‘We’ve done really well,’ Tom said, in answer to Aunt Hetty’s request for a progress report. ‘The only people on our list left to speak with are Doctor Owen and the elusive Mr Hargreaves.’
‘I do find it quite extraordinary that Mr Hargreaves was not at home,’ Aunt Hetty said, after Tom had told her about their three attempts to call on him. ‘I cannot imagine where he would have been on a Saturday afternoon.’
‘He’s not a soccer fan, is he?’ asked Fran, thinking of the absent Dr Owen.
‘Not so far as I know. And surely, if he had known he was going to be away from the house, he would have mentioned it when he called this morning?’
‘Perhaps he had forgotten he was going out,’ suggested Tom. ‘Isn’t he quite elderly?’
‘Elderly and senile are not the same thing,’ harrumphed his aunt. ‘As for Doctor Owen, why not telephone him and ask if you can call there this evening? He will have been back from Nottingham long ago by now. They can’t play football in the dark. And I suggest you stress that it’s to be a private word,’ she added, by way of an afterthought. ‘Otherwise you will have Dulcie hanging on every word. I regret to say that she has always been rather inclined to eavesdrop.’
‘Yes, ma’am, right away.’ Tom pretended to salute as he marched off in the direction of the telephone.
He returned a few minutes later to say that Doctor Owen would expect them after supper, at around nine o’clock.
‘And now,’ said Aunt Hetty, ‘I will leave the two of you alone to discuss your findings. I’m burning with curiosity, but it’s far better I don’t know anything, because that way I can’t accidentally give something away in the village. In detective stories, that’s always a danger, isn’t it? An innocent remark into the wrong ears and hey presto, there’s another corpse. Also …’ She hesitated.
‘Go on,’ Tom prompted.
‘Well, I was thinking things over while you were out and realized it was very wrong of me to suggest that Dulcie Smith could in any way be a suspect. She’s a rather foolish, misguided woman, but she has always been perfectly harmless. One should not point a finger just because one doesn’t much like a person, or thinks them a little extreme in their views. I’m afraid you must both think rather badly of me for suggesting she might be involved.’
‘It’s perfectly all right to have suspects,’ Tom said. ‘Someone has to be the guilty party. And if you don’t think it’s the Reverend Pinder …’
‘He is our vicar, Tom, a man of the cloth.’
‘And you don’t think that Mr Ripley poisoned his wife …’
‘Mr Ripley has always seemed such a nice man and he has been a very generous benefactor to St Agnes’s in one way and another. He has always been noted for his sociable tendencies too. Look at the way he invited you both to lunch.’
‘Well, someone must have done it!’ Tom exclaimed.
Aunt Hetty stood in the doorway of the drawing room, a troubled look on her face. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I almost feel as if I have been in some way responsible for bringing this trouble down on the village. Perhaps I ought never to have asked you to look into all this. Perhaps it is all in my own imagination.’
‘Don’t be silly, Aunt Het. Mrs Ripley was poisoned. That is definitely not in your imagination.’
‘I suppose not.’ His aunt appeared slightly mollified. ‘Yes,’ she nodded, ‘Mrs Ripley was definitely poisoned. There is that, of course.’
‘And that is still just about the only fact at our disposal,’ Fran said, as Aunt Hetty closed the door behind her. ‘I’ve consumed heaven knows how many calories to hardly any benefit whatsoever. If our investigations continue along these lines, I won’t be able to fasten my skirts.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Tom. ‘A few slices of cake and the odd scone never did anyone any harm. For goodness’ sake, don’t turn into one of those women who’s banting the whole time. It’s such a bore. Not that you could ever be a bore,’ he added hastily.
Fran tried not to blush, because it was silly to react like a schoolgirl, but she felt the unwelcome warmth rising in her cheeks all the same, so she kept her head down and focused on the notebook in which she had attempted to scribble down the substance of their various conversations. ‘So,’ she said, after flicking back a page or two. ‘From the maid, Alice, we learned that Miss Tilling would definitely have admitted Reverend Pinder if he had called while Alice was out posting the parcel.’
