The Twelve Clues of Christmas

by Rhys Bowen

  “Oh, I see.”

  “I don’t see any point in going to look at the orchard,” Darcy said. “We know that the police trampled all over it.”

  “We could question the man’s servants,” I suggested.

  Darcy glanced at my grandfather. “What do you think, sir? Georgie wants to do this, but I don’t want to be accused of stepping on the toes of the police.”

  “Well, that inspector has asked for my advice, but I’m not so sure we should go questioning people behind his back,” Granddad said. “And anyway, I heard from the inspector that nobody in the house knew anything. They didn’t hear the shot. They didn’t know he’d gone out. I gather the servants sleep in another wing altogether and he normally didn’t get up before nine.”

  “Well, that’s a lot of good,” I said. “I wish we knew who his friends were and whether he’d told any of them that he was planning this prank.”

  “What would that prove?” Darcy asked. “He probably told quite a few people that he was planning the prank. If he wasn’t about to carry out some kind of stunt, what on earth was he doing up a tree with a shotgun and wire?”

  I sighed. “This isn’t going to be easy, is it?”

  “Because if these are murders,” my grandfather said, “then someone has put a lot of thought and planning into making them look like accidents.”

  “What kind of person would do this?” Darcy asked.

  “Obviously a brainy type,” Granddad said. “A loner. Quiet sort, I’d say. And if he really has planned to kill these specific people, then I’d say he’s the kind who’d carry a grudge, maybe for years. A crime spree like this must have taken months of planning.”

  “What if it’s a woman?” I asked. “Wild Sal fits those characteristics, doesn’t she?”

  Granddad nodded. “It could be that the farmer’s wife, kicked to death in the dairy, was a genuine accident. We’ll just have to see if there are any more deaths. If there aren’t, then bob’s your uncle. Wild Sal it is.”

  “We should be moving along if you want to cover all of the crime scenes,” Darcy said. “The second one—the man who fell off the bridge.”

  “We can hardly ask the publican what time Ted Grover left, if he was dallying with the publican’s wife,” I said.

  “But we could ask some of the other men,” Granddad said. “There’s a couple of them sitting outside the pub right now.”

  We went over and I hung back, letting Darcy and my grandfather do the talking. They joined me soon after. “They say that nobody saw him leave. He definitely wasn’t in the bar at closing time, so he must have left well before that. Could have been round the back with the publican’s missus.” My grandfather paused. “And they were surprised he fell off the bridge because he didn’t seem to be drunk.”

  There was a clear footpath from the pub across low-lying fields. It was muddy from melted snow and we picked our way carefully until we came to the clapper bridge—just slabs of granite laid over standing stones across the stream.

  “Easy enough to fall off here, if you were unsteady on your pins,” Granddad said.

  “But they didn’t think he was drunk,” I said. “And if he fell into the stream, it’s deep enough that he wouldn’t have hit his head on a rock, and the icy water would have sobered him up in a hurry.”

  “I suspect the stream is much deeper now than it was a few days ago,” Darcy said. “All that melted snow.”

  “That’s true.” I stared down at the swiftly flowing waters, trying to picture a man’s body lying there; trying to spot a rock that could have killed him. We made our way back to the road and went to look at the house of the Misses Ffrench-Finch.

  “We do know that Wild Sal was admitted to their kitchen on that night,” I said.

  Granddad shook his head. “Do you think she’d know about things like turning on gas taps if she lived wild on the moors? And more to the point, would she have any idea about cross-wiring a switchboard?”

  “I suppose that’s true,” I said. “It would take a person with experience of electricity to make sure someone was electrocuted when they plugged in headphones.”

  We made our way around the house to the side with Miss Effie’s window, and sure enough there was a very large footprint in the flower bed right beneath the window.

  “Looks like a large Wellington boot to me,” Granddad said. “A very large one. Doesn’t that half-witted bloke wear big boots?”

  “Willum? Yes, but we know he was here the day before Miss Effie died. He helped them carry in packages and get the decorations down from their attic. He could quite possibly have had to fetch something from the shed.”

