by Emily Organ
“No, no. It ended because he had a tryst with Mrs Thonnings.”
“What?! She of the haberdashery shop?”
“The very same.”
“But she’s not his type!”
“How do you know what Mr Harding’s type is?”
“I’m a good judge of character, Pembers, and I can tell you now that Mrs Thonnings is not his type. Have you noticed how cheap her blouses are? They’re practically see-through.”
“Perhaps that’s what he liked about her.”
“Nonsense, Pembers. Mr Harding has more class than that. Mrs Thonnings indeed! Well, I suppose we’ve all done things we’re not proud of.”
“What’s wrong with Mrs Thonnings? I thought you liked her.”
“I don’t suppose there’s anything much wrong with her, apart from the cheap blouses. I’m rather surprised that’s all.”
They were interrupted by a knock at the door.
“Do come in!” chimed Churchill.
A police officer stepped into the room.
“Inspector Mappin! To what do we owe this pleasure? I assumed you’d be too busy today to pay us a visit.”
“I am,” he said gruffly, “but the back-up from Bulchford has arrived now, as has the chief inspector from Dorchester.”
“You must be glad of the assistance, Inspector.”
“Indeed I am, Mrs Churchill. And it would be of even greater assistance to me if you could find your way to not getting involved.”
“Getting involved with what, Inspector?”
“The murder case that has gripped the village of Compton Poppleford today.”
“Oh that. No, I shan’t get in your way, Inspector. I shall merely continue my work on the case I had already taken on before the tragic event occurred.”
“Which is what?”
“The case of Mr Rumbold’s onions.”
“I see. As long as you stay well away from the Williams case that’s fine by me.”
“There may be a slight overlap, Inspector. You see, Williams was the prime suspect in the onion case.”
“I assume the case is closed now that he’s deceased.”
“Not exactly closed, no. I may need to root around for further evidence.”
“Please don’t root around, Mrs Churchill. There really is no need.”
“You’ll hardly notice me, Inspector.”
“With all due respect, Mrs Churchill, you’re not the sort of person who moves about unnoticed.”
“Is that intended as an insult or a compliment, Inspector?”
“It’s more a statement of fact than anything else. Now please reassure me that there will be no overlap, as you put it, between your case and mine. I couldn’t bear it if you began meddling again.”
“Do I look like a meddler, Inspector?”
“Yes.”
“How offensive to make such a suggestion!”
“If I’m wrong, how do you explain that large incident board on the wall over there?”
“Oh, that little thing. That’s just something Miss Pemberley and I cobbled together for fun. In fact, Miss Pemberley did all of it, I didn’t have anything to do with it at all because I was off buying a kettle at the time.”
“You asked me to do it, Mrs Churchill,” said Pemberley. “I think your exact words were, ‘You get started on the incident board, then, and I’ll pop into this little cookshop here to buy us a new kettle.’”
“Whether those were my exact words or not is splitting hairs rather. The long and short of it is that we’re not meddlers, are we? We’re professional investigators and shall forge our own path, leaving you to forge yours, Inspector.”
“I don’t want our paths to cross again, Mrs Churchill.”
“They won’t even run parallel. They shall run forever in opposite directions.”
“Until they meet on the other side of the world,” added Pemberley.
“They won’t even do that,” corrected Churchill. “We shall take evasive action to avoid any possible collision.”
“I do hope so,” replied Mappin. “Otherwise we shall end up in a very sorry state of affairs indeed.”
“Who’s your chief suspect?” asked Churchill.
“There isn’t one yet.”
“Rumbold’s name is being cast around. You might want to ensure that he doesn’t go hopping off to the port any time soon. And I hear that one of Colonel Slingsby’s guns went missing shortly before Williams was shot.”
“Who told you that?”
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly reveal my sources.”
“You’ve been meddling!”
“The information was extended to me, Inspector. I didn’t even ask for it.”
