Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders

by Tessa Arlen

  “The Pritchards, three lewtenants, and Sid,” I reminded him.

  “Ah yes, Mr. Ritchie—well I guess life isn’t all fun and games.”

  The last thing in the world I was going to do was ask him for any details of his blasted lunch or refer to Fenella.

  “Come on.” He took my arm. “Let’s stroll down to the pub and have a nice pint—shandy for you and bitter for me—and chew over this liniment business, and then we can go into Wickham and see a movie.”

  “I can’t,” I said and pulled my arm away. “I promised Granny I would help her with the mending. I can’t put her off anymore, ’specially since most of it’s mine.”

  “Well, okay. I could come and keep you company and enjoy a glass of Jasper’s scotch.”

  “Not tonight, Griff.” I whistled for Bess, and to my utter relief, she appeared almost immediately.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I had two embrocation suspects left to check on—Mrs. Glossop and Sid Ritchie—and I felt downright silly about pursuing both. One was an interfering old lady with too much time on her hands, who was about half Audrey’s size. And the other: even at his most irritating, Sid was loyal, had a strong sense of right and wrong, and was far too squeamish to commit murder, not to mention he had a solid alibi for Doreen’s murder.

  My mood was gloomy as I walked up the village High Street toward the post office. As soon as I had tackled Mrs. G., I would drop in on Audrey, now that she was out of hospital, and see if there was anything else that had come back to her from the night of her attack.

  Questioning Mrs. Glossop would be easy. All I had to do was bring up the subject of coughs, colds, and sore backs and she would be ready with a string of instructions and long lists of home remedies and the sufferers they had cured. Then I could steer the conversation around to the night of our air-raid drill.

  “What’s the matter with you? Are you coming down with something?” Mrs. Glossop’s eyes searched my face. It was a relief to see a concerned expression rather than a critical one. “You’ve got rings under your eyes.” Her voice was chiding but not unkindly, as if my dark circles were a cause she was prepared to fight for.

  “Just a bit of a scratchy throat,” I said as hoarsely as I could manage.

  “Elliman’s Embrocation, that’s what you need. Don’t use Foster’s, it’s rubbish. I’ve heard it causes breathing problems if you use too much of it. Destroys the lung tissue.”

  “I can’t stand the smell of either of them,” I told her. “And anyway, it’s for sore backs and stiff joints, isn’t it?”

  “What rubbish. Elliman’s has simple clean ingredients: wintergreen and other natural things. Mr. Glossop used to swear by it when his throat got ticklish. Rub some of that on your chest and you will be as right as rain. And wrap up when you go out at night. That uniform of yours wouldn’t keep a cat warm. Do you have a nice Chilprufe vest or a Liberty bodice?”

  I refused to be drawn into a chat about my underwear, and instead asked her a bold question of my own. “Do you use Elliman’s?” I asked.

  “I don’t use anything. I never get colds and bad chests. I don’t have time to get sick. There’s this post office to run for one thing—and the mail has to get through: all those letters going to our boys overseas.” She pursed her lips and, turning, looked along the rows of jars that lined the back of her shop. “What about a throat lozenge? Fisherman’s Friend is good for sore throats, and they don’t count as sweets in your ration book, which is a very good thing. I sometimes suck on one if I have a yen for sugar. Take a bag of Friends with you.”

  She opened a glass jar and smiled at my enthusiastic grin as a strong camphor-like aroma filled the shop. “Never had a Fisherman’s Friend before? You don’t know what you’re missing.”

  My eyes were watering as she put the open jar down on the countertop. “Good heavens, what on earth’s in them?”

  She cocked her head on one side and read from the label on the jar. “Licorice extract, menthol, ewcally-iptus oil, and pepper tincture. Good combination for a sore throat. Made for fishermen in the North Sea. Go on, take a couple. See if you don’t come back for more. The vicar loves them.” She twisted two white pastilles up in a bit of paper and slapped them into my hand.

  I thanked her and was immediately instructed to put a Friend in my mouth.

