by Carola Dunn
‘I’m afraid he rarely attended church services, and never took communion. On the rare occasions when he did come, Christmas and Easter for the most part, one had the impression that he did so to please his mother. Mrs Devine is a regular communicant.’
‘Did you know him before the war, sir?’
‘No. I came to St. Nicholas’s during the war. Mrs Devine told me Martin had once wanted to embrace a clerical life, but I put it down to the enthusiasm of youth. It rarely lasts long enough to bear fruit, alas.’ He sighed.
‘Mrs Devine mentioned that Martin had occasionally encountered you at the Cricketers’ Arms.’
‘Yes, indeed. I try to visit all the public houses in my parish now and then. You would be surprised what confidences may be shared over a modest half-pint. But not by Martin Devine. Of course, if he had, naturally I should be unable to pass on anything he said.’
‘But you would pass on the fact that he had.’
The Rector inclined his head. ‘Certainly.’ He hesitated, and Alec held his breath. ‘I can only say, since no words on the subject were ever uttered, that he presented a cheerful and contented façade, but I sensed in him – read in his eyes, perhaps – a deep bewilderment, verging on unhappiness. A troubled soul. I cannot express it otherwise. But such is of no use to a policeman, I suppose.’
‘On the contrary, sir. I dare say you’d be surprised at how much we rely on our impressions of people and on the obscure workings of intuition. I shan’t lightly dismiss the insight of a clergyman. Thank you for your time.’
Alec met the others at the Cricketers. Tom had already arranged with the landlord for the use of his snuggery, a tiny room with a desk where he did up his accounts. Two extra chairs had been squeezed in.
Entering last, Tom was barely able to close the door behind his huge bulk. He took out a large white handkerchief and wiped his endless forehead – merging as it did with the bald dome of his head, Daisy had once described it as continuing to the nape of his neck. ‘Won’t that window open any wider, laddie?’ he said to Piper, gesturing at the small square of glass high on the wall. ‘We’ll all suffocate.’
‘I’ll try.’ By main force, Ernie opened the stiff casement another two inches. The air that wafted in was distinctly warmer, but at least it was also fresher.
He was at the small desk, as he had to take notes whereas the others had only to report. Alec took the sagging armchair, while Tom and Mackinnon had the wooden chairs brought in from the bar. Four plates of limp-looking sandwiches, each adorned with a single gherkin, were spread out on the desk along with Ernie’s papers.
‘Don’t know how the landlord can stand to do his bookkeeping in here,’ Tom grumbled, wiping his neck. ‘And he does plenty, he says, this being a free house. It’s easier to run a pub owned by a brewery, but they’re looking over your shoulder all the time. He likes his freedom.’
‘You said in your report, Sarge, the pub in Ayot St. Paul was a free house, too,’ Ernie mentioned.
‘He seeks them here, he seeks them there, he seeks connections everywhere,’ said Alec, in parody of The Scarlet Pimpernel.
‘You never know,’ Ernie insisted.
‘Very true. Right, you go first, Mackinnon.’
‘I talked to everybody at Devine’s office, sir, from the senior partner, who was his uncle by marriage, down to the office boy. Hard-working, good-tempered, polite – he sounds like a nice chap. That’s what it all amounts to, though yon Mr Webb put it in fifty words when ane would hae sufficed.’
‘Not really? The senior partner? The uncle?’
‘Aye. I wonder that any of his clients ever manages to explain his business.’
Alec and Ernie exchanged a glance and laughed.
‘We had the dubious pleasure of meeting Mrs Webb,’ Alec explained. ‘Ernie had to resort to underhanded methods to get her to shut up so that I could talk to her sister. How on earth do they manage at home?’
‘Either one of ’em talks a lot elsewhere,’ Tom suggested, ‘because he or she can’t get a word in edgewise at home, or else neither listens to t’other. Wasn’t there any grain among the chaff, Mr Mackinnon?’
‘Plenty of names. Everyone he ever knew Devine to associate with. I kept a separate list, which I’ve already gi’en to Piper.’
‘A lot of ’em Mrs Devine told us, too.’
‘How many total, Ernie?’ Alec asked with deep misgiving.
