Village Affairs

by Cassandra Chan

  “So you entered the house?” asked Carmichael.

  “Yes—the door was open. I saw him at once in the sitting room, slumped over in his chair, but he was quite cold when I felt for a pulse. I knew he was dead.”

  “You didn’t, I understand, ring for an ambulance?”

  Tothill looked surprised. “No,” he answered. “Why should I have? There wasn’t an emergency. I rang Dr. Cross—he’d been taking care of Charlie—and he said he’d be right over.”

  Carmichael nodded. “And then?”

  “I didn’t like to just leave him,” said Tothill. “So I waited until the doctor came. I tidied up a bit—”

  “Excuse me,” interrupted Carmichael. In his voice was his deep dislike of tidying up murder scenes. “What exactly did you tidy?”

  “Well, I washed up the glass of whisky he’d left, and looked to see what might spoil in the refrigerator. That was all, really.”

  “And emptied the ashtray,” supplied Bethancourt helpfully.

  The vicar did not immediately reply and his brown eyes looked reflective.

  “No,” he said finally, “I didn’t. There was nothing in the ashtray and there should have been. The glass was less than half full and Charlie was a heavy smoker. If he’d sat there and drunk off most of a glass of whisky, he would have been smoking. I never noticed at the time.”

  “That’s it then, isn’t it, Chief Inspector?” Leandra Tothill turned her clear eyes on Carmichael. “You don’t think he died there, do you?”

  “No,” replied Carmichael. “It doesn’t look like it. But please go on, Reverend.”

  “Where was I? Oh, yes, I washed up the glass, looked in the refrigerator, and then went out to the desk to look for his daughter’s address. I found that and his solicitor’s number and made a note of them, and then Dr. Cross arrived. He examined the body and rang the hospital. He said it looked like a heart attack, but there would have to be a postmortem. While we waited for the ambulance, we agreed that I would try and contact the daughter. I went back out to the kitchen and took the milk and cream over to Mrs. Eberhart and broke the news to her. She came back with me—she had a spare set of keys, you see—and shortly after that, the ambulance arrived and Dr. Cross went off with them. I tried to ring the daughter in Paris, but there was no answer, and then Mrs. Eberhart locked up and I left.”

  “I understand from the local police that you later succeeded in leaving a message at Miss Bingham’s flat?”

  “That was me,” said Leandra.

  “Lee’s French is better than mine,” said the vicar with an admiring look at his wife.

  “I spoke to Miss Bingham’s maid,” continued Leandra. “Miss Bingham had left town for a few days and the maid wasn’t sure when she’d be back. I didn’t like to leave a message saying her father was dead, so I just left our number and said it concerned Charlie. But she hasn’t rung back.”

  “I see,” said Carmichael, glancing at Gibbons. Miss Bingham had not yet responded to the message left by the police, either. If they did not hear from her soon, they would have to go looking. Carmichael only hoped she was not as inveterate a traveller as her father. She could be in Bangkok by now.

  “When was the last time you saw Mr. Bingham?” Carmichael continued.

  “I saw him at Saturday’s market,” said Leandra. “But Richard wasn’t with me then.”

  “Did he seem just as usual?”

  “Oh, yes. We had a cuppa together, in fact. He was always very bright and cheery, with a sly sense of humor. I liked him enormously, even when he was playing devil’s advocate. Which he did a good deal.”

  “He flirted shamelessly with you,” said her husband, but not as though he minded.

  Leandra smiled. “I suppose he did,” she said. “But he never meant anything by it. It was only amusement for him.” She looked at the detectives. “I don’t mean to give you a wrong impression of him,” she said. “He wasn’t one of those older men who are always pinching girls’ cheeks. He liked to banter and flirting was the way he did that with me. In a funny sort of way, he meant it. It would have tickled his fancy to be sleeping with the vicar’s wife—it’s the kind of thing that would have appealed to his sense of humor. On the other hand, he never actually expected it to happen. He knew it wasn’t on.”

  “That was because he liked you as a person,” said the vicar. “Which he wouldn’t have done if you had slept with him. He could be perfectly scathing about anyone he didn’t like.”

