“Possibly, but it happens to be true,” said Macdonald placidly, “and the fact may account for the well-attested dizziness suffered by deceased.”
“Well, that’s the last thing I ever dreamt of,” said Ferens, “though I suppose the same thing’s been known to happen before. Elderly women of irreproachable character sometimes take to drink quite inexplicably.” He broke off and sat in deep thought, his chin in his hands, and Macdonald did not interrupt him. At length Ferens looked up with a start. “Sorry. I was thinking. The whole thing’s altered by that piece of evidence, isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
“Well, damn all, if the woman was drunk it accounts for everything. She may have had a fall sometime before she toppled into the stream.”
“I didn’t say she was drunk. I said they found traces of alcohol,” said Macdonald. “She hadn’t taken anything for some time before she died. One of the things I want to know is where she got the stuff from, or who gave it to her, likewise where she kept it. But that all comes under the heading of routine—domestic enquiries. One routine question for you, Doctor. You were out at a case on the night Miss Torrington was drowned?”
“Yes. I didn’t get in until about two in the morning. I was out at a maternity case on the moor. I drove back up the village street, past the Mill House. Not a soul about, not a light showing anywhere, and a midsummer night to dream of, by gad. I don’t think it got really dark all night, and the village street was white under the moon. You could sec as clearly as in daylight.” He paused, and then added: “I did think of parking my car by the smithy, way down the hill, and walking up through the park, just because it was such a gorgeous night. If I’d done so, I might have been more useful to you.”
“Who knows?” said Macdonald meditatively. “Well, I’ve kept you away from your hay fever for long enough. In conclusion, is there anything you’d care to add, or opinion you’d like to express?”
“Nothing of any use to you,” said Ferens. “In my own mind I think it’s probable that the Torrington woman did shove Nancy Bilton into the midstream. That is to say, deceased was unbalanced. If she’d taken to drinking, that in itself shows she was abnormal; it was such a startling departure from the habits of a lifetime, and I’m the more disposed to believe that she got herself drowned without assistance from anybody else.”
2
When Macdonald left the Dower House, he found Reeves looking out for him in the little square on the hilltop.
“Had a successful shopping expedition?” he enquired.
“Very,” said Reeves. “I’ve sent my missis some Devonshire cream. Got it at the Manor House Creamery. Very high-hat. D’you know what it costs? Ten bob a pound including postage—and the tin. I liked that bit. A very nice specimen in the way of land girls there. I said I’d go in again tomorrow. You can pay for the next lot. Send some to the old man. How was trade with you?”
“So-so. The things which weren’t said were more enlightening than those uttered—as usual. Now I’m going to see the bailiff, Sanderson. Would you like to come too?”
“Not unless you want me. I’d like to prospect in the park. Learn that path off by heart and find just what you can see and what you can’t see. Shall we be doing the Gramarye place later?”
“Yes. In an hour’s time. The children have been packed off, but the nurse and the cook are still there.”
“O.K. I’ll be there. I have a feeling the things they haven’t said are more interesting than those they have. Exert a little leverage.”
“First find the lever. ‘Give me a lever and a place to stand on and I will move the world.’ ”
“Who said that?” demanded Reeves.
“The same bloke who said ‘Eureka,’ ” replied Macdonald.
Reeves knew that one. “Have you?” he enquired.
“No, but I’ve got the glimmering of an idea,” said Macdonald.
CHAPTER IX
John Sanderson lived in a beautiful little stone house not far from the park gates at the top of the hill. It was an early Georgian house with a porch whose classic gable was upheld by slender Ionic columns, elegantly fluted, and there were Ionic pilasters on the house front.
Sanderson himself opened the door: he was a big fellow, Macdonald noted, squarely built, with a square face whose low forehead was lined as though he were given to worrying. He looked a countryman, not a townsman, though he spoke without any accent whereby you could place him.
“Yes. Come along in. Chief Inspector Macdonald, isn’t it? I’m having tea. Will you join me?”
