Murder Near Slaughter

by L. A. Nisula

  Miss Dyer shook her head. “I think we should offer you sympathy, although you seem to have the tea and cakes sorted out.” She nodded at my hamper. “We told him the whole story about moving Mr. Hoyt. He seemed to know about it already, but then if you knew him, I suppose you had to tell him.”

  “He wouldn’t have taken my not telling him well.”

  “At least that’s over with,” Miss Hayworth said. “He seemed to believe us, which I think is the best we could hope for. Come along. Let’s get something to eat.”

  Inside, the pub looked like it had recently had a good cleaning, which was reassuring. Miss Hayworth and Miss Dyer brought me straight over to the side of the bar that seemed to be where food was ordered. The man further down the bar talking while he handed out drinks spotted us at once. “Hello, ladies. Back again, eh? Knew those fish and chips were a good idea. And you must be one of the temporary residents of Oakwood Cottage.”

  “Miss Pengear,” I supplied.

  “Nice to meet you. Silas Brunner, best barman in the county. I’ll see you’re done right. Wouldn’t want Mrs. Foster thinking we don’t take care of her guests. What shall I get you? Three fish and chips?”

  “Four,” Miss Dyer answered.

  “Wrapped to take to the cottages, then. I think Lucy just finished a batch, nice and hot. Just give me a minute.” He went to the door to the kitchen and called to Lucy then went back to the customers at the bar.

  Miss Hayworth and Miss Dyer moved to the wall by the door to wait out of the way, so I followed them. While we waited for our food, I let my gaze drift around the pub. There seemed to be at least three rooms, not counting the kitchen. The one we were in was dominated by the bar and seemed to be filled with people either sitting at the bar to talk to Mr. Brunner or waiting for food, with a few people scattered around at tables by themselves. The next room over seemed to be where people who wanted to sit in the pub and eat went, as it appeared filled with families or groups of workers taking the long way home. Most of the pints seemed to be going through to the third room, which made me think most of Mr. Hoyt’s old clientele had been relegated to the farthest room.

  “There’s someone you’ll be interested in,” Miss Hayworth murmured. “Green scarf, brown coat, second table from the door.”

  I tried to spot the table without being obvious. It didn’t matter. I spotted the woman in question at once, the woman from Mr. Burton’s who had told me the cake was safe to eat, and she spotted me as I glanced around and gave a short, polite nod which I returned and kept looking around as if I hadn’t been looking for her.

  “You’ve met?” Miss Dyer asked as she stared at the door to the kitchen, looking like she was interested in nothing more than when our food would be ready.

  I started looking at the blackboard with the evening’s specials written on it, pretending to be terribly interested in the game pie and treacle tart. “In Mr. Burton’s grocery.”

  “And no doubt she accused you of murder, very politely, of course.”

  “More warned me that there would be a real detective down soon.”

  Miss Hayworth nodded slightly. “Not surprising.”

  “Any reason why I should be interested in her?”

  “Gossip,” Miss Dyer answered. “And you were poking around behind the shops. Mrs. Carney. She was rumored to be one of Mr. Hoyt’s ladies when she was between husbands.”

  “The first was lost at sea, or so she said when she moved here,” Miss Hayworth explained.

  “That does seem worth considering. She was with two other ladies.”

  “Do you see either of them here?” Miss Hayworth asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, if you notice any of them around, we’ll tell you what we know of them. I think Mr. Brunner has our food.”

  He did indeed have our food, four orders of fish and chips each wrapped in their own pages of newspaper. We paid and split up the packets, then I followed the pair outside.

  “I take it you’re going home now?” Miss Dyer asked and nodded to the food I was carrying.

  “I want to get back before Mrs. Albright starts fixing something to eat.”

  “Then we’ll walk with you.”

  “If you’ve finished in the village, I’d be glad of the company.” And I was glad of it. I’d spent enough time puzzling over the case. A bit of conversation about anything else would be a welcome break.

