Lies in Lashbrook 13 cliffie bonus

 

Chapter 13

 

Alexander turned sharply to Savin.

“Have you been in your daughter’s room since her death?” he asked.

“Why, yes,” said Savin. “Both nights, I went and sat on her chair at her desk, and I talked to her. After all, she might be able to hear.”

“Did you search for her diary or disarrange anything?” asked Alexander.

“I didn’t even know she kept a diary,” said Savin. “She never mentioned it.  I did gather up her shorthand text books, and bundled them up; I took them into the school today on my way into work and asked if they could use them for a pupil who was having trouble affording them, and informed them officially of her death. They were appreciative. She had not written inside them,” he added, hastily. “I don’t permit her to do so, I’ll happily buy her any number of exercise books.”

Alexander nodded.

“Nothing else?”

“No... Oh! Yes. I picked up her teddy bear, because I couldn’t hug Irma ever again, and I took him into the guest room. I’ve been sleeping in the guest room since Irma... died.... because Vi and I quarrelled over it.”

“I told you! He quarrelled with her! He did it!” Mrs. Tweedie-Banks had pushed into the cottage.

Alexander spun round to face her.

“Madam, this is a crime scene. Please vacate the premises.”

“Not until you arrest him! Look, he’s been packing to leave!”

“Mr. Savin is leaving on my orders,” said Alexander. “Get out!”

“You can’t make me, and if you men hang together to cover it up....”

“You have the right to remain silent but any further words you use may be used in a court of law to your detriment,” said Alexander, fed up with her. “You are under arrest for wasting police time and interfering with evidence, and God help you if your pernicious nosiness meant that it was you who let yourself in to search Irma’s room!”

“And why shouldn’t I? I didn’t make a mess, but her diary was a load of patterns of dots, squiggles, and dashes and no use at all,” said Mrs. Tweedie-Banks. “You can’t arrest me! I haven’t done anything wrong! Arrest him!” she pointed at Savin, who flinched.

“Actually, you have done several things wrong, and have just moved to the top of the list as the suspect of writing the poison-pen letters and killing both Savin women, since your wearing of beach-pyjamas could lead to confusion over whether the killer was male or female,” said Alexander. “Lock her up, Tim, and we’ll have her arraigned in Oxford.”

“You can’t do this!” protested the woman as Tim snapped handcuffs on her. “I haven’t done anything wrong!”

“What a liar you are,” said Tim, with great pleasure. “Interfering in police work, breaking and entering, disturbing evidence with malicious intent; I should think you’ll get three months, and more if you run off your mouth to the judge.”

“I never heard anything so ridiculous! You’ll be sorry.”

“I already am, I have to listen to your farrago of nonsense in the cells, and walking there,” sighed Tim.

“Can you drive?” asked Alexander.

“Yes, I learned,” said Tim.

“Then you may borrow my car and bring it back when she’s locked up,” said Alexander. “Do the paperwork first, it will take a while to get this sorted out.”

“Gladys cycled over with me,” said Ida. “Just in case the killer thought we knew anything. She can go back with Tim so there’s a woman with the prisoner.” Mrs. Tweedie-Banks was led off, still protesting.

“What an irritant!” said Jeff. “But I am inclined to believe her when she said she made no mess,” he added. “She’d want to pry but not be caught at it.”

“I’m inclined to believe you,” said Alexander. “I don’t think she is the poison pen, but it will do no harm to treat her as if we believed that she was.”

“It might stop the real one from killing anyone else, as well,” said Jeff.

“It did cross my mind,” Alexander agreed. “Ida, is that a new dress?”

“I do love you, Alex,” said Ida, standing on her toes to kiss his nose. “No, it’s an afternoon dress from last year, made over for the new fashions. Jade is still in fashion, and I added side panels in cinnamon georgette as a contrast, with the same georgette rolled over cords to put a line around the neck and cuff, and three around the hemline, and very fiddly it was, and I said some naughty words that Jeff wouldn’t know that I learned from Basil, but I did most of it on the train. I thought about adding some beading at the base of the georgette but I thought it would over-egg the pudding.”

“Paint the lily and gild refined gold,” murmured Jeff.

