The Problem at Two Tithes (An Angela Marchmont Mystery Book 7) (8 page)

‘Do you mean the feud came before the dispute over the path?’

Primm nodded.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They haven’t got on for years, ever since Tom married Margaret about forty years ago. Norris was sweet on her, you see, but Tipping stepped in, and they’ve been rowing ever since. ’Course, it’s not so much the woman they’re fighting over—it’s more that old Norris is a bad loser and can’t bear to be beaten. Tipping got what was his, you see, and now Norris wants to pay him back.’

‘Goodness me,’ said Jameson. He glanced at his watch. ‘It’ll be lunch-time soon, but if you don’t mind I’d like to go back to Dead Man’s Path first and look around more carefully, this time without interruptions.’

‘Right you are, sir,’ said Sergeant Primm.

Inspector Jameson looked about him as they came out of the police station. They were in the centre of the village, which was laid out around a large green. Many of the buildings were ancient and had thatched roofs, and the whole effect was very attractive and quaint. Of course, the signs of modernity had inevitably encroached upon even this quiet place, and on market days (for Banford Green, although now considered merely a village, had once been a thriving market town and still proudly held to that tradition), the cobbled streets that led off the green tended to be crowded with motor-cars and vans. Otherwise, there was little to disturb the peace, and as Jameson eyed the pretty cottages with their window-boxes full of flowers, he understood why people might choose to live here.

A few doors along from the police station was the Red Lion Inn, where Andrew Norris and Ben Shaw had had their lunch on the day of Tom Tipping’s murder. It looked pleasant enough, and Jameson made a note to speak to the landlord. The two policemen crossed the green and walked down a narrow street, then turned left. This brought them to the entrance to Tithes Field and the start of Dead Man’s Path. Tom Tipping’s body had been found some way along it, and Jameson paused again to look about him.

‘As you can see, sir,’ observed Sergeant Primm, ‘even if Andrew Norris did somehow manage to sneak out of the inn, he’d have been in full view of everyone in the street and couldn’t possibly have run all the way here, shot Tipping and then come back without
someone
seeing him.’

‘Is this the only way to Dead Man’s Path from the Red Lion?’ asked Jameson.

‘Unless you can run through brick walls,’ said Primm, and pointed. Just past the entrance to Dead Man’s Path was a lane. Jameson walked a little way down it and saw on the left farther down a row of tiny terrace cottages. Opposite them was the church, a pretty building of grey stone with a mossy roof, which sat within a quiet churchyard.

‘The inn backs onto those houses,’ said the sergeant, who had followed him. ‘You’d have to jump over them to get here.’

‘I see. That seems to settle it, then,’ said Jameson.

They returned up the lane and entered Dead Man’s Path. The sky was still gloomy and the path was even darker than it had been that morning. Nobody was about, and they reached the spot where Tom Tipping had died without meeting anybody. Sergeant Primm looked about him warily.

‘I’m not one for believing in ghosts,’ he said, ‘but Margaret Tipping was right enough when she said this place was haunted. It’s not the pleasantest of spots.’

‘No,’ agreed Inspector Jameson. ‘Why is it called Dead Man’s Path?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the sergeant. ‘But I’ve lived here all my life and my father used to call it by that name,
and
his father before him.’

‘But where does it go? It’s not a short-cut from the village to the fête, as far as I can tell. It starts at Tithes Field and leads—where?’

‘There are farmhouses and cottages up that way,’ said Primm. ‘Mrs. Montgomery lives in one of them, and some of the farm-hands who work around here live in the others. And a little farther up still there are some newer houses, which were built when the river flooded about thirty years ago and washed away a street of old cottages on the lower land.’

‘I see,’ said Jameson.

A church bell rang out suddenly in the silence and made them both jump.

‘I didn’t realize we were so near the church,’ said Jameson. He peered through the trees and saw the tumble-down wall of the churchyard. ‘Hmm,’ he went on. ‘Whoever did it might have come here by any number of ways, it seems. He might have come from the fête in Tithes Field at that end, or from the houses at the other end.’

‘Beyond those houses is open countryside,’ said Primm helpfully, ‘so anyone might have come from that way and done it. There’s nothing to say it was someone from Banford. It might have been someone who just happened to be passing.’

