Styx and Stones

by Carola Dunn

  “What makes you sure she has not told anyone?” Flagg asked, his frequently expressive face at its most phlegmatic.

  “I cannot be sure, of course, but Mrs. Osborne has never been inclined to pass on gossip, however avidly she listens to it. She likes to know everything about everyone. No doubt it is part of her desire to control. I imagine the letters have the same purpose.”

  “You don’t think she even passes on what she hears to her husband?”

  Alec saw Daisy frown. He guessed she had second thoughts about Miss Prothero’s guilt, in view of her vehement denunciation of Mrs. Osborne as the Poison Pen. If she had not killed Professor Osborne in mistake for his brother, it was unnecessary and a pity to let the arch-gossip know of the vicar’s misconduct.

  For the old lady had at once seen the implications of Flagg’s question. Already sitting back-board straight, she became rigid, her face flushed. “Do you mean to tell me,” she demanded with surprised disgust, “the vicar wrote the letters? Disgraceful! I shall most certainly write to the bishop.”

  Taken aback, Flagg hesitated.

  Alec took over. “The inspector made no such statement, ma‘am. He merely asked whether, in your opinion, Mrs. Osborne might inform her husband of matters pertaining to his parishioners. I take it you consider it possible. Would you be so kind as to tell us where you were between two o’clock and half past three yesterday?”

  “Two and half past three? But the professor was killed between half past two and a quarter to three,” said Miss Prothero.

  Flagg pounced. “How do you know?”

  “My dear man, it’s perfectly obvious. At least, it must have been before five to three, at any rate, though I am disposed to set it earlier. I myself passed through the churchyard at two minutes before the half hour—when one lives so close to the Parish Hall, one is liable to set out at the last moment. At that time the angel was in its accustomed place. At five to three, Miss Dalrymple must have been approaching the hall if she intended to arrive on time.” Miss Prothero inclined her head regally in Daisy’s direction. “As I am sure she did, being a well-bred young lady, unlike so many these days.”

  Alec might have quarreled with this description, but Daisy accepted the encomium with an equally regal inclination of the head.

  Miss Prothero continued. “Naturally one cannot conceive of Miss Dalrymple murdering Professor Osborne. She found him already dead. Therefore he died before five to three.”

  “But why did you say quarter to?” Flagg burst out.

  “Because,” said Miss Prothero gloatingly, “that is when Mrs. Osborne arrived at the Parish Hall, and Mrs. Osborne loathed the man!”

  “Yes, I knew she didn’t like him,” Daisy admitted sheepishly.

  They had returned to the police house to discuss Miss Prothero’s revelation, not quite trusting that lady’s veracity when she so clearly revelled in her story. As Daisy informed them on the way, the old cat had cast utterly unsupported aspersions on the married status of Catterick’s visiting friends, Mr. and Mrs. Edgbaston.

  “The first day I was here,” Daisy continued, “Mrs. Osborne came to tea at Oakhurst and mentioned that she couldn’t bear her brother-in-law’s dreadful jokes. She also complained that the brothers held such learned discussions, she couldn’t understand a word.”

  “Neither’s exactly what you might call sufficient motive for murder,” Flagg said doubtfully.

  “Ah, but then I found out about the professor being an atheist, and the vicar himself told me it was since his brother arrived that his wife had begun to suspect he was too. If you follow me.”

  “I do,” said Alec, frowning. “You think Mrs. Osborne suspected the professor of leading the vicar astray? In that case, she would fear him, fear the loss of her position and everything that goes with it. Motive enough. We don’t have to prove motive, but there’s no gainsaying it influences the jury—and the judge—if we can provide one.”

  Mrs. Barton bustled in with a tray with a vast teapot flanked by a vast Dundee cake and a plate of jam tarts. No wonder Constable Barton, sitting quietly in the corner listening, was such a fine figure of an officer!

  “Don’t let me interrupt,” said his wife genially. “I’ll leave you to pour, miss, if that’s all right.” She departed.

  Pouring, Daisy said, “The trouble was, once we knew Mr. Osborne was the Poison Pen, I was sure the murderer had aimed at him. It was fixed in my mind that the vicar was the intended victim, and I didn’t know of any motive for Mrs. Osborne to bump off her husband.”

