by Carola Dunn
“Aye, that I wor, your honour, Mr. Crowner, sir. But if your honour pleases, I want for to say … .”
“Thank you, Mr. Bligh.” The coroner was kindly but firm. “Unless you have any specific and hitherto undisclosed evidence to present to the court, or you wish to draw attention to an explicit inaccuracy in your statement, that will be all for now.”
Bligh hesitated, but perplexed by words he didn’t understand he made a helpless gesture and sat down.
“Owen Morgan.”
A murmur rose from the public benches as Owen stood. Daisy heard someone behind her mutter, “Furriner,” and a scornful whisper, “Taffy.” A lonely outsider in the close-knit Cheshire community, Owen had good reason to miss his home and family.
“Mr. Morgan, you were ordered by your superior, Arthur Bligh, to dig up the Winter Garden flowerbed?”
“Yes, sir,” Owen responded in a low voice, listlessly.
“You immediately recognized the deceased as Grace Moss?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I understand you were … er … keeping company with the deceased before her disappearance?”
“Yes, sir.” Almost inaudible.
“How did you account for her sudden absence?”
“I thought she’d run off to London, look you!” His quiet answer was a cry of pain. “Dull she found it here and the bright lights she wanted. Those there were … .”
“Thank you, Mr. Morgan,” pronounced the inexorable coroner. Owen slumped into his seat and buried his face in his hands.
Something nagged at Daisy’s mind. Something Ted Roper had said? It faded as the coroner called on Ben.
Stony-faced, plainer than ever, he gave his brief evidence. Grace Moss had failed to return after her weekly evening out on Wednesday, December 13. Lady Valeria had instructed him, should she reappear, to pay her whatever was owed and dismiss her. He had not set eyes on her again until he arrived at the Winter Garden yesterday as the body was identified. After arranging for the police to be called, he had stayed to guard the body until they arrived. He sat down.
Inspector Dunnett’s impassive report added nothing new. Daisy’s name remained unspoken, a delicate attention she did not appreciate. Her evidence was as good as any man’s, if not better.
“Dr. Sedgwick.”
The plump doctor revelled in obscure medical terms, but not for nothing had Daisy worked in a hospital office during the War. The deceased had been buried for several weeks, greater precision being impossible after such a passage of time. Because of the cold winter weather and the winding sheet, the body was in an excellent state of preservation.
As Sergeant Shaw had told Daisy, Grace had been hit on the back of the head by a blunt instrument, with enough force to crush her skull. An ordinary fall would be insufficient to produce the effect, and other injuries consonant with a fall from a height were absent. In fact, abrasions and contusions—scrapes and bruises, Daisy translated to herself—on the face, knees, and front of the body suggested that the victim had fallen forward, either immediately before or immediately after death.
Dr. Sedgwick paused for breath and the coroner interrupted to summarize in layman’s terms for the jury.
“Is that correct, Doctor? Please continue.”
“The deceased”—this time his pause was clearly for dramatic effect—“was three months pregnant.”
With a wordless roar, Stan Moss jumped to his feet and shook a fist like a ham at the doctor. An excited clamour rose from the public and Press benches. The coroner rapped once on his table, gave up, and crossed the stage to speak to the jury.
As the hubbub died down, he returned to his seat and gave three smart knocks. An expectant silence fell.
“Gentlemen of the jury, have you considered your verdict?”
The foreman stood up. “That we ’as, sir, and we find murder, by person or persons unknown.”
“Then I shall adjourn these proceedings for two weeks to allow the police to proceed with their enquiries.”
Apparently Daisy was not the only one to feel a sense of anticlimax. Subdued chatter accompanied a general movement out of the hall. Inspector Dunnett and Sergeant Shaw climbed the steps to the stage to talk to the coroner. Ben and Daisy followed the flock down the aisle to the door.
Outside, people lingered, reluctant to return to their everyday affairs. Some of the Press photographers were snapping a few shots in a desultory way. As Daisy emerged into daylight, a tall, loose-limbed figure detached itself from the mass.
“Phillip! What on earth are you doing here?”
“What-ho, old thing. I read about this beastly business in the paper this morning and I thought I’d better toddle along and make sure you’re bracing up. Hullo, what’s going on now?”
