Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders

by Tessa Arlen

  But more important than that, I found it hard to shake the image of Audrey’s sullen anger toward the dead Doreen as she leafed through her magazine with those strong hands. So it was difficult to concentrate on my companion’s account of the latest German air raids.

  Sid was still struggling with a name that was eluding him. “It’s on the tip of my tongue. I don’t know how to pronounce it, because they say it so fast on the radio. But ever since we bombed their precious Lubeck, the Germans have been hitting back, choosing cities like Bath and York, you know—places of historic interest.”

  Light dawned at last. “Baedeker?” I suggested. “After the guidebook?”

  He stopped, and I heard him chuckle in the dark. “Bi-decka, yes. That’s what it was. I knew you would know because you’re so clever.” There was admiration in his voice. Sid really is the nicest boy, and is quite bright really, but he’s easily influenced, and it is his lack of curiosity that holds him back. Not his fault: village life usually makes for a narrow point of view.

  “I think it’s wrong to bomb towns at all, especially at night.” I could see women herding their children and the elderly along Clave Street toward the Underground and remembered a six-year-old girl rooted to the pavement outside her house, trembling with terror. “It’s wicked to bomb civilians and cowardly to do it at night.”

  He looked quite stunned for a moment. He obviously thought I was being unpatriotic. For people like Sid, the only good German is a dead German. It was time to move away from tender subjects.

  “Have you finished The Three Musketeers?” I asked him. “I was wondering what you thought of it.” Granny had donated a lot of my old books to the village library and Sid had told me on our first patrol that he had borrowed two by Alexandre Dumas. I hoped Dumas would at least get him off the topic of battleships, or, even worse, rip-roaring, jolly old Biggles. His response, though enthusiastic, was predictable. “They were wizard!” he said in the strangulated vowels he imagines his hero Spitfire pilots use.

  “Which did you prefer, The Count of Monte Cristo or The Three Musketeers?”

  “The Count of Monte Cristo was really good, but I liked The Three Musketeers best—because of Milady.” I sensed from the sound of his voice in the darkening lane that he was smiling. “You just can’t keep up with her—she’s all over the place.”

  I liked his description of the slippery Milady.

  “You see, with men,” he went on to explain, “you know where you are. They usually declare what side they’re on and fight for that side, but not Milady. It’s frightening how wicked she is—beautiful and wicked.”

  We had arrived at the intersection on Smithy Lane where the new road led up to the airfield. It was usually busy with ground crew waiting for the bus to Wickham to catch a movie, as Americans called the pictures, or to go dancing at the Palais de Danse. “Not a Yank in sight,” said Sid with approval. “That’s why it’s so nice and quiet. Pity they don’t keep them on the base all the time.” I couldn’t help but laugh, because sometimes Sid sounds just like a peevish middle-aged man who shakes his copy of the Telegraph in outrage at the antics of today’s youth, and not a young man of twenty.

  “Grandad told me that airmen have one of the most dangerous jobs in the war.”

  I should have known better than to talk about airmen to a Biggles fan. “Major Redfern was talking about the Royal Air Force, I expect. Our chaps take all the most dangerous missions, which is why their casualties are so high.”

  I didn’t want a lecture on British versus American bravery. “Do you think the village will make trouble for them because of Doreen’s death?” I wondered. Sid is not a gossip, but his mother is very thick with Mrs. Glossop, so he has probably heard all the rumors that fly around Little Buffenden, and it is easier to sound him out than to interrogate our postmistress, who takes over every conversation.

  I heard his snort of disgust. “I don’t know about trouble. But the gilt’s off the gingerbread for the American Air Force, so they had better behave themselves in our village.” His voice was throaty with the emotion he felt at the loss of his friend.

  “But what do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” he wailed. “It’s all so horrible, I can’t bear to think about it. I can’t sleep at night for worry.”

  “What does the village say?”

