The Burning Issue of the Day

by T E Kinsey

  ‘I shouldn’t think you’ll need to do any more walloping. But he’s really starting to get on my nerves, that Crane chap. I honestly doubt he’s got murder in him, but we can’t ignore him until we’ve checked his alibi. And I do so long to ignore him. Dreadful little man.’

  ‘Do you know the way?’

  ‘Inspector Sunderland gave me his address. It shouldn’t be too hard to find.’

  We crossed the Downs and began searching.

  An hour later, we found a policeman on his beat and asked him for directions. He pointed to a road two streets away, past which we had already driven at least four times.

  ‘There, you see?’ said Lady Hardcastle as she stopped the engine. ‘Not too hard to find at all.’

  I said nothing as I clambered down and took off my goggles.

  The house was a large, stone-built affair, no more than twenty years old. It was set back from the road behind a substantial hedge and its front garden seemed, by the dim light of the streetlamps, to be well tended.

  Lady Hardcastle rang the doorbell. Some moments later the door was opened by a slightly doddering butler of uncertain vintage.

  ‘Yes?’ he said, in a tone that said, quite emphatically, ‘No!’

  ‘Is Mr Crane at home?’ asked Lady Hardcastle as she handed the butler her card.

  He examined the card. He tried first to read it by holding it as far away from his face as possible. Still unable to make it out, he grudgingly pulled a pair of smudged spectacles from the breast pocket of his jacket and put them on. He adjusted them. He moved the card back and forth again to bring it into focus. At last he spoke.

  ‘Good evening, my lady,’ he said. ‘Mr Crane is not at home but he told me to expect your visit and to answer your questions truthfully.’

  ‘Did he, indeed?’ she said. ‘We shan’t take up too much of your time, Mr . . . ?’

  ‘Russett, my lady.’

  ‘We shan’t take up too much of your time, Mr Russett. In truth we have only one main question: where was your master on the evening of Tuesday the twenty-fifth of January?’

  My heart sank when Russett fished about in his inside pocket and produced a small diary. We’d be there all night while he tried to read it.

  ‘Let me see,’ he said, licking his thumb and riffling through the pages. ‘The twenty-fifth . . . Ah, yes, here we are.’ He tromboned the tiny book a little to get it properly into focus. ‘He was at home.’

  ‘All evening?’ she asked.

  ‘I believe so,’ he said. ‘He retired at around half past nine complaining of a headache. I took him two aspirin tablets with his cocoa and then retired myself.’

  ‘Was anyone else in the house?’

  ‘The rest of the staff. But we are an efficient household and there was no more work for anyone to do until the morning so everyone was in their own room by no later than ten o’clock.’

  ‘Where was Mrs Crane?’

  ‘She was . . . out for the evening.’

  ‘Did you or anyone else hear Mr Crane leave the house after you had retired?’

  ‘No, my lady. But it is a large house and it is possible for the owners to come and go without disturbing the staff.’

  ‘Does Mr Crane own a motor car?’

  ‘He does.’

  ‘Might the chauffeur have taken him out?’

  ‘Mr Crane does not employ a chauffeur. He much prefers the excitement of driving himself.’

  ‘I see,’ she said. ‘Thank you, Mr Russett, you’ve been most helpful.’

  ‘Happy to oblige, my lady,’ he said. ‘Goodnight.’

  He closed the door.

  We walked back along the drive to the waiting Rover.

  ‘That was most unhelpful,’ said Lady Hardcastle once I had started the engine and clambered in beside her. ‘He was in, but he could have gone out. He has a motor car so he could easily have driven to Thomas Street in time to start the fire and been back in bed with no one any the wiser.’

  ‘Or he might have stayed in bed all night with aspirins and a headache,’ I said.

  ‘Precisely. Stupid man. Ah, well. Fish and chips from the bottom of Christmas Steps?’

  ‘Unless you’d prefer to take me for an expensive meal at that hotel,’ I said.

  She eased the motor car forwards.

  ‘Fish and chips it is, then,’ she said.

