MULBERRY COTTAGE WAS NEXT ON MY AGENDA. Miss Dyer had said they used a wheelbarrow to transport Mr. Hoyt, so if something had fallen out of his pockets, it was most likely it had landed in there. But I still looked along the path to be certain it hadn’t been lost along the way. At least there was only one logical way for them to have gone, along the lane straight from their cottage to Trillwell Lodge.
As I approached Mulberry Cottage, I found myself with another dilemma. I’d had no qualms about poking around in Lord Hector and Mr. Briggs’s yard without asking, but I wasn’t sure what I ought to do about Mulberry Cottage. I was fairly confident they’d allow me to poke around, but that was because I believed their version of events. If I was being properly objective, then telling them I was looking for anything that might have fallen out of Mr. Hoyt’s pockets wasn’t a good idea. If I was wrong and they were involved, it would give them an idea of where the investigation was going and the chance to plant something in a way that would be helpful to them. I could just hear Inspector Wainwright saying that was what became of becoming friendly with murder suspects. The most galling part was that I was fairly certain Inspector Burrows would say something similar.
But I was in luck. When I approached Mulberry Cottage, no one was in the yard, and the cottage had the definitely look of someplace that was empty. I tried the gate and found it unlocked, so I let myself into the front garden. Briefly, I considered knocking at the door in case I had misread the area and the ladies were peering at me through the window, but I told myself to be as objective with them as I’d been with the residents of Trillwell Lodge and went looking for the wheelbarrow. Best to get the most intrusive over first, then I could examine the area near the gate where they had found the body. I assumed the wheelbarrow would be kept with the rest of the gardening supplies, and it seemed most likely that would be in the back garden.
I’d only had a glimpse of the back garden along the side of the cottage, but it was more or less what I’d been expecting. A compact area of well-tended lawn with a small table and chairs set up near the back door, more rose bushes and several flower beds, each planted according to a different pattern which no doubt made them more interesting to paint, and three small sheds along the back of the property.
The first thing to do seemed to be to find the wheelbarrow. I had no doubt Inspector Wainwright had sent someone to examine it as soon as he’d heard Miss Dyer’s description of moving the body, so there was little chance of me finding anything useful in it, but at least it would give me an idea of how the process had been carried out.
Fortunately, the wheelbarrow was easy enough to find. It had been left out by one of the sheds. As everything else had been tidied away, I wondered if that meant that the police were planning on looking it over again and so it had been left convenient for them. Of course, it was quite possible that Miss Hayworth and Miss Dyer didn’t want something that had been carrying a dead body near the rest of their gardening tools, although that did cause one to wonder why they would have used it to begin with. Reminding myself I was being objective, there was also the possibility that they were hiding something in the shed and didn’t want the police to go inside, so had left what they were most likely to examine out on the lawn. That meant the shed was the first thing I ought to look at.
Unfortunately, that was harder than it seemed. The door was locked with a very modern padlock, not that sort of thing that could be easily opened with a hatpin. If my tinkering friend Kate had been with me, she probably could have managed it, but it was far beyond anything I could do. I walked around the shed to see if there were any windows, but there wasn’t even a convenient knot in the wood. I turned my attention back to the wheelbarrow.
As I’d thought, there wasn’t much to be learned from it. It was a sturdy wooden one, not new but not particularly old. They had probably acquired it when they moved into the cottage. If anything had fallen inside the wheelbarrow, it had already been found. There was nothing inside, not even twigs or grasses left over from gardening. I knelt to examine the front wheel, but all of the dirt and leaves caught on it seemed to fit with what I saw around me. Still, at least I knew their story of moving the body was plausible. The wheelbarrow was large enough and sturdy enough to do the job. I gave it a small push and noted that the wheel seemed to work well, so they should have been able to manage the short distance to Trillwell Lodge just as they’d described. As I walked back to the gate, I kept my gaze on the grass in case something had fallen out of the wheelbarrow as they’d put it away, but nothing caught my eye, and the lawn had been well tended, so something out of place would have been noticeable and therefore noticed by Constable Taylor or Constable Edwards.
