Murder Near Slaughter

by L. A. Nisula

  I shook the leaves off of my skirt.

  “He wouldn’t tell me either. You detectives are very close-mouthed. I need to find your Watson and have him tell all. Unless you’re Watson, in which case you’re as difficult to get information out of as he is.”

  I decided it was time to change the subject. “Is that where you found him?”

  “Yes, between that tuft of greyish things and that big brown rock. Facedown. Horrible time getting him up to the lawn. I’d like to know how those two managed to get him down there to begin with. Beastly of them to go to the trouble. Just the sort of thing Miss Dyer would do.”

  I decided not to tell him Mr. Hoyt falling into the river was purely accidental. “You don’t like Miss Dyer very much, do you?”

  “Why on earth would I like her when she despises me? After all, she did leave a corpse practically on my back terrace.”

  “To be fair, you left the same corpse in my sitting room and expect me to take you seriously.”

  “Yes, but that’s entirely different. I wasn’t intending to leave him for you. He was meant for Mrs. Foster.”

  “Which makes it even worse, considering you knew she’d be gone for another three weeks. Coming home to a month-old corpse is not a pleasant thing.”

  He paused. “All right, I’ll grant you that. I did not fully consider the effects of decomposition on the issue, but in my defense, I was drunk when I did it. Miss Dyer has no such defense.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Are you ever not drunk?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  Although he seemed quite sober now. “And not as often as you want us to think.”

  He opened his mouth to answer but was prevented by a crash from the direction of the kitchen. “I think we can both agree dear old Freddie manages to maintain at least four sheets to the wind at all times.”

  Before I could decide how to answer, the kitchen door opened and Mr. Briggs stumbled out carrying an empty plate and a coffee cup. “They send someone else? I didn’t think anyone was coming until Friday. Well, bring her up.”

  “This is Miss Pengear,” Lord Hector called. “With the body, remember?”

  “Why’d she bring a body?”

  “She didn’t bring it, we brought it to her.”

  “Oh. How’d we get it?”

  “Miss Dyer and Miss Hayworth brought it over.”

  “That’s right. We ought to go over there and invite them over. Be a good distraction while we wait for the ones from London. She can stay too, but she can’t bring the body.”

  “I don’t think any of them are staying.”

  “Nonsense. Miss Dyer likes me, or she will once I get a minute alone with her. You could get Miss Hayworth to like you. Mention the title. Title always works. Is there any coffee?”

  “Inside, I would think.”

  “Why’s it in there?” Mr. Briggs turned and stumbled back inside.

  Lord Hector chuckled and said quietly, “Poor old Freddie. Likes to think he’s a man of the world, but he can be quite naive about les affairs du coeur.”

  “What, Hec? Did you call me?” Mr. Briggs called through the kitchen door.

  “Not at all.”

  Mr. Briggs came out with the coffee pot but no cup or plate. “Then you were talking about me, weren’t you?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Out with it.”

  “I was just telling Miss Pengear that you’re not Miss Dyer’s type. Or Miss Hayworth’s type, for that matter.”

  “Course I am. Have no trouble at all with them if I wanted to. Just don’t like wasting my time on bluestockings.”

  “You go on thinking that,” Lord Hector said under his breath.

  “Aren’t I your type, Miss...” I could see he was struggling for my name, which I was not about to help him with.

  Lord Hector sighed. “Go back into the kitchen before you annoy her.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  Lord Hector pretended to misunderstand. “Don’t know, but if you did, she’d probably find evidence to say you’d killed old Hoyt and then you’d be in real trouble.”

  “Don’t know why she’d do that. I have an excellent manner with women. Just ask—what was her name, last week? The redhead?”

  “Ruby, and I don’t think five guineas would go as far with this one.”

  “You’re mocking me. I know it.”

  “I am not, you’re just drunk.”

  Mr. Briggs attempted to put the coffee pot down on the edge of a flower pot, where it promptly fell to the terrace. Fortunately for the owner, it was both metal and empty. “Going to go see Reynolds. He appreciates me.”

