The Killings at Badger's Drift

by Caroline Graham

  She sighed again and returned to the kitchen to make her cocoa. She unhooked a spotless pan from one of the beams and measured out the milk. She had never felt more keenly the truth of the saying ‘a trouble shared is a trouble halved’. But she had lived in a small village long enough to know that what she had discovered could safely be discussed with no one - not even dear Lucy, who was not a gossip but who had absolutely no idea of concealment. Nor the people one would normally have regarded as natural confidants such as her own solicitor (now on holiday in the Algarve) and, of course, the vicar. He was a terrible gossip, especially after the Wine Circle’s monthly get-together.

  She took an iridescent fluted cup and saucer (she had never been able to adapt to the modern fashion for hefty mugs), put in a heaped teaspoon of cocoa, added a little sugar and a sprinkling of cinnamon. She could tell her nephew living safely in Australia, but that would mean writing it all down and the very thought made her feel slightly sick. The milk foamed up to the saucepan’s rim and she poured it into the cup, stirring all the time.

  Sitting in her winged chair Miss Simpson sipped a little of the cocoa. If no individual was to be trusted surely there were organizations one could talk to at times like this? Never friendless in her life, she cast around in her memory for the name of a society which helped those who were. She was sure there had been a poster in the offices where she had gone to argue about deductions from her pension. A man holding a telephone and listening. And a name which had struck her at the time as faintly biblical. Inquiries would know. Thank goodness everything was automatic now: nothing would have got past Mrs Beadle on the old post office board.

  The girl knew immediately what she meant and connected her to the Samaritans. The voice at the other end was most comforting. A little young, perhaps, but kind and sounding genuinely interested. And, most important, assuring her of complete confidentiality. However, Miss Simpson, having given her name, had hardly begun to explain the situation when she was interrupted by a sound. She stopped speaking and listened. There it was again.

  Someone was tapping, softly but persistently, at the back door.

  PART ONE

  SUSPICION

  Chapter One

  ‘There’s something very wrong here and I expect you to do something about it. Isn’t that what the police are for?’

  Sergeant Troy observed his breathing, a trick he had picked up from a colleague at Police Training College who was heavily into T’ai Ch’i and other faddy Eastern pursuits. The routine came in very handy when dealing with abusive motorists, boot-deploying adolescents and, as now, with barmy old ladies.

  ‘Indeed we are, Miss . . . er . . .’ The sergeant pretended he had forgotten her name. Occasionally this simple manoeuvre caused people to wonder if their visit was really worth the bother and to drift off, thus saving unnecessary paperwork.

  ‘Bellringer.’

  Chiming in, thought the sergeant, pleased at the speed of this connection and at his ability to keep a straight face. He continued, ‘But are you sure there’s anything here to investigate? Your friend was getting on in years, she had a fall and it was too much for her. It’s quite common, you know.’

  ‘Rubbish!’

  She had the sort of voice that really got up his nose: clear, authoritative, upper upper middle class. I bet she’s ordered a few skivvies around in her time, he thought, the noun springing easily to mind. He and his wife enjoyed a good costume drama on the television.

  ‘She was as strong as an ox,’ Miss Bellringer stated firmly. ‘As an ox.’ There was a definite tremor on the repetition. Jesus, thought Sergeant Troy, surely the old bat wasn’t going to start snivelling. Mechanically he reached for the Kleenex under the counter and returned to his breathing.

  Miss Bellringer ignored the tissues. Her left arm vanished into a vast tapestry bag, trawled around for a bit then reappeared, the hand gripping a round jewelled box. She opened this and shook a neat pile of ginger-coloured powder on to the back of her wrist. She sniffed this up each nostril, closing them alternately like an emergent seal. She replaced the box and let out a prodigious sneeze. Sergeant Troy grabbed resentfully at his papers. When the dust had settled Miss Bellringer cried, ‘I wish to see your superior.’

  It would have given Sergeant Troy a great deal of pleasure to say that none of his superiors was on the premises. Unfortunately this was not the case. Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby had just returned from holiday and was catching up on some files in his office.

