The Complete Tommy & Tuppence Collection (116 page)

“You didn't imagine it. We're going to pay them a visit this morning. We are going to ask some rather awkward questions.”

“Good,” said Tuppence.

“We're doing quite nicely. We've cleared up the big post office robbery of 1965, and the Albury Cross robberies, and the Irish Mail train business. We've found some of the loot. Clever places they manufactured in these houses. A new bath installed in one, a service flat made in another—a couple of its rooms a little smaller than they ought to have been thereby providing for an interesting recess. Oh yes, we've found out a great deal.”

“But what about the
people?
” said Tuppence. “I mean the people who thought of it, or ran it—apart from Mr. Eccles, I mean. There must have been others who knew something.”

“Oh yes. There were a couple of men—one who ran a night club, conveniently just off the M1. Happy Hamish they used to call him. Slippery as an eel. And a woman they called Killer Kate—but that was a long time ago—one of our more interesting criminals. A beautiful girl, but her mental balance was doubtful. They eased her out—she might have become a danger to them. They were a strictly business concern—in it for loot—not for murder.”

“And was the Canal House one of their hideaway places?”

“At one time, Ladymead, they called it then. It's had a lot of different names in its time.”

“Just to make things more difficult, I suppose,” said Tuppence. “Ladymead. I wonder if that ties up with some particular thing.”

“What should it tie up with?”

“Well, it doesn't really,” said Tuppence. “It just started off another hare in my mind, if you know what I mean. The trouble is,” she added, “I don't really know what I mean myself now. The picture, too. Boscowan painted the picture and then somebody else painted a boat into it, with a name on the boat—”

“Tiger Lily.”

“No,
Waterlily.
And his wife says that he didn't paint the boat.”

“Would she know?”

“I expect she would. If you were married to a painter, and especially if you were an artist yourself, I think you'd know if it was a different style of painting. She's rather frightening, I think,” said Tuppence.

“Who—Mrs. Boscowan?”

“Yes. If you know what I mean, powerful. Rather overwhelming.”

“Possibly. Yes.”

“She knows things,” said Tuppence, “but I'm not sure that she knows them because she knows them, if you know what I mean.”

“I don't,” said Tommy firmly.

“Well, I mean, there's one way of knowing things. The other way is that you sort of feel them.”

“That's rather the way you go in for, Tuppence.”

“You can say what you like,” said Tuppence, apparently following her own track of thought, “the whole thing ties up round Sutton Chancellor. Round Ladymead, or Canal House or whatever you like to call it. And all the people who lived there, now and in past times. Some things I think might go back a long way.”

“You're thinking of Mrs. Copleigh.”

“On the whole,” said Tuppence, “I think Mrs. Copleigh just put in a lot of things which have made everything more difficult. I think she's got all her times and dates mixed up too.”

“People do,” said Tommy, “in the country.”

“I know that,” said Tuppence, “I was brought up in a country vicarage, after all. They date things by events, they don't date them by years. They don't say ‘that happened in 1930' or ‘that happened in 1925' or things like that. They say ‘that happened the year after the old mill burned down' or ‘that happened after the lightning struck the big oak and killed Farmer James' or ‘that was the year we had the polio epidemic.' So naturally, of course, the things they do remember don't go in any particular sequence. Everything's very difficult,” she added. “There are just bits poking up here and there, if you know what I mean. Of course the point is,” said Tuppence with the air of someone who suddenly makes an important discovery, “the trouble is that I'm old myself.”

“You are eternally young,” said Ivor gallantly.

“Don't be daft,” said Tuppence, scathingly. I'm old because I remember things that same way. I've gone back to being primitive in my aids to memory.”

She got up and walked round the room.

“This is an annoying kind of hotel,” she said.

She went through the door into her bedroom and came back again shaking her head.

“No Bible,” she said.

“Bible?”

“Yes. You know, in old-fashioned hotels, they've always got a Gideon Bible by your bed. I suppose so that you can get saved any moment of the day or night. Well, they don't have that here.”

“Do you want a Bible?”

