Blood From a Stone

by Dolores Gordon-Smith

  ‘That’s very true, doctor,’ said Ashley, ‘but I still think Napier would’ve been lucky to have got away with it.’

  ‘It might’ve been more convincing, if Terence Napier had been given more time, Ashley,’ said Jack. ‘Say Mrs Paxton and Napier hadn’t quarrelled. Napier could have become a regular visitor and no one would have thought anything of it.’

  ‘But surely Mrs Paxton would realise she’d been swindled as soon as she saw her will?’ asked Mrs Mountford.

  ‘If she’d seen the will, she’d certainly know it was a forgery,’ agreed Jack, ‘but I very much doubt Napier would leave it in the desk. If he’d had enough time, he could have put the will into her papers after she died without anyone being any the wiser. It sounds as if the quarrel caught him on the hop, so he had to act quickly and hope for the best.’

  ‘It’s all very sad,’ said Mrs Mountford with a sigh. ‘You think so too, don’t you, James?’

  The doctor nodded gravely and, taking his pipe from his pocket, absently filled it with tobacco from the jar. ‘Very sad, indeed. After Mrs Paxton spoke to me about going to Paris with Napier, I was worried. She was certain of success. I knew she’d be heartbroken if she didn’t find him and, from what she’d told me of young Paxton, thought there was every chance she’d end up being heartbroken if she did.’

  His face lengthened. ‘It’s hard to explain the Sandy Paxtons of this world. He seemed to have every advantage and yet he went wrong. From what I could make out, his mother made excuses for him and covered things up, and was rewarded with crocodile tears and promises of reform. It’s the psychology of the thing I find interesting.’

  Ashley blinked and Dr Mountford smiled fleetingly. ‘Even in a one-horse place like this, we’ve heard of psychology. You know he became an actor after he was sent down from Oxford? Mrs Paxton didn’t approve, but still continued to support him. What she did resent – resented bitterly – was him marrying an actress.’

  ‘I didn’t know he was married,’ said Jack in surprise. ‘Neither Frank Leigh nor his daughter, Celia, mentioned it.’

  ‘He had the sense to keep it quiet,’ said Dr Mountford. ‘When his mother did find out, she was furious. She read him the riot act and cut off her support. She’d been supplanted, you see, and Mrs Paxton wasn’t a woman to forgive or forget very easily.’

  Mrs Mountford shook her head sadly. ‘I can’t imagine treating any of our boys like that.’

  ‘I’m glad to say you’re a very different person, Milly,’ said the doctor. He sighed. ‘To be fair to Mrs Paxton, none of our boys gave us anything like the problems Sandy gave his mother. She did try.’

  ‘You said that she tried to get him into the Church,’ said Mrs Mountford, with an ironic twist to her voice. ‘Goodness knows why. From what James has told me it’s hard to think of a less likely profession for him to adopt.’

  ‘She didn’t try and get him into the Church, Milly,’ said the doctor. ‘She said she hoped he might enter the Church, which is a very different state of affairs. One of his friends was a minister, or so he told his mother, at any rate, and he wanted to follow in his footsteps. It seems pretty unlikely to me.’

  Jack, cup of coffee in hand, froze. ‘A minister?’ he repeated slowly.

  ‘That’s what she said. She believed him. I don’t know if I would.’

  ‘I might,’ said Jack. ‘Did she say minister, doctor, or vicar?’

  Beside him, Ashley let out a sudden breath. ‘By George!’ he muttered. ‘The Vicar!’

  The doctor and Mrs Mountford looked at them curiously. ‘She said vicar, I think,’ said the doctor. ‘The two terms are more or less interchangeable, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jack, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice. ‘Yes, I believe they are.’

  In the small and inquisitive village of Topfordham, it was hard to find somewhere where they were free from observation, but the Malt and Shovel was a haven of calm.

  Two middle-aged clerks were taking an early lunch, three travelling salesmen, identified by their cases of samples, were playing five-o-one on the dart board and six elderly, bewhiskered men, pipes lit and half-pints close to hand, were bent over a game of dominoes. A ginger cat was spread somnolently in the warmth of the diamond-barred sunshine flooding through the leaded window onto the oak window sill.

  By common consent, neither Jack nor Ashley said anything about the case until they were sitting at a table by the window with a pint of bitter, a cheese sandwich and a pork pie apiece.

