Murder in the Mill-Race

by E. C. R. Lorac

  Peel threw him a grateful glance and continued: “I tried to sum the woman up. I knew she’d been in a position of trust for half a lifetime and that she’d been in complete control at that home. I thought she’d gone a bit queer. Some women do as they grow old, especially if they’ve been undisputed bosses in a small world of their own. Because I wasn’t satisfied about the Bilton case, I’ve been trying ever since to find out a bit more about conditions in this village. None of the village folk would talk—what they didn’t know would fill a book. Now I’ve got a boy and girl of my own at our school here, and they’ve made friends with some of the children from Milham in the Moor, and I’ve listened to those kids chattering. According to them, Sister Monica was a know-all. There was nothing went on in the village she didn’t get to know about, and the kids played a snooping game they called ‘Sister M.’ Now I reckon when a woman takes to spying on her neighbours there’s likely to be trouble sooner or later. My own belief is that Sister Monica found out who’d got Nancy Bilton into trouble, although she denied knowing anything about it. It seems to me that the same person who shoved Nancy Bilton in the millstream may have tried his luck again when he found Sister Monica somewhere near the bridge.”

  “You mean that Bilton was killed by the chap who’d got her into trouble,” said the D.D.I., “and that he believed that Sister Monica knew what he’d done—or are you thinking she blackmailed him in a quiet way?”

  Major Rootham put in a word of protest. “You’re making out that Sister Monica was a thoroughly evil woman,” he said. “I can’t see that you’ve got any evidence at all to support the theory.”

  Peel got very red in the face, but he stuck to his guns. “I think she went queer in the head, sir. Religious mania is like any other mania, it makes people unaccountable for their actions. They think that, whatever they do, it must be right. All this praying for hours, and going out at night to meditate in the dark, it’s mania, nothing else. Then the fact that she had a sense of power added to it. She dominated everybody at Gramarye: the old nurse and the cook and the young maids; I reckon she almost hypnotised them. It’s bad enough for anybody to get a sense of power like that. No one had ever stood up to her, they were all afraid of her.”

  “I’m willing to believe she dominated her household and got the village under her thumb because she knew too much,” said Major Rootham, “but I’m not willing to believe she dominated Lady Ridding and the rest of the committee. They’re not fools.”

  “No, sir,” persisted Peel, Tut I can see that Sister Monica was very useful to Lady Ridding. Her ladyship’s always taken a pride in Gramarye—old family charity, unique in its way. And I know Lady Ridding’s right when she says such charities are hard put to it to cover expenses these days. Sister Monica ran that place cheaper than anyone could believe. Nurse Barrow and the cook work for a fraction of the wages any other domestics get, and the young maids were delinquent juveniles in training. Lady Ridding’s said to have a hard enough head when it comes to business, sir, meaning no disrespect.” Major Rootham looked troubled, as well he might. Lady Ridding’s flair for business was becoming famous in the county. The D.D.I., who had no inordinate respect for county families, put in a word here.

  “I can see Peel’s point, sir. The Warden at Gramarye was a competent manager and a very economical one—there’s no denying that. I’ve no doubt she soft-soaped Lady Ridding and the committee very cleverly, so the latter folks disregarded any signs of queer behaviour in the Warden and upheld the saint story. They’re not going to change their tune now.”

  Major Rootham sat and cogitated. Then he said: “What indisputable evidence have we got that there has been foul play?”

  The D.D.I. answered before Peel had a chance.

  “It’s worth considering these facts, sir. Two women have been drowned at the same spot, both at night. They were both inmates of the same house. The first case resulted in a verdict of suicide. The question is, are we going to be satisfied with a verdict of accident in the second case? There’s evidence that deceased had been suffering from attacks of giddiness: Peel has collected unanimous opinions about the probability of her having fallen over, knocked her head, and rolled or slipped into the stream. There’s no evidence against that theory, but there’s a possibility that deceased’s private papers may have been stolen. It’s up to you, sir.”

