A Snapshot of Murder

by Frances Brody

  Edward glanced at Rita. He put down his spoon. ‘A sleep and a forgetting.’

  Rita glared at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean. Where were you?’ She turned to Derek. ‘And where were you? If we had all gone and demanded to be let in, we might have taken her home.’

  Mr Briggs said gently, ‘No one will be going home yet, Miss Rufus. You will be asked to stay only for as long as the enquiry into this tragic incident continues. Mrs Murchison will be well looked after.’

  ‘She needs her friends. Kate stayed with Harriet and we should have stayed with Carine.’

  There was a crocheted blanket on a rocking chair by the fireplace. I went to fetch it, and put it around Rita’s shoulders. ‘It wouldn’t have done Carine any good to come back here, Rita. We’ll wait for her. She’ll know that we’re waiting.’

  This seemed to calm her a little.

  When the pork and beans came, we made an effort.

  After a couple of mouthfuls, Rita began to cry onto her plate.

  Edward, stony-faced, put down his knife and fork.

  There was a long pause, and then we all tried again.

  Rita left the table first. Edward took the tray of dishes and carried it into the kitchen. Constable Briggs followed.

  Derek and I were left alone.

  ‘We might not have long, Derek. Thanks for your sketch of where we all were.’

  ‘Does it tell you anything?’

  ‘Not yet, but at least we’ve done this while our memories are fresh. There’s something I want to ask you. Why did Tobias agree to come here?’

  ‘I don’t know. He seemed to think he was going to the Black Bull. To be honest, I don’t think he was all that keen on going anywhere but he doesn’t trust Carine, doesn’t want her out of his sight. I’ve no idea why.’

  That seemed a bit rich, coming from him. I pressed on. ‘Did you have any other thoughts about who else may have suggested Stanbury for our outing? When we were in the Kardomah, making plans, we thought one of the slips of paper was for Ponden.’

  He hesitated just a little too long. ‘I really don’t remember. Is it important?’

  ‘Probably not. I’m just trying to understand.’

  ‘What is there to understand? Tobias stabbed himself with his own swordstick.’ He gulped, and struggled to control his emotions. ‘It could only be because Edward came back, and he knew. He knew Carine loved Edward.’

  Constable Briggs came back, just in time to catch these words.

  ‘Mrs Shackleton, Mr Blondell, I have spoken to the others and I’ll say this to you. I’d be obliged if everyone remains in the house for the rest of the night.’

  When I went upstairs, Rita was lying on her bed, shivering. ‘I’m freezing, Kate. I haven’t been warm all day.’

  I went across to her. She was worryingly cold. ‘Why didn’t you say?’ I took a cardigan and a pair of socks from my trunk. ‘Sit up and put these on. I’ll find a bed warmer.’ I helped her into the cardigan. She was shivering so much that she could not pull on the socks. I put them on for her. ‘Here.’ I took the hip flask from my satchel.

  ‘It’s my own fault,’ she said, taking a sip of brandy. ‘August, I thought. My holiday, I thought, silk will be perfect.’

  ‘Yes, well it might be, in Jaipur.’

  ‘It’s the monsoon season.’ She looked as if she might burst into tears. ‘I lost my shawl somewhere along the way. My lovely shoes are ruined. They were a gift from the woman who made my shalwar kameez.’

  ‘I’ll go down and find bed warmers. When I’ve warmed up the box bed, move across there. Harriet’s not coming back tonight.’

  Elisa was sitting at the kitchen table with Edward, deep in conversation. I got the impression she was trying to divert him from his misery, and perhaps his guilt.

  ‘I don’t know how many generations ago,’ she was saying, ‘but we were landowners, and had a coat of arms.’

  ‘Elisa, Miss Rufus is very cold. Will you find bed warmers for her, please?’

  Edward pushed back his chair. ‘Let me help. Is she ill?’

  ‘I believe she’s caught a chill. It can’t have helped that she was chasing about, worrying over Carine while in a shocked state herself.’

