Murder in the Mill-Race

by E. C. R. Lorac

  Eventually Peel, who had plenty of common sense when he wasn’t being given information about dairy cattle, had decided that the best thing he could do was to search the immediate environs of the bridge. He could interrogate natives later, but any delay in .searching might mean losing valuable evidence. The ground was fairly soft, and, for all Peel knew, somebody’s cows might be driven all over the place before he could stop them. The sergeant knew who had been at the bridge since the body had been found: Rigg, Venner, Wilson, and Hedges, all in labourer’s boots, Dr. Brown and Dr. Ferens in good country shoes. Rigg and Venner had lifted the body from the stream, Wilson and Hedges had turned up just after the body had been laid by the bank, and they had all come from the south side of the bridge. Dr. Ferens had come from the north, down the park. Peel and his attendant constable began to search the ground, the hedges, and the grass, seeking for any object or sign which might indicate the presence of any other person who had been at the spot. When they had been at this job for some quarter of an hour, Inspector Carson of Barnsford arrived, together with two of his own men and a photographer. Peel saluted his superior officer, and while the constables continued searching the ground, the two seniors stood on the bank and Peel gave a brief description of events as far as his information went.

  “I reckon we must make a job of it this time,” he said. “I wasn’t happy in my mind over the last case, and I reckon this proves I was right.”

  “What have you got in mind, Peel?”

  “I believe there’s a murderer in this village. That girl Nancy Bilton was a bad lot and she got into trouble with some chap here. I daresay she made a nuisance of herself to him and he pushed her into the midstream. We never found out who he was, but I shouldn’t be at all surprised if this Sister Monica had some sort of idea about his identity.”

  “Then why didn’t she tell you?” asked Carson. “She swore in the witness box she didn’t know the chap’s identity and she was a religious body. You’re not telling me you think she told lies?”

  “No, I’m not, though I reckon she was queer—too religious, you know. Takes some women like that. I know she thought herself next door to the Almighty, for all her show of humble pie. My own idea is that she had her own suspicions and wouldn’t put ’em into words because she’d no means of proving it. And the chap knew she’d got an inkling of who he was and she was going round trying to ferret things out in that clever-belike way she’d got.”

  The Inspector grunted. “More than a year ago, isn’t it? Not likely she’d have found out anything now.”

  “I don’t know: this village is a queer place. Maybe somebody let something out to her, thinking it was all over and done with. Anyway, my guess is she met the chap down here and charged him with it sudden-like, and he heaved her into the millrace like he did the other. They do say she wandered round here of nights. Must have been some reason made her do it.”

  Again the Inspector grunted. “Well, you’ve evidently had the last case on your mind, Peel. What’s your idea?”

  Peel looked cautiously round the sunlit spot where they were standing, and lowered his voice even more. “Strikes me things went on pretty quietly in this village until two or three years ago. It’s the sort of village doesn’t change much from generation to generation. It was after that new estate manager came, three years ago, there seemed to be upsets.”

  “I see,” said the Inspector. “Well, it’s worth looking into. And about these folk in the Mill House here.”

  Peel interrupted with an exasperated snort. “There’s none so deaf as them that won’t hear. I reckon this spot is a sort of lovers’ lane. As you see, you can come round the mill from the village street and walk up the park by that steep path there. The village folk are allowed to use that path, but not to go through the Manor garden. They can get out again, into the village square, by a gate beside the walled kitchen garden. In other words, you can take a walk down the village street, turn into the park by the mill here, walk up the park, and get to where you started. The gates aren’t locked. I bet any money the Venners know who’s in the habit of walking through here: they know Sister Monica used to walk here after dark. Stands to reason they know who else does.”

  The Inspector nodded. “We’ll see to that. And now what about fingerprinting the handrail of that bridge? It’s worn smooth enough. We might get something there. I reckon there’s been too much trampling around for footsteps to help, and it’s too much to hope that we’ll find anything left around. Not that you weren’t right to start here. And we’ll have those gates shut and see to it that no one comes through.”

