A Little Local Murder

by Robert Barnard

  ‘Yes, of course,’ answered Cressida.

  ‘You don’t think you would have heard the door, or a floorboard on the stairs, or something like that?’

  ‘I wasn’t listening,’ said Cressida; ‘I was writing.’

  ‘Do you always go up to your room in the evening after dinner?’ asked Parrish.

  ‘No, not always. Not if Daddy is in, or if there’s anything on the television I want to watch.’

  ‘Did Mummy often go out in the evening?’ asked Parrish.

  Cressida considered. ‘Often? I don’t know what you mean by often. Of course she went out sometimes.’

  ‘Once a week, twice a week?’

  ‘I can’t say, really,’ said Cressida. ‘Often I wouldn’t know – if I was in my room, like Monday night.’

  ‘Do you know where she went?’

  Cressida almost smiled. ‘No, she didn’t have to ask my permission.’

  ‘She’d go and visit people, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. She had lots of friends.’

  ‘You don’t know of any particular friends that she might have gone to last night?’

  ‘No. She was on some committee or other with Mr Jimson, I think. He lives next door.’

  ‘Other than that – ’

  ‘No, I’m afraid I can’t think of anyone.’

  ‘What did you do yesterday morning, Cressida?’

  ‘Yesterday morning? I helped to make Daddy’s breakfast. Then I didn’t feel too well, so I went back to bed for a bit. I thought I’d have the day off school.’

  ‘You didn’t think of going to ask Mummy if you could?’

  ‘Oh no. We were quite independent, you know. She was very good, and left me alone if I wanted it. Then the policeman came – you, wasn’t it? and others – and said Mother was dead. Then I stayed up and waited for Daddy.’

  Parrish already felt he had got nowhere, and was likely to get nowhere.

  ‘Is there anything you can remember that you think might help us? Anything odd that happened yesterday, or the day before. Anything out of the ordinary?’

  Cressida was silent for a few moments.

  ‘Any phone call on Monday, for example, or anything that upset Mummy at all?’ Parrish became as insistent as he felt he could in the circumstances.

  ‘No, there’s nothing I can think of.’

  ‘You will tell me if you think of anything, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’m trying to help as much as I can, only I don’t seem to remember anything useful. Is that all?’

  ‘Is what all? Oh yes – yes, I think so. For the moment.’ Parrish had an odd feeling of having been dismissed.

  ‘You see, Daddy is still awfully upset, and I’d like to go to him if I may.’

  ‘That’s right, you do that. Daddy must have loved Mummy very much, I can see that.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Cressida seriously. ‘We both did. We’re both enormously upset.’

  And she left the room and went upstairs to her father.

  • • •

  It really isn’t my day, thought Sergeant Feather. Come to that, yesterday hadn’t been either, but it was nothing like as bad as today. First there had been Harold Thring. All orange-dyed hair, waving hands and seductive smile, pretending to work himself up to a great lather about his possible role in the death of Alison Mailer, and in reality hugging himself with ghoulish glee at the mere idea of it.

  ‘Only think, though, Sergeant, how I must feel,’ he had said, his mouth opening and shutting in simulated concern, making him look like a fledgling bird being fed worms. ‘And of course I let slip those words, those terrible words, quite without thinking, quite without, and then to see the jealousy in their eyes as I did, because you know what people are like, and then within minutes maybe for all we know there she is dead by the side of the road. Well! – what a thing to live with, what a terrible load to have on your conscience.’

  ‘I really don’t think I should take it so seriously, if I were you,’ Sergeant Feather had said soothingly, his hand pausing in the writing down of Harold’s high-pitched story. ‘In all probability there’s no connection at all between the two things.’

  ‘Oh, do you think not?’ said Harold, bitterly disappointed, but grasping Feather’s hand in a Victorian gesture of beseechment. ‘Do say so and put my mind at rest.’

  ‘I’m quite sure you needn’t feel responsible,’ Sergeant Feather had said, trying terribly hard to retrieve his hand, locked in a distastefully clammy grip. ‘Murders are not often done for a little thing like that.’

  ‘Is that so?’ said Harold, clinging like a love-sick limpet. ‘But you do get such terrible stories in the papers these days, don’t you? I’m so glad to learn it’s not true!’

  In the end Feather had had to hand him over to Sergeant Underwood, which had effectively doused his agonized conscience. Within a couple of minutes he had seen Harold prancing off down the street, and waving gaily to a passing Mrs Withens. ‘Lovely to see you, Debbie,’ Harold had shouted.

