Chapter 3 #2
“Feel free to talk as long as you want,” I said. “But first… we’re looking for a woman by the name of Lydia Morrison. The vicar’s wife in Lower Slaughter thought she might live here, because of the Methodist chapel. Constance?”
Constance gave a short but concise description of Morrison—late forties, bobbed brown hair turning gray, sallow skin, pointy nose—and the constable nodded. “She’s in one of the cottages on the Square. The one with the blue door.”
“Wonderful. We’ll just have a look. You two keep going for as long as you want.”
I headed in the direction the constable had indicated.
Christopher followed. Constance dithered for a moment, looking from me and Christopher to Francis and back, before she made the decision that her fiancé might benefit from having another veteran of the War to talk to, and then she scurried after us toward the rows of cottages up ahead.
They were pretty buildings, if I do say so. Very much the type of mental image one gets when someone says ‘Cotswold cottage.’ Honey-colored, of course, with slate roof tiles, peaked gables, and deep-set, mullioned windows. Bagshot Square, the street sign said, 1-8.
“There’s a blue door,” Christopher pointed. I looked in the direction he indicated, and nodded.
“Indeed it is. Can you see any others?”
He couldn’t, nor could I. We headed for the robin’s egg blue, and Constance applied her knuckles to the door. And then we stood back, in a tight row, with Christopher in the middle, and waited.
After half a minute, when no one had answered, Christopher stepped forward and knocked again, more forcefully.
Just in the event that Morrison hadn’t heard us the first time.
I kept an eye on the curtained window next to the door, but there was nothing to indicate that anyone was standing there peeking out at us.
When another few seconds had passed and nothing had happened, Christopher turned to me. “Would you like a go?”
“I don’t see the point,” I said. “Try the handle?”
He gave me a look. “You try the handle.”
I reached for it, and he slapped my hand down. “Not in front of the constable, Pippa!”
No, of course not. I stuffed my hand in my pocket with a guilty look over my shoulder.
“Do you suppose there’s a kitchen door?” Constance wanted to know, and I brightened.
“I’ll wager there is.” Every cottage I had ever seen had had a kitchen door and a kitchen garden of some sort. “Let’s go around back and see.” I tucked one arm through her elbow and pulled her away from the front door while Christopher followed on our heels.
“Francis…” Constance began, with a glance at him. He and his new friend were still deep enough in conversation that there was no point in interrupting them, if you asked me.
“It’s good for him, you know, to have someone to talk to. Someone who understands more than we do. He’s not seeing any of his old friends anymore.”
And thank God for that. But still, while I was relieved that he was going without the alcohol and dope, I understood that he’d also lost the people who understood what he’d gone through.
Constance nodded, worrying her lower lip. Christopher waved at Francis and indicated our path around the cottages, and Francis nodded while he made no move to leave the conversation.
On the back side of the row, each little cottage had a small courtyard. Some had gardens, with herbs or flowers growing—dry sticks at this time of the year, of course—while some were bare patches of dirt and brick. We peered up at the cottages as we went, until—
“I believe it’s this one,” Christopher said. “The garden gate is blue, too.”
So it was. We slipped through and into the courtyard.
It was narrow and enclosed, the space largely taken up by a row of pots with twigs sticking up out of the dirt, and by a bench resting against one honey-stoned wall.
It might have been a pleasant place in the summer, with the sun shining, the flowers blooming, and the bees buzzing, but under the sullen November sky, it looked gloomy and deserted.
“Private,” Christopher commented, looking around at the high stone walls of the courtyard and the higher walls of the surrounding houses.
Yes, it was. No one would be able to see into this courtyard unless they made a real effort. “Let’s try the kitchen door.”
It was painted the same cheery robin’s egg blue as the front door and garden gate, and set into a corner of the courtyard. I draped Christopher’s handkerchief over the latch and pushed down on it.
The door resisted—it was a heavy, old thing—but eventually, with a groan, it opened.
