Patricia Wentworth - The Key

‘And now it’s me. I know – we ought to be working day and night with wet towels round our heads. We really do sometimes.’

‘I don’t believe it. Things would get done if you did. If you ask me, there’s too much idling and sloppy talk.’

They weren’t getting anywhere. He had been dragged away from Miss Mary Anne. He made a determined attempt to get back.

‘You say your sister sees a lot of people. I suppose she knew Mr Harsch?’

Miss Doncaster sniffed.

‘If you could call it knowing. He was wrapped up in his experiments. I always said he’d blow himself up some day.’

Garth permitted himself a faint tinge of malice.

‘But he didn’t, did he?’

Miss Doncaster eyed him with the dislike which her features were so well qualified to express. She had the long, sharp nose and reddish eyes of a ferret, and the thinnest lips that Garth had ever seen. The fact that she never opened them far enough to allow anyone to see her teeth had given rise to a legend which had terrified his infancy. It was said, and was possibly still believed amongst the young of Bourne, that she had real ferret’s teeth, and that if she caught you alone after dark almost anything might happen.

‘I can’t say I see much difference between being blown up and being shot,’ she said tartly.

Garth went on trying to find out whether Miss Mary Anne could have been listening in on the party line at half-past six on Tuesday and who, if anyone, had visited her that evening, but the going was too hard, he got nowhere. Miss Doncaster appeared to disapprove of him even more strongly that she had done when he was in his teens. He gave it up, and being unable to go away and leave her stranded, he found this disapproval, as it were, radiating out to embrace the entire population of Bourne. The only person for whom she had a good word was Mr Everton, whom she conceded to be good-natured, though she immediately qualified this by remarking that the dividing line between good nature and folly was a fine one, and, ‘If men knew how very foolish they appear when they, allow a silly young woman to twist them round her little finger, it would at any rate preserve them from exposing themselves to ridicule in company’ – the remark being concluded by one of her most pronounced sniffs.

‘I expect you find Sophy very much aged,’ was her next remark.

Garth was astonished at his own anger. Some of it seemed to come back with him out of that past in which he had been a frightened little boy and Aunt Sophy one of the bulwarks of his world. He said with careful politeness, ‘Do you know, I don’t think she’s changed a bit for as long as I can remember.’

The ferret nose twitched and sniffed.

‘Not very observant, are you? Breaking up – that’s what Sophy is.’

After which she passed rapidly by way of the rector’s Extreme Views to the incompetence of Dr Edwards – ‘His own wife being a complete invalid is hardly a recommendation’; the decline of manners and morals amongst the young, exemplified by pointed references to Mrs Mottram; and the generally unsatisfactory condition of everybody and everything. He heard about the triplets all over again – ‘Most improvident.’ He heard about the intransigent behaviour of young Podlington, who had married Lucy Pincott and had obtained the Military Medal, by what means Miss Doncaster was unable to say, but it had had a most unhappy effect. Returning on leave, he had accosted her in the churchyard with an unseemly, ‘Hello, Miss Doncaster, how are you getting along?’ And Lucy, hanging on his arm, goggling her eyes right out of her head, as if no one had ever had a medal before – ‘And now, if you please, he is to get a commission! I really cannot think what the world is coming to!’

At this point Miss Sophy saved his life by calling him over to be introduced to Dr Edwards. Out of the tail of his eye he saw Janice handing Marie biscuits to Miss Doncaster and being pinned down.

When the tea-party broke up he walked home with her.

‘I’d forgotten what a terror she was,’ he said. ‘What do you suppose she’s saying about us?’

Janice, having been warned against attributing serious intentions to idle young men whose only idea was to amuse themselves, had a pretty fair idea. She blushed slightly and becomingly, and said, ‘I am a village maiden whose head is being turned, and you are a gay deceiver.’

There was something about the way she said it that tickled him – a delicately dry inflection, a faint, demure sparkle. He burst out laughing and said, ‘She didn’t warn you!’

‘She did.’

He went on laughing.

‘She’s a museum piece, you know.’

Rather to his surprise, Janice flared up.

‘Then I wish someone would lock her up in a museum.’ Her foot tapped the ground and she faced round upon him. ‘It’s all very well for you, to laugh! You don’t happen to live here – I do!’ Then, before he could speak, ‘Did you find out anything about Tuesday? You were talking to her for simply ages.’

‘You mean she was talking to me. And I didn’t find out a thing. What about you?’

Janice looked doubtful.

‘I didn’t like to ask questions, because they might have been the same as yours, and once she thought we were up to anything everyone in Bourne would know it too. But I did find out one person who was there on Tuesday evening, only-’

‘Who was it?’

‘Bush.’

‘Frederick Bush?

She nodded.

‘He came in to move some shelves out of the attic and put them up in the sitting-room – you know he does all that sort of odd job. Miss Mary Anne wanted to have her Spode teacups where she could look at them instead of being put away in the dining-room cupboard. Miss Doncaster told me all about it because she’s feeling very angry with all the Pincotts just now on account of Ernest Podlington. And as Mrs Bush is a Pincott, of course Bush can’t do anything right. She said he had taken twice as long as he need over the shelves and didn’t get done until half-past seven, which was very inconvenient because of supper. And Miss Mary Anne had talked too much, which was very selfish and inconsiderate of her, because she knows quite well that it gives her a bad night, and when she has a bad night, Lucy Ellen has one too. And it was all Bush’s fault.’

Garth said, ‘Gosh!’

GARTH CAME SLOWLY back. When he reached the village he took the shorter way and came to the bottom of the Rectory garden by way of the Church Cut. Someone had cleared away the broken glass. As he was wondering who it might have been, Cyril Bond emerged crab-like from Meadowcroft.

‘I made a good job of it, I reckon. I’m a Scout, so I thought, “Suppose someone was to cut himself,” and I picked it all up and put it in the ditch. I reckon that was a good deed all right.’

Garth laughed. There was something artless about the creature.

‘I reckon it was.’

Cyril edged nearer.

‘Was you at the inquest?’

Garth nodded.

‘What did they say?’ His a’s were all i’s, his London twang pure Stepney.

‘They said it was suicide.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he was found in the church with the door locked and his key in his pocket.’

Cyril gave a scornful laugh.

‘I reckon there was another key all right, mister.’

‘Oh, yes – there are three other keys. The Rector has one, Mr Bush the sexton has one, and Miss Brown who plays the organ has the third. They were all accounted for.’

Cyril said ‘Coo!’ And then, ‘They don’t ’arf believe things, those blokes at inquests. I could tell them something if I liked. And would they believe me? Not ’arf, they wouldn’t! I’m not a clergyman, nor a sexton, nor Miss Brown.’