“He’s a German and all Germans are brutes at heart.”
“He adores me, Noel, and you know how much I like to be adored. And he is very rich and generous. But you’re right. There is only so much time that one can spend in Germany without longing to escape—especially now that that dreadful little Hitler man seems to have taken control.”
“He won’t last, my darling,” Noel said. “He can’t last. He is comic beyond belief. You’ll see. Someone with more military bearing will arise and topple him. Maybe even your Max might like to take over—then you could be Frau Fuhrer.”
“If you’re in Mr. Coward’s play then you’ll be stuck in England, won’t you?” I said. “It’s bound to be a hit and then it’ll run forever.”
“Of course it will. Anything I write is a hit,” Noel said. “And then we’ll take it to America, where everyone will adore us.”
“Oh, yes. Do let’s.” Mummy’s face lit up. “I really do think it’s time I went back to the stage. It’s been so long. Do you think my public will have forgotten me?”
Noel took her hand. “As if they could, my darling. They have been yearning for your return.”
I glanced at my grandfather and he winked.
The grandfather clock in the hallway struck four. I stood up. “I should go back to the hall, I suppose. They’ll all be returning from their various expeditions.”
“Apart from the ones who have been felled along the way by the Lovey Curse,” Mr. Coward said callously.
“No, that’s all taken care of now,” Granddad said. “Remember the inspector told us he’d arrested the madwoman.”
Noel sighed. “How I love this village. A resident madwoman and old spinsters and a village idiot and a pub called the Hag and Hounds.”
“And don’t forget about the Lovey Chase,” I said and gave them all the details.
“We absolutely can’t miss that, can we, Claire?” Mr. Coward said. “And I rather think we’re coming to your fancy dress ball tomorrow night, since we can be in disguise and nobody will recognize us.”
“Oh, yes, I’d forgotten about the fancy dress ball,” I said. “You should see the ballroom. It’s absolutely lovely.”
“I don’t know what we’ll do for costumes,” Mummy said. “I don’t suppose there is a costume shop in Exeter that can send something over by tomorrow. One will just have to improvise, I suppose, if you really insist on attending, Noel.”
“I do, darling. Absolutely adamant about it. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
I glanced at his elegant face with its sardonic smile. One never knew with people like him if they were being serious or if this was thinly veiled sarcasm.
“Toodle pip, everyone,” I said, blowing a kiss. As I opened the front door I saw a man getting out of a motorcar. “It’s the inspector again,” I called back to the others. “I wonder, has Wild Sal confessed?”
The inspector came up the path with slow, measured tread. “Well, it seems I spoke too soon,” he said. “We’ve got Wild Sal in custody and now I’ve just heard there’s been another death.”
Chapter 26
MY MOTHER’S COTTAGE
STILL DECEMBER 27
“Another murder?” my mother asked. “How positively thrilling. People are dropping like flies.”
The inspector frowned at her. “Not sure about the murder part, madam. It was some miles away, on the other side of Bovey Tracey, which is why I didn’t hear about it until now. A farmer’s wife was found lying in the milking shed. Apparently she was kicked in the head by the cow she was milking. Any other time I’d think this was just a nasty accident. Now I just don’t know.”
“You’d better come in and let Mrs. Huggins make you a cup of tea,” my mother said. “You’re looking quite haggard.”
“I know. This whole thing is driving me mad. My chief gets back in a few days and he’ll think I’ve done nothing.”
“But you’ve had nothing to go on,” my grandfather said, ushering the inspector to the armchair by the fire. “I mean, there’s not been one of these deaths that one could pinpoint as a murder. No signs of foul play, no motive at all, was there?”
The inspector nodded. “You’re right. No clues, no motive, no sense at all. To start with I thought it might be those escaped convicts, killing because someone had spotted their hideout. But that wouldn’t explain a switchboard operator in town, would it? And an escaped convict wouldn’t go to the trouble of setting up a trip wire for someone’s horse. He’d have been able to stay hidden very nicely in that kind of mist without doing anything. No— that horse’s leg has opened my eyes, so to speak. That was a deliberate act of malice. I don’t know if it was aimed at a particular person or just at the hunt in general, but it was certainly aimed at felling a rider.”
“Did you find the actual tree where the trap was laid?” I asked.
“My boys might have done so by now, but quite frankly they’ve been stretched to the limit, what with finding this Wild Sal and bringing her in. My, but she was a little tiger. Put curses on my men too, like someone possessed by the devil—scared the daylights out of some of them, I can tell you.”
“If you look at it logically,” Noel Coward interjected in his bored upper-class drawl, “you still couldn’t come to the conclusion that you were looking at a string of murders. The horse’s leg is the only sign of outside intervention —unless you found telltale boot marks around that tree in the orchard or signs of a scuffle where the man fell off the bridge.”
“To tell you the truth, sir, we bungled both of those,” the inspector said. “That first one with the man in the tree—well, we just took it to be a stupid accident, see. So we walked around a bit and left our footprints all over the place. Same goes for the man who fell off the bridge. Didn’t occur to us that they were crime scenes to begin with.”
“Why would it?” Granddad said. “You don’t expect someone to be lurking and pushing people off bridges in this part of the world.”
“You do not, sir,” the inspector agreed. “But after eight days of one death per day, I have to believe that someone is behind this.”
“Not one death per day,” I interrupted. “There was no death on December twenty-fourth, remember?”
“You’re right, my lady.” He wagged a finger in my direction. “But there was a crime, wasn’t there? The jewelry shop in Newton Abbott was broken into. I don’t suppose that had anything to do with the deaths. In fact, I’d have said that someone needed extra money for Christmas except that it was clearly a professional job—safe cracked with no problem and only the best stuff taken—some really expensive gold rings.”
“So have you given up on the idea that the convicts were to blame?” Granddad asked.
“I think I have to, sir. The deaths have been so spread out now that I can’t believe escaped convicts could have covered so much ground on foot without being seen. And then there’s the question why. If you’d just escaped from Dartmoor Prison your one thought would be to get as far away as possible and then lie low, wouldn’t it?”
“You said they’d recaptured one of the convicts, didn’t you?” I asked.
“They have, my lady, and they’re holding him in a cell up in Birmingham until they can bring him back here.”
“Did he have anything to say about his fellow escapees?” I went on.
“He thought the other two were planning to head straight for London. Leastways, that’s what he said. If he knows more, he’s not spilling the beans. They don’t usually rat on each other.”
“So this woman who was kicked in the head—have you seen her yet?”
“I haven’t. They rushed her to the hospital because she was still breathing, but unfortunately she died on the way there, and nobody got a chance to see how she was lying or to examine the shed as a possible crime scene. By now those cows have probably walked all over the spot where she was found.”
“It seems to me this all comes down to why,” Granddad said. “Why these particular people.”
“I agree with you, sir,” the inspector said. “And believe me, I’ve asked myself that question over and over. But they’ve nothing in common. They’d certainly not have mixed socially, would they? I mean a master of hounds and a switchboard operator and a butcher. I’ll wager they didn’t even know each other.”
