Fran felt absurdly nervous as she and Tom drove in through the gates of the large Georgian rectory, but the visit quickly turned into an anti-climax, for the maid who eventually answered the clanging doorbell informed them that the Reverend Pinder was out on parish business.
‘Blow it,’ said Tom when they were back in the car. ‘Who should we try next, do you think?’
Fran glanced at her wristwatch. ‘It’s getting on for twelve,’ she said. ‘It’s not very good form to drop in on people just before lunch.’
‘You’re right. I wonder what time Doctor Owen and his sister Mrs Smith sit down? But perhaps we’d better leave them until this afternoon. Hello … Who’s this?’
Tom’s eye had been caught by a man wearing rather shabby tweed plus fours and a matching jacket who had paused in the act of walking his spaniel past the rectory gates. He now appeared to be hesitating, as if unsure whether to enter or not. As Tom pulled the car forward a few yards and nosed it out into the road, the stranger waited, with the obvious intention of initiating a conversation, so Tom wound down his window and said good morning.
‘Good morning. Pardon my asking, but would you be the young persons commissioned by Miss Florence Ripley to look into her stepmother’s death?’
‘Tom Dod.’ Tom removed a hand from the wheel and extended it in the stranger’s direction. ‘And this is my companion, Mrs Black.’
‘I see, I see.’ After fumbling the dog leash from one hand to another, the man clasped Tom’s proffered hand for a brief reluctant shake, rather as if he suspected a trick of some kind, then said, ‘You’ve just been to visit the Reverend Pinder, I see.’
‘He wasn’t at home,’ Tom said. ‘I don’t think we have been introduced?’
‘Pascoe. Frederick Pascoe. I daresay my name has already come to your attention.’
‘I can’t say that it has, Mr Pascoe.’
‘Oh …’ The man seemed momentarily taken aback. ‘Then I suppose you haven’t spoken to that bossy harridan at the bank yet. You should not take any notice of a word she has to say about me, Mr Dod. Not a word. I am a wronged man – a thoroughly innocent party, that’s what I am. And if people are talking about the sending of the letters, well it turns out that I was right all along!’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Pascoe, but I’m afraid I have no idea what you are talking about,’ Tom said. ‘Perhaps you would care to explain.’
‘There is no explaining to do!’ the man burst out. ‘That’s the whole point, sir. I know that wretched woman at the bank will try to foist the whole blame on to me, somehow or other, but the point is that I did not know for sure when I sent the letters. Only now, of course, with everything being looked into and that woman at the bank wanting to lay the blame elsewhere, I know it is only a matter of time before she will have her say. She knows what was said, you see.’
‘What was said about what? Which woman do you mean?’
‘There is only one woman at the bank, you dunderhead,’ thundered Mr Pascoe, who had gone so red in the face that he looked about to explode.
Sensing his master’s mood, the spaniel gave a couple of indignant barks, as if by way of corroboration.
‘Do you mean Miss Rose?’ asked Tom, but the man was already walking off down the road, carried mostly on the tide of his own indignation.
‘What a peculiar fellow,’ said Fran. ‘You know, now I come to think of it, I’m sure that someone has mentioned the name Pascoe before, but I can’t remember how it came up. Was he one of the disgruntled parishioners?’ She was fumbling for her notebook as she spoke. ‘He certainly isn’t on the list of people Florence Ripley has made arrangements for us to talk with.’
‘Mmm. He doesn’t strike me as someone who’d be particularly enthusiastic about having a tête-à-tête with us. Let’s go back to Aunt Het’s for a bite of lunch. Then we can ask her to elucidate on the peculiar Mr Pascoe. He must be a local if he’s walking his dog along here, and I bet there’s no one in Durley Dean that Aunt Het doesn’t know.’
Aunt Hetty had laid on cold meat and pickles, ‘so that you can tuck in whenever it is convenient’. As for Mr Pascoe, ‘I’ve never thought him particularly odd,’ she mused, ‘though he does have a very short fuse and is the sort who easily falls out with people.’
‘Indeed he does,’ Tom said. ‘I doubt that we’d managed to exchange more than a dozen words before getting into his bad books. And he certainly has it in for Miss Rose. He called her a bossy harridan. Has there been some kind of problem between himself and Miss Rose?’
Aunt Hetty laughed. ‘Lots of men don’t particularly like Miss Rose. She is very firm and capable, you see, and men like Mr Pascoe expect all women to behave just as their wives do, saying, “Yes sir, no sir, three bags full, sir”. It would not go down at all well if, for example, Miss Rose refused them admission to Mr Ripley’s office at the bank.’