  Ashley took a swig of beer and wiped his mouth. ‘What d’you reckon?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s interesting, isn’t it?’ said Jack. ‘Where on earth have all the servants got to?’

  Ashley looked at him, beer in hand. ‘I can’t see there’s any great mystery about that, Haldean. I’d have expected you to be leaping up and down about the Vicar, not fretting about the servants.’

  ‘Never mind about the Vicar for a minute. I’ll leap as high as you like later. What about the servants? Don’t you think it’s odd that they’ve all vanished?’

  Ashley shrugged expressively. ‘Not really. Mrs Paxton was dead, the house was shut up and, although Mrs Leigh was probably only too happy for them to keep the place aired, she was only paying them a pittance to do it. You can’t expect them to stay on in those circumstances.’

  Jack put his hands wide. ‘Perhaps, but wouldn’t you expect them to mention where they were going? Maybe Mrs Welbeck did just take herself off but what about Florence? And what was she, to use Mrs Mountford’s expression, cooking up with John Bright?’

  ‘Who knows?’ said Ashley without much interest, cutting his pork pie into segments. ‘Where they were going to run off together, perhaps?’

  ‘They left separately.’

  ‘All right. So Mrs Welbeck goes off to Leeds, Florence decides to try her luck in London and John Bright can’t get another job in the village so he ups and offs. It’s only when you put all three of them together that it seems mysterious they’ve all gone.’

  ‘I was wondering if there was a common reason,’ said Jack. ‘And if that common reason had something to do with Terence Napier.’

  Ashley munched his way through a portion of pork pie before replying. ‘It seems unlikely,’ he said eventually. ‘Napier slung his hook double quick, didn’t he? I can’t see him sneaking back into the village and picking them off, one by one, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

  ‘That does seem unlikely, I agree,’ said Jack. ‘What I actually had in mind, you melodramatic old thing, was that they know where Napier is and he’s bribed them to keep quiet. Actually,’ he added, clicking his tongue, ‘it would have to be no end of a bribe and they could stick around and be quiet without having to vanish into thin air. All right, let’s say he’s murdered them.’

  ‘Come off it,’ said Ashley. ‘Bodies are blinking hard to dispose of. What would he do with them? He could hardly leave them lying about.’

  ‘The dustmen would probably complain,’ said Jack with a grin. ‘I’ll be honest, Ashley, I don’t know what could have happened to them, but it just seemed so very odd.’

  ‘What about Sandy Paxton?’ questioned Ashley. ‘That sounded a great deal more promising. I saw your eyes light up when the Mountfords talked about him going into the Church. I’m assuming, as you assumed, that what Paxton actually meant was that he’d taken up with Parsons, the Vicar. It sounds more probable than him actually considering holy orders.’

  ‘I couldn’t help but think it,’ said Jack, taking a tentative bite of pie. ‘Isabelle suggested that Paxton was the Vicar himself.’

  ‘I don’t think much of that idea.’

  ‘That’s more or less what I said. To be fair to her, as soon as the notion of the Vicar having an associate was floated, she suggested Paxton as a candidate, so that’s one up to her. I like the idea of him telling his mother he was considering the Church. It would appeal to a certain sort of humour, you know? The sort of person who en
joys flaunting a secret. It’s a sort of dare to themselves, I suppose.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Ashley with a nod. ‘He could think it was really funny to talk about “the Vicar” when all the time he meant Parsons. I think I’d better let Inspector Rackham know what the Mountfords said.’ He sucked his cheeks in thoughtfully. ‘I wish we knew if Paxton did die on the Somme or really was a deserter. His mother was convinced he was alive, but he’s officially dead.’

  ‘Let’s say he was alive,’ said Jack, spearing a pickled onion. ‘Apart from anything else, it’s more fun that way. Adds a bit more mystery, don’t you think?’

  ‘That’s all we need,’ said Ashley grumpily.

  ‘Maybe both Napier and Paxton were in it with the Vicar, as Dr Mountford suggested. They were cousins, after all. Come on, Ashley. You’re not on duty now. Engage in a little speculation.’

  Ashley laughed. ‘All right, I’ll play. Paxton and Napier could’ve been working together or Paxton could’ve moved in on his own account after Napier managed to mess it up and see off Mrs Paxton into the bargain. If the description of Napier wasn’t so far adrift from the description of the murder victim, I’d have him down as a likely candidate to have another crack at the sapphires again, too.’

