As I perambulated down the lane, deep in thought, a black Volvo sped by me. Startled, I recognized Jane Hardwick at the wheel. Quickening my pace, I arrived at Jane’s cottage as she was opening her front door, her arms laden with bags bearing the logo of Blackwells. I smiled briefly. In Oxford on a sleuthing mission, Jane couldn’t pass up a visit to a bookstore.
Jane welcomed me with an excited grin, looking almost girlish, and I helped her with her parcels. “What did you find out?” I demanded, and she shushed me until we were safely inside.
Bags placed carefully on a table in the hall, Jane and I ensconced ourselves on the sofa in her sitting room. “I received some very interesting information. Nothing completely conclusive, mind you, but certainly very suggestive. I think we’re nearing the end.”
“Do tell!” I said. “And then I have some things to tell you as well!”
“I have a very dear friend, Araminta McClain, who is one of us, vintage 1801. (She actually knew Jane Austen, Simon!) Minta has been in Oxford for the past seventy years or so, and she knows all the decent gossip there is to know. And if she doesn’t know it herself, she knows exactly the person from whom to extract it.”
“Sounds like an important person to know,” I said. “But if she is so much in the know, how does she keep herself camouflaged?”
Jane laughed. “To the mortal world, Minta looks seventy-odd, with a decided emphasis on the ‘odd.’ I suppose if anyone ever gave it much thought, they’d realize she’s been there forever, but while others come and go, Minta’s there, essentially the same, year after year. People tend to take her rather for granted, and she encourages that.”
“Clever,” I said, “Miss Marple in the flesh, so to speak.”
“Yes, exactly. Anyway, I consulted Minta, and she supplied what we needed. She even remembered Neville and Lester Clitheroe vaguely from their days as undergraduates. One of her sources of information at the time was in the same college, and Minta got some rather juicy tidbits about Neville and Lester.”
Jane paused teasingly, and I urged her to continue. “You’ll love this bit, Simon! Apparently, Neville and Lester were extremely close. So close, in fact, that they often slept in the same bed.” She paused again. “But they weren’t doing a lot of sleeping.”
I whistled. “And I thought dear Neville, handsome as he is, was unabashedly straight. Appearances can be deceiving!”
Jane laughed for a moment, then sobered. “The most interesting bit of information about that relationship that I gleaned was this: Apparently Lester very much enjoyed dressing up in women’s clothes. Undergraduates get up to all sorts of rags, some of which involve cross-dressing, but from what Minta said, Lester’s interest went far beyond that.”
“What are you saying, Jane? Transvestism isn’t all that unusual. Do you mean that Lester actually wanted to be a woman?”
“That’s what Minta seemed to think.” Jane shrugged.
“Neville was allegedly heard to refer to Lester as ‘Lettice’ on occasion.”
“My Gawd,” I said. “Then what about the mysterious accident that befell poor Lester in the Swiss Alps? No more Lester/Lettice?”
Jane’s eyebrows arched upward. “After bringing Minta up-to-date on what had been going on here and telling her what I knew of Neville and Letty Butler-Melville, Minta suggested that the authorities might want to dig a bit deeper into Letty’s background.”
“Because the death of Lester Clitheroe might have been staged so that he could assume the identity of Letty Clivering? Who in turn became Mrs. Neville Butler-Melville? ”
Jane nodded.
“It makes a certain sense, given Letty’s general appearance and some of her mannerisms,” I said. “Or should I say his?”
“According to that clipping in Abigail’s trove, Neville and Letty met in Denmark.”
“Where she/he could very well have had gender re-assignment surgery,” I said.
“Exactly.”
“But what’s the big deal? So Lester became Letty? Who cares?” Then the answer hit me. “The Church of England would never go for a vicar with a transsexual wife. Good grief! Is such a marriage even legal in England?”
“I don’t know about that, Simon, but you’re certainly right about the church. That would be the end of Neville’s career, such as it is, in the grand old C of E.”
I stared at Jane for a long moment. Suddenly, various things were beginning to make a lot of sense. “Letty is the one who actually ministers to the needs of the parish, not Neville. And I’d be willing to bet the advance on my next book that she writes the sermons, and so on. She’s the one who does the real work of the parish, while Neville sits there looking handsome and distinguished and vicar-like.”
Jane sighed. “Yes. I had never given much thought to the situation because in my experience many clergy wives are much like Letty. Hardworking handmaidens of the Lord who do their best to further their husbands’ careers, veritable mainstays of the parish. Neville is perhaps more of a figurehead than I had realized, but Letty is truly the vicar of this parish.”
