'I daresay as you'll have read about it all in the papers at the time. Let's see, near as possible it would have been twenty years ago. You'll have read about it for sure. Child murders. Little girl of nine years old first. Didn't come home from school one day. Whole neighbourhood was out searching for her. Dingley Copse she was found in. Strangled, she'd been. It makes me shiver still to think of it. Well, that was the first, then about three weeks later another. The other side of Market Basing, that was. But within the district, as you might say. A man with a car could have done it easy enough.'
'And then there were others. Not for a month or two sometimes. And then there'd be another one. Not more than a couple of miles from here, one was; almost in the village, though.'
'Didn't the police - didn't anyone know who'd done it?'
'They tried hard enough,' said Mrs Copleigh. 'Detained a man quite soon, they did. Someone from t'other side of Market Basing. Said he was helping them in their inquiries. You know what that always means. They think they've got him. They pulled in first one and then another but always after twenty-four hours or so they had to let him go again. Found out he couldn't have done it or wasn't in these parts or somebody gave him an alibi.'
'You don't know, Liz,' said Mr Copleigh. 'They may have known quite well who done it. I'd say they did. That's often the way of it, or so I've heard. The police know who it is but they can't get the evidence.'
'That's wives, that is,' said Mrs Copleigh, 'wives or mothers or fathers even. Even the police can't do much no matter what they may think. A mother says "my boy was here that night at dinner" or his young lady says she went to the pictures with him that night, and he was with her the whole time, or a father says that he and his son were out in the far field together doing something - well, you can't do anything against it. They may think the father or the mother or his sweetheart's lying, but unless someone else come along and say they saw the boy or the man or whatever it is in some other place, there's not much they can do. It was a terrible time. Right het up we all were round here. When we heard another child was missing we'd make parties up.'
'Aye, that's right,' said Mr Copleigh.
'When they'd got together they'd go out and they'd search. Sometimes they found her at once and sometimes they wouldn't find her for weeks. Sometimes she was quite near her home in a place you'd have thought we must have looked at already. Maniac, I suppose it must have been. It's awful,' said Mrs Copleigh in a righteous tone, 'it's awful, that there should be men like that. They ought to be shot. They ought to be strangled themselves. And I'd do it to them for one, if anyone would let me. Any man who kills children and assaults them. What's the good putting them in loony bins and treating them with all the home comforts and living soft. And then sooner or later they let 'em out again, say they're cured and send them home. That happened somewhere in Norfolk. My sister lives there and she told me about it. He went back home and two days later he'd done in someone else. Crazy they are, these doctors, some of them, saying these men are cured when they are not.'
'And you've no idea down here who it might have been?' said Tuppence. 'Do you think really it was a stranger?'
'Might have been a stranger to us. But it must have been someone living within - oh! I'd say a range of twenty miles around. It mightn't have been here in this village.'
'You always thought it was, Liz.'
'You get het up,' said Mrs Copleigh. 'You think it's sure to be here in your own neighbourhood because you're afraid, I suppose. I used to look at people. So did you, George. You'd say to yourself I wonder if it could be that chap, he's seemed a bit queer lately. That sort of thing.'
'I don't suppose really he looked queer at all,' said Tuppence. 'He probably looked just like everyone else.'
'Yes, it could be you've got something there. I've heard it said that you wouldn't know, and whoever it was had never seemed mad at all, but other people say there's always a terrible glare in their eyes.'
'Jeffreys, he was the sergeant of police here then,' said Mr Copleigh, 'he always used to say he had a good idea but there was nothing doing.'
'They never caught the man?'
'No. Over six months it was, nearly a year. Then the whole thing stopped. And there's never been anything of that kind round here since. No, I think he must have gone away. Gone away altogether. That's what makes people think they might know who it was.'
'You mean because of people who did leave the district?'
'Well, of course it made people talk, you know. They'd say it might be so-and-so.'
Tuppence hesitated to ask the next question, but she felt that with Mrs Copleigh's passion for talking it wouldn't matter if she did.