  “Who cares what they are all saying? The old gossips. Most of them think it was either Doreen’s new boyfriend, even though he was in the sick bay, or that other one, Ivy’s boyfriend, Joe Perrone. The rest of them think it was some tramp. Do you remember that awful business over in Wooten Hayfield? Of course you do. It was about five or six years ago. Those girls who disappeared? Come off it, Poppy, you can’t have forgotten. The papers were full of it.”

  I did remember. It had been the talk of the county all one summer. “Weren’t their bodies found months later?”

  “Six months later, when they were bringing in the harvest. Just thinking about it gives me the willies. Anyway, they got the chap that did it. He was a tramp—a vicious character who had been in prison for all sorts of violent crimes—but there haven’t been tramps around here for ages. It has to be someone from the base.”

  “Did you go up to the party at the airfield the night when Doreen was killed?” I asked. It would be interesting to hear what Sid thought about Ivy and Doreen and their American boyfriends.

  “No, I was away doing my small-arms and machine-gun training at Wickham GHQ.” He stopped and adjusted the strap on his Sten gun. “And even if I hadn’t had training, I wouldn’t have wanted to go.” I couldn’t see his face in the dark, but his tone was lofty. “Americans are so loud they make my ears hurt. And some of them have such strong accents I can’t understand a word they are saying. There were two in the post office the day after they arrived. I was in there getting Mum some cough drops. They wanted ‘candy,’ whatever that is. Mrs. Glossop understood what they meant; she told them that she couldn’t sell them any sweets unless they had a ration book. One of them told her that they send candy over from America for them. Can you imagine?”

  “Imagine what?”

  “It is kind of sissy, isn’t it? Grown men having sweets shipped over for them, as if they can’t survive without their chewing gum. Anyway, they wanted to buy English candy and send it back to their brothers and sisters in the US. That’s what they call America. Mrs. Glossop gave them pretty short shrift, I can tell you. Suggested that they might want to hand out some of their ‘candy’ bars to the village children.”

  “What did they say?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know because I left. But Mum said they turned up at the school with three huge boxes of chocolate bars and asked her if she would distribute them.”

  “That was generous. I bet the kids were delighted.”

  He shrugged one shoulder. “Mum said she handed them out before the children went home. There were enough for two each!” He stuck his fingers in the air to emphasize the shocking fact. “Two bars of chocolate are the equivalent of a six-week sweet ration, and they gave boxes of them away—just like that.” He paused and giggled. “Mum brought one home for me. And you know what? It didn’t taste like our chocolate at all. I can’t imagine what they make it with.”

  * * *

  —

  LITTLE BUFFENDEN DID its best, for the Newcombe family’s sake, to settle down to normal after the shock of Doreen’s death. And still the Americans were confined to base, and apart from the racket of squadrons of Fortress bombers and Mustang fighter planes taking off every evening, it was almost as if the Friendly Invasion, as the popular press called the arrival of our allies, had never occurred.

  But it was impossible for me to resume my life as if nothing had happened. My quiet night patrols were now full of Sid’s passion for war and his lectures on British superiority. “Really, when you think of it, Poppy, there isn’t a country in
the world that shouldn’t go down on its knees and thank God for the British Empire.” Most of Sid’s opinions were barely-thought-through adolescent twaddle, but responding to them required a certain kind of stamina, so it was hard for me to ignore him and concentrate on finding answers to the questions batting around in my head.

  Who in our village could possibly have a reason to murder Doreen? And even if they had a reason, was anyone among us capable of strangling a healthy young woman? We are a village of women, children, and middle-aged to elderly men. Little Buffenden’s younger fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons had long joined up to fight in the war, leaving very few men who would be physically able to commit the crime, which left me with a list of women and the same unanswered questions.

  I returned to my list of possible male suspects. Sid Ritchie, unable to join up because of ill health, is what we might call an able-bodied young man, physically capable of murder, but he had been in training at Wickham GHQ.

  Our vicar, Cedric Fothergill, is probably in his mid-forties, and certainly fit enough to overpower a young woman, but it seemed sacrilegious to think of him as a suspect for murder.