‘A random killing, you mean?’ said the inspector. ‘They’re pretty rare. Was the motive robbery, perhaps?’

‘No,’ said the sergeant. ‘That was our first thought, as a matter of fact. We’ve some troublesome gipsies hereabouts, but they’re not that sort. They’re more for the petty pilfering. They’ve never been known to attack anybody. We’ll have a word with them, though.’

‘Do,’ said Jameson. ‘Of course, with so many people out and about that day, whoever it was might have passed quite unnoticed. It would have been a matter of minutes to slip away from the fête and do the deed, for example.’

‘That’s true enough,’ said Primm. ‘There was a pretty large crowd there that day, and a lot of coming and going.’

‘Whoever it was took quite a risk, though, since anyone might have turned up—and in fact there were three people nearby at the time that we know of,’ said Inspector Jameson. ‘He must have arrived, shot Tipping and then run off as quickly as he could before he was caught.’ He turned his attention back to the path. ‘So, then, our murderer might have arrived from either end of the path, or he might have come from the lane and through the churchyard, or he might have come from that house over there,’ he indicated a large farmhouse that could just be glimpsed through the trees on the other side of the path, ‘which I take it is the Tippings’ house.’ He paused. ‘Where does Norman Tipping live?’ he said after a moment.

‘He has his own house on the edge of the village,’ said Primm.

‘Is he a wealthy man?’

‘I couldn’t say what he was before, sir,’ said the sergeant, ‘but I imagine he’ll be rather wealthier now that his father is dead.’

The words hung significantly in the air, and the two men exchanged glances.

On her way back to Two Tithes, Angela decided to take a detour through the old orchard in which she had spent many a happy hour stealing fruit as a child. She crossed Tithes Field and climbed over a stile, beyond which was the orchard itself. The place looked much the same as it had twenty years ago, and she smiled to herself as she recognized a pear tree that she had been especially fond of as a girl, since she was convinced it produced the sweetest pears of all the trees in the place. She passed through quickly, for she was looking for something in particular, which she soon found. Just beyond the orchard, at the top of a slight incline, stood a stately oak tree of great age. From here it was possible to get a glimpse of Two Tithes house through the trees, and it was here that Joseph the footman—now Doggett the butler—with the help of the old gardener, long dead, had set up a swing for young Miss Angela at her special request. And there it still was, its wooden seat slightly cracked and its ropes greying and a little frayed, with a bare patch of ground below it which indicated that it was still used frequently—presumably by local children. Angela smiled and for the first time felt something akin to a twinge of affection for the old place. She walked over to the swing and tested the ropes, then brushed off the seat and sat down gingerly. It was something of a squeeze, and her legs were rather too long for it these days, but still it was a swing and it was hers. She pushed off with her feet and then let go, enjoying the long-forgotten sensation and recalling how delighted she had been when Joseph had first brought her here and proudly but shyly shown off his handiwork. Of course, she had been much more daring then, and had liked nothing better than to push herself as high as she could, then at the very highest point launch herself into the air to see how far away she could land. The swing had been the cause of many bumps and grazes, she remembered.

She was still swinging gently back and forth, letting her thoughts drift pleasantly, when she suddenly became aware of someone approaching. It was the second of the two young men she had spotted that morning crossing the garden at Two Tithes, and he did not appear to have seen her, for he was scribbling in his notebook as he walked, stopping only occasionally to gaze into the air for a second and then resume writing. After proceeding slowly in this manner for some minutes he finally drew level with the oak tree, and stopped short as a particularly splendid idea seemed to strike him.

‘Ha!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’ll get ’em, see if it won’t!’

He wrote down whatever it was, then closed his notebook with a snap and put it in his pocket. He took out a cigarette and inserted it into his mouth, then patted his jacket, looking for a light.

‘Hallo, Freddy,’ said Angela.

Freddy Pilkington-Soames started and whirled round.

‘Good Lord, it’s Mrs. M!’ he said in astonishment. ‘Whatever are you doing here?’

‘Discovering that I’m rather wider these days than I was when I was twelve,’ she replied regretfully. ‘Still, I suppose I ought to be thankful that this branch appears to be holding my weight for now.’

‘Are you here for the murder?’ said Freddy. ‘Don’t tell me Scotland Yard have called you in specially.’

