Adele Rawlins chapter 7 Lynched on the Links part II

 

Chapter 7 Lynched on the Links II

 

Paulson had a carriage for us. Of course Paulson had a carriage for us. He was that sort of young man; efficient, able to procure hackney cabs in the rain, knew where to book tickets for anything, capable of finding any file, and entirely devoid of anything approaching an imagination. The perfect secretary but not a perfect aide-de-camp. For that, Papa relied on us.

“Which one is dead?” I asked.

“Mr. Corbett,” said Paulson. “His wife didn’t join the men this morning; she saw Sir Geoffrey, and told him she felt unwell. He wondered if her husband had asked her tactfully to stay out of negotiations.”

“I fancy Papa was well aware that the word ‘tactfully’ when allied with Mrs. Corbett could be construed as something of an oxymoron; I am sure he did not say that at all,” I said. Mr. Paulson became flustered.

“Oh, well, I suppose you are used to him,” he said. “What he actually said was, ‘I suppose the worm turned and Corbett told that bloody woman that she is not welcome at business talks as all she does is bellyache on about women in industry without having the faintest idea about her husband’s business.’”

“I rather suspect I could quote more statistics about Corbett Steel than she can,” I said, dryly. “Because I took the effort to research each of our fellow guests, and, too, the seedy little man who calls himself Alfred Docker, who is no such thing, and whom I would suspect of being a spy if I was not well aware that he is a policeman assigned to Papa for his protection and that he has already arrested the bluff steel magnate known as Gregory Oldborough, who I suspect turned out to have a Russian name when shaken hard enough.”

What, did he think Tony and I spent our holiday idling when Papa’s safety might be at stake?

Apparently, for he looked most taken aback.

“And it’s as well the Endicotts are thoroughly vouched for, considering the indiscreet letters Mr. Corbett has been sending to Mrs. Endicott,” I added.

“Er?” said Paulson.

“I searched the underwear drawers of all the women when they were out of the hotel, of course,” I said, patiently. “Mrs. Corbett is all woman underneath, as you might say; she has new frillies and I fancy embraces female emancipation in the frustration of being unable to embrace a good man. Mrs. Endicott reads extremely robust gothic novels and unlike Lady Bagpuss is sufficiently well acquainted with French to manage some rather robust French novels too. Lady Bagpuss reads gardening catalogues and treatises by Poulton and would endear herself more to the aristocracy if she held forth more on the cultivation of dahlias than on her spurious French ancestry.”

I had shocked the poor man into incoherence. Tony was laughing.

I actually felt sorry for Mrs. Corbett; plainly she had been hoping for some kind of second honeymoon, considering her lingerie, some of it still in its wrappings from the shops. But on her rather blocky body, I fancied the effect would be more farcical than fanciable, a bit like when men dress up as pantomime dames, and overdo it for comic effect. I felt sorry for Dora Bagpuss – not Dorothée Bacquepuis – who was so insecure she felt the need to playact.  As to Mrs. Endicott, I had no sympathy for her at all, as her hobby seemed to be seducing other men, or rather, fascinating them. Judging by her reading matter and toys, she and Endicott indulged themselves with games around her apparent straying. Which is all very well, and as they say, à chacun son gout or even if you want the Latin tag from a qualified lawyer, de gustibus non disputandum, or in plain old English, one man’s meat is another man’s poison. And it’s not so much the vice Anglais when the spank is on the other cheek, as you might say.  But I disliked her for involving other men in her games with her husband and doubtless breaking other marriages.

What? You can learn a lot about another woman by going through her underwear and the things she chooses to leave in there to hide them, under the mistaken belief that nobody will be so indelicate as to rummage in one’s frillies. Me, I keep anything of importance for which I wish a degree of secrecy in coat pockets. After all, in a fire, one grabs an outdoor coat, not lingerie.

