‘You dogs!’ chuckled Rattigan. ‘You catch us every time.’
Felix shook his head regretfully. ‘Well done, chaps, most impressive, but we’re not there yet, I’m afraid. Poisoning chocolates wasn’t the only wickedness perpetrated in that hayloft or I’m a Dutchman. Come on Teddy, we’re taking a walk before it gets dark. Then I think we’ll have a word with Mr Bates. In the meantime, you two have the pleasant duty of telling the company they will be free to go home tomorrow morning. Nine o’clock onwards, I think, as I wish to be here when they leave. If there are any questions, be noncommittal. And if you have the time, you might work out how our would-be poisoner managed to do away with herself. Toodle-pip.’
‘Thanks a lot!’ muttered Yardley to their retreating backs.
Chapter Sixteen
‘Would this be one of Absalom’s “presentiments”?’ asked Rattigan, glancing wistfully back at the Vauxhall.
‘I prefer “hunch,”’ smiled Felix, ‘it has a more visceral, unconstrained quality to it. He’s a funny old stick, isn’t he? Sharper than I gave him credit for. But no, not this time. I just want to look at Falkner’s grave.’
Arnoldswell’s Holy Trinity Church, a squat little thirteenth century building with an adjoining graveyard, was situated in the centre of the village. Space was at a premium, and many of the older memorials had been moved to stand or lean against its ivy-covered walls.
‘We need a guide,’ said Rattigan, looking around him.
As if in answer to his prayer, a plump, balding man of forty or so in a clerical collar appeared from a side door and came towards them. ‘Can I help you gentlemen at all? I’m Cyril Liversage, the vicar.’
‘Chief Inspector Felix and Sergeant Rattigan, sir. We’re hoping to see Harry Falkner’s grave, if you would oblige.’
The vicar nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose you would do. He’s that one over there, the pauper’s.’
‘Pauper’s?’
‘Sorry. Pauper’s cross.’ He led the way along a gravel path. ‘Here we are. He wasn’t a pauper, of course, but she never would give him a headstone, so I’m told. Looking a bit sorry for itself now, I’m afraid. Oak, fortunately.’
‘Well-maintained otherwise,’ observed Rattigan.
‘Yes, it is,’ agreed the vicar, ‘And flowers on it too, in season.’ He gestured around him. ‘There are some who could take a lesson from it, as you can see.’
‘Who does it?’
‘Oh, Rosie Falkner. I never see any of the others here; though they might come when I’m not about, I suppose. Surprising, really. It’s usually the eldest, isn’t it, takes these things in hand?’ The others are younger, of course, and would scarcely remember their father. I wonder if I can ask, have you a date for the inquest yet?’
‘Shan’t miss this damned hill,’ said Rattigan, puffing hard.
Felix smiled. ‘I don’t think we’ll need to put you through it again, Teddy. It’ll be interesting to see if our seeds of fear and terror have sprouted.’
‘Because they’ll know who that leaves?’
‘Quite so. Trouble is, we’re as close as we’re likely to get without using thumbscrews. However, Mr Bates next, I think.’ Suddenly he stopped dead. ‘Ah!’
‘Ah?’
‘I’m reminded of a certain conversation.’
◆◆◆
‘Sorry to trouble you again, Mr Bates,’ said Felix, ducking into the cottage’s tiny living room. ‘This gentleman is Sergeant Rattigan. Sorry that he’s rather large; I haven’t got a smaller one. Lost your lodger, have you?’
‘Moved down to the house,’ said Jeremy, gazing with awe at the huge policeman. ‘I quite misses him, now he’s gone.’
‘He seems a nice enough chap,’ agreed Felix. ‘Mr Bates, I needed to be up in the hayloft earlier and my natural curiosity drew me to the gable door.’
‘Oh yes, sir?’ said Jeremy, glancing from one to the other.
‘Yes. Someone had been doing a little remedial work on the joinery there. Was that you?’
‘Do you mean the threshold plank? Soon as I felt well enough, I went up there and done it. Patched it anyway. It’ll want more work later.’
‘You found it broken?’