‘Of course not,’ said Angela. ‘It’s nothing to do with me. Did the
Clarion
send you? I saw you and your friend crossing the lawn this morning—and by the way, didn’t you know it’s very rude to walk through other people’s gardens?’

‘Nonsense,’ said Freddy. ‘It’s not as though I was stealing the begonias. It serves them right, anyhow—if people will insist on putting a house in my way then they must expect me to walk through it.’

‘A refreshing point of view, I admit,’ said Angela. ‘Still, though, you’d better watch out for Humphrey.’

‘Humphrey? Is he the pompous old ass who caught me on the croquet lawn and told me it was young men such as I who had got the nation into the parlous state in which it presently finds itself?’

‘That pompous old ass, as you call him, happens to be my brother,’ said Angela.

‘No!’ said Freddy, and regarded her with some surprise. ‘Really? Tell me you’re joking. I can’t believe you have a brother. In fact, I don’t believe you were born in the normal way at all. I’ve always supposed that you emerged fully formed from a fountain, in a shower of jewels and rose-petals. Please don’t shatter my illusions like that—I fear I shall never get over it.’

‘Idiot,’ she said good-humouredly. ‘No, I’m afraid I came into being in the usual manner, and am presently showing what a dutiful sister I am by staying here and behaving with great sobriety and respectability.’

‘Poor you,’ he said. ‘That sounds awfully dull. Still, I’m here now to shine a little light on things.’

‘Yes, it’s very kind of you,’ said Angela. ‘And how is the reporting business going?’

‘Slow, very slow,’ said Freddy. ‘I expect it’s the time of year.’

‘But it’s the middle of the season,’ said Angela. ‘Don’t they send you to all the debutantes’ dances?’

Freddy shuddered.

‘They most certainly do,’ he said, ‘and I may never recover from the horror of it. I’m
supposed
to be there to observe and then find twenty different ways of describing pink tulle, but what actually happens is that I enter the room and a thousand beady eyes immediately regard me in the manner of a school of sharks contemplating a small and frightened herring. Then all at once I am pounced upon and plied with champagne, and someone says, “Of
course
you remember Bessie, don’t you? She was at school with Evelyn Fox,
you
know, whose aunt ran off to Antibes with Harold Barker-White, who used to be the stepfather of Reggie Coverdale—now don’t tell me you don’t remember Reggie: he’s doing
marvellously
well out in India now that he’s recovered from the amputation,” and then before I know it I’m smiling glassily and dancing with some trussed-up female who
might
be quite good-looking if one could only get a glimpse of her under all that silk and lace and rouge, and
might
even be rather good fun if only she hadn’t been drilled to death in the proper behaviour and one could get a laugh out of her. I don’t know what’s wrong with the young men of today,’ he finished, ‘but I tell you this: it’s coming to something when all the proud mamas of Mayfair are eyeing
me
up as a prospect.’

‘Don’t be silly—I’m sure you’ll make some girl very happy one day,’ said Angela kindly. ‘So then, this murder must have been rather a godsend for you.’

‘I’ll say,’ he said. ‘As soon as it turned up I threw my dinner-suit on the fire and came down here like a shot.’

‘And what is the
Clarion
’s position on the case?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ said Freddy. ‘I haven’t thought of one. I’ve been scouting about all morning, but I’ve been rather hamstrung by the competition.’

‘Ah, that would be the other man I saw. Is he a reporter too?’

At this, Freddy gave a sound expressive of utter disgust.

‘A reporter?’ he said. ‘I beg you, please don’t use that word in the same sentence as that—that—no, I won’t flatter him by calling him a blister. As a matter of fact, to call him a blister would be an insult to right-thinking blisters everywhere. He’s a weeping sore on the face of humanity, that’s what he is.’

‘Goodness,’ said Angela. ‘Who is he?’

‘Corky Beckwith,’ said Freddy. ‘He works for the
Herald
—and I won’t bore you with my opinions on that rag: suffice it to say that it’s the sort of newspaper which employs people like Corky Beckwith, and
that
ought to tell you all you need to know about it.’

‘How dreadful,’ said Angela politely. ‘I shall spit at his feet and turn my back on him if I happen to meet him accidentally.’