Murder in Cold Mud

by Emily Organ

  “Never underestimate the power of food, Pembers,” said Churchill the following morning. “I’ve realised that if I pedal toward the picnic in the basket on the front of my bicycle I’m able to stay in the saddle.”

  “Hurrah, Mrs Churchill. You’ve learned how to bicycle in a straight line!”

  “I’ve always known how to do that, Pemberley, but for some reason reminding myself of the sandwiches, pork pie and pickled onions improves my balance. You didn’t forget the cherries and Madeira cake, did you?”

  “No, they’re in my basket.”

  “Wonderful. And the lemonade?”

  “That’s in my basket, too. I didn’t want to take the risk of putting any glassware in yours.”

  “And I wouldn’t have wanted you to, Pembers. I’ll leave the glassware transportation to you. Oh, how I do love a picnic. When shall we stop and eat it?”

  “Don’t forget that the picnic is part of our ruse, Mrs Churchill.”

  “But we still get to eat it, don’t we?”

  “Yes, but we need to carry out the ruse first.”

  “Must we?”

  “Don’t you want to find out what the colonel has removed from Mr Harding’s cookshop?”

  “Of course I do, and I shall be even more determined after a slice of pork pie.”

  “We haven’t even bicycled a quarter of a mile yet, Mrs Churchill.”

  “Nonsense, we must have travelled three miles by now.”

  “We can’t have. We’ve only just passed the old water pump.”

  “Trust you to notice something as dull as an old water pump, Pembers.”

  “I like to keep an eye out for landmarks.”

  “I can feel my balance going now I’ve learnt that we’re not even at the half-mile mark.”

  “Keep bicycling toward the picnic, Mrs Churchill.”

  “I am! But at this rate I’ll never catch up with it. Is this really worth our while, Pembers?”

  “Of course it is. This level of effort and determination is what’s required to crack the case.”

  “I like that sort of talk, Pemberley. You almost sound like me. I must add that this new pair of breeches is quite comfortable. I hadn’t realised that funny little ladies’ outfitters by the bric-a-brac shop was any good.”

  The two ladies continued their journey along the hedge-lined lanes that led to Ashleigh Grange. Pink and white dog roses, powder blue cornflowers and flashes of scarlet pimpernel brightened the hedgerows. The sun shone and Churchill perspired.

  The tall gateposts of Ashleigh Grange eventually loomed into view. As soon as she saw them, Churchill paused beneath the shade of an oak tree.

  “Thank goodness we’re there,” she puffed. “And now we wait.”

  “We can’t wait,” replied Pemberley. “That will look suspicious. We need to arrive spontaneously whenever he appears.”

  “How can we arrive spontaneously when we’ve planned this in advance?”

  “We’ll have to bicycle to and fro along this stretch of road.”

  “Pedal continuously? Are you trying to drive me to a fit of exhaustion, Pemberley?”

  “No, I wouldn’t wish to do that at all. But don’t you see that if the colonel finds us standing under this tree he’ll know we’re here to seek him out.”

  “Indeed I do see that, Pembers. A nice slice of pork pie and a swig of lemonade will see us on our way. Don’t you agree?”

  The two ladies paused for a spot of refreshment, then remounted their bicycles.

  “To and fro then, Pembers?”

  “Yes, while keeping the gateposts within our sights at all times. Doing so will ensure that we’re close by when the colonel’s car appears. Then we can have our ‘spontaneous’ chat with him.”

  “And ask him what’s in his valise?”

  “We’ll have to think of something a little less direct than that.”

  “Such as: what were you doing sniffing about in the cookshop, colonel?”

  “A bit too direct, I feel.”

  “I know what you mean, Pembers. What we really need is something along the lines of: Oh hello, Colonel. Lovely day, isn’t it? We’re just bicycling out to have a picnic on the bank of a babbling brook. How marvellous to happen upon you like this. I’ll throw in a question after that, but I will think of the exact phrasing on the spot. I pride myself on being able to improvise well in conversation. Now, what happens if the colonel’s car doesn’t appear?”

