Village Affairs

by Cassandra Chan

  All the same, he thought, frowning as he emerged from the hotel, feeling the evening air cool against his face, he needn’t have behaved like such an idiot. Bethancourt would certainly never have been so gauche. Even now he could imagine the amused twinkle in the hazel eyes behind the horn-rimmed glasses, and hear that light, clipped voice saying, well, saying something suave and appropriately damping. But then, if Bethancourt had nightmares, they were not connected with the opposite sex.

  As he started up the car, another thought occurred to him. He wondered if he hadn’t after all received a kind of bribe.

  Bethancourt had given him directions to Stutely Manor, and Gibbons decided to call in instead of phoning. He was too agitated to sleep and besides, it might be his last chance to see the Jacobean manor house. Glancing at his watch, he estimated he could make it there before eleven; a trifle late for a call, but not unduly so if one was a policeman in pursuit of his duties.

  Like the Imperial Gardens in Cheltenham, Stutely Manor was not at its best in the dark, though there was light enough to make out the gabled front and the celebrated bay window. Gibbons let fall the massive knocker and in a few minutes a male servant opened the door and ushered him into the great hall, which was a very fine example of its period.

  Gibbons had forgotten that Marla would be there, and less than pleased to see him. He could never quite tell if her antipathy was due entirely to his profession and the interest Bethancourt took in it or whether it was jealousy, stemming from an instinctive feeling that Bethancourt liked Gibbons better than he liked Marla, if in an entirely different way.

  Bethancourt as usual handled everything smoothly. He greeted Gibbons with pleasure, introduced him to Astley-Cooper, and then said, “So you’ve come round to question Clarence, here, have you? I think I forgot to tell you, Clarence, that Jack might be dropping by if it wasn’t too late.”

  Gibbons grasped at this deception eagerly; Marla was frowning at him from across the room.

  “That’s right,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind, Mr. Astley-Cooper. It won’t take long—I’d just like to get your thoughts on a few matters.”

  “Phillip and I will leave you to it, then, shall we?” said Marla brightly, while Astley-Cooper, a little taken aback, mumbled that he would be delighted to help in any way he could.

  “Don’t forget your glass, Phillip,” said Marla.

  Bethancourt obediently fetched his port and followed her into the next room. He expected to have to placate her, but she closed the door behind them and said, “This looks well, don’t you think, Phillip? I mean, if the police were absolutely set on Eve as their prime suspect, Jack wouldn’t care about talking to Clarence. He’s never met the woman.”

  “Darling,” protested Bethancourt, “I’ve already told you that things are wide open at this point. Yes, Eve is a suspect, but so are any number of other people. Jack and the chief inspector are still in their collecting evidence mode.”

  “Yes, but I thought you were just trying to make me feel better.” She wandered over to the sofa, sipping at her port and frowning. “Eve was different today,” she said.

  “Different?” asked Bethancourt.

  “Yes. Much less scatterbrained than I’ve ever seen her.” Marla sighed. “But then I’ve never known her well. I suppose … well, I suppose she could have killed her father. I just don’t believe it. I don’t know why.”

  “Woman’s instinct,” said Bethancourt, smiling. “Not to be lightly discounted. Here, once Jack’s done with Clarence, I’ll go find out how his interview with Eve went, shall I?”

  Marla gave him a sharp look. “I thought you both spoke to her this morning.”

  “We did,” said Bethancourt, “but Jack went back to follow up tonight. I imagine that’s where he’s come from now.”

  “Oh.”

  This seemed to disturb her, but in the next moment she sighed again.

  “I don’t like this,” she said fretfully. “It’s bad enough when all you can think about is murderers—it’s worse when I might actually know one.”

  Bethancourt kissed the top of her head. “We’ll be going home tomorrow,” he said encouragingly.

  She snorted. “As if that’s going to stop you,” she said.

  “I am here,” announced Bethancourt, once Astley-Cooper’s pointless interview had been concluded and he had trotted off to entertain Marla in Bethancourt’s absence, “to assuage Marla’s fears about her friend by grilling you on your chat with her tonight. You did see her, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Gibbons ruefully.

