by L. A. Nisula
“He was certainly busy then, wasn’t he?”
“Was being the correct word. Mrs. Otway thinks that was all over before he started running the pub. At least with those ladies. She seemed to think there were others, but she wouldn’t come right out and say who. I’m going to try to work on her over tea tomorrow.”
“But it does explain why they were all acting so curiously around me in the village. And it means they’re all still suspects, along with their husbands. And I found out that there were rumors about Mrs. Hoyt as well, with Mr. Elliott of the cheese shop.”
Mrs. Albright refilled her cup. “That does explain why the body was left there. And why she was so unhelpful when we were looking for him that morning. Do you suppose it was him?”
“No, I went to see him after I left and got him to tell me what was going on. Mrs. Hoyt was having him put aside money from the pub in case Mr. Hoyt burned through it. She thought he was gambling.”
“Money coming in not out? That’s unusual. Perhaps he got tired of affairs and wanted a new vice. Unless Mr. Elliott said that to distract us.”
“No, I think I believe him. He let slip another name, Lillian, which I think is his actual paramour.”
“Well, men were deceivers ever.”
“You’re in a Shakespearean mood tonight.”
“It was the only thing to read that wasn’t in the sitting room, and as that’s blocked off...”
“You should have asked. I brought plenty of books with me.”
“That explains the trunk, I suppose. But Mrs. Otway and I have been talking about going to Stratford-upon-Avon for an afternoon. She has a sister who runs an inn there. I thought it would be a good time to refresh my memory. By the by, it wasn’t your handwriting on that list of names.”
“No, Inspector Wainwright wrote it out for me. And without being asked.”
“So he’s that desperate, then? It must be quite a confusing case. Were you able to give him all this information?”
“He was still at the village hall when I’d finished with Mr. Elliott, and I didn’t think he’d welcome me bothering him there again, and as it looked about to rain, I decided to put it off. Which means tomorrow I’ll have to go and explain to him why I didn’t tell him everything today.”
“He ought to be grateful to get the information at all.”
“But we both know he won’t be. But at least he’ll listen, unlike Sergeant Harris.”
“That’s something at least. Mrs. Otway brought over a pound cake after you left this morning. We should have a celebratory slice. Or a consoling one, I’m not sure which applies.” She got up and went to the cupboard where she’d put the cake. I went to find the plates.
~ * ~ * ~
After a bit of tea and scones the next morning, I set out bright and early for Eybry. That seemed to be the best place to find some way to get to Stow-on-the-Wold, or perhaps find out if Inspector Wainwright was expected back in the village. And if I caught him early enough, perhaps he wouldn’t have had time to get irritated with any of his other witnesses. I planned to check in the square first and if that failed, go to Mr. Elliott’s for advice with the thought that he’d be eager to get rid of me. That often worked with Inspector Wainwright. As I turned onto the lane leading to the ford, I realized I should have brought Miss Hayworth’s coat with me. It would have given me an excuse to call on them, and they would know the best way to get to Stow-on-the-Wold. I was just wondering if it was worth turning back when I heard my name called.
“Miss Pengear, you’re up and about early.”
“Lord Hector, I wouldn’t have taken you for a morning person myself.” I certainly had not expected to run into him, but there he was, perched atop the driver’s seat of the steam landau, which was now most definitely parked on the lane and not stuck in the gate.
“I’m thinking we’ll save a day’s rent on this contraption if I bring it back before Morales opens for the day.”
That was more logical than I’d expected him to be so early, unless he hadn’t been to bed yet. I decided against asking that, though. “You got it out. And in one piece. I’m impressed.”
Lord Hector grinned at that. “Yes, apparently I’m not completely useless when I put my mind to it.”
He seemed quite proud of himself, so I asked, “How did you manage it?”
