Death at Gallows Green (4 page)

Her mother was in the kitchen now, sitting beside the scrubbed wooden table. To Betsy's surprise, two men were with her, both standing. One, whom she didn't recognize, was very tall and lean, as tall as her father, with brown eyes like Fairley's chocolate drops and hair and beard the exact colour of her father's tobacco. He was wearing a heavy khaki coat with dozens of pockets, and every one of them filled, to judge from the interesting lumps and bulges. The other man was short and slender, with sandy hair and a round, ruddy face and a uniform like her father's, its navy serge brushed and its buttons polished like the lucky gold sovereign her father wore on his watch chain, which he sometimes let her hold when she had a stomachache.

“Hello, Uncle Ned,” she said. She frowned a little. His gray eyes were not smiling, as they usually did. His brows were pulled together and his face troubled. Her mother's mouth, too, was set. She was pinching her lips together, and her eyes had a queer look.

Uncle Ned squatted down in front of her. “I find, Betsy, that I am in need of tobacco for my pipe.” He opened his palm and held out three threepenny bits. “Would you be so kind as to run to the green grocer and get me fourpence worth? You may use what is left to buy a sweet for yourself.”

Betsy did a quick bit of mental arithmetic. She would have fivepence left! With that and the coins in the bit of cloth, she could buy the hoop! Betsy looked to her mother for confirmation and got a quick, hard nod of the head. Still, she did not move. Something was wrong, she knew it. Kep knew it too, with the unerring sense that dogs have for things gone wrong. She could feel him crowding close against her, quivering. She swallowed.

“Must I go just now?” she asked her mother. “I want to stay and—”

“Betsy,” her mother said, in a strange, tight voice. “Betsy, your father—”

The very tall man stepped forward. “Let me introduce myself, Miss Oliver,” he said with great courtesy. “My name is Sir Charles Sheridan.”

Betsy narrowed her eyes, forgetting for the moment her uneasiness. She had never before been personally introduced to a “sir,” although she saw the Gentry every week, riding helter-skelter down the High Street on skittish horses, brandishing riding crops, and shouting arrogantly at the villagers who got in their way. She herself had often been pinned against the churchyard wall by the horses. She had no admiration for gentry.

“How fortunate that you are going to the green grocer's,” Sir Charles remarked. “Your errand reminds me that I meant to buy a button for my coat.” He bent over and showed her his sleeve, from which indeed a button was missing. “If you will permit me, Miss Oliver, I will accompany you to the grocer's. There, perhaps you would be so kind as to inquire after a proper button for me.”

Betsy sighed. Really, these Gentry. Why they couldn't take care of themselves instead of always depending on other people to do it for them—

She looked up just in time to glimpse the unmistakably grateful look Uncle Ned gave to Sir Charles, and the naked loss in her mother's tear-filled eyes. Her heart stopped, and she forgot all about her hoop and the proper button for Sir Charles's coat.

T
he McGregors' cottage was painted a faded pink and heavily thatched, with yarrow growing against the wall, and lavender and rosemary blooming, and roses climbing in great masses over the brick wall. On the stoop in front of the door sat a pair of muddy boots, heavily hobnailed and with a patch on one instep, and beside the door, leaning against the plaster wall, was a stout staff. McGregor, Charles deduced, was at home.

The door stood ajar, as most cottage doors did when the weather was fine, and Edward Laken raised his hand to it. When he had knocked twice, Mrs. McGregor opened it wide.

“I tol' ye,” she said with asperity, as if the affair in the back garden had been their fault. “He's that put out.” She lowered her voice. “An' mind wot ye say t'him. He's a ogre when he's crossed.” She stepped back and allowed them to enter the flagstoned passage, at one side of which ascended an uncarpeted stair. On the other was a small, neat sitting room with a woven rush mat on the stone floor. Behind that was the kitchen, where the redoubtable McGregor, an undersized, ferret-faced man with thick eyebrows and a surly mouth half-hidden in wire whiskers, sat with both elbows on the table, devouring a thick slice of crusty bread and cheese.