“Thanks. I’d be glad of a cup,” rejoined Macdonald, and while Sanderson fetched another cup and plate, the C.I.D. man took in the small dining room. Good old furniture of the right period, pleasant curtains, some good etchings and pewter tankards and plates. “I envy you your house, Mr. Sanderson.”
“You’re not the only one. It’s a good house and I like houses of this period. It happens to have been the bailiff’s house ever since it was built. Sugar?”
“No, thanks. Part of my job consists of taking an interest in other people’s. I should think yours is a very satisfying job.”
“Yes. It is. I’m interested in buildings and in the land. I couldn’t ask for a better job than I’ve got here. Which brings us on to your job. The late Warden of Gramarye would have got me sacked if she could. You might as well know it first as last.”
“Why did she want to get rid of you?”
Sanderson laughed a little. “It was mutual. I knew she was a damned hypocritical humbug and not fit to be in charge of either young children or young maidservants.”
“Any evidence to support the statement?”
“Yes. I’m responsible for the fabric of Gramarye. It’s an ancient house and needs constant attention, so I go there quite often. She didn’t beat the children, but she locked them up when they were tiresome: sometimes in a small room, sometimes in a dark cupboard. In my opinion, that’s no way to treat small children. I reported it. She denied it. So there you were. I was told to mind my own business. Sister Monica got her own back by reflections on my character.”
“I’ve heard a bit about Miss Torrington’s methods,” said Macdonald. “Now you’ve probably heard that Sergeant Peel has a theory that the two cases of drowning in the midstream may be connected. I have an open mind on the subject, but I want to get any information I can about Nancy Bilton. Did you ever speak to the girl?”
“Oh yes,” Sanderson answered quite easily. “I was supervising a job on the roof of Gramarye and I was in and out there pretty frequently a month or so before Nancy Bilton’s death. Neither she nor the other maids were supposed to speak to me: they were under orders not to, but girls like Nancy Bilton don’t obey orders of that kind. She made opportunities to get in our way. She was a bad lot, you know, but I think her tendency to throw herself at any man’s head was aggravated, not lessened, by the atmosphere at Gramarye. Her line with me was to appeal for help to get out of the place.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t run away,” said Macdonald.
“She tried to more than once, but this isn’t an easy place to run away from. She had no money: her wages were being saved for her by the Warden. If she’d got on a bus she’d have been seen and reported. It’s a ten-mile walk to Milham Prior, and Nancy Bilton was no pedestrian and she hadn’t much stamina. She tried it once, at night. She walked seven miles before blistered feet made her sit down by the roadside to cry, poor little wretch. She’d been missed by that time, and the Warden got old Dr. Brown to get his car out and go after her. He brought her back. After that, they locked her into her room at night and put another girl to sleep with her. I was surprised myself that she managed to get out of that window. It took some doing.”
“What was your own opinion on the matter? Did you think she drowned herself?”
Sanderson waited a long time before he replied: then he said slowly: “I don’t know. I simply don’t know. I accepted the verdict at the time. I knew the girl wa
s miserable and I think she probably dreaded being kept at Gramarye until it was time to send her on to some other home for the birth of her child. She might have killed herself in a fit of depression. But thinking the matter over since—and God knows I’ve thought about it quite a lot: I found her body, you know—I’ve doubted whether the suicide verdict were the true one. You see, she wasn’t a miserable penitent. She was still chock-full of original sin: she enjoyed being naughty—at least that’s my opinion. And I don’t believe she’d have taken all that trouble to scramble out of that narrow window in order to kill herself. She got out of the window because she’d thought out a plan for some future devilment.”
“I think that’s probably sound reasoning,” said Macdonald, “but the query is—what devilment? Had she made contact with any other lad in the village?”
