by Bruce, Leo
“Let me buy you a drink,” said Keith. “No, you bought me a brandy this evening and it saved my life. What is it? Whisky? And what are you having, darling? ”
Wilma asked for port.
“Will you have one? “Keith asked Hilda.
“It’s rather early,” said Carolus, “but shell make an exception. Won’t you? ”
Could that curious fluttering at the mouth-tips be a smile?
Priggley joined them a few minutes later and said that the remains of Florrie Lamplow had been taken to the mortuary.
“I shouldn’t like that,” mentioned Hilda.
But Carolus was watching the faces of the two young lovers. It was clear that nothing that happened except to themselves could do much to disturb them.
15
NEXT morning Carolus hesitated not at all in Maresfield, but drove out to Flogmore woods. He was alone today, for Priggley had excused himself on the grounds that he wanted to swim and was going down to the coast on his motor-cycle. Carolus found the point where the track to the game-keeper’s cottage left the lane, and was about to turn when he saw a woman hurrying from a cottage which overlooked the entrance to the track. She had, it seemed, been putting out her laundry when she saw the car, for she still held in her hand a pair of pink knickers, though she was evidently far too excited to be aware of the
garment. She was blonde and sinewy, and shouted “Just a minute! “as she approached.
Carolus pulled into the side of the road and waited for her to come breathlessly to the car windows.
“Are you from the newspapers? “she asked.
“Yes,” lied Carolus without hesitation.
“Come about the murder? ”
“Yes.”
“Got your camera with you? ”
“No. I shall send a photographer out later if there’s a story.”
“Oh, yes! There’s a story! “panted the woman. “Wait till you hear what I can tell you! ”
“I should very much like to.”
“You better come inside then. I don’t want everyone else to know my business.”
“Don’t you? Then …”
“Oh, I mean neighbours and that. Let them read it in the papers if they want to, not come eavesdropping to what I’m going to tell you.”
Carolus followed the woman to a small front room of her cottage and found himself wedged between an upright piano and a flowerpot stand. The woman faced him exultantly.
“Would you like to ask the questions or shall I just tell you all I know? “she asked.
Carolus then made a grave tactical error.
“You just tell me,” he said, and a moment later realized his blunder.
“My name’s Redlove, Daisy Redlove. R-e-d-l-o-v-e. My husband’s a farm foreman, Herbert Redlove. Aren’t you going to write that down? ”
Carolus, beginning to see his mistake, produced paper and pencil and began doodling industriously in a pattern which he hoped resembled shorthand.
“I’ve been married twelve years,” went on Mrs Redlove, “but we’ve only just the two children Arthur and Margaret. They’re at school now. Here’s a photo of them taken at Westgate last summer. I can’t let you take that away with you, I’m afraid. It’s the only one I’ve got. Tell you what, though, I’ve got an extra one of me and my husband coming out of the church when we were married, so you can have that. Better write on the back of it, ‘Parish Church, Flogmore, June 7th, 1949.’ Well, as I was saying, we’ve lived in this cottage ever since we were married, and although it’s cold in the winter we’ve got used to it now and the children have never known anything else.”
“About the Lamplows,” interrupted Carolus.
“I’m just coming to them. Well, they were here before we were, so you’d have thought being their nearest neighbours we should have found them friendly, but they seemed to want to keep to themselves, so in all these years I haven’t worried about them. I soon had the children to think of, and the older one, that’s the little girl, had such a passion for music that nothing would satisfy her till we had her taught the piano. That’s some of her music beside you there. She can play all that. It’s wonderful, really, because she’s only eleven. I suppose you could take a picture of her sitting at the piano, here, couldn’t you? It doesn’t seem to matter about the light for pictures now because you see them taken of Princess Margaret coming out of the theatre at night. Only I should like to know what time you’ll be coming, because I want to see she’s dressed nice for it.”