‘I think I’ve got it now,’ Fran said. ‘On the morning when I met Mademoiselle Bertillon in the village, she told me that when a Mr Pascoe’s business failed he blamed Mr Ripley and swore to take revenge on him.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Aunt Hetty. ‘There was talk of something like that. One doesn’t know all the details, but Mr Pascoe’s business did go under a year or two ago and I believe their circumstances have been somewhat straitened ever since. They had to let their cook go and they have stopped entertaining altogether since Mrs Pascoe has been doing the cooking.’
‘And is it true that he swore to take revenge on the Ripleys?’
‘Well, Tom dear, I really don’t know anything about that, though it would be easy to imagine Mr Pascoe saying something of the kind in the heat of the moment. He’s such a blustering type of man.’
‘We need to ask Miss Rose what he’s talking about,’ Fran said. ‘It might be significant.’
‘There now!’ Aunt Hetty pretended to smack the back of her own hand. ‘I almost forgot to tell you. Mr Hargreaves came here this morning hoping to catch you. Like Mr Pascoe, it seems that word of your mission on behalf of Mr Ripley has reached him, and he said he would like to talk with you. When I explained that you were already out, he said he would appreciate your calling on him this afternoon, if you can spare the time.’
‘Hargreaves … Remind me where he fits in,’ requested Tom.
‘I am not sure where Mr Hargreaves “fits in”, as you put it. He is a regular worshipper at St Agnes’s and not at all enthusiastic about all the changes.’
‘Wasn’t he one of the signatories to the letter of complaint which was sent to the bishop?’ asked Fran.
‘He is the only surviving complainant,’ said Aunt Hetty. ‘Or at least the only one who still attends St Agnes’s. Mr and Mrs Brayshaw were the others, but they have left.’
‘Gosh,’ said Tom, as he piled piccalilli on to his plate. ‘We’d better get to him before someone bumps him off, too.’
‘Really, Tom!’ his aunt objected. ‘One oughtn’t joke about such things.’
‘Now my dear,’ she turned to address Fran. ‘You really must have more than that for your lunch, or you will simply waste away.’
‘Leave her alone.’ Tom laughed. ‘You are always trying to feed people up. Tell me, did Mr Hargreaves give you any idea what he wants to talk to us about?’
‘I think it may have been something to do with Dulcie Smith. He said, “I suppose you’ve told them about Mrs Smith?” and then he gave me a sort of knowing look. I didn’t know quite what to say to that. Then he said, “It was just something she said the other day. It troubled me, but I don’t want to go to the police, you see”. So I said, “The best thing will be to tell my nephew and his colleague, Mrs Black. They will know what to do”.’
‘It sounds as if Mr Hargreaves thinks that Dulcie Smith knows something about the murders,’ Fran said. ‘Miss Venn, you once said you had your suspicions about a particular person. That was Dulcie Smith, wasn’t it?’
‘I do hope this isn’t going to go beyond these four walls.’ Aunt Hetty spoke reluctantly. ‘It does seem so dreadful to suspect anyone. And, of course, there is no evidence whatsoever. It’s just instinct really. One feels there is something … not quite right … about that poor woman.’
‘Poor woman, my eye,’ Tom remarked, when they were climbing back into the car in readiness for their afternoon house calls. ‘It seems to me everyone falls over themselves to make allowances for that woman and be nice to her, despite the fact that she’s quite venomous to other people.’
They decided to call on Mrs Smith and her brother first, but met with disappointment when the maid, a timid-looking girl with a lisp, informed them that the doctor had driven into the city in order to watch Nottingham Forest play, and his sister was not at home either, having gone to help hand out the hymn books at a wedding in St Agnes’s.
‘Bother! That means Father Pinder will be tied up too,’ said Fran. ‘I can’t say the happy couple have chosen the best weather for their big day. It looks as if it’s going to pour down again in a minute. Let’s try Mr Hargreaves next, as he was so keen to see us.’
‘It’s quite surprising, isn’t it?’ said Tom. ‘We thought it might be difficult to get people to talk to us, but instead even people who aren’t on Florence Ripley’s list, like Mr Pascoe and Mr Hargreaves, are positively seeking us out.’
