By Wednesday evening Fran was in a position to provide Tom with her first progress report and duly telephoned him, using Aunt Hetty’s wall-mounted telephone, which was even more old-fashioned than the instrument that graced her mother’s home.
He greeted her enthusiastically. ‘I was hoping you would call. How are you getting on?’
‘Quite well, I suppose. It took me most of yesterday to get here, but this morning I took the bus into Nottingham and went to the main library there. They had all the old newspapers, just as they do in Kendal, so I made a note of all the relevant details.’
‘Oh, jolly good work.’
‘It didn’t take long. Both inquests were pretty cursory affairs. Mr Vardy’s body was found by one of his own farmworkers. He was a widower who lived alone and the woman who came in to cook and clean for him didn’t generally get there until nine o’clock, whereas the farmworkers turned up at first light. When they realized that he hadn’t appeared to give them any orders, some of them started on their usual tasks, but a couple of the men began to walk over the farm to look for him and they spotted him lying face down in the pond. There was an autopsy, of course, performed by the local doctor, Doctor Owen, who said that Mr Vardy had obviously drowned. There was nothing at all suspicious, and there were no signs of foul play.’
‘The last person to see him alive?’ Tom prompted.
‘Was Mrs Morgan, keeper of the Bird in Hand beerhouse. It seems that Mr Vardy preferred the beer at Mrs Morgan’s to that served at the other inns in the village, so he went to the Bird in Hand for a drink most evenings, cutting across his fields to get there. Mrs Morgan was called to appear at the inquest and she said that when he left, at about half past nine, it was not only dark but also getting foggy. He was her last customer of the night and she followed him to the front door, then watched him walk down the path.’
‘Presumably the worse for drink?’
‘Mrs Morgan seems to have been somewhat reluctant to confirm that, one way or the other. She said he was “no worse than on any other night”, and when asked how many pints he had drunk she said – and I quote – “I don’t rightly know”.’
‘Well, thank goodness for such a helpful witness!’
‘Quite. The next-to-last customer in the Bird in Hand that night appeared as a witness too, and he took the same line. He said that he left the beerhouse about a quarter of an hour earlier than Mr Vardy, and that Mr Vardy had not drunk any more than usual that evening. On being asked the obvious next question, he affected not to have any idea how much that usually was.’
‘Hmm. They do say that a publican’s relationship with their regulars is bound by the same kind of confidentiality as doctors have with their patients. Perhaps a similar code is observed among fellow drinkers?’
‘I think it would probably have been to spare the relatives. The newspaper mentioned that there was a married niece who had come up from Oxfordshire for the inquest, and you know how reluctant people are to speak ill of the dead.’
‘Do there appear to be any relatives who might be in line to inherit the farm?’
‘That’s another negative. Mr Vardy was a tenant, so he had no property to speak of. He didn’t have any surviving children and he hadn’t made a will, so his savings will be split between quite a large number of grown-up nieces and nephews.’
‘So, according to Mrs Morgan, Mr Vardy set off for home as usual?’
‘That’s right. It seems that he invariably walked along the lane – it would be the same lane we went along, but from the opposite direction – and then he took a shortcut across the fields, which, as we saw last Saturday, would have taken him right alongside the pond. When they found him, he was still wearing his working boots and a heavy coat. If he went too close to the water’s edge, slipped in the mud and fell, it might have been quite a job for him to get out again.’
‘He’s sure to have had stuff in his pockets,’ Tom mused. ‘Pocket knife, loose change, door keys … and once his clothes got waterlogged—’
‘And if he’d had a bit too much to drink, he could have become disorientated when he went into the water. Essentially it has accident written all over it, but there’s just one little loose end. Mrs Morgan said that as Mr Vardy went out of her front gate and she stepped back and half turned to close the front door, she fancied that she heard Mr Vardy speak to someone. The coroner asked her if she’d actually seen or heard anyone else in the lane and she said “no”. Apparently the local police asked around and no one came forward to say they were in the lane that night or that they saw Mr Vardy leaving the beerhouse, so in his summing up the coroner suggested that either Mrs Morgan must have been mistaken or else Mr Vardy might have made an exclamation of some kind, perhaps after stubbing his toe.’
‘Stubbing his toe!’
‘Stubbing his toe – or something like that.’
‘So there’s a faint suggestion that there was someone else around that night?’
‘I’ve put “See Mrs Morgan” on my list of things to do.’
‘Good show. Who’s next?’
‘Well, Mrs Ripley should be – Mrs Alice Elizabeth Ripley, to be precise. But there wasn’t an inquest, because Doctor Owen had been treating her before she died and he put her death down to natural causes.’
‘Which hardly squares with the police digging the poor woman up again. How’s that going, by the way?’
‘It’s all rather horrid. Mr Ripley had to be present when the police exhumed the body on Monday night, and rumour has it that when they opened the coffin, the poor man had to confirm that the remains were those of his late wife.’
‘Good God, how awful!’
‘Some big cheeses from London have done an autopsy …’
‘I bet that was fun. The body must have been in a pretty vile state of decomposition.’
‘Do stop interrupting, Tom. I can’t spend half the night on your Aunt Het’s telephone, think of the cost.’
‘Of course not. Sorry, do go on.’
‘The local rumour mill has it that the London chaps have put various bits of the late Mrs Ripley into sealed jars and are taking them off for analysis, and in the meantime what’s left of the body has been reinterred.’