“Yes, I knew a good Methodist would know the right quote,” said Ida. “I don’t think it’s overdone for an afternoon gown.”

“It isn’t,” said Alexander. “You look very fetching in it, and you’d better get back to your search before I’m tempted to fetch you. Show me the worst.”

Ida chuckled, then sobered, and ran upstairs. Irma’s room was one of the two back bedrooms with a sloping roof on one side, under which was set a low window, below the eaves rather than being a dormer, with two casements and a central section of four small panes which did not open. A low windowseat was built under it, on which a few ageing stuffed toys and a couple of dolls were sitting. Alexander felt tears spring to his eyes as it emphasised how very young Irma had been, unwilling to give away old toys. Everything else was disarranged, as if a storm had hit.  The bed, its mattress pulled awry, was in the corner opposite the windowseat, a desk next to it with a chair, taking advantage of the light of the window. Several books now scattered had presumably stood on a wall-mounted bookshelf over it, and the desk stood open, everything on the floor A chest of drawers stood at the foot of the bed. A Victorian towel-rack had been screwed rather precariously to the top of the chest of drawers with a net curtain draped over it, and a long garden cane was tied to the top of the towel-rail and the other end inserted in a hole drilled into the cottage wall. Net curtains, carefully darned, were threaded through a hem to the cane, parted in the middle and tied back with ribbon, now torn and thrust away to get at the bed.

“Poor romantic little girl,” said Alexander, softly. “Fancy curtains round her bed like a fairytale princess.”

“I didn’t appreciate the depths of Irma until now,” said Ida, whose own eyes were wet. “But you can see someone opened and emptied every drawer, ransacked her desk, threw down the books, pulled the pillows and mattress about and even searched the drawer of her wash-hand stand and scattered her cosmetics.”

On the wall where the door came in was a small wash-hand stand. The other back bedroom had been made into a bathroom with a toilet stool as well, but perhaps it was more convenient to bring hot water in to her bedroom to wash when her father had to get ready to go to work. A mirror over it showed where Irma had applied makeup, her makeup pouch ripped open and its contents scattered, rosy powders staining the white marble top of the stand. A tiny corner fireplace had a heap of ashes in it.

“I don’t know why the searcher did not look in the window seat,” said Ida, carefully moving the dolls and toys. “But looking at the ashes, I suspect they found the diary anyway and burned it.” She lifted the padded top of the windowseat, which proved to be hinged. Childhood books and more toys lived in there, under a tennis racket, canvas shoes, golfing shoes, and a golf bag.

“Someone did not associate it with storage?” suggested Alexander. Ida scoffed.

“Any woman knows that you put storage where you can,” she said. “It’s a box. It’s just a box with a padded top, like an ottoman.”

“But then, I don’t think we are necessarily looking for a woman,” said Alexander.

Ida froze.

“I thought it was usually those entering womanhood or leaving their fertile time?” she asked.

“Or someone who wants to get rid of someone inconvenient who fulfils those criteria,” said Alexander. “And I may be wrong. Hell, it might even be Mrs. Twiddly-bonk, who does like to criticise everyone, knows nothing about some of us, but makes up her mind anyway. There’s something almost mannish about her in some ways as well. And she goes on the offensive without pausing to find out the facts; there’s something eating her that she needs to push other people around about.”

“Yes, but how does she know about people?” asked Ida.

“Because Irma prattles...prattled,” said Alexander.

“Would she prattle to Twiddly-bonk?” asked Jeff, as Ida turned back to searching methodically.

“Probably not, but what’s the betting Twiddly-bonk eavesdrops?” said Alexander. “The more I think of it, the more I’m wondering if my initial thought was owing to personal dislike of someone.”

“If it’s a male, who has something to gain in getting rid of someone, that’s Sam Reckitt, Dan Reckitt, Fred Chaffinch, and Edgar Thripp,” said Jeff. “Not Braithwaite or his Billy; it’s plain as the nose on your face that Maud is the sunshine of their lives now Sally is gone.  I think it has to be one of the other four.”

“Reasoning?” said Alexander.

