by M. J. Trow
‘There’s something I haven’t told you,’ she said, closing her eyes. ‘That man Maddox. The Pinkerton man . . .’
He placed a finger on her full lips. ‘And there are a few things I haven’t told you,’ he said. ‘The world is wide, Marylou Adams. We have room for little secrets.’
Under the branches he felt her cheek, wet with tears, rest on his and he heard her whisper. ‘I love you, Richard Grant. I love you. I love you.’
He broke away, holding her at arm’s length. ‘Better not,’ he said. ‘The world is a cruel place, Marylou. We must find our way in it alone.’
She looked up at him. ‘Always?’ she whispered.
‘I’m married already,’ he said and caught her frown. ‘No, not to a woman. To a machine. A machine that hums and throbs all through the night. Listen. If you keep very still, you’ll hear it now. The presses, Marylou, the rush and the bustle. That’s my life. The only one I know.’
‘Always,’ she whispered again.
The Coxless Eight
‘A
re you sure this is the way, Tom?’ Lestrade was spitting leaves out of the corner of his mouth as he and Gregory trudged upwards through the foliage. ‘Only I’ve seen rather a lot of woods recently and I sort of hoped there’d be a road.’
‘Yes, I think there probably is, Sholto,’ Gregory grunted, disentangling his lower limbs from the creeping ivy. ‘I certainly don’t remember coming this way yesterday.’
‘Marvellous! Ugh!’ Lestrade’s boater crunched into an oak bough seconds before his head did.
‘Ah.’ Gregory’s bovine face lit up. ‘Here’s a clearing. Come on.’
He groped forward through the bushes on to a broad, green sward. As he did so, there was a hiss and a thump and he pitched forward on his head. Lestrade hurtled after him, crashing through the undergrowth, and he crouched over him, the switchblade flashing in his fist. He saw no one, other than the poleaxed policeman, and he hauled the body over. Gregory looked pale, only marginally less animated than when he was upright. Lestrade bent over him, listening at his chest. All he could hear at first was the ticking of his regulation half-hunter. Then he caught a heartbeat.
‘Good God!’ a voice suddenly boomed above him and he looked up to see a giant man in Lincoln green blotting out the sun. ‘You perverted swine! Avert your gaze, Millicent. There are two men here engaging in unnatural practices.’
Lestrade stood up, his parting reaching the bowman’s biceps. ‘The only unnatural practice here, sir, is that!’ He snatched the bow and snapped it over his knee with a strength and dexterity which momentarily surprised him.
‘How dare you!’ the giant roared, looking helpless with the broken bits stuffed back into his hand.
‘Is it all right, Freddie?’ a female voice called. ‘May I look now? Are the gentlemen decent?’
‘One of the gentlemen could well have been dead, madam,’ Lestrade said as an elegant lady in muttonchop blouse and long skirts hove into view. ‘Thanks to this man’s appalling aim.’
‘Appalling aim?’ Freddie had turned bright crimson above his doublet of green. He looked like a Christmas tree. ‘There is the target, man.’ He pointed to the circle of straw behind him. ‘I was only inches off. At one hundred and thirty yards, that’s entirely permissible. Besides, the sun was in my eyes.’
‘Tosh, Freddie!’ Millicent said and stood beside the fallen inspector. ‘You’re below par this morning. Have been for days. Good heavens, isn’t this the Scotland Yard chappie who was here yesterday?’
‘It is, madam,’ Lestrade said. ‘And I am the Scotland Yard chappie who is here today. Superintendent Lestrade.’
‘Oh, Freddie, it’s Mr Lestrade. You remember. He was on the Wild Goose Case in Nottingham a few years ago.’
‘Have we met, madam?’
‘Millie Blanchard,’ she said. ‘No. But I read all about you in the Sagittarius. Issue Number 34. This man is quite brilliant, Freddie.’ She took Lestrade’s arm. ‘Freddie will sort out your chappie there. After all, it was his shaft that laid him low.’ She paused. ‘Where did you get him, Freddie?’
Freddie crouched over Gregory, muttering. ‘Right shoulder, I think. He obviously hit his head when he went down.’
‘Right shoulder? A black,’ she said scornfully. ‘Only three points, I’m afraid, Superintendent. Oh, but of course you know that.’