The inspector tutted. “The gossipmongers in this village risk undermining a serious investigation. I shall have to give one of my strict talks at the village hall again.”
“Goodness, that sounds rather serious.”
“It is. Now stay out of this please, Mrs Churchill. That includes you and your secretary. Leave this case to the people who actually know what they’re doing.”
“And who might they be, Inspector?”
Inspector Mappin glowered at her as he left the room.
Chapter 10
“There’s one thing you can say about all officers of the law, Pemberley, and I know it from having been married to one for many years.”
“And what’s that?”
“They always assume they’re in the right. Take Inspector Mappin as an example. He’s completely convinced of his ability to solve the murder of Mr Williams while the likes of you and I are demoted to the role of mere meddlers.”
“It’s his job, I suppose.”
“But it’s our job too, Pembers! I’m going to make sure we solve this crime before he does.”
“How will we do that?”
“We’ll simply crack on with it. Now then, when we were investigating Rumbold’s onions, didn’t he mention the name Barry Woolwell?”
“I think so.”
“I’m sure Woolwell is a member of the gardening gang. I happened to bump into him at the allotments this morning. Have you any idea where the chap resides?”
“I don’t, but I’ve often seen him staggering out of the Wagon and Carrot.”
“Right then, that’s where we’ll need to go if we want to find him. Hopefully we’ll get to him before he reaches the staggering stage.”
“Don’t underestimate the staggering stage, Mrs Churchill, it can be quite useful. People are more talkative at that level of inebriation than they might otherwise be. Atkins invariably picked up golden nuggets of information from drunkards.”
“Did he indeed?” Churchill checked her watch. “In that case, let’s give Woolwell a bit longer in there. Another two tankards should do the trick. How long do you think that’ll take him? About an hour?”
“I think that sounds like a good estimate.”
“Excellent.”
Churchill tapped her pen on the desk and hummed a tuneless ditty.
“I’ll tell you what I noticed about Mrs Thonnings this morning, Pemberley.”
“What did you notice?”
“That she uses a tawdry colour of hair dye. These things often reveal themselves in the harshness of daylight, don’t they? When she’s tucked up in the corner of her gloomy haberdashery shop, her hair appears, to all intents and purposes, to be a deep red. But out in the sunshine it has quite a tacky orange hue.”
“Why has Mrs Thonnings become a candidate for your ire all of a sudden, Mrs Churchill?”
“There’s no ire. It was just an observation I made this morning.”
“Is it because of her romantic involvement with Mr Harding?”
“No!” Churchill spluttered. “That’s simply by-the-by. I can only assume the man likes orange hair dye as much as he likes see-through blouses. Anyway, what do you make of the colonel’s missing gun?”
“It’s suspicious.”
“It is rather. We need to find out who might have gained
access to his gunroom.”
“Perhaps we could ask him.”
“We could, Pembers, but it wouldn’t do to turn up at Ashleigh Grange unannounced. We would need to invite ourselves via an acquaintance of the colonel’s.”
Churchill allowed Pemberley to give this some thought before chipping in with a suggestion. “Oh, I’ve just thought of someone! When I was purchasing the kettle this morning, Mr Harding mentioned that he was a friend of the old crumb.”
“That’ll give you an excuse to talk to Mr Harding again, then.”
“It’s not a case of having an excuse Pembers. This is an important part of our investigation. Why don’t you come with me? We’ll pop into the cookshop to speak to Harding, and by then Woolwell will hopefully have consumed enough scrumpy to be in a talkative mood over the road at the Wagon and Carrot.”
Chapter 11
“Oh dear,” said Mr Harding as Churchill and Pemberley walked into his cookshop. “Is there something wrong with the kettle?”
“Oh no, Mr Harding, please do put yourself at ease.” Churchill felt her face warming as his dark eyes met hers. “The kettle is a delight. In fact, my tea has never tasted so good!”
“Surely the taste is in the tea leaves rather than the kettle,” suggested Pemberley.