  “You do that. And see if you can get him to give you some of that wine.”

  “I do have a way with him, don’t I?” Mr. Briggs wandered across the terrace and into the back garden without his hat. I couldn’t tell if he had his shoes on or not.

  Lord Hector rolled his eyes. “Forgot his coat again, didn’t he? I hope he had his trousers on, at least.”

  I was more than a little surprised to realize he was serious. Perhaps Miss Dyer’s story of their late night trouble wasn’t quite as exaggerated as I had thought. “Is that something we need to worry about?”

  “Oh, he’s only drunk enough for that at night, and then he can’t get far. You and the village are safe enough. I’m the only one who has to worry.” The last was said in the tone of someone who’d had to worry about it quite often and was thoroughly sick of it.

  “If you dislike him so much, why are you staying with him?” I realized I didn’t know their exact arrangement so I added, “Or having him stay with you?”

  “The first was correct, I am indeed staying with him. As to why, why he provides the foie gras and the wine, of course. Not a penny to my name.”

  I sighed. “Dare I ask why?”

  “The normal reasons. Papa, in his great foolishness, had me pegged for the army. Second son and all that. Didn’t suit, obviously, so he sent me to Oxford with the intention I should become some sort of country vicar. I’m sure you can imagine how well that went. So now I’m cut off without a sous, having failed at both of the acceptable paths open to a second son. But don’t worry about old Freddie, he doesn’t like me either, or rather he likes my title quite well. That’s how we met, you know. First day at Eton, he was going around asking ‘Who are you?’ and pressing until he found out who someone’s parents were. Once he heard Papa was the Marquess of Ludston, he was all over himself to be my friend and get to introduce himself as the friend of Lord Hector. Only person more thrilled by the friendship—if you call it that— was old Mr. Briggs. Practically asked if my older brother was prone to illness or riding accidents the first time we met. Luckily, I’m not easily offended.”

  I felt a faint stirring of sympathy for Lord Hector and tamped it down quickly. He was still waiting for wine and ladies from town, and he was still a murder suspect. Still, I asked, “So what would you do then, if you weren’t a second son?”

  “I would like nothing better than to be an artist.”

  “So you paint?”

  “Badly. And before you ask, I also draw badly; none of my artist friends will let me anywhere near sculpting tools after one particular incident, the less said about it the better, and my embroidery does not even deserve the name. Yes, I even tried that, and failed at it spectacularly, and stitched a sampler to the arm of my chair for my trouble. If I had any talent at all, I would pop off to Paris and stay with one of my artist friends there, but alas, I am even less qualified to be what I want to be than I am to be what I am. And so I stay with Freddie or his ilk and enjoy myself.”

  “Are you enjoying yourself?”

  “Well, not while I’m accused of murder. That is one experience I would prefer not to have. I’d better go and see if he’s actually gone to see Reynolds or if he’s collapsed in the back garden. You’ll be perfectly safe going out the front. It will take him a good hour to find his way there.”

  I knew th
at was a dismissal, but then I was poking around his garden so I wasn’t particularly surprised to be dismissed. I suspected the hour was an exaggeration, so I hurried across the lawn and back out the gate.

  Chapter 13

  MULBERRY COTTAGE WAS NEXT ON MY AGENDA. Miss Dyer had said they used a wheelbarrow to transport Mr. Hoyt, so if something had fallen out of his pockets, it was most likely it had landed in there. But I still looked along the path to be certain it hadn’t been lost along the way. At least there was only one logical way for them to have gone, along the lane straight from their cottage to Trillwell Lodge.

  As I approached Mulberry Cottage, I found myself with another dilemma. I’d had no qualms about poking around in Lord Hector and Mr. Briggs’s yard without asking, but I wasn’t sure what I ought to do about Mulberry Cottage. I was fairly confident they’d allow me to poke around, but that was because I believed their version of events. If I was being properly objective, then telling them I was looking for anything that might have fallen out of Mr. Hoyt’s pockets wasn’t a good idea. If I was wrong and they were involved, it would give them an idea of where the investigation was going and the chance to plant something in a way that would be helpful to them. I could just hear Inspector Wainwright saying that was what became of becoming friendly with murder suspects. The most galling part was that I was fairly certain Inspector Burrows would say something similar.