  “There is a chance he won’t be making any excursions today.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we’ll just eat our picnic.”

  “When exactly?”

  “Shall we improvise?’

  “Oh yes, I’m good at improvising. Let’s go.”

  The two ladies pedalled past the gates of Ashleigh Grange before turning around and pedalling past again. They did this three times before Churchill’s legs began to complain.

  “I’m sorry, Pembers. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. It must be the heat.”

  “Your flesh doesn’t like heat?”

  “It does, but it doesn’t enjoy having to do a lot of moving about in it. And I’m worried the Madeira cake will spoil if it spends any longer in your basket.”

  “Do you want to sit down and eat some cake, Mrs Churchill?”

  “Oh, I do, Pembers! I very much want to!”

  “Let’s do four more passes past the gates first.”

  “It’ll be the end of me, Pemberley, it really will. I can picture the wording on my tombstone now. Here lieth Annabel Churchill, who pedalled herself to death.”

  “That sounds rather dramatic, Mrs Churchill.”

  “That’s how serious the matter has become. I’m dramatically close to complete collapse.”

  “Oh, look! Here comes the colonel’s Daimler.”

  Churchill had never seen a more pleasing sight than that of the shiny red and cream car bumping down the long driveway toward the gates.

  “Get pedalling!” said Pemberley. “We’ve just bicycled out from the village, remember? And we’re on our way to the babbling brook.”

  “Surely it’ll be just as convincing if we’re walking alongside our bicycles.”

  “We won’t get there quickly enough. The car’s nearly at the gates.”

  “Oh, darn it, Pembers,” said Churchill as she clambered onto her bicycle again. “This really is the last time I’m getting on one of these contraptions. They don’t agree with me at all.”

  “One final push, Mrs Churchill. We can do this.”

  The car stopped and the chauffeur climbed out to open the gates. The two ladies pedalled toward him as he got back into the car and drove on through. Then he got out again and closed the gates behind him.

  “What a palaver it must be to be upper class,” said Churchill as they neared the gateposts. “All that gate opening and closing, and the endless fussing over the family silver. Hobnobbing with the right set and all that business. How wearisome it must be.”

  “They have staff to do most of it.”

  “But the staff must be managed, Pembers. Remember the Colonel saying what a bind they were? One almost feels sorry for the old bean.”

  “I don’t.”

  They reached the first gatepost.

  “Here we are, Pembers. We timed it perfectly to intersect with the path of the colonel’s car.”

  No sooner had Churchill spoken than an almighty honk catapulted her out of her saddle and into the road.

  For a brief moment the earth seemed to stand still as she lay prostrate on the ground.

  Then an angry voice broke the silence. “Where’d you two spring from, eh? Was yer purposefully tryin’ to get ’it by me car?”

  “I can explain,” said Churchill through a mouthful of grit. As she pushed herself up into a sitting position she felt a sharp pain in her shoulder. Her bicycle lay next to her, its wheels still spinning. Pemberley’s bicycle also lay on the ground. The slender assistant was on her feet, brushing
the dirt from her skirt.

  “Oh, it’s Mrs Churchill, ain’t it?”

  Churchill squinted up into the sunshine and saw the silhouette of the chauffeur standing over her.

  “I’m right sorry, Mrs Churchill! You didn’t ’alf gimme a fright!” The chauffeur held out a gloved hand and helped her to her feet. “Yer don’t often see folks bicyclin’ down this lane. I didn’t expect yer to be ’ere.”

  “I understand, Pattison, please don’t worry. I suppose I should have made use of my brakes, but in all truth I don’t know how to use them.”

  “Not ter worry, Mrs Churchill. Not ter worry.” Pattison took her arm and guided her toward the car. “I’ll take yer both up to the ’ouse to get patched up.”

  “I’m sure there’s no need—”

  “I insist, Mrs Churchill, I insist. Leave the bicycles ’ere and I’ll collect ’em shortly.”

  “Thank you, Pattison. We’ll bring the baskets with us, though.”

  Although her knees were scuffed and her shoulder hurt, Churchill felt pleased that Pemberley’s plan to speak to the colonel had worked so well. She smiled and thanked Pattison as he opened the door of the Daimler for her to climb in.

