CHAPTER NINETEEN

The funeral of Amy Phelps was an odd event. Normally, the death of a well-respected villager would have resulted in a formal, properly conducted affair, with the whole village turning out to make the most of it. The farm labourers would have been given time off to pay their respects, the shop would have closed for a half-day, and everyone would have turned out in their most sombre dark clothes to sing hymns reverently, and see the dear departed interred with all the pomp and circumstances she would have expected. Then everyone would have gallivanted off to the deceased’s home to consume large amounts of free food and alcohol.

And although that was all still happening, it was not all that was happening. Reporters had descended like a flock of carrion crows, as the latest death in the ‘house of tragedy’ had finally awakened them to the fact that they were now on to a major story. Likewise, an inordinate number of members of the public who had hitherto never heard of Maybury-in-the-Marsh found themselves – totally by chance, naturally – walking or picnicking nearby, or visiting the church strictly for brass-rubbing purposes, only to be amazed to stumble upon a funeral.

The police were also in the church, watching everyone, but most ardently, those in the front pew, where the nearest and dearest to the deceased were seated. These included an irate and now visibly worried Murray Phelps, who’d been invited to Inspector Gorringe’s police station yesterday for a ‘bit of a chat’ which had lasted almost all night.

Val, sitting next to Arbie and his uncle somewhere in the centre of the rows of pews, right in the midst of the crush, leaned even closer to Arbie and whispered in his ear, ‘What on earth is Murray doing here? I thought the Inspector was going to arrest him?’

‘Apparently not,’ Arbie said laconically.

He and his uncle were dressed in the suits they always wore for this occasion, and he was very much aware that his uncle was wrestling, as usual, with his starched collar. His relative didn’t often go to church, and Arbie knew that he was merely passing the time, as it were, until they could get on to the baked meats. These were being provided – contrary to tradition – by The Dun Cow Inn, apparently on the orders of Murray Phelps, after a hasty consultation with Jane Brockhurst. Somehow, the thought of the whole village, agog with curiosity, descending on the Old Forge, where another woman had died less than forty-eight hours earlier, was simply too bizarre to countenance.

‘But why not?’ Val hissed at him, earning a speculative look from the wife of the local milkman, who was sitting in front of them, nursing a grizzling infant.

Arbie lowered his voice even more. ‘How should I know?’ he whispered. ‘Buck up, your father’s giving you the eye.’

At this Val instantly straightened up, a guilty flush crossing her face as she saw that, sure enough, her father, now in the pulpit, was watching her disapprovingly. If she’d been able to, she’d have nudged a little further away from Arbie, but such was the crush in the church, that this was impossible.

They were packed in like sardines.

The Reverend Coulton-James had never had to bury a murder victim before, let alone bury one in a village almost febrile with scandal and fright over the death of yet another member of one of their most prominent families. Under the circumstances, he did his best.

In the front pew, Cora Delaney listened to the eulogy with her back ramrod straight and her gloved hands resting neatly in her lap. She had had her funeral outfit sent from home, making sure that her maid had included a rather fine black lace veil. From behind this, she was able to smile grimly and with satisfaction whenever she wanted, secure in the knowledge that nobody could tell how much she was enjoying herself.

To hear the vicar talk, she mused sardonically, you’d have thought that Amy was a cross between an army general and a latter-day saint. Aware that everyone – reporters and sightseers exempted – knew the deceased well, The Reverend gentleman did his best to portray her rigid personality and sometimes upper-handedness as a whimsical and endearing trait. He took great pains to point out all her many – and genuine – charitable contributions over the years. He emphasised how much employment and prosperity the various enterprises of her family business provided for people not just locally but nationwide, and how the village had lost ‘a distinct and much-liked member under such sorrowful circumstances’.

Cora let all this wash over her. She, for one, was not in the least sorry that Amy Phelps was dead, and she suspected that a number of people nearby her were not sorry either. And as the vicar’s attempt at soothing words for his parishioners in these ‘trying times’ echoed around the cool stone interior of the church, Cora went back over the days to that moment she’d found his letter in Amy’s secret drawer.

