by Robin Paige
Flour of England, fruit of Spain,
Met together in a shower of rain;
Put in a bag tied round with a string,
If you’ll tell me this riddle, I’ll give you a ring!
—BEATRIX POTTER
The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin
That afternoon, Kate and Bea explored the ruins of Bishop’s Keep and walked into the nearby woods, looking for interesting fungi for Bea to draw. While Bea sat down to sketch a large mass of rust-coloured toadstools against a mossy rock, Kate picked meadow buttercups and yellow heartsease, feeling herself almost contented.
But several nagging thoughts continued to intrude into her mind. One had to do with Sir Charles, whose patronizing objection to her investigative efforts still rankled. Another had to do with Agnes, whose future security depended upon her husband’s posthumous reputation. Surely there was something she could do to ensure that Agnes kept her pension, even though Sir Charles had so pointedly told her to stay out of the affair. And the third had to do with the emeralds.
So when they returned to Bishop’s Keep that afternoon, and while Bea was giving Peter Rabbit an airing in the shrubbery, Kate summoned her butler to the library. Mudd, she had found, could be counted upon to supply almost any information she might need about the local environs. While he was young for his position and clearly a climber, she knew him to be reliable in difficult circumstances and she respected his intelligence and good judgment. She had come to this assessment when he had assisted her in apprehending her aunts’ killer a few months before.
“Mudd,” she said, “I am greatly concerned about the welfare of Mrs. Oliver. I assume that you know her situation, and what is being said about her husband’s off-duty pursuits.”
Mudd inclined his head to show that he did. “A very sad business.”
Kate eyed him. “What credit do you give the rumours about the sergeant’s involvement in poaching?”
“None, mum,” Mudd said firmly. “It’s only the riffraff talking.” Mudd was from London, and rather inclined to scorn the villagers, feeling himself their superior in station, manners, and intelligence.
Kate went to the mantle and stood staring down at the fire. “I have spoken with Lord Marsden’s assistant gamekeeper, Mr. McGregor. What do you know of the man?”
Mudd pulled a long face. “He’s a shrewd one, that Matthew McGregor. He has his hand into many a pot, I hear. People say they wouldn’t put a spot of murder past him.”
“But I understand,” Kate said, “that the sergeant’s body was discovered in Mr. McGregor’s garden. One would scarcely think that a murderer would abandon a body on his own doorstep, would one?”
“ ’Twas said at the inquest,” Mudd remarked judiciously, “that the sergeant was shot elsewhere and left in the garden. But that was the constable’s interpretation. If anybody saw what happened, they haven’t put themselves forward yet”
“Suppose that theory isn’t correct,” Kate said, thinking out loud. “Suppose the sergeant was shot in the garden and left there with the intention of bringing a cart through the lane to take him somewhere else, probably at night, when no one was about. Only the business was somehow interrupted, and Lawrence and Amelia discovered the body before it could be disposed of.”
“Could’ve been,” Mudd agreed. “There’s Mrs. McGregor’s brother, too. He’s an unsavoury sort.”
“Mrs. McGregor’s brother?” Sir Charles had mentioned a brother in his telling of the story, but Kate did not recall the details.
“Tommy Brock,” Mudd said, “called Mr. B by some. It was his gun that was first thought to be the murder weapon, but wasn’t. He was gone for a time from the area, but he’s back again. Or so Pocket’s father says,” he added. “He’s the brewer’s drayman, you see, and goes from pub to pub.”
Kate had ceased to wonder at the marvelous efficiency of the information network that linked the villages and hamlets in the district so that news traveled as fast as by telephone in the city. Now she thought briefly of the copper-haired Mr. Tod, who had come to McGregor’s inquiring after someone. Perhaps he had been looking for McGregor’s brother-in-law.
“I would be obliged if you could inquire at the pub,” she said, “into the matter of Mr. Brock’s reappearance. I should like to know if the man seems to have any connexion to the crime.”