“Took down part of the gate. Pulled the nails out and everything. It wasn’t my idea, of course. Aunt Gertrude’s footman came down to get Miss Dyer’s painting and suggested it. Didn’t help a bit, of course. I think he enjoyed watching me struggle with the bolts. But it’s done. Now I just have to figure out how to put it back or we’ll have countless local sheep paying calls on us. The gate, not this lovely.” He patted the side of the landau as if he’d suddenly become attached to it. “So now where to, Miss Pengear? Anywhere in England, or beyond if you think this contraption is seaworthy. Not sure it is, but willing to try if you are.”
And most likely he would leave me at the post office to pay for the rental that was now two days past due. “A kind offer, but...”
He cut me off. “And don’t worry about the money. Freddie is paying.” He correctly read my expression and added, “I can show you the cash if you like.”
I sighed. “All right then. I was planning to visit Inspector Wainwright.”
“You’re certain you wouldn’t rather try for Paris? Or even Birmingham seems better than him, and Aunt Gertrude is in Birmingham.”
I wondered if Aunt Gertrude was related to the aunt Mr. Moron had mentioned. “I have something to discuss with him.”
“As long as I don’t have to discuss it. Hop aboard.”
Lord Hector kept up a cheerful patter of nonsense all the way to Stow-on-the-Wold, but he did manage to bring us there in one piece and without too much jolting around. He left me on a side street just around the corner from the police station—most likely because it was empty and gave him plenty of room to stop the landau and to start it again—and went on his way with a cheery wave and a great deal of excess steam and grinding gears. I waved back then turned my steps towards the police station.
The constable on duty at the front desk was one I hadn’t met yet. He greeted me with a sort of pleasant blandness that told me he wasn’t quite certain why I was there and if it was a situation where he ought to be friendly or sympathetic, which changed to poorly disguised surprise when I said I wanted to see Inspector Wainwright and open relief when I added that I knew the way if he would just let me pass. It was not reassuring for Inspector Wainwright’s mood.
Inspector Wainwright was at his desk in the common room, as I’d expected, with pages of notes spread out over it. He didn’t look up when I approached, but then, as the desk was in an open area, he probably thought I was some constable going about my business. “Good morning,” I said so I wouldn’t startle him when I sat across from him.
He still didn’t look up. “I suppose you’ve come to compare notes from yesterday’s service.”
“I didn’t think you’d be interested in that. Although if you are, I’m quite willing to share.”
He snorted at that. “Then I take it you came all this way to chat with Sergeant Harris.”
“Now you’re just being annoying. No, I came to bring you a bit of interesting information I learned yesterday after I left the service. I know why everyone is trying to protect Mrs. Hoyt.”
“Besides the fact that she’s a local and not a visiting busybody?”
“Well, if you’re not interested.” I made no move to get up from my chair. I knew he would want to hear my news, and I knew he knew as well. When I’d given him the chance to ask and he hadn’t taken it, I went on. “Everyone thinks she was cheating on her husband, with Mr. Elliott. Which also explains why the body was left there.”
“Everything thinks, so you believe they’re incorrect?”
I wasn’t surprised that Inspector Wainwright had caught the phrasing. “I went and spoke to him. He’d kept his shop open because of t
he walkers coming through for lunch. She has been visiting him, but because she thought her husband was gambling and may have taken a loan against the pub without thinking how to repay it, so she was having Mr. Elliott put aside a bit of money for her in a bank in Chipping Campden, in case they should need it.” I explained the full arrangement, or at least as much as Mr. Elliott had explained to me.
“That doesn’t mean she wasn’t also seeing him on a more... intimate basis.”
“True, but he also let slip something about a Lillian. I think that might be who he’s actually seeing.”
“The Widow Sayer.” Neither of us had heard Constable Taylor enter, so we both started when he began speaking without warning. “So that’s why she’s been so cheery lately. We were all betting on some man, but Mr. Elliott had never been a suspect.”
Inspector Wainwright recovered first. “The Widow Sayer?”
“She lives in Chipping Campden. Was married to the owner of the pub there. He was a good twenty years older than her, but she wanted out of her house so it suited her. Then he up and died and left the whole estate to his son from his first marriage. She’s been a bit down since then, being a hanger-on in her own home, I think. But lately she has seemed to take an interest in things again, and Mr. Elliott would explain it.”