  “Here, don’t guzzle the port that way,” said Bethancourt. “It’s very fine, very old, and was laid down by one of Clarence’s ancestors—likely the one who built the house, to hear him tell it.”

  Gibbons snickered.

  “So what happened?” asked Bethancourt, settling himself in a chair. “There must be some reason you came ’round.”

  Gibbons gave him a swift précis of the interview and its aftermath. Bethancourt immediately looked concerned, but only said, “Well, I can see you would want a drink after that.”

  Gibbons stared into the fire. “It brought it all back,” he said in a low voice. And then, plaintively, “Why the devil do female suspects keep trying to seduce me? I’m sure Carmichael never had this problem.”

  “I think it’s just an unfortunate coincidence,” said Bethancourt. “Marla says Eve is impulsive—the true madcap heiress. She’s probably never kissed a policeman before, and the notion amused her.”

  Gibbons smiled. “So I was a trophy?”

  “That, or she truly wanted company and chose that way of persuading you to stay. In any case, it was unfortunate.” He shot his friend a sidelong glance. “Will you tell Carmichael?”

  “Absolutely,” said Gibbons firmly. “The more so because, well, I thought at the start she might be going to offer me a bribe.”

  “Yes, so you said,” replied Bethancourt skeptically.

  “Well, what happened might be looked at in that vein.”

  “But in that case, why should she waste her time with a lowly sergeant when there’s a chief inspector away from his wife just a short distance away?”

  “I suppose there is that. You think it’s a washout then? That she’s innocent?”

  “Good Lord, no. Even if she is a murderer, she may quite likely not be happy with her own thoughts in the wee hours and wanted some distraction. And the same thing applies if she’s innocent. Really, Jack, you have to remember that she’s used to getting whatever she wants, and she has two ways of getting it: money and sex. She’s young and she certainly leads a frivolous life; she may not yet have learned that peace of mind cannot be bought with either commodity.” Bethancourt paused to light a cigarette.

  “I’m overreacting,” agreed Gibbons glumly.

  “I wouldn’t put it that way,” said Bethancourt. “You’ve got good cause to be wary.”

  He looked at his friend and cursed inwardly. This case had looked to be the one that might take Gibbons’s mind off his heartbreak, only now Eve Bingham had contrived, however innocently, to bring it all back to him.

  “Well,” said Gibbons, finishing off his port in one gulp, “I expect I should let you get back to Marla.”

  “True. It doesn’t do to press one’s luck. Are you going to be all right, Jack?”

  “I’m fine,” he answered, rising. His tone was resolute. “By the way, Carmichael’s giving me the Rover to take to London tomorrow. He’s got to stay here for the inquest.”

  Bethancourt looked startled. “But I thought you were riding up with us,” he said. “Do you not want me along at the hotel? I didn’t think it would matter.”

  “No, of course you can come along,” said Gibbons. “You can meet me there after you drop Marla off, if you like. I’ll ring you when I start.”

  “But what about this cousin in Lincoln?” persisted Bethancourt. “Surely Carmichael’s going to tell you to stop and see him on your way back?�
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  “Lincoln is not on the way back to the Cotswolds from London,” Gibbons pointed out dryly.

  Bethancourt waved this consideration away. “It’s another loose end to be tied up,” he said. “And one can easily drive from here to London to Lincoln and back all in a day. I can follow you in the Jaguar, but I can’t see why we should drive two cars over half of England. Think of the environment.”

  Gibbons sighed, beginning to feel, as he so often did with Bethancourt, that argument was futile.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll speak to Carmichael about it and ring you in the morning. Marla won’t be happy, though.”

  “Nonsense,” said Bethancourt. “It will give her an opportunity to persuade you that Eve Bingham is innocent. She’ll jump at the chance.”

  Carmichael was still awake when Gibbons returned to the inn. The chief inspector had the case file spread out over his bed and was poring over it from a chair drawn up to the bedside. In the corner the television was on, but the volume was turned low, and Carmichael seemed to be paying it no attention.