Mudd was perfect for such an errand, because he had the interesting capacity of being able to mimic the speech and manners of those with whom he spoke. In any event, Kate herself could hardly visit The Live and Let Live without creating a local sensation. Even her completely innocent bicycle rides with Edward Laken had caused a great many raised eyebrows. And while Beryl Bardwell’s female characters sometimes disguised themselves as males to gain information, Kate did not intend to do anything quite so outré when Mudd was available, willing, and excellently dependable.
Mudd gave her a canny glance. “I should have to go to the pub specially,” he remarked. “I don’t have another half-day until next month.”
“Then go this evening,” Kate commanded, “and tell me what you learn.” She went to the desk drawer, took out a purse, and found two florins. “And use these to purchase a round,” she added, giving Mudd the coins. “Perhaps a pint or two will loosen a few tongues.”
Mudd straightened his shoulders. “Very good, mum,” he said.
“And one more thing,” Kate said. “What do you know about Lawrence, the Marsden’s footman?”
Mudd’s mouth reflected his displeasure. “A light sort, mum. He has played fast and free with Amelia’s affections.” Mudd might look down on the villagers, but he was unfailingly kind to the household staff.
“Aside from your opinion,” Kate said, stressing the word, “what do you know of him?”
Mudd became rather more cautious. “Only what I see of him at the pub. He’s likable enough. He’s been in service hereabout for seven or eight years.”
“I would not want you to mention this question to anyone else,” Kate said, “but I wonder whether. . .” She paused and chose her words carefully. “Has there been any rumour of Lawrence’s coming into a sum of money?”
“If he has, he’s keeping it close,” Mudd said sagaciously. “He’s been drinkin’ on th’ tick. On credit, mum,” he added. “He did not appear to be in funds.”
“Thank you,” Kate said. “And is there, do you think, any possible connexion between Lawrence and Mr. Brock?”
Mudd’s brows came together. “I saw them drinking together once. A year or so ago, it was.”
Kate nodded. “Thank you, Mudd,” she said. “That will be all.”
Mudd retired, leaving Kate standing alone beside the fire, speculating about the mysterious Mr. Brock. How did he figure in this increasingly complicated situation? Was it possible that he was somehow connected to Lawrence? Were the two of them related in any way to the emeralds? And were the emeralds connected to the sergeant’s murder?
Kate walked to her desk, wondering how Beryl Bardwell might resolve this puzzle. If this were a novel, however, the plot would likely need more thickening before it was done. Wanting to feed her readers’ taste for sensation, Beryl might add another murder, or perhaps a kidnapping, and a few exotic characters—a pirate or two, perhaps. But in the end, no matter how many complications she introduced, the solution would be as neatly wrapped and pleasing as a pudding. It was a pity that the mysteries of real life were not resolved so easily as Beryl Bardwell’s penny dreadfuls.
20
O put not your trust in princes, nor in any child of man: for there is no help in them.
—Prayer Book, 1662
In all of her nine years, Betsy Oliver had prayed on only one occasion. Mister Browne, her pet owl, had flown off in a huff after she had taken a live baby rabbit from him and substituted a dead lizard. Betsy had petitioned God for his safe return, and God (who in her imagination bore a remarkable similarity to Father Christmas, the chief difference being that He wore a white robe instead of a red fleece
suit and was somewhat less rotund) saw fit to respond by recalling Mister Browne to his perch in the shed before another night was out.
This minor success notwithstanding, Betsy was not given to prayer. It was not that she did not trust God to reply (for evidence of the efficacy of prayer, she had only to look to the safe return of Mr. Browne), but rather that she questioned the ethics of the transaction itself. For instance, telling God that you would be a good girl all day in return for marmalade biscuit for tea, when all Mother could put on the table was plain biscuit—wasn’t that selfish and unjust? It seemed rather shabby to ask God to slip it into Mother’s head that she ought to be supplying marmalade biscuit when she couldn’t, with the consequence that Mother felt sad when she had to serve up plain, or spent more on marmalade than she ought. Or force God to expend divine effort on a marmalade miracle, which was admittedly more mundane than loaves and fishes but no doubt required every bit as much divine ingenuity.