I had taught Clara the art of searching, now she was old enough to join the family firm, and secure enough to understand. She discovered that one of the chambermaids was a secret scholar [and I should have to send her some good books] and that the wife of the proprietor would have to look out for the yellow-haired hussy who waited tables. It’s all harmless fun and occasionally very useful. And the sort of thing a woman can get away with, and if accused of spying, swear that one had no interest in blackmail, only in knowing who was doing what with whom.  It’s believable; and moreover insisting one is not a blackmailer and failing utterly to understand that one is suspected of being an actual spy is disarming.

We reached the links before Mr. Paulson recovered his equanimity, and followed him to the fairway, or rather, just off the fairway, where Papa had managed to prevent the caddies from cutting the body down before it had been examined. We arrived at the same time as Mr. Albert Docker.

“Hello, Officer Green,” I said.

He glared at me.

“Albert Docker, as you know, madam,” he said.

“And you may need to show your credentials so it seems silly to hide them,” I said. He deflated.

“The doctor is on his way to ascertain time of death,” he said. “Mrs. Corbett says her husband got up early for a walk and she has no idea how he came to walk out this far.”

“Eh bien, a cab will be found to have conveyed him, and probably another to the links,” I said. “I think that he did not die by hanging.”

“What makes you say so?” it was Papa who asked.

“Why, the knot is not a proper hangman’s knot, and it has sawed on the neck in the wrong place to hide the thumb mark where I think he was throttled manually,” I pointed out. “Obviously, there is no question that it was suicide anyway.”

“And this is why I call in an expert,” said Papa, to Officer Green. “There have been suggestions that he killed himself over an infatuation, but I have held in mind the fact that it might be to prevent him making a winning bid.”

“I hope he has a credible heir,” I said. “His wife is all squeak and no, er, substance, in her claims of equality.”

“I fear so,” said Papa. “I’m afraid the ground has been somewhat trampled, everyone came to look.” He glared at the two industrialists and their caddies.

“Eh bien, it was inevitable,” I said. “What la pauvre Mme Corbett fails to understand is that no woman who believes in herself wishes to ape the behaviour of men, thus diminishing herself. Because it is the nature of men when beholding something out of the ordinary to come and stare at it, as if it is a great wonder, put their thumbs in their braces, so, rock back on the heels thus, and say ‘eh oop, yon’s gone an’ ’ung ’isself, sithee, d’ye suppose he’s dead?’ and is answered, ‘Aye, happen he must be. We should do something. We politicians need to consider all possibilities, put everything in proportion, decide on an agenda, appoint a committee to agree with our thoughts, and then act decisively by doing as little as possible.’” I used Sir Cyril’s orotund tones when he remembered to forget he was also from Yorkshire.

“Young lady, art ee mocking us?” demanded Endicott, his slight Yorkshire accent bursting out in response to my mimicry.

“Of course I am,” I said. “Now, if you can tell me that this is not the response you and Sir Cyril made, in broad if not in detail...”

He stared. Then he laughed.

“Tha wench!” he said. “Eh oop! Tha has us perfectly!”

I warmed to him the more for being able to accept my mockery with good grace, unlike Sir Cyril who was looking daggers at me.

“Fortunately,” I said, “The body has been arranged with great theatre to be seen from the fairway, and attract attention... oh, here is the police doctor. Papa, he will not listen to me, but perhaps you will insist that he checks for the hyoid bone with great care, because sans doute it is broken from manual strangulation, since any man alive with that ligature would be likely to drop if he struggled, see how it is already passing the ear; and even if planning to die thus, it would take great fortitude to just hang and strangle. And I will observe the path made through this spinney where his body was dragged. Du vrai, it is plain enough, and if you follow, please to walk in my footsteps so as not to spoil the trail, which has been disarranged at the bottom of the hanging tree, by, if I am not mistaken, the golf club, both with careful movement, and as an ultimate disguise, mashed about as though some frantic and inept golfer was attempting to retrieve a ball in the rough. Ah, you say, some poor fool was here yesterday before this tragedy, and enfin moved on. But the footsteps come in from behind.”

“So they do,” said papa Geoffrey. “And drag marks which mostly obscure the footsteps.”

“Whoever killed him tried to obscure their footsteps by dragging him over them,” I said. “The toes are quite pointed. It’s a current fashion conceit in men’s and women’s shoes; I prefer the older style with squared toes, myself. Me, I have feet meant to walk, not to advertise that I can afford to sit about in shoes too uncomfortable to bear to stand in.”

