veritable spider, gathering victims into her web and feeding on them over the course of many years.
Which victim had finally turned on her? Which one had inevitably been pushed beyond endurance and reacted with violence?
If Everard Stevens had a good motive, I could easily imagine him killing Abigail Winterton. Or, at the very least, ordering his brutish manservant to do so for him. Samantha Stevens had impressed me as a woman not to be crossed lightly. She and her husband made a formidable team, in some ways, though I’d be willing to bet neither of them trusted the other very much. One of them was going to end up dead before too much longer, I’d be willing to bet.
The Stevenses were more than capable of murder. But what motive would have compelled them to commit such an irrevocable act? Samantha Stevens was obviously frustrated, thwarted by her husband from continuing in London the types of activities she seemed to thrive on, and evidently Lady Prunella Blitherington and Abigail Winterton, between them, had managed to keep her from gaining much power here in Snupperton Mumsley. Was she so frustrated by this that she had resorted to murder to remove one of the stumbling blocks in her way?
That was possible, I thought, but it seemed even more likely to me that Samantha Stevens was biding her time, waiting for the right opportunity to divest herself of her odious husband in an innocuous and apparently innocent manner. If Everard Stevens didn’t die “accidentally” in the next year or so, I’d quit writing mysteries.
The Stevenses weren’t the only viable suspects, of course. Lady Prunella herself could be standing at the head of the line. If it turned out that she had truly cuckolded old Sir Bosworth and presented him with a son and heir who wasn’t truly his, she could have been horribly embarrassed by the ensuing scandal. But—I thought this one out further—surely if there had been any question about the identity of Giles’s father, it would have surfaced
when Giles was born? What would be the point of resurrecting it a quarter of a century after the fact? Bastardy was still potentially embarrassing, I supposed, but it was rather old news, wasn’t it?
But if one had inherited an estate that one wasn’t legally entitled to, then one might have a most excellent motive for murder. As much as I’d like to, I now admitted to myself, I couldn’t take Giles’s name off the list of suspects. Yet.
Then there was the vicar and his wife. A bit of a mystery lingered there, according to that clipping Abigail Winterton had, about the death of Lester Clitheroe. Had Neville Butler-Melville, in his youth, done something despicable? Had Miss Winterton somehow discovered proof of it and been using it to increase her hold gradually over the vicar and his wife? Letty Butler-Melville was so protective of her husband that I couldn’t imagine her letting Miss Winterton get away with much unless the threat was rather serious. How far would Letty go to protect Neville? Would she murder for him?
I certainly couldn’t imagine Neville exerting himself to save Letty. Though handsome and charismatic, he nevertheless was a bit of a wanker. He just didn’t have the gumption, I suspected, to murder someone, no matter the reason. But he could always depend on Letty to do it for him.
How was Colonel Clitheroe connected? If he was indeed the father of the mysteriously dead Lester Clitheroe, how did that relationship connect him to the present crime? Did he, too, suspect Neville Butler-Melville of having murdered his son? Was that why the colonel had settled in Snupperton Mumsley around the same time as the Butler-Melvilles? But, again, there was the aspect of timing. Why wait twenty or so years? What had happened recently to bring the situation to a head?
Trevor Chase had been called into the police station. That was a fairly serious step, as far as I knew. Not actually an arrest but an indication of more than ordinary interest in a suspect on the part of the police. I considered the possible evidence against Trevor. If the story about his early teaching job were true and if the Ml story of his pursuit of Giles were told around the village, he would no doubt be a laughingstock, if not worse. In my brief exposure to him, Trevor had proved more than a bit prickly, not as easygoing as he had seemed upon our first meeting. Would he remain in Snupperton Mumsley if his past were exposed to ridicule and censure by the locals?
Of all the people connected with the case, Trevor seemed to have the strongest motive. There could be another suspect lurking somewhere in the background. There was Giles, naturally, who might be motivated by the same reasons as his hideous mother, but I really preferred not to think of him as a potential murderer.
Besides Giles, the only other person of my current acquaintance in Snupperton Mumsley was Jane Hardwick. I laughed at the thought of Jane as the murderer.
Then I caught myself up short Maybe the idea wasn’t so ridiculous, after all. If I interpreted recent events in a certain way, I could see that Jane had stage-managed me (or maybe “manipulated” would be a better choice?) into following just the paths that she wanted me to. After all, Jane could easily have sneaked into Abigail Winterton’s cottage with none in the village the wiser, and Abigail would probably have little reason to fear Jane. Jane, despite her small size, was strong enough to have throttled Abigail Winterton.
And it was certainly interesting, I thought abruptly, that Jane had known where to “find” evidence of Abigail’s blackmailing activities. What if Jane herself were the blackmailer and had planted that evidence in Abigail Winterton’s bedroom? Jane had led me there like a fatted calf to the slaughtering pen.
What could be the motive in that scenario? I thought disgustedly. Had Abigail Winterton somehow discovered Jane’s true nature?
I was getting more and more twisted in my thoughts, and nothing was clear except that I was accomplishing nothing. Fat lot of good this walk was doing me, I thought sourly as I climbed back over the stile and marched down the lane to my cottage.