“Yes. Mrs Lamplow was …”
“Well, as I was saying, we moved in after them, and the first time I met her in the street I thought it was only right to tell her who we were. I must say she was quite polite, but she didn’t say anything like where she lived if we needed anything, as anyone would. I thought to myself, you’re not very friendly to anyone just moving in, but I didn’t say it.
“He was just the same. He used to go into the Woodmen’s in the evening sometimes where my husband won the darts championship. There was a bit in the paper about that, then later a photo of him with all the other champions from all over the country. I think I’ve got a copy of that you could have. Yes, there he is at the back. That’s my husband with the cup in his hand. Well, they’ve all got cups, but that’s him in the corner …”
“Lamplows.”
“Well, as I was saying, when I was expecting the little girl I did think this Mrs Lamplow would say something, but I saw her go by on her bicycle many a time without stopping. It was the same with others in the village, she never seemed to mind whether she knew you or didn’t. She only had the one friend, that was Mrs Beale at the shop, and they were very thick. What are you writing that down for? Mrs Beale won’t have a lot to tell you; she’ll be too Upset. Still, you know what you’re doing. No sooner had I had the little girl, it seemed, before I was expecting again and the little boy was born within the year of the girl. He was a bonny baby. Well, everyone said so. I’ve got a picture of him somewhere which I often thought of sending up to one of the papers. I’ve been told more than once it would win a competition.”
“Lamplows,” insisted Carolus feebly.
“Of course, he went very sudden. You could put that bit in: ‘Mrs Redlove says dead woman’s husband died very sudden.’ I never really knew what it was; he seemed to be all right one day and taken to hospital the next, and before we knew where we were we heard he was dead. Something to do with the liver, they say. And he was a big, strong-looking chap, and no age really. It makes you Think, when they’re Taken like that. Same as my sister Went. She lived in the village here because her husband worked at the nurseries in Maresfield. She went just as sudden. Only it was kidneys with her, the doctor said. But she had a beautiful funeral. I can show you a picture somewhere, only I don’t suppose you’d need that, would you? Not with all the others you’ll have. You should have seen the flowers! One of the undertaker’s men told me he’d never seen so many flowers at one time. So it shows, doesn’t it? ”
“Lamp …”
“‘Well, as I was saying, when he’d Gone we heard she was moving away. Young Roger Goode, the postman, was about the only one who used to go up to their cottage. She used to take her milk back herself and there was no call for anyone to go out all that way. I don’t think young Roger knew much of them, but he used to see her when there was letters for her. It was him told me she was going, after Tom Lamplow died. ‘She’s packing everything up,’ he said,’ so I suppose she’s leaving.’ Some said they wanted the cottage for another game-keeper, and then again that it wouldn’t be worth while because this is all going to be built over next year. I suppose that means our cottage which is more than a hundred years old will be pulled down. You better write this part down, that we say we won’t live in a council house. ‘Herbert and Daisy Redlove, who came to their cottage straight from the church they was married in, say they won’t live in council house.’ Then you could put it with a picture of us standing in front, with the dog in with us if he�
�d keep still.”
“Lamplows,” persisted Carolus, less gently.
“Well, as I was saying, I knew she was going, but I never imagined she’d go off in the middle of the night like that. At least that’s what we thought. We weren’t to know the poor woman had been strangled and lying out there all this time, were we? So when I heard this car …”
“Which car? ”
“That’s what I’m saying. I heard it because I’m a light sleeper. Not like my husband. Nothing will wake him up once he’s got off. He didn’t know anything about it till the morning when I told him Mrs Lamplow had gone off in the night, as I thought.”
“Which night was that, Mrs Redlove? ”
“That’s right. You write this down. ‘Mrs Redlove of Brook Cottage, Flogmore, hears Murder Car.’ It was the Saturday night, I heard it. Well, the Sunday morning, really, because it was past two o’clock. I thought to myself, I wonder why she’s flitting off like that, because from all accounts she didn’t owe a penny and there was the furniture, too.”