  The hake was as good as before and the chips even better. By the time we got home, I was sleepy and contented, and more than ready for bed. But the drive had enlivened Lady Hardcastle, who bounced into the house and set about updating the crime board.

  ‘Would you mind awfully putting some cocoa on?’ she said. ‘That fellow Redmond—’

  ‘Russett,’ I said reflexively, cursing myself for being tricked into it again.

  ‘That’s the chap,’ she said with a grin. ‘He mentioned the Crane creature retiring with cocoa, and now I have a hankering.’

  ‘We can’t have unsated hankerings,’ I said. ‘It interferes with the balance of the humours. I shall attend to your cocoa cravings at once.’

  ‘Bung a good glug of brandy in it while you’re at it, there’s a good girl.’

  When I came back with the fortified cocoa, she was sitting in an armchair examining the board.

  ‘We’ve learned absolutely nothing to move us along. All we have are more questions,’ she said.

  ‘We have learned something,’ I said.

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh?’

  ‘We’ve learned that Crane – whom we had previously believed to be muddling drearily along in his own humdrum, coffee-filled world – has been talking to people.’

  ‘How do we know that?’

  ‘Because he knew who you are. He was very proud of the fact. “Don’t think I don’t know who you really are,” he said. He met you as Lady Summerford last week, but since then he’s learned that that was a lie. I doubt he has the gumption to make enquiries of his own. Someone told him.’

  ‘You’re right, tiny one. You’re right,’ she said, sitting up. ‘I’d missed it in all the puffed-up bombast, but that’s exactly what he said, isn’t it. He knows who I really am. I didn’t think twice about giving Ridpath . . .’

  I didn’t react. She sighed.

  ‘. . . giving Russett my calling card, and the man didn’t bat an eyelid. He was expecting a call from Lady Hardcastle. So who is it? Who’s talking to whom?’

  ‘Perhaps the city really is being run by a sinister cabal after all,’ I said. ‘I must say I was beginning to think that Brookfield was suffering from some sort of persecution mania – seeing conspiracies everywhere, linking all those men into one big story. But perhaps he was on to something.’

  ‘We shall know more once you others have made your enquiries. I do hope we don’t have to wait too long. For us it’s merely a frustrating puzzle, but poor Lizzie Worrel is stuck in that miserable little gaol cell.’

  ‘We’ll have her out in no time,’ I said.

  ‘We shall,’ she said, slapping her thighs and rising to her feet. ‘Fancy a game of cards before bed?’

  ‘To tell the truth, I’m done in. Would you be awfully upset if I declined?’

  ‘Not at all. You go up. I’ll sit down here and read. On my own. In the gloom. With only a cup of cocoa for company.’

  ‘Goodnight, my lady,’ I said, and went to bed.

  The next few days passed without incident, nor even any news. We were both becoming ever so slightly agitated by the lack of progress, so much so that when the telephone rang on Friday morning, Lady Hardcastle answered it herself.

  I came through from the kitchen, where I had been helping Miss Jones check the bills we had received from Weakley the greengrocer and Spratt the butcher. I arrived in the hall just as the call was ending.

  ‘Right you are, dear,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘No, you can’t miss it. Just turn left off the village green and head up the lane. We’re the only house there. A modern one. Red brick . . . No, opposite side from the church
. . . If you get lost just call in at the pub, they know where we are . . . Righto. See you later.’

  She hung up.

  ‘That was Georgie Bickle,’ she said. ‘She has news of the Honourable Jimmy, apparently. She’s going to brave the Gloucester Road to come and see us for lunch. She’ll be here at noon.’

  ‘On her own?’

  ‘No, Fred is driving her, I believe.’

  ‘I meant is she bringing any of the other suffragettes with her?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I see. No, she’s coming alone. But with Fred.’

  ‘I’ll make sure we have something to offer them,’ I said. ‘Though it won’t be as grand as those pastries she served us.’

  ‘Miss Jones’s food is always splendid. Beyond splendid. And don’t worry about Fred. I’m told he prefers to wait in the Rolls with his sandwiches and a Thermos of tea.’