We all three froze. However, when several seconds passed with no reaction from inside, we exchanged a look. The sound was loud enough that it should have roused some interest from within, if anyone was there. Yet there was no yell of outrage, nor the pitter-patter of approaching feet.
I gestured to Constance, who leaned forward, into the kitchen, and opened her mouth. “Morrison?” Her voice quavered. “Are you home? It’s Constance Peckham.”
“We could be wrong,” Christopher said softly as we waited for an answer.
There was no need for him to spell out what we could be wrong about.
We were both thinking the same thing, after all.
Constance might not have caught on yet—she’s finer-minded than Christopher and I, or at least less distrustful—but we’d both seen enough dead bodies to recognize the signs. “She could have gone to church—”
“The Methodist chapel, do you mean?” I shook my head. “It looked empty, Christopher. There was no singing, nor any sign of life. And surely it’s too late in the day for mass—”
He nodded. “But she might have gone home with one of the other parishioners. Or whatever one would call an adherent of the Methodist faith.”
“Member?” I suggested. “Fellow worshiper?”
“Perhaps. Might she not have gone home with one of them after the service was over? For luncheon or companionship or something else?”
She might very well have done, of course. “Would she have left her kitchen door open, though? And the chapel was that way.” I pointed through the house, towards the front of the square. “Wouldn’t she have gone out the front?”
“Who knows? In a place like this—” Christopher gestured to the tiny hamlet with its picturesque cottages and fairytale look, “perhaps people leave their doors open all the time. Mum does too, at home. We only lock up at night.”
Yes, of course we did. Or at least we had done, at Beckwith Place. In London, Christopher and I both made certain that the flat was locked up tight whenever we went out, and Evans the commissionaire guarded the entrance to the building.
But that was London, and this was the Cotswolds.
On the other hand—
“Beckwith Place is full of people,” I said.
“Aunt Roz and Uncle Harold. Francis. Constance now, and you and me back then. If people started wandering in and out—people who didn’t belong—one of us would notice.
This is a single woman who lives by herself, and not just that, but a single woman who left her last position in a bit of a hurry, as if something was wrong.
Not to mention that her counterpart at Sutherland Hall was killed not three months ago.
Don’t you think she would lock her door when she goes out? ”
“She might not know about Hughes…” Christopher demurred.
No, she might not. Hughes had been asking about Morrison that weekend at Beckwith Place, but there was nothing to indicate that she had found her before her death. We hadn’t.
“Look,” I said, pointing. “There’s a keyhole. If someone took the trouble to install a lock, surely it must be for the purpose of locking the door, at least some of the time.”
“So what do you suggest we do, Pippa?” Christopher wanted to know. “I’m not walking in. Not with a constable a few yards away.”
No, of course not. “Call her again, Constance,” I said, and Constance rolled her eyes but did as I said.
There was no answer this time either, and by now Francis and his companion had caught up, and were standing in the courtyard behind us.
“What’s all this, then?” the constable wanted to know, looking from one to the other of us.
“The kitchen door was open,” I explained, hiding Christopher’s handkerchief behind my back. “But she’s not answering.”
“Went home with someone after chapel,” the constable said, “most likely.”
Christopher, who had suggested the same thing, gave me an arch look. I thought about sticking my tongue out, but reconsidered it.
“Do you think perhaps you ought to check?”
The constable stared at me. “This is someone’s home. I can’t just walk into it.”
“You’re a constable. Of course you can.”
“Not without cause!”
“Isn’t this cause enough?” I gestured to the open door with one hand while the other still kept the pocket square behind my back. “The door was unlocked and she’s not responding to knocks and calls. What if something’s wrong?”
“Everyone’s door is unlocked in Upper Slaughter,” the constable said.
“Well, I’m concerned for her wellbeing.” I turned towards the kitchen, partly visible through the open door. “If you won’t check, then I will.”
His hand shot out and grabbed me by the arm. “You cannot walk into someone else’s house, Miss!”
“We’re acquainted,” I told him, twitching my sleeve out of his hand.