“You say you heard a car drive up soon after two o’clock? ”
“That’s when it came, yes, because I struck a match and looked at the clock. Then it drove away again.”
“How long afterwards? ”
“Must have been at least an hour. I can’t be sure of that because I’d dozed off, but you can tell. Anyhow we know now, don’t we? Because he must have done for her in that time while he was up there and then made off again. You write that down. ‘Mrs Redlove says murderer was at death house for an hour. Farmer’s wife a light sleeper.’ Well, you can call my husband a farmer, being a farm foreman, can’t you? Only you want a good picture when you take it. I think you should have Arthur and Margaret in too, because they might remember something and they was ever so excited when they heard about it before they went off to school this morning. You know what children are when anything out of the way happens, and there’s not much going on about here till they begin building. We haven’t got the telly yet, so it’s something for them to say to the other kids who always start talking about the shooting and that they’ve seen on the telly the night before. Is there anything else you want to know about? ”
“Yes. Have you any idea what kind of car it was? Did it sound like a large car? ”
“Not like a lorry, it didn’t, but it wasn’t a bubble car or anything like that. Just an ordinary car I should say. Of course I didn’t see it, but you can tell pretty well. Write that down, I should. ‘Mrs Redlove says murder car not a lorry.’”
Carolus doodled industriously.
“Is that all then? There’s that £50 we won in the pools two years ago if that …”
“Had the Lamplows many visitors? ”
“You’d be surprised. There was often someone popping out to see them and IVe wondered more than once who they were. Nice cars, you know, and up there for a long time. At first I thought it was all part of the shooting, but they seemed to come more in the summer than winter.”
“You didn’t know any of them? ”
“No, I can’t say I did, not to recognize them,” said Mrs Redlove regretfully. “You could just put that Mrs Redlove said there were frequent visitors in cars at the death house before the night of the murder. That would do, wouldn’t it? ”
“Do you remember a car coming out on the Friday morning? ”
“Well, I can’t say I do, really. Of course there were lots of cars only I wouldn’t have noticed before this happened, and I don’t really know one from another. Is that an important part, because I could ask my husband only I doubt if he’d know any better than what I would.”
Carolus thanked Mrs Redlove and prepared to leave.
“What would be the best for me to wear when you bring your photographer? I’ve got the dress I go to the dances in. It’s a sort of bluey emerald colour …”
“That would be excellent,” said Carolus, now past the piano and the plant pot and on his way through the door.
“What about my husband? “asked Mrs Redlove following him.
“Black. Certainly black,” said Carolus absently as he opened the front gate.
“He’s got his blue serge,” said Mrs Redlove, “if you think that would do? And I’ve just bought a new dress for Margaret so we shall be all right.”
Carolus achieved his driving-seat and started the engine.
“You could say how sorry I was about it, too, because she was a next-door neighbour, really. ‘I have lost a friend’, says Mrs Redlove, of Brook Cottage, Flogmore. Only then I think I ought to wear my black.”
“Yes,” said Carolus as his car moved forward. “Yes, I think you ought. Thanks very much. Good-bye.”
He had driven a quarter of a mile before he remembered that he had been on the way to ‘the death house’ when Mrs Redlove stopped him. But that could wait. He would not take the chance of another encounter. He would go instead to see ‘Mrs Beale at the shop’, with whom Florrie Lamplow had been ‘very thick’ but who ‘wouldn’t have a lot’ to tell him.
She had not, but what little there was he found interesting.
‘The shop’ was one of two in the village, the other having a wired-off section to serve as a post office and being called by that name. ‘The shop’ had Ernest Beale Provisions in bright letters above its windows, but its stock was meagre. When the shopper ahead of Carolus asked Mrs Beale for some dried fruit she said she was sorry, she had no call for that now, that they all go into Maresfield to the supermarket.