  ‘I won’t keep you a moment,’ said Troy, horrified to find the word madam lurking at the end of the sentence.

  As he knocked on Barnaby’s door and entered, Troy kept his face expressionless and his ideas regarding Miss Bellringer’s degree of senility firmly to himself. The Chief could be very terse at times. He was a big, burly man with an air of calm paternalism which had seduced far sharper men than Gavin Troy into voicing opinions which had then been trounced to smithereens.

  ‘Well, Sergeant?’

  ‘There’s an old - elderly lady in reception, sir. A Miss Bellringer from Badger’s Drift. She insists on seeing someone in authority. I mean someone apart from myself.’

  Barnaby lifted his head. He doesn’t look as if he’s had a holiday, thought Sergeant Troy. He looks tired. Not very well either. The thought did not displease him. The little bottle of tablets which Barnaby carried everywhere was on the desk next to a beaker of water.

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘Her friend has died and she’s not satisfied.’

  ‘Who would be?’

  The sergeant rephrased his question. It was obviously going to be one of the Chief’s sarky days. ‘What I meant, sir, was that she’s convinced there’s something wrong. Not quite straightforward.’

  Chief Inspector Barnaby looked down at his top file: a particularly unsavoury case of child molestation. It would be a pleasure to postpone reading it for a while. ‘All right. Show her in.’

  Miss Bellringer settled herself in the chair that Sergeant Troy drew forward and rearranged her draperies. She was a wondrous sight, festooned rather than dressed. All her clothes had a dim but vibrant sheen as if they had once, long ago, been richly embroidered. She wore several very beautiful rings, the gems dulled by dirt. Her nails were dirty too. Her eyes moved all the time, glittering in a brown seamed face. She looked like a tattered eagle.

  ‘I’m Chief Inspector Barnaby. Can I help you?’

  ‘Well . . .’ She eyed him doubtfully. ‘May I ask why you’re in mufti?’

  ‘In what? Oh’ - he followed her stern gaze. ‘I’m a detective. Plain clothes.’

  ‘Ah.’ Satisfied, she continued, ‘I want you to investigate a death. My friend Emily Simpson was eighty years old and because she was eighty a death certificate has automatically been issued. If she’d been half that age questions would have been asked. A post mortem carried out.’

  ‘Not necessarily, Miss Bellringer. That would depend on the circumstances.’

  It had been years since Barnaby had heard such an accent. Not since his early days of going to the pictures. In the postwar years films had been full of clean-cut young Englishmen with straight up and down trousers, all sounding their As like Es.

  ‘Well the circumstances here are very strange indeed.’

  They didn’t sound all that strange, thought Barnaby, picking up a notepad and pen. Apparently his visitor’s friend had been discovered, lying on a hearthrug, by the postman. He had needed a signature for a parcel and, not getting any reply to his knock (except the frantic barking of a dog) had peered through the sitting-room window.

  ‘He came straight to me . . . he’s been our postman for years you see . . . knew us both and I telephoned Doctor Lessiter -’

  ‘That’s your friend’s GP?’

  ‘He’s everyone’s GP, Inspector. Well, all the elderly in the village and those without transport. Otherwise it’s a four-mile trip into Causton. Well - I hurried over, taking my key, but in the event it wasn’t nec
essary because . . .’ - Miss Bellringer lifted a compelling annunciatory finger - ‘and this is the first odd thing - the back door was unlocked.’

  ‘Was that unusual?’

  ‘Unheard of. There have been three burglaries in the village recently. Emily was most particular.’

  ‘Everyone has a lapse of memory sometimes,’ murmured Barnaby.

  ‘Not her. She had a fixed routine. Nine p.m. check time with the wireless, set her alarm for seven, put Benjy in his basket then lock the back door.’

  ‘And do you know if her alarm was set?’

  ‘No. I looked specially.’

  ‘Then surely that simply indicates that she died before nine p.m.’

  ‘No she didn’t. Died in the night. The doctor said.’

