Murder Is Easy (4 page)

“What was the name now? I've got it. Pinkerton.”

Lord Whitfield said with a hoarse chuckle:

“Really, you've no luck! She's dead too. Got run over the other day in London. Killed outright.”

“You seem to have a lot of deaths here,” said Luke lightly.

Lord Whitfield bridled immediately.

“Not at all. One of the healthiest places in England. Can't count accidents. They may happen to anyone.”

But Bridget Conway said thoughtfully:

“As a matter of fact, Gordon, there
have
been a lot of deaths in the last year. They're always having funerals.”

“Nonsense, my dear.”

Luke said:

“Was Dr. Humbleby's death an accident too?”

Lord Whitfield shook his head.

“Oh, no,” he said. “Humbleby died of acute septicæmia. Just like a doctor. Scratched his finger with a rusty nail or something—paid no attention to it, and it turned septic. He was dead in three days.”

“Doctors are rather like that,” said Bridget. “And of course, they're very liable to infection, I suppose, if they don't take care. It was sad, though. His wife was brokenhearted.”

“No good rebelling against the will of providence,” said Lord Whitfield easily.

II

“But was it the will of providence?” Luke asked himself later as he changed into his dinner jacket. Septicæmia? Perhaps. A very sudden death, though.

And there echoed through his head Bridget Conway's lightly spoken words:

“There have been a lot of deaths in the last year.”

L
uke had thought out his plan of campaign with some care, and prepared to put it into action without more ado when he came down to breakfast the following morning.

The gardening aunt was not in evidence, but Lord Whitfield was eating kidneys and drinking coffee, and Bridget Conway had finished her meal and was standing at the window, looking out.

After good mornings had been exchanged and Luke had sat down with a plentifully heaped plate of eggs and bacon, he began:

“I must get to work,” he said. “Difficult thing is to induce people to talk. You know what I mean—not people like you and—er—Bridget.” (He remembered just in time not to say Miss Conway.) “You'd
tell
me anything you knew—but the trouble is you wouldn't
know
the things I want to know—that is the local superstitions. You'd hardly believe the amount of superstition that still lingers in out-of-the-way parts of the world. Why, there's a village in Devonshire. The rector had to remove some old granite menhirs that stood by the church because the people persisted in marching
round them in some old ritual every time there was a death. Extraordinary how old heathen rites persists.”

“Dare say you're right,” said Lord Whitfield. “Education, that's what people need. Did I tell you that I'd endowed a very fine library here? Used to be the old manor house—was going for a song—now it's one of the finest libraries—”

Luke firmly quelled the tendency of the conversation to turn in the direction of Lord Whitfield's doings.

“Splendid,” he said heartily. “Good work. You've evidently realized the background of old-world ignorance there is here. Of course, from my point of view, that's just what I want. Old customs—old wives' tales—hints of the old rituals such as—”

Here followed almost verbatim a page of a work that Luke had read up for the occasion.

“Deaths are the most hopeful line,” he ended. “Burial rites and customs always survive longer than any others. Besides, for some reason or other, village people always like talking about deaths.”

“They enjoy funerals,” agreed Bridget from the window.

“I thought I'd make that my starting-point,” went on Luke. “If I can get a list of recent demises in the parish, track down the relatives and get into conversation, I've no doubt I shall soon get a hint of what I'm after. Whom had I better get the data from—the parson?”

“Mr. Wake would probably be very interested,” said Bridget. “He's quite an old dear and a bit of an antiquary. He could give you a lot of stuff, I expect.”

Luke had a momentary qualm during which he hoped that the clergyman might not be so efficient an antiquary as to expose his own pretensions.

Aloud he said heartily:

“Good. You've no idea, I suppose, of likely people who've died during the last year.”

Bridget murmured:

“Let me see. Carter, of course. He was the landlord of the Seven Stars, that nasty little pub down by the river.”

“A drunken ruffian,” said Lord Whitfield. “One of these socialistic, abusive brutes, a good riddance.”

“And Mrs. Rose, the laundress,” went on Bridget. “And little Tommy Pierce—he was a nasty little boy if you like. Oh, of course, and that girl Amy what's-her-name.”

Her voice changed slightly as she uttered the last name.

“Amy?” said Luke.

“Amy Gibbs. She was housemaid here and then she went to Miss Waynflete. There was an inquest on her.”

“Why?”

“Fool of a girl mixed up some bottles in the dark,” said Lord Whitfield.

“She took what she thought was cough mixture and it was hat paint,” explained Bridget.