Daisy turned. Behind her the two policemen had come up on either side of Owen.
“Mr. Morgan,” said the Inspector, “I’m requesting you to come along with us to headquarters to help us with our enquiries.”
“Murderer!” Stan Moss advanced, fists raised. As Sergeant Shaw interposed his bulk, photographers sprang to life. “I’ll see you in Hell for this, you dirty, sneaking Welshman,” the blacksmith bellowed.
Dunnett’s hand on his arm, Owen moved through the parting crowd like a sleepwalker, bewildered yet apathetic.
“Oh well,” said Phillip, “if they’ve got their man already, I needn’t have worried.”
“They haven’t arrested him,” Daisy protested.
“Comes to the same thing, doesn’t it? Watch those Press chappies run. They know what’s what.”
“Then they’ve got the wrong man,” said Daisy fiercely. “Owen didn’t do it. They’ve made him a scapegoat!”
“Here, I say, old bean, no need to bite a fellow’s head off.”
“No,” Daisy admitted. “Sorry, Phillip. It’s that ghastly man Dunnett I’m mad at, and myself. He wasn’t interested in what I had to say so I tamely stood by and let him jump to the conclusion that suited him best.”
“Why should it suit him—it’s the busy we’re talking about?”
“Inspector Dunnett,” she said with loathing.
“Why does it suit him to pinch that particular laddie?”
“Because it lets the Parslows off scot-free and so saves him from Nemesis.”
“Nemesis?” asked Phillip, puzzled. “Wasn’t she that ghastly Greek female who turned people into stone?”
“That’s Medusa. She’ll do even better for Lady Valeria.”
“She really is a battle-axe, eh? Look here, Daisy, I suppose you’d better tell me what this is all about.”
“If you don’t mind, Phil. It would help me sort things out for myself.”
“Is there a Tea Shoppe in the village?”
“I don’t think Occleswich runs to such gaiety. I’ll ask … . Oh, where’s Ben? I should have introduced him to you.”
“Ben?”
“Sir Reginald’s secretary, Ben Goodman. He had to give evidence so I came down with him.”
“You call Sir Reginald’s secretary Ben?”
“It’s no good frowning at me. He’s a thoroughly good egg and I like him and I’ll call him Ben if I choose. There he is, talking to the coroner. Oh dear, he looks worn to a thread. He was gassed in the War.”
“Was he, by Jove, poor devil! Expect I ought to offer to run him home in the bus.”
“Will you? He has a bad leg, too. I’ll squeeze into the dickey and we can go on into Whitbury for tea.”
This plan was adopted, except that Ben insisted on taking the dickey seat. On the way back through the village after dropping him at the Hall, they stopped at the Cheshire Cheese and Phillip booked a room.
“Good job all those reporters are clearing out back to town,” he said, returning to the Swift. “When I arrived, there wasn’t a room to be had for love nor money.”
“They’ve gone?” Daisy pulled a wry face. “So they really believe the case is closed.”
“Yes, and without giving them
much to sink their teeth into. This morning’s headlines were along the lines of ‘Beauty’s Body Buried in Baronet’s Border.’ After that, ‘Gardener Biffs Parlourmaid Sweetheart’ just doesn’t come up to scratch.”
“If they print that, it’ll be libel. He didn’t.”
“What makes you think not, old girl?” Phillip shouted over the racket of the car as he speeded up on leaving the village.
Daisy hung on to her hat. “I’ll tell you when we get there,” she yelled.
6
The small town of Whitbury boasted a genuine Cadena tea room. Over a pot of tea and hot-buttered toasted tea-cakes, Daisy gathered her thoughts and for the first time put her misgivings into words.
“For a start, Owen loved Grace and wanted to marry her. He was absolutely miserable because he thought she’d run away.”
“How the deuce do you know that?” Phillip demanded.
“He told me. He was showing me the Winter Garden and we were talking about his family, and how lonely he was far from home.”
Phillip shook his smoothly neat fair head in disbelief. “This assistant gardener, a total stranger, poured out his bally heart to you within minutes of meeting you?”