  “Come in, lad,” he said, waving at the second chair in the room. “How was Miss Bingham?”

  “Rather odd, sir,” replied Gibbons, taking a seat.

  Carmichael raised a bushy eyebrow and leaned back, settling his bulk more comfortably. “Odd?”

  “I told you how cool she seemed this morning,” said Gibbons, “but tonight she was quite different. Sad, it seemed to me, and a bit vulnerable. And then, when I left, she tried to kiss me.”

  He reddened as he said it, and both Carmichael’s brows went up.

  “Well, that’s certainly odd,” he said. A smile began to play about the corners of his mouth. “Not an interview technique I’ve heard of before, Sergeant.”

  “Sir!” protested Gibbons.

  Carmichael merely grinned. “If you must have romantic interludes with murder suspects, you’d best accustom yourself to a spot of ribbing. Well, well. Suppose you tell me what led up to this kiss.”

  Gibbons obliged, happy to retreat to the mundane terms of Eve Bingham’s will and his visit to her bathroom.

  Carmichael frowned when he heard about the cousin from Lincoln. “That puts out my plans,” he said. “I’d been thinking of sending you to London by train, so I could run down to Somerset after the inquest tomorrow and check on Martha Potts’s alibi. I’d like to get all these loose ends tied up, but I hadn’t counted on another one cropping up in Lincoln. I suppose you’ll have to have the car after all.”

  “Phillip offered to drive me to London, sir,” said Gibbons reluctantly. “I doubt he’d mind including Lincoln in the trip. You know how he is.”

  Carmichael brightened. “Then that’s sorted,” he said. “Having him around is a bit awkward, but every so often he does come in handy. What’s he making of this case?”

  Gibbons shrugged. “I think he’s mostly curious as to who Bingham’s mistress was, sir. He did say he thought Miss Bingham was only looking for distraction when she tried to kiss me tonight.”

  “He may be right,” said Carmichael. “Did you think differently?”

  “I didn’t know what to think,” admitted Gibbons. “I was quite startled, and the only thing that occurred to me was that it might be in the nature of a bribe. But it’s rather an odd one for an extremely wealthy woman to offer.”

  “So it is,” agreed Carmichael. “Well, we’ll just tuck it away in the back of our minds for future reference. It may be she was merely overcome by your manly presence, Sergeant.”

  Gibbons regarded his chuckling superior resignedly.

  “Oh, really, sir,” he said.

  CHAPTER 8

  “We had better get up,” said the vicar, glancing at the clock and reluctantly releasing his wife from his embrace.

  Leandra groaned. “And I haven’t yet done the breakfast dishes,” she said. “Really, Richard, how you persuade me back to bed on the slightest of excuses …”

  Her husband merely grinned and kissed her before flinging back the covers and sliding out of the bed. Leandra yelped as the colder air struck her and bent to reach for her discarded clothing.

  “Anyway,” she said, picking up their previous conversation, “I really don’t think it’s appropriate.”

  “It’s quite clear it’s inappropriate,” said the vicar, drawing on his trousers.

  “I don’t care how much money one has,” continued Leandra, “it is simply wrong to drive about in a white Rolls-Royce when your father has just died.”

  “White,” said the vicar reflectively, “is the color of mourning in China.”

  “She is not Chinese, Richard. And don’t go on about Charlie having spent so much time in China, because, however long he was there, he was not a Buddhist.”

  “I suppose not,” agreed the vicar.

  “If she wanted to get herself disliked in the village, she’s certainly gone the right way about it.” Leandra shook out her jumper with a sharp jerk before pulling it over her head. “Ah, that’s warmer.”

  “You mean the Women’s Institute last night,” said Tothill.

  “You should have heard the old cats,” said Leandra, bending to retrieve a sock. “They feel, in some obscure way, that she’s insulting them.”

  “You agreed with them?” asked Tothill, pausing in the act of donning his cassock.