  “Yes. I see your point all right,” said Rootham. “You feel that further investigation is called for. I agree. But it’s not going to be easy. Country people can be very obstinate. Peel says the customary answer is, ‘I don’t know’ or else ‘I can’t remember.’ In other words, the village folk won’t help. It’s very odd, that.”

  “You’ve got to realise the sort of village Milham in the Moor is, sir,” said Peel. “They’ve always been cut off, kept themselves to themselves. We say in Milham Prior, when we’ve got a fete or a dance or a collection, ‘No use asking those folks out there on the moor to help,’ and they say, ‘Milham Prior’s done nought for us. Us won’t do nought for Milham Prior.’ It’s not actually a feud, it’s a habit of mind, going back for centuries for all I know. They diddled me last time, over the Bilton case, because they were solid against outside interference.” Peel mopped his face and then added stubbornly: “It’s as though the moor’s in their blood. Something hard, and something different from folks who’re used to the give-and-take of town, and law and order that’s part of their lives. It’s as though they’re trying to be a law unto themselves,” he concluded.

  3

  “I’m disposed to put this business to the Yard, Grey,” said Major Rootham later to the D.D.I., after Peel had left. “I see your point about the two deaths looking fishy. We can’t leave it alone. But it looks like being one of those long jobs. You’ve got your hands pretty full already, and I don’t think the chaps here have got time for this job: neither do I think they can get to the bottom of it.”

  “I agree with you there, sir, but all the same I think Peel’s done pretty well. He jumped to it: he got all the routine evidence, timing, position’ of contacts, and so forth. Pie examined the ground and he went over that house. In addition to all that, he thought out the possibilities involved and some of his ideas are worth following up. But I don’t think he’ll get any further. It’s not his fault. It’s the peculiarity of those two places. I thought he put it pretty well when he described that village as a law unto itself, but he’s got a bias, They’ve put his back up, and that means he’s put their back up.” Rootham nodded. “That’s it. I think a newcomer would have a better chance: would see the thing more in focus. Of course I could take you and your chaps off that job you’re on.”

  “I’d be sorry if you did that, sir. We’ve put a lot of work in with the excise officers and I think we’ve a chance of getting it cleared up. It’s a sizeable racket and it involves a lot of local knowledge. This business here is concentrated into a limited environment, it you see what I mean. And I think there’s this to it. The Milham in the Moor folk are holding out against the Milham Prior police. They’ve seen them before and they reckon they’ve sized them up. They may feel quite different when a Yard man tackles them. And that goes for all of them, the quality as well as the villagers.”

  Major Rootham’s eyebrows shot up, but the Detective Inspector went on: “It seems to me, sir, that Lady Ridding must have known her Warden was getting a bit odd, to say the least of it. I’ve every sympathy with Peel when he gets hot under the collar about all this ‘saintly’ business. There’s several people in that village who’d be none the worse for knowing what it feels like to be pinned down to hard facts by an expert investigator.”

  “You may be right,” agreed Rootham, “and if that’s so, well, someone from London might tackle the job with a more open mind, if you take me.”

  The D.D.I. grinned to himself as he went back to his car to get busy on the job he’d been working at for weeks.

  “If they’re to be bullied, let the Yard wallahs do the bullying. I bet they wil
l, too, saints or no saints.”

  The Deputy Chief Constable sat and thought very deeply after he had parted with his officers. Rootham could not help being conservative by nature, in his general approach to a problem as well as in his politics. It was ingrained in him to trust and respect the “right people,” and he felt uncomfortable about the D.D.I.’s comments on Lady Ridding, and still more uncomfortable when he remembered that phrase, “It’s up to you, sir.” Did Grey think he was going to shut down on an enquiry because its continuance would cause discomfort to the Riddings? But Rootham was honest enough to admit to himself that he would feel relieved if this case were to be handled by C.O. and not by the county men. It would have been very uncomfortable to have a sense of divided loyalties, a desire to save “the right people” discomfort and a desire to back up his own men, no matter which way their enquiries led them. “Probably all a mare’s-nest, but there may be some mud slinging,” he thought to himself.