  And now this. If there was anything Sergeant Feather disliked and mistrusted it was characters. Local characters. Every village had one, or had to pretend to have one if it hadn’t, but they were a highly dispensable element in Sergeant Feather’s professional life. They were usually crooked as a corkscrew in his opinion, and he always got the notion they were taking the mickey out of him, without ever being sure how, or why. It wasn’t that Stephen Feather lacked a sense of humour. He could laugh at himself with the best. But he liked to know why he was supposed to be laughing. And here was old Amos Chipweather, sitting in the most comfortable chair in the whole station (brought to him, under orders, by Feather himself) and having Parrish play up to him for nigh on half an hour in the most shameless, time-wasting fashion. The two had been going on nineteen to the dozen, and he wasn’t even sure whether he was supposed to be getting all the nonsense they talked down or not.

  Amos Chipweather was one of the local postmen. He wasn’t a singing postman, because someone else had thought of that first, but he would do anything else on earth at the glint of a coin. The prospect of a free pint of beer would send him off into an ecstasy of scabrous rural reminiscence, into long, improbable lectures on local lore and folk wisdom, or even into a tap-dance routine with a bit whistling thrown in – all depending upon the tastes and interests of his potential patron. Sergeant Feather thought him a shameless old scrounger, but Parrish always pointed out that he worked hard for the driblets of charity he received, and with an inventiveness well above the common run of mental activity in Twytching. And because he was the sort of character who inevitably is going to come in useful some day, Parrish had always made it his business to cultivate him.

  ‘An’ ’ee do say,’ Amos was chuckling to Parrish, ‘’at that young lad from Broadwich ‘at be staying at Lamb be soft on that other furriner, Missis Billington, an’ ’at he do sit there night arter night just a-lookin’ at ’er great cuddlers a-hanging atween the pumps. I couldn’t say a-self, cos I’m too busy a-lookin’ at ’em on me own account I hint got eyes for nothing else – he-he-he-he . . .’ And Amos ended in a great wheezy guffaw, which Parrish joined in, and the two collapsed over the table, each eyeing the other off the while. Sergeant Feather was disgusted. This was not the approach to the job they taught you at Police College.

  ‘She’s certainly got what it takes,’ said Parrish, finally straightening up from his frenzy of unsophisticated mirth.

  ‘She’m got a great bullocky husband as takes it, too,’ snuffled Amos, ‘and he int a goin’ to let one o’ them mannikins from that there commercial radio come and ’ave ’is little bite at the cherries, I’ll betcher.’

  ‘You’re probably right at that,’ said Parrish. ‘But it was letters we were talking about, you remember.’ He paused. ‘Odd letters, letters addressed in funny ways – you know the sort of thing I mean, don’t you, Amos?’

  There was an enormous, fecund rural pause.

  ‘Oo-a
h, I know what ’ee me-an,’ said Amos pregnantly.

  ‘Do you remember any, then, eh, Amos?’ asked Parrish wheedlingly.

  ‘I remember . . .’ said Amos, ‘I remember a old country saying from these ’ere parts – ’ave you ’erd it? “Thirsty thrushes sing but gribbetty songs” – ’ave you ’erd thetn?’

  ‘I have now,’ said Parrish.

  ‘I’se reckon I’d be but gribbetty, was I to say owt to you now,’ said Amos, putting on an expression of mock self-doubt. ‘’Aving this thirst on me like, after me round.’

  To Stephen Feather’s surprise, Inspector Parrish leant down under his desk, unlocked his bottom drawer, and produced a more than half-full bottle of scotch. Good scotch at that. Cunning old bugger, thought Feather to himself. Never said a word to me about it in all these years. The number of times we could have done with it too, after Saturday traffic duty and all.

  ‘Get us a glass, Sergeant,’ said Parrish rather grandly, ‘and a jug of water.’

  ‘Don’t ’ee bother about no wotter,’ said Amos Chipweather. ‘I don’t ’old with no wotter, ’cept when I ’as me bath now and then, and better then than now is what I ses.’

  ‘I thought perhaps since you felt gribbetty – ’ suggested Parrish.

  ‘Nothing better ’an pure whisky for a touch of the gribbets,’ said Amos, watching the liquid flowing into the glass, and seeming to will a little more out of the bottle. Amos had a very strong will.

