Chapter 4
Ida and Gladys arrived in time for church the next morning, and Alexander drove the family to church in his beloved Lancia Lambda.
The rather faded blonde, pretty young woman with a small boy came forward to embrace and kiss Ida outside the church.
“Shake hands with Miss Henderson, Cyril,” she said.
The small boy held out his hand obediently, and Ida took it. Her expression changed slightly.
“Why, Mr. Baskerville, how unkind of you to frighten your mouse by giving him to a lady without introduction,” said Ida. “I think you should let him go.”
“I didn’t know you were that good,” said Cyril, with a gap-toothed grin. He reached down and released the mouse he had palmed to shake hands. It scuttled off into the grass at the side of the path and vanished behind a tombstone.
“I’m an archaeologist; I handle dead bodies,” said Ida. “Much worse than a live mouse.”
“Spiffy!” said Cyril.
“Oh, Cyril,” said Cecily Baskerville.
“Oh, you will like Inspector Armitage,” said Ida. “He’s a detective.”
“That’s the cat’s pyjamas!” said Cyril, deeply awed.
“It can be boring at times,” said Alexander. “I don’t spend all my time chasing crooks in cars, Mr. Baskerville, sometimes I do my chasing in an office, in old paperwork.”
Cyril giggled. He liked being ‘Mr. Baskerville.’
The service was not too long, and the hymns played at a fast speed by Miss Amabel Brinkley, a spinster lady of uncertain years who helped Miss Thripp with the village school, and assisted with the Brownie Guides. The Scouts and Guides were nicely turned out, under the stern eyes of Tim Mapp, the local bobby, who ran the Scouts, with aid from the vicar and Oliver Oliver, and the Guides were run by Marion Squires, with the aid of her daughter, Maggie, Tim’s best girl, and Miss Brinkley when not performing her duty as organist. Alexander smiled to see Maggie lean over and touch the jiggling knee of a bored Brownie, with a quiet gesture to stay still. He recognised several of the Girl Guides and Senior Scouts as being members of the chorus. It was a good community, and he smiled, glad he was moving here whenever he could.
After the service, Ida and Gladys spent some time catching up with Maggie and other Girl Guides.
“I wouldn’t have recognised you, Ida,” said Maud Braithwaite. “Why, you look healthy and every inch a fashionable flapper!”
“I was a sickly child, not helped by that evil woman trying to poison me to stop me asking questions about her drug dealing out of our cellar, and later murdering my sister-in-law and my brother, Basil,” said Ida. “Don’t start playing games, Maud; remember who never called you ‘Haddock.’”
Maud flushed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was afraid you were going to throw your weight around, being a lady and all.”
“The war swept most of the old order away,” said Ida. “My fiancé doesn’t make a big deal about his family, either, so don’t start on him.”
Maud blushed.
“I thought he was an outsider, and I was waiting for you to be stuck up,” she said. “And Gladdie looks as if she’s gone up in the world.”
“I’m getting married to Mr. Basil’s man, who is now Mr Alexander’s man and chauffeur,” said Gladys. “And we eat at the same table and he listens to our opinions.”
“He’s still ‘Mister,’ though,” said Maud.
“I doubt he’d care, but I do,” said Gladys.
“I wouldn’t,” said Alexander. “But I won’t push anyone to do what makes them uncomfortable, Miss Braithwaite.”
“Oh, well, so long as that’s understood,” said Maud.
“How come you’re singing Koko, not Katisha?” asked Ida.
“A combination of Oliver stepping down as Koko, and Miss Thripp stepping up as Katisha,” said Alexander. “I need to ask Fred whether I should introduce lyrics about local characters into the list song.”
“What had you in mind?” asked Ida.
Alexander gave her a roguish wink, and raised his voice in song.
“There are architects whose houses look like sewerage works or worse
And flat-foot London cops who think they own the universe
And Flappers, who can dance a bit but would really rather flap
And chauffeurs who see car back seats as somewhere for a nap,
And it really doesn’t matter whom you put upon the list
For they’d none of them be missed, they’d none of them be missed”
Ida laughed.
“Poor David!” she said. “I’ve seen the plans of the new Foursquares, and it’s much better. Modelled after the designs of a Swiss architect called Le Corbusier. It has a grand staircase and gallery at the front with a round bay covering it, all window, but private places off at sides and back, and the rest in brick, but with a conservatory on the roof under a glass dome. A lot of poured, reinforced concrete, and steel.”
“Well, it can’t be more grotesque than the original,” said Alexander.
Fred Chaffinch was in one of his silent paroxysms of laughter.
“That’ll do nicely for your own stamp on the song!” he said, slapping Alexander on the back. “I hope you wrote it down.”