  ‘You’re right. The man who the Leighs saw – and Belle saw, too, for that matter – sounds nothing like Napier, which brings us back to Paxton.’ Jack thought for a moment, then looked up, his eyes brightening. ‘Wait a moment! Dr Mountford said Paxton’s mother had a photo of him! If I can find it, I can show it to Isabelle and ask her if he’s the man she saw at Market Albury.’

  ‘You could ask the Leighs if he’s the man who turned up at their house, as well.’

  ‘Mrs Leigh has probably got Mrs Paxton’s things,’ said Jack. ‘Who knows, it could be boxed up and at Breagan Grange. I’m going there tomorrow. If I can lay my hands on that photograph, that’ll be a big step forward.’

  ‘If he really was the man on the train, it’d be a massive step forward,’ said Ashley.

  Jack clicked his tongue. ‘I wonder if it’s really on the cards? Our train victim couldn’t speak French. I’d assumed Paxton does.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Ashley. ‘Because Napier told Mrs Paxton he’d seen him in France? We can’t trust anything Napier said.’

  ‘That’s true,’ agreed Jack adding chutney to his cheese sandwich. He ate without speaking for a few moments. ‘I must say I’d hoped to get a bit further on today.’

  Ashley put his beer down in surprise. ‘I think you’ve come a dickens of a way.’

  ‘M’yes. But even if our man on the train is Sandy Paxton, how does that lead us to the Vicar? I was convinced that once we’d identified him, we’d have the Vicar, and we haven’t. And I really would like to know where the servants have got to.’

  ‘You’ve got a bee in your bonnet about them,’ said Ashley.

  Jack cocked his head to one side. ‘Are you in a hurry to get back this afternoon?’

  ‘Not particularly. Why?’

  ‘Because it strikes me,’ said Jack, running his finger round the top of his pewter mug, ‘that although Mrs Mountford seems to know everything that goes on in Topfordham, the only way

  to find out for certain if Mrs Welbeck, Florence Pargetter and John Bright haven’t told anyone where they’re going, is to ask the people they’re likely to have talked to.’

  Ashley’s eyebrows shot up. ‘What? Interview all the servants in Topfordham, you mean?’

  ‘Interview’s a bit official. I was thinking of having a chat to Mrs Henderson’s Mavis, as she seems to have been closest

  to Florence Pargetter, but you can call it an interview if you’d rather. Old-fashioned police work,’ added Jack with a grin, taking a gulp of bitter. ‘You should love it. Or do you have minions to do that sort of thing for you nowadays?’

  ‘Minions be blowed,’ grumbled Ashley. ‘This is supposed to be my day off.’

  TEN

  ‘I don’t know as who could tell you about Mrs Welbeck,’ said Mavis blankly. ‘Or John Bright, neither.’

  Mavis Stainburn was a big, amiable, fair-haired girl with large, placid blue eyes, only too willing to follow Mrs Henderson’s instructions and ‘talk to these gentlemen’. She reached across the well-scrubbed kitchen table for the sugar bowl, stirred three spoonfuls into her tea and settled back happily.

  Mavis had echoed more or less what they had learned from Mrs Mountford. Mrs Welbeck had departed in a huff back up north, John Bright had hung around until he, too, had taken himself off and as for Florence ...

  ‘I don’t suppose,’ said Ashley, ‘that Miss Pargetter and John Bright could’ve gone off together, could they?’

  Mavis blinked at him in slow disbelief. ‘Flo go off with Bright?’ She gave a rich laugh. ‘She wouldn’t give him the time of day. Mind you,’ she added, ‘it wasn’t for want of asking. Quite struck on her, he was, for a time, but Flo wouldn’t have any of it.’

  ‘So there wasn’t any special friendship between them?’ asked Jack.

  ‘No ...’

  He picked up the hesitancy in her voice and looked a question.

  ‘There was something going on,’ she admitted. ‘I couldn’t make it out. She didn’t fancy him, nothing like that. She could do far better than him, but there was something. I saw them with their heads together a couple of times.’

  ‘Could it be something to do with Terence Napier, perhaps?’ suggested Jack.

  Mavis digested the notion. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, then shook her head. ‘No. That doesn’t seem right, somehow.’ Jack could see her struggling to put her thoughts into words. ‘Florence was worked up about something. I don’t know what. She should’ve told me,’ she added, indignation clouding her good-natured face. ‘She had no right, keeping things back. We were best friends but I’ve not heard nothing.’