  ‘Now,’ said Parrish, after Amos had had his first generous sip, and had begun washing it round his large mouth with appreciative grunts of ecstasy. ‘Shoot.’

  ‘Wew,’ said Amos, swallowing finally and reluctantly, and shaking his head as the warm shock reached his body. ‘Wew, there ’ave been some oddens, I’ll say that. Course, there allus be oddens, what wi’ some folk’s ’andwritin’, and little kiddies as writes to God and the Queen, and that. But there ‘ave been a powerful few oddens goin’ through this ’ere office in these last weeks.’

  ‘What sort of oddens?’ said Parrish encouragingly.

  ‘Wew,’ said Amos, ‘most on ‘ems quite simple like, see. Thems as ’as sent them’s just cut a line or two out of the drectry.’

  ‘The telephone drectry?’ asked Parrish.

  ‘That’s ’er,’ said Amos. ‘Just the one line, in some cases. But them as ’as businesses, like, and ’as it writ large on them there pages at the back, thems a bit larger. Just cut out, they was, an’ stuck on to th’emvelope wi’ that there sticky stuff what gets all around yer fingers and doesn’t go where yer puts it.’

  ‘Sellotape?’ asked Parrish.

  ‘That’s ’er,’ said Amos. ‘Just stuck on wi’ sellytape, they was. Then there was others – ’

  ‘Different types?’

  ‘Aaaah. Themses was like print. Single letters, like, one after another. Only not like ‘ee or I’ud write – a bit topsy-piggledy, like. No, these was all reg’lar and shipshape, like ’im as writ used a sort o’ shape to trace ’em out, like.’

  ‘One of those child’s lettering sets, do you mean?’

  ‘Oh-ah. ’Appen. Int had no children goin’ on for fifty years now – not as I’se ’ad the bringin’ up on.’

  Amos’s old face creased with delicious rumination, and he finished the final drops of his scotch.

  ‘Now, what about the details,’ said Parrish. ‘Who were these letters addressed to, can you remember that?’

  He already knew the answer to that. Amos’s wrist started jiggling his glass from side to side, and his disreputable old eye cast meaningful glances in its direction.

  ‘Aaah, if only I could,’ he said. ‘But a man’s memory do get powerful mumbled at this hour of the day.’

  Parrish poured.

  ‘Aaaah,’ said Amos, as if tasting liquid for the first time after a prolonged drought, ‘that do be better. Wew then, who was it now? Tain’t easy to call ’em to mind, not wi’ all the work and responsibilities we ’ave, like Mr Jackson says. Let’s see. There was that niminy-piminy schoolteacher type wi’ the nasty flummoxin’ ways kiddies hate, and wi’ the bonny wife.’

  ‘Mr Jimson?’ suggested Parrish.

  ‘Oh-ah, that’s ’im,’ said Amos Chipweather.

  ‘When did he get one?’

  ‘Ooo, ’appen a fortnight ago, ’appen longer. Can’t rightly figure out the details. Then there was ’im at the Lamb wi’ the frogglessome wife, and ’er as keeps the shop – Mrs Leaze.’

  ‘And the vicar?’ prompted Parrish.

  ‘Oh-ah. Them there clergies get in everywhere they int a-wanted. ‘E ’ad one, yes, I ’member that. Who else? Wew, Mrs Buller, she ’ad one, and ’er daughter as keeps ’aving the population explosions – yes, that I do mind. And Mr Mailer – ’

  ‘Mr Mailer?’ said Parrish, immediately interested.

  ‘Oh-ah. Or were it ’er as got it? Can’t rightly remember that.’ Amos furrowed his brow, and seemed genuinely distressed at not being able to deliver the goods. ‘No, I can’t call it to mind.’

  ‘When was it, can you remember that?’

  ‘Can’t rightly, not seein’ as there’s bin so many. Wasn’t one of th’ early ones, more recent than that, but they be all frumbled up in me mind, like. Last one was that Edgar chap from school, I do mind that. That were yesterday, so it’s fresh, like.’

  ‘Yesterday,’ said Parrish thoughtfully. ‘I see. What about today, then?’

  ‘No, int bin no more today?’

  ‘Have there been many days without any in the past few weeks, or do they come in little rushes, so to speak.’

  ‘Oh-ah, there int bin that many,’ said Amos. ‘’Appen two or three days ’d go by wi’out one. ’Appen more. But I don’t call to mind any day when there was more than one, not on my round.’

