Chapter Five

Three or four men, including Simon, stepped in to separate the two combatants before the landlord threw us all out.

Once the two were at a safe distance apart, one of the men stepped between them. “John, what did you think you were doing?”

“I was startled by that bang. It was at just the wrong moment as I was letting the dart go. It was an accident. I hope I didn’t hurt you, Peter.” He sounded genuinely concerned.

“They shouldn’t let you loose with sharp instruments, John. It was just by luck I wasn’t hurt,” Peter grumbled. His hands were down at his sides now and the two men holding him back decided to release him.

“I really am sorry. That was entirely my fault. Here, someone take my turn with the darts,” John said.

“No, I think we’ll put these up for a while,” the landlord said, putting everything back into a small wooden box.

“Don’t play darts again. You’re a menace,” Peter said, one finger raised to shake in John’s face before he walked outside.

People went back to talking in small groups. I turned to George. “Has Peter always had that quick temper?”

“Yes. Fortunately, it cools off fast, too.” He turned the conversation to the newest Dorothy Sayers mystery and I didn’t get an opportunity to ask any more questions that evening.

* * *

The next morning at breakfast, I mentioned that I was hiking over to Bletchley to catch the train into London, but that I felt uneasy at the end of the drive. I was certain that when I reached the lane, I passed the spot where the woman I replaced was murdered.

“No,” Maryellen said, “it was down the lane quite a bit. It’s a spot you can’t see from the house or the army camp.”

“Do you want us to show you?” Marianne asked, sounding more kindly than ghoulish.

“You know where it is?”

“We all know where it is,” Maryellen said, as if I were mentally defective to not realize that everyone knew all the interesting gossip.

“If you’re finished, we’ll show you. We call it the spookiest spot in Bloomington,” Marianne said.

“You’re a bunch of ghouls,” Gwen said, letting her fork clatter onto her plate.

We finished, cleaned up, and then the sisters and I put on our coats and left for a walk. When we reached the end of the drive, we turned right, away from our bus stop.

The trees over our heads had bare branches, but the hedges along the lane were still thickly leaved. And it was the hedges that would keep the army camp, the manor house, and anywhere on the other side of the road from seeing a murder committed. Since the murder took place after dark on a cold night, it was unlikely anyone would have been around to see the act even without the hedges blocking the view.

The spot that the sisters pointed out was near a sharp bend in the road, keeping anyone from seeing far past that point in either direction. “Why does the road turn this way?”

“There’s a beck on the other side of the hedge that cuts a sort of S-shape around some trees. The lane follows the same pattern as the beck, which is an old boundary line,” Marianne told me with a note of authority in her voice.

“How did you find that out?”

“Talking to an old man in the pub in Old Bricton. That’s the village if you keep going in that direction.” Maryellen pointed down the lane.

“That’s where the local Women’s Institute meets,” Marianne said. “That’s where we take our knitting for the soldiers. They have lectures sometimes. Most of their programs are during the day, though, so we can’t attend since we’re at work.”

“We do a lot of things with the WI at home. Otherwise, the countryside gets pretty boring in the winter,” Maryellen said.

“That’s why we can knit so fast. We used to race at home,” Marianne said.

I was suddenly very glad I grew up in London. “Is that why you volunteered for war work? To go someplace where there was more going on?”

“Of course. Plus they pay us. The salary here is good. There are few jobs in the countryside up north, and it’s time we earned our own way,” Marianne said.

“Our neighbor, a big landowner who was a colonel in the Great War and worked with some of the men here, suggested we get in touch with the Foreign Office, even though we don’t speak a bit of anything but English,” Maryellen told me as they stopped.

“He quite turned Maryellen’s head with talk of glory and excitement,” Marianne said.

“It makes a change from home. Nothing exciting or glamorous happens there,” her sister grumbled. “I’ve been bored out of my head since I finished university. I don’t know how Marianne stood it the last year I was away.”

“I was bored silly without Maryellen. There are so many people here, it’s as if it were Paradise,” Marianne told me.

There was nothing to see to tell us there had ever been a crime committed there. The dried grass and low branches of the wintery landscape looked undisturbed. “There must have been quite a scene with the police all over the road,” I said, looking around.