‘I believe I remember the scores on a circular fixed target, madam . . .’
‘Millie.’ She nuzzled her quiver against him.
‘. . . Millie, but on a man?’
‘Well, Mr Lestrade.’ She led him away across the green where a line of archers were taking aim in the glorious morning sun. ‘Oh, good shot, Jeffrey! We’re everyday countryfolk here, Mr Lestrade, we don’t deliberately aim for passers-by, you understand, but these woods round here do have a certain amount of wildlife, jays, partridge, even the odd . . .’ and she ran her fingers over his lapel, ‘. . . courting couple.’
‘I see,’ he said. ‘How many points for a courting couple?’
She tapped him playfully with her finger stall. ‘Saucy!’ she said. ‘It depends where precisely the shaft lands.’
He stopped strolling. ‘And where precisely did the shaft land on Tyrrwhit Dover?’
‘Ah.’ She let go of his arm, noting the steely glint in the eyes under the battered brim of the boater. ‘Poor Tyrrwhit.’
‘I must ask you a few questions, Millie,’ Lestrade said.
‘Of course. Although we all gave evidence to that gentleman now over Freddie’s shoulder.’
Lestrade glanced back to where the giant was wandering across to the clubhouse with Tom Gregory dangling over his back like one of the King’s deer.
‘Yes,’ said Lestrade, ‘but that’s rather like talking to a wall, so could you please tell me?’
‘But of course.’ She took his arm again. ‘You know, you have a bowman’s bicep?’ she commented, squeezing the muscle under the serge.
‘Well, I promise I’ll give it back when I’ve finished with it,’ he smiled.
She trilled a high-pitched giggle completely at odds with her fulsome figure. ‘Lemonade?’
They sat under the spreading boughs of an oak at a little circular table and she was mother, pouring the cooling glass for him and fanning herself with her score card. The morning was alive with bees, their murmurings punctuated now and then by the thump of arrow on target and some desultory clapping from the perimeter fence.
‘Tyrrwhit Dover,’ said Lestrade, suddenly feeling a delicate toe tickling his stockings below his trouser leg. ‘Can that be his real name?’
‘Of course not, you silly,’ said Millie. ‘No one would be christened that. His real name was D’Abernon Falconhurst.’
‘D’Abernon Dover?’
‘Yes. He was called “Tyrrwhit” here at the Lincolnshire Poachers for onomatopoeic reasons.’
‘I see,’ lied Lestrade.
She sensed that he did not. ‘The sound of the shaft, you see. He could equally have been called “Whoosh” Dover, I suppose.’
‘Or Eileen?’ suggested Lestrade.
She looked at him oddly.
‘In what capacity did you know him?’ he asked.
‘Not very well, really. We were not what you would call . . . intimate.’ She fluttered her lashes at him. ‘He was a cold fish, Mr Lestrade. He lived for his sport.’
‘Archery?’
‘Toxophily,’ she corrected him. ‘The Greeks had a word for it, you see.’ She leaned towards him. ‘But then, they had a word for everything, didn’t they?’
Lestrade really didn’t know. If it was not in the first declension in Latin, then it was beyond him. And that left a great deal beyond him.
‘How long had you known him?’ he asked.
‘Let me see, about two years I think.’
‘Financial worries?’ he asked.
‘You impertinent fellow,’ she scolded him. ‘We hardly know each other.’
‘I mean, Millie, did
Dover have any financial worries?’
‘Well, I suppose since death duties none of us are as socially secure as we once were, are we?’
‘Indeed not,’ sighed Lestrade, whose salary placed him so far below the paying of death duties that it was off the scale. ‘Do you know who found the body?’
‘Didn’t your man tell you?’
‘My man?’
She jerked her head in the direction of the clubhouse.
‘Ah. Inspector Gregory. No. His report didn’t mention it.’
‘I see.’ She looked resolutely ahead at the archers practising. ‘Well, if you promise this will go no further,’ she said.
‘Millie,’ Lestrade leaned across to her, ‘you seem to forget I am conducting a murder enquiry. I am not in a position to promise anything.’
She looked at him out of sultry eyes. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘I suppose you’d find out eventually. I did.’
‘When?’
‘Night before last.’
‘Where?’