  ‘And there’s no one else got one, that you can remember?’

  Amos furrowed his brow, and entered gradually into a prolonged bout of rural contemplation, emerging struggling at the end of it to shake his head regretfully.

  ‘Int no more I can think on. ’Appen there was others, but I can’t call ’em to mind. I’ll ask me mates, o’ course . . .’

  Parrish, encouraging hand on shoulder, showed Amos out, suggesting that they would always be there if he ever remembered anything else that might be of use, however slight. The two parted most affectionately.

  ‘You’ll have him down here every hour of the day,’ observed Sergeant Feather sourly when he came back. ‘Old scrounger – he’ll remember that one had the stamp stuck on upside down, and he’ll come snuffling round for another drink.’

  ‘Case’ll be in the bag by Saturday,’ said Parrish comfortably. ‘Anyway, I’ve had that two years – time I got a fresh supply.’

  ‘I can’t see how you can be so confident we’ll have anyone charged by Saturday,’ said Feather.

  ‘Broadwich are playing home,’ murmured Parrish. His sergeant ignored him.

  ‘Anonymous letters are the very devil,’ said Feather, remembering an earlier case. ‘People sit on them like broody hens, swear they never received one, swear they burned it as soon as they’d read it, swear they never opened it at all. I’ve known it take a week to get an anonymous letter out of someone, and then it was only a lot of words I learnt before I took the eleven-plus.’

  ‘I’m hoping these are a bit more interesting than that,’ said Parrish. His cunning old eyes glinted. ‘And I doubt if they’ll be as reluctant as all that this time. There’ll be all the usual fuss and palaver at the beginning, but eventually I wouldn’t mind betting folk will bring them out pretty sharpish.’

  ‘Why should they?’

  ‘Murder, that’s why. Folk around here may be slow, but they’re not completely dim. They’ll have made the connection: anonymous letters – murder. And having made it, they’ll be scared rigid: either they might be done in, or they might be accused of it – revenge on the letter-writer. Once it gets through to them that we know they’ve received one, I should think they’ll co-o
perate, with a bit of pressure.’

  Sergeant Feather thought this out. ‘You mean they’ll think the letters were a sort of preliminary, the appetiser, so to speak, with the murder as the main course to follow?’

  ‘Something of the sort. Or else that Alison Mailer wrote them, and got herself done in by one of the recipients. But we’ll stress the first possibility – tell them she received one herself. Then they’ll be scared stiff for their own skins, and we’ll promise them full police protection if they co-operate.’

  Stephen was still deep in thought. ‘Interesting,’ he said, ‘that there was no letter today. Of course we’ll have to wait a bit, but if they’ve stopped, then the thing will be fairly clear, as far as I can see.’

  ‘Yes, interesting,’ said Parrish, ‘if a trifle obvious. No, I don’t rule out Alison Mailer as the writer, and certainly I don’t rule her out because either she or her husband got one. We’ll keep her in mind, as they say. But it’s not half as open and shut as you seem to think. By the way – how did she get on the programme?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You told me that little orange-haired birdie said he’d let it out on Monday night that she was to be on the programme.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did she get on?’

  Stephen looked crestfallen. ‘I didn’t ask him that.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Parrish disgusted. ‘Talk about keeping a dog and having to do the rat-catching yourself.’

  ‘Well, he was talking such a lot of bilge,’ said Stephen in an aggrieved voice, ‘and then he kept fluttering those damned eyelashes at me, and he grabbed hold of my hand, and I – ’

  But Parrish had left the room, closing the door with the nearest such an equable type could get to a bang.

  CHAPTER IX

  PRIVATE AND PERSONAL

  The rest of Wednesday, and most of Thursday morning as well, was devoted by Parrish to the securing of the mysterious correspondence which had apparently floated around Twytching for the past few weeks without anyone being willing to divulge to anyone else the fact of his having received one. This was a job Parrish felt he had to do for himself. Sergeant Feather’s more brutal and censorious approaches seemed more likely to scare people into silence than to encourage them into full co-operation. However, he let him loose on Mrs Buller’s Val, with strict instructions to be understanding and lovable. And – feeling much more guilty about this – he gave the vicar to Sergeant Underwood, on the grounds that he had had enough of religious dottiness to last him for several months. The rest of Amos Chipweather’s list of lucky recipients he took himself.