  Elisa lifted a brass bed warmer from a hook on the wall and took it to the fire. Edward scooped a shovel of hot coals into it. ‘There’s another,’ Elisa said, taking an earthenware pot from a shelf. ‘Kettle’s boiled. I’ll fill this one.’

  Moments later, the three of us went upstairs, Elisa leading the way with the earthenware pot, me following, and Edward behind me with the long-handled bed warmer.

  He waited by the door while Elisa and I went to the box bed. I drew back the covers. Elisa wrapped the copper warmer in a little blanket she had brought, while speaking reassuringly to Rita. ‘Come across. You’ll be cosy in here. It’s a good little spot.’ Encouraged, Rita crossed the room. Elisa plumped the pillow. ‘Nobody ever died in this bed. Well, not for a long time. I always think it’s best if dying people take to a bed with two sides. It’s very awkward otherwise.’ She turned to me. ‘There’s a nice big eiderdown in the Murchisons’ room.’

  ‘I’ll get it.’

  Edward was still by the door, now writing in a notebook. He must have felt a poem coming on. ‘Where is the Murchisons’ room?’ I asked.

  Edward wrote one more word. He put the notebook in his pocket. ‘I’ll show you. It’s just beyond the library.’

  I had meant to look at the library. The day’s events had put that thought from my mind.

  Edward went into his own room and lit a candle, because there was no natural light in the corridor. I followed him.

  He flung open the door to the Murchisons’ room. ‘This is it. There’s another room beyond, the peat loft Elisa says.’

  It was strange to go into the bedroom where Tobias had spent the last night of his life. ‘It’s enormous, Edward. I’ve been in stately homes where the main bedroom is smaller than this.’

  ‘It was the room where the weaving was done. That’s why there are so many windows.’

  Perhaps it was the literary shadows cast by previous visitors to the house but as I approached the double bed, I felt like a thief. A Christmas Carol came to mind, and the scene where Scrooge watches what passes after his death, seeing the cleaning woman steal his belongings. Somehow it felt wrong to be here, taking the eiderdown from the bed where Tobias and Carine had slept.

  ‘Let me.’ Edward handed me the candle and took the unwieldy eiderdown, folding it into a manageable size.

  We walked back along the corridor. ‘Anything else I can do, Kate?’

  ‘I should think Rita will start to warm up now. You might ask Elisa to bring her a hot drink in about half an hour, and a piece of that cake none of us ate.’

  There was a movement somewhere nearby, perhaps at the bottom of the stairs. In a house this old and this size, it was difficult to know from where the sounds came from.

  ‘That’ll be our resident policeman,’ Edward said quietly. ‘He has taken off his boots and found himself a comfortable chair in the parlour. From there he’ll be slip-sliding on patrol, expecting to hear something incriminating.’

  ‘Will you keep him talking for ten minutes? I want to talk to Rita, and I’d rather he wasn’t earwigging.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll be pleased to speak to me. I must be suspect number one.’

  ‘It was sitting on that wall outside the police house that made me so cold.’ Rita was propped up on pillows in the box bed. ‘I’ve made such a mess of everything.’

  I climbed in at the other end and we faced each other. ‘You haven’t made a mess of anything. You tried to help Carine.’

  ‘I wanted to go in there, and I told the sergeant’s wife that I killed Tobias.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘No, but they weren’t to know that. She could have made a citizen’s arrest and let me in.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘Kept me waiti
ng there and she must have sent for that blooming constable because he turned up on his bike and asked me questions. How did I kill him, what was the weapon, did anyone see me do it.’

  ‘Did you say you used the swordstick?’

  ‘What swordstick?’

  ‘Tobias had a swordstick.’

  ‘Someone might have told me that. I said scissors, a pair of scissors that I threw away. Of course that wasn’t good enough. He wanted to know where I’d thrown them. Well I didn’t know did I? “Take me to the place,” he said. Next thing I know we’re at the bus stop. “You have a choice,” he said. “You can get the next bus to Ponden or I’ll have one of the specials take you to the lock-up in Keighley. You’ll be charged with wasting police time.”’ She crossed her arms around her chest and hugged herself. ‘That’s gratitude for you.’