  “How could I? They feel strongly enough as it is. I said that she was burying him here and that could hardly be thought of as an insult.”

  “Thank God. I thought for a moment, my dear, that you’d gone quite provincial.”

  Leandra turned to him. “No,” she said, “not yet. And I do know perfectly well that she probably didn’t do it intentionally. She’s used to fancy cars and that white Rolls was likely simply the best they had at the agency. Really, when you think about it, Charlie would have been quite amused.”

  “Yes,” said the vicar, with a reminiscent smile, “he would be.”

  “But what do you think of her?” asked Leandra. “You haven’t ventured an opinion at all.”

  Tothill considered while he did up his shoelaces. If Eve Bingham was grief-stricken, she certainly did not show it. On the other hand, he remembered a fleeting instant when she had looked at him with the eyes of a hurt and puzzled child. An instant, however, was nothing to go by; he could easily have been mistaken in what he thought he saw.

  “I don’t know,” he replied at last. “I don’t think I’ve seen enough of her to judge.” He caught a frustrated look in his wife’s eye and said, “Oh, dear. Your ladies last night have decided Eve murdered her father, haven’t they?”

  Leandra sighed. “It’s no use trying to keep anything from you, is it?” she said. “Yes, you should have heard them. The scandal over the missing girlfriend has been completely forgotten.”

  They were interrupted by the doorbell. The vicar, buttoning up his cassock, said, “I’ll answer it, my dear. Is there any coffee left?”

  “Oh, yes,” answered Leandra, pushing her hair out of her face. “There’s nearly a full pot keeping warm. Let me know if you want it brought into the parlor.”

  “Righto.”

  They clattered down the stairs together and divided at the bottom, the vicar heading toward the front door and Leandra making for the kitchen. She rather expected to bring the coffee through to the parlor—those who knew the Tothills well generally used the back door—and was setting out a tray when her husband reappeared with Astley-Cooper’s young friend in tow.

  “Here’s Phillip Bethancourt, dear,” he said. “I’ve told him he’s the very man we need to clear this up, as my parishioners seem to think driving a Rolls is indicative of a murderous nature. The police are still thinking misadventure, aren’t they, Mr. Bethancourt?”

  “Well,” said Bethancourt cautiously, “not absolutely, you know. But,” he added hastily as their faces fell, “they haven’t settled on Eve Bingham. If it was murder, there are plenty of suspects. Take Derek Towser, for example. He’s a stranger
to the village and he lives conveniently close to Bingham’s cottage. Perhaps they had crossed paths before.”

  Leandra looked horrified. “You can’t mean they seriously suspect Derek?” she asked.

  “At this point, they suspect anybody who hasn’t got an alibi,” he returned.

  “But I haven’t got one,” said Leandra, a trifle nervously. “I did go to the pub that night, but I left early, and Richard wasn’t here to say when I came in.”

  “Yes,” said Bethancourt, “but it’s rather difficult to make out a case for your having known Charlie before, since you were already living here when he returned to England. Whereas anything may have gone on between he and Towser before he ever moved here.” Seeing that she still looked disturbed at the idea of Towser as the murderer, he added cheerfully, “But if you object to Towser as a suspect, how about Bingham’s business partner, Andrew Sealingham? He lives near London, and perhaps Bingham went to see him that night. Or there’s Mrs. Potts, up at the farmhouse. She’s supposed to have gone off to visit her sister, but there’s no confirmation of that yet.”

  Tothill was laughing. “Martha Potts?” he said. “Now that is absurd.”

  “I admit I like Towser or Sealingham better myself,” said Bethancourt, “but you can see the field is wide open. Sergeant Gibbons is off this morning to interview an exceedingly sinister cousin of Miss Bingham’s, with me as his chauffeur. I wanted to stop and ask a favor of you, though, before we left.”

  “Of course,” said the vicar. “Anything we can do to help.”

  “What I want,” said Bethancourt, “is for the two of you to try to remember anything Charlie Bingham said about his daughter. I don’t expect you to think of everything right now, but perhaps I could drop by when I get back.”