Shadows & Lies

by Marjorie Eccles

  As he left the Fox’s house and began to walk home to Belmonde, taking the short cut behind the house which avoided the longer way through the village, he tried to reassure himself he couldn’t realistically have been expected to go searching through the sodden woods yesterday for a woman he might or might not have seen. But his conscience gave him a wretched feeling that had he done so, and offered help, she might have been alive now, and not have died from exposure – or, unlikely as it seemed, from being shot.

  That being said, on the premise that sooner or later the police would want to see him, and the feeling that it would look better if he were to approach them rather than the other way round, after hesitating for only a moment, he made a firm decision and turned back. Outside the village school, the crowd had thinned, though some with nothing better to do were still hanging around. Sebastian had been known to them all from childhood, and though he was Sir Henry’s son, he was well-liked; they exchanged greetings as he made his way to the door, but he was aware of curious glances, people wondering what connection the folk from the big house might have with this business.

  “What’s going on, Joe?” he asked the village policeman who was standing on guard, arms folded.

  “Haven’t you heard, Mr Sebastian? There’s been a dead woman found in the Abbey woods.”

  “Yes, I do know that, and I’m sorry to hear it. Who is she?”

  “Don’t ask me. But we got the big guns out,” Simmonds said, rolling his eyes. “Chief Constable’s been here from Shrewsbury and the inspector from Bridgnorth’s come over, so I dare say we shall find out just now. Want to see him, then, the inspector?”

  “It might be as well.”

  When Sebastian was taken inside, he found himself alone with a policeman who was engaged in a struggle with a long hooked pole, trying to open the top of one of the high windows. As well he might wish to, for the room was stifling, with the peculiarly distinctive school smell of chalk-dust, ink, the dry wood of the planked floor and generations of children. All Miss Edith Swanson’s pupils, from five years old until they left at thirteen, were housed together in the one room, where the older ones (those who were bright enough) were expected to help the younger to learn their letters and do their sums. But now, with the harvest holidays still on so that the children could help in the fields, and Miss Swanson on a walking tour in the Dolomites with her old college friend, the room was presently out of use. The big blackboard on its easel had been rubbed clean and all the child-sized double desks, each with its built-in bench and its desktop scarred with generations of inkblots and scratched-on initials, had been pushed to the sides of the room, as they were when the schoolroom doubled as the village hall.

  The inspector acknowledged Sebastian’s arrival with a nod, and valiantly carried on with his task, while Sebastian, wondering whether to offer to help and deciding it wouldn’t be appreciated by one of the stalwarts of the police force, perched on one of the desks, prepared to wait.

  Having finally succeeded in letting some air into the room, the other man, mopping his perspiring face and rubbing his hands with a handkerchief, came to sit at Miss Swanson’s desk which, with the blackboard, was set on a dais, and was now covered with official looking papers. “That’s a bit better,” he announced. “Can’t work without breathing, eh?” He still looked mightily as though he’d have liked to open the neck of his thick navy blue serge tunic, were it not for holding on to his dignity; as it was, he made do with passing a finger between the inside of the high collar and the roll of damp red flesh it had pushed up.

  After ascertaining Sebastian’s name, the inspector offered his own. A Welshman by the name of Meredith, he was stockily built, short for a policeman. Settling himself down, he regarded Sebastian steadily. “You got something to tell me, sir?”

  Before answering that, Sebastian asked a question of his own, the one he’d asked of Joe Simmonds. “Who is she, this woman who’s been found?”

  “Haven’t been able to identify her yet. Seems she’s a stranger to these parts.”

  “Is it true she’s been shot? If so, we’d better find out which tomfool was out there at Belmonde with a gun – without permission, and on a day like yesterday.”

  “Oh, and where did you get the idea, then, that she’d been shot? And at Belmonde?” Meredith asked, very Welsh, giving an appraising glance to this assured young sprig of the landed gentry perched against a child’s desk, one leg thrown negligently over the other knee; polished but mud-stained gaiters, well-cut tweeds, high round stiff collar, thick dark-brown hair neatly side-parted.