  The thing which nagged uncomfortably at the back of Rootham’s mind was that he believed he had a faint glimmering of what might have been going on so far as the mystery of Sister Monica’s finances was concerned. Lady Ridding had paid the Warden’s salary in cash. Officially that salary was ten pounds a month, all of which had been thriftily paid into the Building Society. Had Lady Ridding augmented the salary unofficially? Rootham remembered hearing a woman friend of his wife’s say: “You can always get a little extra from Etheldreda Ridding.” Mrs. Rootham had promptly changed the subject. Cream, was it, or butter? pondered Rootham. Had the Warden of Gramarye tumbled to it? A trivial thing, but unpalatable. Of course, Major Rootham didn’t really know anything about Lady Ridding’s affairs: he’d only overheard a remark—and ignored it. He had not been Deputy C.C. at the time, and a man can’t snoop on his wife’s friends.

  Major Rootham stretched out his hand for the phone. “I’ll ask for a first-rate man,” he said to himself.

  The upshot of Major Rootham’s request to the Commissioner’s Office was that Chief Inspector Macdonald was detailed to investigate the matter of Sister Monica’s death.

  CHAPTER VII

  Macdonald enjoyed his drive down to Devonshire. Pie took Detective Inspector Reeves with him, and they left London at 5:30 A.M. on June 27. At that hour, the London streets were almost deserted, and Macdonald drove south westwards through Chelsea and Mortlake and then on through Staines before the inevitable lorries had set out in any great numbers. It was a glorious morning and Reeves sat in happy companionable silence as Macdonald’s well-serviced car slipped easily along the sunlit roads. They drove by Basingstoke and Andover, and then increased speed over the fine Wiltshire roads to Amesbury, with Salisbury Plain to their right and the chalk downs beyond. Reeves gave a grunt of surprise when he first saw the stone circle of Stonehenge in the distance. It looked so small—like a model of the familiar reality.

  “I’ve never seen it before,” said Reeves.

  “High time you did,” said Macdonald.

  He pulled the car up, and they walked towards the mighty stones. Reeves stood and stared, and at last he asked a question: “Where did they get them from, originally?”

  “The outer circle, the sarsen stones, from the Wiltshire downs: the inner ones, the blue stones, from Pembrokeshire.”

  “How the heck did they move them?”

  “When you’re tired of detecting events concerned with the unruly wills and affections of sinful men, you might find it refreshing to try to answer that ‘how,’ ” said Macdonald. “The most probable answer is by floating them here, and to do that they would have had to excavate canals connecting up existing rivers.”

  “Some job.”

  “Yes. Some job. As a variation, you can think out the mechanics of moving them on rollers, invoking such assistance as the law of the lever might give, bearing in mind that there were no roads and that Stone Age Britain was pretty thickly covered with forest.”

  “Yes. Quite a nice problem,” said Reeves. “Seems to me it’d be simpler to concentrate on who killed Sister Monica, plus How and Why. But I’ll keep your tip in mind. It’d make a nice change of thought sometime when I’m browned off.”

  “And when I retire, I might write a monograph, for private circulation only, on the subject of stones,” said Macdonald. “Stonehenge, the Dale Stones in Lunesdale, and the London Stone.”

  “Not forgetting the item from Scone,” chuckled Reeves.

  “I hadn’t forgotten it, but let sleeping stones lie,” replied Macdonald. “If you’ve stared enough, what about some coffee? We’ve made good time. Seventy-eight miles in two hours isn’t bad going, remembering we started from Westminster.”

  They drove on through Taunton and reached Milham Prior in time for an early lunch at the George, Reeves studying the Victorian decor with lively amusement. Alter lunch they drove to Milham Prior police station to consult with Sergeant Peel and the Barnsford Inspector.

  2

  “There’s something wrong there,” said Peel, after he and Macdonald had discussed the report which had been sent to the Commissioner’s Office. “I know it’s no use guessing, and our deputy C.C. said, ‘Leave it to the Yard,’ so I’ve left it. But my opinion is that every single witness I interrogated could have told me more than they did. They just shut down, and that goes for the Manor House as well as the cottagers: old Dr. Brown, the Reverend Kingsley, the estate agent—Sanderson—they all know more than they admitted.”