  But I was in luck. When I approached Mulberry Cottage, no one was in the yard, and the cottage had the definitely look of someplace that was empty. I tried the gate and found it unlocked, so I let myself into the front garden. Briefly, I considered knocking at the door in case I had misread the area and the ladies were peering at me through the window, but I told myself to be as objective with them as I’d been with the residents of Trillwell Lodge and went looking for the wheelbarrow. Best to get the most intrusive over first, then I could examine the area near the gate where they had found the body. I assumed the wheelbarrow would be kept with the rest of the gardening supplies, and it seemed most likely that would be in the back garden.

  I’d only had a glimpse of the back garden along the side of the cottage, but it was more or less what I’d been expecting. A compact area of well-tended lawn with a small table and chairs set up near the back door, more rose bushes and several flower beds, each planted according to a different pattern which no doubt made them more interesting to paint, and three small sheds along the back of the property.

  The first thing to do seemed to be to find the wheelbarrow. I had no doubt Inspector Wainwright had sent someone to examine it as soon as he’d heard Miss Dyer’s description of moving the body, so there was little chance of me finding anything useful in it, but at least it would give me an idea of how the process had been carried out.

  Fortunately, the wheelbarrow was easy enough to find. It had been left out by one of the sheds. As everything else had been tidied away, I wondered if that meant that the police were planning on looking it over again and so it had been left convenient for them. Of course, it was quite possible that Miss Hayworth and Miss Dyer didn’t want something that had been carrying a dead body near the rest of their gardening tools, although that did cause one to wonder why they would have used it to begin with. Reminding myself I was being objective, there was also the possibility that they were hiding something in the shed and didn’t want the police to go inside, so had left what they were most likely to examine out on the lawn. That meant the shed was the first thing I ought to look at.

  Unfortunately, that was harder than it seemed. The door was locked with a very modern padlock, not that sort of thing that could be easily opened with a hatpin. If my tinkering friend Kate had been with me, she probably could have managed it, but it was far beyond anything I could do. I walked around the shed to see if there were any windows, but there wasn’t even a convenient knot in the wood. I turned my attention back to the wheelbarrow.

  As I’d thought, there wasn’t much to be learned from it. It was a sturdy wooden one, not new but not particularly old. They had probably acquired it when they moved into the cottage. If anything had fallen inside the wheelbarrow, it had already been found. There was nothing inside, not even twigs or grasses left over from gardening. I knelt to examine the front wheel, but all of the dirt and leaves caught on it seemed to fit with what I saw around me. Still, at least I knew their story of moving the body was plausible. The wheelbarrow was large enough and sturdy enough to do the job. I gave it a small push and noted that the wheel seemed to work well, so they should have been able to manage the short distance to Trillwell Lodge just as they’d described. As I walked back to the gate, I kept my gaze on the grass in case something had fallen out of the wheelbarrow as they’d put it away, but nothing caught my eye, and the lawn had been well tended, so something out of place would have been noticeable and therefore noticed by Constable Taylor or Constable Edwards.

  Back at the gate, I did a more thorough search of the ground where Miss Dyer had described finding the body and Mr. Reynolds had described dumping it. Both seemed to have described the same area, so I knew more or less where to look, but again there was nothing, and the short grass would have made it easy to spot anything there was to find.

  So no better off than I had been when I started unless you counted having ruled out two places, I continued on to the previous stop in Mr. Hoyt’s journey. The churchyard. Mr. Reynolds had described moving the body as trying to get it to the nearest place out of the way of the ladies going for their church meeting, so he would have taken the most direct route, which was to continue down the lane, cross the footpath at the ford, and along to the churchyard. It was also a good choice, being flat and relatively deserted. But to be thorough, I also tried going across the bridge on the other side of the ford in case he hadn’t wanted to get his shoes wet, although that added a rather tricky bit of going up along the riverbank to get to it, not easy to do with a body.

