The Twelve Clues of Christmas (21 page)

“Since when did you become so forceful?” Darcy said. “I remember you as a meek little thing when we first met.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been meek,” I said. “Remember, I do come from a great-grandmother who was rather forceful herself. Maybe I was just reticent when we first met—I didn’t quite trust you.”

Darcy laughed. “Good judgment. My one aim was to get you into bed, and I can’t believe I haven’t succeeded yet. I must be developing a conscience.”

“I do want to, Darcy,” I said. “It’s just that the moment never seems to be right.”

He grinned at me. “We’ll make a moment even if I have to whisk you off to Brighton to do so.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Smith?” I joked.

“How about Mr. and Mrs. O’Mara?”

Ah. There was the rub. I tried to say, “I can’t marry you,” but I couldn’t. Instead I joked, “I suspect I’ll have a good long wait, then, until you’re ready to settle down.”

“Who knows,” Darcy said, giving me a questioning look. “Stranger things have happened.”

We reached the jeweler’s, but it was closed. “I don’t believe it’s opened since the robbery,” I said, peering through the window into the dark interior.

“There’s a front door to one side,” Darcy said. “Maybe he lives over the shop. Try knocking.”

We knocked. We even rang the doorbell, but nobody came.

“Not at home,” Darcy said.

I stared up at the window with the curtains drawn across it. “Who would go out on a day like this?” I asked.

Darcy and I looked at each other. “You don’t suppose . . . ?” we said in unison.

Chapter 34

I
N THE TOWN OF
N
EWTON
A
BBOTT,
D
EVONSHIRE

D
ECEMBER 29

Darcy gave one last volley of knocks on the front door. As we were walking away a window opened above the next-door haberdashery shop. An elderly woman’s face looked out.

“You’re wanting Mr. Klein, are you? He’s not there, my dearies,” she said. “Leastways, I haven’t seen him since I got back from my daughter’s yesterday. I knocked to give him a piece of my daughter’s Christmas cake, but nobody answered so I think he must have gone away.”

“Any idea where he might have gone?” I asked.

She shook her head. “He has two daughters, I remember, but I couldn’t tell you where they live. He’s a very private man. Keeps himself to himself and it’s hard to get a word out of him.”

Darcy and I exchanged a look as we walked away. “We’d better go back to the police,” I said. “He could be lying there dead on the floor and nobody would know.”

The constable at the police station listened politely but clearly wasn’t taking us seriously. “Lots of folks go away over Christmas,” he said. “I don’t think you should worry yourself unduly, miss.”

“But we have reason to believe that the robbery of his store was linked to all these strange deaths. You know—Gladys Tripp, Mr. Skaggs.”

“And how might that be, miss?”

“It’s too complicated to explain now,” I said. “I’m sure Inspector Newcombe would act immediately if I told him what I now know.”

“We can’t just go breaking in someone’s door on the off chance that something might not be right,” he said.

“Not even if a person may well be lying dead inside, murdered?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “I’m all alone here at the moment. Can’t leave the station unattended, can I? Besides, I can’t do nothing without my sergeant’s permission.”

“And where is he?”

“It’s his day off, miss. Can’t bother him on his day off.”

I had a growing desire to slap him but I fought to stay calm. “So if a major crime happened now, if someone ran down the street shooting people, you’d just watch because you’re all alone in the police station?”

I felt Darcy dig me in the side. The constable considered my question, not recognizing it as sarcasm. “Well, miss, if a man ran down our street shooting at people, I reckon I’d be bound to try and stop him, wouldn’t I? But if the gentleman you’re talking about is already dead, then an hour or so more won’t matter much to him, will it?”

In the face of such reason I had to back down.

“So you have no way of contacting Inspector Newcombe at all? You couldn’t find out where his meeting is being held?”

The constable considered this. “I suppose I could put through a telephone call to the main police station in Exeter and they might know how to find him, but he wouldn’t half be mad at me if I brought him back here for nothing.”

“I can promise you it’s not for nothing,” I said. “We now have proof that all those deaths were murders, you see.”

“You don’t say!” He stared at me, wide-eyed.

“And another man has died this morning and more people will go on dying unless the murderer is stopped.”

“Well, I never. Who’d have thought it around here?” he said. “I don’t recall there ever being a murder in these parts. Just like London, isn’t it?”

“So will you try to contact the inspector for us, please?” I asked.