  “Very good,” said Peel. “Let ’em see we mean business from the word go this time, and not so much about the poor soul brooding and throwing herself in. Brooding my hat.”

  CHAPTER V

  “Her come over dizzy, poor soul. That be it. Terrible dizzy Sister’s been these weeks past. Only Sunday ’twere she fell flat as never was, and the little maids did all hear mun fall. And yesterday again, her did slip on stairs and knocked back of her head a real crack.”

  It was “Nurse” Barrow giving evidence, treating Sergeant Peel to a wealth of detail over Sister Monica’s dizziness, until the sergeant felt it would have been a relief to knock Hannah Barrow flat and give her reason for dizziness herself. Hannah Barrow, aged sixty-two, assistant at Gramarye since 1929, called “Nurse” by courtesy, devoted admirer and servant to Sister Monica—“the most garrulous old fool I ever heard,” groaned Peel. The worst of it was that she had corroborative evidence, lashings of it. Emma Higson, aged fifty-nine, cook at Gramarye since 1939, upheld every word Hannah Barrow uttered. “Her come over dizzy-like, poor soul,” she wheezed. “Her head, ’twas. ‘Sister,’ I says, ‘it’s new glasses you’re wanting. And what’s the National Health for?’ I asked her. ‘You get some new glasses, Sister,’ I says. Them as knows can tell you wrong glasses do make folks dizzy. And a terrible fall she had, terrible. Sunday ’twas. . . .”

  Emma Higson was even more tiresome to listen to than Nurse Barrow, for Emma was of Welsh parentage, reared in London, whose Cockney speech was variegated by a Welsh lilt, the whole rendered more formidable by a veneer of Devonian idiom, picked up in eleven years’ association with Devonians.

  “Her fell while her was watching water, that’s how ’twas,” said Hannah Barrow, sucking her false teeth back into place. “Her was unaccountable fond o’ that bridge, a thing I don’t rightly understand,” she went on, “but then Sister was a proper saint, not common earth such as you and me.” Her glance indicated that saintliness was very remote from the police force. “Herd pray for hours,” said Hannah reminiscently. “Terrible taken up with praying for us sinners was Sister.”

  Peel got the conversation back to the topic of Sister Monica’s habit of wandering in the park after dark. “Iss, many a night she’d go out,” said Hannah. “Her said her could meditate proper when the world was all still and dark and nought to come between her and ‘her thoughts. ’Twas then she wrestled for righteousness,” she added, “and there’s no knowing the good she did a-communin’ with spirits and souls of the righteous, and if her was took in the midst of ’oly thoughts, it was all for the likes of us.”

  “That’s as may be,” said Peel, and transferred his attention to the three young serving maids—Alice, Bessie, and Dot. Here he found the same unanimity of purpose. They had all heard Sister fall on the stairs and had rushed to see what had happened. She had been sitting with her head in her hands by the time they got into the hall, and she wouldn’t hear of having a doctor, like Nurse said she ought. “No, I’m not hurt, just shaken a little,” she said. “I’m afraid I wasn’t looking where I was going, and my foot slipped.”

  “And I don’t wonder at it,” said Dot, who was the talkative one of the three abigails. “Look at the way Sister made us polish them stairs, fair glassy they are, and the lino’s old anyway and been polished for lifetimes. Then she wore them flat shoes about the house, soft shoes, so’s you never could hea
r her coming. But there, she was a saint, so it’s no use wondering she wasn’t like the rest of us.”

  “How long have you been here?” asked Peel, and she looked at him for a second with a bright and unregenerate eye.

  “Fifteen months. I shall be eighteen come Christmas.”

  Peel knew what that meant. When she was eighteen Dot would be independent and able to choose her own job. “Are you girls happy here?” he asked.

  It was a false move. Dot lowered her eyelids and clasped her hands and became a virtuous automaton again. “Ever so happy,” she said smugly. “Sister Monica was wonderful. It’ll never be the same again.”