‘Maybe fifty, Chief.’
An upheaval beneath Tom’s moustache indicated a broad grin. ‘I can add a couple of dozen from the landlord, though some may be the same. No strangers about that evening.’
Alec groaned. ‘Now how are we going to work out which of his acquaintances are significant and worth interviewing? Well, that can wait. We can’t spend a lot more time here or we’ll never make it to Tunbridge Wells today. Any lady friends, Mackinnon?’
‘Plenty of ladies he played tennis or bridge with, and a few clients, but none he squired about, sir.’
‘The Devines’ servants didn’t know of any, either, Chief,’ said Tom.
‘Hmm. We’ll get to the servants in a minute. If that’s the lot for the office, Mackinnon, did you have any better luck with the doctor?’
‘Just a wee scrap. I’d say the guid doctor puts away a fair bit and wouldn’t likely have noticed if Devine had bared his soul. Devine was never ill, but he did once ask for a prescription for sleeping powders.’
‘Ah!’ said Tom, stroking his moustache.
‘Tom?’
‘The live-in servants, two maids and the cook, say Devine occasionally suffered from nightmares. They’d hear him crying out in his sleep. Mrs Devine always wears earplugs because the least little sound wakes her, so she wouldn’t know.’
‘The third man?’ Alec wondered.
‘Devine was the second,’ said Ernie with his usual precision.
‘No, you missed that bit when you went to get the brandy for Mrs Devine. The third man was the one Devine killed in the war, or may have killed. She thought it was what made him resolve not to become a clergyman. We’ll never know for sure, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s what gave him nightmares. I don’t suppose anyone found out which regiment or brigade of the Territorials he was in? Or the regular army?’
They all shook their heads.
‘Colonel Pelham was in the Territorials,’ Ernie reminded him, ‘but I don’t know which regiment. We should be able to find out this afternoon, and then we can go to their records and find out if Devine was in the same branch. D’you reckon it could be an important link, Chief?’
Alec sighed. ‘Who knows? But Daisy suggested it might be,’ he confessed.
CHAPTER 8
Kesin turned off the High Street at the Cross Keys, an ancient half-timbered building with an overhanging first floor, where Daisy had often taken Belinda for lunch or high tea.
She would have liked to stay there, but Sakari preferred the larger and grander Rose and Crown, in the Market Place. As far as age was concerned there wasn’t much between them, the Cross Keys being fourteenth century and the Rose and Crown fifteenth. The latter’s flat three-story façade was plastered over and painted white, however. To Daisy’s eye, it might be grander but it lacked the older inn’s charm.
King Street was brightened by window boxes overflowing – inevitably – with red geraniums and blue lobelia. The Rose and Crown was straight ahead, half hidden by the projecting upper stories of another half-timbered building, these a fake frontage added by the Victorians, for inscrutable Victorian reasons, to the Georgian Town Hall – or so Sakari’s guidebook had informed them.
The Market Place opened out on their left. It was a market day, the square full of stalls selling farm produce and all sorts of second-hand goods. Crowds of shoppers swirled about the Victorian drinking fountain in the centre.
Kesin edged the car forwards, saying something in Hindi. Sakari answered in the same language.
There was no room to park in front of the hotel, bu
t the chauffeur paused for long enough to let the ladies out. As they went up the steps to the entrance, he turned into a narrow alley, running along the side of the building, with a sign pointing to the Rose and Crown Yard.
‘He will unload our bags,’ said Sakari, ‘and then go to the school to await the girls.’ She pushed through the door.
The interior of the hotel had been modernised – just as well when it came to bathrooms, Daisy admitted – but the bedroom to which she was shown had an uneven floor to proclaim its age. Her window looked over the market. After unpacking and putting away her clothes in the wardrobe, she washed her face and hands and brushed her shingled curls. Then she leant against the sill, watching the bustle below, until she heard a knock on the door.
‘Come in!’
Sakari came in, with Melanie following. ‘It is nearly one o’clock. Kesin will arrive with the children at any moment. Are you ready to go downstairs?’