“I’ll do my best, miss,” he said.

“We shouldn’t wait around any longer,” Darcy said. “They’ll worry where we’ve got to. And I’ve borrowed Monty’s motorcar without permission. The inspector will come out to us as soon as he gets your note.”

“I should add something about Mr. Klein,” I said and on the back of the envelope I wrote,
Mr. Klein doesn’t answer his door. Suspect he may be dead inside his flat. Constable refused to break down door to find out.

Then reluctantly we had to drive back to Tiddleton-under-Lovey. The field where the chase had taken place now had an abandoned feel to it, with bits of bunting flapping in the wind and the ghostly shapes of booths looming over the fence. Johnnie’s roguish face swam into my mind and I remembered the others teasing him about entering the race because of his age. He had felt himself immortal then. I squeezed my eyes shut in an attempt to blot out the pain.

We put the motor back in the old stables beside the house and went in to find everyone in a mellow mood after the exertions of the race and the large amount of alcohol consumed. Cherie and Ethel had now attached themselves to Monty and Badger and were sitting beside them on a sofa. The adults were drinking coffee and looking bored. Lady Hawse-Gorzley waylaid me in the passageway.

“Oh, there you are. I suspect you slipped away with my nephew, you naughty girl.” She wagged a finger, but she was smiling.

“We tried to find Inspector Newcombe,” I said. “We discovered something he ought to know.”

She brushed back her hair from her face in a distracted gesture. “These deaths—I’m really beginning to believe in the Lovey Curse. I can’t explain them any other way. And Wild Sal was out there at the Chase today, dancing around as bold as you please. It would not surprise me one bit if she were a witch.” She paused, then managed an embarrassed smile. “Oh, I know one is supposed to be modern and pooh-pooh anything supernatural, but in this part of the world we take the supernatural seriously.”

“I don’t think she’s responsible for these deaths,” I said.

“Then how can they be explained?” she snapped. “Seeing poor Johnnie today . . . I’ve known him all my life. We used to play together when we were children. Am I really to believe that he suffered a heart attack?”

“I think we’ll find out that he was murdered,” I said. “I think we’ll find that these were all well-planned murders.”

She glared at me fiercely. “Then who will be next?” she said. “Shouldn’t I send my guests away now rather than expose them to this kind of danger?”

“I think your guests are safe. It seems to be only local people—people about whom the killer knows an awful lot.”

She shuddered. “Horrible. Horrible. I worry about Oswald. He often goes off alone, tramping all over the estate. He takes the dogs with him, but they can’t protect him, can they?”

I put a tentative hand on her arm. “We may be near to solving this,” I said. “I suggest we keep everyone close to the house for the rest of their time here.”

“What about the Worsting of the Hag?” she said. “They’ll want to take part in that, won’t they? It’s the big event.”

“What exactly happens?”

“On New Year’s Eve every year, everyone goes from house to house around the village, banging on pots and pans and drums, making noise to drive out evil spirits. It’s supposed to be the reenactment of the time when they chased the witch around the village before they caught her on Lovey Tor. Always great fun.”

“But dangerous,” I said. “How can you protect people out in the dark?”

She shrugged. “We’ll have to enlist the help of the police, won’t we? We can’t stop the festival. It’s been going for two hundred–plus years.”

She peered into the sitting room. “Oh, God. What are we going to do with them? Look at them—just sitting there, waiting to be entertained. I do wish I hadn’t undertaken this stupid farce.” She looked at me for understanding. “You’ve probably heard by now that they’re all paying guests.”

I nodded.

“We needed the money, you see. Things have not been going well and this seemed like such a good opportunity.” She sighed. “But I wish to God we had never done it. I even began to wonder whether these deaths were some kind of punishment for not accepting our lot.”

“I’m sure they’re not,” I said. “Look, why don’t I go and set up another skittles tournament for them? And maybe we could ask Mr. Barclay to give them an organ concert in the church. He plays very well.”

“What a splendid idea. Thank you, Georgiana. You’ve been a big help to me.”

I didn’t think I’d been that much of a help at all and I suddenly felt awkward about accepting money from her. After all, I was having a far better Christmas than I would have had at Castle Rannoch. Actually, I’d have paid her to be away from Fig!