  “Well, she was found in the grounds, after all, wasn’t she?” Sebastian was disconcerted by the keen glance, but rather relieved at the implications of the inspector’s words. “Do you mean she did die from natural causes?”

  “As to that no, I’m afraid she did not. And as to dying at Belmonde – she could have been killed elsewhere and brought in – dumped, like.”

  “But I saw her there – alive. That’s what I came to tell you. At least, I thought I got a glimpse of her before she disappeared,” Sebastian added lamely, slightly less assured. “Disappeared from sight, I mean.”

  Meredith’s interest sharpened. “Saw her, did you? And what time was this, then?”

  “Thought I saw. I couldn’t really swear to it, you know. I only saw her in a flash, as I was driving up to the house. It was bucketing down and she wasn’t equipped for the rain. I thought to give her a lift, but when I reversed to where I’d seen her, I could see no one. Perhaps it wasn’t the same woman.”

  “No, I think we might reasonably assume there was only one.” Meredith spoke quietly, slowly, but Sebastian had the sense that his intelligence was as sharp as the polished silver buttons on his tunic. “And the time?” he repeated.

  “About half past three it would have been. But Mr Blythe – the butler – could probably tell you more precisely. I arrived at the house a few minutes later.”

  Butlers, was it? Didn’t have butlers in the Rhonda, where Daffyd Meredith came from, and sometimes wished he could return to, pleasant as the quiet town of Bridgnorth was. The reason he lived there at all was that he’d married a girl whom he’d met on a bicycling holiday when he’d strayed over the border, and she wouldn’t move away from her native town. “Quite so. Sheltering under the trees, was she? No umbrella – only a hat and coat?”

  “As far as I could see.”

  “And you’ve no idea who she might be?”

  “No,” said Sebastian, in the face of the sinking feeling that he might now be able to make a guess, at least in a general direction.

  Meredith heaved himself out of his chair and went across to the group of desks behind Sebastian. When he came back, he was holding out a sodden bundle. “Would these be the garments?”

  The cloth of the coat and skirt was heavy brown tweed, the hat was one that would be deemed serviceable rather than fashionable, a stiff brown felt with a deep crown, the brim turned up at one side and held in place by a modest brooch of some pewter-like metal set around an insignificant chip of amber – the sort of hat his mother or his sister probably wouldn’t acknowledge as existing. The smell of wet wool rose up as Meredith held up the articles. Sebastian shrugged, aware of the feelings of pity and anger the pathetic belongings aroused in him. “Something like that, I suppose, but it’s impossible to say. I tell you, I wasn’t anywhere near her.”

  “She was also wearing strong boots, recently resoled and heeled. The costume’s not expensive, but it’s of decent quality. Apart from the pin in her hat, she wasn’t wearing jewellery of any kind, not even a wedding ring. And her gloves – grey cotton, darned at the tips of one forefinger and the thumb, look you. I’d put her down as a respectable, working class woman – not, at any rate, a woman able to indulge in expensive tastes. But …take a look at this.”

  ‘This’ was a silk scarf which Meredith now brought to the table, watching Sebastian’s frown as he looked at the delicate thing, its rich, iridescent peacoc
k colours catching the light. “Anything strike you as odd, sir?”

  Odd, no. But it was faintly recognisable. Then he remembered he had bought a similar scarf in Regent Street for Louisa’s last birthday. It hadn’t come cheap. “Compared with the other clothes …well, it’s a pretty incongruous combination.”

  “Very good.” The inspector nodded approvingly. “I see you follow my meaning.”

  “Not entirely …”

  Instead of explaining himself, the inspector said obliquely, “She wasn’t shot, as you assumed, Mr Chetwynd, accidentally or otherwise. She was found in the stream.”

  “You mean she fell in?”