“Well, he did,” Daisy said defensively. “I don’t suppose Dunnett would have believed it, either, but I didn’t even try to tell him because it didn’t seem fair to expose Owen’s private feelings. And worse, I didn’t explain how that blasted bush got dug up in the first place. Did you hear the evidence?”
“Most of it. The head gardener ordered your Welsh chappie to dig it up.”
“Yes, but only because Owen went to fetch him after inspecting the bush and finding it was dying. He could easily have passed it off to me as a late bloomer or something. And then he told Bligh his spade had hit an obstruction. I bet he could have got the bush out without ever mentioning it. Besides, what gardener would be fool enough to bury a body where it would kill plants and draw attention to itself?”
“That’s a point,” Phillip admitted.
“None of that came out at the inquest. I wonder if old Bligh was trying to explain when the coroner cut him off? I’ll have to ask him.”
“Dash it, Daisy, you’re not going to get mixed up in this!”
“Someone has to stand up for Owen, and no one else will because they’re afraid of Lady Valeria, and the more I think about it, the more certain I am Sebastian Parslow is in it up to his precious neck!” Daisy’s teeth closed on a tea-cake with a resolute crunch.
“Sebastian? The beautiful son? Oh Lord, you’re not going to start accusing him of murder?”
“Unlike the despicable Dunnett, I don’t jump to convenient conclusions. I haven’t any evidence, only heaps of hints linking Sebastian and Grace. Owen wasn’t necessarily the father of her child.”
“Which gives him a spiffing motive.”
“Jealousy. Blast, you’re right. But at least it opens the field up to other suspects. Lady Valeria and Bobbie are frightfully protective of Sebastian. Either of them … . Phillip, I’ve just remembered. Ted Roper didn’t say Grace ran away to London, he said she’d gone off with a commercial traveller.”
“Who’s Ted Roper? Another suitor? Dash it, the girl must have been a regular Athena.”
“I think you mean Aphrodite,” said Daisy absently. “But Ted Roper’s just the old chap who drives the station fly.”
“I suppose he told you his family history, too,” Phillip grumbled.
“Yes, and about the blacksmith’s quarrel with Lady Valeria. And he said Grace left with a commercial traveller. Now why should he say that if she hadn’t been seen with one just about the time she disappeared?”
“Can’t imagine. Shall I order more tea? You’ve emptied the pot.”
“Yes. No. Phillip, the obvious place for Grace to meet a commercial would be the Cheshire Cheese, wouldn’t it? Lots of people must have seen her, and the locals are bound to be talking about it after the inquest. If you spend the evening in the bar, you might pick up all sorts of information.”
“Here, I say!”
“And I must talk to Mr. Bligh before dinner. Come on, let’s go.”
Half an hour and a good many futile protests later, Phillip dropped Daisy at the wicket-gate at the top of the village street. She walked up the path across the park in the dusk. Her steps speeded up involuntarily as she came to the gravel walk and passed the door to the Winter Garden. The air was growing chilly, she told herself.
Ben had sent the two gardeners to Bligh’s cottage, she recalled, and after taking their statements Sergeant Shaw had come round the end wall. Turning left through a gap in a laurel hedge, Daisy found herself among cabbages, cauliflowers, and cold frames. The air smelt of compost. On the far side of the vegetable garden a white-painted gate was visible in the growing gloom. Thither she hopefully picked her way between rows of Brussels sprouts.
“Miss!”
Daisy nearly jumped a mile. She swung round. Old Bligh stumped towards her from the direction of a potting shed she hadn’t noticed.
“Mr. Bligh, I was coming to see you. I want to talk to you about Owen Morgan.”
She was aware of a steady regard from beneath his appalling hat, then he said, “Right, miss. I be off home for m‘tea. Do ’ee come along if’ee will.”
She followed him through the gate, set in a hawthorn hedge. A cottage crouched there, with a thin trickle of smoke rising from its chimney into the deepening blue of the sky. There was just enough light left for Daisy to see that the tiny front garden was devoted to rose bushes, already putting out new red shoots. In summer the walls of the cottage would be a mass of climbing roses.
The gardener led her round the side. The back yard was occupied by a pump and an enclosure where half a dozen hens scratched and pecked idly at the ground. A ginger cat sprang down from a windowsill and twined around Bligh’s ankles, mewing.