‘And Mrs Smith says she was out that afternoon, so she wouldn’t have seen any callers.’
‘Right. In fact, there’s anecdotal evidence that if Mrs Smith had spotted the vicar arriving at Miss Tilling’s, she might have found some excuse to invite herself over. My next note is headed “Pascoe”. We need to ask Miss Rose about him.’
‘Bearing in mind,’ Tom said with a wry grin, ‘Mr Pascoe’s contention that we ought not to believe a word Miss Rose tells us about him.’
‘Immediately under Mr Pascoe’s name, I’ve got Mr Hargreaves. It’s most vexing that he has something which he wants to say to us and yet after three visits to his cottage, we still haven’t managed to hear what it is.’
‘It may well turn out to be nothing,’ Tom said. ‘According to Aunt Hetty, it’s about something odd that Mrs Smith said to him. But as Mrs Smith is given to saying odd things to people at just about every opportunity, it’s probably of no significance at all.’
‘It may be no more than that Mrs Smith is claiming the three deaths are all connected to the problems at the parish church. Mr Hargreaves probably doesn’t realize she’s told lots of other people exactly the same thing already.’
‘That’s true. We know that Mrs Smith has been suggesting this to all and sundry, because she made it her business to share her ideas with the Brayshaws too.’
‘Do you think she hoped to frighten them?’ Fran asked. ‘After all, both the Brayshaws and Mr Hargreaves signed the letter to the bishop, which puts them next in line for this supposedly divine retribution.’
‘I think it’s more likely that she singled them out in the hope that it would persuade them to change their ways and put their wholehearted support behind Reverend Pinder.’
‘As for Mrs Smith herself,’ Fran scanned her notes as she spoke, ‘we really got nothing useful out of her at all.’
‘She’s such an infuriating woman,’ Tom said.
‘She’s not very likeable, I agree, and she hardly ever appears to have a good word to say about anyone … with the exception of Reverend Pinder, of course.’
‘We didn’t exactly learn much from him,’ Tom said.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Firstly, I’ve noted that he was quite reluctant to speak with us at all. It was also interesting to hear what he had to say about the sequence of events on the last day of Mrs Ripley’s life. According to Reverend Pinder, he only arrived a very short time before Mrs Ripley died. If that’s so, then he can’t have slipped her a fatal dose of arsenic – or at least, if he did, it was academic, as she was dying anyway.’
‘Which rather messes up the theory that Reverend Pinder is our murderer,’ Tom said.
‘Something else I noticed,’ Fran said. ‘According to Reverend Pinder, as well as sending for Doctor Owen, the family had also sent word asking Mr Ripley to come home from the bank, which would be the natural thing to do. But according to Miss Rose, the message she took from Mademoiselle Bertillon didn’t tell him to come home because Mrs Ripley was very ill, but to come home because Mrs Ripley was dead.’
‘That’s an important discrepancy. Something else to ask Miss Rose about.’
‘Then there’s the fact that if Reverend Pinder is right, Doctor Owen didn’t see Mrs Ripley on the final day of her illness until he arrived that afternoon, by which time she was already dying – and that puts Doctor Owen out of it, as well.’
‘I hadn’t realized that Doctor Owen was in it,’ Tom said. ‘Or at least no more so than anyone else.’
‘But don’t you see, Tom, that if you take our conversation with Reverend Pinder at face value, it pretty much excludes all outsiders. If he is right, then only someone within the Ripley household could have got the poison to Mrs Ripley.’
‘We’ve never taken Mademoiselle Bertillon through precisely what happened that day,’ Tom said. ‘I suggest we need to talk to her again.’
‘I agree.’
‘So our list of interviewees is down to Doctor Owen and Mr Hargreaves, after which we need to revisit Mademoiselle Bertillon and Miss Rose.’
‘And Florence too,’ Fran said. ‘To see if she and Mademoiselle Bertillon’s accounts of Mrs Ripley’s last day agree.’