“And explain why he had business in Chipping Campden so often yet wasn’t known at the banks,” I pointed out. “If we could figure out who started the rumor...”
“It might simply have been the fact that she visited his shop so often,” Inspector Wainwright pointed out.
“True, but it would still be worth looking into.”
“If I say I’ll consider it, would you leave?”
I knew I wouldn’t get anything else out of him now that he’d decided to be ornery. “Since you asked so nicely.”
“Then I’m certain Constable Taylor would be happy to show you out.” He went back to his papers and very pointedly ignored me.
Constable Taylor leaned over. “Come on. I am going out to relieve Constable Patel so he can get a bit of tea; I was just dropping off some papers.” He put a folder on the end of Inspector Wainwright’s desk and waited for me to collect my things and follow him out.
Constable Patel looked surprised to see me as I passed the desk, and I wondered if he’d thought Inspector Wainwright would arrest me for some serious crime like disturbing his thoughts, which was always a possibility, I supposed. I bid them both good morning and left before anything could go wrong.
Outside of the police station, I realized I should have made some sort of provision for getting back to Eybry. I wondered how Lord Hector was going to manage it once he returned the landau, which reminded me that Miss Hayworth had suggested the post office as a place to get conveyance back to Eybry. And if there wasn’t some sort of a taxi, I could always ask them for advice. With that in mind, I set out in the direction of the post office.
As I walked, I looked in the shop windows and thought about the last time I’d been in Stow-on-the-Wold, when I’d run into Mr. Reynolds after Miss Dyer, Miss Hayworth, and I had gone to get Lord Hector out of prison, and I wondered if I ought to take a detour to find the insurance medallion now that I knew what it was. As I thought about the strange tour with Mr. Reynolds making up facts and Lord Hector egging him on, I thought of something else Miss Hayworth said later: everyone who had moved the body had something of their own to hide, some reason they didn’t want the police poking around their homes too closely. Everyone but Mr. Reynolds. Why would it have mattered to him if the body were found in the churchyard? I didn’t believe for one moment that he had been concerned about the ladies meeting there, and besides, most of them would have gone up the front path to the church, not around by the gate where Mr. Hoyt had been left. So why had Mr. Reynolds thought he needed to move the body? What was he hiding?
That was actually a very good question. I hadn’t paid much attention to his lies, as he was the sort who always wanted to have something to say, even he knew nothing about the situation and ought to keep his mouth shut. But he had told quite a few lies about where he’d been at the time of the murder. First arguing with Mr. Burton, which very nearly worked and probably would have if Mrs. Albright and I hadn’t been able to fix the timeline so neatly, and if Inspector Wainwright hadn’t listened to us, I was forced to grudgingly admit. Then he had come up with another lie, being with Mrs. Hoyt, which was an odd lie as it gave them both motive. The sort of lie he would have come up with quickly, like the one about the insurance medallion. So he was hiding something too. The reason he’d been at the church? That was something to look into. I could go and speak to Mr. Simmons. He’d seen Mr. Reynolds that day. He might know something. But simply because he was hiding something didn’t mean he was the murderer, any more than any of the others. There would have to be some other connection.
He had Mr. Hoyt’s old sales route. That could be something. It was a connection between them, at least. But there didn’t seem to have been anything acrimonious in the switch. Mrs. Hoyt had inherited a business, and Mr. Hoyt left to help run it. Could there have been something in the route that had caused problems? What did I know about it? Nothing about Mr. Hoyt. Nothing serious enough to have killed someone over. There’d been the fight between Mr. Reynolds and Mr. Burton when I’d first met them, but that had nothing to do with Mr. Hoyt, and it had been resolved somewhat amicably. They’d been speaking to each other at the memorial, at least. And why would Mr. Reynolds murder Mr. Hoyt over a discount on his old route? That made no sense.