“It probably started with someone whose toes naturally grow that way being feted as beautiful,” said Papa, cynically. “The tiny feet of upper class women in China are made that way by the foot being folded in half and tied up when they are babies, because of a deformed Imperial concubine whose tiny bent feet were admired.”

“Doesn’t that hurt?” I asked.

“Excrutiatingly, as I understand,” said Papa. “But that’s how it is with fashion; people whose bodies don’t fit fashion suffer to be forced into it.”

“Well, the foot is on the small side but no smaller than Tony’s,” I said.

We came upon where two pairs of shoes entered the rough on the other side, which I think was near the seventh hole, but don’t quote me; I had very little interest in it, after all. There was an area of crushed grass which looked as if someone had lain there and thrashed about a bit.

“And here he was strangled,” I said. “How he was wrestled down isn’t clear, I’d expect more confused footwork. It almost looks as though he walked here, spread something to soften the impression and lay down.”

“Why would he do that?” asked Papa.

“Well, it isn’t the tiny shoes that Mrs. Endicott totters about in, to have supposedly passed out to facilitate a lurking husband killing him if Corbett knelt down to tend to her,” I said.  “Yes, that is far fetched,  but it’s plain the square toes Corbett wears and is wearing where he is hanging. Endicott has huge feet; Sir Cyril’s are smaller and he wears a pointed toe to be fashionable.”

“So, you think it is Sir Cyril?”

“Not necessarily,” I said.

I did a bit more searching. And I saw something gleaming in the sunshine; something that would not have showed in the lower sun of early morning. I bent and picked it up.

“Gaudy, if a tie pin,” I said, displaying the sapphire pin, surrounded with small diamonds. The sapphire was a good half inch across, rather vulgar for a tie pin. I had seen it elsewhere, however. I held it out to the men.

“Do either of you recognise this?” I asked.

“No, never seen it before,” said Endicott. Sir Cyril fancied himself a gemologist, and produced a jeweler’s loop which he screwed into his eye.

“Flawed,” he grunted. “Nothing I’d buy for my wife.”

“Ah?” I said. “May I borrow your loop?”

He let me use it; and he was right. There are those flaws in certain sapphires and emeralds which produce star effects, and are prized for the same, but this stone was indifferently cut and the flaw merely detracted from its colour and shine.

“A sentimental belonging, I fancy,” I said, returning the loop and carefully wrapping the pin. “Bought by someone when less well off.”

“Do you know who did it?” asked Papa.

“Yes, and it wasn’t these two,” I said. “Have someone search for a young man who hired a pony and trap for very early in the morning, not far off dawn. They might have found him a little odd.”

I had a hunch.

 

 

oOo

 

Having returned to the hotel, I went with Papa to break the news to Mrs. Corbett that her husband was dead.

She did not want to let us into her room but Papa was forceful.

She heard the news with dull horror.

“It hasn’t solved anything, has it?” I said. “By the way, you lost this,” I passed her the pin. “Did he like you dressing as a man?”

“I... we met when I had borrowed my brother’s clothes and used my hatpin as a tie pin,” she said. “He saw through my disguise, and rescued me, and... and it inflamed him, and we got married; but we got very conventional apart from my politics, and then there was that woman. And... and I thought we could rekindle things if I dressed up and made an assignation with him; and it seemed to work, but then he said something about me embarrassing him by being mannish in women’s clothing and asked if I could not be more like Mrs. Endicott. And I saw red and I strangled him.  And all I could think of was making it look like a suicide, but oh! I miss him so much!” she burst into sobs.

“What a tangled web,” I said. “And what games these rich women play. Me, I prefer intimacy with the clothes off.

And that, dear readers, was it. Papa decided to leave it to the local police who got as far as an inquest declaring it murder by person or persons unknown; and I fancy Mrs. Corbett had a worse prison of her own making without him.

 

For my own part, I took Tony firmly to bed whilst Clara was out with Mama, to prove the point that we needed no props or games.