Back at the gate, I did a more thorough search of the ground where Miss Dyer had described finding the body and Mr. Reynolds had described dumping it. Both seemed to have described the same area, so I knew more or less where to look, but again there was nothing, and the short grass would have made it easy to spot anything there was to find.
So no better off than I had been when I started unless you counted having ruled out two places, I continued on to the previous stop in Mr. Hoyt’s journey. The churchyard. Mr. Reynolds had described moving the body as trying to get it to the nearest place out of the way of the ladies going for their church meeting, so he would have taken the most direct route, which was to continue down the lane, cross the footpath at the ford, and along to the churchyard. It was also a good choice, being flat and relatively deserted. But to be thorough, I also tried going across the bridge on the other side of the ford in case he hadn’t wanted to get his shoes wet, although that added a rather tricky bit of going up along the riverbank to get to it, not easy to do with a body.
But there was absolutely nothing to find on the path as I walked. I assumed the police had been over it as well, as had any locals, children, ramblers, and who knew what else. But at least now I knew.
This time, the churchyard was empty when I got there, which would certainly make it easier to go poking around, although again I had very little hope of finding anything after Constable Edwards had searched. Mr. Reynolds had said he’d found the body by the side gate, so that was the place to start looking. The gate swung out into the lane, so a body leaning against it would definitely seem to fall out into your path. I could see how Mr. Reynolds would have been shocked by that, although not shocked enough to go for the police, it seemed. Just inside the gate, there was no formal path, but the grass had been trampled down by countless feet, so it was as good as. It also meant there was no place just by the gate for something like a wallet to be hidden.
I turned my attention to the small flowers and weeds growing along the wall near the gate, too close to the stones to be bothered by foot traffic. Nothing there but a few bits of discarded newspaper, all too old to have been related to the murder. I did find a number of bent flowers and crushed leaves, which seemed to suggest that I was in the place where Mr. Hoyt had been left, but no wallet or anything I would expect to find from his pockets. That meant I would be continuing on to the cheese shop.
That was going to be a tricky one. I doubted Mr. Elliott was going to let me go upstairs and poke around in his flat, but I wasn’t sure how else I could be sure the wallet hadn’t been lost there. And I’d already checked the lane in back where the body must have entered the shop; I’d have noticed a wallet then.
While I considered the best way to go about determining the missing wallet wasn’t in the cheese shop, I had a bit of a walk around the churchyard. There were some grasses by the back gate which had been trampled almost flat. It was quite a distance from the place where Mr. Reynolds had found the body, but it seemed worth having a look, more because it would give me a bit more time before I had to decide how to approach Mr. Elliott than because I thought it would be related.
It was a good thing I did go looking. Clearly, Constable Edwards had also thought the back gate was too far from the place the body had been found to be worth searching, but I’d barely pushed aside the top layer of grasses when I spotted a brown leather wallet. I took a clean handkerchief from my pocket and used it to gently pick up the wallet. It was used, but not weathered, so not something that had been out in the elements for long. I straightened up and opened the wallet. There was a stack of slightly faded business cards for “J. Hoyt, Sales Representative, Mrs. Quimby’s Quality Tinned Goods. As good as you would make them.” So this had been his. I poked through the compartments and found a small amount of money, so he hadn’t been robbed, a receipt from a pub in Bristol, and a card for a barber in Chipping Campden.
So the wallet wasn’t going to be as useful as I’d hoped. Not dropped at the crime scene, merely as Mr. Elliott had been moving the body. Although why on earth would Mr. Elliott have used the back gate to enter the churchyard? It would have been faster and more direct to go through the side gate, or to simply toss him over it, than to walk along the stone wall to the back gate. And why carry him clear across the churchyard to the other gate rather than leave him somewhere along the way? There were plenty of headstones to lean him against, and trees, bushes, even a small bench. Any of those would have been closer. It seemed I would have a few more questions for Mr. Elliott after all, although I didn’t think any of them would be any easier than asking to search his flat would have been.