I paused in the middle of the street. When I thought about it, none of it really made any sense. Why would Mr. Reynolds have given Mr. Burton a discount out of his own pocket? He couldn’t make that much of a commission on sales, and he’d have to keep taking the reduced rate himself for as long as the contract ran. He couldn’t just raise the prices on Mr. Burton arbitrarily. And he’d done it when Mr. Burton had threatened to contact the main office. Why should that matter? Surely they knew he’d given a discount to Mr. Sundur, and if it really was against their policy, they should be pleased to find he was adhering to the policy now.
And Mr. Burton had found out about it by looking at Mr. Reynolds’s account ledgers. That was suggestive. There could even be motive there. I tried to remember everything Mr. Burton had told me about the affair. He had thought of looking at the accounts by seeing Mr. Hoyt’s expression when Mr. Hoyt got a look at them in the pub by accident. Mr. Hoyt had had that route before, so he would know all of the procedures and what things should look like. Blackmail was the obvious answer, but why would Mr. Hoyt care what went on with the route now? A bit of curiosity to see how the new fellow was handling his job was natural, but enough to interfere with something as silly as a discount? That was a bit much.
Unless he’d seen something more than a discount that shouldn’t have been offered. If there had been some evidence of a crime in those ledgers, Mr. Hoyt would have known enough to spot it. And that would have been a subject for blackmail. And if there was something in the ledgers that Mr. Reynolds hadn’t wanted seen, Mr. Burton writing to the main office might cause them to examine the ledgers, and they would certainly spot any irregularities.
I looked around to see where I had wandered to and realized that Mr. Sundur’s shop wasn’t that far away. It would hurt to go and find out exactly what their arrangement had been.
Chapter 23
I FOUND MR. SUNDUR’S SHOP EASILY enough, on the next street over from where I’d been walking. I went inside before I could change my mind and found that I seemed to have stumbled upon the shop during a slow period, which suited me fine. There were no other customers and the man behind the counter seemed more competent than the one who’d waited on me before.
“Good morning, miss. Can I be of assistance?”
“I was looking for Mr. Sundur.”
“And you’ve found me. That must mean there is something I can assist you with. What were you looking for?”
He seem
ed ready enough to help when he thought I was in the shop for a pound of sugar or some tinned tomatoes. I hoped it would last when I started asking questions. “I had a couple of question about your arrangement with Mr. Reynolds.”
“Mr. Reynolds? My only arrangement with him is business. He’s one of my suppliers.”
“Of Mrs. Quimby’s Quality Tinned Goods, yes. I wanted to ask about that.”
Mr. Sundur didn’t seem to know how to respond to my request. He stared at me for a moment, clearly trying to figure out who I was and why I was in his shop asking questions about his business. “If you’re selling something, I’m well set with my current products.”
“You heard of Mr. Hoyt’s death in Eybry?”
“Yes, most tragic. He was my old supplier. I was going to go to the memorial and pay my respects to his wife, but my clerk called off, and I couldn’t leave the shop unattended for that long. A job offer from Mrs. Quimby’s, ironically enough.”
That did seem to be a coincidence and I filed it away to think about later. “Well, I’m acquainted with the family.” That wasn’t too much of a stretch. After all, I had found Mr. Hoyt’s body; that suggested some relationship. “There were a couple of points that came up in the investigation that were confusing, and I was hoping you could clear them up for me.” That sounded too formal, but Mr. Sundur didn’t seem to notice. Or he was so confused by my visit that any more confusion simply didn’t register.
“I’m not sure I can...”
“It just the matter of your arrangement with Mr. Reynolds. He seems to have been giving you a discount, and I was wondering how that came about. Did he offer it, or did you ask...”
Mr. Sundur looked genuinely surprised by the question. “A discount from Mrs. Quimby’s Quality Tinned Goods? They’re such cut-rate products, I never thought to ask. I only stock them because the company is somewhat local, and I like to be seen to support the local economy. It never really seemed worth the effort to ask. Not many people buy them here. I have some tinned peas that have been on the shelf since February.”