  “Was he generally popular?” asked Carmichael, who had been listening intently to these reminiscences.

  “I’d say so,” answered the vicar. “Of course, he was still the new man in town, so there was a lot of talk about him, but most of it was in his favor, I think. Don’t you, Lee?”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “The Eberharts liked him, and that went a long way with people. They both grew up here, you see,” she added to the policemen.

  Carmichael nodded. “Were either of you aware that Mr. Bingham was rumored to have a secret girlfriend?”

  Both the Tothills laughed.

  “Oh, yes,” said Tothill. “I never asked him about it, because, frankly, I rather thought the lady must be married. But it seems I was wrong.”

  “Oh?” Carmichael cocked his head, as alert as a pointer. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I did ask him about her,” said Leandra. “I’m not absolutely sure she wasn’t married, though.”

  “What did he say?”

  Leandra smiled. “He wouldn’t tell me a thing, although he didn’t deny there was someone. All he said was to tell Richard there was nothing to concern him in his clerical capacity.”

  “Which I took to mean that the woman wasn’t married after all,” put in Tothill. “Surely that’s what he meant.”

  “Probably,” agreed Leandra. “It’s only that I wouldn’t put it past Charlie to lie to me, just so my conscience wouldn’t be bothered. I don’t think we can really tell the chief inspector that for sure.”

  Carmichael smiled. “I don’t need sureties,” he said. “Every little bit of information can help in a case like this. Now, one last question. Would you say he was a man of independent means?”

  Tothill shrugged. “He was retired. I think everyone assumed he was living comfortably on his pension, within his means. He once told me he’d managed to put away a bit over the years.”

  “You would be surprised then to learn that he was a very wealthy man?”

  Both the Tothills smiled. “Oh, yes,” they agreed.

  There was a pause while the implications of the question sank in, and then Leandra, with her eyes wide and the smile gone from her face, said,

  “You mean he was?”

  “Exceedingly,” replied Carmichael.

  Marla was somewhat appeased by Bethancourt’s prompt appearance and the bouquet of autumn flowers he brought with him. Presents counted for a lot with Marla.

  In an attempt to spark some tolerance of the case from her, Bethancourt announced that the dead man had been the father of the socialite Evelyn Bingham.

  “Eve Bingham?” repeated Marla.

  “Yes,” answered Bethancourt. “I think we’ve seen her in clubs a time or two. You must remember.”

  “Of I course I do,” said Marla. “I know her.”

  “You do?” said Bethancourt, nonplussed.

  “Yes. When I went to Paris last year for the shows. She was hanging round with the lead singer of Who Else, and the drummer was seeing Carol, who was doing Lacroix with me. You remember Carol?”

  Bethancourt thought so.

  “Anyway,” Marla went on, turning back to flower arranging, “I ended up seeing quite a bit of her. She was fun—rather high-spirited. She drank a lot.”

  “I doubt if she’ll be much fun when she gets here,” said Bethancourt.

  “Not a very cheerful time for her,” agreed Marla, stepping back to view her handiwork.

  “Do you think you’d better rally ’round?” asked Bethanc
ourt, hope dawning that Marla might actually take some interest in this case. Or at least be preoccupied while he was with Jack.

  “I might,” said Marla. “Depending on who’s with her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s not the type that goes anywhere without an entourage,” answered Marla.

  “Oh,” said Bethancourt, privately wondering who of the glitter crowd would be willing to bury themselves in the Cotwolds in October.

  “Hullo,” said Astley-Cooper, coming in. “Did you get yourselves a drink? No? Let me then.” He paused on his way to the drinks cabinet and added, “Those are lovely flowers.”

  “I brought them for Marla,” said Bethancourt. “As an apology for deserting the two of you today.”

  “We had a lovely time without you,” said Marla, her jade eyes sparkling at Astley-Cooper. “Didn’t we, Clarence?”

  “Quite right,” replied that gentleman, avoiding Bethancourt’s eye and pouring the scotch liberally.