“Sam... I noticed sometimes he keeps his temper with difficulty when his missus is better some days than others,” said Jeff. “I think he gets her in his ear rather.  Dan? Well, he’s an outsider as a choice, but his mother relies on him rather, I think. Tim mentioned that Dan would like to get away from the village and be more than a village postie, but his mother cries if he suggests it. That can get very wearing.”

“That sounded like personal experience.”

“It was. My mother. I just walked out with all the clothes I could carry one morning, and signed up with a police recruitment drive, and moved in the unmarried men’s barracks. It was hell, but it was my choice.”

“Well done; that’s strength,” said Alexander. “Go on.”

“Edgar... he’s a weak character, and Miss Thripp has a few savings.  I know that’s a bit weak, but it’s a motive of sorts.  Fred... I know he and Polly sing together, but I’ve also heard him sigh over the packed lunch she gives him, and she does boss him about. Nobody can know what goes on in a marriage, but a henpecked husband can become the worm that turns. Even as Twiddly-bonk thought Savin could kill Violet Savin.”

“Unless she is the culprit and accusing him and having him die by judicial execution is one of three murders to get rid of the Savins,” said Alexander.

“But why would she do that?”

“If she’s the poison pen, then the women for the same reason – for knowing too much. And accusing him could be just to divert suspicion. Unless the letters were again a diversion from an intent to kill them all, because she could guess that the two women would make a big thing of any suspicion that could make killing them about knowing too much easy to blame on their knowledge.”

“So, now I have to find out what connection there was between them,” said Jeff.

“I can tell you that,” said Savin, who had come upstairs. “She’s my cousin. My parents took her in when her parents died. We hated each other from the first. She had to come first in everything.  She married a schoolfriend of mine, and dominated himself until he jumped off the river into the weir.  I can believe her throwing Irma into the weir as revenge on me; she blamed me for her husband’s death. I don’t know why.  I don’t think she even loved him. She used to flirt with Vi, though I don’t think Vi ever really understood that. And Vera did not like Vi turning her down. I’m not even sure she preferred women, but she liked people she could bully. Fortunately for her, Violet has... had, I should say... the impenetrable armour of utter self-centredness.”

“Dear me, that is a series of motives,” said Alexander. “Why on earth do you live next to each other?”

“Because our fathers were brothers and were very close, and bought cottages next door to each other,” said Savin. “My dad rented out her cottage until she married. It’s hellish at times. But we were living in a pokey apartment and with a little girl, it wasn’t right.” He paused. “I don’t think she’s the poison-pen, though.”

“Why?” asked Alexander.

“Because she enjoys the drama of bullying people to their faces,” said Savin. “I don’t think she’d find it enough to take hurt into the lives of others on the sly.”

Alexander nodded.

“You know her best,” he said. “Did she know Sally Braithwaite?”

“Yes, she hired Sally as a companion. Al, that’s Albert Banks, he never bothered with the Tweedie, died in 1913.  Sally was her companion for a few months but she said she couldn’t cope unless the pay was a lot more. That would have been... oh, 1916 or thereabouts. I’m a bit hazy as I’d been called up, but I spent the whole war in the pay office. They needed people who could add up columns straight.”

“And an important job, whatever some people might say,” agreed Alexander. “Here’s my car back; I’ll drive you to your sister now, and leave everyone mopping up here.”

They went out, and Gladys smirked as she came in the gate with Tim Mapp.

“I want danger pay for searching that besom,” she said. “That voice! Mr. Morrell can ride my bike and I’ll perch on with Ida on the parcel rack as she doesn’t have a crossbar, and Tim’s Maggie wouldn’t take kindly to him giving a lift to another girl.”

“And nor would Jim Campbell take it kindly to have you accepting such a lift if you weren’t injured,” said Alexander. “Stay together.  Jeff, you’ll lock up when Ida has finished?”

“I have finished, I think,” said Ida.  “I think we need to take some dusting for prints but I can’t find any diary. As I said, I think the ashes in the grate are the remains. And well-enough broken up with a poker not to be legible at all. I suspect that was our killer, knowing that he or she would not be interrupted.”

“And don’t get Agatha started on the subject of Vera,” said Savin. “She’s a couple of years older than me and had to share a room with her.”

“I can imagine that her reaction to that would be somewhat negative,” said Alexander.

“And that,” said Savin, “Is the understatement of the year.”