  “There.” She laughed at my horrified expression. My mouth felt as if someone had lit a fire in it. I was about to spit it out when she said, “Keep it in, keep it in. You’ll get used to the heat. And anyway, heat’s good for a sore throat. You should wear a woolly scarf at night.”

  “I’m on my way to see Audrey,” I said in a voice that sounded as if I had been adrift on the seven seas all winter on a life raft. “She’s out of hospital but has to stay inside convalescing for a few days.” I gasped in a cooling draft of air.

  “Then wish her a speedy recovery from me and tell her I’ll pop by tomorrow afternoon when I’m done here.” I almost expected her to come up with some instructions as to the quickest course Audrey should take for her recovery, but she didn’t.

  “When did you know she was missing—was it before or after the air-raid drill?” I asked her and caught a sharp look.

  “Back on that old bandwagon again, are you?” Her eyes were shrewd. “Well, someone needs to be asking questions; the police don’t seem to have the time or the inclination. They say crime’s shot up in the last two years, what with the blackout and so few policemen. For your information, I got a message from Mrs. Martin just after eleven thirty, when Audrey didn’t show up at the vicarage. And I know you are not going to like this, but she told me about the air-raid drill—no, don’t look like that! She had to have some reliable help, poor woman—and I know how to keep my mouth shut.” I could have laughed out loud at this Glossop pearl of inaccuracy. “Anyway, over I went to the vicarage. Mrs. Martin was that worried about it being too cold in the crypt for the kiddies.” She paused only to glare at me. “Why you had to plan that drill for after midnight I can’t imagine. They do have air raids in the daytime, you know.” She paused for another scowl at my awkward planning. “We scrounged up blankets and shawls from the stuff put by for the jumble sale and carried them down into the crypt. Of course, if there was a real air raid—which there will never be—then we would all have to put up with a bit of cold, wouldn’t we?”

  And there it was. Mrs. Martin had told Mrs. Glossop about the drill. Had Mrs. Glossop popped a Fisherman’s Friend in her mouth to stave off a craving for sugar and then stopped at Bart’s Field to whack Audrey on the head before she arrived at the vicarage? But I knew that Mrs. Glossop was clearly not my suspect. She was an interfering old bat, but she was not the Little Buffenden Strangler.

  “So, now you know where I was and at what time.” Her eyes were shining with pleasure as she informed me she knew what I was up to. “And before you go thinking the worst, the last person in the world I would harm is our Audrey—so don’t you jump to any conclusions, Miss Redfern. Doreen, now”—her mouth came down at the corners—“she was another matter entirely. Oh, go on with you.” Her eyes were two dark crescents of laughter. “You are taking your inquiry far too seriously, my dear. I’ve known all three of those girls since they were babies.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Glossop,” I said and made for the door. My mouth was on fire from the Fisherman’s Friend. I spat it out in the gutter and walked up the High Street in the direction of Streams Lane for a nice cuppa tea with Audrey.

  * * *

  —

  “STREWTH!” AUDREY BACKED away as I walked into the kitchen. She groped for the back of a chair and, holding on to it with one hand, raised the other to her throat. I was used to Audrey’s implacable silence, but this reaction seemed rather an overly dramatic swing in the other direction.

  “Audrey, what on earth is the matter? Come on, sit down.” Alarmed, I pulled out a chair with a high back and ar
ms and helped her into it. She had been fine when she opened the door to me, almost cheery. And here she was backing away from me as if I were the devil.

  I filled a glass of water from the kitchen pump. “Sip slowly.” She did, but I noticed that there were beads of sweat on her upper lip and that her hand was shaking as she took the glass from me. I cupped my hand around hers to steady the glass in it. Then I took a seat next to her and waited.

  “Fine now. Not your fault, but you gave me such a fright.” Her voice was low—almost a whisper. I had come to welcome her back from hospital and had caused this?

  “Oh, Audrey, I’m so terribly sorry.”

  “What on earth have you been eating?”

  Now I understood. “A Fisherman’s Friend, but that was when I left the village. It was so strong I couldn’t finish it.”