Jane and I sat quietly for a while. I thought with great sadness of an institution that had no place for someone such as Letty Butler-Melville. A woman in a man’s body who had made the most drastic change possible for a human being to make, under a compulsion that even I could only dimly understand. The Church was only now, and very reluctantly, it seemed to me, accepting women into important pastoral roles, but twenty-five years ago those avenues were not available to women in England, as far as I knew. So I supposed that Letty had gone about it the only way she knew how, working through her husband, who was obviously complicit in her scheme.
Then Abigail Winterton had somehow got onto the situation and threatened to reveal their secret, thereby destroying both their lives. I frowned.
“But, Jane,” I said at last, and Jane looked at me inquiringly. “There wasn’t much in Abigail’s cache of evidence that would indicate that she really knew the truth about this. Not even in the play.”
“What do you mean, in the play?” Jane’s tone was sharp with disbelief. “Has a copy of it turned up?”
I explained quickly how the play had come into my possession. I gave her an edited version of the play’s contents and a recounting of my conversations with various and sundry during the day. I had omitted the bits about Jane in the play, and oddly enough, she didn’t ask me whether she had figured in the play. I pondered the significance of that while we continued talking.
“There really wasn’t anything in the play to indicate that she knew the complete truth about Letty Butler-Melville,” I finally concluded.
“Abigail doesn’t seem to have gotten close to the actual truth,” Jane said. “But if she kept pressing the point about Lester Clitheroe’s supposed death, they could have gotten the wind up sufficiently to take some drastic action.”
“And the colonel is implicated as well, since he had to have called either Letty or Neville to come and remove the play from my office.”
“Yes, the colonel is involved. He certainly knew that Letty was his, well, I suppose we’ll have to say ‘daughter,’ won’t we? But what is the extent of his involvement? Merely as an accomplice? Or could he have done it?”
“I don’t know, Jane,” I said. “Frankly, I’m sorry that we even got this far, to discover all this. It’s appallingly sad, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Jane said softly. “There are times when death is the only answer no matter how distasteful one might find it as a solution. The urge for self-protection is an incredibly strong one.” Her eyes had darkened, and she seemed to be looking somewhere within, dredging up old memories that might still be causing her pain. Her hands twitched in her lap. Then she came back to the present. “Though sometimes the circumstances might seem to warrant it.” Her tone was firm, and she met my gaze with calm assurance.
“You’re absolutely right, Jane. This has to be resolved, and justice somehow must be served. But what would the police think if we went to them with our bits of gossip and speculation? They already have the play. Maybe we should just leave them to it.”
“They might well think that we’re interfering busy bodies with too much time on our hands,” Jane said with obvious patience, “but if we take this information to them, Robin Chase might believe us.” She tapped a finger against her temple. “But having something more concrete wouldn’t hurt. I do think we should do our best to force the murderer’s hand.”
“With some sort of trap, I presume?” I began to see where all this might be leading as a certain pattern made itself evident in my thoughts. I groaned inwardly; I could never get away with this in one of my own mysteries, but in this case it might work. I thought quickly as an idea occurred to me. I filed it away for further thought.
“Okay, Simon,” Jane said, “here’s what we’ll do.” Nodding at suitable junctures, I agreed to her plan to trap Abigail Winterton’s murderer. Hercule Poirot, eat your little gray cells out, I thought smugly.
Lights glowed in the downstairs windows of the vicarage as the evening faded gently into twilight Darkness would come in another quarter hour, or so I reckoned as Jane and I walked toward the front door. The rest of Snupperton Mumsley was quiet around us, as if to underscore the seriousness of our task, and Jane seemed to make an unusual amount of noise as she banged the ornate knocker.
“Nervous?”Jane asked, smiling with cool confidence.
“No,” I replied a bit testily. “Only anxious to get this over with.” I had made a couple of telephone calls during the afternoon on my own initiative, and I was finally satisfied that I was doing the right thing in order to get this whole mess resolved. Jane might not agree with me, but there would be time enough to sort that out afterward.
The door swung open then, cutting off any further conversation between Jane and me. Here goes nothing, I thought, following Jane across the threshold. Neville Butler-Melville uttered no word of greeting as he opened the door. He simply waved us inside. His handsome face was scored with worry lines, Neville had aged since the last time I had seen him.
Jane and I paused at the door of the sitting room. Conversation ceased, and Lady Prunella Blitherington cut off her oration on the current state of British theater long enough to smile a welcome at us. This afternoon’s confrontation seemed to have cleared the air between us. Samantha Stevens looked delighted at the respite occasioned by our arrival, and she motioned for Jane and me to join her on the lumpy sofa. Trevor Chase stood across the room, talking quietly to Giles Blitherington, and I smothered a momentary flare of emotion at seeing them, heads bent ever so slightly together.
