LITTLE Burntenham was an ordinary village about forty miles from London, to which no one, until recently, had paid much attention. In the last year or so, Londoners had “discovered” little Burntenham and its accessibility to the city—it was now a stop on the main line. This soon resulted in a burst of activity in the estate market and the plucking up of some of its falling-down properties that the villagers wouldn’t have had on a bet. Great wads of money had exchanged hands, passing from those of the fools who would be parted from it to the estate agents always ready to grab it. The other change, which the older residents of the village greatly resented, was the respelling of the name so that tourists could find it more easily. It had been decided finally, that since Little Burntenham was actually pronounced Littlebourne, it might as well be spelled that way. It took a lot of the fun out of listening to strangers ask for directions.
Littlebourne, surrounded by pleasant, open country, with one side hemmed by the Horndean wood, was pleasant but undistinguished, no matter how the new inhabitants might spend money on rethatching roofs and exposing beams and painting exteriors in pastel washes. The village had its one street, called the High, which divided halfway along so that it flowed round an irregular patch of carefully tended grass called Littlebourne Green. The High had its sufficiency of shops, just enough so that the villagers weren’t forced to go into the market town of Hertfield, four miles away, except when they wanted to browse through its many antique shops.
As some wags liked to put it, the High contained, among other things, Littlebourne’s four P’s: one pastor, one post office, one pub, and one police station. There was a fifth P with whom the villagers would happily have dispensed: Littlebourne’s one peer.
The fifth P—Sir Miles Bodenheim—was presently giving one of the other P’s the devil of a time. He was in the post office store making the postmistress’s life hell. There had been only one other person waiting for service before Sir Miles Bodenheim had decided to rejuvenate the British postal system. Now there were twelve, snaking down past the bread tray.
“I should certainly think, Mrs. Pennystevens, that you could do the stamps a little quicker if you would keep the half-p’s separate from the others. You would do better to have some sort of system. I have been standing here a good ten minutes simply trying to post this one letter.”
Mrs. Pennystevens, who had been tending a gouty husband for fifteen years, was proof against practically anything. She even refrained from pointing out that the whole of the ten minutes had been taken up with Sir Miles’s arguing the weight of the letter and claiming she was coming up too heavy. Finally, she had had to let him fool with the scales himself.
Back in the bread-shadows, a voice was heard to mumble, “ . . . stupid old sod.”
Sir Miles turned and smiled in a self-satisfied way, delighted to know that someone else was as quick at seeing Mrs. Pennystevens’s deficiencies as he himself. He turned back to her: “I still believe that your scales are malfunctioning. But I daresay there’s nothing to be done; the government has seen fit to place its faith in your judgment. Frankly, Mrs. Pennystevens, I would get a new pair of spectacles, were I you. Yesterday you shorted me two p on a half-loaf.”
Shuffling, shuffling up and down the line and the woman behind Sir Miles whined that she was in the most dreadful hurry . . .
“Yes,” said Sir Miles. “Kindly hurry it up, Mrs. Pennystevens. We’ve none of us all day, you know.”
Mrs. Pennystevens looked at him with steel in her eyes and counted out his change, which he slowly recounted, as he always did, naming each coin. One would have thought, given the puzzled expression, that he was unused to the coin of the realm or the decimal system. Finally, he pocketed the money, nodded curtly to the postmistress, nodded again up and down the line as if they had come not to buy bread and milk but to be received by Sir Miles Bodenheim, owner of Rookswood. He bade them all adieu.
Having accomplished the difficult task of posting his letter, Sir Miles proceeded farther along the High. He considered returning a handkerchief he had purchased in a tiny haberdashery next to the sweet shop, as he had noticed one loose stitch. Fifty pence, and the Empire couldn’t even sew after all these years, he thought. There was only the one smudge, a tiny one in the corner when he had been eating a bit of chocolate, but that should make no odds. He was after bigger game, though, today. He was intent upon Mr. Bister’s garage, down a few doors, where the owner had not given him the right change yesterday for gasoline.
Thus did Sir Miles make his daily rounds. The police station he was saving up for last, where he planned on spending the whole of the morning finding out from Peter Gere, the village constable, why the Hertfield police weren’t moving more swiftly in the matter which had brought Littlebourne to much wider notice.
One would have thought that Sir Miles was the least popular of the villagers. This was not so. His wife, Sylvia, beat him out by a hair. It wasn’t five minutes after her husband had left the village post office that she herself was on the telephone arguing with the benighted Pennystevens.
