by Dean James
June Bartwick, however, was highly upset, because the police were in her garden, tearing apart her flower beds, looking for the bodies of several young men who had disappeared, in succession, shortly after dining with her. June apparently had a habit of consorting with men much younger than she, young men who seemed to vanish abruptly after having been seen entering her cottage a time or two late at night.
Everett Stewart and his blowsy, slatternly wife, Susie, were currently at the mercy of die Inland Revenue for various offenses that were never made quite clear.
Tristan Case wandered through, with a handsome, noticeably effeminate, young choirboy in tow, insisting loudly to anyone who would listen that he was just tutoring the boy for his A-levels, nothing more.
Finally, there was the vicar and her husband, Lottie and Greville Baker-Mandeville. (A most interesting switch, I thought, and perhaps the most telling one in all of the twisted portraits thus far.) The vicar went about minding everyone’s business but her own, running the parish into the ground by ignoring the offers of assistance from those who knew better than she, while her husband remained at home, where he did little to help. Instead, he sat around all day, eating chocolates and devouring romance novels by the dozen. Greville was rumored to have a dark secret in his past, one that precluded his serving the church despite his degree in theology and his training for the priesthood. He was often observed wringing his hands in the manner of Lady Macbeth (Miss Winterton did not forbear to quote the Scottish play, sadly) when he thought no one could see him.
I put the pages aside and fought the urge to wash my hands. Instead, I picked up the phone, found the card that Detective Inspector Chase had given me, and dialed the number of his office in Bedford. When someone answered, I asked to speak to Detective Inspector Chase but was politely informed that he was unavailable at the moment I identified myself and informed the person at the other end that I had just come into possession of important evidence in the Snupperton Mumsley murder case and asked if he would please let the Detective Inspector know I would be at home whenever he could come by. After receiving an assurance that the message would be forwarded to the detective inspector with all due speed, I rang off and sat back in my chair.
I was tempted to get a pair of tongs from the kitchen and transport my copy of the play (a sad misnomer) and deposit it in the garbage can. But putting aside my finer feelings for the moment I instead forced myself to think about the implications of what Abigail Winterton had written.
How much of it was simply a spite-driven interpretation of innocuous fact? Was any of it based on at least a grain of truth? And had Abigail Winterton really believed the play would ever have been performed? What was she trying to do in forcing this on her neighbors?
In Trevor Chase’s case, certainly, there was a bedrock of truth present in the play. Trevor had, at least once, become involved inappropriately with a minor, if Abigail Winterton’s distant friend, Parthenope Foxwell, were to be believed. Trevor had also become obsessed with Giles Blitherington, although the obsession seemed to have faded. At least Giles no longer appeared troubled by Trevor’s presence in the village, whereas in the beginning, he must have been uncomfortable.
What if Giles really were illegitimate? There did seem to be some sort of story there. Abigail Winterton could be making it up out of whole cloth. I thought back to the clipping in her collection, the one telling of Sir Bosworth Blitherington’s antipodean trip. The timing was odd, given the date of Giles’s birth, but there could be an innocent explanation. And certainly a DNA test could probably answer the question, should it ever come to that point. What would happen if I simply asked Giles point-blank? The idea made me uneasy. Perhaps there was another way to get at the information. At the moment, however, I couldn’t think of one.
The charges against Jane Hardwick were far more serious. I had taken Jane at face value, delighted to find a fellow vampire in Snupperton Mumsley, someone with whom I could truly let my hair down. Had I been willing to take too much on trust? Tristan Lovelace had said not a word about her, and surely he would have warned me against her if there were something not quite cricket about her. I could easily see Jane having a taste for young, attractive men. I could even imagine her, in the days before our wonderful little pills were invented, satisfying her urges by feasting on such young men. But the Jane I had met had not impressed me as reckless or stupid—both of which she’d have to be to behave in the manner imputed in the play. Abigail Winterton had intuited some of the truth about Jane, but I didn’t think she had managed all of it.
The question now was, should I confront Jane with this? Simply show it to her and laugh it off? Or take a sterner stance and demand an explanation? To be honest, I wasn’t all that keen on a showdown with her, because she frightened me. She had been a vampire a hell of a lot longer than I had, and she was correspondingly more knowledgeable and more dangerous. She hadn’t survived over four hundred years as a vampire without being well able to take care of herself, and that made me nervous about trying to question her.
I put Jane aside for the moment and went on down my mental list. Abigail Winterton seemed to have included the Stevenses only as a matter of course. She obviously had a score to settle with them over her lost nest egg, but the vagueness of her portrayal of them in the play was telling. She didn’t have enough on them to make them viable suspects in her murder. As attractive as Everard Stevens might be in the role of cold, conscienceless killer, this was one dog that wouldn’t hunt, I concluded regretfully.
That left me with Neville and Letty Butler-Melville. The contempt in Abigail Winterton’s characterizations of them was vicious. She had cast Letty as the strong partner in the marriage. Even I, who barely knew the Butler-Melvilles, could see the truth in that. But how much of the rest of her interpretation was sheer spite? Had Neville Butler-Melville really been responsible for the death of Lester Clitheroe all those years ago? Had his guilt been hanging over him all this time? And what would Letty Butler-Melville do to protect her husband? Would she have murdered Abigail Winterton to stop her from spreading such an ugly story?