His name had been Bartholomew Carmichael – but everyone simply called him Bartie. When they’d first met, he had been twenty-three, whilst she and Amy had both been eighteen. In those far-off days, her life had seemed so idyllic – a seemingly never-ending round of house parties and holidays, balls and dances, with light-hearted flirting being the order of the day after ‘coming out’ at court. The Great War hadn’t blighted everyone and life was fun and gay for the young, beautiful and wealthy. Which was nearly everyone in Cora’s and Amy’s world.

Bartie had caught Cora’s eye the moment she’d seen him at old Colonel Fitzhugh’s London fancy-dress ball, just before Christmas, too many years ago now for Cora even to want to calculate. He’d dressed as Lord Byron and had the dark good looks to carry it off. But his personality had been far removed from that famous brooding poet, being bright, uncomplicated and sunny – as why should it not? As the eldest son of a minor lord who, nevertheless, possessed so much land that he could almost have declared it as his own county, he had the world at his feet. And, naturally, his choice of debutants on the lookout for a husband.

And she had caught his eye too, without doubt, Cora thought with satisfaction. Oh, how they’d danced that night! All the wilting wallflowers and maiden aunts had noticed, naturally, and had gossiped spitefully. As if she and Bartie had cared! It wasn’t long before he was regularly picking her up to take her to the theatre or punting on the Cherwell. Bartie had always been fond of Oxford, having taken a minor degree in Literature at Wadham, and they often visited the ‘city of dreaming spires’. She, too, had come to love it, and it was one of the reasons she’d went on to study there herself, a year later, after things had all gone so horribly wrong.

But even Cora, smitten though she was at the time, had had to admit that her wonderful Bartie wasn’t intellectually gifted (unlike herself) but what did that matter? He had a fine seat on a horse, estate managers perfectly capable of overseeing the family farms and a laugh that could brighten up any room.

She, his parents (who had liked and approved of her) and all their friends, not to mention the society pages, awaited the inevitable engagement announcement with some anticipation. Instead, out of the blue, Bartie departed one day on an unscheduled tour of Europe, leaving her a letter that wished her well. Just that, nothing more. But then, nothing more had been needed to be said.

Her parents hadn’t been best pleased and had blamed her for whatever it was that she’d done to lose a very desirable match indeed. In vain did she try to explain that she had no idea what the ‘it’ was that she’d done!

Of course, she’d had her pride, and when he returned from Europe about six months later, made no contact with him. Indeed, she was already in Oxford, studying, and pretending all was right with her world. She even acted ‘vaguely pleased’ for him when friends showed her the announcement in The Times of his upcoming marriage to a minor earl’s buck-toothed daughter later that same year.

After a while, she had resigned herself to settling down to find another match, and of course, being pretty and well-connected, found one soon enough. She had married a good, if somewhat dry and pedantic man, and had children and been content enough, in a way. But the haunting feeling that she had lost out on a golden future had never completely left her. She’d adored Bartie and had been convinced that her marriage to him would have been a happy one. Good-natured, good-looking, amiable Bartie would have suited her very well indeed.

And until the day, many decades later, when she’d snooped in Amy Phelps’s bedroom, she’d never discovered why Bartie had suddenly cooled on her.

But all that changed when she’d found his letter to Amy.

When she’d first recognised his handwriting, the green-eyed monster had reared its head and she’d suspected the worst – that Amy had seduced him away from her. But she soon realised that she hadn’t got that right. Not quite right. For once she’d read the actual lines of his letter – or rather, between the lines – she realised that the betrayal hadn’t been as simple or unoriginal as all that.

That Amy had wanted him for herself and had tried to get him, Cora didn’t doubt. But Bartie evidently hadn’t fallen for her after all, which meant that Amy had been forced to change tactics. So it turned out that the letter from Bartie hadn’t contained the sweet whisperings of one secret lover to another. No. It had been something far more insidious.

On that afternoon not long before Amy’s death, Cora had read the long-ago written words of her dear Bartie thanking Amy for ‘opening his eyes’ to what, she, Cora had been doing. Which, apparently, had been pursuing a titled earl, having set her heart on becoming a countess. That the earl in question was thirty years older than her, and widely ridiculed for the extraordinary amount of hair in his ears and growing out of his nose, seemed to have aroused no alarm bells in her admittedly dim-witted beloved.