  “Via a flower bed?” Darcy asked.

  “Maybe he wanted to peek in a downstairs window,” I suggested. “He’s very childlike.” I looked over to the shed behind the main house. “Oh, and look. There is a ladder propped against the shed. Perhaps he had to fetch that to put up the Christmas tree.”

  Granddad stared at the ladder, then at the wall. “If that was extended, it would reach close to that bedroom window.”

  “It would,” Darcy agreed. “Now all we have to do is find out who used it, turned on the gas and came down again without being seen.”

  “You’re being sarcastic again,” I said.

  “I just think this is a fool’s errand,” he said. “Maybe Sherlock Holmes could look at the smallest of clues and know everything, but we can’t. We can’t question everybody in nearby towns, look through police records, hospital records—all the things one would need to do to come up with possible suspects for a murder like this. And even then—if our murderer is a twisted reclusive chap, brooding and plotting from his bedroom, we may have no way of finding him until he makes a mistake.”

  “You think he’ll make a mistake?” I asked.

  “They always do in the end,” Granddad said. “He can wipe away fingerprints, work hard to make every death look like an accident, but in the end he’ll slip up.”

  “I’d still like to look at the other crime scenes for myself,” I said. “And since we have the car, why not?”

  “Because it’s cold,” Darcy said.

  After a mile or so I had to agree with him. Monty’s motor was an open-topped Alvis Tourer, so we were exposed to the freezing wind. It wasn’t so bad in the front seat, behind the windshield, but I was perched in the poor excuse for a backseat and the wind hit me full in the face. We sat huddled together as we climbed a hill and then down again into Newton Abbott. I noticed that Klein’s Jewelers had a notice saying Closed on the front door. The robbery had clearly upset Mr. Klein enough that he hadn’t felt like opening his shop again. We found the telephone exchange with two girls working at a makeshift switchboard at a table, while the other end of the room was a blackened mess of burned-out wires. We made Darcy our spokesman, sensing correctly that girls like that would be more willing to talk to a handsome man. And after his initial questions they glanced at him shyly and said they’d do anything they could to help “poor Glad.”

  “I always said she had it coming,” one of them said, looking at the other for confirmation. “She loved to listen in on the calls and she was a terrible gossip, wasn’t she, Lil?”

  The other nodded. “I told her she was going to get in trouble one day for repeating things like that.”

  “Did she ever repeat to you any of the things she’d heard?” Darcy asked.

  “She did sometimes—you know, if someone was seeing somebody else’s wife. She liked that kind of thing. Crazy about the pictures, she was—romance and drama.”

  “So you think that what happened to her wasn’t an accident?” I asked carefully.

  “I don’t see as how it could have been,” Lil said. “I mean, who would ever connect up electric wires to a telephone switchboard? Only someone who didn’t know what they were doing, and nobody like that has ever been in here. We ain’t had no kind of work done, or outsiders in here.”

  “There was that man about the clock,” the other gi
rl reminded her.

  “Oh, right. A man came in the other day—day before poor Glad’s tragedy, it were. Said he was sent to repair the clock. He weren’t here long, fiddled about a bit and then he went.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Nothing much. About forty-something, I’d say. Thin bloke. Big mustache. Glasses. Wearing overalls.”

  “He didn’t give his name or say who had sent him?”

  “We were busy. He seemed to know what he was doing, and he said he’d been sent from the town hall, so we left him to it.”

  “Thank you,” Darcy said. “You’ve been most helpful.”

  “Do you reckon they’ll ever catch the person what did this?” Lil asked.

  “We hope so,” Darcy said. “Oh, and tell me—did Gladys have anyone who might have carried a grudge against her? An old boyfriend, maybe? A neighbor she had annoyed?”

  They frowned, thinking. “Like I said”—the other girl glanced at Lil before speaking—“she did like to gossip so maybe that got her in trouble. But she weren’t the sort for boyfriends. Not much of a catch, you might say. She got her romance from the cinema.”