They met the girls in the lobby. Belinda, skinny as ever but pink-cheeked and healthy, appeared to have grown at least an inch in the six weeks since Daisy last saw her. She gave Daisy a hug, but after politely greeting Sakari and Melanie, her first words were: ‘Daddy couldn’t come?’
‘No, darling. He came home very late last night and went off again very early this morning.’
‘Poor Daddy! But you’re staying till tomorrow?’
‘Yes. We’re all staying to take you out to tea tomorrow. We’ll have lunch together and the whole afternoon.’
‘Wizard!’
‘Daddy sent you some chocolate peppermint creams.’
‘Oh, goody!’
‘They’re up in my room, and they’d better stay there until you’ve finished with your racing. You can have them after tea.’
‘All right. How are the twins? I miss them.’
Daisy told her about her brother and sister’s latest brilliant feats as they all went into the hotel restaurant.
All too soon, it was time to drive up the hill to the school, so that the girls could change into gym bloomers for their races. Daisy had always disliked participating in sports at school, and she was not much keener on watching them, but she did her best to share Bel’s enthusiasm.
At the top of the High Street, they passed the War Memorial. It reminded Daisy of her vague hunch that Alec’s case might somehow be connected with the war. A faded wreath was propped against the base. Next to it, a sad little bunch of drooping scarlet poppies, half their petals already fallen, was proof that the pain of loss was still acute.
But … murder? Three murders? More particularly, those three murders? Which of the doubtless myriad injustices of wartime could have led to such brutal revenge after so many years?
Daisy wondered whether Alec was following up the possibility, then dismissed the thought as the car turned into the school drive.
A few other motorcars were parked at the side, and a couple of station taxis were disgorging passengers near the main entrance, at the foot of the central tower. The red brick building was massive, but its varied façade and roof-line, many windows and a few trees prevented an oppressive, institutional appearance. The gravel drive curved round a close-mown lawn. Between the lawn and the street grew a copper-beech hedge and a belt of trees, fresh spring-green leaves contrasting with dark evergreens, including a huge pine. A bed of crimson peonies, now fading to pink, dropped petals on the dark earth beneath – reminiscent of the poppies at the War Memorial.
‘I wrote a poem about the peonies for English, Mummy,’ Belinda announced. ‘Mr Pencote said it wasn’t bad, for my age. I got an A.’
‘Well done. You must read it to me sometime.’
‘It’s quite short. I can recite it.’
‘Not now, Bel,’ said Deva firmly, as Kesin pulled up behind the taxis. ‘We must run.’
‘We have to run to put on running togs so that we can run races,’ Lizzie said. She was the quietest of the trio but she wasn’t going to turn out half such a prim and proper lady as her mother, Daisy thought with a smile.
All three giggled as they bounced out of the car and dashed off towards the pupils’ entrance at the girls’ end.
The visitors’ entrance stood open. On the doorstep, parents were greeted by a senior boy in a school blazer and tie. He directed one of a cluster of juniors to escort each group of new arrivals to the playing fields.
Folding chairs had been set out in a row along the first hundred yards of the quarter-mile circular track. In the middle of the circle was the cricket pitch.
‘Thank goodness we don’t have to sit through a game of cricket!’ Daisy exclaimed as they sat down. ‘It was bad enough having to play it at school.’
‘Robert took me to Lords’ once,’ confessed Melanie. ‘I fell asleep right there in the stands and disgraced him. Never again!’
‘The Marylebone Cricket Club is to tour India in the autumn,’ said Sakari. ‘I shall keep an eye on the scores in the newspaper, but I must admit that I have never understood the finer points of the game.’
‘I’m sure you can find a lecture course to enlighten you,’ Daisy suggested, laughing, ‘if you’re sufficiently interested.’
‘I am not,’ Sakari affirmed. ‘Now, explain to me what we are to see today. I have never attended a sports day before.’
Daisy and Melanie explained – or tried to explain – sprints versus long-distance races and hurdles, laps and heats and relays, and the house system, which pitted Lister, Mennell and Tuke against one another. Since the three ‘houses’ were purely hypothetical, with no relation to bricks and mortar, Sakari wore a slightly befuddled look when the headmistress, Miss Priestman, came over to say hello. She introduced the games mistress, Miss Bascombe, whom none of them had met before as she had joined the staff at the beginning of the summer term, when her predecessor left to get married.