Luke raised his eyebrows.

“Somewhat of a tragedy.”

Bridget said:

“There was some idea of her having done it on purpose. Some row with a young man.”

She spoke slowly—almost reluctantly.

There was a pause. Luke felt instinctively the presence of some unspoken feeling weighing down the atmosphere.

He thought:

“Amy Gibbs? Yes, that was one of the names old Miss Pinkerton mentioned.”

She had also mentioned a small boy—Tommy someone—of whom she had evidently held a low opinion (this, it seemed, was shared by Bridget!) And yes—he was almost sure—the name Carter had been spoken too.

Rising, he said lightly:

“Talking like this makes me feel rather ghoulish—as though I dabbled only in graveyards. Marriage customs are interesting too—but rather more difficult to introduce into conversation unconcernedly.”

“I should imagine that was likely,” said Bridget with a faint twitch of the lips.

“Ill-wishing or overlooking, there's another interesting subject,” went on Luke with a would-be show of enthusiasm. “You often get that in these old-world places. Know of any gossip of that kind here?”

Lord Whitfield slowly shook his head. Bridget Conway said:

“We shouldn't be likely to hear of things like that—”

Luke took it up almost before she finished speaking.

“No doubt about it, I've got to move in lower social spheres to get what I want. I'll be off to the vicarage first and see what I can get there. After that perhaps a visit to the—Seven Stars, did you say? And what about the small boy of unpleasant habits? Did he leave any sorrowing relatives?”

“Mrs. Pierce keeps a tobacco and paper shop in High Street.”

“That,” said Luke, “is nothing less than providential. Well, I'll be on my way.”

With a swift graceful movement Bridget moved from the window.

“I think,” she said, “I'll come with you, if you don't mind.”

“Of course not.”

He said it as heartily as possible, but he wondered if she had noticed that, just for a moment, he had been taken aback.

It would have been easier for him to handle an elderly antiquarian clergyman without an alert discerning intelligence by his side.

“Oh well,” he thought to himself. “It's up to me to do my stuff convincingly.”

Bridget said:

“Will you just wait, Luke, while I change my shoes?”

Luke—the Christian name uttered so easily gave him a queer warm feeling. And yet what else could she have called him? Since she had agreed to Jimmy's scheme of cousinship she could hardly call him Mr. Fitzwilliam. He thought suddenly and uneasily, “What does she think of it all? In God's name what does she think?”

Queer that that had not worried him beforehand. Jimmy's cousin had just been a convenient abstraction—a lay figure. He had hardly visualized her, just accepted his friend's dictum that “Bridget would be all right.”

He had thought of her—if he had thought of her at all—as a little blonde secretary person—astute enough to have captured a rich man's fancy.

Instead she had force, brains, a cool clear intelligence and he had no idea what she was thinking of him. He thought:
She's not an easy person to deceive.

“I'm ready now.”

She had joined him so silently that he had not heard her ap
proach. She wore no hat, and there was no net on her hair. As they stepped out from the house the wind, sweeping round the corner of the castellated monstrosity, caught her long black hair and whipped it into a sudden frenzy round her face.

She said smiling:

“You need me to show you the way.”

“It's very kind of you,” he answered punctiliously.

And wondered if he had imagined a sudden swiftly passing ironic smile.

Looking back at the battlements behind him, he said irritably:

“What an abomination! Couldn't anyone stop him?”

Bridget answered: “An Englishman's house is his castle—literally so in Gordon's case! He adores it.”

Conscious that the remark was in bad taste, yet unable to control his tongue, he said:

“It's your old home, isn't it? Do you ‘adore' to see it the way it is now?”

She looked at him then—a steady slightly amused look it was.

“I hate to destroy the dramatic picture you are building up,” she murmured. “But actually I left here when I was two and a half, so you see the old home motive doesn't apply. I can't even remember this place.”

“You're right,” said Luke. “Forgive the lapse into film language.”

She laughed.

“Truth,” she said, “is seldom romantic.”

And there was a sudden bitter scorn in her voice that startled him. He flushed a deep red under his tan, then realized suddenly that the bitterness had not been aimed at him. It was her own scorn
and her own bitterness. Luke was wisely silent. But he wondered a good deal about Bridget Conway….

Five minutes brought them to the church and to the vicarage that adjoined it. They found the vicar in his study.

Alfred Wake was a small stooping old man with very mild blue eyes, and an absentminded but courteous air. He seemed pleased but a little surprised by the visit.