  I advised Miss Jones that we’d be one extra for lunch and she excitedly set about doing something clever with a few mackerel. While this magic was being performed in the kitchen, I helped to make certain that Lady Hardcastle – who had been working in the studio in her overalls all morning – was in a fit state to receive a visitor.

  ‘Do I look all right?’ she asked, checking her reflection in the large glass on the wardrobe door.

  ‘You look splendid,’ I said. ‘Understated elegance with just a hint of batty old widow.’

  ‘It’s the hair, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, the hair is fine. You just have a certain air of approachable eccentricity about you.’

  ‘Cultivated over many long years, let me tell you. You’ve no idea how helpful it can be to make people believe that one is nothing more or less than an amiable ninny.’

  ‘There’s no need to tell me,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen the effect at first hand. So many big, strong, clever, confident men have given up so many secrets because they so badly underestimated you. Don’t you ever wish people would just take you – us – seriously, though? Don’t you ever tire of having to pretend to be stupid so as not to upset people?’

  ‘If wishes were horseradish, beggars would eat beef more often. I think that’s how it goes. And yes, of course I mind – the whole thing is preposterous. As though being a woman makes one incapable of . . . well, of anything, really, other than gestating offspring.’

  ‘We’ll show ’em,’ I said.

  ‘Do you know, I don’t believe we shall in our lifetimes. But I don’t think that matters as long as we show each other. As long as we all know what we can achieve, who cares what anyone else thinks?’

  I nodded my agreement as I tugged at the hem of her navy blue jacket to make it lie flat, and proclaimed her ready for public display. She returned to her study to catch up with her correspondence while we waited. I offered my services in the kitchen and was told to sit down, have a cup of tea, and keep out of the way. Edna was already doing that very thing so I did as I was told and the three of us gossiped the rest of the morning away.

  Lady Bickle arrived at half past twelve.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry to be so late,’ she said as I took her coat in the hall. ‘We got a little lost, I’m afraid. We found the village all right but we missed the turning for your little lane and found ourselves going up a hill to a big house with a charming mishmash of styles. A little bit of Tudor, a little bit of Regency, a little bit of Victorian gothic. It was quite charming but it was most definitely not the modern house you’d described on the telephone.’

  ‘That was The Grange,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Our friends Hector and Gertie Farley-Stroud own the place. It’s where Flo and I encountered your acquaintance, the Honourable Jimmy.’

  ‘Yes, I met Sir Hector as we turned around at the end of his drive. He was walking three boisterous spaniels. Or they were walking him. It was hard to tell. Anyway, he pointed us in the right direction and sends his regards. Apparently “the memsahib” will contact you soon to invite you for “tiffin”.’

  ‘How lovely,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘I shall await her call. Do come through to the dining room. Miss Jones has done something ingenious to some mackerel, I believe.’

  It was, indeed, ingenious. And quite delicious. As we ate, we tried to get to know each other better by sharing a few details of our lives. Lady Bickle had already heard something of our adventures, so it was all rather one-sided as we asked her more and more questions.

  She was, as we had surmised, a good deal younger than her husband, whom she had met on a skiing holiday in the French Alps. I guessed she was in her late twenties, but I was too polite to ask.

  ‘I adore skiing,’ she said. ‘One of the few advantages of an outrageously expensive Swiss finishing school is that they tend to be in the mountains. I’d always been a little . . . rebellious, I suppose one might say. I found almost all of the things I was supposed to be interested in to be so frightfully boring. I really wasn’t terribly interested in how to alight gracefully from a carriage or how properly to address the maiden aunt of a grand duchess, so I used to hop the wag and go into the village. I met an absolutely darling young Swiss boy, who taught me how to climb and how to ski. So a few years later, I’d gone out to Grenoble with some chums and I came a cropper one day – ended up unconscious in a tangle of limbs and splintered skis. When I came to I was looking into the eyes of quite the most gorgeous man on the mountain. He told me he was a surgeon and that I should lie still until some more chaps arrived with a stretcher. They got me to the local hospital and patched me up. Nothing broken, thank goodness, but lots of sprains and bruises. Ben – that was the surgeon’s name – oversaw my treatment and looked after me while I sat on the hotel balcony watching my chums on the snow. It was only once we were home in England that I discovered that he’s a brain surgeon who knows nothing about orthopaedics and shouldn’t have been allowed within ten feet of me while I was being treated. But I was in love by then so it didn’t seem to matter. Do you ski?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Did the shenanigans in Norway count as skiing, do you think?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘that was more of an improvised sledge. Although I do remember you standing up at one point.’