  It was Nurse Barrow who took Peel over the house, pointing out again and again how spotless it was, and frowning over the marks made on the polished linoleum by Peel’s damp and heavy boots. He knew the layout: the two dormitories where the children slept, with Sister Monica’s bedroom opening out of one dormitory and Nurse’s bedroom opening out of the other. Peel stood and stared at Sister Monica’s room: it was like a nun’s cell apart from its clutter of holy pictures and plaster angels. Whitewashed walls, a narrow iron bedstead, a chair, a little prayer desk, and a washstand and chest of drawers combined. That was all. He glanced into cupboard and drawers with Nurse’s disapproving eye upon him.

  “Where did she do her writing?” he asked.

  “In the office, downstairs. Sister said bedroom was for sleeping in, and her bedroom’s the same as ours. Same beds, same bedding. Never no luxuries for her.”

  Peel saw again the rooms where the maids slept: two rooms, opening out of one another: the senior maid had a room to herself, the other two shared one, and Emma Higson’s room was next door, she being in control of the domestic staff. Peel remembered the maids’ rooms. They had narrow casement windows, with a stone mullion between the lights. At one time they had been barred, but orders had been given to remove the bars in case of fire, and a fire-escape ladder had been fixed at Sister Monica’s window. The room in which Nancy Bilton had been locked had a very narrow window, and Sister Monica had said in evidence that she had thought the window was too small for anybody to get out of. She had had little knowledge of the athletic abilities of girls today. Again and again Emma Higson gave voice to her own opinion about Sister Monica’s end. “Her turned dizzy, poor soul: fell backwards maybe and knocked herself silly and rolled into water.”

  Peel sent her away after she had shown him the office, and he sat down and went through the contents of the desk, using the keys which had been on a ring in the pocket of Sister’s cloak. Everything was tidy and businesslike and in order. Neatly written books gave detailed descriptions of children who had been or were now in the home; similar details about the maids; account books, recipe books, inventories of linen and blankets and clothes and stores, all written in the same admirably legible hand with the same wealth of detail. Here were all the records anybody could possibly demand so far as the running of Gramarye was concerned: account books and analyses of accounts, costs per week, costs per child, wages, food, clothing, equipment, set out legibly and meticulously in a manner to rejoice any accountant’s heart. But Sergeant Peel was not interested in accounts or in the economics of running a children’s home. He wanted to get to grips with the personality of the dead woman, to know something of her dealings as a human being, apart from her abilities as Warden. He went through every drawer and cupboard, every file and pigeonhole, without discovering a single letter or paper of a personal kind. “Damn it, the woman must have had some personal contacts,” he said to himself. “Most religious-minded old maids are bung-full of sentiment: they keep letters and photos galore and bits about their families and their young days and all that.”

  He sent for Hannah Barrow again and asked where Sister Monica had kept her private letters and papers. Hannah told him that everything Sister possessed was either in her bedroom or in this office. There was nothing anywhere else. He could see the parlour, but there was nothing there. It was only used when visitors came.

  “Do you know anything about her family—next of kin?” asked Peel.

  “Her had no family, poor soul. Her was alone in the world,” said Hannah smugly, with the air of one repeating an oft-told tale. “One sister, her had, name of Ursula. Her died way back. Jubilee year ’twas. ‘Now I’m alone in the world so far as kith and kin goes,’ her said. I mind it same as if ’twere yesterday. ‘My family’s here now,’ her said, ‘the little ones, Hannah, and you and the others: you’re my family, and blessed I am to have you all.’ ”

  “That’s all very fine and large,” said Peel to himself, “but there must have been some papers I haven’t found. The woman was paid, presumably. She’d have been paid by cheque, I take it. She must have had a banking account, or a savings bank book. There’s something damned odd about the whole setup.”

  2

  Peel’s next call was at the Manor House. For twenty years Lady Ridding had been chairman of the committee which controlled Gramarye, and it was to be presumed that she knew all that there was to be known about the deceased Warden.