Suddenly the sound of organ music made her jump a little, and all around her people were rising to sing ‘Rock of Ages’ and Cora was once more dragged back to the present.

Which was the funeral of her so-called friend.

Of course, Cora knew why Amy had done it. Unable to win the man herself, she’d determined that she, Cora, would not have him either. Amy had always been like that. It was not enough for her that she should win, but that others must lose. For that reason alone, she was not at all surprised that Amy had ended up almost the sole owner of the Phelps family fortune. It seemed now, in retrospect, almost inevitable.

Cora’s slight but pleasant voice rose with the rest as the hymn was sung. And under her veil, her smile never wavered as she eyed the flower-bedecked coffin a few feet away from her. For it was indeed true, what they all said. Revenge really was sweet. And surely, outliving your enemy was the best revenge of them all?

At The Dun Cow, the Inspector munched thoughtfully on a ham sandwich and watched, wearily amused, the antics of the press, who were busy interviewing anyone and everyone silly enough to speak to them. And since they were plying the yokels with beer and spirits, that was quite a few. Although what the more bucolic types could tell them about the life and times of Amy Phelps and her poor niece was moot.

None of the immediate family or closest friends would give them the time of day, naturally.

His eye fell presently on Arbie Swift’s extraordinary uncle. He was currently eating like a Trojan and had already managed to dispose of his shirt collar. But despite the man being a known eccentric who sometimes flew close to the wind, the Inspector was not interested in Uncle. Gorringe had met people like him before. Whilst he might enjoy playing up to his louche and disreputable reputation, there was no real harm or malice in him.

His eye then sought out Murray Phelps, who was at the bar, drinking steadily. Now the same, he was sure, could not be said for that particular gentleman.

He did not doubt the vicar’s daughter’s account of what Phyllis Thomas had told her. But as Mr Murray Phelps had repeatedly pointed out during the mutually unsatisfactory night that they had both spent at the police station, second-hand hearsay meant nothing.

He had simply denied, and carried on denying, that he had ever done any such thing. He, bully and threaten his cousin? Perish the thought! Perhaps, he’d suggested snidely, his dear cousin Phyllis had been feeling guilty about stealing his inheritance, and spreading lies about him was her way of salving her conscience, and paving the way to make her own life more bearable? After all, if people came to believe that he was the devil incarnate, she could enjoy her ill-gotten gains in peace, could she not?

Pressed to explain this reference to her ill-gotten gains further, Murray Phelps, finally beginning to lose his temper, had asked him just what he was using for brains. Surely, he’d expostulated angrily, the Inspector must have realised by now that his dear cousin was behind all those puerile ‘ghostly’ hauntings and such? Who else had a motive for alarming his aunt by playing tricks on her and oh-so-subtly laying the blame at his, Murray’s door? After all, it had worked, hadn’t it? His dear aunt had come to believe that he was behind all that falling-down-the-stairs business too and had written him out of the will, and dear cousin Phyllis in.

And, of course, the Inspector had to admit that the man was making sense. So much so, he’d pressed craftily, that the thought of it must have made him hopping mad. So mad that he was determined to bully his cousin into sharing the money with him, perhaps?

Prove it, Murray had challenged.

And there, of course, was the sticking point. Because Miss Valentina Coulton-James’s word about what Phyllis had told her was all but useless in a court of law without more solid evidence to back it up. And what solid evidence did he have? None. That was how much.

So far, neither he nor the best brains in the county police could even work out how the poison had been administered to Miss Phelps, let alone who had done it. For if the killer had simply gone to Amy’s room and somehow inveigled her into drinking something containing the poison, how and why had they then gone to all that trouble to leave their victim in a room locked from the inside?

The Inspector sighed heavily, feeling the onset of a headache, and valiantly ignoring it, tried to concentrate. If Murray’s theory about the crime was to be believed, Phyllis Thomas must have been the killer of her aunt. Why set up all that ghost business, leading successfully to Murray’s downfall, and then not follow through with killing the woman after the will had been changed in her favour? But even if that were so, it still left him with the same problem – what had it gained her to set up such an elaborate locked-room mystery?