  Bethancourt only grinned at him. He was quite used to Marla chatting up the nearest man whenever she felt herself neglected. The fact that this ploy seldom, if ever, succeeded in making Bethancourt jealous did not stop her from trying.

  “I met the vicar and his wife today,” said Bethancourt conversationally. “He’s quite a young man, isn’t he? Somehow one always thinks of vicars as older.”

  “So did everyone here,” said Astley-Cooper, handing ’round the drinks. “Considering that the previous man was ninety if he was a day. There was quite a lot of objection to Richard Tothill when he first came, but people got over it. Lord knows he’s much easier to get along with. Doesn’t badger people, and if you go to him for advice, it’s usually sensible, not a lot of muck about sinning or not sinning.”

  “That must make him popular.”

  “It does, but as I say, it took awhile. And then just as everyone was getting used to him, he went off and married Leandra. That caused quite a ruckus.” Astley-Cooper appeared to savor this past sensation.

  “What’s wrong with her?” asked Marla. “Surely if he’s young, people must have expected him to get married.”

  “First off, she’s beautiful,” said Astley-Cooper with relish. “Vicars’ wives aren’t supposed to be good-looking, they’re supposed to be motherly. You, for instance, Marla, should never consider marrying a clergyman. You’re far too lovely and nobody would ever like you. Secondly, Leandra’s a woman with a past. She was a singer in London and ran, I gather, with a somewhat racy crowd. Well, musicians and all that. She met Richard when she was singing at a wedding. She’s put new life into the choir, I can tell you that, and she’s very active in the parish. But people looked askance at her when she first came.”

  “It doesn’t sound so awful to me,” said Marla.

  “My dear, you don’t have a village mentality. They would much have preferred her to be plain, and have been a nurse or something. Anyway, you’ll meet her tonight if you come ’round after choir practice, and you can see for yourself. Do come, by the way. Everybody turns out for a drink at the pub on Wednesdays—it’s one of our social nights. You can look over all the suspects, Phillip.”

  “Phillip,” said Marla coolly, “has spent the whole day looking over suspects.”

  “That’s right,” said Astley-Cooper hastily. “You never did say, by the way, why the police think old Bingham was murdered.”

  “The body was moved after death,” said Bethancourt.

  “That’s all?” asked Astley-Cooper. “That’s not much. Whoever found him could have got the wind up about it and hauled him back to his house.”

  “And poured the corpse a glass of whisky?” retorted Bethancourt. “The only reason for doing that was if he died in a place where he wasn’t supposed to be. Speaking of which, you don’t happen to know who his girlfriend was, do you?”

  “Didn’t know he had one,” replied Astley-Cooper promptly. “Never saw him about with anyone.”

  “Perhaps he was having an affair with the vicar’s wife,” suggested Marla.

  Astley-Cooper laughed. “That’s right,” he said. “She was alone on Sunday night—the vicar was up here, playing chess.”

  “No,” muttered Bethancourt. “She’s the wrong size.”

  The others did not hear him.

  Forensics reported that Bingham’s fingerprints in his car were overlaid by smudges. Translated, that meant gloved hands. The various medicine bottles found in his cabinet had contained heart medications, and the three loose tablets corresponded with the sedative found in Bingham’s body at the postmortem. This was Seconal, a powerful sleeping pill, and one which forensics thought incompatible with the heart medications. Other than that, they had little to report.

  “Do you want me to look into the sedative, sir?” asked Gibbons. “It looks rather as if he had borrowed them.”

  Carmichael sighed. “Yes,” he replied, “you had better see Dr. Cross, however unlikely it seems that the Seconal was prescribed.” He frowned. “I wonder why Bingham was using it.”

  “Forensics says it’s mostly prescribed as a sleeping tablet.”

  “I don’t mean that, Sergeant. I meant, why did he take it on the evening he died? It seems an odd thing to do if he was, as we’ve speculate, spending the night with his girlfriend.”

  “That’s true, sir,” agreed Gibbons, frowning as well. “Perhaps something upset him and he used it to calm down?”

  “Yes,” said Carmichael, a little doubtfully. “That’s no doubt it.”

