Death at Gallows Green (8 page)

“Allus somethin' suspicious gooin' on,” he rasped. “Sheep gooin' missin', poachers, gypsies in th' vale—”

“Gypsies?” the coroner asked sharply. “When was this?”

“Las' week. Two cabbages and a cauly-flow'r was took from me garden, an' Mrs. McGregor's apern an' a sheet off th' line.”

“And you think these gypsies might have been responsible?”

“ 'Twern't rabbits,” Mr. McGregor replied smartly, and was rewarded with a laugh. But as to whether gypsies might have murdered the constable, he declined to say, nor could he offer any other helpful information. He was dismissed with thanks. Charles, thinking the inquest at an end, turned to make his way in Edward's direction, when the coroner raised his voice once more.

“Superintendent Hacking,” he called, over the murmuring and rustle. There was a silence, and through the crowd came a stocky, distinguished-looking man in the uniform of the constabulary. He went to the witness chair, was sworn, and sat down. The man's grey hair and mustache were luxuriant, his boots were polished, and several decorations glittered on the pocket of his impeccably pressed serge jacket. Altogether, he was an impressive-looking witness.

Charles looked at Edward and raised his eyebrows, curious as to why a superintendent had been called. Edward answered with a shrug. Apparently it was a surprise to him, too—which in itself was odd, considering that the murder, which had been committed in Edward's district, was Edward's case. Superintendent Hacking, who was stationed at district headquarters in nearby Colchester, began with a brief summary of Sergeant Oliver's service and reported that the Standing Joint Committee that controlled the County Force had met upon the matter and determined that the sergeant had met his death while in the execution of his duty. Mrs. Oliver had been granted a pension of fifteen pounds a year, plus two-pounds-ten for the child. The questioning then turned to the incident itself.

“Do you know,” Harry Hodson asked, “why Sergeant OIIVER might have been in the vicinity of Dedham on the night he was murdered?”

Hacking's face was impassive. “I do,” he said.

“Please state it for the jury.”

“There was a matter that required the urgent attention of the police in this neighbourhood.” Hacking' voice was clipped. “If you press me I will state it, but in the interests of justice, it would possibly be best not to.”

Charles frowned. An odd business. Several of the jurors apparently thought so too, for they sat forward on their bench. Edward was even more intent, his face furrowed, lips pressed together.

“You may state the reason,” Coroner Hodson said. Hacking's eyes flicked to Edward. “Sheep have been stolen in the neighbourhood,” he said. “In consequence, close attention was being paid. By my special direction, I might add.”

Edward sat upright.

Harry Hodson frowned. “No one has offered any evidence suggesting that the murder involved sheep stealing.”

“The preceding witness did,” the superintendent replied.

The clerk was consulted, Mr. McGregor's testimony was read back, and the superintendent's recollection was confirmed. But when asked to specify whose sheep had been taken, the superintendent only replied that this was the very information Sergeant Oliver had been attempting to procure so he was no wiser than any of them. However, Chief Constable Pell had taken the case himself, and expected it to be speedily resolved.

Mr. McGregor was recalled from the bench outside the pub where he was sharing a pint with a friend, and asked for more specifics about sheep-stealing. But he could provide nothing more and was permitted to return to his pint. The jury retired to the back garden and returned a few moments later with the verdict everyone had expected: “Homicide, by person or persons unknown.”

People stirred, voices were raised, Sanders the publican opened the tap, and life at the Live and Let Live began to flow again.

E
dward Laken swallowed convulsively. “I don't understand it,” he said.

The black coach bearing the coffin had returned to Gallows Green, the curious had gone back to their shops and farms, and Superintendent Hacking had been driven back to Colchester by the uniformed constable who had brought him. The twelve jurors were bellied up to the bar, drinking the convivial pints purchased for them by Harry Hodson and explaining to anyone who would listen the complex logic behind their verdict. Edward and Charles were seated at a scratched deal table in the rear, a pitcher of local beer before them, a dark brew faintly suggestive of licorice and tobacco and with a definitive body. Edward, having had two glasses, was feeling deeply morose.