I wrapped the wallet in my handkerchief and put it in my pocket. Now I would have to bring it to Inspector Wainwright and tell him how I found it. I paced off the distance from the gate to the spot where I’d found the wallet, being careful not to step on any evidence even though I was certain plenty of people had already been by, including most of the ladies’ group and Mr. Simmons, which I supposed made Mr. Reynolds’ concern about shocking the ladies a little more probable, then looked for anything that would point to exactly where I had seen the wallet. I didn’t want to mark the spot in case it confused any evidence there, so I had to settle for saying it was just in front of a large, pink weed. Hopefully, that would be enough for him to find the place.
I left by the back gate and tried to determine what path Mr. Elliott would have taken from there to the shop, but it didn’t make much sense. To reach the lane along the back of the shops I had taken the first time, I would have had to walk along the wall almost to the side gate, which brought back the old problem of why use the back gate at all. So that left the other direction.
But that quickly proved to be an odd choice as well. It took me to another, wider street, one direction leading to the front of the church and the other to the high street. There was no convenient, sheltered path where one could carry a dead body without being noticed. All of the side streets that crossed it seemed to be at least somewhat busy, with the fronts of cottages facing them on both sides, plenty of places to be spotted out of a window or by someone doing a bit of gardening. Eventually, I was on the high street, where someone carrying a body was sure to be spotted.
So why had Mr. Elliott chosen that route? I was beginning to think it was the sort of questioning Inspector Wainwright ought to do. Something that odd no doubt had some bearing on the case. Besides, me bringing him a clue instead of poking around on my own would please Inspector Wainwright and stop me from having to figure out how to question Mr. Elliott again. That just left the matter of how to get the clue to Inspector Wainwright at the station all the way in Stow-on-the-Wold, although as we were living in the cottage where the body was found it was quite likely he or one of the constables would end up at our cottage sooner rather than later for another look around. It would be simple enough to pass on the wallet and the new discoveries then. Which left me with nothing to do but to make my way back to Oakwood Cottage, except perhaps a bit of a wander through the high street shops and perhaps get a bit of lunch.
Mr. Elliott’s shop was one of the first that I passed, and I was quite glad I’d decided against questioning him right then. He had what seemed to be several groups of walkers inside, all ordering food and hampers. He would not have appreciated having to stop to answer my questions any more than he would have liked having all of his customers hear that he was involved in a murder investigation. I passed his shop and continued down the high street, planning to get a bite to eat from somewhere else.
It seemed to be a morning for tidying up loose ends, so I went into Mr. Burton’s shop. There were no other customers, but Mr. Burton was behind his counter. He smiled as I came in. “Miss Pengear, right? From Oakwood Cottage.”
“That’s right. I was hoping you had another of those excellent cheese sandwiches.”
“I think I can manage that. It’s nice to be appreciated.” He went to the table behind the counter and began assembling the sandwich. “I hope you’re having a nice holiday here. Lovely place for walking. And we have some very good artists in the area.”
“Yes, I met a couple of them at Mulberry Cottage.” He didn’t seem opposed to talking while he worked, and surely he wouldn’t want to turn away what was beginning to be a return customer, so I chose my words very carefully—his sandwiches were excellent, and I didn’t want both of my local sources angry with me—and asked, “Do you mind my asking, what were you and Mr. Reynolds arguing about the day I was in here?”
“You mean when Mr. Hoyt’s... Oh dear, you found him, didn’t you?” He stopped slicing bread and looked over at me.
“Yes, it wasn’t quite how we planned to start our holiday.”
“I should think not.”
“But you can see why I’m interested in everything that happened that day.”
Mr. Burton turned back to his bread. “Of course. Well, that was an old argument, and one that’s settled now. Mr. Reynolds was giving the shop in Stow-on-the-Wold a better discount than he gave me. He insisted it was due to the size of the order, but when Mr. Hoyt was the representative, the discounts were the same. I happen to know that Mr. Sundur, he owns the shop in question, orders tinned goods from three different suppliers, so our orders aren’t that different in size. I’ve been arguing it with Mr. Reynolds ever since I found out. But that’s all been resolved. When he was in yesterday, he offered me an extra five percent off, and I thought that was good enough.”
“That seems very considerate of him.” I wasn’t sure that it did, but Mr. Burton seemed pleased with it. “And how did you find out the difference?”