  She opened her mouth to greet the colonel, but her jaw remained slack when she saw that it wasn’t the colonel sitting in the car at all.

  It was Kitty Flatboot.

  Chapter 42

  “There’s no need for refreshments, Miss Flint,” said Churchill. “Miss Pemberley and I have brought a picnic with us. It’s a little mangled but still perfectly edible.”

  “This egg sandwich has a stone embedded in it,” said Pemberley.

  “Remove it then, Miss Pemberley; the sandwich will taste just the same. We don’t want to put Miss Flint to any trouble providing refreshments when we’ve brought our own.” Churchill combined an embarrassed smile at the colonel’s housekeeper with a withering stare, mindful of Miss Flint’s indiscretion about the breeches.

  The two ladies sat in the drawing room of Ashleigh Grange with Kitty Flatboot, while Miss Flint hovered about like an irritating fruit fly. The girl avoided making eye contact with them and picked at her fingernails. Churchill’s gaze was continually drawn to the item lying on the floor beside Kitty’s chair: the battered leather valise she and Pemberley had seen the Colonel remove from the cookshop the previous day.

  “So, what needs patching up, Mrs Churchill?” asked Miss Flint. “Do you require sticking plasters for your knees?”

  Initially determined to decline any offer of help, Churchill had to reluctantly acknowledge that her knees were quite sore beneath her new breeches.

  “I suppose I do, Miss Flint, thank you. But we won’t detain you any longer than is necessary. The colonel is to be out all day, you say?”

  “Yes, he’s just gone out on a shoot with the Earl of Strangford.”

  “I see. Thank you.”

  “I shall inform him of the unfortunate accident with the chauffeur as soon as he returns.”

  “Oh, there’s no need.”

  “But I must! He will be most concerned to hear about it.”

  “It wasn’t an accident, as such; merely just a little intersection of bicycles and car. Nobody actually bumped into anyone.”

  “I shall inform him all the same,” said Miss Flint as she left the room.

  Churchill sighed and glanced at the valise again. Could it really contain the gun used to murder Mr Williams? If so, why was Kitty Flatboot in possession of it? And what was she even doing at Ashleigh Grange?

  Churchill turned to look at Pemberley. As their eyes met, she immediately knew that they were wondering the same thing.

  Churchill washed down a piece of gritty sandwich with the lemonade, which had remained surprisingly intact in its bottle. Then she cleared her throat. “Are you a regular visitor to Ashleigh Grange, Miss Flatboot?”

  The girl looked up from her fingernails. “Yeah, sometimes.”

  “A sometimes regular visitor?”

  “Yeah.”

  Churchill and Pemberley exchanged a glance and Churchill rolled her eyes.

  “Do you do work for the colonel, Miss Flatboot?”

  “Nope.”

  “I see. I suppose you’re ordinarily quite busy working for Mrs Bramley, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I hope you don’t consider this question intrusive, Miss Flatboot, but what is the nature of your acquaintance with Colonel Slingsby?”

  The girl shrugged. “Friend of the family.”

  Churchill glanced at Pemberley again, desperate to ask her why on earth the colonel would fraternise with this notoriously rustic family. “Has he known your family for long?”

  “I reckon so. He’s old, ain’t ’e?”

  “He’s given you his valise, I see.”

  The girl looked down at the bag as if she’d only just noticed it sitting there. “Yeah, that’s for me ma.”

  “Is it indeed? I do hope she can make good use of it.”

  “Yeah, ev’ryone will.”

  Churchill turned to Pemberley and raised an incredulous eyebrow.

  Miss Flint returned with some sticking plaster, interrupting the subtle interrogation. “You may find it more comfortable to apply this in the colonel’s mother’s dressing room, Mrs Churchill,” she said. “You know where it is, don’t you? I believe you used it during your last visit.”

  “I believe I did. Thank you, Miss Flint,” said Churchill through gritted teeth.

  Pattison drove Churchill and Pemberley back to their office, dropping Kitty Flatboot at Cherrybrick Farm on the way.