‘I didn’t, no. I never goes up there normally and wouldn’t have known nothing about it. Miss Rosie told Miss Beatrice and Miss Beatrice told me. Miss Rosie’s bin doin’ the hay since the old lady took a tumble.’
‘Always? Don’t they take it in turns?’
‘Not the hay, it’s allus Miss Rosie. Dunno why.’
‘Any idea how the threshold strip got like that?’
Jeremy shrugged. ‘Just age, I s’pose. A mighty lot of the screws was rusted out. They’ll want replacin’ when I feels up to it.’
‘You get on well with Miss Beatrice, do you? She seems to be your contact with the house.’
Jeremy nodded. ‘Her’s the best, a sweet kindly lady. Not to say the others ain’t but you’re right; I don’t see so much o’ them.’
‘What did you think of their mother?’
Jeremy pulled a face. ‘I don’t care to speak ill of the dead, sir, and there ain’t nothing good to say about that ’ooman. I reckon the Wicked-mon took she.’
◆◆◆
Back in the interview room, they found the sergeants looking pleased with themselves. The demonstration chocolates were open on the table and the photographs from Scotland Yard’s forensic department were scattered about.
A grinning Nash pushed forward the box. ‘Solved as instructed, sir. We’ve taken out the missing ones, for authenticity.’
‘You’ve really done it?’ said Felix doubtfully. ‘That’d be quite an achievement. Let’s have a look.’
With wrinkled brows, the older men studied the evidence before them. ‘Sorry, chaps, can’t see it,’ said Felix at last, ‘except you’ve got the chocolates the wrong way round.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Rattigan. ‘According to Dr Bartlett the one Alf Brown took was about centre right and Mrs Falkner’s was near the left-hand edge. Yours are the opposite.’
‘Oops! My mistake,’ said Nash theatrically. ‘Hold the box down, Paul.’ Carefully untucking a pair of cardboard flaps, he gingerly extracted the box’s inner tray, swung it round and reinserted it. ‘That better?’ He asked.
‘I didn’t know you could do that,’ said Rattigan, impressed.
‘Neither did I,’ admitted Felix. He sat in contemplation of the now correctly-orientated contents, his long chin cradled on one hand. ‘Hmm, so what you’re saying is, someone could have surreptitiously reversed the doctored chocolates end for end, thereby poisoning the poisoner, so to say, and sparing Mr Brown. It’s clever, I’ll grant you.’
‘Not could have done, sir,’ said Nash triumphantly. ‘They did! Look at this photo of the fatal box. Compare it with our demonstration one and you’ll see the whole thing is reversed. I’ll do it again . . . See? Work of moments.’
‘It’s enough to make you cross-eyed,’ grumbled Rattigan.
‘He’s right though, Teddy,’ said Felix. ‘Simple, once you know how. But wouldn’t Hannah Falkner have noticed?’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Nash. ‘She mightn’t have expected to find them mucked about with, and it’s not at all obvious, with both halves looking the same.’
‘In that case,’ said Felix, ‘I think we’ve got our murderer’s murderer, though it gives me no pleasure to say so. By the way, did anyone own up to delivering the chocolates to the parlour?’ Both sergeants shook their heads.
◆◆◆
Ethel and Charles stood together in the chill morning, talking to Walter. Alison had broken off from her duties in the farmyard and was chatting quietly to Helen, and Harry was ferrying luggage to his car. Archie was already playing inside it, away in a world of his own, and after a while, Lydia joine
d him, rather conspicuously avoiding looking in her future brother-in-law’s direction.
‘Don’t toil up here again in that matchbox,’ Walter told Charles, gesturing towards the little Austin. ‘I’ll do any ferrying until this is over, and if I can’t do it personally, I’ll send a man. You take good care of this young lady, now. In fact, take care of each other. Your mother would have approved, I know that. Ah! I nearly forgot.’ Reaching for his wallet, he fished out an envelope. ‘Don’t open it until you’re away from here.’ He glanced at the little knot of waiting policemen. ‘Not the time for it, I don’t think. Now, where’s that Jezebel? Ah! Here she comes.’
‘I wish . . . Oh, I don’t know what I wish!’ said Ethel miserably.
‘Take it minute by minute,’ advised Charles, carefully tucking away the envelope. ‘It’s the only way.’