He looked over at the door. “I probably shouldn’t say. But you did find the body, so I suppose... It was in the pub. Mr. Reynolds was there having dinner when I stopped in to deliver their order. Mr. Hoyt was minding the bar, and I saw him look over at Mr. Reynolds. It was a very odd look, as if he knew what he was seeing but didn’t know what to do about it. So when I brought his order up to the counter, naturally I glanced over as he was checking it. And Mr. Reynolds was looking at his order book, at the page for Sundur’s shop, and I saw the discount he was giving them.”
“Did you say anything?”
“Not at the time, no. I didn’t know what to make of it. He’d had the route for almost a year by then. So I came back here and thought about what to say, and when he came in, I told him I knew he was giving them a better deal. He denied it at first, so I told him I wanted to see the account. He didn’t want to show it and gave me some nonsense about confidentiality, so I told him I’d already seen it in the pub. That was when he told me the story about order sizes. I was tempted to cancel my order right there, but I wasn’t sure who I would get tinned goods from on such short notice, and there are people in the village who like to support the company as they are somewhat local, so I told him I was considering changing suppliers and left it at that. It’s been an on-going argument for months now. When you came in, I was telling him I would write to the company supervisors directly and ask for the same rate he gave Sundur.”
“And now he’s changed his mind?”
“Yes, after almost four months of arguing, but I think the murder may have shaken him a bit. It’s shaken all of us.” Mr. Burton wrapped my sandwich in paper and brought it over to me.
“I’m sure. Thank you for telling me.” I paid for my sandwich and left.
I brought my sandwich to the same bench Mrs. Albright and I had sat on and considered what I’d learned while I ate. It wasn’t very much.
Mr. Hoyt’s wallet had fallen out when Mr. Elliott had moved him, so there was no need to go looking for it, but it also wasn’t terribly helpful in locating the murder scene.
Briefly, I considered if I had found another motive, but if Mr. Hoyt had been considering blackmailing Mr. Reynolds by telling Mr. Burton about the discounts he was giving another shop, it was a poor attempt at it. Mr. Burton had been placated by a discount of five percent. That was hardly earth-shattering, so if Mr. Hoyt had attempted blackmail, it would have been simple enough for Mr. Reynolds to thwart it by offering exactly what he had just offered. No point to killing over that.
No, my best chance at finding suspects still seemed to be having Miss Hayworth and Miss Dyer introduce me to some of the ladies in the area at the memorial service. It seemed likely that a few of his paramours would show up, if only to make it seem as if they hadn’t been his paramours. Perhaps I would find a suspect there. I finished my sandwich and headed back to the cottage.
~ * ~ * ~
When I entered the cottage, it was to find Constable Edwards and Constable Kittering were taking up all of the space in the entryway. They seemed to be fiddling with the police tapes, which seemed a hopeful sign. Constable Edwards spotted me first. “Sorry we’re in the way, and I think we’ve driven Mrs. Albright to the neighbor’s, but you’ll be happy to know you can get to the kitchen without going outside, or will be able to once we finish moving this around. Still can’t use the sitting room, but not sure you’d want to considering.”
“I’ll be happy with kitchen access. What convinced Sergeant Harris?”
“Nothing, but Inspector Wainwright started complaining about having to go all the way ’round if he wanted his tea, so we’re to make a path.”
“Then I am very grateful to Inspector Wainwright’s tea.” I didn’t want to do anything that might interfere with getting indoor kitchen access back, so I added, “I’ll be upstairs and out of your way, but when you’ve finished, I do have some information for you.”
Both constables laughed. Constable Kittering moved so I could reach the staircase. “We knew you wouldn’t leave it alone, not when you found him. One of us will be up to let you know when we’ve finished with the entryway.”
“Thank you.” As I climbed the stairs, I grinned to myself. Inspector Wainwright would never have his tea in the kitchen of a crime scene, most especially not ours. He would go to his room at the inn if he wanted to be alone or to the pub if he thought gossip would help his case. That told me that something I had said to him recently had proved helpful to his case. I wished I knew what. It certainly wouldn’t be anything I’d found that morning.