  ‘She may have died in the night,’ the inspector continued gently, ‘but lost consciousness several hours before.’

  ‘Now here’s the clincher,’ said Miss Bellringer, eagle bright, as if he had not spoken, ‘what about the ghost orchid?’

  ‘The ghost orchid,’ repeated Barnaby evenly, thirty years of dealing with the public standing him in ineffably good stead. Miss Bellringer explained about the contest.

  ‘And in the afternoon after my friend died I went for a walk in the woods. Silly really, because of course I simply got rather upset. I found myself half looking for the orchid then realized that it didn’t matter any more whether I found it or not. And this brought Emily’s death home to me in a way that seeing her . . . lying there . . . hadn’t.’ She looked across at the inspector, blinked several times and sniffed. ‘That must sound a bit peculiar.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘And then I found it. But you see Emily had found it first.’ Responding to Barnaby’s raised eyebrows she continued, ‘We had a stick with a ribbon to mark the spot. Hers red, mine yellow. Now’ - Miss Bellringer leaned forward and Barnaby, so intense was her regard, only just stopped himself doing the same - ‘why did she not come and tell me?’

  ‘Perhaps she was saving it. As a surprise.’

  ‘No, no,’ she said, irritated by his apparent inability to grasp the situation, ‘you don’t understand. I’ve known Emily for nearly eighty years. She would have been overwhelmed by excitement. She would have come straight to me.’

  ‘She may already have felt ill and been anxious to get home.’

  ‘She has to pass my gate to get there. If she’d been ill she would have come in. I would have looked after her.’

  ‘Did you see her at all on that day?’

  ‘Saw her bringing Benjy back from his walk about two o’clock. And before you ask, they both looked as fit as fleas.’ She looked around the room in a lost yet hopeful manner, as the newly bereft sometimes do. Unable to accept the empty space, half expecting the dead person to reappear. ‘No’ - she focused her gaze firmly on the inspector, ‘something happened after she saw the orchid and before she returned to the village, to put the discovery out of her mind. And it must have been a pretty big something, believe you me.’

  ‘If what you say is true, are you suggesting that the shock killed her?’

  ‘I hadn’t really got as far as that.’ Miss Bellringer frowned. ‘But there is one more thing . . .’ She rummaged furiously in her bag, crying, ‘What do you make of this?’ and handed him a scrap of paper on which was written: Causton 1234 Terry.

  ‘The Samaritans.’

  ‘Are they? Well, they may give succour but they certainly don’t give information. Couldn’t get a thing out of them. Said it was all confidential.’

  ‘Where did you find this?’

  ‘On her little table, tucked under the telephone. I can’t imagine why she would have rung them up.’

  ‘Presumably because she was worried or depressed and needed to talk to someone.’

  ‘To total strangers? Fiddlesticks!’ Hurt lay behind the snort of disbelief. ‘Anyway our generation didn’t get depressed. We soldiered on. Not like today. People want tranquillizers now if the milk goes off.’

  Barnaby felt his innards twang aggressively and shifted in his chair. The brief flicker of interest her story had aroused died away. He felt irritated and impatient. ‘When did your friend actually die?’

  ‘Friday the seventeenth. Two days ago. I’ve been stewing about it ever since. Knew there wasn’t much to go on, y’see. Thought I’d probably be told I was talking a load of nonsense. Which of course I was.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Young man at the desk. Said at her age it was to be expected and hinted that I was wasting his valuable time. Not,’ she added caustically, ‘that he seemed to be doing very much.’

  ‘I see. No, all complaints and inquiries are investigated. Our opinion on their veracity is quite irrelevant. Who is the next of kin in this case?’

  ‘Well . . . I am, I suppose. Neither of us had any near relations. Odd cousins and aunts long since popped off. She had a nephew somewhere in the Antipodes. And I’m her executor. We left everything to each other.’

  Barnaby made a note of Miss Bellringer’s name and address then asked, ‘You’re in charge of the funeral arrangements?’