“Not yet, Fred, I sang it extempore,” said Alexander. “But I do have a notebook with me.”
“You can use my back as a desk,” said Fred, turning round and leaning with his hands on his thighs.
“Much obliged,” said Alexander, who was used to writing in his notebook without anything to help him, but used Fred’s back out of courtesy. It did make his writing more legible.
“I had a good time, thanks,” said Jeff as Alexander saw him off.
“Come down on any day off, old man, and take pot luck,” said Alexander. “I suspect I will be bored much of the time, I already know all my lines, Mary is too efficient for me to need to do anything about the house or grounds, and next time you see me, I shall be fat from beer, batter, and baked goods.”
“I doubt it; you have too much nervous energy,” said Jeff, calling this last through the window as the train pulled out.
He was serenaded as he departed by Fred and Alexander informing him that a policeman’s lot was not a happy one.
Jeff disagreed; he was happier than he had been for years.
And he wanted to return to get to known Ruth Fringford better, and her engaging little girl, who had taken him to see the fairy house she had made in a hole in a tree, with some of her dollshouse furniture.
He was not to know that Alexander would be asking for him in a professional capacity before long.
Alexander walked into the village on Monday morning. He wanted the exercise, and did not want to mope around the house. It was dry when he left, having been drizzling earlier, and threatening more, but he had a good overcoat and hat, and a muffler in his pocket if it came on to be squally.
“If it rains seriously, I’ll bring the car down to the pub,” said Campbell. “Gladdie and Miss Ida are inventorying the attics, and I’ll be lifting, shifting, and runnin’ errands for them, but I’ll keep a wevver eye out.”
“If you find any dead rats, try to dissuade her from embalming them and interring them with a painted voice offering to whichever god it was with thousands bread, cheese, and candlewax,” said Alexander, who had heard Ida on the subject of formulaic burial phrases and thousands bread, beer, and alabaster.
“You will ’ave your little joke, sir,” said Campbell, repressively. “Any voice offerings I give those dratted critters’ll involve a burst o’ the king’s invective, naval fashion like ʼe knows well, an’ a whack wiv anyfink to ʼand.”
Alexander laughed, and went on his way.
He reached the village in a good mood, as he had made it without pain, and had seen a rather well-formed rainbow.
“Mr Armitage, sir?” Tim Mapp, the local bobby, approached Alexander. “I know you’re on medical leave, but... but I think this is police business, and it’s out of my league.”
“‘A policeman’s lot is not a happy one,’” quoted Alexander. “You look upset.”
“Yessir, I am,” said Tim. “My Maggie had a nasty letter, and so has Sid – Sid Smith, you know, the mechanic. We’re good friends, we went to school together, and on to the grammar school; being the two who passed to go free to the grammar school makes you closer, you know?”
Alexander nodded. He understood how it was; he had stood up for the local boys who had passed a scholarship to the grammar school he attended.
“It’s an impressive achievement, but the other kids can be little brutes,” he said. “You’re both about my age, right?”
“Yessir, I think so,” said Tim. “Well, I took my sergeant’s exams, and I heard I got the promotion in the post today, so I am moving up, but I only just got confirmation. And Sam swears there weren’t other letters, they were just in his bag with any others.”
“Which means nothing, as Sam’s bag lies about on the floor in the post office,” said Alexander, steering Tim into an alcove in the cafe-cum-bakery, which was about as private as anywhere in the village. “Bad protocol, but understandable. What did these letters say?”
“Sid burned his, but mentioned it when he heard Maggie talking about it,” said Tim. “Letters made up of being cut out of the newspaper, they were, and the envelopes done with a typewriter. Maggie showed me what had been sent to her, and I told her on no account to burn it, as we’d need evidence.”
“Good man,” said Alexander, holding out a hand. Paper did not take fingerprints well enough to bother, and so it made little difference how many people handled the letter. “Nip and show Sam the envelope; and if he or Dan see such a letter – and Dan’s more likely to do so when delivering – then they are to hold on to it, and ask the recipient to come in to the police house and open it in front of you, and then hand it over. That way, I don’t have to ask Dan to violate the mails by holding onto them for me.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Tim, relieved.
Alexander opened the letter sent to Maggie Squires. It was rather clumsily put together from words and letters cut from newspapers.
“You bitch, you think you have some say because your man friend is a copper. Don’t think I didn’t see you make eyes at the rich Londoner”
The upper and lower case were muddled where whole words were not used, to use what the writer could find, but the spelling was impeccable.
“Nasty,” said Alexander. “I trust you were able to assure Maggie that you don’t believe that nonsense?”