  “At least,” added Gibbons, “we now know something about her.”

  Carmichael raised a bushy brow. “We do?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. We know she has trouble sleeping and has a prescription for Seconal.”

  Carmichael chuckled. “Probably true enough,” he said. “Well, off you go, lad. I’ll stay here at the station and try to get hold of the London solicitors. Even if this death is eventually ruled a misadventure, we don’t want to leave any loose ends. And,” he added appreciatively, “this is certainly a pretty part of the country in which to spend a few days.”

  He glanced out the window, though in fact Constable Stikes’s office looked out on the car park, with only a hint of the hills to be seen above the tops of the buildings opposite.

  “It is that, sir,” said Gibbons, agreeing automatically. The beauties of the Cotswolds had not entirely escaped him, but in his current state of depression, he had paid them scant heed.

  Dr. Cross’s consulting rooms were also in Stow-on-the-Wold, not very far from the police station. Gibbons found them easily enough, but once arrived there he was forced to wait almost twenty minutes while the doctor finished seeing a patient. He attempted to pass the time by chatting with the nurse—a thin, middle-aged woman with a mouth like a slit—but she did not respond to his overtures. With a sigh, he settled back in his chair and fell to contemplating the perversity of women in general. He was really quite relieved when at last he was called into the doctor’s inner sanctum.

  Dr. Cross was a short man with white hair and a brisk manner. He was plainly appalled at the sedative mentioned by Gibbons.

  “Certainly I did not prescribe it for him,” he said tartly. “Do you think I would have kicked up such a fuss at the autopsy if I had? With his heart condition that sort of thing could kill him. In fact, it did.”

  “Was he aware of that, do you think?”

  “He was aware of his heart condition. I don’t believe I ever specifically warned him against Seconal, but why should I? So far as I am aware, he had no trouble sleeping. And that’s something people usually tell their doctors.”

  “I understand,” said Gibbons, trying a new tack, “that you had advised him to cut down on his smoking and drinking?”

  “I advised him to give up both,” answered the doctor dryly. “He’d had a previous heart attack while he was in China—in fact, I suspect he had two. I told him if he didn’t give up smoking and drinking, it was only a matter of time before he wou
ld have a third, and possibly fatal, attack.”

  “So you weren’t surprised when Reverend Tothill rang you on Monday?”

  “Well, now, I wouldn’t say that.” Dr. Cross looked thoughtful. “He was, as I understand it, leading a very strenuous life in China, virtually without any medical attention at all. On the whole, I would have expected him to live for quite a while longer here, with the new prescriptions I’d given him, and without heaving a heavy backpack about. So I was rather surprised when the vicar rang up and said he was dead. In view of that, I thought we’d better have the postmortem, but I can’t say I was expecting to find anything. Heart cases do sometimes pop off suddenly. And although I did advise him to change his vices, and so did Dr. Loomis, he certainly did no such thing.”

  “Dr. Loomis?” asked Gibbons.

  “Dr. Preston Loomis,” replied Dr. Cross. “He’s a well-known cardiologist in London. Bingham consulted him directly upon his return to this country, before he came down here. He saw me after he’d been here two or three months and his prescriptions from Dr. Loomis had run out.”

  “Do you have Dr. Loomis’s address?” asked Gibbons.

  “Yes, my nurse can give it to you on your way out.”

  Gibbons thanked the doctor for his time and went out for a fresh attack on the grim-mouthed nurse.

  CHAPTER 5

  “Bother,” said Leandra Tothill.

  She was just leaving for choir practice, a sheaf of music that her husband had forgotten under her arm, when the telephone rang. She turned back to the parlor to answer it.

  “Hello,” said a high, rather imperious voice. “Is Mrs. Tothill there? This is Eve Bingham.”

  “Oh,” said Leandra faintly, taken unawares. “This is Mrs. Tothill.”

  “I’ve had a message to ring you,” Eve Bingham said crisply. “I’ve also had messages from Scotland Yard and my solicitors. What on earth is my father up to now? I know he’s an absolute devil, but surely he hasn’t managed to get himself arrested and excommunicated all at once?”