  ‘Yes. She’s being buried on Wednesday. That doesn’t leave us with much time.’ Suddenly they were in the realms of melodrama. ‘You know, I can’t help being reminded of The Case of the Vanishing Orchestra. The circumstances are really quite -’

  ‘You read detective fiction, Miss Bellringer?’

  ‘Avidly. They’re a mixed bunch, of course. My favourite is -’ She broke off and looked at him sharply. ‘Ah. I see what you’re thinking. But you’re quite wrong. It’s not my imagination.’

  Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby rose and, after a preliminary flapping of garments, his companion did the same. ‘I shouldn’t worry about the funeral, Miss Bellringer. These things can always be postponed if it proves to be necessary.’

  In the doorway she turned. ‘I knew her, you see, Emily.’ Her fingers tightened on the bone handles of her bag. ‘All this is totally out of character. Believe me, Chief Inspector, there is something very wrong here.’

  After she had left Barnaby took two tablets and swished them down with some water. He leaned back in his chair and waited for them to work. It seemed to take longer and longer. Perhaps he should start taking three. He loosened his belt and returned to the child molester’s file. A photograph grinned up at him: a sunny-faced little man who had had three previous convictions, then been given a job as a primary school caretaker. He sighed, pushed the folder away and wondered about Emily Simpson.

  It was his belief, forged by thirty years of looking and listening, that no one ever acted out of character. What most people thought of as character (the accumulation, or lack of, certain social, educational and material assets) was shallow stuff. Real character was revealed when these accretions were stripped away. It was the chief inspector’s belief that anyone was capable of anything. Strangely enough this did not depress him. He did not even regard it as a pessimistic point of view but rather as the only sensible one for a policeman to hold.

  However, Miss Simpson had done several things on the last day of her life that someone who had known her closely since childhood had never known her do before. And that was odd. Odd and interesting. Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby had made a note of the Samaritans’ number and took hold of the phone. But first there was the little matter of Miss Bellringer’s reception to be dealt with.

  He pressed the buzzer and said, ‘Send Sergeant Troy in here.’

  Chapter Two

  There was no joy from the Samaritans. Barnaby had not expected that there would be. Clam tight as usual. Which was why after a second, later telephone call he presented himself at their tiny terraced house behind Woolworth’s at seven p.m. looking worried.

  An elderly man sat behind a desk with two telephones. The receiver of one was clapped to his ear. He covered the mouthpiece and whispered, ‘Please sit down’ to Barnaby, then continued listening, nodding gravely from time to time. Ev
entually he replaced the receiver and said, ‘You’re the person who rang hoping to see Terry?’

  Barnaby, who had thought the elderly man might have been Terry, nodded. ‘That’s right. We talked on Friday.’

  ‘And you are . . . ?’ He was turning back the pages of a log book.

  ‘I’d rather not give my name,’ said Barnaby truthfully.

  The phone rang again, and almost simultaneously a middle-aged woman and a young girl came out of a room nearby. The couple shook hands. Barnaby turned to the woman who murmured ‘Good evening’ and left. The girl waited expectantly. The man at the desk smiled and made a sign bringing her and Barnaby together.

  She was slim and pretty, with a fall of shiny, fair hair. She had on a neat checked dress and a necklace of little silver beads. Barnaby compared her to his own daughter who, on her last visit home, had been wearing shredded jeans, an old leather breastplate and her hair in a sequinned crest.

  ‘We can talk in here.’ The girl led him back into the room. There was a comfortable armchair, a banquette against the wall and a pine table with a jar of marguerites. Barnaby took the banquette. ‘Would you like some coffee?’

  ‘No thank you.’ He had entered the building with no plan, prepared to play it as it came. For all he knew Terry might have been a tough old pro like himself. Blessing his good fortune, he smiled gravely at her and produced his warrant card.

  ‘Oh! But we’re . . . I can’t . . . what do you want?’

  ‘I understand you were the person who spoke to Emily Simpson last Friday evening?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She sounded a bit firmer this time. ‘But we never discuss clients with anyone. Our service is completely confidential.’