Having reached this conclusion and despite the vicar’s benevolent example and the exhortations of Miss Bottle, her Sunday School teacher, Betsy resisted putting God into such a sticky wicket. So when all the other Sunday scholars dutifully bowed their heads and repeated the Lord’s Prayer after Miss Bottle, Betsy always sat with head up, eyes forward, and mouth resolutely shut. The murder of her father, however, tested her resolve. For several days after she learned the awful truth, it was all she could do not to fall on her knees and beg God for his return, intuitively feeling that while He could find an errant owl in the dark, it was asking too much to request Him to return an escaped soul to the body. Still, she was impressed and even somewhat comforted by the solemnity of her father’s funeral at St. Mary’s in Dedham, and by the gravity of the neighbours as they put the pine box with him in it into a muddy hole in the churchyard, and especially by the vicar’s somber but fervent prayers for her father’s soul.
Well. Her father had been loving, and far kinder than her friend Baxter’s father, who fell to flogging his unfortunate wife and children when he got home from the pub on a Saturday night. Betsy had no doubt that a fair and incorruptible God would assign him a premier place in heaven, where he could enjoy his pipe and the view in comfort.
But Betsy was less certain about her mother’s welfare, and it was that which led her to rethink her position on the matter of prayer. Her mother’s seventeen pounds ten a year was not to be dealt out by God, but by the Standing Joint Committee of the County Police Constabulary. A skeptical realist whose experience as the daughter of a policeman had early introduced her to the darker side of human nature, Betsy did not trust the committee’s good will. Not only that, but last Sunday’s “O put not your trust in princes” still echoed in her mind. So she decided to call God’s attention to the matter of the pension while there was still time for Him to have a hand in things without having to flex a great deal of divine muscle, and went to church to lay her petition before Him.
But it was not to St. Mary’s in Dedham that she was going, her collie dog, Kep, trailing after. The God who lived in such a lofty church might be too grand or too busy to be bothered by the difficulties of small people. So that morning, she followed instead a winding lane that led away from Gallows Green in the direction of the River Stour, to a very old, very plain church built of red brick and flint rubble. She and Kep and Mr. Browne had explored the building and its adjacent cemetery quite often, although this was the first time she had come on official business. She left Kep at the door and went in. Inside, it was chilly and dim, the only light coming through the narrow windows of the nave and the rose window above the altar. She went down the north aisle to the tiny Lady Chapel, where she slipped behind the rood screen, knelt at the undecorated altar, and said what was on her mind.
“God, I wish You would keep Your eye on the people who are supposed to be giving Mother her pension, because it looks as if they are trying to cheat her out of it, which would be a very bad thing. Amen.”
Having thus succinctly put her case, she remained still for a minute, waiting to see if God planned to give her some sign that He had heard—a dove, perhaps, or even a pigeon. When nothing happened, she stood. She had done what she could. The rest was up to the Almighty.
21
Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.
—ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Treasure Island
Kate pulled up the pony and she and Bea sat gazing a little church, quiet in the morning sun. “It’s very odd,” she said.”Aunt Sabrina donated a large sum to help shore up the tower, but it still needs work.”
“Churches always want shoring up, don’t they?” Bea observed realistically. “Our vicar is continually asking for money to keep the tower from falling down.” She climbed out and took a heavy bellows camera and tripod from the gig. “Is there a particularly good view?”
“Over there,” Kate said, pointing to a little knoll from which could be gained a picturesque vista of church, meadow and estuary. “But let’s look inside first. There are one or two inscriptions I want to show you, and the north aisle has some very nice stone detailing.”
Inside, they spent several minutes examining the carved inscriptions around the stone baptismal font and a commemorative plaque set into the wall. Kate was leading Bea up the north aisle for a better look at the stonework when they both startled by a sudden apparition: a small girl in stiff tails, pumpkin-coloured shirt, brown corduroy trousers, muddy boots.
“Oh!” Bea exclaimed, stepping back. “Betsy!”