  Meredith weighed him up before answering. “There is reason to believe she was dead before that. When a person drowns, you see, there are signs – froth from the mouth or nose, that sort of thing. There was none in this case. There will be a post mortem, of course, and if there is no water found in her lungs, which the doctor believes there will not be, then she was not breathing when she entered the water.”

  “She died and then fell in?”

  “Or died and was put in.” He paused. “There were also marks on her throat.”

  “Good God!” The impossible conclusion hung almost tangibly on the air. Murder. At Belmonde. Where violence had been virtually unknown since the Dissolution, when the abbey had been sacked by the troopers of Henry the Eighth. Sebastian felt a kind of anger: what right had this woman to have the temerity to walk into Belmonde and disturb its serenity by getting killed? Then he saw how absurd this was, not to say unfeeling, and laughed at himself shamefacedly.

  “With – the scarf?”

  The inspector shook his head. “The marks were not the mark of a ligature. Someone had his hands around her throat while she was still alive. If that was how she died, why she was left in the stream afterwards is still a puzzle.” Leaving it at that, he walked to the table where the clothes had lain and, like a conjuror producing rabbits out of a hat, he brought forth a small pasteboard oblong, which he put on the desk.

  “Return ticket to London. Looks as though she intended to go back the same day. Slipped inside the palm of her glove, see, for safe-keeping. She didn’t have a bag with her, which I find interesting. Never known a woman happy without a bag of some sort for long – no money, no comb, not even a handkerchief.”

  The inspector sat down and there was silence for a while. “Where exactly was she found?”

  “Where the stream goes by that derelict gamekeeper’s cottage, near what seems to be called the bothy and the pheasant pens.”

  “The devil she was!”

  “It was the gamekeeper, Jordan, who found her.”

  Jordan was a black-browed, sour individual, taciturn of speech but, according to Sir Henry, the best gamekeeper in Shropshire. Unmarried, wary of women. Not, one would have thought, the type to get near enough to any female to strangle her, much less with an expensive silk scarf. And for what reason? He might knock a man down, or break his head with a stick, when his black temper was up; he had big, coarse hands that would certainly be capable of strangling anyone, but Sebastian had seen him free a dog caught in a rabbit-snare with a touch as gentle as a woman’s. “He wouldn’t have done anything like that, not Tom Jordan.”

  “Maybe not, but pending further enquiries, we have him in custody. The person who ‘finds’ the body is naturally suspect – and Jordan’s known to have a temper, I gather – and to drink – and no one seems to have seen him at any time yesterday.”

  “But look here – murder!”

  The inspector raised an expressive eyebrow, but remained silent.

  “Well,” Sebastian said awkwardly, at last, preparing to leave. “You’ve heard what I came to tell you …”

  “Thank you. I appreciate that, sir. I take it you’ll be staying here for the present.” This did not sound like a question. “You may have been the last person to see her alive, see. Apart from her murderer, of course.”

  Sebastian felt a sense of unreality sweep over him. Was the inspector, simply because both he and the victim had arrived from London on the same day, suspecting some connection between them? Did he believe a word of Sebastian’s story? Did he think he had murdered the woman? “Sorry, I can’t stay. I’m due to drive Miss Fox back to London on Monday. She came down with me.”

  “Miss Fox? Who’s she? Did she see the woman under the trees, as well?”

  “No.” Sebastian explained who Louisa was, and where she lived. “She has lectures to attend in London next week. It’s important she gets back.”

  “I’m sorry, but unless we get this cleared up before then, you may have to ask Miss Fox to find some other means of getting back – she shouldn’t have much trouble getting a train from Bridgnorth.” Meredith had seemed to have the business so very much at his fingertips, with little doubt as to the identity of the murderer, that Sebastian was surprised when he added, “It’s a puzzle, this one. Unknown woman, not obviously a vagrant, no obvious motive for her being killed, unless it was the theft of her handbag. Not the sort of thing that happens in these parts, at all – it looks very much as though we’re going to have to borrow a detective from London to help us out on this. We’ve telegraphed for one, and with luck he might be here by Monday, Tuesday at the latest. That’s why I have to ask you to stay – until he’s had a word with you.” He stood up and extended a hand. “Thank you for coming in, sir. That’s all I have to say for now.”