  “Should we go to the town hall?” I asked as we came out again to the busy high street. “They’d know who was sent to repair a clock, wouldn’t they?”

  “I don’t see how that could have any bearing on Gladys,” Darcy said. “If he’d rigged up the switchboard to kill somebody while he was there, he’d have killed one of the other girls before Gladys came on duty in the early morning.”

  “You know what I’m thinking?” Granddad commented. “They let us in and chatted to us easily enough. Who is to say that people don’t often pop in for a chat and that they don’t even remember them afterward?”

  “Good point,” Darcy said. “Emphasizing that we’re on a wild-goose chase.”

  “Fine,” I said angrily. “You’ve made it quite clear that I’m an idiot and we’re wasting our time.”

  I started walking fast toward the motorcar. Darcy hurried to catch up with me. “Nobody says you’re an idiot. I just don’t think we have any way of achieving what you hope to achieve. We’re amateurs, Georgie. We have no access to police records.”

  “He’s right, ducks,” Granddad said. “The only way to solve this, in my thinking, is to find a local person who has shown himself in the past to be antisocial or warped or hostile. You know, the kind who writes letters to the local newspaper about his neighbor’s radio being too loud or the greengrocer raising the cost of potatoes. I think we’ll find each of the victims teed him off in a way that wouldn’t bother you or me.”

  “Then could we go through the past issues of the newspaper and see if anything stands out?”

  “That would take days,” Darcy said. “And I expect the police are already thinking along those lines.”

  I sighed. “All right. Let’s go home. I give up. There’s no point in looking where the butcher’s van drove off the road because anyone could have hidden behind a big rock and jumped out to make him swerve. And I was the one who found the master of hounds’s horse and the only person I saw up there was Wild Sal and she’s behind bars.”

  “Then let’s go back, have a good lunch and forget about it,” Darcy said. “No, don’t look at me like that. I’m not being callous, just realistic. And who knows, maybe we’ll come to the end of the day with no more deaths.”

  “We could drive over to that farm and see where the farmer’s wife died,” I said as we reached the motor and Darcy opened the door for me.

  “And question the cow?” Darcy said.

  My grandfather laughed. For some reason I couldn’t find it funny. I climbed into the car with a haughty “I’m not amused” expression still on my face.

  Darcy touched my hand. “Smile, Georgie. You can’t carry this on your shoulders. What could we hope to learn from looking at a cow barn? The only thing that would be interesting to see is whether the doctor agreed that death was caused by a single kick to the head.”

  “I wonder whether he has a surgery in this town or was called in from Exeter.” I was already looking around.

  “It wouldn’t be right to go and see the doctor without permission from the inspector,” Granddad said. “I’m sorry, love, but I agree with Darcy. There ain’t much more we can do on our own. Best go back to your posh house and enjoy yourselves.”

  Darcy revved the motor and we drove back to the hall. I sat fuming with frustration, but I knew in my heart they were right. If only I had something to go on, some vital clue, some thread that linked the deaths. As we drove I tried to rack my brains about things I might have seen. There had been a couple of occasions when a thought had passed through my head, too fleetingly to grab on to, that I had just witnessed something important. But I could no longer remember what those moments were. As a detective, I was a hopeless failure.

  Chapter 29

  STILL DECEMBER 28

  Suffering from near frostbite.

  When we arrived back at Gorzley Hall we found everyone in a state of excitement about the ball. The clatter of a sewing machine came from a back room and I gathered that one of the local women had been conscripted to make alterations. People were rummaging through the dressing-up trunk, calling out things like, “Will this do?”

  Junior Wexler ran past. “I’m going to be a Redcoat!” he called. “I’m going to borrow a real uniform and a real gun.”

  “Oh, there you are, Georgiana.” Lady Hawse-Gorzley appeared in the doorway, looking frazzled. “I wondered where you had disappeared to.”

  “I went out with Darcy and my grandfather to see if there was anything we could do to help solve these murders,” I said.