“When we heard the first siren go by, we thought something happened in Old Bricton,” Maryellen said.

“When the second went by, we went out to take a look. We had no idea, even when we got there, that it was Sarah. The constable kept us far away,” Marianne said.

“If you were all there except Sarah…?” I asked.

“Oh, no. Rosalie and Gwen and Aileen wouldn’t go out. And this was a day after Sarah had really disappeared, as we found out,” Maryellen said.

“It’s sad, really,” Marianne said. “We all got along with Sarah. She was quiet and sweet, and she never bothered anybody.”

“She was just there,” Maryellen said.

What an epitaph.

“She was nicer than ‘just there,’” Marianne said.

“She was sneaky. We all had the feeling at one time or another that someone had been in our rooms going through our belongings, and we came to the conclusion it was Sarah. She denied it, but I think she was a thief,” Maryellen said.

“That’s not fair,” Marianne said.

“I wasn’t the only one who had money disappear. Money disappeared when Sarah was around to take it,” Maryellen said.

“Well…,” Marianne said. “Maybe…but I don’t think she was really…”

We walked back in the biting air, and then I readied to walk to Bletchley to catch a train to London. As I was about to walk out the door, Helen Preston asked if she could walk to the station with me.

“Of course.” I’d met her at dinner and breakfast, but I hadn’t had a chance to speak to her before now.

“Won’t take me but a minute,” she said.

Five minutes later, I had started to walk down our hallway to find out if she were coming when she appeared out of the last door on my side. “Here I am. Ready?”

“Yes.” I refrained from saying anything cutting. We walked out into the sunshine and started down the drive.

When we turned onto the lane, Helen said, “You’ve been asking a lot of questions about Sarah Wycott.”

“I’m stepping into a murdered woman’s shoes. I don’t want to make a wrong move.”

“I don’t think that’s likely.” Her pale eyes studied my face.

“If we knew why she was killed, I’d agree. But we don’t. And until it’s cleared up, I won’t feel safe, and frankly, neither should you.”

“You subscribe to the random nutter in the village theory?”

“No. I’ve read too many mysteries to buy the random stranger solution. Of course, in real life, that may be the solution more often than we realize.” I watched her as closely as she watched me.

“No one has looked at the boyfriend.”

“No one seems to think there was one.”

“No one asked me.” Helen lowered her voice, although the lane was empty. “I had told them there was a family emergency, so I was at my father’s home in London the night her body was found. No one asked me anything. But I knew she had a boyfriend. He’s stationed at the army camp in the main part of the house.”

“Is it someone she just met?” I asked.

“Oh, no. He’s from her hometown. They were sweethearts before she came here. Then he signed up and found himself next door.”

“That was lucky.”

“Until she was killed. By a brutal strangulation. Don’t they teach that in the army?” She looked at me with raised eyebrows.

“Yes, they do. And you haven’t mentioned this to the police?”

“No, and I don’t intend to.”

“Why?” No wonder the police couldn’t get anywhere with this murder investigation.

“Can you imagine telling the police something they would use to hang someone? It’s barbaric.”

“Surely you’re not the only one who knows about this young man.” I hoped she wasn’t. A lovers’ quarrel would solve this murder quickly.

“I think I am. None of us were supposed to know, but Sarah kept sneaking out at night. I finally followed her. She’d go up to the perimeter fence and he would meet her there. They’d talk very quickly. They’d also hold hands through the fence. At least once they met up inside the house.”

“Is it easy to get into the main part of the house?” I asked.

“Of course. Beside the staircase to the dining room, there’s a small passage off the kitchen that leads to an even smaller hallway with a door at the end. That leads to a ground-floor drawing room. Sort of a place to take visitors the staff weren’t certain would be admitted, but didn’t want to insult. Sort of a waiting room while the family decided whether to greet the visitor. Now the room is an office, but I think no one is in it at night.”

I smiled at Helen. “A good place to meet someone without alerting anyone else.” Then I lost my smile. “How do you know so much about the house?”