It was a lie, of course. Morrison had left her post by the time I visited the Dower House in May, so I had never met her. And the constable seemed to know it, because the way he eyed me was dubious in the extreme. I sighed. “Fine. I’ve never met the woman. But Constance grew up with her.”
I indicated Constance. “Morrison was Lady Peckham’s lady’s maid for twenty-three years,” I added. “Until she up and left without notice one day in April. It has taken us six months to track her down.”
The constable looked from me to Constance. She did her best to appear trustworthy. It oughtn’t to have been a problem, when everything I had just said was the truth, and when she had one of those open, friendly faces, but for some reason she looked extremely guilty.
The constable folded his arms across his chest. “If it has taken you six months to track her down, she clearly doesn’t want to be found. Give me one good reason why I should let you go in there.”
“Because something might be wrong,” I said.
“Perhaps you’re right, and she went to chapel, and then she went somewhere with someone for fellowship afterwards, and left her kitchen door unlocked through it all.
It’s not impossible. You might know better than I do whether that’s in character.
I don’t know her, so I can’t say with certainty that she wouldn’t have done.
But isn’t it also possible that the reason the door is open is that something has happened to her? ”
If I were going to break into this cottage, with the purpose of silencing Morrison, I would do it through this door, in the privacy of this enclosed courtyard with its tall stone walls, where it would be less likely that anyone would see me than if I were fiddling with the front door in full view of everyone in the square.
The constable didn’t answer, and I added, persuasively, “What’s the harm in taking a look? If she isn’t here, she’ll never know that you went inside. And if she is, and something is wrong, you might save her life.”
I tried to look pleading as my hands worried each other in front of my stomach. Constance did the same, big eyes unblinking as she bit her lip.
Francis, of course, wasn’t unaffected by his fiancée’s plight. He asked, somewhat apologetically, “Would it hurt, old chap? If you don’t touch anything, no one would know that you’ve been inside.”
“We’ve motored all the way here from Wiltshire to make certain that she’s all right,” Christopher added, blue eyes limpid.
The constable sighed. “I suppose I might as well. You won’t give me any peace until I do, will you?”
It was clearly a rhetorical question, to which the answer was no, we wouldn’t.
None of us said anything. If he flat out refused to go inside, I wasn’t sure what we’d do.
It would be difficult to affect entrance without inviting a burglary charge after a flat out refusal.
But I was also not prepared to drive back to Wiltshire without seeing with my own eyes that Morrison was either alive and well or dead, so he was right. I would nag him until he did it.
He sighed. “Wait here, please.”
“Of course,” I said piously, as if going into the cottage had never even entered my mind. Francis snorted. Christopher sniggered. Even Constance smirked. The constable looked from one to the others and shook his head.
“One minute.”
He turned to the open door and raised his voice. “Miss Morrison? It’s Constable Woodin. Are you at home?”
He got no more of an answer than Constance had done, and after a second, he squared his shoulders and stepped through the doorway.
We gathered in the opening and jostled for space as we peered into the kitchen of the cottage.
It was small and rustic, with a sink below the window to our right, and a small cooker further down the wall.
On the other side of the door was a small table and two chairs.
An open fireplace on the opposite wall provided heat in the winter months.
Beside it were two apertures: a door to the front room, and a staircase that led to the first floor and, I assumed, a bedroom and bath.
“Cozy,” Constance commented.
“If you like rustic charm.”
She looked around.” I don’t mind it.”
Francis looked like he was taking mental notes.
I had rather assumed that the two of them would remain at Beckwith Place after they got married.
Francis was the eldest, and would inherit the place from Uncle Herbert eventually, I assumed, although that could be decades, so perhaps he would rather bring his wife to a home of their own while they waited.
Constable Woodin had inspected the front room—why, I had no idea, since, if Morrison was in there, she certainly would have heard us knock and call—and now he came back into the kitchen and made his way toward the staircase.
“Nothing?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Everything looks good. But I’ll check the upstairs, too, before we leave.”
He put a regulation boot on the bottom step of the staircase and called out, “Miss Morrison? It’s Constable Woodin. I’m coming up.”