“I don’t think so. There’d been too much fuss about Nancy Bilton already. They’d all have fought shy of her. My own idea is that she meant to try another bolt and was caught by the Warden, and got shoved into the stream in the ensuing scrimmage. I may be quite wrong, but I think that’s more probable than suicide. You see, at the inquest nobody mentioned that Sister Monica had taken to wandering at night.”
Macdonald nodded. “Yes. That’s quite a point. It was early in the morning when you found the girl’s body, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Seven o’clock. I walked down to the sawmill to see if Doone had got some planks cut ready for loading. It was a beastly business.” He sat in silence for a while, his brow frowning, his eyes downcast. Then he looked up at Macdonald suddenly. “Obviously you’re wondering whether I shoved the Warden into the millstream. Sergeant Peel believes I did, and Nancy Bilton into the bargain. I can only tell you I didn’t. I’ve no alibi. I live here alone. I was in bed both nights, but I’ve no means of proving it.”
“Neither have I,” said Macdonald, his voice as equable as ever, “but it’s my business to get both pros and cons. It seems reasonable to me to suppose that Miss Torrington did not share Sergeant Peel’s opinion—if it be his opinion—that you killed Nancy Bilton.”
“Why not?” demanded Sanderson.
“If she had known, or believed, that you or any other man had pushed the girl into the millstream, she would have avoided the chance of the same fate happening to her. In other words, she would have shunned that spot after dark, or taken great care that she wasn’t caught unawares. The fact that she went on going there after dark indicates to my mind that she thought she was safe in doing so.”
“Well . . . thanks for the crumb of comfort,” said Sanderson dryly. “I should like to add this. I’ve got to know the folks in this village pretty well. They’re odd: secretive, and suspicious of strangers, but I don’t believe there’s a murderer among them. The only person I’ve ever met here whom I thought might be capable of murder was the Warden herself, and that’s because she was unbalanced. She’d got a power complex, and she was cruel. There are more ways of being cruel than by violence.”
“Admittedly, but murder is no way of restoring the balance. I believe myself that Miss Torrington was murdered. You say you know the people in this village. I ask you, have you any idea at all who murdered her?”
“No. None whatever.” The answer came quickly, and Macdonald was pretty sure that Sanderson had anticipated both question and answer. “I can’t see any point in having murdered her,” went on the bailiff. “Her power was on the wane, you know. It wouldn’t have taken much more in the way of gossip and disapproval to have got rid of her. She was obviously too old for the job, and even Lady Ridding was saying that poor Sister Monica was getting overtired. Old Brown is pretty doddery now, and I think it’d have been only a matter of months before he gave up Gramarye. Once Dr. Ferens took over, he’d have got rid of her anyway.”
“He’s been saved that trouble,” said Macdonald dryly. “Now I shall obviously be enquiring about the general routine at Gramarye, but it would help if I got some previous information to check by. So far as you know, were the maids at Gramarye given time off in the usual way and allowed out alone?”
“Not out of the village. I do know that. They went shopping, and to the cinema very occasionally, in Milham Prior, but they were always accompanied by one of the old servants—Nurse Barrow or the old cook. I know the bus conductors made a joke about it; I’ve heard them gossiping. The girls were allowed out in this village by themselves, and Lady Ridding let them go into parts of the Manor House garden, or to tea with her own servants. Incidentally, their times off were so arranged that they were not out by themselves on the days the buses run. That’s only on three days a week.”
“Did you ever hear of any other troubles among the maids, apart from Nancy Bilton, during the time you’ve lived here? Any runnings away, or carryings on in the village?”
“No. It’s obvious enough that the Warden was successful in imposing her discipline. People said she was ‘wonderful’ with the girls —you’ve probably heard that one already. I can well believe she was capable of terrorising them. She was terrifying to look at, you know, and she had a great power of imposing her will on people. She was an extraordinary woman. I can believe she was capable of almost hypnotising people. Then she ran quite a skilful system of rewards. The good girl had many inducements to be good and the recalcitrant girl had a very poor time, no freedom, no outings, no sweets, no pocket money.”
“How did you get to know these details?”
