then down again into Newton Abbott. I noticed that Klein’s Jewelers had a notice saying
“I always said she had it coming,” one of them said, looking at the other for confirmation. “She loved to listen in on the calls and she was a terrible gossip, wasn’t she, Lil?”
The other nodded. “I told her she was going to get in trouble one day for repeating things like that.”
“Did she ever repeat to you any of the things she’d heard?” Darcy asked.
“She did sometimes—you know, if someone was seeing somebody else’s wife. She liked that kind of thing. Crazy about the pictures, she was—romance and drama.”
“So you think that what happened to her wasn’t an accident?” I asked carefully.
“I don’t see as how it could have been,” Lil said. “I mean, who would ever connect up electric wires to a telephone switchboard? Only someone who didn’t know what they were doing, and nobody like that has ever been in here. We ain’t had no kind of work done, or outsiders in here.”
“There was that man about the clock,” the other girl reminded her.
“Oh, right. A man came in the other day—day before poor Glad’s tragedy, it were. Said he was sent to repair the clock. He weren’t here long, fiddled about a bit and then he went.”
“What did he look like?”
“Nothing much. About forty-something, I’d say. Thin bloke. Big mustache. Glasses. Wearing overalls.”
“He didn’t give his name or say who had sent him?”
“We were busy. He seemed to know what he was doing, and he said he’d been sent from the town hall, so we left him to it.”
“Thank you,” Darcy said. “You’ve been most helpful.”
“Do you reckon they’ll ever catch the person what did this?” Lil asked.
“We hope so,” Darcy said. “Oh, and tell me—did Gladys have anyone who might have carried a grudge against her? An old boyfriend, maybe? A neighbor she had annoyed?”
They frowned, thinking. “Like I said”—the other girl glanced at Lil before speaking—“she did like to gossip so maybe that got her in trouble. But she weren’t the sort for boyfriends. Not much of a catch, you might say. She got her romance from the cinema.”
“Should we go to the town hall?” I asked as we came out again to the busy high street. “They’d know who was sent to repair a clock, wouldn’t they?”
“I don’t see how that could have any bearing on Gladys,” Darcy said. “If he’d rigged up the switchboard to kill somebody while he was there, he’d have killed one of the other girls before Gladys came on duty in the early morning.”
“You know what I’m thinking?” Granddad commented. “They let us in and chatted to us easily enough. Who is to say that people don’t often pop in for a chat and that they don’t even remember them afterward?”
“Good point,” Darcy said. “Emphasizing that we’re on a wild-goose chase.”
“Fine,” I said angrily. “You’ve made it quite clear that I’m an idiot and we’re wasting our time.”
I started walking fast toward the motorcar. Darcy hurried to catch up with me. “Nobody says you’re an idiot. I just don’t think we have any way of achieving what you hope to achieve. We’re amateurs, Georgie. We have no access to police records.”
“He’s right, ducks,” Granddad said. “The only way to solve this, in my thinking, is to find a local person who has shown himself in the past to be antisocial or warped or hostile. You know, the kind who writes letters to the local newspaper about his neighbor’s radio being too loud or the greengrocer raising the cost of potatoes. I think we’ll find each of the victims teed him off in a way that wouldn’t bother you or me.”
“Then could we go through the past issues of the newspaper and see if anything stands out?”
“That would take days,” Darcy said. “And I expect the police are already thinking along those lines.”
I sighed. “All right. Let’s go home. I give up. There’s no point in looking where the butcher’s van drove off the road because anyone could have hidden behind a big rock and jumped out to make him swerve. And I was the one who found the master of hounds’s horse and the only person I saw up there was Wild Sal and she’s behind bars.”
“Then let’s go back, have a good lunch and forget about it,” Darcy said. “No, don’t look at me like that. I’m not being callous, just realistic. And who knows, maybe we’ll come to the end of the day with no more deaths.”
“We could drive over to that farm and see where the farmer’s wife died,” I said as we reached the motor and Darcy opened the door for me.
“And question the cow?” Darcy said.
My grandfather laughed. For some reason I couldn’t find it funny. I climbed into the car with a haughty “I’m not amused” expression still on my face.
Darcy touched my hand. “Smile, Georgie. You can’t carry this on your shoulders. What could we hope to learn from looking at a cow barn? The only thing that would be interesting to see is whether the doctor agreed that death was caused by a single kick to the head.”
“I wonder whether he has a surgery in this town or was called in from Exeter.” I was already looking around.
“It wouldn’t be right to go and see the doctor without permission from the inspector,” Granddad said. “I’m sorry, love, but I agree with Darcy. There ain’t much more we can do on our own. Best go back to your posh house and enjoy yourselves.”
Darcy revved the motor and we drove back to the hall. I sat fuming with frustration, but I knew in my heart they were right. If only I had something to go on, some vital clue, some thread that linked the deaths. As we drove I tried to rack my brains about things I might have seen. There had been a couple of occasions when a thought had passed through my head, too fleetingly to grab on to, that I had just witnessed something important. But I could no longer remember what those moments were. As a detective, I was a hopeless failure.
Chapter 29
STILL DECEMBER 28
Suffering from near frostbite.
When we arrived back at Gorzley Hall we found everyone in a state of excitement about the ball. The clatter of a sewing machine came from a back room and I gathered that one of the local women had been conscripted to make alterations. People were rummaging through the dressing-up trunk, calling out things like, “Will this do?”
Junior Wexler ran past. “I’m going to be a Redcoat!” he called. “I’m going to borrow a real uniform and a real gun.”
“Oh, there you are, Georgiana.” Lady Hawse-Gorzley appeared in the doorway, looking frazzled. “I wondered where you had disappeared to.”
“I went out with Darcy and my grandfather to see if there was anything we could do to help solve these murders,” I said.
She glanced around in case any guests were within hearing distance. “I thought you said they’d arrested Wild Sal,” she whispered.
“They have. But a farmer’s wife died after Sal was in jail.”
“The whole thing is extraordinary and unbelievable,” she said, shaking her head. “Especially in our little neck of the woods. Did you discover anything?”
“Nothing at all,” I said. “I feel quite frustrated, but we’ve nothing to go on.”
“It’s not your problem, my dear. You are supposed to be having fun with everyone else. You have your costume for tonight, I hope. All the best ones have been snapped up. Oh, and I hope you don’t mind—I had a word with your maid and asked her to help Mrs. Upthorpe and Mrs. Rathbone dress tonight. Our Martha can help Mrs. Wexler and Bunty.”
I tried not to let my face betray that being dressed by Queenie might be something fraught with danger. Should I perhaps warn Mrs. Upthorpe and Mrs. Rathbone that my maid had in the past done such things as setting