“Good even' to you, sir,” Edward said.

McGregor grunted, reached for a china mug, and swallowed a mouthful of tea.

“About this business in the garden,” Edward began.

“Don't know nothin' 'bout it.” McGregor's voice was rough and gravelly. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Cheese, Tildy.”

Mrs. McGregor fetched cheese from a shelf and sliced it. Edward said, “We're curious about your gun.”

“Shu'n't wonder,” McGregor said shortly. “There 'tips.” He gestured with his head. Charles turned to look. A shotgun was leaning against the wall beside the window.

“Is that your only gun?” Edward asked.

McGregor's “Sart'nly” was emphatic. “ 'Tis all I need f'r varmints 'n' such-like.”

Mrs. McGregor paused in her slicing. “Don't fergit Tommy's pistols,” she offered. “Tommy's me brother,” she added helpfully to Edward. “We bin keepin' 'em f'r him.”

Mr. McGregor said nothing, but his look was thunderous. Mrs. McGregor flinched and bit her lip, and fumbled the cheese hurriedly onto her husband's plate.

“Where are the pistols?” Edward asked. When Mr. McGregor did not speak, his face hardened. “I warn you, McGregor. This is a very serious matter. A constable was found dead at the foot of your garden. I have every right to assume that you know something about his murder.” His tone became flint. “Fetch those pistols.”

With a venomous look at his wife, McGregor pushed back his chair and got up. Standing, he proved dwarfish, shorter by half a head than Mrs. McGregor, and stooped. He went to a corner cupboard that housed dishes and crockery, a mortar and pestle and several tarnished brass candlesticks, and took from the top shelf a worn leather case, brass-trimmed, with a brass lock. He slapped the case on the table, fished a key out of a cup, and unlocked it.

“Yer so cunnin'-like,” he said sourly, sitting down again to his tea, “ye c'n look f'r yerself.”

Charles watched as Edward opened the case. It was lined with threadbare blue velvet and contained space for two large pistols. Only one—a silver-plated dueling pistol, a muzzleloader—was in the case. Charles glanced at Mrs. McGregor, whose wrinkled face was deeply perplexed.

“Where's the other pistol?” Edward asked.

“Gone,” said McGregor. “Sold.”

The perplexity on Mrs. McGregor's face changed to indignation and her cheeks grew red.

Edward closed the case. “When?”

“Afore Easter.” McGregor's eyes slid to his wife. Some of the surliness went out of his mouth, and was replaced by defiance. “Well, I needed the money, din't I, Tildy?”

“T'wern't yourn t‘sell, Mr. McGregor,” she said stonily. “T'were Tommy's. Wot am I t' tell him when he comes fer his guns? Tell him you sold one o'em? An' wot's he gooin' t' say t' that?”

“To whom did you sell it?” Edward asked.

The woolly eyebrows made a deep
V,
and the mouth went surly again. “T' a navvy,” McGregor growled. “Passin' through. Give me a gold suv'rin, he did.”

“A suv‘rin!” Mrs. McGregor gasped. “Why, I niver thought 'twere worth—”

“If you sold it for a sovereign, you were cheated,” Charles remarked. “One of these guns is worth twice that.” He pointed to a pile of red cloth heaped on a workbasket beside the fire. “Is that your coat?”

McGregor's scowl deepened. “Wot if it be?”

Charles picked it up. The coat was old and heavily worn, the red colour faded. On the right sleeve, near the shoulder, a thumbnail-size triangular piece was missing. It was this freshlooking rip that Mrs. McGregor was apparently patching, for a small piece of cloth, of a different weight and shade of red, was being appliqued over it, like a triangular badge.

“How did you come to rip your coat?” he asked.

“How should I know?” McGregor growled. “One day ‘twas whole, next 'twas ripped.”

Edward put the pistol case under his arm. “I'm taking this with me,” he said. He looked at Mrs. McGregor. “You will have it again in due course,” he added, not unkindly.

“And the coat,” Charles said, picking it up.