“Well, I do rather. I was brought up properly and I used to know my Bible quite well, as any good clergyman's daughter should. But now, you see, one rather forgets. Especially as they don't read the lessons properly any more in churches. They give you some new version where all the wording, I suppose, is technically right and a proper translation, but sounds nothing like it used to. While you two go to the house agents, I shall drive into Sutton Chancellor,” she added.

“What for? I forbid you,” said Tommy.

“Nonsense—I'm not going to sleuth. I shall just go into the church and look at the Bible. If it's some modern version, I shall go and ask the vicar, he'll have a Bible, won't he? The proper kind, I mean. Authorized Version.”

“What do you want the Authorized Version for?”

“I just want to refresh my memory over those words that were scratched on the child's tombstone . . . They interested me.”

“It's all very well—but I don't trust you, Tuppence—don't trust you not to get into trouble once you're out of my sight.”

“I give you my word I'm not going to prowl about in graveyards any more. The church on a sunny morning and the vicar's study—that's all—what could be more harmless?”

Tommy looked at his wife doubtfully and gave in.

II

Having left her car by the lych-gate at Sutton Chancellor, Tuppence looked round her carefully before entering the church precincts. She had the natural distrust of one who has suffered grievous bodily harm in a certain geographical spot. There did not on this occasion seem to be any possible assailants lurking behind the tombstones.

She went into the church, where an elderly woman was on her knees polishing some brasses. Tuppence tiptoed up to the lectern and made a tentative examination of the volume that rested there. The woman cleaning the brasses looked up with a disapproving glance.

“I'm not going to steal it,” said Tuppence reassuringly, and carefully closing it again, she tiptoed out of the church.

She would have liked to examine the spot where the recent excavations had taken place, but that she had undertaken on no account to do.

“Whosoever shall offend,”
she murmured to herself. “It might mean that, but if so it would have to be someone—”

She drove the car the short distance to the vicarage, got out and went up the path to the front door. She rang but could hear no tinkle from inside. “Bell's broken, I expect,” said Tuppence, knowing the habits of vicarage bells. She pushed the door and it responded to her touch.

She stood inside in the hall. On the hall table a large envelope with a foreign stamp took up a good deal of space. It bore the printed legend of a Missionary Society in Africa.

“I'm glad I'm not a missionary,” thought Tuppence.

Behind that vague thought, there lay something else, something connected with some hall table somewhere, something that she ought to remember . . . Flowers? Leaves? Some letter or parcel?

At that moment the vicar came out from the door on the left.

“Oh,” he said. “Do you want me? I—oh, it's Mrs. Beresford, isn't it?”

“Quite right,” said Tuppence. “What I really came to ask you was whether by any chance you had a Bible.”

“Bible,” said the vicar, looking rather unexpectedly doubtful. “A Bible.”

“I thought it likely that you might have,” said Tuppence.

“Of course, of course,” said the vicar. “As a matter of fact, I suppose I've got several. I've got a Greek Testament,” he said hopefully. “That's not what you want, I suppose?”

“No,” said Tuppence. “I want,” she said firmly, “the Authorized Version.”

“Oh dear,” said the vicar. “Of course, there must be several in the house. Yes, several. We don't use that version in the church now, I'm sorry to say. One has to fall in with the bishop's ideas, you know, and the bishop is very keen on modernization, for young people and all that. A pity, I think. I have so many books in my library here that some of them, you know, get pushed behind the others. But I
think
I can find you what you want. I
think
so. If not, we'll ask Miss Bligh. She's here somewhere looking out the vases for the children who arrange their wild flowers for the Children's Corner in the church.” He left Tuppence in the hall and went back into the room where he had come from.

Tuppence did not follow him. She remained in the hall, frowning and thinking. She looked up suddenly as the door at the end of the hall opened and Miss Bligh came through it. She was holding up a very heavy metal vase.

Several things clicked together in Tuppence's head.

“Of course,” said Tuppence,
“of course.”

“Oh, can I help—I—oh, it's Mrs. Beresford.”

