Murder in the Mill-Race

his statement that Lady Ridding knew that her medical practitioner and her Warden had misconducted themselves in years gone by, but I agree with him that Lady Ridding is past mistress of the art of looking the other way when self-interest prompts her to do so. I also think I’m on firm ground when I maintain that ‘her ladyship’ would not have tolerated irregularities in her own household. The fact that Lady Ridding supported the Warden was an indication to me that Sir James was not involved. I used the same argument about the vicar and his wife. They both said Miss Torrington was wonderful: ergo, they did not pay her blackmail. All these arguments were hypothetical, so I turned to further facts. Dr. Ferens and the bailiff gave an excellent demonstration that it was highly improbable that deceased collapsed on the bridge. The fact that Sanderson assisted so vigorously in the experiment made it more than ever improbable that he was responsible for the murder. But after I had walked up and down that hill once or twice I pondered over another argument. Reeves and I postulated that deceased had gone to meet somebody near the mill, having met the same person there before. But why at the mill? It seemed to me that the garden at Gramarye or that seat where I sat and talked to Miss Braithwaite were much more convenient places to meet. What was there against them? The answer was the steep hill. If a person were aged and infirm that hill would be a tough proposition for them. Dr. Brown was one of the few people concerned whose age and frailty made it very hard for him to walk up that hill, and his car was so old and noisy that everybody in the village knew the sound of it. Again, there was nothing conclusive in that, but it fitted in with other possibilities.”

“You give me the creeps,” said Anne. “I knew you would be very expert fact finders, but I didn’t think you’d argue out all the personal qualities, or that you’d notice so much about people’s general behaviour. What on earth did you think about me—and Raymond?”

“I thought that you looked one of the happiest people I’d ever seen, Mrs. Ferens,” replied Macdonald, “and you reminded me of a Gauguin colour scheme. I argued that since you looked so happy, the probability was that your husband was a very contented—and for tunate—man.”

Raymond gave a shout of laughter. “Good for you. I am—and likewise, I am.”

Reeves sat up again. “Climate,” he observed. “It’s all the thing these days—climate. Your climate seems based on a permanent anticyclone. Nothing in it for C.I.D. chaps. What the G.P.s call an uninteresting case.”

4

“Let’s try again,” said Macdonald. “Facts and the elucidation thereof. It was a fact, bitterly resented by Sergeant Peel, that the village folk were quite unhelpful, and they stuck to it that Sister was wonderful. I managed to get that one unstuck a bit, and they admitted ‘Sister had changed,’ but they still stuck to the explanation of accidental death. Not one of them was willing to divulge a single I act which could assist the investigation. In short, they didn’t want the investigation to succeed. When Ferens and Sanderson exploded the theory that deceased collapsed on the bridge, Venner was furious with them. I argued that the village had a pretty good idea, as villages generally have, as to what had happened, and the village was doing its best to protect somebody whom they held in high regard. And when somebody planted a very nice little piece of evidence in Greave’s shack, I realised that the feeling of the village was very deeply moved.”

“Tramps,” put in Reeves disgustedly. “Never try that one on. Silly jugginses, they don’t give the county police any credit for earning their wages. Tramps aren’t invisible. One of the routine jobs the county men are good at is locating tramps. They can pull the whole lot in any day if they want to, and check up on their itineraries, real or imagined. I don’t mind the village thinking the C.I.D. are mutts. After all, we’re strangers, foreigners. But they might give their own chaps credit for a little gumption.”

“All quite true,” agreed Macdonald, “and Venner landed himself within distance of a capital charge by playing fool tricks with that bag which he’d found empty in the river.”

“Nothing like feelings for making sensible chaps go haywire,” said Reeves.

5

“Let’s get on to Hannah. Hannah’s a wonderful character,” said Macdonald. “They found her uneducable at school, probably owing to the shock she’d suffered in childhood, but she’s capable of arguing things out for herself which most educated people would miss. She noticed the smell of spirits in Sister’s breath. After Peel had been to Gramarye, ‘poking around in what didn’t belong to him,’ Hannah had a look round on her own. She found two bottles of medicine tucked away on a shelf she herself never used because it was right high up out of her reach, and the shelf was in her own housemaid’s cupboard. Hannah did not know what the medicine was or why it was there, and she couldn’t read the labels, but she sensed there was something odd about it. Unfortunately Peel had spoken sharply to her and frightened her, and in her half-childish, half-shrewd mind she decided that it would be better to throw the bottles away. Maybe they were poison, and if anyone had poisoned Sister, Hannah didn’t want any bottles found in her housemaid’s cupboard. So she buried them in the garden at the first opportunity, thereby throwing a spanner in the works without knowing it.”

“The medicine being laced with absolute alcohol?” queried Raymond.

“Nothing of the kind,” said Macdonald. “The medicine was exactly what it ought to have been. And to avoid confusing you further, I’m going to start in on a straight narrative. Some of it you know already, some of it