  Mr. Wantage, who used to be our village blacksmith, is, at fifty, so crippled with arthritis that he would be incapable of wringing a chicken’s neck. Then there is our butcher, Mr. Angus, and the publican of the Rose and Crown, Bert Pritchard, both of whom have led lives of blameless innocence except for a little mild flirtation with other men’s wives; and of course, there is our baker, Mr. Newcombe, who was hardly likely to have murdered his daughter.

  Mr. Wilkes, who owns Streams Farm; his cowman, Percy; and our verger, Len, who found Doreen, are all far too mild-mannered to even think of violent death, let alone commit it. And, finally, there is my grandfather, who is physically capable of strangling half a dozen Germans if they happened to invade England but is incapable of being violent to a woman.

  Rounding off a list of men who were either too mild mannered or too geriatric was our newcomer to the village, the retired Mr. Ponsonby, a deeply reserved man whose only interest was in birds, and Dr. Oliver, who, at sixty-eight, was hardly a specimen of athletic manhood.

  “Of course, we will win this war, even if the Americans hadn’t come to help us. You know why? Because we have Mr. Churchill.” Sid’s voice interrupted my list making. I had to stop myself from harrumphing in disgust because most people with an iota of brainpower know that Winston Churchill had crawled on his knees, for years, to the American president Mr. Roosevelt and begged him to come to our aid. It was all such rubbish that I didn’t have the heart to start in on a list of how many women would like to do away with Doreen.

  SIX

  I nearly forgot.” Granny looked up from her knitting. “I volunteered you for the children’s clothes exchange in the village hall.”

  “Not again, Granny, surely?”

  “There are a thousand and one things to do in this village to help out, dear. We all have to pitch in.”

  Most wartime duties are monotonous and dreary, but the clothes exchange is the most draining of our many chores. “I did the summer one. Do I have to do the winter one too?”

  “Yes, and you know perfectly well why. First, you are impartial, since you don’t have children, and if there’s a falling-out, no one is better at smoothing over difficulties than you.”

  “Only because I don’t have children.”

  “It’s the same difference, darling. And second, poor Mrs. Martin is relying on your help because she has just about had enough of Mrs. Ritchie—she’s obsessing about the jumble sale again. And if you need a third reason . . .”

  “No, Granny, of course I’ll do it.”

  “There is an awful lot of our mending to do. Perhaps you would rather help me with that?”

  “I’ll go and help Mrs. Martin—anything but darning. At least the clothes exchange is over and done with; darning just goes on forever.”

  She smiled her thanks to me and threaded her needle. “Who would have thought that a change in season could cause us all so much tension? Mrs. Newcombe says her boy has shot up like a weed, and none of his winter clothes fit. Even with clothing coupons, the things available are shoddy and expensive.”

  Out of necessity Little Buffenden has become one huge family, where hand-me-downs make the rounds of the entire village. And the ructions this causes among mothers trying to keep their children warmly clothed border on desperation.

  I sighed. “The only problem is that Mrs. Angus takes more than she donates, and it upsets Mrs. Pritchard, and there is not much love lost between them anyway.” I finished my tea and resigned myself to a peacekeeping mission that no one else wanted to take on.

  * * *

  —

  “WOULD YOU LOOK at this?” Mrs. Angus, the butcher’s wife, held up two worn sweaters. She is a skinny little woman with absolutely no sense of humor. There is an air of “the boss” about her, and it is said that she keeps her silent husband completely in check. “This one is full of the moth—and someone looks like they were pulled through a hedge backward in this. I think I’ll just unravel and knit them up again. Only thing you can do with them, really.” She glared at us as if we were moths hungry for wool and dumped four sweaters into her bag.

  Mrs. Pritchard’s round, handsome face was puckered in a frown of concentration. She pushed her curly dark hair out of her eyes and bent over a large cardboard box filled with children’s winter shoes, each one tied to its mate by the laces. “Eight, eight,” she said as she looked at sizes. “Stop running around, Nigel, and come over here. I want you to try these on. I think it says eight, but the print is all worn away.” She peered into the shoe as she said to Mrs. Martin, “He shoots up every summer. Nothing fits.”