“Why, hello,” Kate said. “What are you doing here?”
“Praying,” was the crisp answer. “What else do people do in churches?”
“Oh, lots of things,” Kate said. She wanted to ask what Betsy was praying for, but she thought she knew, and the little girl’s face did not invite casual inquiries.
“Did you come to pray?” Betsy asked, with more interest now, as if she might enlist the two of them in her petition to the Divine, whatever it was.
Kate smiled. “We came to see what we could see. And we’re very glad to see you.”
“Yes,” said Bea. “How is your mother? We will be stopping there to visit later this morning.”
Betsy’s I-suppose-she’s-all-right-but-not-quite shrug was perfectly comprehendible. “I can show you around,” she offered, with a proprietary air. “There’s a sundial and some very old gravestones. One’s a pirate.”
“We’ll see the pirate,” Kate said. “But first, let’s look at the stonework.”
A few minutes later, having admired the interior of the church, they went outside and were met by Kep, who escorted them to the back of the cemetery. The pirate’s headstone bore an engraved name, a ship, and a cryptic bit of doggerel.
He longed for Distant Places,
He sought the whole World round.
Pieces of Eight he was after,
Eternal Peace he’s found.
“I suppose,” Bea said thoughtfully, “he really must have been a pirate.”
Betsy turned to look out across the estuary, calm and gleaming in the late morning sun. “There’s lots of pirates around here.”
“There used to be, you mean,” Bea said, bending over to examine a clump of silvery fungi. Kep looked at it with her, sniffing to see if it might be something he should remember and come back for later.
“No,” Betsy said. She clearly did not appreciate contradictions. “Now.”
“I really don’t think there are pirates anymore,” Kate remonstrated gently. She thought of Beryl Bardwell. “Except in novels, of course.”
Betsy gave her a stony look. “You really don’t know.”
“How do you know?” Kate returned. “Have you seen them?”
“Of course.” Betsy folded her arms across her chest. “Two nights before my father was killed.” She pointed across the field in the direction of a stone barn, a half-mile away. “Over there. At Highfields barn.”
“At night?” Kate frowned.
She didn’t ask What were you doing out here at night? for she wasn’t Betsy’s mother. But the question did cross her mind.
“Mister Browne was hunting.” Betsy said. “It was mizzling, so I came with him. He sometimes catches baby rabbits on mizzly nights, and I take them away from him.”
Kate frowned, trying to imagine who Mr. Browne might be and why he was so interested in baby rabbits that he’d go out on a rainy night to look for them.
Bea laughed at Kate’s mystified look. “Mister Browne,” she told Kate, “is Betsy’s owl. I met him when we went looking for Jemima Riddle-Duck.”
“Oh,” Kate said. “I see.” She looked at Betsy. “What were the pirates doing?”
Betsy turned to gaze out across the meadow at Highfields Farm. Kate followed her glance. The barn was only one of several buildings clustered together. Some distance away was a farmhouse with smoke coming from the chimney.
“They were drinking rum,” Betsy said. She frowned. “But they weren’t pirates exactly. They were more like smugglers. There were five of them. They whispered the whole while, drank rum out of a bottle, and they had horses and a wagon. But it wasn’t loaded with dead men’s chests. It was loaded with sacks. They drove it down to the river and carried the sacks onto a boat.”
“But smugglers smuggle things into a country,” Bea objected. “Not out.”
“Maybe they plan to smuggle them into Spain,” Betsy said.
“Why Spain?” Kate asked.
“Because,” Betsy said, “one of the men was a Spaniard. They called him Juan. He drank the most rum.”
Kate looked at the little girl. “Did you recognize any of the others?”
“They had their hats pulled down because of the wet. But one was very thin and had a pointy chin and red whiskers. The other one had the same name as yours.” Betsy looked at Bea.
“Beatrix?” Bea asked, surprised.
“Of course not.” Betsy’s tone added you ninny. “B-E-E, ‘How doth the little busy bee.’ Mister Bee.”
