Death Among the Kisses (The Inspector Felix Mysteries Book 10)

by R. A. Bentley

  Chapter Thirteen

  ​Sending the others back to the farm, they crossed the road to keep an appointment at Dr Absalom’s surgery, which occupied the ground-floor of his house.

  ​‘Everyone all right on the hill?’ he asked, peering at them over his spectacles.

  ​Felix assured him that they all appeared to be in good health. ‘I wouldn’t say they were suspicious,’ he said, ‘but there is now someone watching Delia Falkner as she cooks. At her own suggestion, I hasten to add. Boiled eggs are much in demand, I’m told; it being hard, one supposes, to poison an egg.’

  ​Dr Absalom smiled. ‘And have you eaten or drunk anything there?’

  ​‘Nothing from the house. We arrived equipped with sandwiches, bottled beer and the makings of beverages, courtesy of Mr Stanley Craddock, and we’ve just had luncheon there.’

  ​‘May I infer that you’ve made no progress?’

  ​‘Nothing yet, but we’d be lucky to do so at this stage. Given the circumstances, I’d let people go home if I could, and may have to. The trouble is, many of them live several hours away. It would make further questioning difficult. I thought I had best call to see if you had any comments to offer on this business.’

  ​‘You’ve had the chocolates analysed no doubt?’

  ​Felix told him what they knew.

  ​‘A relatively small dose, then.’ said the doctor. ‘The intention may have been only to make the victim ill but it seems more likely that our poisoner is rather inept, and murder was intended.’

  ​‘That’s what our forensic department said.’

  ​‘Then I’ve nothing to add. I felt, incidentally, that Dr Bartlett acquitted himself very well. It’s never easy when you are first qualified.’

  ​‘I’ll tell him that,’ said Felix. ‘I wonder, Doctor, if you can tell me, in strictest confidence of course, if you have ever been suspicious of anyone’s behaviour, attitude or mental balance at Arnold’s Farm?’

  ​ Dr Absalom shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I expected you to ask me that. If there is a problem in that regard, it is not overt.’ He sat back and smiled. ‘You know, it’s commonly assumed in the village that the Falkner daughters failed to marry because their mother successfully discouraged all suitors. She may well have done, but I put it to you that she only succeeded because they were content enough to stay at home with each other, rather than take a step into the unknown. Most girls who want to marry manage to do so, after all; even if they have to take employment away from home, or elope. Those who are thwarted may well show symptoms of hysteria in its various forms, but they don’t present with them when they’re in their forties and fifties. In short, I believe they were contented enough, before the murder.’

  ​‘You are talking about motive?’

  ​‘Yes, I am. Also, of course, Mrs Falkner was elderly, and probably wouldn’t have lived for many more years, especially after the trauma of the fall. They would have been free of her, if that is what they wanted, sooner rather than later. Looked at dispassionately it seems scarcely worth the risk entailed in murdering her. You know their father was given to dipsomania?’

  ​‘So we’re told. Did you know him?’

  ​‘No, I wasn’t here then. I mention him only because he might have adversely influenced their attitude to men, further suggesting a disinclination to rush into matrimony. Then again, some of his unacceptable behaviour may well be laid at the door of his difficult wife. And she was difficult, you know. Human relations are complicated.’

  ◆◆◆

  ​‘I suppose we should be grateful he didn’t quote Freud,’ growled Rattigan as they turned towards what passed in Arnoldswell as the shopping street. ‘You know what I think about that sort of thing.’

  ​‘Tells you more about the retailer of it,’ agreed Felix. ‘At least he acknowledged that humans are complicated. And talking of retailers, here’s the village shop.’

  ​The brown-overalled shopkeeper appeared at the summons of the bell. ‘Can I help you gentlemen?’

  ​Felix introduced himself. ‘I realise you’re probably sick of the police by now,’ he said, but my only interest today is to ask if and when you sold a box of the dreaded chocolates to anyone at Arnold’s Farm. Only to there, and not necessarily recently.’

  ​‘Not at Christmas,’ said the man. ‘I did sell a couple of boxes to the deceased, though. October, it was. In fact, I mentioned them to the sergeant that came for the others but he said his orders were to take all my stock and didn’t seem interested in anything else.’