“The parties they gave here, last spring and summer as well as during the past few years, were legendary. They made the newspapers and people were talking about them. I was curious about the main house. I snuck in one night and wandered around.” Helen shrugged. “No one caught me. But there’s nothing to see there. The furniture and paintings are all gone. Now it’s nothing except a bunch of classrooms.”

We walked almost to the village of Bloomington before I asked, “What’s Sarah’s boyfriend’s name?”

“I don’t know.” Helen looked straight ahead.

“Seriously?”

“I never asked her.”

“And she never said? That doesn’t sound as if she were a woman in love.”

There was a pause, broken only by our footsteps. Then Helen said, “She called him Charlie. That’s all I know.” Another pause and then, “I’ll tell you something else. Someone else has been slipping out to meet someone.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. I’d hear footsteps or see a shadow, but when I’d get to a place to see who it was, I would always miss them. They moved fast.”

“You’re sure it wasn’t your imagination?”

“Positive. Someone on our floor of Bloomington Grove is an expert at moving around without being seen.”

All this information was a place to start. “Where are you going in London?” I asked.

“To visit my family. I’m from south of the river.”

“I live north of the center.” In a flat where I hadn’t changed my name yet from when it was Mrs. Denis, in case either Adam or I needed a little anonymity. “Do you have a big family?”

“No. Just my da, my sisters, and a couple of cousins, and a family business to run.”

“What kind of business?” I asked.

“Shall I meet you at the train station at a certain time?” Helen asked, ignoring my question.

“Do you plan to catch a specific train?”

“Tomorrow between eleven and noon. How about you?”

“I don’t know how long I’ll be there. Depends on if my husband is home for the weekend.”

“He’s in the army?”

“Yes.”

Helen looked at me. “This phony war must be getting on his nerves. And yours, too.”

“You’ll get no complaints about it from me.”

“Because it gives the diplomats time to sort out a solution?”

“Because people aren’t getting killed and bombs aren’t dropping,” I told her.

She nodded. “That too.”

The train, when it arrived, was packed with soldiers headed to London or points south. Helen and I stood at one end of a carriage corridor the entire time, balancing against turns and shifts as best we could. I was glad the trip was only a bit over an hour until we reached Euston Station.

We parted company at the Underground station and I headed to my flat. Mail had piled up under my mail slot. I flipped through it, finding a letter from Adam. That I opened immediately.

He missed me. He wouldn’t be home for at least a few weeks.

I would answer him when I returned to the flat, but first I needed to go see Sir Malcolm.

Central London, where Sir Malcolm’s office was in a converted block of service flats, had sandbags piled around the entrances of every government building. His building also had an armed soldier stationed at the entrance, even on a Saturday. Anyone paying attention would know this nondescript block held offices housing some of the most powerful men in our government.

I entered and requested to see the big man himself. After phoning upstairs, the guard on the door summoned a soldier to escort me to his office.

Sir Malcolm was in his usual position at his desk. His back was to the windows overlooking the bare top branches of trees and nearby roofs. He looked up and glared. “Where is your gas mask?”

I opened my large bag and removed the case for the gas mask.

“Clever. I like it.”

“Good.” I sat in the chair facing him across the wide expanse of his desk. “I have need of some background material I’m sure you can ask someone to find out for me.”

“You can’t find out for yourself?” He sounded amused.

“No, I can’t. In one case, the information is in the part of Devon where Sarah Wycott was from, and in the other, I need to know about someone who went to Cambridge but would have finished up two years ago, I think.”

“You think?”

He was being difficult that day. “I can’t be certain about the dates. I’d already left Cambridge. But I am certain about the need for this information. I’ve found two possibilities for Sarah Wycott’s murder that have nothing to do with her work for the war effort, but I can’t get any further with them without your help.”

“We don’t have the resources to send all over England on a simple domestic murder.”

I stared at him in disbelief. “You now believe this was a simple domestic murder? You’ve sent me in to investigate people for a crime Scotland Yard should be solving. Wonderful.” What a waste of my time.

He glared back at me. “I don’t believe it was a simple domestic killing. You do.”

I shrugged, bewildered. “I don’t know what it was. And I won’t know without the information I need you to find out for me while I look closer to home for a traitor.”

“We don’t have time to do your job. No one does.”