  The sergeant was conscious of acute discomfort when he and his attendant constable were shown into the morning room at the Manor. Theoretically, Peel had no undue reverence for the gentry. In the eyes of the law, a witness was a witness, to be treated with neither fear nor favour, but Lady Ridding had given away prizes at the police sports, beamed upon competing police teams in the ambulance competitions, received bouquets from policemen’s small daughters and salutes from sergeants and inspectors. It was Peel’s duty to collect all the available evidence for his Inspector, and information about the financial position of deceased, to say nothing of her next of kin, had obviously got to be obtained, but Peel knew in his heart that be could not really deal with Lady Ridding. If she joined in the “I don’t know” tactics of the village she could defeat him, not by a display of intransigence but by graciously worded regrets for her inability to help him.

  Her ladyship (the title was accorded to her by all the village folk) swept superbly into the small room.

  “Good morning, Sergeant. Good morning, Constable. Please sit down. This is indeed a sorrowful occasion. Sister Monica’s death is a tragedy, and I feel it deeply. I have had the privilege of knowing her for thirty years, and I cannot tell you how profoundly I grieve at her loss. Now I know that it is your duty to make a detailed enquiry into the circumstances of her death, but I do beg you to remember that I and all who knew her are mourning her loss. I ask you to be brief, Sergeant.”

  This speech was delivered with all the virtuosity of one skilled in addresssing committees; moreover, it indicated subtly that Peel was intruding into a house of mourning, and made him feel even less at ease. Essaying a few words of apology and sympathy, Peel started on the easiest question he had to put—the matter of next of kin.

  “I have already discussed that with Sir James,” replied Lady Ridding. “The plain answer is that there is no next of kin. Sister Monica told me years ago, after the death of her parents, that she had only one relative remaining in the world, her sister, Ursula Torrington. Ursula died in 1935. I remember it well. Sister Monica went to her funeral. Since then, believe it or believe it not, Sister Monica has never been away from Gramarye. She refused to take a holiday. Her very soul was in her work, Sergeant. She had no other life. Her home, her friends were here, in this place.”

  Peel then got on to the rather more difficult matter of “deceased’s estate.” He said that he had been unable to find any private papers, any bank statement, any chequebook. Lady Ridding interrupted him here.

  “She had no bank account. Sister Monica was utterly devoid of any interest in money. She despised money. She came to Gramarye thirty years ago, Sergeant. Wages were very different in those days. She was paid forty-eight pounds a year, plus her living expenses, laundry, and insurance. She asked to be paid monthly, in cash, and this method of payment has been adhered to. It was only with difficulty that she was persuaded to accept increases in
salary. She was a selfless woman, Sergeant.”

  “Do you mean that her salary was still forty-eight pounds a year, madam?” enquired Peel, and saw the constable’s eyes goggle over his notes.

  “Of course not,” said Lady Ridding tartly. “We did not exploit her unworldliness. Her salary was raised by regular increments of four pounds a year until it reached ten pounds a month. That was in 1940, during the war, and Sister Monica came to me and said she did not wish for any further rise. She wanted to make her own contribution to the financial sacrifices we were all making. At her own wish her salary has remained fixed at that sum—one hundred and twenty pounds a year. It was too little, of course, but it was what she wished.”

  “And she was paid in cash?” asked the sergeant.

  “As I have told you,” said Lady Ridding coldly. “I, as chairman of the committee, am empowered to draw cheques on the Gramarye account, together with a signature from the vicar. I paid Sister Monica ten pounds on the first of every month, in pound notes. She once told me that after she had paid any necessary outgoings—uniform and so forth—she gave the remains of her salary each month to various charities. She was an amazing woman, Sergeant.”

  “She must have been,” said Peel. He dared not meet Lady Ridding’s eye, for the most heterodox thoughts were going through his worldly mind. A hundred and twenty pounds a year . . . and any good cook could get three pounds a week . . . had somebody been making a bit out of the Gramarye funds? Her ladyship was said to be as hard as nails over a business deal.

  “You will realise that charities dependent on invested funds are finding it increasingly difficult to carry on,” continued Lady Ridding, exactly as though she could read Peel’s thoughts, and he felt his face getting even hotter. “And now, Sergeant, are there any further questions which must be dealt with at this very moment? I do not wish to impede your enquiries, but I have much to arrange.”