  “Rather the opposite,” said Flagg.

  “Exactly.” Daisy gave him a grateful smile. “Also, I’d assumed Mrs. Osborne ran the WI meeting. Mrs. Lomax, who’s the chairman was bemoaning her officiousness, but now I come to think of it, she carried on about needing support, not about being superseded.”

  “You didn’t ask whether anyone had arrived late?” Alec enquired, a trifle sceptically.

  “No, darling, because I knew you’d be livid if I started asking that sort of question.”

  “I would,” he had the grace to admit.

  Daisy sighed. “Oh dear, I’ve really made a bit of a mess of things, haven’t I? I’ve thoroughly misled you about a connection between the letters and the murder.” She nibbled a jam tart, though she had resolved not to touch another bite for hours.

  “There could have been a connection,” Flagg consoled her. “In a way there is, seeing both are connected with his being an atheist. Anyway, we’d have found out about Mrs. Osborne arriving late as soon as we got around to questioning the women.”

  “You just got to them before us,” Alec said dryly.

  “That’s assuming,” Flagg continued, “Miss Prothero’s telling the truth, not making it up just to cause trouble.”

  “Ask the missus,” Barton put in, and blushed when everyone turned to him. “She went to the meeting, sir.”

  “Ask her,” said the inspector, with a long-suffering look.

  The constable returned in a moment, shaking his head. “The door being at the back, sir, only them on the platform ’d see when anyone come in. Mrs. Osborne wasn’t up there with the committee at the beginning, but that’s not to say she weren’t in the hall.”

  “I never thought of that,” Daisy groaned. “Miss Prothero’s on the committee.”

  “So she’d be on the platform, I expect,” said Flagg.

  “For everyone to see, and with a good view of the door.”

  “Who else …?”

  “Mrs. Molesworth isn’t a committee member, but she might know something.” Daisy jumped up, abandoning the remains of her tart. “She won’t spread false rumours. Living just two doors from the Vicarage, she could even have walked to the hall with Mrs. Osborne, if Miss Prothero’s story is untrue.”

  Rising with his hand outstretched, Alec protested, “Daisy …”

  “It’s quite all right, truly, darling. I shan’t need my hand held. I’ve already talked to Mrs. Molesworth, and it won’t take a minute.” Eager to redeem her errors, she hurried out.

  Mrs. Molesworth was about to pop over to the church to freshen the flowers, but she invited Daisy in. “More questions?” she asked cheerfully.

  “One or two, I’m afraid. Did you by any chance walk with anyone to the Parish Hall?”

  “I wondered why you hadn’t asked me for an alibi.” Mrs. Molesworth was amused. “As it happens, Miss Prothero and I met at the lych-gate and walked through the churchyard together.” Sobering, she added, “I’m quite certain we should have noticed had the angel fallen by then.”

  “Did you see anyone else? In front, or behind you?”

  “I didn’t look back. We were often the last to arrive, living so close.”

  “Mrs. Osborne lives closer,” Daisy pointed out.

  “Mrs. Osborne likes to arrive early,” said Mrs. Molesworth dryly, “to make sure things run as she feels they should.”

  “She was already in the Parish Hall when you got there?” Daisy enquir
ed with bated breath. If so, she was innocent, of course. So was Miss Prothero, though, of murder if not malice. Where were they to look next?

  But Mrs. Molesworth hesitated.

  “If you feel that telling me makes it gossiping, Inspector Flagg can come and ask you officially. A man’s been killed, remember.”

  “Murder,” murmured Mrs. Molesworth. The persistent twinkle had entirely vanished from her eyes. “Though the mills of God grind fine, yet they grind exceeding slow. Justice must be seen to be done. The truth is, Miss Dalrymple, I didn’t see Mrs. Osborne when I reached the hall. That is not to say she wasn’t there. It’s not as if I saw her arrive late.”

  Daisy was beginning to think Mrs. Molesworth must once have suffered acutely from being the butt of gossip, to hate it so devoutly. “What did you see?” she asked.

  “You’re determined to pin me down, aren’t you? I saw Mrs. Lomax running the meeting, reasonably competently, for perhaps a quarter of an hour. I saw her then stumble and lose her way, whereupon Mrs. Osborne went up to the dais and took over. She—Mrs. Osborne—seemed agitated. I assumed, because she had given Mrs. Lomax her head and watched her lose it. That’s all I can tell you. I must go and get on with the flowers.”