  It occurred to Sebastian that the inspector was by no means as confident as he had sounded, that perhaps he didn’t believe Jordan was undoubtedly guilty; he had, after all, just admitted that this was being regarded as no ordinary, common or garden murder – if any murder could ever be called that. He began to have the impression that there was also a great deal more that the man might have said, had he so chosen, about who this woman might be, and why she was here. And again he thought that perhaps it was no coincidence she had been found in the Belmonde woods, and that, having been found there, it might well turn out to be nothing short of a catastrophe for the hitherto unassailable Chetwynd family.

  Chapter Six

  The news that a body had been discovered on the estate was brought to Sir Henry by Seton, via one of the estate men who had come upon an almost incoherent Jordan in the woods, mumbling and ranting about dead bodies. Having first made sure, by demanding to see the body in question himself, that Jordan had not been drunk or taken leave of his senses, and that the woman was certainly dead, Will Shefford had guided him into the little bothy where the gamekeeper kept his tools and his fencing and the feed for his pheasant chicks, and where he’d been sleeping the previous night on a rough truckle bed, keeping watch for poachers. His chicks, which he’d hand-reared since spring, were almost ready to be released into the wild, and he’d slept with one ear open and his shotgun at his side, ready to scare off any intruders.

  “I suppose I mun leave you, Tom,” said Shefford, “while I go tell Mr Seton.” He looked doubtfully at the keeper, and then around the bothy. An empty bottle told its own story. “You got coffee or summat up here, then?”

  No answer came from Jordan, and Shefford filled the keeper’s blackened tinkers’ kettle from the stream and set it to boil, after feeding the dying fire with dry wood. He found tea, but no milk, laced the brew with plenty of sugar and thrust a mug into Jordan’s hand in the hopes that he would drink it.

  “Don’t you go doing anything daft, Tom – we’ll be back just now.”

  With this further injunction, Shefford had hurried to the house on the edge of the park where Seton and his wife lived, to find them still at breakfast. After that the matter was taken out of his hands by the agent, who first saw to it that the police were informed and then went up to the bothy, and Jordan, to await the arrival of PC Simmonds, after which he felt it was more than time to inform Sir Henry, who couldn’t be found for some time.

  Eventually the search led to the little room off the long gallery where Henry kept his coin collection. Seton s
aw immediately that something was troubling him; he could spend hours poring over the collection which he’d begun when he was a boy, and which included a louis d’or of exceptional value to him because it had reputedly been given to a Chetwynd by Louis X111 himself. He resorted to examination of his precious collection in times of stress as other men might seek solace in drink, or women, and to find him there when he should have been at church reading the lesson was indeed an indication that something was deeply troubling him.

  After the news was broken to him, he returned with Seton to the clearing where the body had been found, only to be told by Will Shefford that both body and gamekeeper had already been taken away by the police.

  “The police!” growled Henry. “I suppose by that you mean Joe Simmonds? What the devil does he mean by taking away my gamekeeper?”

  “Begging your pardon, Sir Henry, it were the Bridgnorth inspector as took him away.”

  Seton intervened to say, “They’ll need to get the straight facts from him, and they could hardly keep him here.” He added, “I think it might go very badly for him. The woman seems to have been strangled, you know – and though he says he found her —”

  “If Jordan says that, he’s telling no more than the truth. Whatever his faults, he’s no liar.”

  Shefford nodded. “That’s right. Never knowed Tom Jordan tell a lie.”

  Seton also was inclined to be of the same opinion, but he thought any man might be a liar if he found himself faced with a murder charge. He kept his counsel, however. Sir Henry had been in a strange mood for the past week, and he seemed very shocked at what had happened – though possibly, Seton felt, more at the impropriety of such an event occurring on his land than of a woman having cruelly died there. But then, such a woman could be nothing to him, after all, a stranger with whom he had never had any contact.