He opened the back door, ushered Daisy into the cottage, and lit an oil lamp. A single room dominated by a black cast-iron range combined the functions of kitchen, dining room, and sitting room. From rush-matted slate floor to whitewashed ceiling, everything was spotless.
“Set ‘ee down, miss. I s’ll just feed the hens afore I takes m’boots off, if ’ee don’t mind.”
“Of course not, Mr. Bligh. I don’t want to be in your way. Shall I make a pot of tea?”
“That’d be right kindly, miss. There’s water in yon kettle.”
Daisy raised the cover on the hot side of the range and set the kettle to boil. A brown earthenware teapot was warming at the back of the range. She found a canister of tea in the larder. The sight of a large piece of pork pie reminded her that for country folk “tea” meant high tea, the main meal of the day. Taking a plate from the beautiful Welsh dresser, she set the table for one, laid out pork pie, pickled onions and beetroot, bread and butter and cheese. There was a crock of soup in the larder, too, so she ladled some into a pan and put it to heat beside the kettle.
Bligh came in, the cat at his heels. He stopped on the threshold to stare.
“I hope I’ve put out the right things,” Daisy said. “I’m sure you must be hungry.”
“I thank ‘ee, missy, but won’t ’ee join me?”
“I’m afraid I’ve just been making a pig of myself on toasted tea-cakes, and I’m expected for dinner at the Hall later. I’d love a cup of tea.”
She made the tea and served the soup while he took off his muddy boots and set them neatly on an old newspaper by the door. Before he sat down on a rush-bottomed chair at the table, the cat got a saucer of milk.
“How clean and tidy you keep the place,” Daisy said, thinking of some bachelor flats she had seen.
“M‘darter comes up fro’ the village once a week to do for me, and me and Owen don’t make no more mess than old Tibby there.” He gestured at the lapping cat.
“Owen?”
“He lodges wi’ me. Din’t ’ee know? The other lads has homes in the village, but Owen stops here. A good boy, brung
up proper. Chapel, but none the worse for that.” His tone turned belligerent as he went on, “The babby worn’t hisn, I’ll lay my oath, and it worn’t him as killed that poor young creetur. Apple of his eye, she wor, and any road Owen wouldn’t set a trap to kill a mole if the lawn wor tore up like a ploughed field.”
“I don’t believe he killed Grace, either. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I don’t know about the baby, but if it wasn’t his, whose was it?”
She waited while, ruminating over his answer, he finished his soup. “I can’t say for sartin-sure, miss, and it been’t for me to go a-naming o’ names.”
“But you have a strong suspicion.”
“Aye, that I do.” The old man’s bright, shrewd eyes regarded her with an assessing gaze. He nodded slowly as he decided to trust her. “Last summer it wor, missy, two, three, mebbe four times, I come upon Grace wi’ the young master out and about in the gardens where a parlourmaid ha’n’t no call to be. Owen seen ‘em too, and he wor a-worriting, I don’t deny. But it wor him he blamed, turning of a young girl’s head wi’ his handsome face and lying promises.”
“Promises?”
“I can’t swear to nothing, mind. Owen said Grace wor a-talking ’bout being a lady one day.”
“Mr. Parslow promised to marry her?” Daisy asked, suddenly depressed.
“I dunno, miss, I dunno. Any road, Owen thought she’d come to her senses and wed him as loved her in the end. He wor saving up every penny.”
“Did he know she was pregnant?”
Bligh’s bent shoulders twitched in a shrug of impotent doubt. “There wor summat. The last days afore she disappeared, he wor quieter nor usual, and he bain’t much of a talker best o’ times. But I mind him saying as it’s not fair to damn a girl forever for one mistake.”
“I see. Of course, that could just mean he was finally certain she had … succumbed to Mr. Parslow’s advances. Why on earth did he fall for her?”
“She wor kind to en, miss, when t’others laughed at the way he talked.”
How lonely he must have been! Pondering what she had learned, Daisy worried her lip with her teeth. “The trouble is, there’s nothing definite to tell Inspector Dunnett. He’ll just put it all down as rumour and hearsay.”