  “Do you have any more?” I pulled out the little twist of paper, opened it up, and held out a lozenge. Audrey cautiously sniffed. “Oh God, that’s it. That’s what I could smell when I was attacked.”

  “A Fisherman’s Friend? Audrey, really?”

  She nodded, waving her hand in front of her face. I put the lozenge back into the paper, twisted it closed, and stowed it in the pocket of my cardigan.

  “Your attacker had one of these in his mouth?” An awful understanding was taking shape, as I remembered who Mrs. Glossop had said enjoyed these peppery lozenges.

  “I’m sorry, Poppy, but I have to get some air.” Her face was the color of parchment.

  Standing in the scullery porch with her, and gulping down lungsful of the damp afternoon air, I realized that all my checking on embrocation hadn’t been an exercise in futility. It had led me here; the murderer wasn’t a liniment or embrocation user at all. It was someone who, just like Mrs. Glossop, enjoyed a lozenge to soothe a craving for sweets. The list of possible sufferers might be as long as the number of residents in our village, but Mrs. Glossop would know exactly whom she had sold Fisherman’s Friends to.

  “Are you up to doing a test for me, Audrey?”

  She turned her head and smiled. “Don’t tell me you want me to sniff a mothball and then that nasty little lozenge,” she said. “No need, Poppy. When you walked through that door with that smell on your breath, it was as if I was back in Bart’s Field.” Her eyes were dark, her lips still pale. “What do they say about smell? That it fixes in your memory more strongly than sight or sound?” I shrugged my shoulders. I had no idea. But then I hadn’t been the victim of a vicious attack on my life in the dark of night with only foxes and owls to call on for help.

  Audrey took a grateful gulp of the mild afternoon air. “That smell brought that awful night back, as if he was with us right now. I felt the most terrible pressure on my neck as my head was wrenched backward. His mouth was level with my ear. And that dreadful reek filled the air. It wasn’t a woman, Poppy; it was a man. He was tall, or at least as tall as me, and strong.”

  “Come inside, Audrey, and I’ll make you something hot to drink. Or would you like a glass of parsnip wine?”

  She sat down at the table, and her eyes were so fearful that all I could think of was that if it was me in her place, I could only hope to be as brave and as courageous as she had been when she was set upon in the dark.

  I squeezed her hand with the full force of the approval and affection I felt for her, and she winced. “Go easy,” she said under her breath. “That’s only my bloomin’ hand, and I’ll need it tomorrow morning for milking. And tea will be fine, thank you.”

  The kettle rumbled to a boil on the hob and I got up to make us tea.

  “Be as angry with me as you like, Audrey, but I want to rule out Bill Peterson right off the bat. I can’t bear to think that another American will be unjustly accused.”

  She snorted. “Of course it wasn’t Bill, stupid. He may be an American, but he is a decent, kind man. Not a mean bone in his body.”

  I nodded in vigorous agreement. “But you had spent the evening with Bill . . . up at the lambing hut . . . and then you said good-bye. And the next thing you knew . . .” I tried to find the right words and failed.

  She burst out with protestations that Bill would rather die than hurt her. “It was never Bill. I am quite sure of that. And there are just two things that bear out that he was not my attacker. The smell of that disgusting cough lozenge has made me remember that the man who tried to kill me was wearing a coat or jacket of some rough sort of wool material—like tweed. The Americans’ uniforms are made of smooth fabric: worsted or serge. And Bill is large: he has broad shoulders; strong, thick arms; and a chest like a barrel. The man who attacked me was whippy, and his strength was . . . how can I describe it? It was wiry. I was attacked by a lean, wiry man. I would stake my life on it.”

  She nearly had, I thought, as I mentally filed away her description.

  “How tall?”

  “Not as tall as Bill, but taller than me. Probably about six foot.”

  So, I was looking for a tallish man in a tweed-type jacket who was strong enough to take her by surprise but not completely overpower her and who enjoyed Fisherman’s Friends.

  I saw the most civilized man I knew in our village, sitting back in his leather armchair with a glass of fine Amontillado in his hand, enjoying the company of good friends. “It can’t be!” I cried out, conscious as I did so that I would make a terrible poker player.