  Her assumption could be right, Daisy thought as they stepped from the cottage into the street. Maybe Mrs. Osborne had watched from the back the whole time. Miss Prothero might deny noticing her, but someone was bound to have seen her.

  Inspector Flagg would have to get a list of members and question each one. But Doris, the Vicarage maid, could well know when her mistress left the house, Daisy realized. What was more, though the girl might turn sullen if faced by the police, she was quite likely to open up to Daisy.

  “I’ll walk with you,” she said to Mrs. Molesworth.

  They parted in the churchyard. Daisy turned down the path to the Vicarage, through the gate, then right to the tradesmen’s entrance at the back, instead of left to the front door.

  The kitchen door stood open. Daisy stuck her head around, to the astonishment and dismay of Doris and the cook.

  “Oh miss,” cried Doris, “y’ought to’ve come to the front.”

  “I just want a quick word with you, Doris, and I didn’t want to disturb people. I won’t come in and get in your way. Can you step out here for a moment?”

  Her plump face avid with curiosity, Doris joined her. “What is it, miss? Not another murder?”

  “Gosh, no! One’s plenty. Can you remember what you were doing at half past two yesterday?”

  “Ooh, miss,” Doris squealed, “you don’t think I done it?”

  “No, no,” Daisy said impatiently. “It’s what the police call a routine question for elimination purposes.”

  Cowed by the polysyllables, Doris said, “Hunting for Mrs. Osborne’s gloves, I was. You see, Miss Gwen rang up just on twenty-five past, and I picked up the telephone and called the mistress and she told me to fetch clean gloves from her drawer while she was on the telephone but I couldn’t find ‘em anywheres. And Miss Gwen went on talking till after half past and madam was angry as anything ’cause she was already late and I hadn’t got her gloves for her and she had to go and find some herself. She couldn’t find ’em either,” the maid added resentfully, “after giving me what-for and all. Not for ages, anyways. She was ever so late to the meeting.”

  So that was that, Daisy thought, suddenly tired.

  “Miss Dalrymple!” Mrs. Osborne’s voice came from behind her. She swung round, as Doris bolted into the kitchen, closing the door. The vicar’s wife looked haggard. In one hand she wielded a colourful bunch of pompon dahlias like a shield, in the other a pair of sharp-pointed garden scissors.

  “Oh, hullo,” said Daisy, heart in mouth, trying to keep her gaze from the scissors. If Mrs. Osborne had killed her brother-in-law, as now seemed more than likely, it had been on impulse, and without thought for the inevitable discovery.

  “Really, Miss Dalrymple,” she snapped, “I know modern manners are lax, but to come sneaking around to the kitchen …”

  “I didn’t want to disturb you, in the circumstances,” said Daisy truthfully, hoping she wasn’t gabbling, searching desperately for an excuse. The one she found seemed to her pretty lame. “I lost a hankie and I wondered whether Doris had found it here.”

  Mrs. Osborne snorted, and the scissors lowered marginally. “That girl can’t find the nose on her face. Or if she did find your handkerchief, no doubt she put it away somewhere and forgot all about it. So difficult to find competent servants these days! You should have come to me.”

  “Sorry!” Now how to extricate herself? “I’d better go and see if I dropped it at Mrs. LeBeau’s. It’s one my sister embroidered with daisies for me, you see,” she invented wildly. That treasured handkerchief had frayed to the point where her nurse threw it out a good fifteen years ago.

  “A pity to lose it. I shall keep an eye out for it.”

  “Thank you.” Conveniently, the church clock chimed. “Oh gosh, is it four already? I must run.”

  Daisy managed not to run literally, until she rounded the corner of the house. Then she took to her heels.

  At the gate to the street she paused to glance back. The Vicarage looked just as it always had, a large, ugly Victorian house, displaying no signs of the emotional turmoil within. Daisy turned her back on it with a shiver and pulled the gate to behind her.

  On Mrs. Molesworth’s doorstep stood Alec, his hand raised to the knocker, his dark eyebrows a thunderous line.

