I saw a cot with its wool blanket mussed, as if it had been worn as a cloak. I saw the candle wedged into a jelly jar and a tidy stack of newspapers rolled into pretend fire logs. I knew that’s what they were because two of those logs were smoldering in a large tin bucket, edged with gleaming orange, smoking rather than burning and surely not providing much warmth.
“You don’t have a fire.”
As if he didn’t know. I was mortified that I hadn’t considered this before. Why would the garden shed have a stove or a chimney? And here it was, late October! Even Hector—a foreigner—surely had a fire in his room!
“I’ll tell Mummy in the morning,” I said. “We’ll find a place indoors, I promise. But…but tonight…”
It seemed harder now to ask him what I had come to ask. But how else would I get my note to Hector by morning?
“Tonight I wonder if you could deliver a letter for me? Not so very far, just down a ways on Bertram Road. You can ride on your bicycle. Please, Leonard?”
Leonard was shaking his head.
My fingertip found the wax seal on the folded paper in the pocket of Cook’s jacket.
Leonard squinted in the dark. “A letter for who, miss? The police?”
“I’m not telling the police,” I said. “Not yet anyway. They’d try to stop me finding out more and I—”
“Miss Aggie,” Leonard interrupted, “it’s too late at night to play fanciful games. Burn the letter before your mother has more to worry about. You be a good little girl and get yourself tucked into bed.”
Ouch.
He put out a hand, as if beckoning to the note in my pocket. A hand wrapped in an old sock, with the toe cut off for his fingers to peek out and the heel bulging at his wrist. I stepped out of reach.
“Never mind,” I said. “I shouldn’t have bothered you.” I gave him what I hoped was an innocent-looking smile. He summoned one in return.
“To bed, miss.” He gave my shoulder a little push, compelling me to turn around. “Go on,” he said.
He closed the door with a firm click.
Grrr. My hands balled into fists, itching to hammer on the door of the shed. But then the ragged socks-for-gloves came to mind. The narrow cot and thin blanket.
What an awful place to live! All those spades and rakes hanging on hooks over one’s bed, ready to smash a person’s skull. All those pots and jars and earthy things, probably hosting spiders and caterpillars. Poor Leonard. I couldn’t fault him for being in a foul mood on a cold night. Perhaps we could let him stay in the wine cellar, now that Papa wasn’t here to care about wine. At least for the winter. I would ask Mummy at breakfast.
But that was tomorrow. Tonight, I had a decision to make. I touched the envelope in my pocket. If I sent it with the first post in the morning, Hector would not know about the new clue until tomorrow at teatime. We could not meet before Wednesday! It mustn’t wait so long. We were confounded by two simple pieces of paper—the letter with a corner missing and the blue square with powdered creases found inside a shoe…
I blinked, struck by what Hector might call logic. His new shoe, the one that held the powdered paper, had been in one of the Mermaid Room boxes. But those boxes had been hauled away before the murder happened. If the killer had poisoned the sugar early enough to dispose of the evidence in a charity box as Hector had guessed…how could he—or she—know that Mrs. Eversham would be requiring sugar sometime later in the morning? Mrs. Eversham had not yet arrived in the Mermaid Room! It seemed too unlikely. I did not think that anything inside those boxes could be connected to the murder at all.
I began to hum, to drown out the scolding voice inside my head. I had no choice now about what I must do. The stranger’s letter falling out of my notebook had set a sequence in motion, one thing leading to the next. And next was telling Hector that his paper clue was no clue at all—but that I had another one, even more valuable.
As if part of a plan all along, I pulled Leonard’s bicycle upright and got myself balanced on the seat. The sodden toes of my slippers, just reaching the pedals, started to pump. The fender was out of alignment and clicked against the wheel, the tires were not perhaps as fully inflated as they should be, but I bounced along the drive under a starlit sky, with an unfamiliar boldness in my heart.