  “For God’s sake, what now? You really are on edge today.”

  “I have to go!” I said, getting to my feet and making for the door.

  “You could at least tell me what’s going on!” Audrey called after me as I walked down the path to join Bess at the gate.

  “I will, Audrey, really, I will. I just have to think things through for a bit first.” I tried to cover the elation I felt. Griff O’Neal certainly wasn’t my suspect! He might be unreliable and not particularly straightforward, but he was not a murderer!

  My elation didn’t last long, though. The thought of our vicar strangling young women was so disturbing that I was almost up to the stile that led into Bart’s Field before I stopped to order my thoughts.

  I must not reach for the easiest conclusion based on new information, I told myself. Audrey had mentioned that her attacker was wearing a harshly woven type of fabric. Tweed is the first woolen material that springs to mind if you are English and live in the country. Oh, come on, sweetie, Ilona chimed in, your little village is swarming with chaps who wear those dreadful uniforms. What do you call them, the Home Guard?

  TWENTY-THREE

  I tried to measure Sid’s height as we walked down Streams Lane. I estimated he was about six feet: easily tall enough to be Audrey’s attacker. Had Home Guard training turned round-shouldered, cave-chested Sid into a young man with what Audrey described as sinewy strength and a “whippy” build? It was hard to tell; I was so used to thinking of him as a sickly weakling.

  Sid was carefully dressed for the chill of an autumn evening. Underneath the coarse wool of his battle dress he was wearing a sweater in a dark cable knit made by his mum; I could see the wool cuffs sticking out of his jacket just above his bony wrists. Around his neck he was wearing a thick wool scarf, the ends of which were tucked into the front of his jacket. The coils of the scarf came up to his ears. Balanced on the top of his meticulously combed and Brylcreemed hair was a field cap, and on his hands were dark gray knitted gloves. He was so thoroughly bundled up it was hard to tell what sort of physique he had. His eyes slued over to me and I looked away, embarrassed to be caught out. He smiled: Sid was still in an apologetic mood.

  “Did you talk to Hargreaves?” I asked.

  “No, but I did talk to Constable Jones.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “Poppy, I can’t tell you. It’s police business now.”

  I was so annoyed I wanted to biff him one. “Police business? But I was the one who told you to go
to them.”

  “Yes, I know. Please don’t be like that. I hate it when you get annoyed with me. It’s just that I gave my word to Constable Jones.” It was the boys-only thing all over again. You take the time to counsel some silly twit who hasn’t a clue what to do. He follows your advice, and then lo and behold you are immediately barred from any more information—simply because it’s boys only. If the Luftwaffe had flown over at this point and dropped a bomb on Sid Ritchie, I would have cheered.

  “Hi, there—I was hoping I’d bump into you . . . two!” I breathed a sigh of gratitude for the interruption, until I realized that the friendly voice in the dark was that of Griff O’Neal, the other man in my life who led a blessed and exclusive male existence where women were only welcomed to enjoy moments with them in the kitchen or hop in and out of their sports cars.

  “Hullo,” I said, careful to keep my voice neutral in case I sparked off some sort of rivalry between a defensive Englishman and an oblivious American. “Sid, have you met Griff O’Neal? Griff, this is Sid Ritchie.”

  Griff lifted his right hand in that lazy and informal gesture that Americans call a salute, and Sid snapped one back in return, his back parade-ground straight. “No, we haven’t been introduced, but I am familiar with the lieutenant and his red sports car,” he said, with what I supposed he imagined was subtlety, and then in a miffy sort of way, over my head, to Griff: “My job is to escort Miss Redfern, but now that you’re here . . . I’ll be getting off home.” And having handed me over to the enemy, Sid stalked into the night, leaving us both standing outside the Wheatsheaf.

  “Funny sort of guy, isn’t he? We’ve seen him when we go to the pub, but he never responds when we call out to him to join us for a pint. Must be one of the Little Buffers who disapprove of Uncle Sam.”