“I don't understand it,” he said again, staring into his glass.

“The sheep-stealing, you mean?” Charles asked.

“Not that, nor the superintendent's giving the case over to Pell, nor—” He leaned back in his chair and bitterly mimicked the super's clipped tone. “ ‘The urgent attention of police in this neighbourhood.' If Hacking had bloody wanted the urgent attention of the police, he could've had
my
attention. I'm the police in this neighbourhood.”

Of all the hurtful things about this case, that had been the worst. To hear his superintendent, in the presence of every male member of the Dedham community, say that Artie had been working his patch, trying to solve a crime that he had never heard of, and had died in the process. And then to learn that the case was being taken by C.C. Pell! Jesus Mary and the angels. It was bad enough that Artie was dead. It was even worse to think he'd been murdered because he was doing Endward's job, and worse yet to have to wait for somebody else to find the murderer. Christ above!

“You mean,” Charles said, “you'd rather have gotten yourself killed than Artie?” He picked up the pitcher as if to pour himself a second glass, but apparently decided against it and set it down again.

“At least I don't have a wife,” Edward said, “and a child. What's more,” he added forcefully, “I don't for a minute believe that Artie was murdered in this neighbourhood. I think he was killed on his own patch, and dumped here. And whether he was on police business—” He clamped down on the anger roiling inside him. “I'm telling you, Charlie. If there's any sheep-stealing going on here,
I
don't know anything about it. And neither does anybody else. You could see that on the faces of those jurors. If an animal goes missing here, everybody for three miles around knows it. Within the half hour, they're out counting their own flocks.” He said each word emphatically. “There's been no sheep-stealing hereabouts.”

“You think the superintendent is mistaken?”

Edward made circles with his wet glass on the tabletop. “How the bloody hell should I know?” he asked wearily.

“I'm just a country copper.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched out his legs, examining the muddy toes of his boots. “Anyway, Hacking's given the case to Pell. I don't have to worry about it anymore, do I? Let Pell knock his head against it.”

“I wonder about that,” Charles said thoughtfully. “The body was found in your district. Why would Hacking assign the investigation to somebody else? And especially to a chief constable?”

“And especially to Chief Constable Pell,” Edward said. He took another swallow to wash down the bitter taste in his mouth. “Pell's as woolly as a sheep himself.” He gave a short, sarcastic laugh. “Got himself disabled in the line of duty. Bloody hero, but damn stupid. Since he wasn't of any use on the beat, they made him a chief constable. Twenty years behind the desk hasn't sharpened him up. The only thing he knows how to do is deny promotions.” Pell had been quick enough to deny his. He was still at the level of constable long after Artie had been promoted to sergeant.

Charles lifted his eyebrows. “And that's the man Hacking has preferred to you?”

“That's him, damn it,” Edward said wrathfully, and slammed his glass on the table. “Well, let 'em have old Woolly Pell if they want him. But he'll never get to the bottom of this, I promise you. I wouldn't care, either, if it weren't Artie Oliver we're talking about.” He shook his head, despairing. “That's the bloody hell of it, Charlie. Artie deserves justice done. And Agnes and that little girl deserve to see the murderer hanged. And I've been removed from the case. Confound and curse it!”

Edward was not a sentimental man, but his heart softened when he thought of Agnes Oliver. Ah, Agnes, Agnes. He'd loved her a dozen years ago, but somehow the time and the opportunity to let her know how he felt had never come together. And then suddenly the banns were being said for her and Artie, and all his hopes had died.

A dozen years, but she was still beautiful. It was the first thing in his mind when he and Charlie took her the dreadful news: how beautiful she was, with that sad, silent dignity that tore at his heart. It couldn't matter now, of course, although he'd lain awake many nights in the intervening years, lonely and longing, wishing for Agnes beside him, and envying Artie with such a woman in his bed. But that had been then, and this was now, and seventeen and ten a year would pay the rent on the cottage but leave nothing for food.