“I simply want to know how much it will cost to mail it, Mrs. Pennystevens. That seems a simple enough request. I want the parcel in this afternoon’s post. . . . But I have given you the weight—you need merely look it up in the book.” Sylvia Bodenheim’s hand was clicking the garden shears which she had just used to cut the flowers, snapping each one as if it had been the head of a villager. “No, I most certainly will not send Ruth along with a pound note in case the postage is more. You know what servants are nowadays. I don’t understand why you cannot undertake to give me the exact amount . . . My scales are quite accurate, thank you very much. . . . Edinburgh, yes.” The shears clicked now in time to the tapping of Sylvia’s foot. “Fifty pence. You’re quite sure that’s the cheap rate?” Sylvia’s mouth clamped in a grim line. “ ‘As sure as you can be in the circumstances’ is hardly a satisfactory reply. I hope it will not be necessary to send Ruth back again with more money if you’ve misjudged the weight.” Abruptly, and with no farewell, she dropped the phone into the cradle and shouted for Ruth.
• • •
The other two contenders for the Littlebourne murders were the Bodenheim children, Derek and Julia. However, they fell far behind their mother and father merely because of proximity. Derek came down from Cambridge rarely; Julia (whose horse could have got into University before Julia could), was not seen all that much. She spent most of her time shopping in London or hunting with one or another of the local packs. Seldom did the villagers see her from any vantage point except up on her horse in her hacking jacket or black Melton, one hand on her hip.
When the four Bodenheims had to be together (at Christmas, for instance) they entertained themselves by noting the shortcomings of their neighbors, by reestablishing their own superior claims as feudal overlords, and, all in all, generally turning water into wine.
The Littlebourne Murders, as yet unfinished, had long provided practice in the gentle art of murder for Polly Praed. A moderately successful mystery-story writer, she often, when her plots came unglued, would divert herself by practicing various modes and styles of murder on the Bodenheims, singly or together. She favored the denouement which had the entire village coming together to murder the titled family. At the moment she was walking down the High considering a choice of weapons. A dagger passed from hand to hand was out—it had already been used. As she passed the garage considering poisons, she smiled absently at Mr. Bister, who raised his greasy cap. While she was thinking of that dreadful cliché of “arsenic-in-the-tea,” she stopped.
About twenty or so feet away, parked outside of the tiny house which was Littlebourne’s one-man police station, two men were getting out of a car. One was rather slight and ordinary-looking, though it was hard to tell, as he was apparently blowing his nose. But the other, the other made her understand the meaning of being rooted to the spot. He was tall, and if not precisely handsome . . . but what else could one call him? When he reached to take something from the rear seat—was it a bag? was he staying?—a wind blew his hair. He scraped it across his forehead and turned with the other one and walked up the path to the station.
Polly stared at the air and felt mildly seasick.
It was nearly ten. She often went into the station to have a chat with Peter Gere; they were friends. Sometimes they even went across to the Bold Blue Boy for a bit of lunch or a drink. What was to prevent her from simply marching up the walk and feigning surprise—Oh, do excuse me, Peter, I didn’t know—
Her hands shoved deep in the pockets of her coat-sweater, her mind busily worked over the scene that would unfold: there would be the stranger’s open-mouthed astonishment that she was that Polly Praed (a name which had never seemed to get much of a rise even out of her publisher), an appreciation of her wit (which reviewers put on a par with her plots), a quiet appraisal of her beauty (seldom commented on by anyone). At this point she was so deep into sparkling repartee inside the police station that she forgot she was still on the pavement until she heard the raised voices.
She turned to look back toward the petrol station where Miles Bodenheim was waving his swagger stick in the air and Mr. Bister’s face had turned the color of the little red Mini he had apparently been working on. Sir Miles made one last gesture with the stick, and started down the pavement, headed in her direction. Quickly, she crossed to the other side and shot into the Magic Muffin, fortunately open that day. It was a tearoom run by Miss Celia Pettigrew, a gentlewoman of slender means, who kept very capricious business hours. One never could be sure from one week to the next when the Muffin would be open: it was as if Miss Pettigrew were running by some other calendar than the Gregorian and some other time than Greenwich Mean.
Polly watched the progress of Sir Miles, who was marching down the other side of the street and was now just by the police station walk.
She could have died.
Coming down the walk and running bang-up against Miles Bodenheim were Peter Gere and the two strangers. The idea that this brief encounter should fall not to her but to Miles (who deserved prussic acid in his morning egg) made her want to scream. She watched as Peter Gere and the others maneuvered around Sir Miles and separated themselves from him—which must have been like picking a limpet off a rock. The three crossed the street and Littlebourne Green and out of her line of vision. Her face was nearly mashed against the glass.
“Whatever are you staring at, dear?” The reedy voice of Celia Pettigrew pulled Polly back from the window, the blood creeping up her neck as she took a seat at one of the dark, gate-legged tables. Its blue-and-white cloth matched the cottage curtains. “Might I have some tea, Miss Pettigrew?” said Polly in a strained voice. “And a muffin?”