  ‘Where were you standing in relation to Tobias?’

  ‘Behind him.’

  ‘Can you remember who was nearby? If I give you a sheet of paper, could you draw who was standing where?’

  ‘No. I’m hopeless at drawing and my brain is numb.’

  ‘But you might try, just matchstick figures, to see who –’

  ‘Who might have done it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘I know it was a bit of a crush.’

  ‘Well it was and so many strangers near us. It wasn’t like a queue for the tram where everyone knows their own and everyone else’s places. There was shuffling about and taller people letting a little one stand in front and some child being lifted up onto a dad’s shoulders.’

  I left Rita with my notebook and a pencil and went downstairs to chase up the hot drink.

  Edward was in the kitchen. He and Elisa stopped talking as I went in.

  Elisa looked up. ‘I’ll make Miss Rufus a cup of cocoa.’

  ‘Thank you.’ This felt a little awkward, knowing the angel of vengeance in the form of Mrs Varey may still be in the box bed, but I said it anyway. ‘I know our statements were taken in a hurried fashion today, but I believe it would be useful if we each did a sketch of where we were standing when Tobias died.’

  The voice came from the box bed. ‘Keep your pencils behind your ears until whoever did for that man is safely out of reach.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Telling the Bees

  Our bedroom was at the end of a corridor. Next door was what I thought was Edward and Derek’s room, to share. The door was ajar and I saw that it opened onto yet another short corridor, with a room on either side. So they each had a small room that afforded privacy.

  I went into our bedroom, where Rita slept soundlessly in the box bed. All was still and quiet. As I lay in my narrow bed, looking at the stars through the holes in the ceiling, I found something new to worry about. Edward had spoken of himself as a possible suspect. Derek was also an obvious choice. Devoted to Carine and convinced of her mistreatment, had he taken it upon himself to find a way to stab Tobias?

  Derek could be annoying and self-centred, but he was very young. I had heard him clatter his boots to the floor as he made ready for bed. Earlier, he had hidden himself away in the library.

  It must have been three o’clock in the morning when I heard a creaking floorboard, and then silence. Shortly after, a door opened. I heard a low whispering. One voice was Edward’s. I got out of bed, thinking Carine might have come back, and yet how could she at this hour of the night, or early morning?

  A door closed. The low murmur of voices came from the landing, sufficiently close to distinguish who was speaking.

  It was Edward and Elisa. This was no romantic tryst. From Elisa, I caught the words, ‘dead’ and ‘someone must tell them’.

  Edward spoke again, and then there was silence.

  A new and extraordinary thought occurred to me. Edward, as he admitted himself, had good cause to take revenge against Tobias. Elisa still ached for the loss of her sister, and blamed Tobias. When we arrived, Edward had already been here two days, or that was as much as he admitted. Perhaps these two had concocted some devilish plan, and may have drawn in others to help. Timmy Preston, the farm labourer, was now acting as a special constable. He would be in a position to tamper with evidence. And what of the mysterious Mrs Varey, who was supposedly hidden in the box bed? What vengeance might she have taken for her dead daughter and unborn grandchild?

  I clearly heard Edward say, ‘I’m ready.’

  He must have gone back into his room, to put on coat and shoes. Once more, the floorboards creaked.

  I lit a candle.

  If I saw anyone else, at the pictures, or in a scene from a book, about to do what I was going to do, I would say to them, ‘No! Don’t do it. You are alone and it’s the middle of the night.’

  I put on my coat. I had left my boots by the front door. By the time I stepped onto the landing, all was silent. Much as I tried to be quiet, I disturbed Rita. She spoke to me from the box bed, and I thought this must be how a voice would sound if a corpse spoke from its coffin.

  ‘Kate, is that you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Has something happened? Have they brought Carine back?’

  ‘Nothing has happened. I just want a glass of water. Try and sleep.’

  ‘It was my premonition, you know, that seven of us would come here and only six of us would return, and now I’m glad.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘If six of us return, that will mean we are not under suspicion. Tobias did away with himself.’