  But I wasn’t to be so lucky. We were just off the high street heading towards the ford when Miss Hayworth asked, “You said you knew the Scotland Yard inspector?”

  “That’s right, not well enough to be friendly, but rather well.”

  “What about the constables he brought down, are they any good?”

  “Very, if it’s his usual ones. I saw Constable Edwards in the churchyard, so he’s here, and the other is Constable Kittering. If you have anything you want to pass on discreetly, they’re the ones to go to.”

  “You mean like gossip about Mrs. Hoyt’s affairs?” Miss Dyer asked with a little bit of a smile at Miss Hayworth, as if she knew that was the point of the question.

  “Mrs. Hoyt’s? I hadn’t heard that.” I hoped it would encourage them to talk.

  It did. Miss Hayworth leaned over and said, “We hadn’t until today, either, but now it’s all anyone’s talking about.”

  “With Mr. Reynolds, if you can believe it. She must have a fondness for quality tinned goods of dubious origin or something.” Miss Dyer shook her head. “I suppose that was rather catty of me, but can you imagine? He’s so loud and brash. I would think she’d have had enough of that with Mr. Hoyt and his friends.”

  “Perhaps she likes the type?” I offered.

  “You haven’t met her, have you?” Miss Hayworth asked.

  I shook my head. “It’s that obviously not the case?”

  They both nodded.

  “If you wanted to meet her,” Miss Hayworth went on, “there’s going to be a memorial service for him later this week. We’d be happy to have you come with us. The body hasn’t been released, but she wants to do something.”

  “Of course everyone in the village is saying she wants to get it over with and get on with her life. You know they are, Nora.”

  “Yes, but that might not be the best thing to say in front of the churchyard.”

  “The vicar’s not back yet.”

  “But there is a policeman.”

  “That’s Constable Edwards,” I told them. “He can be trusted to ignore things.”

  Right on cue, Constable Edwards called to us, “Have a nice evening, ladies,” then grinned as Miss Dyer and Miss Hayworth both turned, clearly wondering how much he’d heard, which, if I knew Constable Edwards, was most of it.

  Once we’d were out of sight of the churchyard, Miss Dyer started to laugh. “I’m going to start listening to you, Nora.”

  “About time. I think this is where we leave you, Miss Pengear. We’ll let you know when we have the details of the memorial.”

  “Thank you.” I waved as I continued on to the path that would take me to Oakwood Cottage. Miss Dyer and Miss Hayworth waited by their gate until they saw I was on my way, then went into their garden.

  Chapter 12

  WHEN I GOT BACK TO OAKWOOD COTTAGE, Mrs. Albright was in the kitchen contemplating the cupboards. I held up my purchases from the village. “I brought us something for dinner and for breakfast in the morning.”

  That made her smile. “I was just wishing I’d told you to get something for tonight. I have no idea where Mrs. Foster keeps her baking dishes. Fish and chips?”

  Since that was what I always brought when I was bringing dinner, it wasn’t much of a surprise. “From the pub. According to Miss Hayworth and Miss Dyer, they’re using an old recipe that’s excellent.”

  Mrs. Albright took the newspaper-wrapped packets from me. “I have the oven lit, so I’ll put these in for a minute to warm up.”

  “And the hamper has some scones and jam and bread for brea
kfast, and a fig cake for tea.”

  Mrs. Albright looked over at the hamper. “So you went back to Mr. Elliott’s? Did you find anything?”

  “I don’t know. I think I made it more confusing.” While Mrs. Albright got the hamper put away and the fish and chips warmed, I went through the cupboards looking for plates and vinegar for the chips, and told her about my investigations.

  “That ought to be some sort of progress, then. I knew you’d find something.”

  “I just wish I knew what I’d found.”

  “You’ll think of it. You think there’s something not right about the whole thing, I can tell from how you told me the story.”

  I brought the vinegar to the table. “There are plenty of things not right with it, I just don’t know that any of them are useful. Part of the problem is there’s no murder scene. I’m used to knowing where it happened, who might have seen something, how the killer got away, why the victim was there. But we don’t know where there is.”