“That’s what we’re here for,” said Miss Pettigrew, moving briskly toward a curtained door at the rear of the room.
To resist further temptation, Polly had seated herself with her back to the windows, so that when the bell tinkled again, her heart leaped within her. Could his course have been deflected walking across the Green? Could—?
No. It was only Sir Miles, come to hector Miss Pettigrew within an inch of her life. Although Miles Bodenheim vied only with his wife as the first one to dispatch in The Littlebourne Murders, she was almost glad to see him now.
It never occurred to Miles that anyone wouldn’t be, so without preamble he dropped his stick and cap on the table and sat down. “Saw you come in here. Thought I’d join.” He twisted his large frame in the chair and bellowed: “You’ve got customers out here, Miss Pettigrew!”
Polly closed her eyes as the sharp rattle and shattering of dishes came from the curtained alcove.
“Butterfingers,” murmured Miles. To Polly he said, “Well, Miss Praed, and are you working on your new thriller? Been a long time since you’ve had one out, but I expect the last reviews put you off your feed a bit, didn’t they? Look at it this way, though. It’s not what those idiots think, it’s the sales, what? Though they weren’t too brisk, were they? Sylvia tells me all the ones in the Hertfield shop are still there. Oh, well . . . ” He ran his hands against his hair, smoothing it. There was a bit of dried egg on his lapel; since there usually was, Polly wondered if it were the same dried egg bit, or fresh from this morning. “We’ll have to put your book down on the Christmas list for Ruth and Cook. Sylvia says they spend rather too much time reading trash—film magazines, that sort of thing. Where is that idiot woman?” He wheeled around in his chair again as Miss Pettigrew shuddered through the drapery, looking extremely pale.
“Yes, Sir Miles?” she said through lips nearly riveted together. “You needn’t have shouted like that; you gave me the most awful fright—”
“You need something for your nerves. Bring another cup. There’s enough in that pot for two. What are those things?” He poked at what were quite obviously muffins on the plate she deposited before Polly.
“Carrot muffins.”
“Good God, woman! Bring me a scone.”
“I don’t do scones, Sir Miles.”
He sighed loudly. “Bring me some of that anchovy toast.”
“I only have that in the afternoon, as you know.”
Elaborately, Sir Miles pulled a turnip watch from his watch-pocket, clicked open the case to let her know his time of day was more reliable than hers. True, it was only ten. So he settled for, “You really do not get enough custom to be always splitting hairs with your patrons, do you?”
When Polly observed poor Miss Pettigrew’s narrow frame visibly beginning to shake, she put in, “If it’s not too much trouble, Miss Pettigrew, I’d really fancy some myself. You do make such delicious anchovy toast; I’ve heard people rave about it—”
As Miss Pettigrew, somewhat mollified, moved toward the rear, Sir Miles said, “Delicious? What’s delicious about it? It’s straight out of a tin. All the stupid woman has to do is spoon it up and slap it on some bread. But it’s preferable to this muffin—” He poked the plate again. “How does she manage to make muffins the color of a mouse?” He hummed as they waited in silence for the toast.
Polly was about to break her rule of never asking Sir Miles a question when Miss Pettigrew appeared with a plate on a tray. “Too bad you had to be put to the trouble of making up two orders,” he said breezily. “And Miss Praed has let the muffins go cold.”
Stone-faced, Miss Pettigrew retreated behind her curtain.
His mouth full of toast, Sir Miles said, “Whole village has gone mad, far as I can see. First it’s those beastly letters—” He smiled nastily—“didn’t write ’em yourself, did you? Rather your line, isn’t it?”
Polly reddened. “Poison-pen letters are not exactly the same thing as writing mysteries.”
He shrugged. “Since you got one yourself, I expect it makes no odds. Though you could have done that to divert suspicion. Toast?” Handsomely, he shoved the plate in her face. “Not that I’m surprised Mainwaring and Riddley got one. Both of them carrying on with the Wey woman like that. No better’n she should be, that one. And now we’ll be in all the papers, police putting themselves about looking for that body—”
It was the opportunity she wanted. Casually, she asked, “Who was that with Peter Gere you were talking to?”
Sir Miles studied the nibbled edges of his toast. “Policemen,” was all he said.
That was the way with Miles. He’d talk the eyes off a peacock until you wanted him to say something and then he’d clam up completely.
“From where?”
He did not answer this, but said instead, “About time they sent someone to clear up this mess. If we had to depend on Peter Gere for protection we’d all be dead in our beds. I was about to tell him so—”
Polly was saved from stuffing the muffins down his throat by the fresh tinkling of the bell over the tearoom door.