Alf found Beatrice in the kitchen, eating a mince pie.
‘Nobody wanted them,’ she shrugged, wiping crumbs from the corners of her mouth. ‘Can’t think why. What’s that funny look? Got the wind, have you?’
‘I wondered . . .’ said Alf diffidently. ‘Oh, hang it all, Bea! We’ve been friends all our lives. I know what you probably think of me at the moment, and I’m not going to claim I’m in love with you or anything like that, but I find myself in need of a wife and, well, I think we’d be comfortable together, you and I, don’t you agree?’
‘Who is that laughing?’ said Helen, turning. ‘Why, it’s Beatrice! I wonder what’s tickled her fancy?’
‘Come on,’ said Felix. But Delia appeared and planted herself firmly in front of them.
‘Yes, Miss Falkner?’
‘Chief Inspector, I have something to say. It was I who murdered my mother. It was I who put the poison in the chocolates.’
‘I see,’ said Felix. ‘Then I must ask you to remain with these gentlemen. I’ll speak to you later.’
‘But aren’t you going to arrest me?’
They found Alf Brown looking bewildered while Beatrice sat and rocked with mirth, the tears coursing down her cheeks. Seeing the approaching policemen, she attempted to take herself in hand, albeit with only limited success. ‘If you want a confession,’ she said, ‘you’re leaving it a bit late.’
Chapter Seventeen
They were gathered in the office of Colonel Longhurst, the Assistant Commissioner. Unlike his cold and aloof predecessor, who had been interested only in the barest facts, and seldom those, the affable Longhurst had fallen into the habit of summoning his cohorts to discuss in general terms the more interesting cases. ‘I’m learnin’ on the job,’ he’d once told them. ‘I want to know what you fellows do and how you do it.’
‘Over to you, Felix,’ said Chief Superintendent Polly, having made his contribution.
Referring to his notes, Felix bent to his task. ‘As usual, sir,’ he said, ‘I’ve reported my investigation as though we went neatly from one major conclusion to the next. In reality it was, of course, more complicated. Let me begin, for convenience, in eighteen ninety-two, with the untimely death of Harry Falkner, farmer.
‘It would seem that Falkner, though no angel, didn’t deserve his reputation for sexual licence and brutality, which had been carefully fostered over the years by his widow Hannah. There’s no doubt, however, that they had a stormy marriage, exacerbated by drink.
‘At the time of Falkner’s demise, two of their five children were little more than babies, Harry Junior was ten, and the confident and extroverted Rosie just twelve years old. She was close to her father, which perhaps helped her to cope with her eccentric and domineering mother. Delia – a nervous and retiring fourteen – was, by contrast, completely under her mother’s thumb. Hannah Falkner worked hard to turn her children against their father, whom she hated, and among other things advised Delia to keep her door locked at night, on the ground that he, like all men, was not to be trusted; a terrible thing to say to a girl of that age about her own father. It was, perhaps, a short step to persuading her that he’d be better dead. Poison seemed the easiest option and they laced his lunch with strychnine.
‘Mother and daughter never spoke of it again, but a few days after her fall from the hayloft, the incapacitated Hannah called Delia to her, swore her to secrecy, and told her of Walter Bartlett’s intention to sell the farm to Alf Brown, their neighbour and tenant; a plan to which she was adamantly opposed. She told her she had prepared some poisoned chocolates with a view to disposing of Brown in the same way that they had disposed of Delia’s father. The chocolates were hidden in a drawer in her bedroom, but with the other daughters inevitably rooting around in them, finding clothes for her and so on, they were likely to be discovered at any moment. Delia was to take them and conceal them until Christmas. That was all that was required of her.
‘For Hannah, poison must have seemed the logical solution – all men were vermin, and here was simply another to be disposed of – but Delia was appalled. Like her sisters she was fond of the kindly Alf Brown whom she had known all her life. How, then, to respond? If she defied her mother’s orders, one of the others, possibly more pliant, might be prepared to do it. It seemed unlikely, but could she take that chance? Best, she thought, to agree to the job while she considered her options.