Putting that aside for the moment, Gorringe turned to the latest death. Here, surely, there could be little mystery. Murray had killed Phyllis – who else had a motive? Except, according to his two young amateur sleuths, that made no real sense either, for Phyllis had sworn that she was going to alter her will, leaving it all to charity. Unless, of course, her cousin had killed her out of sheer pique or spite!

Naturally, the first thing Gorringe had done was to get someone on to that business of Phyllis Thomas’s will, but here, yet again, this frustrating and convoluted case continued to do its best to drive him to distraction. For the solicitor Phyllis had gone to had already left on his holidays, choosing a walking tour of Aberdeenshire of all places for his annual bout of relaxation. His whereabouts was being sought, but he’d left no set itinerary and the chances of tracking him down to a small inn or hostel weren’t good.

Just to further set the Inspector’s nerves twanging, it was a small firm, and alas, the very junior partner who was the only other member of it didn’t have the keys to the senior partner’s lock-boxes. So getting a peep at the actual document was also out of the question.

The clerk could tell them, though, that Miss Thomas had indeed called in prior to her death, and that the senior partner had subsequently worked on making out a will for her. Moreover, he could confirm that Miss Thomas had called in just two days later to sign the will, for he himself had been one of the witnesses to the signature. But, alas, he had no details as to the deposition of this document, and until the senior partner returned, therefore, could not confirm how the deceased had left her property.

But for all that, the Inspector was confident that Phyllis’s will, once read, would provide nothing that would contradict the idea that she had left her detested cousin penniless.

He’d had more luck with Val’s idea that Phyllis had been fiddling about with the lady’s jewellery though. Experts had quickly been called in and discovered that, yes indeed, several gems within the various suites of jewellery belonging to Miss Amy Phelps were in fact duds. What’s more, a trawl of the jewellers within a twenty-mile radius of Phyllis Thomas’s home had soon traced the respectable firm who’d been only too happy to remove the gems for the nice gentlewoman, and sell them on, replacing the stones with good quality fakes.

His sergeant had questioned the jeweller closely, and was confident that the man, a thoroughly respectable member of a thoroughly respectable firm, which had never fallen foul of the law or even been suspected of fencing, had carried out the requests in all good faith. As the nervous and unhappy gem smith had pointed out, a lot of genteel families, in these days of rising taxes and dwindling private incomes, had found themselves in ‘embarrassed’ and reduced circumstances, and had thus been forced to realise some of their assets. In fact, the jeweller had informed his sergeant earnestly, Miss Thomas was by no means the only gentlewoman who had come to him over the past few years with jewellery that needed to be ‘discreetly rearranged’.

All of which was interesting but put him no further forward. So, the unfortunate Miss Thomas had been reduced to pilfering her aunt’s jewellery. Did that make her less or more likely to have been the killer of her aunt?

Either way – that lady was now dead herself, and so couldn’t be asked to explain herself.

And so, like a weary tennis ball, the Inspector found himself once more being knocked back into Murray’s side of the court again. During their long night of fruitless questioning, Murray had admitted that Phyllis had already told him that he was not mentioned anywhere in her last will and testament. So, he’d demanded, why would he have had anything to do with her overdose? ‘I gained nothing from her death. It’s as plain as a pikestaff that my silly chump of a cousin just mucked up the dosage of her new and unfamiliar sleeping pills and died accidentally. Nothing else makes sense.’

Of course, it was in his best interests to say all this, and they only had his word for it that such a conversation had taken place. But much as the Inspector might like to see the worst in the man, even he had to admit that it was unlikely that Phyllis Thomas would have kept the change to her will a secret. Surely, the whole point of her making out a new will in the first place was to ensure that Murray would have nothing to gain by killing her? Which meant that she would have gone out of her way to tell him so!

All of which was making his headache worse and bringing him no closer to making an arrest in either case!

Later, he would bring in and question the recently dismissed maid, Doreen Capstan, who seemed by all accounts to have developed a very close relationship with the man of the moment. Putting a scare into her might shake things loose a bit!