Inside, I hung up my hat and went back into my office. Giles looked up from his work to smile briefly in my direction, but a glance at my face warned him that I was in no mood for idle chatter. I plopped myself down behind my desk and pulled the pile of mail toward me. As long as I was grumpy anyway, I might as well deal with the mail.
Several of the envelopes obviously contained bills, and I set those aside for later. Giles could handle those as part of his duties as secretary. One large envelope bulged with what looked like a manuscript. Struck by a sudden thought, I picked it up and ripped it open. Surely it couldn’t be?
The pages spilled out on the desk, and I snatched up the tide page.
Here was Abigail Winterton’s missing play.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Staring down at the manuscript of the play, I made a quick decision. I put the manila envelope down on top of the tide page to obscure it from view.
“Giles,” I said casually, and he looked up from his work, his face cautious. I smiled, and he relaxed.
“Yes, Simon,” he said. “Is there something you want me to do?”
I nodded. “I’ve been thinking that as long as I’m going to have an assistant, he should have his own computer. There will be work you’ll need to do, and having a computer to yourself will make that work much easier.” I grinned. “I really don’t like sharing my computer with anyone.”
Giles smiled broadly. “That makes sense, Simon. I have a computer at home, and I could bring it here if you like.”
“No, Giles, you should keep that at home for your personal use,” I said. “I thought you might go into Bedford and shop around for something.” I glanced at my watch; it was nearly noon. “Why don’t you go on now? Take your time, have lunch, look around. Chalk it up to expenses, and I’ll reimburse you, since it will be a working lunch. Get the specs on what you think will be necessary and bring them back to me tomorrow. We’ll go from there and get you set up with your own equipment.”
Giles’s face clouded momentarily as he eyed the stacks of papers that yet needed to be organized in my files.
“There’ll be plenty of time for all that later,” I assured him. “Besides, having the computer, not to mention your own printer, will help you get me organized that much more quickly.”
He laughed at that. “True enough,” he said, standing up and stretching, letting me have a long look at the muscular torso beneath his snugly fitting shirt. “So you want to get rid of me for the rest of the day. You’re the boss.”
“Cheeky!” I said, smiling.
Giles picked up his satchel and cast me one last grin as he headed out of the office. “See you tomorrow, then!”
As I heard the door close, I sat and contemplated the pile of papers in front of me. I picked up the envelope again and felt something still inside. I drew out a thick piece of heavily embossed notepaper. Abigail Winterton’s name and address were emblazoned across the top in scarlet Gothic lettering, and the paper was an expensive, creamy stock. Miss Winterton had written me a letter in neat, crabbed handwriting. I squinted, deciphering it.
Dear Dr. Kirby-Jones:
I beg you will pardon my forwardness in sending you this with no forewarning. [Goodness, I thought, she sounds like the heroines in my historical romances.] Jealous and prying eyes surround me, and I am entrusting myself to your reputation as a scholar and to your status as a newcomer to Snupperton Mumsley. Having read your works and having chatted with an academic acquaintance who shares your specialty, I know that you have the bona fides of a true member of the literati, unlike some others in this village with pretensions far beyond their abilities, meager at best. Discretion being ever the better part of valor, I decided, after having announced to my fellow members of the SMADS the existence of this play, I would ask an impartial witness to read it and pass judgment before I shared it with the world at large. I do trust that you will give this work your undivided attention and discuss with me, at your earliest convenience, its suitability for production by the SMADS. I have little doubt that the enclosed work of fiction [and the word was heavily und
erscored] -will pack the house, as the saying goes.
If you agree, I mil then share the manuscript with the rest of the committee. For the moment, they can wait, as do I, for your decision.
Yours most sincerely, Abigail Winterton
I could picture the murder victim sitting at the desk in her bedroom while she penned this note with great self-satisfaction, drawing me into her web. In my mind, I saw her scurrying downstairs to the post office and placing the envelope in the appropriate bin or pile, then going on about her business. Happy with the turmoil she had created among the members of SMADS, she fed off the ensuing fear and anxiety until at some point, one person, pushed beyond endurance, had come and killed her. That person might have found any other existing copies of the play and taken them away to be destroyed, thinking he or she had gotten away with them all. Miss Winterton might yet have the last laugh.
I should have called Detective Inspector Chase immediately to report what I had received, but of course I was much too nosy to let this chance go by. I decided to exercise some self-restraint, however, by making a copy of the manuscript and not handling the original further before reading it. Rummaging around in the kitchen, I found a pair of very thin latex gloves, which allowed me, in a clumsy fashion, to handle the manuscript with some attempt at care. Once the copying was done, I put the pages back in the envelope and settled down for a quick scan of the copy before I called the police.
There wasn’t much to the play, only about sixty pages, and since I read quickly, I was done with it in perhaps fifteen minutes. Abigail Winterton had been no stylist, but what she lacked in literary ability she made up in venom. The portraits of my acquaintances in Snupperton Mumsley within the pages of Village Affairs: a Modem Morality Tale contained vituperations of the nastiest kind.
One Lady Prudence Blister made a brief appearance, with her bastard son, Miles, in tow, happily announcing to the world that she and her son were to be at long last reunited with her one true love (and, incidentally, Miles’s real father), a former gardener on her estate who was returning from Australia, having made a fortune in some unspecified fashion. Which helped, naturally, since Miles would be disinherited, the truth of his base birth now broadcast to one and all.