CHAPTER 15
A WEARY MESSENGER
I KNEW WITHIN THREE turns of the wheels that my petticoat was an impediment to pedaling. Little wonder that lady cyclists were now wearing bloomers on the fashion pages in Mummy’s Tatler magazine. With an awkward jerk of the handlebars, I steered the bicycle into a privet hedge to guarantee it stopping. I unhooked my skirt, rolled it tightly and pushed it in amongst the brambles near the bottom. Chilly air bit through my pantaloons, almost as if they weren’t there. I was about to ride to the vicarage and back wearing one flimsy layer of cotton on my legs! What if Mrs. Teasdale should be having a late-night stroll about her garden? With her hair in pins under a kerchief! Yes! Smoking a cigar! A thick, leaf-wrapped cigar, imported from Morocco! Saying curse words between puffs…
Well, if Mrs. Teasdale was tapping ash into the laurel bush, she deserved to see me in my pantaloons! I looked about in the dim, blurred night. Not so much as a fox or an owl was stirring. No one to see me. So, get a move on! It wasn’t as far as all that…
The bicycle wobbled along, meeting each pebble as if it were a boulder. I concentrated on balance, and also on steering. The pale, holy glow of the moon transformed familiar hedges into monstrous tree sprites.
“Thank you, Papa,” I said out loud, my voice a funny quack next to the clickety-clank of the bicycle and the silence beyond. Papa had spent many hours holding the seat of my child-sized bicycle while I learned to pedal up and down the drive. He’d tricked me in the end, trotting alongside in a pretense of holding me up, but having let go many minutes before.
Up and down the drive, however, was sorry preparation for the up and down of a hilly road. Part of what made Groveland my favorite place was how far it was from other houses—which tonight meant how far a person had to pedal on a rickety bicycle to get to where she wanted to be. The other homes along Bertram Road and then St. Vincent’s Close stood shadowed and forbidding.
My foot slipped, making my shin bang hard against the pedal. Ouch! Pay attention! I bumped over a ridge of mud at the side of the road and nearly toppled. It wasn’t safe to drive a vehicle and be lost in thought at the same time. Despite the cold and chafing web of my slippers, I pedaled harder. I coasted down one more hill, braking on and off, the rush of air chilling my legs. What a sight I must be, with the lace edging of my pantaloons poking out beneath Mrs. Corner’s jacket, bare ankles winking above muddy slippers.
I had arrived at the vicarage without being noticed by anyone! The gate was hemmed in by shrubbery, the house itself out of sight. I rested the bicycle against the fence and reached over to unhook the latch. I was now on somewhat holy ground—if a vicarage counted as holy—so I said a silent prayer. Forgive us our trespasses…
Was this trespassing? Somewhere, a dog howled. Did the vicar have a dog? Three worried breaths. All quiet. The path to the verandah lay in deep shadow. I could barely feel my feet but trusted that my toes were still there inside the spongy slippers. I extracted the letter, crumpled and a bit damp, from the pocket of Mrs. Corner’s jacket. The wax seal still sat firmly, and Hector’s name was clear enough on the outside.
Was the Reverend Mr. Teasdale an early riser, or did he take his tea in bed? If I were lucky, Hector would be the first to leave in the morning, on his way to school. I tucked half the note under the bristled mat in front of the door. I crept away and steered the bicycle onto the road, my feet feeling as if I were ankle-deep in cold spring mud, squelching with every step. My heart sank a little as I realized that the homeward journey was uphill all the way.
Then GONNnG! I jumped nearly out of my skin! GONNnG! GONNnG! The bells of All
Saints clanged twelve clamorous times. Goodness, had I ever before been up so late as midnight?
With my ears still ringing, I heard something else, a whoosh and a creak. Before I could dart into hiding, another bicycle hurtled toward me with a torch beam jiggling from its handlebars and a police officer upon the seat.
“Steady on there!” Constable Beck. His long legs dragged his bicycle to a stop as he shone the light straight into my face, rendering me quite blind.
“Miss Morton, is it?” Surprise painted his words. He redirected the torch to the middle of my chest and then to my saddle and wheels. “What the devil brings you out in the middle of the night?”