  It was slow work, but they learned quite a bit about Florence. How she could take off Mrs Paxton, with her snooty ways, so you would weep with laughing. And the vicar. Yes, and Mrs Welbeck, too, and anyone else you could care to mention in the village. She was a rare one for noticing, was Florence. ‘My mum,’ said Mavis, pouring herself another cup of tea, ‘said that Flo was so sharp she’d cut herself one of these days, but she made me die, she did.’

  ‘It’s a real gift, to be able to mimic someone properly,’ said Jack with a warm smile. ‘You have to be a very keen observer. And, of course, a good mimic gets to know all sorts of things about the people they’re impersonating.’

  A slow smile spread across Mavis’ face. ‘I’d say so. Florence always knew what was going on.’ Mavis laughed. ‘She did all right out of it, too. She had some nice presents from folk who wanted to keep her sweet. Bits of jewellery, stockings and chocolates and so on. My mum,’ she added with a sniff, ‘didn’t like it, but, as Flo said, if you don’t want to be caught out, don’t get up to anything you shouldn’t in the first place.’

  ‘What about Florence’s mum? Did she approve?’

  Mavis gave an incredulous snort. ‘Mum? She didn’t have no mum. She only had her gran and when she passed over, Flo went to the orphanage. They put her into Service. She reckoned she’d never have been in Service if she wasn’t an orphan. We often spoke about what we’d do if we had the choice.’ Mavis’ expression became dreamy. ‘I’d be a film star, and wear a fur coat and have jewels, just like they do in the magazines.’ She looked at a pile of magazines on the kitchen sideboard and sighed.

  ‘Which ones have you got?’ asked Jack with interest, strolling over to the sideboard and flicking through the heap of magazines. ‘I see. Peg’s Paper, Up To Date, Woman’s Companion, Chit-Chat, Society Snippets, Joy, Love and Laughter Weekly and Film Life.’

  ‘Not one of yours, then, Haldean?’ asked Ashley. He turned to Mavis. ‘Major Haldean writes for On The Town magazine.’

  Mavis’ eyes bulged. ‘Do you, sir?’ she asked in awestruck tones. Unconsciously her hand reached up and she patted her hair into place
. ‘Flo would’ve loved meeting you. That’s what she wanted to do. Be one of these people who find things out and write about it in magazines, I mean. Oh, I wish she was here.’

  ‘I wish she was, too,’ said Jack. ‘I could’ve given her a couple of tips about how to get on, perhaps.’

  Mavis nodded vigorously. ‘She would’ve liked that. You might meet her, up in Lunnon. I reckon that’s where she is. She had something in mind, I know. What’s more, I’m sure it had something to do with a magazine. Mad about magazines, she was.’

  ‘About magazines in general or any one in particular?’ asked Jack, his hand resting on the pile.

  Mavis ruminated for a few moments. ‘She talked about Joy, Love and Laughter.’ Slightly surprised, Jack held up the copy of the magazine. From Mavis’ description of Florence, he’d had expected her to be more drawn to the acidic observations of Chit-Chat or Society Snippets rather than the fulsome sentimentality of Joy, Love and Laughter. ‘Yes, that’s the one. Mind you, we were all excited about it, because of the sapphires.’

  Jack and Ashley exchanged glances. ‘The sapphires?’ questioned Jack.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Paxton’s sapphires. A big picture it was, with Mrs Whoever it is – the lady who’s got them now, I mean – all dressed up, with them on. Flo wanted to take the magazine,’ continued Mavis, ‘but I wouldn’t let her. I wanted to show it to mum. Flo fell out with me over it, but I said if she wanted it, she’d have to buy her own.’

  As Mavis talked, Jack flicked through the magazine, remembering the feel of the picture he and Bill had taken from the dead man’s wallet. The quality of the paper was right and so was the price. A tuppenny weekly, he’d said.

  And there it was. The picture he had last seen in that gloomy room in Charing Cross, complete with a half-page article, describing the origin of the sapphires in reverent terms.

  The writer rather spread themselves about the mysterious Breagan Stump Bounty, locked away in a golden box in the dark fastness of a cave for millennia, etcetera, etcetera. The fact that the sapphires had been locked away in the equally dark fastness of a bank for years and had only seen the light because an old lady was murdered wasn’t mentioned. Murder, he thought, wouldn’t induce the appropriate emotions in the readers of Joy, Love and Laughter.