‘They must suspect poison, then? Sorry, sorry, I won’t interrupt again.’
‘As you know, according to Aunt Hetty, Mrs Ripley was taken ill at a lunch party, but no one else showed any symptoms. The doctor was called in – like most people in the village, the Ripleys are patients of Doctor Owen, Mrs Dulcie Smith’s bachelor brother – and he didn’t appear to think it was initially all that serious, but then Mrs Ripley suddenly died a few days later. I’ve added Mademoiselle Bertillon to my list of people to talk to, because she was living with the family at the time and it strikes me that it might not be too difficult to get her talking about what happened.’
‘Good plan.’
‘Finally, there’s Miss Tilling. There was an inquest, of course, because it was a sudden death. Doctor Owen – he was Miss Tilling’s doctor too – gave her a fairly clean bill of health. Couldn’t recall any problems with dizziness, said she was steady on her feet, no previous history of falls or anything of that kind. The police couldn’t find any evidence of a loose rug at the top of the stairs or anything else that might have caused an accident, so basically it’s a complete mystery why she fell.’
‘What about the statue?’
‘Well, that’s where the plot thickens. The statue hit the back of her head with sufficient force to fracture her skull, so it wasn’t just a glancing blow.’
‘Could someone have hit her over the head while she was standing on the landing, then staged it to look as if she had fallen down the stairs?’
‘If they did, then they’d gone to an incredible amount of trouble. One of the bannister rails had been dislodged where Miss Tilling knocked into it, and a small tear in her frock corresponded with a strand of material found on a carpet tack that was slightly proud of the fifth tread up – which suggests the dress was torn as Miss Tilling came hurtling past. But the point is that if you hit someone over the head when they were standing at the top of the stairs, the chances are that they would fall from top to bottom anyway.’
‘So all you would need to do to fake the accident would be to take the statue down and place it next to the body as if it had fallen on her as she came tumbling down the stairs.’
‘Quite so. And if you swept everything else off the shelf too, that would add a bit of dressing to the scene.’
‘Isn’t it a bit strange that none of this appears to have occurred to the police?’
‘My impression is that they did consider other possibilities at first, but the policeman who gave evidence told the coroner that they had ruled out foul play on the grounds that nothing within the house had been tampered with or stolen and there was no sign of a break-in. According to the maid, Miss Tilling was unusually particular about keeping her doors locked. The front door had a Yale lock and the maid had turned the key on the outside of the back door when she left the house, in accordance with the household’s usual practice. She reckoned that Miss Tilling hardly ever went into the kitchen, and even if she had gone to answer the front door bell herself while the maid was out, she would never have admitted a stranger to the house when she was there on her own.’
‘That only rules out people she didn’t know. What about people who might benefit financially?’
‘Another non-starter, I’m afraid. Miss Tilling left small legacies to her household servants, a fairly generous dollop of cash to her goddaughter who lives in Australia, a few hundred pounds to the parish church, and the remainder of her money goes to a charity which takes care of retired horses.’
‘Aha. It was Dobbin what done it.’
Fran ignored the lame joke. ‘It looks as if money wasn’t a motive. One thought which did occur to me is that the killer must have known that Miss Tilling was alone. You couldn’t risk hitting her on the head and watching her tumble down the stairs while there was someone else in the house – in case she screamed and the servants heard that or the sound of the fall, and came rushing into the hall to see what was going on.’
‘You think it was an accident then?’
‘Perhaps – but the statue business niggles me.’
‘Well done, anyway. You’ve found out a terrific lot already.’
Fran smiled to herself as she ended the call. Tom would always say that, she thought, even when she had found out next to nothing at all.
Aunt Hetty was waiting for her in the drawing room. ‘What does Tom make of it all?’ she asked.
‘It’s too early to draw any real conclusions,’ Fran said. ‘We need to find out more about all three cases if we can.’
‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
‘Well,’ Fran paused. After thinking for a moment, she said, ‘I need to talk with Mademoiselle Bertillon, but I’m not sure how to go about it. I can’t just drop in unannounced.’
‘Hardly the most tactful time to make a call,’ Aunt Hetty agreed. ‘Your best chance of bumping into her accidentally would be in the High Street. She tends to do a little household shopping at around ten thirty, most weekdays. She uses Fulchers butchers and Mr Wainwright is their regular greengrocer.’
God bless domestic routines, Fran thought. Aloud, she said, ‘Is there a tea shop in the High Street?’
‘I’m afraid Durley Dean doesn’t possess such an establishment, but if you want to keep her talking, you could profess to be walking the same way. I’m sure I can think of some little errand that would take you in the direction of the Ripley house. Let me think … That’s it, you could be dropping off a chutney recipe to Miss Grimes – she lives out past the Ripleys. I don’t believe she’s ever asked me for one, but she’s getting so forgetful that she won’t question it if you turn up with one.’
‘That’s brilliant, Miss Venn. Thank you.’
‘Goodness, all this subterfuge! It would be quite exciting if only it wasn’t all so tragic. Is there anything else?’
‘Only that I need to speak with Mrs Morgan, who keeps the Bird in Hand beerhouse.’
‘Oh dear, I’m not sure I can help you with that. I’m not acquainted with Mrs Morgan, I’m afraid.’
‘That’s all right. I’m sure I’ll find a way.’