I stared at the faint gleam of buttons on his chest, any answer I might muster stopped in my throat. I was standing in front of a grown man whose duty it was to apprehend anyone misbehaving. I was outdoors on a dark road wearing Cook’s battered jacket and only my underthings beneath! If greater mortification were possible, I prayed never to know.
“Are you…Are you…awake, Miss Morton?” Alarm shot through his voice.
Would it make things better if I pretended to be sleepwalking? The frozen lumps that had formerly been my feet chose that moment to fail me. I sagged at the knees, let go of the bicycle and collapsed to the ground. A spinning wheel scraped rudely against my calf, which was horribly, nakedly illuminated under the glowing moon.
The policeman gave a small cry of consternation. He swung off his own machine and scooped me up in strong, Papa-like arms, the damp wool of his uniform smelling slightly of camphor. Setting me back on my feet, my rescuer looked very stern.
“What sort of lark is this?”
“Please don’t tell Charlotte!” I was flustered by the brief embrace, flummoxed by my likely doom if he were to tattle. “Miss Graves, I mean.”
I had a fleeting picture of the policeman murmuring in Charlotte’s ear, his stubbly chin against her neck. I pushed that thought aside.
“It will ruin the surprise, you see? I delivered a letter to a friend…” I vaguely waved a hand so that he wouldn’t guess about the vicarage. “It would be dismal if all my planning was for naught.”
The policeman sighed. “Hop on,” he said.
In a rather impressive display of strength, Constable Beck pushed his own bicycle with his right hand while propelling mine with the left. He managed to keep both steady, with me upright on my seat, my poor feet resting on the gently turning pedals.
“Am I the only person,” he said, “who knows you’re running about at midnight?”
I wondered for one distressing moment, might he be the killer? The wicked man had only pretended to court the plain and earnest nursemaid. His murkier intent was to watch the inquisitive nuisance of a girl. And here she was, alone and unchaperoned in the dark of night, easy prey for a murder near the vicarage! A brisk blow to the head with his truncheon would quiet her infernal curiosity for once and for all!
Constable Beck was breathing noisily, pushing two bicycles and a tall-for-twelve-year-old girl up Bertram Road. If he were going to bonk me on the head, would he not have done it before climbing the hill?
“Second time today,” said Constable Beck, “that I’ve been waylaid by a pesky child sleuth.”
“Whatever do you mean?” I said.
“Your little friend, the funny French chappie—”
He broke off to lean his bicycle against his hip while he fished a handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his forehead—all while keeping me upright on my own vehicle. I counted to ten.
“Hector?” I finally asked, as he replaced the square of linen into his jacket pocket.
“Ha, yes, well, he come into the station today with a look about him so serious that we thought he was there to confess stealing the head off Queen Victoria’s statue.”
Oh, dash it all! The powdered paper! He must have taken it—
“He walks right up to the desk sergeant and says, ever so gravely, he says, ‘I am wishing to speak with the inspector, if you please.’ ” Constable Beck began to chuckle, as if it were a great joke. “‘If you please! ’ ”
It was not amusing to hear Hector’s accent being mocked. I rather doubted that the policeman could speak French so well as Hector spoke English.
“The inspector!” Laughter lingered in Constable Beck’s voice. “If you please! We told him the inspector was not available—which was true, as it was the middle of the afternoon and everyone but us was gone for their tea breaks.”
Hector must have walked to the station directly from school, I thought. He’d probably stewed all day and then summoned his courage and—
“Constable Rushton was on desk duty,” said Constable Beck. “A great pal of mine. ‘And how might we be of assistance, as Inspector Locke is not available?’ Rushton asks the little Frenchie.”
“Hector is Belgian,” I whispered, “not French.”
“And out of his pocket he pulls this bit of folded paper, like he’s going to show us the Duke of Buckingham’s cuff links.”
I squirmed on my seat, causing the bicycle to wobble, but Constable Beck straightened it out with a jerk of his wrist and carried right on with the story.