'Who did you think it was?' she asked.
'Well, it's that long ago I'd hardly like to say. But there was names mentioned. Talked of, you know, and looked at. Some as thought it might be Mr Boscowan.'
'Did they?'
'Yes, being an artist and all, artists are queer. They say that. But I didn't think it was him!'
'There was more as said it was Amos Perry,' said Mr Copleigh.
'Mrs Perry's husband?'
'Yes. He's a bit queer, you know, simple minded. He's the sort of chap that might have done it.'
'Were the Perrys living here then?'
'Yes. Not at Watermead. They had a cottage about four or five miles away. Police had an eye on him, I'm sure of that.'
'Couldn't get anything on him, though,' said Mrs Copleigh. 'His wife spoke for him always. Stayed at home with her in the evenings, he did. Always, she said. Just went along sometimes to the pub on a Saturday night, but none of these murders took place on a Saturday night, so there wasn't anything in that. Besides, Alice Perry was there and you'd believe when she gave evidence. She'd never let up or back down. You couldn't frighten her out of it. Anyway, he's not the one. I never thought so. I know I've nothing to go on but I've a sort of feeling if I'd had to put my finger on anyone I'd have put it on Sir Philip.'
'Sir Philip?' Again Tuppence's head reeled. Yet another character was being introduced. Sir Philip. 'Who's Sir Philip?' she asked.
'Sir Philip Starke. Lives up in the Warrender House. Used to be called the Old Priory when the Warrenders lived in it before it burnt down. You can see the Warrender graves in the churchyard and tablets in the church, too. Always been Warrenders here practically since the time of King James.'
'Was Sir Philip a relation of the Warrenders?'
'No. Made his money in a big way, I believe, or his father did. Steelworks or something of that kind. Odd sort of man was Sir Philip. The works were somewhere up north, but he lived here. Kept to himself he did. What they call a rec-rec-rec-something.'
'Recluse,' suggested Tuppence.
'That's the word I'm looking for. Pale he was, you know, and thin and bony and fond of flowers. He was a botanist. Used to collect all sorts of silly little wild flowers, the kind you wouldn't look at twice. He even wrote a book on them, I believe. Oh yes, he was clever, very clever. His wife was a nice lady, and very handsome, but sad looking, I always thought.'
Mr Copleigh uttered one of his grunts. 'You're daft,' he said. 'Thinking it might have been Sir Philip. He was fond of children, Sir Philip was. He was always giving parties for them.'
'Yes I know. Always giving parties, having lovely prizes for the children. Egg and spoon races - all those strawberry and cream teas he'd give. He'd no children of his own, you see. Often he'd stop children in a lane and give them a sweet or give them a sixpence to buy sweets. But I don't know. I think he overdid it. He was an odd man. I thought there was something wrong when his wife suddenly up and left him.'
'When did his wife leave him?'
'It'd be about six months after all this trouble began. Three children had been killed by then. Lady Starke went away suddenly to the south of France and she never came back. She wasn't the kind, you'd say, to do that. She was a quiet lady, respectable. It's not as though she left him for any other man. No, she wasn't the kind to do that. So why did she go and leave him? I always say it's because she knew something - found out about something.'
'Is he still living here?'
'Not regular, he isn't. He comes down once or twice a year but the house is kept shut up most of the time with a caretaker there. Miss Bligh in the village - she used to be his secretary - she sees to things for him.'
'And his wife?'
'She's dead, poor lady. Died soon after she went abroad. There's a tablet put up to her in the church. Awful for her it would be. Perhaps she wasn't sure at first, then perhaps she began to suspect her husband, and then perhaps she got to be quite sure. She couldn't bear it and she went away.'
'The things you women imagine,' said Mr Copleigh.
'All I say is there was something that wasn't right about Sir Philip. He was too fond of children, I think, and it wasn't in a natural kind of way.'
'Women's fancies,' said Mr Copleigh.
Mrs Copleigh got up and started to move things off the table.
'About time,' said her husband. 'You'll give this lady here bad dreams if you go on about things as were over years ago and have nothing to do with anyone here any more.'