• • •
The next person to enter the Magic Muffin was Emily Louise Perk, ten years old with no sign she had grown since she was eight. Her small-boned frame and triangular face, mournful brown eyes, strings of yellow hair hanging about her pointed chin, shabby little hacking jacket and jeans, all proclaimed her to be quite a pitiful child.
Emily Louise Perk was anything but pitiful.
Her unkempt appearance had nothing to do with a neglectful parent or a poor one. If her hair never looked combed and her costume never changed it was because Emily Louise was up long before her mother, up before the rest of the village, up before God, seeing to her interests, chief among them being her pony, Shandy. Shandy was stabled, oddly enough, at Rookswood, the Bodenheim manor. Emily was permitted to keep her own pony there in return for taking care of the Bodenheim horses. Since Emily Louise knew more about horses than anyone from Hertfield to Horndean, they let her alone. That she was not even plagued by Sylvia Bodenheim was in itself a remarkable feat, testimony to Emily’s remarkable facility for either getting what she wanted out of grown-ups or ignoring them completely. She was permitted to slop about freely in the stableyard and even to enter the kitchen for tea and tidbits served up by the Bodenheim cook, who was fond of Emily Louise. Thus, unlike the other village children whom the Bodenheims gladly squashed like stray cats and dogs, Emily was permitted, metaphorically speaking, to live.
And live she did rather high on the hog because she knew everything that went on in Littlebourne. She was not a gossip, but she certainly knew the going rate of exchange. News flowed back and forth through her four-foot frame as if she were an electrical wire.
Polly happily called out to her and pulled a chair round for her to sit in. If anyone would know, she would.
As Emily sat down, Miles said, “Thought you were supposed to be up at the house currying Julia’s horse.” His iron-gray brows furrowed.
No frown, however, was any match for Emily Louise’s. She always appeared to be in a brown study. “Today’s Saturday. I don’t do spit on Saturday.” She looked at the muffin plate and sighed. “It’s carrot again. I wish I had a hot cross bun.” She clamped her hands atop her head and looked at Polly.
Polly called to Miss Pettigrew, who, seeing Emily, immediately procured a plate of buns and a fresh pot of tea. Miss Pettigrew was not immune to the charms of Miss Perk, either. They spent rather a lot of time over tea and talk.
“Thank you,” said Emily, who did not place herself above manners. “There’s a policeman in the village, a new one.”
“I know,” snapped Sir Miles. “Met the chap already.” He dusted his trouser knees and drank his tea. “He’s from Scotland Yard.”
Scotland Yard. Polly’s mouth dropped open. She cleared her throat. “What’s he doing here? I mean, is he staying?”
Apparently unable to supply any more information, Sir Miles passed it off with a general comment about the inefficiency of police in general. “All running about cock-a-hoop, none of them seem to know what they’re doing.”
Emily ate her bun. “He’s going to find that body, I expect. He’s staying at the Bold Blue Boy. They dropped off their stuff there. He’s a police superintendent.”
“Did you, ah, happen to hear his name?” asked Polly.
Emily did not provide this essential bit of information. Instead, she drained her cup and shoved it toward Polly. “Tell my fortune, please.”
Polly was loath to drop the subject, but perhaps the tea-leaf reading could be turned to that account. Sir Miles sighed hugely, as if they had chained him to his chair, forcing him to listen to this nonsense.
Polly tipped the cup and looked down at the meaningless pattern the small bits of black leaf left on its surface. All she saw was something that looked like a ragged bird. “I see a man, a stranger.”
“What’s he look like?” Emily’s chin rested in her clenched fists. The eternal pucker between her brows deepened.
“Tall, good-looking, about forty—”
“That old?”
“ . . . chestnut hair, uh, brown eyes—”
“Gray.”
“Gray?”
“Rubbish,” contributed Miles.
“Go on!” said Emily.
Looking at the wingless bird, Polly said, “Some kind of danger, some sort of mystery.” Polly shrugged her shoulders. Ordinarily her imagination was sprightlier, but today she couldn’t seem to make it click.
“He’s got a nice smile and a nice voice,” said Emily, supplying the missing details. Then she stood up, her legs slightly bowed, her feet turned in. She had found a bit of string which she was winding thoughtfully about her finger. “Do policemen make much money?”
“Ho! Poor as churchmice,” said Sir Miles, hoping it was bad news.
Apparently it was. “I can’t marry anyone who hasn’t got a lot of money. I’d need it for the horses. One day, I’m going to have a lot of horses.” Then she turned and walked out the door.
• • •
Detective Superintendent Richard Jury had been in Littlebourne under an hour and had already turned two of its women to jellies.
Though Emily Louise Perk seemed made of starchier stuff than Polly Praed.