  ​‘Are you pretty sure about that, sir? Only it could be important.’

  ​‘Yes, I remember her coming in. She never bought anything like that normally. It was all practical stuff – bootlaces and the like – which is why I remember.’

  ​‘Bought them herself, you say? Anyone with her?’

  ​‘No, she was by herself.’

  ​‘Definitely Pride and Taylor’s?’

  ​‘Yes, it was.’

  ​‘I could do with some tobacco, while I’m here,’ said Rattigan, surveying the shelves. ‘And twenty Weights please.’

  ​‘Could you point out Mr Watkins’ house,’ asked Felix as Rattigan took his change. ‘I know he’s in the High Street somewhere.’

  ​‘Just up on the right. Red door.’ The man grinned. ‘Been a naughty boy, has he?’

  ​‘We’re expecting a Black Maria momently.’

  ​Age had withered Percy Watkins. Much diminished from his regulation five foot eight, he was, at seventy-seven years old, bent and wizened, his clothes hanging loose upon him. There was, however, humour and intelligence in his watery blue eyes, and he welcomed them warmly into his little stone cottage.

  ​‘You keep this nice,’ said Felix, ‘looking appreciatively around the neat and cosy room.’

  ​‘Oh, I gotta do that,’ said Percy, bringing in a tray of tea things. ‘She wouldn’t like it if I let it go.’

  ​“She,” he indicated with a glance, was the deceased Mrs Watkins, whose plump likeness gazed down at them from the mantle shelf.

  ​‘I don’t think she’d have anything to complain about in this room,’ smiled Felix. ‘Did Constable Peterson, tell you what we wanted to know?’

  ​‘Jim? Yes, he’s just been in. He’s a likely lad, though I don’t suppose we’ll have him long. They all want promotion in these days, don’t they? I never did; I served out my whole time here and loved every minute of it. There wasn’t nobody or nothing I didn’t know about in these parts, though I says it as shouldn’t.’

  ​‘Did you know the Falkner family well?’

  ​‘Yes, pretty well. I can remember Harry’s father, too. Old Harry, we used to call him, to distinguish him from Young Harry. Three generations of Harrys, there are now, though we’ve lost the last one of course. I don’t think he ever cared much for farming. Or maybe it was his mother drove him away. And he married a bit above himself to my mind. A town girl she was, and probably couldn’t take the creature’s nonsense either. I never knew her family, though, Hannah’s I mean, because she came from over Cranfold. I was there when they met, you know.’ He nodded in reminiscence. ‘Yes, I was there when they met. At a dance it was, at the church hall. She wasn’t nothing special to look at and couldn’t hardly dance neither, but she knowed what she wanted, which was a farmer’s lad, and she got one!’

  ​‘Were they happy?’

  ​Mr Watkins snorted and shook his head. ‘Not my idea of happy. They fought like cats, almost from the start. And when Old Harry died it got worse. It mightn’t have been so bad if she’d stuck to the house – it’s a nice house, as you’ll have discovered, and plenty to keep her busy in it – but she wanted his job; she wanted to run the farm. And not the way he did neither — she had her own ideas, that one. He used to come into the Sheep’s Head and moan about it. She rubbed everyone up the wrong way, that woman, not just him. Some of the men left as a result and she could never keep servants. They all we
nt eventually and were never replaced. No-one would work for her, see? The only way to shut her up, he used to say, was to give her another baby. As you know, she had five, and another one died in infancy.

  ​‘Anyway, he started drinking. He’d always liked a jar but it got so he was never rightly sober. Then he beat a man up. Not just a farmhand, that was a common occurrence, but Edgar Driffield, of all people! He got bound over for that and lucky it’s all he got. Then he began knocking her about and she came to me about it. I had to warn him off, not that there was much I could do unless she pressed charges. A few weeks later he was dead. It’s my opinion she broke him, broke his spirit. He was a gurt, fierce-looking fellow and she was half his size but she was too much for him. Wore him out, she did. We found him dead in a sheep shelter with a bottle in his hand. Filthy wet weather, it was, and his lunch half eaten, I can see him as clearly as I can see you.’

  ​‘Was he faithful to her?’