Miss Priestman moved on. Miss Bascombe was a hefty but pretty-faced young woman in a tennis dress, clutching a sheaf of papers. She said a few encouraging words in a doubtful tone about Belinda and Deva’s athletic abilities. With more enthusiasm, she turned to Melanie, but Lizzie’s prowess was destined to remain unsung.
‘Miss Bascombe!’ The man who hailed her was even heftier, with overdeveloped muscles and a stentorian voice to match. Dressed in shorts and singlet, he had a toothbrush moustache and hair clipped so short it bristled like a nailbrush. ‘I want a word with you about the ridiculous way you’ve scheduled the races. I can’t have my chaps sitting about getting chilled while your little girls toddle along the track.’ He waved a matching sheaf of papers at her.
‘If he’d helped me work out the schedule …’ Miss Bascombe muttered resentfully. ‘Excuse me, Mrs Germond. Coming, Mr Harriman.’ She stalked off.
‘A mistake, I fear,’ said a soft voice behind Daisy. Glancing back, she recognised the headmaster, Mr Rowntree.
‘The Committee had little choice,’ the man with him pointed out, sounding harassed. ‘Since the war we’ve had few applicants to be games master, and as you know very well, none of the Quaker applicants has been fit enough to fill the position adequately.’
‘I know. But still, an ex-sergeant major! I hate to say it, but Harriman has turned out to be something of a bully. It’s a great pity …’ They moved on and Daisy heard no more.
The girls came up just then. They had changed their shoes for canvas plimsolls, but they were wearing heavy, baggy serge bloomers and blouses with sailor collars and floppy bows. It was definitely not a convenient costume for running, though better than skirts. At least all the girls were at the same disadvantage, but it was just as well they didn’t have to compete against the boys, who wore shorts and singlets like Mr Harriman’s. They sat down on the grass.
Kesin turned up bearing three large green silk umbrellas. Bowing, he handed one each to Daisy and Melanie, and then opened the third and stood behind his mistress, holding it over her head to shade her from the sun. The day was growing quite warm, but so far Daisy was enjoying it. The brim of her hat kept
the direct rays off her nose, reducing – she hoped – the threat of freckles.
‘I hope the children won’t suffer from sunstroke, running on a day like this,’ said Melanie anxiously.
‘Oh, Mummy!’ Lizzie protested. ‘We’ll be perfectly all right. It’s running in the cold and wet that’s horrid.’
‘You should see our knees after a game of hockey in the winter,’ said Bel. ‘They’re all blue and purple and red, not even counting the bruises.’
‘Mine aren’t,’ Deva pointed out with a trace of smugness.
‘It gets much hotter in India, doesn’t it, Mummy?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ Sakari agreed, smiling, ‘but in India, young ladies do not run races.’
‘You’re not going to stop me?’ her daughter asked in alarm.
‘No, no! Have I not come today especially to watch you?’
Harriman blew a whistle and started issuing orders through a megaphone. The girls jumped up and scampered off to the start line, and sports day proceeded on its scheduled – or possibly rescheduled – way. Belinda, all flying legs and pigtails, managed to come in second in her heat of the under-fifteen-hundred yards, thus winning two points for Lister.
‘Only because Vanessa got a cramp in her leg halfway,’ she said dismissively when Daisy congratulated her. ‘And Jane didn’t even start. She’s in the San with an upset tummy.’
‘Well, it’s jolly good, all the same,’ Daisy insisted. ‘I’m proud of you, and Daddy will be, too, when he hears.’
‘I wish he was here. Do you think he might come tomorrow?’
‘How can I guess, darling? You know how it is.’
Bel heaved a sigh. ‘Yes. I’m not making a fuss, honestly. Some people’s fathers are in Africa, and Deva’s and Lizzie’s didn’t come even though they’re just in London, not off catching criminals.’
Lizzie ended the day with four points for her house, and somehow Deva scraped up one, so three happy children dashed back to the school buildings later that afternoon. With the prospect of high tea in the town ahead, they were in a hurry to change. Their mothers followed more slowly.