'It's been very interesting hearing,' said Tuppence. 'But I am very sleepy. I think I'd better go to bed now.'
'Well, we usually goes early to bed,' said Mrs Copleigh, 'and you'll be tired after the long day you've had.'
'I am. I'm frightfully sleepy.' Tuppence gave a large yawn. 'Well, good night and thank you very much.'
'Would you like a call and a cup of tea in the morning? Eight o'clock too early for you?'
'No, that would be fine,' said Tuppence. 'But don't bother if it's a lot of trouble.'
'No trouble at all,' said Mrs Copleigh.
Tuppence pulled herself wearily up to bed. She opened her suitcase, took out the few things she needed, undressed, washed and dropped into bed. It was true what she had told Mrs Copleigh. She was dead tired. The things she had heard passed through her head in a kind of kaleidoscope of moving figures and of all sorts of horrific imaginings. Dead children - too many dead children. Tuppence wanted just one dead child behind a fireplace. The fireplace had to do perhaps with Waterside. The child's doll. A child that had been killed by a demented young girl driven off her rather weak brains by the fact that her lover had deserted her. Oh dear me, what melodramatic language I'm using, thought Tuppence. All such a muddle - the chronology all mixed up - one can't be sure what happened when.
She went to sleep and dreamt. There was a kind of Lady of Shalott looking out of the window of the house. There was a scratching noise coming from the chimney. Blows were coming from behind a great iron plate nailed up there. The clanging sounds of the hammer. Clang, clang, clang. Tuppence woke up. It was Mrs Copleigh knocking on the door. She came in brightly, put the tea down by Tuppence's bed, pulled the curtains, hoped Tuppence had slept well. No one had ever, Tuppence thought, looked more cheerful than Mrs Copleigh did. She had had no bad dreams!
Chapter 9
A MORNING IN MARKET BASING
'Ah well,' said Mrs Copleigh, as she bustled out of the room. 'Another day. That's what I always say when I wake up.'
'Another day?' thought Tuppence, sipping strong black tea. 'I wonder if I'm making an idiot of myself... ? Could be... Wish I had Tommy here to talk to. Last night muddled me.'
Before she left her room, Tuppence made entries in her notebook on the various facts and names that she had heard the night before, which she had been far too tired to do when she went up to bed. Melodramatic stories of the past, containing perhaps grains of truth here and there but mostly hearsay, malice, gossip, romantic imagination.
'Really,' thought Tuppence. 'I'm beginning to know the love lives of a quantity of people right back to the eighteenth century, I think. But what does it all amount to? And what am I looking for? I don't even know any longer. The awful thing is that I've got involved and I can't leave off.'
Having a shrewd suspicion that the first thing she might be getting involved with was Miss Bligh, whom Tuppence recognized as the overall menace of Sutton Chancellor, she circumvented all kind offers of help by driving off to Market Basing post haste, only pausing, when the car was accosted by Miss Bligh with shrill cries, to explain to that lady that she had an urgent appointment... When would she be back? Tuppence was vague. Would she care to lunch? - Very kind of Miss Bligh, but Tuppence was afraid... 'Tea, then. Four-thirty. I'll expect you.' It was almost a Royal Command. Tuppence smiled, nodded, let in the clutch and drove on.
Possibly, Tuppence thought - if she got anything interesting out of the house agents in Market Basing - Nellie Bligh might provide additional useful information. She was the kind of woman who prided herself on knowing all about everyone. The snag was that she would be determined to know all about Tuppence. Possibly by this afternoon Tuppence would have recovered sufficiently to be once more her own inventive self.
'Remember, Mrs Blenkinsop,' said Tuppence, edging round a sharp corner and squeezing into a hedge to avoid being annihilated by a frolicsome tractor of immense bulk.
Arrived in Market Basing she put the car in a parking lot in the main square, and went into the post office and entered a vacant telephone box.
The voice of Albert answered - using his usual response - a single 'Hallo' uttered in a suspicious voice.