  The hall became silent, and I looked up from sorting wool socks into pairs to see Mrs. Newcombe come in through the door carrying a heavy suitcase. “Oh no, Beryl, there’s no need to give away Doreen’s . . .” Mrs. Pritchard bit back her words as she saw her friend’s face.

  I hadn’t seen Mrs. Newcombe since Doreen’s death. She had always been a well-set-up woman, but she seemed to have shrunk in size since her daughter’s brutal murder. Her pale blue eyes were almost apologetic as she stood in the doorway as if waiting to be invited in.

  “No point in keeping them all hanging in her wardrobe where they are no good to anyone.” Mrs. Newcombe’s eyes were red-rimmed with exhaustion, her face pinched with grief. “It’s wrong to hang on to good clothes when there are so many girls going without these days. Look, this would do for your Yvonne, wouldn’t it?” she said to Mrs. Pritchard. “She’s taller than Doreen was.” She held out a winter coat in almost-new condition. “Might need to let down the hem a bit . . . but it should fit her nicely.”

  There were exclamations of commiseration and comfort as mothers gathered around the forlorn figure of a woman who would never see her daughter married with a family of her own, would never enjoy her grandchildren. Mrs. Angus, who is always fully aware of what is going on around her, whispered to me, “I don’t think this is a good idea, Poppy. How will she feel when she sees one of the schoolgirls in the village wearing one of Doreen’s dresses? I know I couldn’t stand it.”

  Mrs. Martin, her spectacles halfway down her nose, a sheaf of lists in her hand, joined us. “She’s right, Poppy. I can understand why Mrs. Newcombe is doing this, because she is a generous soul. But . . . can you imagine how she’ll feel when she sees someone walking ahead of her up the High Street in Doreen’s favorite coat?”

  Mrs. Newcombe lifted the suitcase up onto an empty table, sliding her hands across the latches to open it. The women stood in a silent group, as far away from her as they could get, careful not to catch anyone’s eye. Mrs. Pritchard, who had been presented with Doreen’s red coat, looked down at her shoes, blinking away tears and shaking her head.

  I walked over to Mrs. Newcombe as she raised the lid of a perfec
tly packed suitcase. “Thank you for bringing these over, Mrs. Newcombe. It is very generous and thoughtful of you. But something just occurred to me. Would you be prepared to give us permission to ask the vicar to run these over to Harrowdean? They have a lot more girls of Doreen’s age than we have in the village staying at the hostel there. You know, the munitions factory girls? What do you think?”

  She hesitated as she looked down at the suitcase, laying a hand on a layer of tissue paper. “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “They all have to be up ever so early to go to work, those girls. And with the colder weather coming, they could probably do with some nice warm clothes.”

  She nodded, gazing down at the half-open case. “Yes, yes, you are right.” She smiled down at the top layer of clothes, her hand stroking the smooth fabric of a rich royal blue worsted skirt that shouted “prewar.” “Doreen did so love her clothes. Her father said she had far too many of them. I just wanted to make sure young Yvonne had her red winter coat.” She turned and nodded to Mrs. Pritchard. “That shade would look lovely on your Yvonne.” She closed the lid of the case. “Thank you, Miss Redfern, it is a good idea. Will you see to it?”

  “I would be pleased to.” I followed her to the door, opened it, and stood aside to let her pass.

  “If you would just return the suitcase when you have delivered the clothes, I would appreciate it,” she said, and walked off down the street.

  * * *

  —

  THEY SAY THAT the garments of the dead reveal a lot about who they were. I carried the suitcase into the village hall’s storage room and started to sort through Doreen’s clothes. They were of good quality, and because she had had a lot of them, they didn’t have the drab, overworn look that most of our clothes did these days. It is a good thing Doreen was an only child. We only children are always given so much, I thought as I sorted winter clothes from summer frocks. A baker couldn’t possibly afford to clothe a large family to this standard. I put aside Doreen’s summer frocks and concentrated on repacking the suitcase with cashmere sweaters, beautifully cut skirts, dresses, and suits. Then I started to put away her summer clothes, for the exchange in May, in the large chest of drawers we use for storage.