  “Alec!” Untrammeled by a middle-class upbringing, Daisy called out as she ran to him.

  “Daisy, where have you been? Mrs. Molesworth’s, you said, but no one’s home. Not the Vicarage, you unmitigated little idiot?”

  Safe in his comforting arms, she explained, “I went to talk to Doris, the maid. I’m not a complete idiot, I went round the back way specially to avoid Mrs. Osborne. How could I guess a murderess would be out in the garden picking flowers?” Suppress the scissors, she thought. He didn’t need to know about those. “Would you believe she chatted quite calmly about incompetent servants and lost hankies?”

  “I take it what the maid told you supported the theory of her guilt.”

  “She left the house very late for the meeting. Mrs. Molesworth said she arrived on the dais at about quarter to.”

  “It wouldn’t take more than a moment to push over the statue. She might not even have spoken to the professor first.”

  “But is that enough evidence?” Daisy asked.

  “Flagg rang up Mrs. Lomax. She saw Mrs. Osborne enter the hall and lost her place in what she was saying. It was two forty-seven. She particularly noted the time, as she meant to point out that since she had managed quite well for over a quarter of an hour she could have managed the whole thing. Flagg’s satisfied with her confirmation of Miss Prothero’s story, though the maid’s evidence will help. It’s more than enough to tax her with in hopes of a confession, and I agree with Flagg that she’s unlikely to hold out.”

  “Where is Mr. Flagg?”

  “He drove up to the house to get a warrant, Frobisher being a Justice of the Peace. And you’re going to follow him, Daisy.”

  She yielded without a struggle. She had no desire whatsoever to be present at the arrest.

  Daisy was half way to the stairs when Inspector Flagg came into the front hall from the library. Tucking a folded paper into the inside breast pocket of his bronze-green suit jacket, he said with satisfaction, “Signed, sealed, and to be delivered. You’ve seen Mr. Fletcher, I expect, Miss Dalrymple?”

  “Yes, he told me what Mrs. Lomax said.” She reported her conversations with Mrs. Molesworth and Doris.

  “Excellent.” He rubbed his bony hands. “Extra confirmation never hurts. To think all this—Poison Pen letters and murder—came about because the vicar turned atheist!”

  “Not really,” Daisy protested. “He wrote the letters because he couldn’t escape his religious instincts and training. He felt obliged
to try to set the world to rights. As for the murder, if you ask me, she’d never have done it if it hadn’t been for the professor’s constant jokes.”

  “Well, that’s as may be,” said Flagg peaceably. “You may have gone off in the wrong direction a bit to begin with, but I must say in the end you and Mr. Fletcher have been more help than a dozen slow-witted constables going door to door. It’s a feather in my cap to have the whole thing wrapped up before the inquest tomorrow. The coroner and my super’ll both be happy.”

  The complacent inspector went off, leaving Daisy to reflect on the fact that even murder is not an unmixed tragedy.

  Johnnie came out of the library, also looking pleased with himself. “So you have found the Poison Pen and the murderer all in one,” he greeted Daisy.

  “Inspector Flagg told you so?”

  “He applied to me for a warrant for the arrest of Mrs. Osborne for murder. He said the police didn’t intend to prosecute over the letters. Stands to reason, when they have a so much graver charge against her, and of course I don’t want any publicity about them. Jolly hard cheese for poor Osborne, I’m afraid. I’ll have to see what we can do for the family.”

  Daisy decided he didn’t need to know that the vicar had been the Poison Pen. He would find out soon enough that Mr. Osborne was leaving the Church, but now the defection might be blamed on his wife’s crime. If no one but the bishop was aware that he had lost his faith, it would be one less burden for the family to bear, she hoped.

  Johnnie seized her hand. “I say, Daisy, I’m dashed glad I asked you to investigate. You sorted it all out in no time. I’ll give you a recommendation as a sleuth any day.”

  “No, thanks! If you think I actually enjoy stumbling over bodies or seeing families cast into chaos, you can think again.” Which was true enough in itself, though it dodged the issue of her zest for investigation. “I’m a writer,” she said firmly.

  “Well, thanks anyway, old dear.” He dropped a peck on her cheek, and blushed. “You coming out for tea on the terrace?”

  “I’ll join you in a bit. I need a wash and brush-up.”