A Question of Honor: A Bess Crawford Mystery

by Charles Todd

  I peered into the front room. Miss Gooding had leaned forward to follow my mother’s finger across the photograph. Squinting, she said, “That’s Theodore Belmont. He was afraid of his own shadow, poor lad.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  I nearly leapt out of my skin as a hand closed around my arm. In the same motion, Simon’s hand closed over my mouth before I could cry out. Pulling me back into the kitchen, he let me go and beckoned toward the kitchen yard and the back garden. There were vegetables in a bed that was slowly losing ground to the weeds, and a pair of sheds by two old apple trees.

  Following him, my heart still beating twice as fast as normal, I waited until we were out of hearing. “What is it?”

  “I did a little poking around. You’ll never guess what I found.”

  I followed him to one of the sheds. There were chickens penned next to a coop, and the rooster flew up at us as we passed. Inside the shed were tools from a generation gone, and cast-off household items from broken crockery to worn-out pans and a table that had lost a leg. A large vinegar jug with a crack running down to the base stood in the darkest corner. Simon reached down to lift the jug, and I thought surely it would break apart. But it was thicker walled than I expected. He turned it around and I could see that the back was out, as if something heavy had knocked against it.

  But it was what was inside the hole that made me stare.

  It was a revolver that appeared not to have been cleaned for years. It was standard service issue of the late Victorian era.

  As I reached for it, Simon caught my hand. “It’s still loaded. Be careful.”

  I leaned over, wishing I’d brought a torch with me. But as my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, I realized that three of the cartridge chambers were empty. And three were still loaded.

  “Simon—what on earth?” I straightened up. “Are you telling me—is this the murder weapon? The revolver that killed the Caswells?”

  “Very likely.”

  “But where did it come from? How did it get here?”

  “Either the killer left it behind and Miss Gooding took it for reasons of her own or the killer has hidden it here. He couldn’t very well keep it, could he?”

  “There’s the third possibility,” I said, not wanting to put it into words. “Miss Gooding killed the Caswells. While everyone else had the day off.”

  “It’s entirely possible.”

  From the house came the familiar whistle of the teakettle. “I must go. What shall we do with it?”

  “I think it would be best if we take it.”

  I was already running toward the house as he answered me. I got to the kettle before the steam had reached fever pitch, and rinsed out the teapot before spooning in the tea and then setting it to one side to steep.

  And all the while, the question was running through my mind. Had whoever left the revolver in the shed also changed that photograph in the frame in Miss Gooding’s bedroom upstairs?

  My mother’s voice was coming from the front room, and I heard Miss Gooding reply, “Yes, that’s true. But the money they’d come into didn’t last forever. They had decided to take in children again. There were already two queries from their advertisement in the Times. One from South Africa and one from India.”

  There was a motive for murder if I’d ever heard one. Killing them before they took in more innocent children and turned their lives into wretched misery.

  “But surely—”

  “Who was there to stop them? I ask you.”

  I peered around the door again. Mother was putting the photograph back into Miss Gooding’s blue-veined hands. “I should think any one of these children would have moved the earth to stop the Caswells from resuming their cruelty.”

  “Not Hazel Sheridan. She came back once. Did you know? After the murders were in all the newspapers, and she paid me to tell anyone nosing about that there was no such person as Hazel Sheridan who once lived at The Willows. I held out for more, because I’d lost my position, you see. And she paid up without a word of argument. I wouldn’t have said anything now, but you already knew her name.” She gestured around the room, indicating the cottage. “It made it possible to live here, you see.”

  “Did she indeed? Er—I understood that she was friends with the sexton. How did that come about?”

  Simon had come in with the coal scuttle, and the tea was ready to pour.

  We reached the front room, Simon with the coal scuttle and I with the tea tray in my hands.

  Miss Gooding was saying, “Hardly friends. Barney Lowell? He was the gardener’s son at The Willows. A troublemaker. The Caswells let him go, and his father set up as a nurseryman. They did well, much to everyone’s surprise.”

  My mother glanced up at me as I set down the tray. I knew what she was thinking—that if Miss Sheridan bribed one person to remove her name from the list of children, why not two? I wondered if it was Lowell who had wanted to buy that photograph from me. It would make sense, if he’d intended to purchase it and I got there first. Still earning his keep from Miss Sheridan. He’d told Mr. Gates about Simon and me in the churchyard to cause more trouble. Had he put the gun in the shed?

  Had he used that gun?

  As I handed Miss Gooding her cup of tea, I said, “I can’t remember just when Miss Sheridan was married.”

  “It was just before the Caswells were murdered. I know, because Miss Gwendolyn was angry about not being invited to the wedding. She’d written a letter to Miss Sheridan. I heard her tell her mother what she’d done. Mrs. Caswell laughed. But Miss Gwendolyn was set on going to a fashionable wedding.” Miss Gooding chuckled. “She should have thought of that ten years before, and so her father told her, from behind his newspaper. If looks could kill, he’d have fallen dead where he sat. I had just come into the room to tell them Cook was better. She’d had an attack of gallstones.”