* * *

A
FTER LUNCH
I
took Mrs. Upthorpe, Ethel and Mrs. Wexler for a walk with me to see Mr. Barclay. I didn’t feel like going anywhere alone anymore and they all seemed at loose ends. All the way down the drive they chatted about fashions and dressmakers and ladies’ magazines until I felt quite left out. Sometimes it’s hard to be penniless.

Mr. Barclay’s eyes darted nervously when he saw us standing on his doorstep.

“Well, this is an unexpected pleasure. A peeress of the realm in my humble cottage,” he said, but he didn’t look very pleased. He invited us into a neat, old-fashioned front parlor that looked as if it hadn’t been touched since his grandmother’s day, and offered us tea. It seemed rude to refuse and we sat uncomfortably while he kept apologizing for not having anything suitable to offer us to accompany the tea. If only he’d known we were coming, he said, he’d have baked something. When he heard the reason for our visit he perked up no end.

“Oh, how kind of you,” he said. “What an honor. I shall be thrilled, positively thrilled. Now you’ve given me a challenging task—what piece of music to play. What a delicious dilemma, isn’t it?”

We set the time of the concert for three o’clock the next day (“Not after dark, if you please; the church lighting is so poor and my hands won’t work when they get too cold”) and were glad to take our leave.

“Poor little man, I feel rather sorry for him, don’t you?” Mrs. Upthorpe said when we could finally take our leave. “Such a lonely life. Probably has nobody in the village to talk to.”

We arrived back to a second, and more satisfying, tea. The day seemed to drag on and on, with no news from the inspector. We played charades again before dinner, but this time it felt as if nobody’s heart was really in it and nobody had the urge to dress up, after the previous night’s horror. We had just gone up to change for dinner when there was a tap on my bedroom door. I opened it to find one of the maids.

“If you please, my lady, that police inspector has come to see you,” she said. “I’ve put him in the master’s study.”

I hurriedly finished dressing and went down the stairs. Inspector Newcombe had been pacing the room and spun around as I entered.

“I came because my constable impressed upon me that you had something terribly important to tell me. A matter of life and death, I believe was how he put it.”

I nodded. “But first what of Mr. Klein? Did anyone go and see what had happened to him?”

“We did,” he said, eyeing me coldly. “And it turned out he’s been staying with his daughter in Torquay. We felt like a lot of right charlies, I can tell you.”

“So he’s all right, then?”

“Perfectly.”

I let out a sigh of relief.

“Do you mind telling me what made you think he wasn’t all right?”

“Because he should have died on the twenty-fourth,” I said. “He was the gold rings.”

And I explained what I had figured out. He listened, at first with a smirk on his face, but then a frown formed on his forehead and his expression grew grimmer and grimmer as I went along.

“It’s positively bizarre,” he said at last, “but I have to admit it certainly fits. And if you’re right, then the man who died today did not have a heart attack.”

“Maybe he did,” I said. “If the killer knew he had a weak heart and was on medicine, he could easily have tampered with the dose. He has been staying here so you’ll probably find his medicines up in his bedroom. I suggest you take them with you for testing.”

The inspector looked at me suspiciously. “Where do you get these ideas, a well-bred young lady like you?”

“I’ve had some experience with murders,” I said.

“Do you go around actually seeking them out for fun?” He shook his head. “I’ve heard of you bright young things stealing policemen’s helmets, but this takes the cake.”

“Certainly not. I hate them, but I’ve been involved in a few. I’d much rather not.”

He perched on the edge of Sir Oswald’s desk. “All right, then, my lady. If you’ve figured out how these deaths are linked, perhaps you’d be good enough to tell me who might be playing this little game with us.”

“I wish I could. Somebody local who knows everybody’s habits. Somebody with considerable skills and a twisted mind. Somebody with a grudge against a lot of people.”

He sucked in air through his teeth. “And how are we to find out who that might be?”

“He has made two mistakes,” I said. “Mrs. Sechrest and Mr. Klein. He has let them live. They may have some idea of who might want them dead.”

“Right,” he said. “I don’t think Mrs. Sechrest will be up to talking much yet, but I could go to see Mr. Klein tomorrow.” He looked at me almost coyly. “Do you think the retired gentleman from Scotland Yard might want to accompany me?”

“He might very well want to,” I said. “And I’d like to come along as well, if I may.”

“Well, given that you’re the only one who has made any headway with this puzzle, I can hardly say no, can I?” He stood up again.