“Not for those with a refined palette,” snapped Churchill. “Every stage of the tea-making process plays its part in the quality of one’s brew.”
“The water makes a difference too,” said Mr Harding.
“Oh, it does indeed. It makes an enormous difference,” agreed Churchill.
“Unfortunately, the water here in Dorset has quite a high mineral content,” continued Harding. “Travel west to Devon and you’ll be blessed with lower mineral levels in the water, which makes for a softer, rounder-tasting cup with significantly less scum.”
“I cannot abide scum,” said Churchill.
“The water in Devon is so soft that sometimes I consider moving there for the quality of the H2O alone.”
“Oh, please don’t leave, Mr Harding!”
Churchill’s loud appeal was met with a stunned silence.
She gave an awkward cough. “Don’t leave now, is what I meant, Mr Harding. Don’t go to Devon immediately because we came here to ask you a favour.”
“I have no plans to leave for Devon at this moment, Mrs Churchill. I would have to find a buyer for my shop first.”
“Of course. And you can hardly do that within a day, can you? In fact, it’s such a faff moving from one place to another that it’s not really worth considering it at all.”
“You’ve just moved here from London haven’t you, Mrs Churchill?” said Pemberley.
“Yes I have, and as I said it’s a thorough faff. However, I am exceedingly pleased to have made the move because now I have met some lovely people, such as your good selves.”
“You mentioned a favour, Mrs Churchill,” Mr Harding said.
“That’s right, I did. Thank you for reminding me. Miss Pemberley and I are visiting you this afternoon in our professional capacity as private detectives. We were wondering if you could somehow see your way to negotiating a little tête-à-tête between ourselves and your good friend Colonel Slingsby.”
“But that’s three people,” said Pemberley.
“Congratulations on your counting ability, my trusty assistant.”
“A tête-à-tête is only between two people,” she continued. “Its meaning in French is ‘head-to-head’.”
“How about tête-à-têtes then, Pembers?”
“That means two head-to-heads, not one head to two heads.”
“I think the thread of this conversation is straying a little now, and Mr Harding’s time is precious.”
“You’d like me to ask the colonel if he’d be happy to meet with you two fine ladies?” asked Harding.
“Why yes, that would be wonderful, thank you. We did meet him informally only yesterday, quite by accident, in fact, while we were at the allotments conducting an investigation.”
“I’m sure he’d be delighted to speak with you. I can telephone to him now. What should I say it’s regarding?”
“It’s regarding the dreadful murder of Mr Williams, but please reassure the colonel that our questions will be brief and certainly not probing as we have full respect for his no doubt emotional state at this present time.”
“Right ho. Excuse me then, ladies, while I step out the back and make the call.”
“Thank you, Mr Harding. You’re terribly helpful.”
“Isn’t he helpful, Pembers?” whispered Churchill once Mr Harding had disappeared into the room at the back of his shop.
“Yes, all the ladies say that.”
“Do they indeed? You’re lumping me in with all the ladies of Compton Poppleford now are you, Pemberley?”
“Well, it is what everyone says.”
“Because he’s a helpful man, that’s why. There’s no smoke without fire, you know. A man earns his reputation.”
“So does a woman.”
“She does indeed. Mrs Thonnings ought to be reminded of that.”
“Why Mrs Thonnings again?”
“Not all ladies consider the potential blemishes on their reputations before conducting themselves in a certain manner. Shush now, I can hear him coming back.”
“The colonel would like to know what time he should send his motor car for you ladies?” said Mr Harding.
“Would he really do that? For us? Oh my, that’s very kind of him. What do you think, Miss Pemberley?” Churchill checked her watch. “Shall we say four o’clock?”
“If I suggest four o’clock to the colonel I have no doubt he’ll have a fine afternoon tea – or tiffin, as he likes to call it – awaiting you on your arrival,” said Harding.