‘It was only after the chocolates were safely removed to her own room that the full enormity of the situation struck her. Her first instinct was simply to destroy them, but what then? If her mother was determined to murder Brown, nothing would be likely to stop her. She could warn him, of course, but the consequences of that didn’t bear thinking about. For someone of Delia’s retiring disposition it was a difficult decision to make and she decided to confide in the more worldly Beatrice, considering her a better choice than the rather shallow Alison or the no-nonsense Rosie who might scold her for doing the wrong thing.
‘Beatrice suggested that the safest solution was to substitute a blameless box of chocolates for the poisoned one. That would at least delay any further attempts on the unfortunate Brown until Hannah was ambulatory again, and either the property had been safely transferred or she could be talked out of anything as drastic as murder. But then came the earth-shattering revelation that her mother had taken from her the man she loved, and years of resentment turned to burning hatred.
‘Appropriating the poisoned chocolates, Beatrice carefully examined them, identified the doctored ones, noted their distribution, and after some cogitation simply reversed the liner in the box. Alf Brown would now be spared and her mother would die. She probably reasoned that once we’d discovered Hannah Falkner’s abortive murder attempt, fatal only to herself, we would close the case. Indeed, if things had turned out differently, we might well have done. It was a gamble on her part as to whether she’d be discovered, but beside herself with anger and loathing she presumably deemed it worth taking. The presence of other people in the house happily courting can only have added to her pain.
‘How did we find out? We began what we thought was a straightforward murder investigation but we slowly came to realise that everything pointed towards an attempt by the victim on Alf Brown’s life. Our questioning of Brown and of Walter Bartlett gave us a motive; the chance discovery of the poisoned-chocolate factory in a biscuit tin gave us the means and Christmas gave us the opportunity. It even transpired from Dr Absalom’s researches that Hannah had quite possibly poisoned her husband – later confirmed by Delia – and might not have been averse to using the same method again. But how on earth did she end up dying by her own hand? I was not disposed to accept that she’d simply made a fatal mistake, and the more we went into it, the more unlikely it became.
‘The first intimation that I might be right was our discovery that someone had probably made an earlier attempt on Hannah Falkner’s own life by tipping her out of the hayloft. We stood little chance of discovering the culprit, or even proving it had really happened, but it added to my hunch that her death
was not of her own making, and I became convinced we had another murderer on our hands, the murderer of a murderer, so to say.
‘It was scarcely credible that it could be other than one of the daughters, needing, as they did, access to the chocolates, and knowledge of the plot to kill Alf Brown. But which one? All of them, theoretically, had the means and the opportunity and, to a greater or lesser extent, the motive. It was perfectly possible, of course, that they were all of them guilty, but I considered that unlikely. Wiser council would probably have prevailed.
‘From then on, our reasoning was not very scientific, but it was all we had to call on if we hoped to make an arrest. An arrest, of course, is not the end of an investigation but we preferred not to make a mistake all the same. We worked on the assumption that Hannah, finding herself, as I have said, unable to move freely about, had been obliged to recruit an accomplice in her attempt on Brown. She might even have had one from the start. Our first thought was that it was likely to be Delia, the eldest. She had not conducted herself well at her interview, giving the distinct impression of hiding something – which, of course, she was – and as she was in her teens at the time of her father’s murder, she might perhaps have been involved in it, if only reluctantly. A trip to her father’s grave possibly lent credence to this when it transpired that it was Rosie and not Delia who regularly tended it, and probably no-one else. It might be considered hypocritical in the extreme to tend for a lifetime the grave of the father you had poisoned to death – or at the least had known about it – and maybe Delia couldn’t face doing that. But if she was complicit in that ancient murder, we decided it was unlikely that she would have had the boldness or incentive to involve herself in the present one. Still the nervous and timid one of the family and only really happy in her kitchen, she wasn’t the type. We speculated, however, that given their history together she would still be Hannah’s first choice, and not knowing how to refuse her would probably have gone to one of her sisters for advice. Whoever she’d chosen was probably her mother’s murderer. As it happens, all that turned out to be true; if more, perhaps, by luck than judgement. But, again, which one?
Death Among the Kisses (The Inspector Felix Mysteries Book 10) Page 13