He was contemplating this possibility with some pleasure when he spotted young Arbie Swift trying to detach his now somewhat inebriated uncle from the bar, much to a nearby newspaperman’s amusement. The Inspector stepped in to offer his assistance, and between them they managed to manoeuvre a placid, slightly over-affectionate Uncle out into the garden and deposit him under a spreading elm. There he happily contemplated a duck, which was on the lookout for scraps.

‘Thanks, old man,’ Arbie said gratefully. ‘I say, you’re looking rather gloomy and worn out. Bad night?’ he added.

The Inspector knew that the young pup was only fishing for information and smiled grimly, but was nevertheless inclined to indulge him a little. Just a little. After all, he had proved useful so far.

‘I dare say you’re surprised to see Mr Phelps at his aunt’s funeral?’ Ignoring Arbie’s vague and unconvincing denials, he swept on. ‘The trouble is, we have nothing concrete to go on. He might very well have threatened his cousin, but as he so carefully pointed out, we can’t prove it. And it’s not as if he’s the only one with a motive to kill his aunt. By the way, we know now that Miss Phelps would have died very quickly after being poisoned. Not that that helps us much, does it? And as far as motive goes – even the housekeeper has come under suspicion.’

‘Eh?’ Arbie said, opening his eyes wide enough to resemble an owl. ‘Mrs Brockhurst? By Jove, that’s a turn up for the books! What on earth could she have had against the poor lady?’

The Inspector sighed wearily. ‘Oh, my men have been out and about talking to everyone and anyone about the residents of the Old Forge. And one of them unearthed an old scandal going back nearly thirty years. Apparently, the housekeeper, who was a maid at the time for Miss Amy’s mother, had to leave the village for a while to have an illegitimate baby.’

Arbie swallowed hard, not wanting to admit that he’d known that for some time, due to Val’s sleuthing. The less the police knew about what you’d been up to, the better. So his uncle maintained, anyway, and for once Arbie was inclined to agree with him. ‘You don’t say!’ he managed to mumble, conspicuously avoiding meeting the policeman’s eye.

‘It happens more than you’d think,’ the Inspector said, misconstruing his unease and taking pity on him. ‘They get into trouble and go away for a bit to have the babe and put it up for adoption. Or give it to the nuns, poor little blighters.’

‘And one of your foraging constables wormed this out of one of the villagers, I suppose?’

‘Yes. Naturally, we then wondered if the housekeeper might not have secretly resented Amy Phelps and her mother for all these years. In her own mind, she might have convinced herself that they could have let her stay on as maid and keep and raise the child herself. Impossible of course – no respectable family could have kept on a maid in those circumstances. But Jane Brockhurst might not have thought so. In the end, though, we tracked it all down and found out that the poor babe didn’t survive the birth. So she had no reason to resent the Phelpses after all.’

Arbie wasn’t so sure. If he’d been Jane Brockhurst, he might not have felt so kindly towards them, even so.

‘No, I think you and your pretty Miss Val are probably right, and Murray is our man – at least for his cousin’s death. It’s just proving it that’s going to be the bugbear. And as for who was responsible for the death of their aunt – I think it’s a toss-up between Phyllis or Murray. And again, I have no idea how we’re going to prove it either way.’

‘Ye-es,’ Arbie said, but slowly and uncertainly. And if the Inspector had been less aggrieved and sleep-deprived, he might have recognised the doubt in the younger man’s tone. But right then, he had other things on his mind.

‘Well, I must get back to the fray,’ he said, nodding towards the noisy pub, and with a last yawn, set off back into the thick of it.

Arbie watched him go with an anxious eye. He’d been doing a lot of thinking since the shock of Phyllis’s death, and his thoughts had been leading him down some very dark and startling places. Now he thoughtfully regarded his uncle, who was watching the duck with a silly smile on his face. He sighed heavily. ‘Come on, Uncle, let’s get you home and get some coffee into you. I want to pick your brains about something.’

‘Hmmm? Perpetual motion, eh? Leonardo couldn’t crack it, but I think I might. Yes, that latest little idea of mine …’

Arbie, who had no idea what he was talking about, hauled him to his feet and began guiding him determinedly towards home. ‘No, Uncle, come on, buck up. I really do need to ask you about something. How are you on chemistry?’