Mrs Beale was a dumpy little woman with a curt businesslike manner which rather daunted Carolus who had only the vaguest plans for questioning her. Indeed before he had decided what he should say he found himself addressed.
“Next please,” said Mrs Beale, though Carolus was now alone with her in the shop.
“I understand,” he said, “that you were a friend of the late Mrs Lamplow? ”
“Oh, I’m too upset to talk about that.”
“I know. I sympathize. But …”
“Yes, dear?” said Mrs Beale peremptorily to a small child who had just entered.
While she was serving, without looking at Carolus, she addressed him again.
“I couldn’t say anything. It wouldn’t be right. There you are dear, and tell Mum to come and see me about that other. Mind how you go now.”
“I just thought …” said Carolus.
“No. It would never do for me to say anything. We only heard about it last night.”
“She was only found last night. I thought that you, as her friend …”
“Yes, but I should never forgive myself. What can I get for you, Sheila? ”
She had turned to a tall young woman. But as she weighed some tomatoes for her she continued to speak to Carolus.
“No,” she said, “I really couldn’t. You must ask someone else. I wouldn’t trust myself.”
Carolus tried a direct attack.
“Had she seen much of her friends from Maresfield lately? ”
“That’s just it,” said Mrs Beale, re-arranging some packets of tea.
This was hard going, but Carolus stood his ground while two more customers were served and Mrs Beale seemed to remember his presence.
“Besides, I told Mr Beale this morning, I shan’t say anything, I said. So it’s no good. I don’t feel myself about it, and that’s a fact. Lying out there. They say she had nothing on but her nightie, poor thing. But it’s no good. Yes, boys, what is it? ”
Carolus began to lose hope. He decided to wait another five minutes then abandon all possibilities here, at least for the present. But just as he was preparing to leave, Mrs Beale said, across a collection of small groceries she was preparing for a customer—“I’ll tell you one thing about her. That’ll be eighteen and six altogether, Mrs Rider. Ta. Go in your bag will they? Yes, I’ll tell you one thing. She was scared out of her wits to stay in that cottage after Tom had died.”
“It is certainly very isolated.”
“It wasn’t that. She wa
s used to that because she never went out with Tom in the evenings. Good morning, Mr Budd. What can I do for you? All right, I’ll put a bit of paper round them. No it wasn’t that. It was Something Else. She told me the last time she was in here she didn’t mean to stay a minute longer than she could help. That’s why when Mrs Redlove said she’d gone off in the night we all thought she had. Fred’U run them round for you if you like, Mr Budd. They’re a bit heavy for you. Yes, we never thought any different. But when I heard this morning what had happened, I said to my husband—‘ There! ’ I said, ‘what did I tell you? She was scared to be out there all alone, now look what’s happened.’ ”
“She didn’t explain at all what frightened her? ”
“No. Only that there was Something. I can’t say any more. I oughtn’t to have said that, really. I’m much too upset by the whole thing. Fancy strangling anyone! You don’t know where you are, nowadays, do you? Yes, dear. A shilling’s-worth, did Mum say? There you are, then. All I can say is I hope they find who’s done it and that he’s hanged. Anyone alone like that and their husband only dead a few days. They didn’t wait long, I must say.”
“When did you last see Mrs Lamplow? “asked Carolus, taking advantage of Mrs Beale’s melting reserve.
“Not since the Saturday afternoon when she popped in for a minute on her bicycle. She was worried then. Yes, Mrs Ford? Gone off, had it? I am sorry. It’s this hot weather. There’s some nice fresh new-laid ones just in; I’m sure you’ll find they’re all right. Yes, she was worried that afternoon. What’s more she had reason to be. Half a pound? Yes. And tea. Let’s see, you have the green packets, don’t you? Worried out of her life, she was, and I’ll tell you why in a moment. No I haven’t one left. There’s not much call for them, really. What she said was one of Tom’s guns was missing.”