  ​Mr Watkins wagged his head equivocally. ‘Generally, I think. There was a bit of nonsense with Driffield’s daughter – that’s what led to the fight – but he liked to flirt and it gave him a reputation, if you know what I mean.’

  ​‘What about the children? Did he treat them all right?’

  ​‘Oh yes, I think so. He used to take them about on his shoulders when they were little. Not that they stayed little for very long! Ideal farm wives they’d have made. Big, sturdy girls. There were plenty of young fellows buzzing around them too, when they were younger, but none of it came to nothing. People said she drove them away. Didn’t want to lose her workforce, very likely.’

  ​‘Did you like him?’

  ​Mr Watkins smiled and shrugged. ‘I didn’t dislike him. I don’t think he was a bad man particularly. More tea?’

  ◆◆◆

  ​‘You’ve got to be inside a marriage to know how it ticks,’ said Felix, as they toiled back up the hill. ‘However, I think we have all we need on that one.’

  ​‘If that’s a typical example, I’d rather be on the outside of it,’ averred Rattigan. ‘Do you suppose those extra boxes of chocolates are included in our total?’

  ​‘I don’t see how they can be, unless others were spirited away in their place. It’s a long time to keep chocolates though.’

  ​‘Would be for me. What made you think there might be any?’

  ​‘Only that whoever poisoned them must have got them from somewhere. They’d hardly have had time to doctor the Christmas ones, I shouldn’t have thought. What I wasn’t expecting was for the victim to have bought them.’

  ​They returned to find the house in uproar. Everyone was out in the hall, listening, and on the landing two angry men were snarling in each other’s faces. Nash and Yardley had Alf pinned between them and Charles was hovering uncertainly beside his father who was nursing a bloodied nose. Ethel had her arms around a weeping Florence.

  ​‘You are a complete and utter bastard!’ raged Alf, shaking off his captors. ‘You didn’t even have the decency to come and tell me. I had to find you at it!’

  ​‘We weren’t “at it,” as you put it,’ sobbed Florence, ‘we were just talking. We were talking about how to broach it with you.’

  ​Alf turned furiously on her. ‘Broach it! You, you . . . Jezebel. Lucky I found you out before it was too late!’

  ​‘Well, if that’s how you feel,’ said Walter, ‘you won’t mind if I take her off your hands, will you?’

  ​‘I’m not a chattel!’ complained Florence.

  ​‘You would have been if you’d married him,’ snapped Walter. ‘All he wanted was a free scivvy.’

  ​‘Take it easy, Dad,’ said Charles. ‘Remember your heart.’

  ​‘What about my heart? There’s nothing wrong with my heart.’

  ​‘It’s fifty-one years old. Yours too, Alf. I won’t be responsible.’

  ​Rattigan rolled his eyes in disfavour, ‘Ought to know better at their ages,’ he growled. ‘I blame the mistletoe. Have you noticed it, dangling everywhere?’

  ​‘You ought to watch out, then,’ grinned Felix. ‘The house is full of maiden ladies.’ He called up to the combatants. ‘Mr Bartlett, Mr Brown, I’d like to see you in my interview room please. You may wish to come, too, Mrs Gray.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  ​‘This has nothing to do with the murder, Mr Felix’ grumbled Walter, helping Florence to a seat.

  ​‘Indeed it has not,’ agreed Felix, ‘but while you’re here you can’t be knocking seven bells out of each other. My sergeants have better things to do than referee private disputes. Mr Bartlett, I understand that you were responsible for doing this farm’s tax accounts?’

  ​Walter exchanged glances with Alf, then looked resigned. ‘Yes, I was. And am. Not that they amount to much.’

  ​‘Why you, sir?’

  ​‘Complicated,’ sighed Walter.

  ​‘I’m in no hurry.’

  ​ ‘All right. When Harry Falkner Senior drew up his will, he judged Hannah not competent to deal with the financial side of things; in which, I might say, he was quite correct. She could read and write well enough, but figures were, and remained, beyond her. He therefore asked his sister’s husband, my father, to take it on. When my father became ill, he handed the job to me, for my sins.’

  ​‘He was an accountant, your father?’

  ​‘Like me, yes.’

  ​‘That seems remarkably astute of Mr Falkner, given what I’ve been told about him. Or am I misjudging him?’