“Wot's a man t‘wear?” McGregor was stormy. “How's a man t' keep th' rain off while th' bloody coppers has got his coat, is wot I wants t' know.”

“What I want to know,” Edward said sternly, “is whether you've seen anything unusual going on in the neighbourhood. Have there been any suspicious goings-on?”

McGregor shrugged. “Allus somethin gooin' on, suspicious-like. Allus sheep goin' missin'—”

“Sheep?” Charles asked. “Whose sheep?”

“Just sheep,” McGregor said vaguely. “An' harses. Jarge Styles lost his grey, din't he?”

“That was two years ago,” Edward said.

“Happen Jarge Styles still's lookin' f'r it, i‘n't he?” McGregor retorted with a snaggle-toothed grin. “Allus somethin' gooin' on, I say. If ye don't wanter know, don't ask.”

Edward took the coat from Charles. “We may have occasion to ask you for additional information.”

McGregor sat down and applied himself once more to his tea. “No mind o' me,” he said with a careless shrug. “Ye'll git a groatsworth an' no more.”

“H
urry along, now, Harriet,” Sarah Pratt said firmly, “an' don't dawdle. Time's a-wastin'.” Tea was over, and there was the washing up to do and the kitchen to tidy and ready for breakfast. While Miss Ardleigh was gone to Melford Hall to her house-party, breakfast at Bishop's Keep was not the formal affair it was when she was at home. But it would not do to let things slide.

Mrs. Pratt surveyed the newly appointed hall where the servants took their meals. While she still mourned the death of the elder Miss Ardleigh, she could say without fear of contradiction that the demise of Jaggers (the younger of the two Ardleigh sisters) had occasioned a great change in the management of the household. Now that the young miss was in command, with herself, Sarah Pratt, at the helm, so to speak, the ship sailed along ever so smoothly. Her gaze lingered on the sofa that had been brought down from the attic. And ever so comfortably, too. No more sugarless tea for the servants, and that made from sweepings, the poorest to be had. No more stale buns, either, but fresh buns with raisins, and she'd been given back the drippings to sell for her profit, as was her right. No penny-pincher, was the young miss! She had begun on good bottom, as the unfortunate Mr. Pratt would have said, and she was carrying on that way.

There was in Mrs. Pratt's otherwise quite high esteem of her employer, however, one niggling apprehension. It was not that she was actually doing anything wrong, of course. The difficulty was that she held certain unconventional views as to the propriety of certain behaviours. She undoubtedly held these views because she was an American and not properly brought up, no disrespect intended. However the habit had arisen, Mrs. Pratt had to say that the young miss did not sufficiently concern herself with what other people thought. In particular, she did not worry about setting an example for the servants.

And that was the pickle in which Mrs. Pratt found herself. Among other things, Miss Ardleigh was in the habit of riding a bicycle in the evening. On a
Sunday
evening, while everyone else was at Evensong, and with Constable Laken, alone! In the minds of villagers, (Mrs. Pratt heard this regularly from her sister Rose), Miss Ardleigh and the constable were a “friendly” couple. If Miss Ardleigh did not intend to marry the man, she was running the risk, the very
definite
risk, of appearing fast. And if she
did
intend to marry him . . . Well, while Mrs. Pratt had every respect for the constable, the match was not appropriate to Miss Ardleigh's station. In her opinion, the young Marsden heir—Bradford Marsden—was a far better choice. Not necessarily a better man, mind you, for the constable had a kind nature and was liked by all, while the future Baron Marsden was something of a rake. But still, one was aware of the social realities, even from the kitchen. And it would present no end of difficulty if Miss Ardleigh were really to prefer the constable.

Not that any of this was Mrs. Pratt's business, of course; she was not a dragon of propriety. But what
was
her business was the discipline of the servants. And how was she to maintain a proper discipline, she'd like to know, if the mistress went riding with the constable, alone and unchaperoned, until nearly dark? The servants, who knew as well as Mrs. Pratt what was going on, wouldn't stick at using such behaviour to excuse their own misdemeanours. If they used the mistress as a model of behaviour, who knew what kinds of cutting-up they might get into?