“Of course, sir,” said Tim. “I know my Maggie doesn’t have eyes for anyone else. And that you don’t have eyes for anyone but Ida Henderson.”
“I’m glad,” said Alexander, soberly. “This sort of thing – poison pen letters – it’s dirty, it’s insidious, and too many people say, ‘no smoke without fire.’”
Tim laughed.
“They’ve never tried to teach Cub Scouts to light a campfire and have the little ninnies try to do so with all green wood.”
“Good point,” said Alexander. “I’m glad. If I felt that you were mistrusting me, it would make my position to help very difficult.”
“I might not know what to do with a poison pen, sir, but I wasn’t born yesterday,” said Tim. “It’s all about creating sensation. I read books about psychology since you mentioned it in passing after that Gloria woman’s machinations, and I know it’s usually either teenage girls who feel isolated, or ageing spinsters, who want a bit of spice in their lives.”
“And does that lead you to anyone?” asked Alexander.
Tim shuffled, uncomfortably.
“A few names did come to mind,” he said, unhappily. “Miss Thripp, because she’s afraid she might not be able to sing; Mrs. Reckitt, who is a semi-invalid, but has access to the post bags with her husband being postmaster and her son the postman, and she does get jealous of them going out to sing. I’ve heard the odd row. And... well, Haddock Braithwaite. She’s a loner, and her father wouldn’t let her put in for the exam for the girls’ grammar school, ‘not for the likes of us,’ he said, and her clever enough to take it. And Maggie did and she’s always been jealous.”
Alexander nodded.
“If people didn’t use that unpleasant nickname, it might help,” he said. “I can see that she feels she’s wasting her youth and talent wrapping fish and chips nightly. Her father’s a heavy handed man, I think; kindly enough in his way, but he isn’t progressive.”
Tim gave a bark of sour laughter.
“Not progressive! And rain is damp,” he said. “He lets her sing because of how it would look if he didn’t, but you watch, tonight, she’ll be off to London, made up to the nines, because no chippie is open on a Monday night.”
Alexander nodded. As well as shutting on Sunday, no chip shop could open on a Monday, as of course the trawlers would not go out on a Sunday, so there was no fresh fish. Most shops had their half day on Wednesday, but fish shops shut all day Monday. [1]
Alexander went back to the police house with Tim, which was opposite the ‘Clene Shepe’ public house, and was known locally as ‘The Crook House’ in irony, as it was a fifteenth century edifice which leaned in several different direction, and with a number of layers in the nomenclature covering the lockup in the cellar for any crooks, before transfer into Oxford, and the idea of Tim wielding a shepherd’s crook, metaphorically, on anyone drunk and disorderly. Here, he telephoned his boss, Superintendant Edwin Barrett.
“Alex, my boy! What are you up to, and why does it involve me?” he boomed.
“We just got two poison-pen letters,” said Alexander. “I know that doesn’t constitute a spate, but a spate begins as a trickle. And there might be more which have not yet shown up. Sergeant Mapp intercepted one, and has been told about another. Sid Smith... oh, here he is! Sid, what did yours say?”
“Nothing much, but Tim wanted me to tell you about it,” said the mechanic. “Something about me overcharging for having a little knowledge and that I cut the brake line of David Henderson’s car last year to stop him winning a race. Which is balderdash as it was your car, and that woman did it, and you weren’t racing.”
“How interesting,” said Alexander. “Anyway, Edwin... Superintendant, I mean, I’m trying to be official here... is it in order to ask to borrow Jeff Morrell as an official face of Scotland Yard, and Sergeant Harris? Harris is known, locally, so he’d be looked on as Tim is.”
“I’m already short an inspector with you hors de combat,” said Barrett. “You think this is going to end badly, don’t you?”
“These things are nasty, even when the writer needs help more than blame,” said Alexander.
“I can let you have Harris, and I can tell Morrell to come down at the weekends to take reports,” said Barrett. “Unless he’s on a case. That’s as far as I’ll go. Try not to get into too much trouble.”
“I’ll try, sir,” said Alexander.
He smiled at Tim as he hung up.
“We shall have Harris,” he said. “Good at poking about, is Harris.”
“That’s good; I can be everywhere with normal things, but this isn’t,” said Tim.
“I’ll listen to what people say at the pumps when they fill up,” said Sid. “It’ll be farmers mostly, for diesel. Them as don’t still use steam. I’ve nothing against steam, mind,” he added. “And it saw us through the war. But diesel and petrol, they can do a cold start.”
“I take it you were in the Royal Engineers in the war?” asked Alexander.[2]
“That’s right, Major, and we kept all your tanks running,” said Sid.
Alexander laughed.
“That you did,” he said.