  Macdonald looked at Peel’s carefully typed lists. “I have a feeling that the fellows who were there when you first arrived on the scene ought to be able to give a bit more factual evidence than they have,” he said. “If I’ve got things right, all those chaps were closely associated with that bit of the village nearest to the midstream. There’s Samuel Venner, who lives at the Mill House, Bob Doone, who’s foreman at the sawmill close by, George Wilson, who’s electrician in charge of the generating plant, and Jack Hedges, cowman at the farm close by the Mill House. Jim Rigg, who found the body, is second cowman at the Manor Farm, but he lives in a cottage by the bridge over the river. Am I right in saving that all of them would be likely to use that footbridge over the millstream at any hour of the day or night?”

  “Correct, sir,” replied Peel. “Cowmen have to look to their beasts at calving, no matter what the hour may be. George Wilson’s got to keep an eye on his storage batteries, and I know for a fact he often goes to inspect the plant late at night, especially when a lot of current’s been used up at the Manor. Doone’s often been known to work at the sawmill after dark. He does some trading of his own with the farmers, and he or his son will cut posts for the farmers, or saw logs for them when they’ve been felling their own timber. Young Doone’s got a tractor outfit of his own and runs a saw from the engine in the evenings. But I’d give them all a clean bill so far as character is concerned. The only thing I’d say is that they’re pretending to be stupider than they are.”

  “Well, it’s with them I shall start,” said Macdonald. “Now, tell me this. You say deceased used to be treasurer of this, that, and the other. What reason is given for her being relieved of those activities?”

  “‘Her was tired out. Terrible tired Sister was,’” quoted Peel sardonically. “‘Old Dr. Brown said Sister was wearing of herself out and us was properly ashamed to’ve put upon her so.’ You sort that one out, Chief. It sounds easy, but it isn’t. Butter won’t melt in their mouths.”

  “Well, I’ll have a shot at melting it,” said Macdonald, “and the sooner I get going, the better.”

  “And good luck to you,” said Peel. “Now where are you going to stay, sir?”

  “At the inn at Milham in the Moor. I think this is one of the cases when it is salutary for everybody concerned to know that the C.I.D. is very much on the spot and that it will remain on the spot until something turns up. Reeves and I will adopt wearing-down tactics.”

  Reeves chuckled. “It does work, you know. They get to hate the sight of you, and somebody loses their
temper eventually, and says something they wish they hadn’t. Haunt them, that’s the idea, day and night.”

  “Haunt them,” echoed Peel appreciatively. “You’ve got something there. They’re superstitious in their own way.”

  “Don’t tell Reeves so. He’s quite capable of borrowing a nurse’s cloak and providing apparitions which aren’t regulation,” said Macdonald. “For myself, I’m out after chapter and verse, hoping somebody will slip up eventually.”

  The two C.I.D. men drove out towards the moor, both keenly aware of the fragrance blowing in at the open windows: new-mown hay, flowering beans and clover, so that Reeves sniffed like a pointer. When they saw the church tower and roofs on the hilltop, Reeves said: “Quite a place. It’s different from anything I’ve ever seen.”

  Macdonald said: “Hilltop villages are the exception rather than the rule in England. Perhaps an unusual site makes for unusual people.”

  “Uppish?” hazarded Reeves, his eyes fixed on the piled-up roofs, one above the other on the steep hillside.

  “No. Not uppish. Isolated maybe,” said Macdonald. “Isolated communities tend to a communal defence mechanism. Sorry. That’s hideous jargon.”

  “Is it? I shouldn’t know,” said Reeves, “but I get the idea. All for each and each for all and to hell with interlopers.”

  Macdonald drew up outside the Milham Arms and went in to find the landlord, whom he asked for two single rooms. Simon Barracombe shook his head. They weren’t expecting visitors just now, he urged, washing his hands.

  “In that case you had better take some of those A.A. and R.A.C. signs off your walls,” said Macdonald. “I am an officer of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard. I want two bedrooms. Can you accommodate me or not?”