At the police station I was met by a worried-looking young constable. “Sorry I can’t help you, miss,” he said, “but our telephone isn’t working either. I don’t know what can be wrong. It’s not as if there was a storm last night, was there? Maybe it’s the cold what’s done it.”
I looked around the village shop, but there was nothing that was remotely suitable for Christmas presents, the most exotic items being long woolen underwear and white handkerchiefs. But my spirits were raised when I realized that someone would now have to go into town to deliver Lady H-G’s message.
“Their telephone’s not working either?” she said, running a hand through her hair. “What a nuisance. There is always a last-minute hitch, isn’t there? I don’t suppose you’d be an angel and go into town for me, would you? I absolutely have to have those geese and I know he’ll sell out if I wait any longer.”
“Of course I’ll go into town for you,” I said, delighted that I would now get a chance to shop.
The car was summoned and I rode in solitary splendor into the little market town of Newton Abbott. If the village had depicted the rural Christmas scene, this was straight out of Dickens. Little shops with lead-paned bow windows, a cheery pub, children singing carols on every street corner and people staggering under loads of provisions and presents. I delivered my message to Mr. Skaggs, who looked pleased with himself.
“I told her ladyship, didn’t I?” he said in his thick Devon burr. “I said she’d be needing the geese as well. Right, my lovey, you tell her that I’ll be delivering them bright and early on Christmas morning. She don’t need to worry.”
“Lady Hawse-Gorzley tried to telephone you,” I said, “but it seems that the line is down or something. Even the police station telephone was not working.”
“Ah, well, they wouldn’t be, would they?” the butcher said, giving me a knowing look. “Fire last night at the exchange. Didn’t you folks hear about it? Terrible it were. Seems there was something wrong with the wiring and one of the poor telephone operators plugged in her headphones and she were electrocuted right away. Then the whole thing caught on fire. Took the fire brigade hours to put it out. Such a terrible shame so near to Christmas.”
“So the girl was killed?” I asked, swallowing back my rising fear.
He nodded. “Not exactly a girl anymore. Poor old Gladys Tripp. She’s been operator at the local exchange for years. Bit of a nosy parker if you ask me, always listening in on people’s calls, but a good enough soul. Didn’t deserve to die like that.”
“Did she live out toward Tiddleton-under-Lovey?” I asked.
“No, right here in town. Born and bred here. She and I went to primary school together.”
I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I came out and walked down the high street, no longer noticing the lively Christmas-card scene. The fourth death. Again it could have been a horrible accident—wiring that had been badly done. Electric wires too close to telephone wires. I didn’t exactly know how telephones worked, but I didn’t think that kind of accident would happen too often. And the telephone operator who had been killed was the type who loved to listen in, to gossip. Had she overheard something she shouldn’t? At least I couldn’t tie her to the Lovey Curse when she had always lived in a town ten miles away.
There was nothing I could do to help and I couldn’t see any way that her death was related to the others, unless a madman in the area was randomly targeting people to kill in different ways. Then I remembered there was one connection: I had heard her name before. Inspector Newcombe had mentioned that Gladys Tripp was the quick-thinking operator who had been sharp enough to alert the police after she had received the emergency call about Miss Effie. A link between two deaths at last, but a tenuous one. I toyed with it as I walked down the high street, being buffeted by round ladies with shopping baskets. By the end of the street I was none the wiser and tried to turn my mind back to the job in hand—finding Christmas presents in a hurry. I looked in dress shops, shoe shops, newsagents, even a haberdashery, and found nothing that looked nice but cost little. I paused to look in the bow window of a small jeweler and saw some lovely pieces of antique jewelry that made me sigh with longing. There was some high-quality stuff here. I wondered how many people in a small Devon town had the sort of money to patronize a place like this. I was about to walk on when a small display at the bottom of the window caught my eye.
The pixies were silver charms in pretty little boxes with the verse on the lid, obviously put there to attract tourists and bring people into the shop. I decided that Granddad could use some luck and that maybe my mother might be charmed by the pixie too. I was about to buy one for each of them when, on impulse, I took an extra one for Darcy, if and when I had a chance to see him again. If anyone needed luck it was he, since he was as impoverished as I and was always popping off to dangerous places.
The man who served me was an elderly Jewish man, presumably Mr. Klein, since the shop was called Klein’s Jewelers. He treated me with great deference even though I was buying such humble items.
“I’ve just acquired some fine pieces from Paris if you’d care to look, miss,” he said as he wrapped up the boxes for me.
“I’m afraid that I don’t have the money for your lovely things,” I replied, giving him a regretful smile.
“I understand.” He handed me the boxes. “It’s not easy to survive these days for most of us, is it? It’s rare that I have a call for my better-quality items these days. My compliments of the season to you, miss.” Then he added astutely, “Or should I say ‘my lady’?”
I came out of the shop with three pixies then went into the sweet shop next door and bought a box of chocolates for Mrs. Huggins and Black Magic for Lady Hawse-Gorzley. I wasn’t going to attempt to buy anything for the invisible Mr. Coward.
Chapter 12
The next lot of guests arrived around two o’clock. They were Mr. and Mrs. Upthorpe and their daughter, Ethel—a large girl with a rather vacant moon face and Marcel-waved hair that somehow didn’t make her seem smarter. Both mother and daughter wore well-cut clothes that shouted Paris, but they still seemed ill at ease. The Wexlers and the Upthorpes regarded each other suspiciously. I showed Ethel up to her room.
“I’m glad to see there’s someone else ordinary here,” she said in a whisper. “I was afraid they’d all be lords and ladies. We’re plain folks really, except that my dad has made a lot of money. But that’s not enough, is it? They wanted to have me presented at court, but I got turned down. So now my mum has set her heart on my marrying into the aristocracy; that’s why she decided we had to come here. But I don’t actually see any young men around.”
“I gather that three of them are due later today,” I said. “The son of the house, his friend from Oxford and his cousin. I can’t tell you what they are like because I haven’t met them yet.”
“So what does your dad do?” she asked.
“He used to be Duke of Glen Garry and Rannoch,” I said. “He’s dead now.”
She put her hand up to her mouth. “Oh, crikey. I know who you are. I’ve seen your picture in the society pages. Oh, I do feel a fool.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “I am quite ordinary, really. I’m unattached with no job, so probably worse off than you are.”
“But you have royal relatives,” she pointed out.
“Well, yes, that’s true.”
“I should be curtsying and calling you ‘my lady.’”
“Not at a function like this. We’re all friends together this week. Why don’t you call me Georgie?”
She beamed at me. “You’re a good sport, Georgie. Just wait till I tell the girls at home about this.”
At least I’d made someone happy. We came downstairs to find that Colonel and Mrs. Rathbone had arrived. They looked exactly as I would have expected. He was portly with a small military mustache. They were both wearing country tweeds and she had a good-quality Cairngorms brooch in her lapel.
“Of course it can be dashed uncomfortable in Calcutta in summer,” he was saying. “I usually send the memsahib up to the hills, don’t I, old thing?”
“It’s lovely up in the hills. Tea plantations for miles and miles. Have you ever been to India?” Mrs. Rathbone looked at the Wexlers and the Upthorpes, only to be met with blank stares.