“Your friend tells us that he has discovered a piece of very important evidence in a charity box taken from the scene of the murder. Rushton calls me over and we lean in close to have a better look. Young Mr. Perot shows us white powder clinging to the creases of a piece of paper. ‘I believe it to be poison,’ he says.”
Constable Beck whispered with exaggerated solemnity as he reported the next bit.
“ ‘That is a very serious charge,’ says Rushton. And then he lifts the paper up close to his face and takes a sniff. He’s examining the evidence with the greatest attention, you see? Then he says to me, ‘Tell my Julie I loves her truly…’ Like he’s heading into battle. He puts the paper up to his lips and…he licks it!”
CHAPTER 16
A PROFITABLE EXCHANGE
CONSTABLE RUSHTON’S TONGUE, broad and pink, met the white dust for a tentative appraisal. At first touch, the taste was slightly sweet, but as he greedily slobbered on the paper, his mouth began to burn. Too late, the policeman groped for water, his scorched tongue taking on a yellow hue, darkening to purple as foam bubbled up from the wretched man’s throat…
“Did he die?”
Of course he had not. Constable Beck would not have been in such good humor if he’d been telling the tale of a colleague’s demise.
“It was paper from a square of Turkish delight!” cried Constable Beck. “He’d brought us a sweetie wrapper! We had a good laugh about that, we did.”
Oh, poor Hector! A warm flush swept up my neck on his behalf. How foolish he must have felt! First, how determined and brave in approaching the police, and then how small and foolish. I hated Constable Beck just then, and I hated Constable Rushton even more.
I bristled on Hector’s behalf. “I suppose your investigation is tearing along, and you have a suspect behind bars?”
“I think you know perfectly well that I am not at liberty to discuss the case,” he said. That sounded to me like a phrase he’d practiced in front of the mirror, making himself feel important. “But it won’t be long, Miss Morton. Not long now.”
Not long now? Getting some answers would be the best revenge for Hector’s humiliation. I mustn’t back down. When might I have another chance to interrogate a police officer?
I waited until we reached a flat bit of road.
How to begin? I knew what Grannie Jane would say. No man has yet been born who does not like to be admired for what he knows.
“Miss Graves…” I managed.
“Oh, yes?” said Constable Beck.
“She speaks of you.” She never did. Not out loud. But I fancied I knew what she was thinking. “A policeman’s job is terribly difficult, she says. Catching robbers, being kind to old lad
ies, keeping clues straight in your head. You can do it all, Miss Graves says.”
Constable Beck grunted. He was sweaty but not scowling.
“Miss Marianne was not the killer,” I blurted.
“We know that, do we?” puffed the constable.
“I believe it to be certain,” I said.
“And why is that?”
“If I lived with a person I wanted dead,” I began, “I should contrive a convenient death at home. Preferably an accident.” I refrained from sharing my full catalogue of creative murders. “Would you not do the same?”
Constable Beck grunted again, most unhelpfully.
I persisted. “Would it not be wiser to avoid the complications of using a public place?”
“If you drops your corpse in a public place,” said the constable, “you’ve saved yourself the trouble of disposal.”
Chopped up in a suitcase, shoveled into a well, hurled from a clifftop, locked in a cupboard…
“An excellent point, constable!” Why had that not occurred to me already? “If you do it at home, I suppose the suspect list is cut down to those who live there with you.”
“That’s why the Mermaid Room was a clever choice. Your dance teacher made it look like a spur of the moment murder, in a public place with plenty of suspects!”
I felt sick.
“She had enough poison on the premises to kill ten old ladies,” added Constable Beck. “Or two hundred mice.”
VerminRid! I’d had my suspicions…had even inquired of Mr. Tunweed at the museum, after hearing Miss Marianne and Mr. Roddy Fusswell chatting about rodents quite freely. And here was official testimony. No one had carried poison to the Mermaid Room. It had been already waiting there, to serve its demonic purpose! No wonder the police were so rude to Hector about his powdered paper if they already knew the source.
The Body under the Piano Page 11
