Authors: Carola Dunn
Styx and Stones (17 page)
Inspector Flagg regarded her, his face bland but for the twinkle in his eye, very reminiscent of the way Tom Tring generally looked at her. Daisy decided he was beginning to get her measure.
“What do you reckon, sir?” he said to Alec. “It seems to me, Mrs. Burden will deny everything, likely as not, unless we have Miss Dalrymple on hand to remind her of what she said about the envelopes.”
“As you choose, Inspector,” Alec said with a wry smile. “But Daisy, you stay out of things unless you're needed.”
“Yes, Chief,” said Daisy.
They went into the shop. Mrs. Burden was at the Post Office counter, registering a letter for a stout, smart matron she addressed as Mrs. Lympne. Daisy recognized her from a previous visit, when she and her husband had dined at Oakhurst. Not wanting to get caught in a chat, Daisy went to the other
counter and started looking through the box of picture postcards. She glanced round as someone else stepped up to the counter.
counter and started looking through the box of picture postcards. She glanced round as someone else stepped up to the counter.
“Mrs. Gresham, how do you do! I've been hoping to see you, to apologize for not turning up at the meeting.”
The farmer's wife smiled at her. “From what I hear, you have every excuse in the world, Miss Dalrymple. I'm sorry, though. I was looking forward to hearing your talk. Another time, perhaps.”
“Win, come and lend a hand,” Mrs. Burden called just then. Daisy looked back to see Mrs. Lympne's back departing and Alec and Flagg standing at the Post Office counter.
Winifred slouched through from the exchange. “Who's first?” she enquired uninterestedly.
“Help Mrs. Gresham,” Daisy said. “I haven't made up my mind yet.”
“I'll take a box of puppy worming pills, please.”
“Mu-um, where're the worming pills?”
But Mum was leading the detectives into the store-room at the back. Regretfully Daisy decided she had better wait until called.
“They're over there, down near the bottom.” Mrs. Gresham leaned forward and pointed at the shelves behind the counter. “The white box with âPadgett's' in blue and a picture of a dog.”
Winifred crouched with a grunt, rose with a groan, and slapped a small box on the counter. “Tenpence ha'penny.”
The picture looked just like Tinker Bell. An idea occurred to Daisy. “You have puppies?” she asked.
“Five, in need of homes.” Mrs. Gresham handed over a shilling and dropped her penny ha'penny change in her purse. “I don't know what Ellie found to mate with but they're no good as farm dogs. My Amos is too soft-hearted to drown them, I'm glad to say.”
“No promises,” said Daisy, “but if Alecâmy fiancéâagrees, I'll bring my stepdaughter-to-be to see them.”
“Miss Dalrymple!” Flagg stood at the store-room door. “If you wouldn't mind stepping this way?”
Daisy most certainly wouldn't mind. She said a hurried goodbye to Mrs. Gresham, and followed the inspector into a small room even more crammed with goods of every size, shape, and description than the shop. Just inside the door, Mrs. Burden sat on a cardboard box labelled BOURNEVILLE COCOA, stacked on another marked COLMAN'S MUSTARD. Looking frightened but stubborn, she let out a little gasp when she saw Daisy.
Alec, leaning against the nearest shelves, towered over her. “Mrs. Burden seems to have had a lapse of memory, Miss Dalrymple,” he said. “I hope you can jog it for us.”
Daisy sat down on a box of
Lifebuoy
soap. “You talk to so many people every day, Mrs. Burden,” she said encouragingly, “you can't possibly remember every conversation. We were chatting about how badly written addresses often are. You mentioned as an example those in pencil, which are hard to read even when they're written in capitals. And you said they're infrequent, but that recentlyâ”
Lifebuoy
soap. “You talk to so many people every day, Mrs. Burden,” she said encouragingly, “you can't possibly remember every conversation. We were chatting about how badly written addresses often are. You mentioned as an example those in pencil, which are hard to read even when they're written in capitals. And you said they're infrequent, but that recentlyâ”
“Oh
those
letters!” Mrs. Burden seized on the excuse to get out of the corner she had painted herself into with her flat denial of all knowledge. “What about them?”
those
letters!” Mrs. Burden seized on the excuse to get out of the corner she had painted herself into with her flat denial of all knowledge. “What about them?”
“We want to know,” said Flagg, “who they were addressed to.”
“I don't know that I ought ⦔
“We can get a warrant.”