  Mrs. Albright nodded. “That does seem to be a problem. Is there any way to determine where he was killed?”

  “There must be, I just don’t know what it would be. Is the fish ready?”

  “I think so. We don’t want it to burn.”

  Miss Dyer was right about the fish; it was excellent. Mrs. Albright didn’t say much once we started eating, which gave me time to think. She was right as well; there was something about the whole mess that seemed wrong, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Something besides at least four groups of people deciding that moving a body they’d found was more sensible than calling for a constable. Surely, if you stumbled across your neighbor lying dead on your property, you would think to offer a bit of assistance, even if you didn’t like the fellow. And then I realized what was bothering me about the whole thing, or at least one of the things. He was their neighbor, in a small village, not London. “Why take his identification?”

  Mrs. Albright looked up from her chips. “Well, I would think the normal reason would be to hide his identity, wouldn’t it?”

  “That’s what I would think, but everyone here except for Lord Hector and Mr. Briggs knew him on sight, so there wouldn’t be any point to it. And surely Lord Hector would be clever enough to know that everyone in a village like this knows each other. Besides, he was the one who told me there was no identification since he’d checked his pockets for it.”

  Mrs. Albright added some more vinegar to the lower levels of her chips then offered me the bottle. “All right, that sounds promising, then. What do you think happened to it?”

  “Either the killer took it because something about it pointed to them... Maybe they took the whole wallet, looking for a particular calling card or something. Or no one took it at all and it fell out of his pocket somewhere.”

  Mrs. Albright nodded. “You mean at the original murder scene. And if you could find the original murder scene, it might point to the original murderer.”

  “Exactly. Unless it fell out somewhere along the way and no one noticed. He was moved a lot, and I doubt anyone bothered to watch his pockets, as he was in no state to himself. Either way, it seems the thing to do is find it. It’s a pity Mr. Elliott didn’t notice if he had his wallet when he found the body. It would rule out it being lost at the original scene if he had.”

  “Still, it’s a place to start.”

  I realized Mrs. Albright was hoping to encourage me to investigate by getting me to plan out what I could do. And it seemed to be working. “I suppose I ought to have a chat with Inspector Wainwright and let him know to be looking for it. The village is small, but not small enough for me to search on my own. Unless his identification turns up near the shop. If he lost it somewhere along the way, I’m not sure how much help it is to us, except that it would show it had been lost while he was being moved and wasn’t worth looking for. Of course, we’d have to look for it in order to determine that.” It was starting to sound like the sort of thing Inspector Wainwright would be happy for me to investigate, in other words, a probable dead end of little use and lots of bother.

  “Do you think it’s worth pursuing?”

  “I might as well. If nothing else, if I don’t find it anywhere along the way, it would tell me that wherever I do find it is probably where he was killed. And I might get lucky and it might give me an idea of someplace else to look.”

  Mrs. Albright seemed satisfied with that answer. At least she didn’t say anything else about investigating while we finished our food and tidied up, then collected our lanterns, went out the kitchen door, locked everything up, double-checked it, went all the way around the cottage, unlocked the front door, locked up the front of the house, double-checked everything there, and finally made it upstairs to bed.

  ~ * ~ * ~

  The next morning, looking for Mr. Hoyt’s wallet was still my best idea, my only idea, really, so after a breakfast of scones and toast from Mr. Elliott’s hamper, I made certain I had my best hatpins and set out for Eybry. As I left Oakwood Cottage, I decided that, as I was walking to the village, I might as well take the route past the cottages and look for the wallet as I went. If I found it, then I would know it had fallen out as he’d been moved, and there wouldn’t be much point to trying to get inside Mr. Elliott’s flat to look for it. If I didn’t find it, and I could confirm that Mr. Elliott didn’t have it, either by searching his flat myself or, a decidedly second best, by asking him to look for it, then I would know that the wallet was most likely at the murder scene, and I could begin trying to figure out the best way to go about finding it.