  She sipped the tea and smiled. “Honey. I don’t know how long it’s been since I tasted honey.”

  “The Caswells had lost their money,” I said, taking my own cup. “It’s why they took in children in the first place. But then they came into money again. Where did that come from?”

  “I don’t know.” She helped herself to another biscuit. “We talked about it sometimes, below stairs. The general view was that Miss Grant—the governess, you see—inherited a little money from her fiancé, and put together with what she’d saved, Mr. Caswell was able to make an investment, and it did well for some years. But he wasn’t very clever with money, and in the end, he lost more than he was earning.”

  “He had no right to that money,” I said before I could stop myself.

  “Who was there to tell him he didn’t? I ask you.”

  Servant gossip was often on the mark. They were invisible, and the family often talked in their presence without thinking twice.

  Miss Gooding began to nod off soon after that, unused to company.

  My mother gestured to the tea things and I took them to the kitchen to do the washing up. After a moment she joined me and helped dry.

  “I’ve sent Simon out to the motorcar. When you’ve finished here, we’ll take our leave.”

  “Did Simon tell you what he discovered in the shed?”

  “He showed me. I gathered it could be the murder weapon?”

  “Possibly. Simon remembers that was part of the evidence against Lieutenant Wade. According to the MFP, he’d taken it with him.”

  “Just so.”

  She returned to the front room. When I followed her there she was just saying farewell to a drowsy Miss Gooding, thanking her for the tea.

  I thanked her as well, and she smiled. “Come again,” she said. “I always enjoy having guests.”

  Simon had already cranked the motorcar and was standing beside it, ready to hold the door for my mother.

  On our way into Petersfiel
d, Simon glanced over his shoulder at me. “If I turn the revolver in to the police, I shall have to tell them where I found it.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that. We can’t have them descending on Miss Gooding, demanding to know how it got there, in the shed.”

  “I didn’t think to ask her if there was a weapon in the Caswell house,” Mother said.

  “The police must have asked the staff at the time.” Simon slowed, finding a place to pull over.

  “True, of course. There’s certainly no way to connect it to this man Lowell.”

  “I’d like to talk to him again,” I said.

  “It’s too dangerous,” Simon interjected.

  “Not in broad daylight in the churchyard. He must live in one of the houses overlooking it. He always seems to appear without warning,” I said.

  Reluctantly Simon agreed, but only if Mother went with me. “And I’ll find a spot where I can watch, unobserved.”

  When we reached the square again, Mother and I got down, and Simon drove on. We were to give him ten minutes to leave the motorcar and circle around behind the church. Meanwhile, Mother and I strolled through the market, looking at the wares for sale. When we came to the garden stall, which featured a wooden arbor that shaded the offerings from the sun, we paused to look at the healthy array of perennials.

  It was then I saw the discreet sign behind the counter where a young woman was explaining to an elderly couple where and how to put in the wisteria they were buying.

  LOWELL AND SON

  Judging from the display, the former gardener’s boy had done very well indeed. Certainly he or someone had a knack for growing healthy plants.

  Had the money the former Miss Sheridan paid him helped him to build his business? Just as it had helped Miss Gooding live in her cottage?

  The elderly couple walked on with their young wisteria, and we walked up to the counter in our turn. “You have such lovely plants,” my mother said effusively. “Who has the green thumb?”

  “Mr. Lowell,” the girl said shyly. “He’s a wonder with anything green, and his grafting is amazing. Ornamental trees, fruit trees. It’s an art, you know.”

  My mother did know, because her grandfather had grafted grapes and apple trees and even roses, as a hobby.

  “Yes, that takes a great deal of skill. I used to know a Lowell here in Petersfield. He had a son named Barnaby, as I recall.”

  “That would be Mr. Lowell’s father,” she said, nodding.

  “Was the father by any chance in the Army?” I asked. “I seem to remember something about that.”

  “He was in South Africa until he was invalided out. My mother was his housekeeper and he had malaria something fierce. She said she’d never seen anyone sweat like that.”

  Another customer came up, a pot of pansies in her hand, and we stepped aside.

  “He wouldn’t have had a revolver as an ordinary rank,” Mother was saying under her breath, “but he wouldn’t be the first to pick one up as a souvenir.”

  She went back to the plants and found a pretty low-growing ground cover with lavender flowers. “I’ll take this one,” she told the young woman, and paid for it. “And that trowel as well. I’ve misplaced mine. Yes, thank you.”

  We paid for the plant and the trowel, and my mother said, “I think it’s time we go to the churchyard.”

  I carried the plant while she took up the trowel and then at another stall she saw a pair of gloves for the garden.