For the life of me, I couldn’t see what kind of evidence that Abigail Winterton might have had in order to convince anyone that Neville Butler-Melville had a death, accidental or otherwise, on his hands. I supposed, however, that rumor might be enough to get him in serious trouble, especially combined with the fact that it was Letty who seemed to shoulder the burdens of the parish rather than Neville himself. I wondered, suddenly struck with the idea, whether Letty even wrote his sermons for him. I had attended one service during a quick weekend trip to Snupperton Mumsley two months ago, and at the time, Neville had impressed me with the erudition and style of his sermon. Having been around him a bit more, though, I was now suspicious. He had an actor’s ability to sell himself in a role, but did he also have the ability to write his own dialogue?
I checked the time. Getting close to one. Jane wouldn’t be back from Oxford for a while yet, probably not until after teatime at least. I wondered whether she would forgive me readily for turning the play over to the police without letting her see it first. I wondered just what she would do once she was aware of the accusations against her in the play. Would the police be bound to search her garden? I couldn’t help admit curiosity as to what they might find if they did.
Time for some tea, I thought, getting up abruptly from behind my desk. Surely Detective Inspector Chase would arrive soon, and I could turn this mess over to him. I had been intrigued by the puzzle of Abigail Winterton’s murder, but now that I knew more about all involved, I was disgusted by the sordidness of it all. Even if the remnants of an all-too-human curiosity were still lodged within my brain.
I was sipping at my tea some fifteen minutes later, staring blankly at the manuscript on my desk, when the doorbell rang. Setting down my teacup, I was all set to dash to the door, but then it occurred to me that I should put away my copy of the play. It wouldn’t do to have Detective Inspector Chase spot the evid
ence of my illicit activity! Casting about for a hiding place, I decided to stuff it in the bottom drawer of my desk, where small mammals could disappear for months at a time.
The doorbell rang again, and I almost ran to the front door. Detective Inspector Chase was going to get a welcome he wouldn’t soon forget, with me at my most innocently helpful.
I swung the door open, a huge smile of greeting blasting out at the handsome policeman.
Except that it was Colonel Clitheroe standing patiently on my doorstep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Poor Colonel Clitheroe took a step backward as my beaming smile morphed into a disappointed scowl. “Apologies for calling on you like this,” he squeaked.
“Not at all, Colonel,” I said. Drat! Where was a good-looking policeman when you expected one? “Please pardon me. I’ve been wrestling with a thorny problem in my research, and I’m afraid I was lost in thought when I answered the door. Writers, you know.”
Smiling uncertainly, the colonel said, “Quite.”
I motioned him in. “What can I do for you, Colonel?”
“Been thinking about your garden,” he said. “Came by to have a look and see what might be done.” He cleared his throat. “Might not be a good time, though. Could come back later, I suppose.”
“Not at all, Colonel,” I said, trying not to sound impatient. What if the detective inspector showed up while I was discussing perennials with the colonel? One had to observe the social conventions, nevertheless. “Would you like a spot of tea before we go out to the back garden?”
Colonel Clitheroe nodded. “Most kind of you, I’m sure.”
Sighing inwardly, I invited him to make himself comfortable in the sitting room while I went to the kitchen to put more water on for tea.
My hearing is acute, as I believe I’ve already mentioned, and over the noise of the water from the tap, I could hear surreptitious footsteps leaving the sitting room. What was he doing?
Putting the kettle quickly on the stove, I tiptoed to the kitchen door and peeked down the hallway just in time to see Colonel Clitheroe’s back disappearing into my office. What have we here?
I could have charged down the hallway right then to confront him, but I decided to give him a little line to see what might happen. I waited until the water boiled, busying myself with preparing the tea tray, then went back to the sitting room. Tray in hand, I discovered Colonel Clitheroe sitting innocently in my favorite chair, looking bored as if he had been waiting there for quite some time.
Scanning his clothing, I didn’t spot any unusual bulges. For the moment, I couldn’t think of a good reason to excuse myself to go into my office to check on the manuscript of the play. He couldn’t have known it was there. What had he been after?
I served the tea and made idle chatter with the colonel about herbaceous borders and the hardiness of certain varieties of lilies. Since I knew nothing about either subject, the colonel did most of the talking, quite happily, I might add. Whatever sneakiness he might have been engaged in, he was still an enthusiastic gardener.
After a few minutes of this, I was pleased when the colonel decided it was time for a look at the back garden. I took him down the hall through the kitchen and out the back door. Excusing myself at the sound of the telephone, I left the colonel gazing in dismay at the undisciplined growth.
The caller was Detective Inspector Chase. “I just received your message a few minutes ago, Dr. Kirby-Jones,” he told me. “I expect to be with you in about fifteen or twenty minutes.” Judging by the static I could hear, he must be calling me from his car.