  ‘Not for long. I quite forgot Newton’s third law – the recoil from my pistol nearly upended us both. Winged our pursuer, though, so it was worth the momentary terror.’

  ‘We shall have to go skiing together before the season ends,’ said Lady Bickle. ‘I absolutely insist.’

  I prefer my mountains green, with coal mines at the bottom, but I smiled and ‘Mmm’-ed nonetheless. Lady Hardcastle was similarly noncommittal.

  Lady Bickle laughed. ‘All right, then, perhaps not skiing. But we should do something fun when all this is over.’

  ‘We should,’ we both agreed, massively relieved to be spared a week of yodelling and falling over, or whatever happened in the Alps.

  When lunch was done, Lady Hardcastle suggested that we retire to the drawing room with our coffee so that we might examine the crime board and hear Lady Bickle’s news.

  ‘It took me a while,’ she began, ‘but I managed to track down Jimmy Stansbridge’s favourite card game. It’s at a club in Clifton, not an awfully long way from our house.’

  ‘That’s splendid news,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘And does he have an alibi?’

  ‘He has half of one. Either an ali or an ibi, I’m not sure which. He wasn’t there himself – no one’s seen him for days – but I spoke to several swaggeringly self-important young gentlemen. They were confident that he was there until at least ten o’clock.’

  ‘And after that?’

  ‘No one is entirely certain. One or two think they might have seen him. Another couple don’t know. And one chap thinks he saw him leave the club, but wouldn’t swear to it.’

  ‘But they’re all sure he was there until ten? Are they reliable witnesses? Do you trust their testimony?’

  ‘Collectively I’d say they are as unreliable as witnesses get. They were all pie-eyed for a s
tart – theirs is more of a drinking club with occasional card games than the other way round. And they’re the most self-absorbed creatures you’re ever likely to meet. If something is going on that doesn’t actually involve them – even if it’s in their direct line of sight – they’ll probably not notice. As for trusting them . . . I’m not so sure. They have little reason to lie. I have it on good authority that he owes money to most of them, so it does them no good if he gets into trouble. On the other hand, they have every reason to lie – he owes money to most of them, so it might give them some satisfaction to see him get into trouble.’

  Lady Hardcastle was writing notes on the board, including making additions to the timeline I had started the week before.

  ‘So far we can account for both Crane’s whereabouts only until nine o’clock, and the Honourable Jimmy up to around ten. Either, both, or neither of them could have got to Thomas Street in time to set the fire and be home in bed before anyone missed them. But it’s a start, at least. We just need to find out where they were between ten and midnight.’

  ‘What about the other two?’ asked Lady Bickle.

  ‘We’re still awaiting word from Miss Caudle about her possible interview with Councillor Morefield, and we’ve got nowhere with Hinkley. We asked our police inspector friend if he could press Morefield for proof of his whereabouts, but since he’s not officially under any suspicion, there’s little he can do to help us.’

  ‘Ah, well,’ said Lady Bickle. ‘We’re making some progress, at least. I say, don’t think me too much of a pig, but is there any more of that delicious cake left?’

  I retrieved the cake from the kitchen and conversation turned once again to less murderous matters.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about your motor car, you know,’ said Lady Bickle after her third slice. ‘I wonder . . . would you let me have a go?’

  ‘At driving it?’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Why, of course. Your coat should be warm enough. Flo, dear, you don’t mind lending Georgie your gauntlets and goggles, do you?’

  ‘Of course not. I’ll even start the engine for you.’

  ‘Would you? I was hoping you might.’