  ‘Perhaps you are right. Are you warm enough now?’

  ‘Yes, but I won’t sleep easily until I know that Carine is all right.’

  ‘I’m sure we will see her tomorrow.’

  Shielding the flame of the candle against the draught as I opened the door, I walked into the corridor. I paused on the landing and listened. Whoever it was had gone downstairs. In this labyrinthine place I may never catch up with them.

  Slowly, I made my way down the staircase, tiptoed through the main hall. I glanced into the parlour. Constable Briggs was comfortably ensconced in the rocking chair by the fire, snoring in a tuneful rhythm of snort and blow. He had left the door ajar, presumably to hear any comings and goings. There was no one in the short part of the L shaped hall, but I heard a sound as I reached the turning. Someone was opening the front door.

  Fortunately for me, the pair at the door did not look round. I was right. It was Edward and Elisa. They went outside.

  I put on my boots, and tried the door. It was unlocked. I snuffed my candle and set it on the ledge by the side of the door. It would be a waste of a candle to keep it burning, and would alert anyone else who found sleep difficult and wandered through the house. I would have to find my way back upstairs in the dark. I opened the door, just a crack.

  I saw the two of them cross the track that led into the field.

  I followed, half expecting to find myself witnessing the meeting of a coven of villagers who had conspired in murder, and now needed to agree their stories.

  It was lighter outside than indoors. The moon was on the wane but still bright, lighting the path. It was a mild night, too, though as I watched and thought what I must do, a dark cloud crossed the moon. Surely this was the moment when an owl would hoot.

  Silence.

  I was hoping for something other than a dastardly conspiracy. Perhaps that lone camper had changed his mind about moving on from this site, and Elisa had seen him. If so, the constable could question him in the morning.

  They had dutifully closed the gate. As I opened it, something flitted close to my head. I immediately raised my hands to protect myself from what must be a bat. I had a sudden vision of claws sinking into my scalp and never letting go. The thing disappeared. This was madness. What if someone, the constable, had deliberately left the door unlocked to see who might come and go, someone who might behave in a suspicious manner?

  Anyone could feign snoring.

  The night was not silent. Something move
d through the undergrowth, perhaps a hedgehog or a fox. With that acute hearing that night brings, I listened to the stream below. There was another sound, a little way ahead. Someone spoke.

  I followed the sound, keeping to the edge of the path. Trees provided cover for me. I moved from the path and instantly realised the disadvantage of doing so. Twigs cracked beneath my feet.

  I edged closer. I should have guessed that there was something between Edward and Elisa. He had sung her praises, thinking her some heroine from a Thomas Hardy novel. She held a lantern. She handed him strips of what appeared to be dark cloth.

  Elisa spoke in a clear voice, I suppose to ensure that the bees would hear and understand. Without drawing closer, I caught every word.

  ‘He is dead. He brought us nothing but shame and sorrow that man, that Tobias Murchison. He will trouble us no more. When you go into the next world, tell my sister and her little one that the man who brought her trouble is busy picking his way to hell through thorns and burning coals. We are free of him. All is well and so do not leave us, dear bees. We need your honey.’

  Edward began what must have been an ad hoc recitation. The words bees, and honey, and how welcome bees and honey were, formed part of the verse.

  Now was the time for me to step back smartly, the way I had come, and to gain entry to the house before they did. Elisa would surely lock the door once they had completed their mission.

  The door creaked open as I re-entered the house. I took off my boots, which had been clean. If anyone looked now, they would see that the soles were covered in soil and bits of grass. I remembered to pick up my candle, though unlit it was not much use. I felt my way back along the corridor, the only light coming from the fire in the hall.

  The constable was still snoring. I wondered whether Elisa had put something in his drink, or whether he simply felt secure in the knowledge that all his suspects were safely tucked away for the night.

  By keeping a hand on the wall, I reached the stairs, stubbing my toe on the first step. The stairs creaked. What an idiot! I remembered there was a flashlight in my trunk and I had not unpacked it. I managed to find my way back into the room where Rita slept soundly.