At the bar, the jurors had drunk up Hodson's pint and were into their own. If they kept on drinking for long, they'd do it on the tick, since most wouldn't have another shilling in their pockets until the end of the week. They were discussing the case loudly, over the rusty wheeze of the concertina someone was playing outside the front door. Sanders the publican—a tall, lanky man in slippers and trousers too short for his legs—was saying to a tenant farmer who had just lost his farm, “ 'Tis no gud gooin' agin th' gentry, Jack. They got th' land an' they got th' money, an' what've you got?” He spoke with the authority of one who owned his own business, while the dispossessed farmer sadly hung his head and wiped his eyes on a grimy sleeve.

“I wonder,” Charles said slowly, “if I could be of some help in this matter.”

Edward gulped the dregs of his beer and poured a third, the last in the pitcher. “God-awful beer,” he muttered, slopping it on the table. “Any more murders ‘round here, ol' Harry ought to move th' inquest t' th' Marlborough, where a man c'n get somethin' decent to drink afterward.”

“I had it in mind, Nerd,” Charles remarked, his gaze steadily on Edward, “to look into Artie's murder myself.”

Edward leaned his head on his hand. His vision was blurry and his tongue felt thick. Sanders probably brewed his beer in the privy. “Y‘did right well th' last time y' took it in mind t' look into a murther, Charlie,” he said, lapsing into a slurred country idiom. “Not even th' doctor guessed what 'twas that did for th' Ardleigh sisters.”

Charles was thoughtful. “I don't suppose you have seen Miss Ardleigh since she received her inheritance.”

“ 'N th' contrary,” Edward said, rubbing the back of his neck. “See her quite oft'n.”

Charles looked up, startled. “The devil you say.”

Edward pursed his lips. If it had been anybody but Charlie, he would not have confided the truth. “Been teachin' her t' ride a bicycle,” he said. Miss. Ardleigh's request for the lessons had come as a surprise, but he had been glad to help. He understood and honoured the wish for independence that lay behind her desire to ride a bicycle. So it was with pleasure that he had helped her obtain a suitable machine and had devoted several delightful Sunday evenings to assisting her wobbly efforts. The friendly, casual intimacy of their excursions had proved a welcome break in the humdrum routine of the police work that was the centre of his life. He grinned fondly.

“Lovely sight, that, I'll tell ye, Charlie m' friend. Kate Ardleigh on her cycle, weavin' merrily down th' lane from ditch t' ditch, singin' at th' top o' her lungs. Even rode into Mrs. Perry's black cow one afternoon. But she's stayed with it, bless her. Goes flyin' down the High Street, proud as ye please, basket piled wi' parcels. She's a wonder, she is.”

His grin faded slightly and he fell into silence. He was thinking of Agnes, beautiful Agnes, and how she might look on a cycle, her hair blowing in the wind, her face alight, flying beside him down the steep hill toward the River Stour. But she was a widow now, with a child, and Artie's murder had broken her heart. What might have been was past and would not come again, dream as he might.

Edward's reverie was broken by the advent of the publican's fat wife with a tray of fragrant pies. “All ‘ot!” she cried over the enthusiastic babble that greeted her. “Beef, mutton, an' eel! All 'ot!”

Thinking that food might serve as an antidote to the beer, Edward signaled to the woman and received a penny-ha'penny pie. The woman gave Charles a dimpled smile. “ 'Ow about you, sir? 'Ot eel pie, sir?”

Charles shook his head and watched as Edward wolfed down his pie. After a moment he remarked, oddly, and apropos of nothing that Edward could think of, “I suppose you've considered taking a wife, Ned.”

Still fuzzy-headed, Edward finished the last bit of pie. “I have.” He thought of the time when he might have asked Agnes but had not, delaying, believing that she deserved more. “But life is hard fr a P.C.'s wife, an' precious little t' show fr it. Twenty-two shillings, eleven pence when I began, an' not much more now. Long duty hours, difficulty, danger. A wife never knows when her man won't come home.” He shook his head sadly. “An' no station, either, and no respect. To most, a policeman's low as a crim'nal, his wife none better.”