“Oh no!” The shopkeeper looked as if she might faint.
“Not an arrest warrant,” Daisy said quickly, “just some sort of official permission for you to tell the police.”
“That's right, ma'am, but it'd waste time, and there's a murderer on the loose.”
Though hardly reassured by this announcement, Mrs. Burden pulled herself together. “I'm sure I don't want to obstruct the police. Let me think. Well, there was Lord John for one, I'm sorry to say, miss. And that Mrs. Willoughby-Jones who thinks she's so superior, always carping at other people. Mrs. LeBeau, Miss Prothero that's her next-door neighbour, Miss Hendricks ⦠Let me see. Oh, Brigadier Lomax and that writer he let his cottage to. And the doctor, I'm sorry to say. That's all that comes to mind just now, but I think there's more.”
“Yourself?” said Flagg.
“No!”
Flagg glanced at Alec, who shook his head slightly and asked, “Have you any idea who might have written the letters, ma'am?”
“The amount of gossip in this village,” said Mrs. Burden bitterly, “it could've been anyone.”
So she
did
get one, Daisy thought, while the inspector asked when the first lot of letters had been posted. That question, she realized, everyone had forgotten to pose to Mrs. LeBeau.
did
get one, Daisy thought, while the inspector asked when the first lot of letters had been posted. That question, she realized, everyone had forgotten to pose to Mrs. LeBeau.
“First I noticed was the middle of July. You'll have to let me go now,” Mrs. Burden insisted as the bell in the shop rang. “I've customers to be seen to.”
“Just one more question, for now. Where were you yesterday afternoon between two o'clock and half past three?”
“Here, where d'you think?” She pushed past him, calling, “I'll be right with you!”
“Should we talk to the girl?” Flagg asked Alec.
“Not now, I think. Mrs. Burden has given us plenty to be getting on with. We can always come back later. Let's try the doctor again. His nurse thought he wouldn't be gone long.”
They went out through the shop. Mrs. Burden, busy with a customer, did not so much as glance their way.
In the car, Daisy said, “I'm sure she got a letter, and whoever wrote it, she blames it on Mrs. Willoughby-Jones.”
“Oh, undoubtedly,” Alec agreed, “but I see no need to press the poor woman about it unless we get no lead elsewhere. What can you tell us about Mrs. Willoughby-Jones?”
“She's one of the Vicarage tea-and-scandal set.” Daisy described the forthright termagant. “Whatever she found out about Mrs. Burden, she would have taxed her with it to her face, and tattled to the rest of the old cats.”
Flagg stopped the Ford outside Old Well House again. This time Dr. Padgett's Humber stood in the drive. “Caught him,” said the inspector with satisfaction. “You coming in, Miss Dalrymple? Now we have another source of information about his letters, you're quite safe, wouldn't you say, sir?”
“I dare say, but there's no good reason to give for her presence.”
“I'll think of something. Miss Dalrymple's got insight, sir, and I'd give a deal to hear what she makes of his story.”
Daisy did her best to look modest.
Alec resignedly assented, and they went into the doctor's waiting room. The sole occupant, a shabby, weatherbeaten old man bent with rheumatics, glared at them. “We'll wait our turn,” Flagg soothed him. From the inner room came a baby's wail.
Ten minutes later, Padgett was free. If he was surprised to see Daisy, he did not show it. He was all charm to her, man to man with Alecâintroduced as both her fiancé and a Scotland Yard detectiveâand gravely professional with Flagg, as he ushered them through to the private side of the house, into an elegant, expensively furnished drawing room. The voices of small children came from the garden beyond the open windows.
“I need your medical report on the murdered gentleman,
sir,” Flagg opened, “but first we'd like to make sure your recollection of your movements in the graveyard chimes with Miss Dalrymple's.”
sir,” Flagg opened, “but first we'd like to make sure your recollection of your movements in the graveyard chimes with Miss Dalrymple's.”
Padgett smiled at Daisy. “Miss Dalrymple was most particular that I must be careful not to destroy any clues.” He described circling between the tombstones, crouching by the professor's head, returning by the same route. Then, before she could stop him, he divulged her sudden faintness and his supporting her to the church porch.
“Daisy, you never told me!” Alec exploded.
“You couldn't expect me to admit to being such a frightful drip,” she retorted. “Anyway, it was only for a moment. Dr. Padgett offered to go to the Vicarage to tell the vicarâ”
“So you were quite certain of the identity of the deceased, sir?”