  Of course, there really wasn’t much point to looking for Mr. Hoyt’s wallet or other identification on the path from Oakwood Cottage to Trillwell Lodge, as Lord Hector had said he’d checked the pockets before he moved the body to our sitting room and found nothing. Unless he hadn’t done much of a job of checking. I’d have to ask him how thoroughly he’d checked. If I was planning on speaking to him again, of course, something I hadn’t decided about yet. In any case, I’d no doubt be walking back that way to get home, so if I didn’t find anything more helpful, I could always search on my way back. That meant it was easiest to begin at Trillwell Lodge and work back to Mulberry Cottage in case Mr. Hoyt’s wallet had fallen out while Miss Dyer and Miss Hayworth were moving him. And it was very likely both Lord Hector and Mr. Briggs would still be hung over from the night before and not interested in what I was doing at all, so I could search in peace.

  When I approached at the cottages, Trillwell Lodge seemed empty, which I doubted was the case. Far more likely, the residents had both passed out. Still, it seemed the best chance I was going to get to look around there. The gate was still propped open with the broken latch, so there was no trouble getting into the front garden. I remember Miss Dyer had said they’d used the wheelbarrow to move the body, so they would have had to have taken a path that could accommodate it. The smoothest way to the river’s edge seemed to be straight through the middle of the lawn, so I began walking that way, brushing aside the overly long grass with the tip of my shoe as I walked, hoping to spot something useful.

  I walked slowly all the way to the edge of the terrace where Miss Dyer said they’d left the body but found nothing that could have been his. There were a fair number of empty bottles, bits of newspaper, and another stocking, although not the mate to the one I’d found in the bush. I didn’t have much hope of finding anything—if Lord Hector really had looked for identification in Mr. Hoyt’s pockets, I would think he would have checked the surrounding riverbank as well, that being an easier job than going through a damp corpse’s clothes—but as I had the chance to look around, I thought I might as well take it, in the interests of being thorough. At least then I’d know the wallet hadn’t been lost near the river and could continue to work backwards. And I did have my hatpins, although I didn’t think I’d need them unless Mr. Briggs was up and about. I continued down to the edge of the water and pushed aside some of the long plants along the bank in case anything
had fallen from his pockets when he’d dropped into the river. No such luck. Unless Constable Edwards had already been poking around here. I had to remember we now had competent investigators involved, which made my involvement seem rather superfluous. With that in mind, I straightened and started back up the slope of the riverbank to the lawn.

  “Would you like a hand or shall I continue to admire from afar?”

  Apparently, the residents of Trillwell Lodge had not been passed out, at least not both of them. “Lord Hector, hello.” There didn’t seem to be any need to explain to him what I was doing on his property—if he couldn’t figure that out on his own, he was an even bigger fool than I’d thought. And while I did not want his assistance getting up the slope, it seemed prudent to say nothing just in case it should become necessary.

  “It’s a bit drier along the left side there, if you’re interested.”

  He seemed to be correct, so I took the drier edge of the slope and managed quite well. When I was again on level ground, I realized Lord Hector had in fact been watching me quite closely. He stepped back as soon as he saw I was in no danger of falling, which made me wonder what he would have done had I lost my balance. Even if he wouldn’t have been much help, it was nice of him to have considered making an attempt.

  “I take it you were looking for any clues our erstwhile detectives missed.”

  “So there have been people looking around?”

  “Sergeant Harris, who would have missed the river itself if I hadn’t pointed him towards it, Constable Taylor, who gave the lawn a thorough going-over and found the cravat pin I lost three days ago, a London constable who did an even more thorough search and found the packet of postcards Freddie lost last month, though he didn’t give that back, although Freddie should be glad he doesn’t seem to be prosecuting either, and the London detective, who went through those reeds so thoroughly I think he found things left by tenants past going back a century or more. Really, they should send him to Greece to find the remains of the Trojan horse. Pity he isn’t more fun, or any fun at all, or I’d suggest it to him. Although I don’t think I’d be the one he’d want to go with. Did you find what you were looking for?”