Colonel Clitheroe came into the room trailing Letty Butler-Melville, who was wheeling a tea tray laden with cups and saucers and a teapot. I groaned inwardly. Just what the evening needed: some of Letty’s truly dreadful tea.
The hum of conversation resumed as Letty served the tea. Jane had jumped up to offer assistance. I chatted idly with Samantha Stevens as Letty and Jane made the rounds, Letty pouring and Jane serving. I accepted a cup from Jane, raising it to my mouth almost without thinking. My nose caught a whiff of something odd about the tea. I froze. Then I did my best to pretend to take a sip. I set the cup down on the table in front of me and eyed it thoughtfully for a long moment.
Jane and Letty had by now completed serving everyone and had taken their places with the group. While I listened with half an ear to Jane’s recital of her finds at Blackwells to Samantha Stevens, I thought some more.
After a few minutes, I cleared my throat. Expectant faces turned toward me.
“Thank you all for agreeing to meet on such short notice,” I said, “but I couldn’t wait to share my discovery with you.”
“Yes, you did say when you called me that you had something exciting,” Jane said. Then she addressed the group casually: “He gave me no hint about it, so I must admit to excruciating curiosity.”
“Yes, do tell us, Dr. Kirby-Jones, about this discovery of yours,” Lady Blitherington said, her eyes aglow. “It sounds most interesting.”
“I do believe you will all find it of great interest,” I said modestly. “You see, I received something in the mail today, something utterly fascinating.” Pausing for effect, I then continued, “I received a copy of Abigail Winterton’s play!”
I heard the hiss of several intakes of breath. This was bad news to more than one person in the room, but only one of them truly had reason to fear.
“A letter from the dead!” Giles exclaimed. “How morbidly fascinating!”
His mother shot him a pained look, which he patently ignored. “Surely you’ve read the play, Simon?” Giles asked. “Was it truly dreadful?”
The dear boy was playing along as if he had read my script. From the twinkle in his eyes, I knew he was on to at least part of the game that Jane and I were playing. I smiled inwardly.
“Oh, the play was far from dreadful,” I said airily. “I’m sure you will all find it most amusing despite its deficiencies of style.” With a flourish I pulled several copies out of the pocket of the bulkily unfashionable jacket I was wearing and started handing them around.
Giles and Jane had the only two faces in the group that retained a healthy amount of color at that moment. The room was deadly still for a long moment as shaky hands turned the pages. Gradually, faces resumed their normal colorations.
Letty Butler-Melville looked up from the copy she and Neville shared between them. “But this, this...” she sputtered.
I nodded, my expression grave. “Yes, I know. Rather sad, isn’t it? I don’t know how Miss Winterton thought she could get away with such a blatant rip-off of The Cocktail Party, but perhaps she presumed none of us was familiar with the works of T. S. Eliot.”
Trevor Chase threw his pages down onto a table near his chair. “Then what the hell was she going on about (pardon me, I’m sure, Vicar) with that tripe about moral decay in a little village. This drivel is pathetic, but it’s not anything about a village! ”
Ah, the wonders of word processors, not to mention the ability to type quickly! It had taken me about three and a half hours to knock out this new version of Abigail Winterton’s death warrant. In between phone calls, that is.
I clucked my tongue. “Rather appalling, isn’t it? I don’t know what she was going on about at that meeting. I thought it odd enough that she had sent me a copy of this through the mail. It quite gave me the shivers when I realized what it was, I can tell you.” I paused to give them a suitably spooked look.
“Maybe the play she was talking about was another one that she had squirreled away somewhere,” I said slowly. “Perhaps a copy of that play still exists somewhere.” I looked straight at Letty and Neville Butler-Melville as I said it, and Letty blinked. “It would be most interesting if that other play were to surface after all this time, I should think.” I shrugged. “But it might never happen.” My eyes shot sideways at Jane. She sat very still on the sofa beside Samantha Stevens, who, in contrast, was squirming with delight.
Mrs. Stevens waved her copy of the play in the air. “This will certainly not do for our production.” She shook her head. “I do wonder what on earth Abigail was thinking. I vote that we accept Giles’s play for our fundraiser and get on with the planning.”
Amid the hearty concurrences, I sat back and watched Giles nervously explain to the group that he had actually written the play with Trevor’s help and that Trevor deserved a great deal of the credit. Proud as I was of Giles’s accepting responsibility in this fashion, I kept thinking about my cup of tea.
My cup of tea, which someone had poisoned.