  “Day off today, Miss Flatboot?” asked Churchill.

  “Yeah, I gets Thursdees off ’cause I does Saturdees.”

  “Jolly good. Well, do enjoy the rest of your day.”

  As Kitty dragged the valise out of the Daimler, Churchill peered at the sprawling, ramshackle farm buildings through the polished window. A goat returned her stare. There was something which didn’t seem right about the Flatboot family.

  “They all live here, do they? The Flatboots?”

  “Yes, several generations,” replied Pemberley.

  “Goodness. There really must be hundreds of them, as Mrs Bramley said.”

  A group of scruffy, apple-cheeked children ran out to the car and Pattison wound down his window to hold out a bag of sweets for them.

  A snotty-nosed boy knocked on Churchill’s window.

  “Sweets at the front of the car, dear,” she shouted through the glass, pointing at the chauffeur. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

  The Daimler turned around, slowly navigated its way through a brood of chickens, then continued on its way.

  “Goodness me, Pembers,” said Churchill. “You and I have a lot to discuss when we get back to the office.”

  Chapter 43

  “What on earth, in the name of St Francis the Brave, can the explanation for all these shenanigans possibly be?” Churchill slammed her handbag down on her desk.

  “It gets worse,” replied Pemberley.

  “Worse? How?! What do you mean?”

  “I know what’s inside the valise.”

  “How?”

  “I looked inside it.”

  Churchill stumbled over to her chair and slumped into it. She retrieved a handkerchief from her jacket pocket and wiped her brow. “You looked inside the valise, Pembers? When? Did you seek Kitty’s permission?”

  “No. I engineered a peek while you were in the colonel’s mother’s dressing room applying your sticking plaster.”

  “Please elaborate.”

  “You may have noticed there was a framed photograph on the wall behind the chair Kitty was sitting in.”

  “I didn’t, but pray continue.”

  “While you were gone the room fell quiet, so I decided to declare an interest in said photograph, loudly stating that its setting looked familiar to me. It didn’t, of course, but I knew that Kitty would be none the wiser, whereupon I got up from my cha
ir and excused myself to Kitty, asking if she minded me taking a closer look at the photograph. Not wishing to be in my way, the sullen girl got up and went to stare out of the window. Don’t forget that the valise was lying by the side of her chair.”

  “I hadn’t forgotten.”

  “So I stepped forward to peer at the photograph, which I had no interest in at all, and while doing so dropped my slice of Madeira cake all over the valise.”

  “You had a slice of the cake?”

  “Yes, didn’t you?”

  “No. Is there any left?”

  “A little.”

  “I could have done with a slice of that. You should have offered me some, Pembers.”

  “Anyway, back to the valise. After dropping my cake on it I emitted an oopsy-daisy sort of sound, then proceeded to make a great fuss of picking up the pieces and wiping the crumbs from it. I told Kitty not to worry and to stay where she was, and that I would see to it all. The girl obliged and allowed me enough time to furtively undo a strap. I just about managed to pull the case open on one side so I could see into it.”

  Churchill leaned forward, her eyes wide. “And what was inside?”

  “Coins,” replied Pemberley. “Sovereigns. Just like the ones we found in that marrow. In fact, they could be the very same ones.”

  Churchill gasped. “No gun?”

  “I couldn’t see one, but I didn’t have much time. I knew that if I spent too long clearing up my cake mess Kitty would grow suspicious.”

  “Good thinking, Pembers. It doesn’t take much to raise her suspicions. So these coins, then. The colonel has given her some of the money?”

  “It would appear so.”

  “Perhaps he removed the money from the cookshop.”

  “By all accounts, Mr Harding doesn’t have any.”

  “So the colonel might have used the valise to remove the gun from the cookshop, then hid the gun in his ancestral seat and filled the valise with coins from the marrow. Then, for some reason none of us shall ever be able to fathom, he gave the money to Kitty Flatboot.”

  “She said it was for her ma.”

  “That’s right, so she did. So why is the colonel giving Mrs Flatboot all that money?”