  ​Walter shook his head. ‘Whatever else he was, he wasn’t stupid. He ran a successful farm until the drink got him.’

  ​‘You may as well tell him the rest,’ said Alf sullenly. ‘since you’ve told him that much.’

  ​‘What is the rest, Mr Bartlett?’ said Felix patiently.

  ​Walter gave Alf a sour look and sighed. ‘I own this farm,’ he said. ‘It’s mine.’

  ​Felix sat back in surprise. ‘How so?’

  ​‘Well as I said, he didn’t trust Hannah with it, not financially, so he left it to my mother, with the understanding that Hannah and the children could live and farm here until the last one died or, in the case of the girls, married. My father predeceased my mother and when she died, she left the confounded place to me. As I’ve said, I’d already taken on the accounts.’

  ​‘What did your parents get out of it?’

  ​‘Nothing really, just a small rent. It was supposed to cover my father’s expenses.’

  ​‘Did it?’

  ​‘Shouldn’t think so, not even then. I don’t think he even collected it. I never have.’

  ​‘What about your cousins? They know about this presumably?’

  ​‘Yes, of course, but I don’t know that it means much to them. It’s been that way all their lives. Hannah would never discuss it, least of all with them. She was perfectly content with the arrangement and nothing was going to change as far as she was concerned. She made that plain enough. Now, of course, they can have it. No charge.’

  ​‘You’ve told them that?’

  ​‘No, I haven’t broached it with them yet; there hasn’t been time, what with the murder and everything.’

  ​‘Too busy seducing my fiancée,’ growled Alf.

  ​‘He didn’t seduce me,’ protested Florence. ‘I’m not some chit of a girl!’

  ​‘What do you call it then?’

  ​‘Not now, please,’ said Felix sharply. ‘Mr Brown, what is your part in this? You rent most of the farm from the Falkners; or rather, it seems, from Mr Bartlett.’

  ​‘That is my part in it now. Nothing else,’ said Alf.

  ​‘It might be now,’ said Walter, ‘it wasn’t then. As my son kindly reminded me, I’m not in the first flush of youth. I’ve enough on my plate with the garages and I didn’t want the bother of the place. Neither did I want to lumber Charles with it. Mr Brown and I had agreed that he should buy it from me, the rent he pays for it to become, effectively, the repa
yments on a mortgage; although the monies would go directly to the Falkners, as they always have done. Nothing would change, from their point of view. It struck me as an excellent solution, but Hannah wouldn’t hear of it. She really was the most difficult of women. We were hoping to have another go at her this Christmas, before events intervened.’

  ​‘And why did Mrs Falkner object so vehemently to this arrangement, Mr Brown? Any idea?’

  ​Alf shook his head. ‘She never would say. Maybe because Bartlett is family, and I’m not. Or perhaps she thought I’d make some changes she wouldn’t care for. Not that I planned to.’

  ​‘And what about now? Are you still interested in buying it?’

  ​‘From him, no,’ snapped Alf, standing up. I need to trust people I do business with. Anyway, it would be pointless. Even if the Falkners didn’t want it back, which they surely will, it would be no use to me now.’ He turned to Florence. ‘I thought perhaps I might have a son or daughter to leave it to one day. Now that’s unlikely to happen. And you can now see,’ he added, this time addressing himself to Felix, ‘that I had no incentive whatever to murder Mrs Falkner. Quite the reverse, in fact.’

  ​‘Oh, Alf —’ began Florence miserably, but taking no more notice of her he left the room.

  ​‘Mr Bartlett,’ said Felix. ‘I should like to speak to Mrs Gray alone for a moment, if you don’t mind.’

  ​‘Er, yes. Of course,’ said Walter. ‘I’ll wait for you in the hall, Florence.’

  ​‘Chief Inspector,’ said Florence, as the door closed behind him. ‘I am so very ashamed. You must think we’re appalling people, carrying on with our petty affairs as if nothing has happened.’

  ​Felix shook his head. ‘It’s not for me to judge people’s conduct, Mrs Gray, provided it’s legal and not prejudicial to my investigation. I do, however, have a couple of questions to ask you. Firstly, I understand that you and Mr Brown brought some presents with you when you arrived, including a box of Pride and Taylor’s chocolates.’