“Not a problem, Detective Inspector,” I said. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
On the way back outside, I glanced quickly at my desk. From what I could see, the pages of the manuscript hadn’t been disturbed, though the envelope in which they had arrived might have been shifted a bit on the desk. Had the colonel seen enough to satisfy his curiosity?
As I came out the back door, the colonel was slipping his hand into the pocket of his rather baggy pants. I hadn’t paid much attention to them before, but they looked capacious enough to hold a cellular phone. Which is what I thought the colonel had been putting away.
“Sorry about that,” I said. “Business call.”
The colonel waved that away. “Over here,” he said, pointing at the jumble of plants (some of which might have been weeds, for all I knew) lining the wall on the northern side of my property. “Lot of work needed there,” he said. “Too much unrestrained growth.” From his enthusiasm he might have been Margaret Thatcher going after cuts in old-age pensions.
For the next ten minutes I listened while the colonel outlined a plan for bringing my garden back under control. I simply nodded, wondering how much it would cost me if I were to follow through with any of this. All the while, I was wondering about his real motive in coming here today. Finally, the colonel told me he could recommend a man to do the job, and I suggested that we go back inside so that I could write down the man’s address and phone number. As we were finishing in the hallway, my doorbell rang again.
This time it was, thankfully, Detective Inspector Chase.
“Good afternoon, Dr. Kirby-Jones,” he said, smiling, though he looked more than a bit worn around the edges. I found out later that he had just come from attending the postmortem on Abigail Winterton.
“Please, do come in, Detective Inspector,” I said, standing aside to allow him in. “Colonel Clitheroe has very kindly been giving me advice on taming my back garden.”
“Better be going,” the colonel said, nodding stiffly at the policeman.
“Thank you again, Colonel,” I said, ushering him out with relief.
“Not at all,” he said, pausing for a moment on the doorstep. Then he turned and marched down the walk and out into the lane, having turned precisely on his heel at the gate.
“What is this new evidence you’ve got?” Detective Inspector Chase asked once he had explained his delay in responding to my call.
“Please come into my office,” I said, “and I’ll show you.” With a flourish I waved him in, then stopped in surprise as I scanned the top of my desk. The play and the envelope in which it had arrived were gone.
I said something rather vulgar, and the detective inspector blinked in surprise. I motioned for him to sit while I did the same.
“What I had to show you,” I said, “was Abigail Winterton’s missing play. Which seems to have gone missing again!”
“What?” the detective inspector said, halfway coming up out of his chair. “How did you come to have it?” He sat tiredly back again.
“It came in the mail, along with a letter from Miss Winterton explaining that she wanted someone who was a professional, more or less, to look at it before she let anyone else read it. Something the killer probably didn’t expect.”
Sighing, thinking about the inevitable embarrassment, I opened the drawer where I had hidden my copy of the play and was relieved to find it just where I had put it, mixed into the jumble of junk. Somewhat reluctantly, I pulled it out, along with the copy I had made of Miss Winterton’s letter to me. “This is a copy,” I muttered.
Detective Inspector Chase struggled to hide a smile at the chagrin in my voice, but at least my nosiness may have foiled the plan the killer had to destroy all the evidence of the play’s existence.
“Before you take that away,” I said, “I’d better tell you about what just happened here.” I sketched the details of Colonel Clitheroe’s visit, including my notion that he had been putting away a cell phone when I came back outside.
“You think he alerted someone to the presence of the play and that person came and removed it while you were still talking in the back garden.” More a statement than a question, really—Detective Inspector Chase beat me to the punch line. “Had you left the front door unlocked?”
I nodded ruefully. “Most of the time when I’m at home, unless it’s late at night, I generally do. I’ve never seen the need to worry abo
ut it. After all, that’s one of the reasons I came to Snupperton Mumsley. The low crime rate.” I arched an eyebrow at him, and he grinned briefly.
“It’s a lucky thing that you had the foresight to make a copy of the play, then,” he said with a perfectly straight face.
“Amazing coincidence, isn’t it?” I agreed, grateful that he was taking such a sensible attitude toward my indiscretion. Or my helpfulness, if you chose to look at it that way.
“And did you have time to read the play?” he asked.
“Yes, and it’s altogether a nasty piece of work, as you’ll discover.”
He arched an eyebrow, and I took that as encouragement to comment further. Though she changed their names, the more prominent citizens of Snupperton Mumsley figure prominently. Apparently, each of them has something to hide. Presumably something worth killing for. But there’s one thing I still can’t quite figure out”
“What’s that?” the policeman asked after a moment.
“What she expected to gain by forcing them to put on this play!” I snorted in disbelief. “I can’t imagine she thought she’d really make them do it. It would have been the ultimate humiliation for them all if it had gone ahead. If she were truly blackmailing them over what she was insinuating in this play, why did she suddenly try to bring it all into the open?”
Detective Inspector Chase examined his hands rather closely for a very long minute.
“I believe I can tell you this in all confidence,” he said. “As I explained earlier, I have just come from attending the postmortem on Miss Winterton. The police surgeon discovered that she had a large tumor on the brain. Such a condition, as I expect you’re aware, can cause someone to act erratically at times.”