“A capital game.” The Vicar gave a final brisk rub to his niblick. “And all the more pleasant, my dear Appleby, for coming after a long day’s work. A round of parish visiting makes me feel like Macbeth.”
“Macbeth?” Appleby drew the cover over his own clubs. “You surprise me.”
“Lady Macbeth described her husband as too full of the milk of human kindness. I finish my duties far too full of its tea. Towards a clergyman, common benevolence expresses itself largely through the medium of a nice strong cup. Sometimes I feel like Mr Tony Weller’s acquaintance when similarly regaled – a-swelling wisibly before the eyes. Policemen escape this inconvenience.”
“As it happens, I’ve known something like it in my time.” Appleby sat down on the bench overlooking the eighteenth green. “And if it wasn’t as a policeman that I started in on it, there was undoubtedly a professional twist to its close. It began, of course, with my aunt.”
“The Yorkshire aunt? A pertinacious and strong-minded woman, to judge from your accounts of her.”
“Quite so, Vicar. And it was her pertinacity and strength of mind that set me off.
“Retired and pensioned retainers are one of Aunt Jane’s special lines. I doubt whether either she or her parents ever lived in a particularly large way, but nobody who was once in the family employment is ever dropped off the list. Aunt Jane visits them all about once a month, with a great unloading of admonition, devotional reading, tinned soup, and sacks of firewood. Aunt Jane is honestly domineering and honestly benevolent – a frank anachronism that one can’t very decently turn down. So when I’ve stopped with her from time to time, I’ve lent a hand with the visiting.”
The Vicar chuckled. “My dear fellow, this is a new light on your character. One thinks of you as banging on the doors of thieves’ kitchens and shouting ‘Open in the name of the Law’. And here you are, tinkling the bells of old women and disgorging tinned soup. The more credit to you. But proceed.”
“Sometimes it was entertaining enough. If I ever heartily regretted being my aunt’s emissary, it was the afternoon I visited Nannie Moggs. I believe she had been no more than temporary nursery maid in some remote branch of the family sixty years before, and she was too peripheral, so to speak, to be among the pensioners in any substantial way. Her circumstances were dismal, and so was she.
“She inhabited what they call a back-to-back house of the most meagre sort – one room up and one room down, with the upper one let off to another penurious old person like herself. The only vestiges of comfort she rejoiced in – or rather was lugubrious over – were an emaciated cat, distinctly disposed to spit, and a minute gas-fire that seemed incapable of as much as singeing the cat’s whiskers. It occurred to me that the old woman would do better to scrap the thing and apply to Aunt Jane for a sack of firewood. Meanwhile I planked down those tins of soup and made what conversation I could.
“The wickedness of some local burial society proved to be the main field of Nannie Moggs’ interest. Indeed, I could get her to talk of nothing else. For years, it seemed, she had subscribed ninepence a week, and the man who collected the money had assured her at the start that this meant solid brass handles and an inscribed plate. But when one of her neighbours – a ninepenny neighbour – died some months before, Nannie Moggs had contrived a personal inspection of the coffin and satisfied herself that no plate was provided, and that the handles would be a disgrace at fourpence.”
The Vicar shook his head. “Deplorable. There is undoubtedly much exploitation of the importance which the simpler classes attach to matters of that sort.”
“No doubt. Well, we had this sort of chat for some time, and if the old lady didn’t get any less dismal, at least she managed to get more excited. I pointed out that there was a metal shortage, and that perhaps it was unpatriotic to insist on carrying lumps of the stuff into the grave. As old Sir Thomas Browne insisted, the commerce of the living is not to be transferred unto the dead.”
The Vicar shook his head. “Appropriate,” he said. “But not perhaps persuasive.”
“Quite so. And of course Nannie Moggs was in the right in the matter. She had paid her ninepences, and was entitled to corresponding riches in the adornment of her ashes. Fortunately all her pennies hadn’t gone the one way. She had a secret to reveal, and the nearer she got to it the more excited she became. She banged the floor with a stick, and her voice rose to a screech that might have made the cat bolt from the room. ‘Three-pun ten under the third stair’, she said. ‘And a letter to the Royal Fambly respekfully demanding that justice be done.’
“It wasn’t clear to me how the letter was to reach its august destination, or even that seventy shillings would pay for the brass handles. But Nannie Moggs’ spirits began to rise as she surveyed her posthumous triumph, and I did my best to confirm her in this improved nervous tone. Presently I was congratulating myself on having the makings of a successful district visitor after all. The cat had begun to purr, the gas-fire was burning brighter, the tins of soup took on the appearance of a magnificent benefaction, and the old lady was crowing away merrily over her nest-egg. So it was rather disconcerting that, when she hobbled out of the room to let me have a peep at it, it proved to have disappeared.
“So my visiting, Vicar, had ended much like yours: in what might be called a nice cup of tea. Alternatively, you might say that we were in the soup – the tinned soup – or that the fat was in the fire.”
“Nannie Moggs was upset?”
“It was clear that seventy bob out of my own pocket would get us nowhere. She cried aloud for vengeance. So I had to abandon my charitable character, turn back into a policeman, and investigate.
“When had she seen the money last? Apparently it had been not long before I arrived. Her main occupation was taking furtive peeps at it whenever her upstairs lodger, Mrs Grimble, was out of the way. As you can guess, Mrs Grimble seemed to me the first person due for interview, and I climbed straight to her room. It was pretty well a replica of Nannie Moggs’ – the same cat, the same miserable little gas-fire, the same suggestion of horrible poverty.
“Mrs Grimble was out. It was an hour before she came back again. She was precisely the miserable old soul I expected, and most suspiciously communicative about her movements. She had been out of the house all afternoon, she declared, visiting the municipal cemetery with her widowed brother.
“I saw that if this story was true she could have nothing to do with the disappearance of Nannie Moggs’ nest-egg. And I guessed that there was a widowed brother and that the story Mrs Grimble was telling he, too, would tell. It was a reasonable story, too – even if the weather was uncommonly chilly for a long afternoon among the graves.
“Suddenly the truth came to me. I fished a box of matches from my pocket. There was an experiment I could make. You can guess it, of course.”
“Guess it, my dear Appleby?” The Vicar was bewildered.
“The gas-fires. There had been a point, you remember, at which Nannie Moggs’ fire burnt brighter. In a couple of minutes I had satisfied myself that just this happened as soon as Mrs Grimble’s fire was turned off. It was a wretched old installation, but I’ve seen the same effect even with tolerably efficient ones.”
“Did Mrs Grimble confess?”
“Yes. I told her precisely what had happened. Lurking out of mere curiosity outside Nannie Moggs’ door, she had heard the secret confided to me, stolen the hidden money, and bolted back to her room. Then she had had sufficient cunning to realise that she must get it out of the place and fake a kind of alibi. So off she went to her brother – who was no doubt as dishonest as she. But, being a thrifty soul, she turned off her gas-fire before she left. And she did confess. My apparently supernatural knowledge of her movements was too much for her.”
“And Nannie Moggs continued vindictive? A constable was called in, and the one wretched old woman got the other sent to jail?”
Appleby shook his head. “It was my aunt who was called in. I doubt whether Mrs Grimble ever ventured on dishonesty again.”