“Mr. Fitzwilliam is staying with us at Ashe Manor,” said Bridget, “and he wants to consult you about a book he is writing.”

Mr. Wake turned his mild inquiring eyes towards the younger man, and Luke plunged into explanations.

He was nervous—doubly so. Nervous in the first place because this man had no doubt a far deeper knowledge of folklore and superstitious rites and customs than one could acquire by merely hurriedly cramming from a haphazard collection of books. Secondly he was nervous because Bridget Conway was standing by listening.

Luke was relieved to find that Mr. Wake's special interest was Roman remains. He confessed gently that he knew very little of medieval folklore and witchcraft. He mentioned the existence of certain items in the history of Wychwood, offered to take Luke to the particular ledge of hill where it was said the Witches' Sabbaths had been held, but expressed himself regretful that he could add no special information of his own.

Inwardly much relieved, Luke expressed himself as somewhat disappointed, and then plunged into inquiries as to deathbed superstitions.

Mr. Wake shook his head gently.

“I am afraid I should be the last person to know about those.
My parishioners would be careful to keep anything unorthodox from my ears.”

“That's so, of course.”

“But I've no doubt, all the same, there
is
a lot of superstition still rife. These village communities are very backward.”

Luke plunged boldly.

“I've been asking Miss Conway for a list of all the recent deaths she could remember. I thought I might get at something that way. I suppose you could supply me with a list, so that I could pick out the likelies.”

“Yes—yes—that could be managed. Giles, our sexton, a good fellow but sadly deaf, could help you there. Let me see now. There have been a good many—a good many—a treacherous spring and a hard winter behind it—and then a good many accidents—quite a cycle of bad luck there seems to have been.”

“Sometimes,” said Luke, “a cycle of bad luck is attributed to the presence of a particular person.”

“Yes, yes. The old story of Jonah. But I do not think there have been any strangers here—nobody, that is to say, outstanding in any way, and I've certainly never heard any rumour of such feeling—but then again, as I said, perhaps I shouldn't. Now let me see—quite recently we have had Dr. Humbleby and poor Lavinia Pinkerton—a fine man, Dr. Humbleby—”

Bridget put in:

“Mr. Fitzwilliam knows friends of his.”

“Do you indeed? Very sad. His loss will be much felt. A man with many friends.”

“But surely a man with some enemies too,” said Luke. “I'm only going by what I've heard my friends say,” he went on hastily.

Mr. Wake sighed.

“A man who spoke his mind—and a man who wasn't always very tactful, shall we say—” he shook his head. “It does get people's backs up. But he was greatly beloved among the poorer classes.”

Luke said carelessly:

“You know I always feel that one of the most unpalatable facts to be faced in life, is the fact that every death that occurs means a gain to someone—I don't mean only financially.”

The vicar nodded thoughtfully.

“I see your meaning, yes. We read in an obituary notice that a man is regretted by everybody, but that can only be true very rarely I fear. In Dr. Humbleby's case, there is no denying that his partner, Dr. Thomas, will find his position very much improved by Dr. Humbleby's death.”

“How is that?”

“Thomas, I believe, is a very capable fellow—certainly Humbleby always said so, but he didn't get on here very well. He was, I think, overshadowed by Humbleby who was a man of very definite magnetism. Thomas appeared rather colourless in contrast. He didn't impress his patients at all. I think he worried over it, too, and that made him worse—more nervous and tongue-tied. As a matter of fact I've noticed an astonishing difference already. More aplomb—more personality. I think he feels a new confidence in himself. He and Humbleby didn't always agree, I believe. Thomas was all for newer methods of treatment and Humbleby preferred to stick to the old ways. There were clashes between them more than once—over that as well as over a matter nearer home—but there, I mustn't gossip—”

Bridget said softly and clearly:

“But I think Mr. Fitzwilliam would like you to gossip!”

Luke shot her a quick disturbed look.

Mr. Wake shook his head doubtfully, and then went on, smiling a little in deprecation.

“I am afraid one learns to take too much interest in one's neighbours' affairs. Rose Humbleby is a very pretty girl. One doesn't wonder that Geoffrey Thomas lost his heart. And of course Humbleby's point of view was quite understandable too—the girl is young and buried away here she hadn't much chance of seeing other men.”

“He objected?” said Luke.

“Very definitely. Said they were far too young. And of course young people resent being told that! There was a very definite coldness between the two men. But I must say that I'm sure Dr. Thomas was deeply distressed at his partner's unexpected death.”