In order to reach Mr Hargreaves’ cottage they had to backtrack towards the church. They initially had some trouble locating the address, which turned out to be a modest dwelling tucked down a little alleyway at the rear of the churchyard. As the path was too narrow for a motor car, the Hudson was left on the main road and they undertook the fifty or so yards on foot. It turned out to be another wasted journey, for although they allowed plenty of time for Mr Hargreaves to respond to their summons on the door knocker, it soon became apparent that there was not going to be an answer.
‘Dear me,’ said Fran. ‘We really should have made firm appointments with people. We’re wasting an awful lot of time, just traipsing around not finding people at home.’
They had more success when it came to gaining an audience with Clara, Miss Tilling’s one-time cook, though she could add nothing to what Alice the ex-housemaid had already told them. Clara was now working for Mr and Mrs Cocklington, who insisted on providing them with tea and cake and were very keen to help, though they had no real information to give.
After that they called on Mr and Mrs Brayshaw, who also plied them with tea and cake, but although the Brayshaws had been the other signatories to the letter of complaint to the bishop regarding Father Pinder, they too had little to add to what was already known.
‘I’m sure you will think this a strange question,’ Tom said, ‘but did you ever think it a little odd that several of the people who signed that letter have died unexpectedly?’
‘It is a strange coincidence,’ Mrs Brayshaw said. ‘Of course, people in country districts like this are inclined to get all sorts of silly superstitious ideas into their heads. Personally I have never given any credence to that kind of nonsense, but I daresay that if you asked Harriet, our parlour maid, she would say that someone had put some kind of curse on the signatories. I’m afraid poor Harriet is much addicted to attending these wretched séances which are all the rage nowadays. One tries to discourage it, but discipline among domestic staff is so much more difficult to achieve than it was in the old days.’
‘I don’t believe we’d made any connection between the three deaths and the fact that they all happened to be party to the letter until Mrs Smith pointed it out,’ said Mr Brayshaw. ‘Mrs Smith came up to my wife in the village one morning and made some foolish remark about Mrs Ripley’s death being another sign, but that’s exactly the sort of silly thing Mrs Smith would say, I’m afraid, and we didn’t take any notice. I feel sorry for Doctor Owen. He’s a good sort of chap, and I think he has a lot to put up with. Imagine listening to that sort of drivel over the breakfast table.’
‘There was a lot of stupid talk when Mr Vardy died, too,’ Mrs Brayshaw said. ‘It was the fault of that woman who keeps the beerhouse, saying he’d seen a ghost in the lane, or something of the sort.’
‘I’m not sure she actually said that, my dear,’ Mr Brayshaw demurred.
‘Well, that was the interpretation some people put on it. I distinctly recall Reverend Caswell saying something about the danger of falling prey to old superstitions when he conducted Mr Vardy’s funeral. I’m sure he meant all the talk that went round among the labouring classes about there being ghosts in that lane. Although Mr Brayshaw and I were no longer regular worshippers at St Agnes’s, we naturally attended the funeral as we’d known Mr Vardy for years, and it was particularly nice that Reverend Caswell came back to take it. Quite like the old days.’
In response to gentle probing from Fran about Mr Vardy’s drinking habits, however, Mr and Mrs Brayshaw emphatically denied any knowledge of his private life. Nor did they know anything about Miss Tilling’s private lending library.
‘Not really up my street,’ Mr Brayshaw admitted. ‘I must say, I prefer good old Raffles and Bulldog Drummond, myself.’
‘I’m sure you’re right about there being no connection between these sudden deaths and the letter to the bishop,’ Tom said. ‘But I wonder if you can clarify something for me? How was it that these particular people came to sign the letter? I mean, did you have some sort of meeting to discuss it?’
It was Mr Brayshaw who replied. ‘No, no, nothing as formal as that. I believe the letter was originally Miss Tilling’s initiative. There had been a lot of upset, people were leaving the parish church, and there had been one or two private conversations between what might be termed the dissenters about what could possibly be done about it. Being a daughter of the manse herself, so to speak, Miss Tilling thought of appealing to the bishop. It was fairly well known within the congregation which of us supported Reverend Pinder wholeheartedly and which of us did not. Several people, my wife included, had crossed swords with the vicar over one thing and another. My wife had taken issue with him after he refused to baptize an infant over some technicality or other—’
‘No babe should be denied a Christian baptism,’ Mrs Brayshaw put in.
‘So when Miss Tilling composed her letter, my good lady here was an obvious person to approach as a co-signatory and, naturally, I said I would be happy to sign it too. I believe Mr Hargreaves, Mr Vardy and Mrs Ripley were all approached by Miss Tilling on a similar basis.’