  She glanced around in case any guests were within hearing distance. “I thought you said they’d arrested Wild Sal,” she whispered.

  “They have. But a farmer’s wife died after Sal was in jail.”

  “The whole thing is extraordinary and unbelievable,” she said, shaking her head. “Especially in our little neck of the woods. Did you discover anything?”

  “Nothing at all,” I said. “I feel quite frustrated, but we’ve nothing to go on.”

  “It’s not your problem, my dear. You are supposed to be having fun with everyone else. You have your costume for tonight, I hope. All the best ones have been snapped up. Oh, and I hope you don’t mind—I had a word with your maid and asked her to help Mrs. Upthorpe and Mrs. Rathbone dress tonight. Our Martha can help Mrs. Wexler and Bunty.”

  I tried not to let my face betray that being dressed by Queenie might be something fraught with danger. Should I perhaps warn Mrs. Upthorpe and Mrs. Rathbone that my maid had in the past done such things as setting fire to her employer?

  “What about Mrs. Sechrest?” I asked. My mind went immediately to that white figure creeping down the corridor in the night.

  “The Sechrests have gone home and will be dressing there. I wonder what she’ll wear this year. She always goes in for frightfully elaborate costumes. Last year she was Nell Gwynne.” I tried not to smile at this.

  I went to find Queenie to try to instill in her the fear of God and dismissal from my service, but she seemed pleased with herself that she was going to act as lady’s maid to all and sundry. “They don’t have no more proper maids like me here, so her ladyship actually begged me to help them get dressed.”

  “She had no idea what you’re like, Queenie. Please try not to do anything too stupid, for my sake.”

  “I always try, miss. It’s just that sometimes things happen.”

  At least she hadn’t been asked to dress the dowager countess.

  I went through the dressing-up box and found my red scarf and gold earrings, then I noticed a long black wig and added that. It’s amazing how a difference in hair color changes a personality, isn’t it? When I tried on the costume I looked quite sultry, like a Mediterranean temptress. I was rather pleased with my choice, especially as Darcy would be my gypsy partner.

  Lady Hawse-Gorzley served a high te
a at five, as we would be having a late supper at the ball. This included boiled eggs and Welsh rarebit as well as the usual tea fare and took me back to nursery days when Nanny and I would share such a meal in our own little world. How long ago that seemed now.

  Around seven everyone dispersed to prepare for the ball. I told Queenie I could dress myself and sent her off to help the other ladies. As I stood alone in my room I realized that the day was almost over and nobody had died. Maybe our surmise had been true after all—the farmer’s wife had been an accident and Wild Sal had been responsible for at least some of the other deaths. I felt a great wave of relief sweep over me. I realized that I had been almost holding my breath, waiting for the next stroke of doom to fall. I was almost ready, only fiddling with tying the scarf around my false locks, when I heard an awful scream. I came flying out of my room, as did those around me. The scream was coming from the far end of the hallway and we raced down it, flinging open a door.

  The sight inside was not a pretty one. Mrs. Upthorpe was standing in front of a mirror, wearing a Marie Antoinette costume and screaming her lungs out while Queenie stood behind her with a look of terror on her face.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “The stupid girl has zipped me,” she shouted, her broad North Country vowels coming through in this moment of stress. “Now she can’t get it open again.”

  That didn’t sound too bad until I saw that what Queenie had done was to catch a fold of Mrs. Upthorpe’s copious skin in the teeth of the zip fastener and, being Queenie, to keep on tugging. It took several minutes and a great deal of comforting of the distraught Mrs. Upthorpe before we managed to release her back from the zip fastener. There was an ugly red welt that was bleeding in places where the teeth had been.

  “Queenie, go and ask the butler for first aid supplies,” I said.

  “No, don’t send that girl. She’ll probably come back with caustic soda or weed killer,” Mrs. Upthorpe wailed.

  “I’ll go,” I said and dragged Queenie out with me. “How could you?” I demanded as soon as we were clear of the room. “I asked you to be careful.”