“Well, that sounds just perfect. Don’t you agree that it sounds quite perfect, Miss Pemberley? Thank you, Mr Harding. How thoroughly agreeable.”
Mr Harding stepped into the back room again.
“Why do you keep asking me questions without waiting for my reply?” whispered Pemberley.
“I don’t think I asked you any questions, did I?”
“Yes, you did. You asked me what time I thought the car should pick us up and whether I agreed that afternoon tea sounded perfect.”
“I suppose I was just being polite and that I was assuming you’d simply go along with whatever I suggested, Pembers.”
“I wanted to say that we should leave enough time to speak to Barry Woolwell first.”
“Oh dash it, you’re right. We’ve only got twenty minutes. And what if we can’t find him?”
“Exactly. I was going to mention that before you forged ahead with our plans.”
“Well, nothing’s stopping you from speaking up, Pembers.”
“Only the loudness of your voice.”
“Now you’re just being a wallflower! My voice isn’t the least bit loud. Shush now, he’s coming back again.”
“That’s all arranged, then,” said Harding. “The colonel’s chauffeur will collect you from the high street at four o’clock. Keep your eyes peeled for a red and cream Daimler.”
“Oh, they’ll be peeled all right,” said Churchill. “How can I ever thank you for your help this afternoon, Mr Harding? I’m most grateful, I truly am. If there’s ever anything I can do for you in return you will let me know, won’t you? We’re practically neighbours on the high street, and I was commenting to Miss Pemberley just the other day that—”
“We have another appointment, Mrs Churchill,” Pemberley interjected.
“Yes, thank you, Miss Pemberley. As I was commenting to Miss Pemberley just the other day, in fact the same Miss Pemberley who is standing right next to me now, funnily enough—”
“We only have twenty minutes,” interrupted Pemberley again.
“Shush now, the grown-ups are talking. As I was—”
“Perhaps you can enlighten me during your next visit, Mrs Churchill,” suggested Mr Harding. “Miss P
emberley is quite insistent that you have another appointment to get to. You can come and visit me any time you like.”
“Oh, can I really, Mr Harding? I must say I could do with replacing some of my crockery—”
“I’ll see you then, Mrs Churchill,” he replied before she could finish her sentence.
“Yes indeed, see you then. Cheerio, Mr Harding!”
Chapter 12
“So we’ve just enough time to speak to Barry Woolwell before the colonel’s motor car collects us,” said Churchill as they strode toward the doorway of the Wagon and Carrot. “Oh dear, it seems we’ve missed the staggering stage.”
Rolling down the steps of the Tudor-timbered pub was the tweed-jacketed form of Barry Woolwell. Behind him came a lean man with a hooked nose who picked Woolwell’s cap up from the ground and dusted it off before proceeding to haul the old man to his feet.
“Goodness, the fellow’s completely stewed to the gills,” commented Churchill.
“No, not ’im; ’e’s just tired,” replied the hook-nosed man, plonking the cap back on Barry Woolwell’s head.
Churchill introduced herself and Pemberley. “I was hoping we might be able to interview the chap about his good friend, the sadly deceased Tubby Williams.”
“’E’s too tired to speak,” said the man, pulling one of Woolwell’s arms across his shoulders.
“I can see that.”
“What d’you want ter know?”
“We’re after Mr Woolwell’s version of events, but I think we’ll have to try him tomorrow once he’s sobered up.”
“Who said anythin’ about ’im bein’ drunk? It’s the shock what’s ’it ’im.”
“Shock?”
“Yeah, the shock of Tubby’s death. It’s ’it ’im all of a sudden.”
“There’s no doubt that he’s been deeply affected by something,” Churchill retorted. “Are you a member of the gardening fraternity?”
“I’m ’is mate, Sniffer.”
“Mr Colin Sniffer Downs?”
“Yeah. What of it?”
“I recall Mr Rumbold mentioning your name.”
“’E did, did ’e?”
“A few people have named him as the chief suspect.”