  But there was absolutely nothing to find on the path as I walked. I assumed the police had been over it as well, as had any locals, children, ramblers, and who knew what else. But at least now I knew.

  This time, the churchyard was empty when I got there, which would certainly make it easier to go poking around, although again I had very little hope of finding anything after Constable Edwards had searched. Mr. Reynolds had said he’d found the body by the side gate, so that was the place to start looking. The gate swung out into the lane, so a body leaning against it would definitely seem to fall out into your path. I could see how Mr. Reynolds would have been shocked by that, although not shocked enough to go for the police, it seemed. Just inside the gate, there was no formal path, but the grass had been trampled down by countless feet, so it was as good as. It also meant there was no place just by the gate for something like a wallet to be hidden.

  I turned my attention to the small flowers and weeds growing along the wall near the gate, too close to the stones to be bothered by foot traffic. Nothing there but a few bits of discarded newspaper, all too old to have been related to the murder. I did find a number of bent flowers and crushed leaves, which seemed to suggest that I was in the place where Mr. Hoyt had been left, but no wallet or anything I would expect to find from his pockets. That meant I would be continuing on to the cheese shop.

  That was going to be a tricky one. I doubted Mr. Elliott was going to let me go upstairs and poke around in his flat, but I wasn’t sure how else I could be sure the wallet hadn’t been lost there. And I’d already checked the lane in back where the body must have entered the shop; I’d have noticed a wallet then.

  While I considered the best way to go about determining the missing wallet wasn’t in the cheese shop, I had a bit of a walk around the churchyard. There were some grasses by the back gate which had been trampled almost flat. It was quite a distance from the place where Mr. Reynolds had found the body, but it seemed worth having a look, more because it would give me a bit more time before I had to decide how to approach Mr. Elliott than because I t
hought it would be related.

  It was a good thing I did go looking. Clearly, Constable Edwards had also thought the back gate was too far from the place the body had been found to be worth searching, but I’d barely pushed aside the top layer of grasses when I spotted a brown leather wallet. I took a clean handkerchief from my pocket and used it to gently pick up the wallet. It was used, but not weathered, so not something that had been out in the elements for long. I straightened up and opened the wallet. There was a stack of slightly faded business cards for “J. Hoyt, Sales Representative, Mrs. Quimby’s Quality Tinned Goods. As good as you would make them.” So this had been his. I poked through the compartments and found a small amount of money, so he hadn’t been robbed, a receipt from a pub in Bristol, and a card for a barber in Chipping Campden.

  So the wallet wasn’t going to be as useful as I’d hoped. Not dropped at the crime scene, merely as Mr. Elliott had been moving the body. Although why on earth would Mr. Elliott have used the back gate to enter the churchyard? It would have been faster and more direct to go through the side gate, or to simply toss him over it, than to walk along the stone wall to the back gate. And why carry him clear across the churchyard to the other gate rather than leave him somewhere along the way? There were plenty of headstones to lean him against, and trees, bushes, even a small bench. Any of those would have been closer. It seemed I would have a few more questions for Mr. Elliott after all, although I didn’t think any of them would be any easier than asking to search his flat would have been.

  I wrapped the wallet in my handkerchief and put it in my pocket. Now I would have to bring it to Inspector Wainwright and tell him how I found it. I paced off the distance from the gate to the spot where I’d found the wallet, being careful not to step on any evidence even though I was certain plenty of people had already been by, including most of the ladies’ group and Mr. Simmons, which I supposed made Mr. Reynolds’ concern about shocking the ladies a little more probable, then looked for anything that would point to exactly where I had seen the wallet. I didn’t want to mark the spot in case it confused any evidence there, so I had to settle for saying it was just in front of a large, pink weed. Hopefully, that would be enough for him to find the place.