“The whole village knows. Mrs. Yeo and Mrs. Barron at the village shop knew what money the girls had and what free time they had. The general opinion was that the Warden managed them very capably, and it was true. I didn’t like her methods—too much of the old-time workhouse matron or prison wardress about her.”
Macdonald sat and pondered. “It’s a problem with a lot of possibilities. One wonders if any girl who hated Miss Torrington in time past came back to square up the account. But the objection to that is that they couldn’t have known she’d be at that particular spot at that particular time.”
Sanderson considered that for a while and then said: “How about this for a suggestion? I said it wasn’t easy for the girls to run away. They were dressed in uniform and they’d have been spotted anywhere, but any smart girl could post a letter without being seen. Could one of them have got to know that the Warden went out at night on certain occasions and have written and told somebody else about it?”
“It’s worth looking into,” said Macdonald. “I shall get a policewoman up and see what we can make of the three girls who were at Gramarye. Well, thanks for your help. I shall probably be looking in again sometime if further questions arise.”
“Do,” said Sanderson cordially. “I’m generally at home in the evenings and I shall be glad to see you any time. I admit that Sergeant Peel put my back up. He regards me as his hope of promotion, but you’ve been both fair and reasonable and I’d gladly talk to you again.”
“Thanks. But don’t be too hard on Peel. He put a lot of hard work into this job, and his report was an honest effort, not a biased one.
2
Reeves was ready when Macdonald approached Gramarye: not exactly waiting; Reeves wasn’t the sort of fellow to stand outside a house and wait for a senior officer unless there was some point to be served in so doing. He had been prospecting, and he was able to give Macdonald a description of the entrances and exits to Gramarye.
“The front door opens on to a drive, and the drive has a gate into the park,” said Reeves. “I imagine it was used by riders, because the gate opens on to a bridle path. There’s another gate into the Manor House garden, and a small gate into the Manor kitchen garden. The back of the house opens on to that flagged yard, which has a door in the wall which is locked; inside the yard there’s a door to the kitchen premises, which tradespeople use, and a side door as well.”
“It seems to be well supplied with ways in and out,” said Macdonald. “Two ways into the square, by the drive or the yard. A gate into the park, two others into the Man
or gardens.”
“That’s it. And none of the gates on the park and garden side can be overlooked from the house because there are too many trees and clipped shrubs and hedges. And that steep path down the park isn’t overlooked anywhere. It’s an interesting layout.”
The two men went up the drive and knocked at the front door proper, where they were admitted by Hannah Barrow in impressive array of severely starched cap and apron, a blue cotton frock also starched as stiff as cartridge paper, black shoes and stockings, and glazed collar and cuffs. She had a wrinkled old face, and her grey hair was strained back off her face. Macdonald knew that she was only sixty-two years of age, and he knew plenty of women of that age who might pass for forty-five: why was it, he wondered, that this specimen looked so much like a wizened and elderly monkey? He stated his name, rank, and business, and Nurse Barrow accepted the information without any show of interest or surprise.
“Please to walk in,” she said, and led them into the parlour, where she stood as erect as a ramrod, though Macdonald noticed she walked as the elderly walk, and guessed that her severe black shoes pained her quite a lot. He asked her to sit down, but she remained standing. (Reeves, noticing her stiff skirts, knew that Nurse Barrow had not sat down since putting on her clean frock: there wasn’t a crumple in those formidable skirts.) Macdonald began by asking questions about the late Warden’s health.
Nurse Barrow replied: “Sister had very good health. All the years I’ve known her she never took to her bed. She kept to her room sometimes, if she’d got a cold, but that was to avoid spreading infection. Sister didn’t hold with people coddling themselves. You can keep well if you’ve the will to keep well, Sister said. A wonderful powerful will Sister had got.”
“But what about this dizziness she suffered from?” enquired Macdonald. “People don’t tumble about if they’re quite well.”
Murder in the Mill-Race Page 11