She raised a finger tentatively before pointing it. ‘Out there,’ she said, ‘on the butts.’
‘What time was this?’ ‘Oh, let me see. I got here about eleven. Perhaps ten minutes past.’
‘So it was dark.’ Lestrade was drawing on years of experience.
‘Why, yes, Mr Lestrade. It often is at about that time of night, I’ve noticed.’
He paused. ‘Do I gather you had an assignation, Millie?’ he asked.
She looked him full in the face. ‘If you mean did I come here for Tyrrwhit Dover to make love to me the answer is . . . that’s none of your business.’
‘I fear it is my business,’ he told her, ‘if you hit him in the back with an arrow. What would that be on the score card? Nine for the gold?’
‘Your chappie said the shaft pierced poor Tyrrwhit’s heart, Superintendent. That makes it . . . approximately seven for the red, I’d say.’
Lestrade edged his chair closer, putting down the lemonade. ‘Millie,’ he took her hand, ‘I’d like you to tell me all about it.’
She glanced at him. ‘If I must,’ she said. ‘You must realize, Mr Lestrade, that I . . . what I am about to tell you does not happen all the time.’
‘Of course not,’ he nodded comfortingly.
‘Tyrrwhit and I had been close. A long time ago, it seems to me now, though it can only have been months. He’d found someone else, you see. And indeed . . . well, so had I.’
‘The name of this someone else?’ he asked.
‘His or mine?’
‘Either,’ he said. In entanglements like these, he knew it was wise to have as many facts as possible at his disposal.
‘Mine is a gentleman named Willie Dod, a fellow toxophilite. His was a trollop named Lucy Trundle.’ She scowled. ‘Anyway, a lady has her good name to uphold, Mr Lestrade. Tyrrwhit was gossiping, right here in the club, dragging my name through the mud. Willie – Mr Dod – threatened to box his ears, but I planned to settle his hash my own way. I went to have it out with him.’
‘Again?’ Lestrade checked.
She ignored him. ‘It was a moonlit night, the night before last. I knew he’d be here.’
‘On the butts?’ Lestrade asked. ‘At that hour?’
‘Oh yes. Whatever else Tyrrwhit Dover was, he was a damned good shot. He could put the light out on a glow-worm at sixty paces.’
Lestrade shook his head, clicking his tongue in amazement.
‘He often practised by moonlight. Many’s the times we . . . only on dry nights, of course, because of the undergrowth.’
‘Of course.’ For a copper, Lestrade made a damned good father confessor.
‘There he was, half-way through a quiver.’
‘He was alive?’ Lestrade blinked incredulously.
‘Of course he was,’ she said. ‘I challenged him. Told him where to get off.’
‘Did you hit him?’
‘I certainly did. Caught him a beauty round the side of the head with my riding crop. Why?’
‘That would explain the mark on the face,’ Lestrade said. ‘My chappie Gregory told me about it.’
‘Well, there you are. Anyway, I was ashamed of myself for losing my temper. I’d intended to stay calm, you see. He just laughed. Told me not to be a silly little thing and said he had to practise. The Olympic Tournament takes place in two days.’
‘Then what?’
‘I walked away, crying. I could have . . .’
‘Killed him?’ Lestrade saw his opening.
‘Yes.’ Her eyes flashed fire. ‘Yes, cheerfully. But I didn’t. I went back to the road.’
‘Is that where you’d left your horse?’
‘Yes. It was then that I heard a cry.’
‘Oh?’
‘No, it wasn’t like that. It was more an “Ugh”.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I turned round.’
‘And?’
‘I could see Tyrrwhit standing by the target. He’d gone to fish out his shafts.’
‘Who had cried out?’
‘It must have been him. I called, “Are you all right?” Though why I can’t imagine. I didn’t really care.’ She shrugged. ‘It was for auld lang syne, I expect. He didn’t answer. I went over to him. I could see that he was pinned to the target with a shaft through his back. It was horrible.’ She shuddered so that her ample bosom rippled.
‘He was dead?’
She nodded.
‘Forgive me, Millie,’ he said, steadying her forearms and feeling the muscles at the same time. ‘Do you remember how far in the arrow had gone?’