“Yes,” said Tuppence, and added, “And
it's Mrs. Johnson, isn't it?
”

The heavy vase fell to the floor. Tuppence stooped and picked it up. She stood weighing it in her hand. “Quite a handy weapon,” she said. She put it down. “Just the thing to cosh anyone with from behind,” she said—“That's what you did to me, didn't you,
Mrs. Johnson.
”

“I—I—what did you say? I—I—I never—”

But Tuppence had no need to stay longer. She had seen the effect of her words. At the second mention of Mrs. Johnson, Miss Bligh had given herself away in an unmistakable fashion. She was shaking and panic stricken.

“There was a letter on your hall table the other day,” said Tuppence, “addressed to a Mrs. Yorke at an address in Cumberland. That's where you took her, isn't it, Mrs. Johnson, when you took her away from Sunny Ridge? That's where she is now. Mrs. Yorke or Mrs. Lancaster—you used either name—York and Lancaster like the striped red and white rose in the Perrys' garden—”

She turned swiftly and went out of the house leaving Miss Bligh in the hall, still supporting herself on the stair rail, her mouth open, staring after her. Tuppence ran down the path to the gate, jumped into her car and drove away. She looked back towards the front door, but no one emerged. Tuppence drove past the church and back towards Market Basing, but suddenly changed her mind. She turned the car, drove back the way she had come, and took the left-hand road leading to the Canal House bridge. She abandoned the car, looked over the gate to see if either of the Perrys were in the garden, but there was no sign of them. She went through the gate and up the path to the back door. That was closed too and the windows were shut.

Tuppence felt annoyed. Perhaps Alice Perry had gone to Market Basing to shop. She particularly wanted to see Alice Perry. Tuppence knocked at the door, rapping first gently then loudly. Nobody answered. She turned the handle but the door did not give. It was locked. She stood there, undecided.

There were some questions she wanted badly to ask Alice Perry. Possibly Mrs. Perry might be in Sutton Chancellor. She might go back there. The difficulty of Canal House was that there never seemed to be anyone in sight and hardly any traffic came over the bridge. There was no one to ask where the Perrys might be this morning.

Seventeen

M
RS
. L
ANCASTER

T
uppence stood there frowning, and then, suddenly, quite unexpectedly, the door opened. Tuppence drew back a step and gasped. The person confronting her was the last person in the world she expected to see. In the doorway, dressed exactly the same as she had been at Sunny Ridge, and smiling the same way with that air of vague amiability, was Mrs. Lancaster in person.

“Oh,” said Tuppence.

“Good morning. Were you wanting Mrs. Perry?” said Mrs. Lancaster. “It's market day, you know. So lucky I was able to let you in. I couldn't find the key for some time. I think it must be a duplicate anyway, don't you? But do come in. Perhaps you'd like a cup of tea or something.”

Like one in a dream, Tuppence crossed the threshold. Mrs. Lancaster, still retaining the gracious air of a hostess, led Tuppence along into the sitting room.

“Do sit down,” she said. “I'm afraid I don't know where all the cups and things are. I've only been here a day or two. Now—let me see . . . But—surely—I've met you before, haven't I?”

“Yes,” said Tuppence, “when you were at Sunny Ridge.”

“Sunny Ridge, now, Sunny Ridge. That seems to remind me of something. Oh, of course, dear Miss Packard. Yes, a very nice place.”

“You left it in rather a hurry, didn't you?” said Tuppence.

“People are so very bossy,” said Mrs. Lancaster. “They hurry you so. They don't give you time to
arrange
things or
pack
properly or
anything.
Kindly meant, I'm sure. Of course, I'm very fond of dear Nellie Bligh, but she's a very masterful kind of woman. I sometimes think,” Mrs. Lancaster added, bending forward to Tuppence, “I sometimes think, you know, that she is not quite—” she tapped her forehead significantly. “Of course it
does
happen. Especially to spinsters. Unmarried women, you know. Very given to good works and all that but they take very odd fancies sometimes. Curates suffer a great deal. They seem to think sometimes, these women, that the curate has made them an offer of marriage but really he never thought of doing anything of the kind. Oh yes, poor Nellie. So sensible in some ways. She's been wonderful in the parish here. And she was always a first-class secretary, I believe. But all the same she has some very curious ideas at times. Like taking me away at a moment's notice from dear Sunny Ridge, and then up to Cumberland—a very bleak house, and, again quite suddenly, bringing me here—”