“Not absolutely, no,” Padgett said, “but if I'd found the vicar at home it would have become obvious. I told Barton I was going, went, found Osborne out, and returned to Miss Dalrymple. I had my rounds to do, so I couldn't wait for your arrival, Inspector.”
No word of his dash to escape Mrs. Osborne, Daisy noted.
He gave his medical report next. Daisy tried not to listen to the details, giving her attention to a magnificent, green-eyed, silver Persian which strolled in just then. Going straight to Padgett, it leapt into his lap, and he fondled its ears as he spoke. The main part of his evidence was that when he examined the body, at about twenty past three, Professor Osborne had been dead for at least half an hour but not more than an hour.
“That agrees with our other information, sir,” said Flagg. “You'll understand that I have to ask where you were between two and three o'clock yesterday. Just routine.”
“I left Lower Foxwood Farm at five past two. I noticed particularly because I was reckoning how long a nap I'd have time
for, having been up half the night. I must have got home by twenty-five past at the latestâI spoke to our parlourmaid, Nancy, she might know. Went straight upstairs, took off my shoes and jacket, and slept like a log till the call came through from young Master Derek just after three.”
for, having been up half the night. I must have got home by twenty-five past at the latestâI spoke to our parlourmaid, Nancy, she might know. Went straight upstairs, took off my shoes and jacket, and slept like a log till the call came through from young Master Derek just after three.”
Thirty-five minutes to dash up to the church, bump off the professor, and dash home again. He would have to have set up a meeting. If he had murder in mind, why such a public place? No, the murderer surely came upon Professor Osborne by chance, Daisy thought, as Flagg recorded Padgett's answer without comment.
“But of course I had no conceivable motive,” the doctor finished. “I don't suppose I'd exchanged more than a couple of dozen words with the chap in my life.”
“We've reason to think the murder may be connected with a spate of anonymous letters,” Flagg said deliberately. “And we know you to be one of the victims of the Poison Pen.”
Padgett paled. The cat miaowed indignantly, as if his caressing hand had abruptly tweaked its ear. “I don't know what you're talking about,” he blustered, apologetically smoothing the offended feline's fur.
He liked cats but disliked dogs. Daisy had a sudden vision of his avoiding Tinker Bell's friendly lick. Tinker ⦠so like the dog on the packet of pills Mrs. Gresham bought ⦠the words on the packet ⦠“Padgett's Patent Puppy Worming Pills,” said Daisy. “âGentle but thorough.'”
Alec and Flagg stared at her as if she had run mad, but the doctor slumped with a groan.
Dr. Robert Padgett, M.D., was sole heir to the Padgett puppy-wormer fortune. The pills had paid for a public school education, medical training, and the purchase of a profitable practice. They also paid for the ambitious young man to move in fashionable circles. There he had met and fallen wildly in
love with Miss Henrietta Bevis, third daughter of a County family with more pride than money.
love with Miss Henrietta Bevis, third daughter of a County family with more pride than money.
Puppy worming pillsâof all the nauseating ways to make a fortune. Unmentionable in polite company! Hetta refused to marry him unless he swore to cut himself off from all social intercourse with his plebeian,
nouveau riche
parents. (The purse-strings, naturally, were not to be severed.)
nouveau riche
parents. (The purse-strings, naturally, were not to be severed.)
“There's enough from them to live on in comfort, but I always wanted to be a doctor,” Padgett said, adding even more defensively, “I go to see them regularly. Hetta won't let the children see them. In fact, they don't know that set of grandparents is still alive.”
“If they're such a secret,” Alec said, stony-faced, “who in the village might have found out? You've told nobody?”
“Just one ⦠My parents are getting older, you see. They desperately want to know their grandchildren. One evening at the Lomaxes, I must have had a glass too much of the brigadier's excellent port and I found myself asking the vicar's advice. Of course I should have known what a man of God would say ⦠But I couldn't bring myself to hurt Hetta so. She would be devastated.”
“Could anyone have overheard you?” Flagg asked neutrally.
Padgett shook his head. “Lomax was practically comatose. The ladies were playing whist, and Lympne was watching over his wife's shoulder, giving her bad advice. Yet I can't believe Osborne would have told anyone! He's a clergyman, and a good fellow, to boot.”
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