She looked at him, her eyes frightened with the sudden horror of it all. ‘I don’t know,’ she flustered, then collected herself. ‘About a third of the way.’
He helped himself to an arrow from her quiver. ‘Show me,’ he said.
She took the shaft and held it between thumb and forefinger at the point where it had embedded itself into Tyrrwhit Dover.
‘Was the arrow the same type as this?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘Yes, parabolic flights.’
‘And length?’
She nodded again. ‘There was one other thing,’ she said. ‘When the police pulled poor Tyrrwhit down, I saw the arrow head.’
‘And?’
‘It had been sharpened to a needle point.’
‘I see.’
‘An ordinary shaft wouldn’t kill, Mr Lestrade. Rather like your chappie earlier. It merely knocked him off balance.’
‘What strength bow do you use, Millie?’ He studied the yew weapon, lying against the tree.
‘Standard,’ she said. ‘Twenty-five pounds.’
He stood up and led her towards the clubhouse. ‘Show me where you were standing,’ he said.
‘About here,’ she said, when they reached the spot.
‘That was when you heard the cry?’
‘Yes.’
Lestrade stood with her and looked to the butts. ‘Which target was Dover using?’
‘That one,’ she pointed. ‘Third from the end.’
He looked to his right. The low clubhouse was some yards away. ‘Tell me,’ he said, walking her towards the target, ignoring the “Look out there’s” from practising archers, ‘would the clubhouse have been open at that time of night?’
‘Yes. I made a telephone call from there.’
‘The clubhouse has a telephone?’ Lestrade was surprised.
‘Of course,’ she told him. ‘This is the twentieth century, Mr Lestrade. Which reminds me, are you married?’
‘Er . . . no, Millie, I am not.’ He allowed the surprise of the question to break his stride. ‘What was Dover wearing on the night he died?’
‘Um . . . let me think. A pair of Lincoln green trousers – the colour of the club – and a white shirt.’
‘A white shirt under a bright moon.’ Lestrade was talking to himself. ‘Would I be right in assuming that there are bows and arrows in the clubhouse?’
&nbs
p; ‘Oh, yes. We all have our own, of course. But there are spares in case one of us breaks a string or snaps a bow.’
He turned back from the target, impervious to the madly waving archers a hundred and fifty yards away. The clubhouse stood alone with lawn all around it. Beyond it he could see the line of the hedge that marked the road. Whoever had killed Tyrrwhit Dover had crept into the clubhouse, carefully honed down an arrow, and had picked him off in the presence of Millie, from her blind side of the building. Dover’s white shirt would have been an easy target, particularly if the man was an accomplished archer. And man he certainly was. Lestrade had handled a bow in the Wild Goose Case, albeit years before. A man’s bow stood six foot and had a draw weight of forty-eight pounds. No mere lady’s bow could have pierced Tyrrwhit Dover and pinned him to the target.
Freddie came lumbering over the green. ‘Your chappie’s coming round,’ he said. ‘Look, I didn’t realize who you were earlier. I mean, you won’t be pressing charges, will you?’
‘That rather depends,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Millie, you’ve been very helpful.’ He kissed her hand.
‘I should have told all this to your chappie,’ she purred. ‘I’m sorry.’
He shook his head.
‘Perhaps,’ she looked deep into the tired eyes, ‘perhaps we could meet again?’
He glanced at Freddie and leaned towards her, whispering, ‘I’m not sure Willie Dod would be very pleased about that,’ and he stepped away as three arrows thudded into the target where his head had been.
Inspector Tom Gregory sat dazed in a darkened room inside the clubhouse. Lestrade mechanically checked the equipment. Rack after rack of arrows. Row upon row of bows. No problem in obtaining a murder weapon there. And if he’d judged his man aright, no point in checking for fingerprints, either. He’d have worn his gloves.
‘What’s going on, Sholto?’ Gregory blinked. ‘What the blazes am I doing here? I’ve got a corker of a headache.’
‘You fell down on the job, Tom, I fear,’ Lestrade explained.
‘Listen,’ said Gregory, ‘what’s the matter with that big feller in green, the one who looks like Little John?’
‘Why?’
‘Well, when I came to a minute ago, from . . . wherever it was I’ve been, he was in a sorry state. Muttering apologies and carrying on. Then he made a bolt for the door.’