  Laden with our purchases, we went into the churchyard and I pointed out Georgina Wade’s grave. My mother got down on her knees and, drawing on the gloves, took the trowel from me and began to dig in the soft earth by the headstone. “Poor child. She deserves something, doesn’t she?” With my help we planted the ground cover in the center by the headstone. Patting the earth around it, she said, “There. We need a little water to settle it in.”

  I looked up. “Here comes the sexton,” I said under my breath.

  “Perfect. I thought we might get his attention very quickly.”

  She rose, and dusting her gloves, she pulled them off. Handing them to me along with the trowel, she looked around, and seeing the sexton apparently for the first time, she walked toward him, smiling.

  “Just the man to help me,” she said brightly. “I need a little water. Is there any to be had close by? Or must I ask at the pub?”

  “You need permission to plant flowers on the graves,” he said.

  “Oh, surely not,” she answered. “I’m a member of the family. And look at the other flowers there and there and even over there.”

  “What family?”

  “The Wade family, of course. Cousins on my mother’s side. That’s why we’re here, to remember that poor child.”

  He stared at my mother. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why ever not?” Mother asked sharply. “My daughter here found the grave for us, and I’ve come to take care of it.” When he stood his ground, she added, “If you don’t believe me, I have a photograph of Georgina. And a chair that was hers. They were being sold at the charity stall, believe it or not. I’d asked Mr. Gates to keep them, and someone made a terrible mistake.”

  I could see him taking in what she had to say. She gave him a moment. “Now about that water,” she pressed.

  “You’ll have to go to the pub,” he answered ungraciously.

  “I understand your nursery grew the flowers I just put in. You must enjoy working with them. I was quite impressed with your stall. Did I see azaleas there? I’m sure I did. Was your father a plant man as well?”

  His face was rigid, dark color coming up under his weather-roughened skin. “Leave my father out of this.”

  “I don’t see why I should. Like father like son, only you chose not to go into the Army. At least that’s what Hazel Campbell tells me. We saw her just the other night, in London.”

  “I don’t know anyone called Hazel Campbell.”

  “But you must know her. She was one of the children at The Willows when you were the gardener’s boy. Surely you haven’t forgotten? Well, I don’t have time to stand and chat, I need to find some water. Good day, Mr. Lowell.”

  And she walked away, with me in her wake.

  “That should confuse him,” she said as we walked out into the square. “But the question now is, what did Hazel Sheridan have to hide?”

  “If she was marrying into Society, being drawn into the murder of the Caswells wouldn’t endear her to her husband’s family.”

  “I must have a friend who knows something about her background. It’s worth pursuing. Let me think where to start.”

  We found the pub and went inside. The polished brass at the bar reflected the dark beams and the lamplight. My mother walked up to the barman, smiled, and said, “I should like to buy a little water for the plants I just put in by my niece’s grave.”

  “Yes, of course, madam,” he said. “There’s no charge, but I’m afraid you’ll have to bring the container back. I don’t have a pail.”

  She agreed, and he went behind the bar, came back with a jar, and filled it for her.

  Thanking him, she left and we started back toward the churchyard. “Marianne Thorndyke,” she said.

  “Sorry?”

  “I can speak to Marianne Thorndyke. I’m sure she can tell me what I need to know about Lady Campbell. Or if she can’t, she’ll know someone who can.”

  I laughed as we walked back to the church. Depend upon my mother to know where to turn.

  There was no sign of the sexton when we reached the churchyard and made our way to Georgina Wade’s grave. We watered the little plant well and then my mother stood back. “There. Something good has come of this.”

  We returned the jar to the pub and went to look for Simon. He was standing near the Lowell nursery stall, and he looked up as we approached.

>   “What did you say to that man? He left the churchyard as if all the imps of hell were at his heels.”

  I told him.

  “That was pushing rather hard, wasn’t it?”

  Mother shook her head. “If we don’t, who will? And I knew you were close by.”

  “Have we finished here?” Simon asked.

  “Yes, I think so,” I answered. And he led us back to where he had left the motorcar.

  When we got there, Simon put out a hand, telling us to wait while he went forward.

  He came back to us and said, “Someone searched the motorcar.”

  “Dear God,” I said, “did he find the revolver? Or the photograph?”

  “Neither. I had them with me, in case.”

  It was late when we reached Somerset, and we fell into our beds, exhausted.

  But the next morning my mother was dressed and ready to go. “The proper time to call is in the afternoon, but Marianne won’t mind if I show up in the middle of the morning. Simon will drive us. She’s always been quite fond of him.”

  And so it was we drove into Glastonbury to call on Marianne Thorndyke.

  She had moved to the family home there when the Zeppelins began dropping bombs on London. Her husband was an undersecretary at the Foreign Office and couldn’t very well leave. And so she was very glad of company, and Mother used the excuse that I was at home on leave to explain our early call.

  Mrs. Thorndyke greeted me warmly and welcomed Simon like an old friend. She ordered tea and asked all the news.