“I was wondering if Nancy went for her and tried to shove her in the stream, without realising that Sister M. was much bigger and stronger than herself—and it happened that way. She was a very powerfully built woman, Ray, and she had enormous hands. They gave me the horrors.”
“Yes. I noticed her hands, too. But all this doesn’t get us any nearer to who shoved Sister Monica in the mill-race.”
“Did they ever find out who was the man Nancy had been going with?”
“No. She never told anybody, and when the police enquired in the village, the answer was ‘I don’t know.’ Nobody knew, which meant that nobody would tell. This village has a very strong defence mechanism of the ‘I don’t know’ variety. They’re nearly all related or connected by marriage, and they present an unbroken front to outside interference. That’s why they resent the fact that the village children are sent to school at Milham Prior now. Children chatter, one to another.”
“Do you think the village rumours got to Milham Prior that way?”
“Yes. I think Sergeant Peel got wind of what was being said in secret conclave in this village—to wit, that Sister Monica pushed Nancy in the mill stream. Incidentally, he doesn’t believe it, but he holds there’s no smoke without fire.”
“And so what?”
“Peel’s own belief is that there’s a killer in the village, responsible for both deaths. Whether he’s right or wrong, it means a full dress police investigation. He’ll go on asking questions until somebody cracks.”
“How grim,” said Anne. She paused a moment, and then said: “Well, thank heaven I don’t know anything about anything: and in the meantime, ought I to offer to go and help at Gramarye?”
“I’d much rather you didn’t, but I suppose we ought to offer to help,” said Raymond. “I’ll ring up Lady Ridding and find out how things are. My own opinion is that it would be much better to have all those tinies dispersed to other homes. They’re bound to hear some of the gossip and they’d be better out of it.”
“Oh, do try to get that done, Ray. It’d be so much better. That aged nurse and the old cook will be fairly spreading themselves over death and disaster, and the brats of maids will be gossiping like ghouls. It’s bound to happen. They’ve all been battened down and kept under, and now the tyrant’s hand is removed they’ll go haywire.”
“I think that’s probably perfectly true,” said Raymond.
3
Sergeant Peel was a competent and zealous police officer, but he tended to develop a bee in his bonnet over Milham in the Moor. In actual fact, the village defeated him. It was a law-abiding village, and the constable who occasionally patrolled it had no complaints to make, but on the few occasions when Peel had had occasion to investigate irregularities—motoring offences, drinking after hours, dramatic performances in a hall which had no licence for same—he had come up against the communal answer, “I don’t know.” It had been the same over Nancy Bilton’s death: no one knew anything, and Peel was perfectly certain that quite a number of people knew quite a lot, but no wiles of his own could break down that unanimous ignorance of a village which was an integral whole. When he had received the news of Sister Monica’s death, Peel had fairly jumped to it. Milham in the Moor had diddled him once over a big case, and it wasn’t going to happen again.
He had arrived to find the two doctors, Venner and Wilson and Bob Doone all together close by the bridge. Hedges had been hurrying away after his agitated cows, who were not used to being honked at on their way to milking. No driver in the village ever honked at milking cows—it was bad for milk production. Peel had shouted at Hedges to come back and Hedges had disregarded the voice of the law, while Venner, Wilson, and Doone had all told Peel to “let mun be.” Cows had got to be milked and Hedges didn’t know aught about this here. Which negative statement set the old theme of not knowing.
After his first routine enquiries, Peel had agreed that the body should be moved to Dr. Brown’s house. There was no object in waiting for the photographers, for the body had already been lifted from the water and its position gave no information. The sergeant was favourably disposed towards Dr. Ferens, for the simple reason that he was a newcomer to Milham in the Moor, and things had gone fairly smoothly, except that Peel was incensed because Jim Rigg, who had first found the body, was not at hand to be questioned. Jim Rigg worked at the Manor Farm and was now milking Sir James Ridding’s pedigree Jerseys—and the Jerseys, Peel was given to understand, had to be milked to the clock and no dilly-dallying. “Him’ll tell you all him knows in good time,” said Venner, who had the Devonian’s persistence in using an accusative for a nominative and vice versa.
Eventually Peel, who had plenty of commonsense when he wasn’t being given information about dairy cattle, had decided that the best thing he could do was to search the immediate environs of the bridge. He could interrogate natives later, but any delay in searching might mean losing valuable evidence. The ground was fairly soft, and, for all Peel knew, somebody’s cows might be driven all over the place before he could stop them. The sergeant knew who had been at the bridge since the body had been found: Rigg, Venner, Wilson, and Hedges, all in labourer’s boots, Dr. Brown and Dr. Ferens in good country shoes. Rigg and Venner had lifted the body from the stream, Wilson and Hedges