I didn’t want to make the constables try to guess which room was mine, so when I got upstairs, I went to my room long enough to retrieve a book and a chair and set myself up near the window at the end of the hallway. From there, I could see across the lawn to Mrs. Otway’s cottage, although not well enough to see if Mrs. Albright was indeed there. I would be able to see if she started for home though. I spent a few minutes going over my morning, but there was nothing I hadn’t already considered several times from several angles, so I picked up my book and started reading.
It was not as long of a wait as I’d feared. There was a good bit noise, mainly the scrape of furniture moving about, and after no more than half-an-hour, I heard footsteps on the stairs and Constable Edwards came around the landing. “I take it you did a bit of poking around this morning?”
“I should start calling it that when I talk to Inspector Wainwright. Poking around does seem less like I’m stepping on his investigation. But yes, I did go into Eybry, and I did have a little look around as I went.” No reason to tell him I’d been looking for the original murder scene. That was definitely stepping on Inspector Wainwright’s investigation. “And I have something for him; you can save me the trip to see him.”
“Happy to,” Constable Edwards said. He did not make any sign that he knew it was seeing Inspector Wainwright, not the trip, that I was hoping to avoid.
If I was going to hand it over, I might as well tell him all of it, even the not useful bits. It might save them a bit of time if they didn’t have to look at something I’d already examined. “There’s a bit of a story of how I found it.” I told him about going to the various places where the body had been found, hoping I was making it sound as if I’d merely happened across them on the way to the village, although I knew he wouldn’t really believe that. Still, it meant I didn’t have to tell him exactly why I’d been poking around. I took the wallet out of my pocket and unwrapped it. “This is Mr. Hoyt’s. I found it in the churchyard near the back gate.”
“The back gate? We’d been told he was found by the side gate.”
“That’s what everyone told me too. But this was in the trampled grass near the back gate.” I gave him the best description I could of where I’d found the wallet.
“Well, I didn’t think to look there, as everyone said he was by the side gate, but thank you. Perhaps someone was going to steal it off his body and their conscience got the better of them. Or they realized they’d likely be arrested for murder. Or it did fall out of his pocket near the gate, and when they spotted the body, they realized it was more serious than they’d thought and left it. In any case, I’ll see the inspector gets this.”
“I don’t mind if you’d like to tell him you’re the one who found it.” I had the feeling that would be easier for him, both because it would allow him to avoid saying he’d missed looking by the admittedly unlikely back gate and because he could avoid bringing me up, something which I was sure would make everything easier.
“It’s kind of you to say, but the inspector knows you’re poking around, so he’ll figure out you found it sooner or later. Besides, he didn’t mention the back gate either, so I’m not the only one who didn’t think to look there.”
“You might tell him it was really quite unlikely. The side gate would have been so much more convenient for Mr. Elliott.” I described my examination of the two paths.
“I’ll be sure to let him know that too. Perhaps it was a robbery after the fact, and the thief dropped it when he realized how it would look.”
“I suppose, but there wouldn’t have been much time for it between Mr. Elliott leaving the body and Mr. Reynolds finding it.”
“Then perhaps Mr. Elliott noticed the dropped wallet and tossed it back into the churchyard to hide it.”
“Perhaps.” That did seem more likely, but why would he want to hide it? As long as it wasn’t in his shop, it didn’t point to him. But I didn’t think arguing with Constable Edwards over it was productive, and it was something I ought to leave to Inspector Wainwright anyway, so I thanked Constable Edwards again for restoring our access to the kitchen and walked downstairs with him.
Constable Kittering was outside. It seemed he’d been sent to let Mrs. Albright know she could return, as she was following him across the lawn from the direction of Mrs. Otway’s cottage. Once we’d bid the constables good evening, Mrs. Albright and I enjoyed the novelty of going from the entryway to the kitchen without going outside.
“This is certainly much easier,” Mrs. Albright said as she got the kettle. “Did they tell you what changed Sergeant Harris’s mind?”
“Inspector Wainwright’s tea.” I told her the story Constable Edwards had told me.
“Well, I never. I suppose he must have been grateful for some clue you found. Pity he didn’t let slip which.”
“And if he has a good clue, then he should be perfectly capable of solving it himself.”
“I suppose so. And that means we can start our holiday properly.”