Styx and Stones Page 4

  “Mr. Osborne, I don’t expect you remember me—Daisy Dalrymple, Derek’s aunt. It’s kind of you to offer, but I think I’m going to have to climb after him. His foot’s caught and he can’t take off his shoe.”

  “Allow me, Miss Dalrymple.”

  The vicar kicked down his bicycle stand, took off his hat, which he gravely handed to Belinda to hold, and laboriously clambered up the ironwork. A moment later, Derek’s shoe fell.

  “Gosh, thank you, sir,” said Derek, and scrambled down.

  Mr. Osborne was descending at a more cautious pace, when a snort of laughter made Daisy turn away from the unlikely spectacle.

  A short, portly man was crossing the road from the churchyard. He wore plus-fours in a bright blue and tan check which reminded Daisy of Alec’s sergeant, Tom Tring. Above this striking garment floated an academic gown, black with a slight sheen. A face which proclaimed a close relationship to the vicar was topped by a cricket cap a good two sizes too small.

  “Ho!” exclaimed the apparition. “A more improbable exponent of Muscular Christianity one can scarcely conceive. D’you need a hand down, Ozzy?”

  “Not at all, not at all,” said the vicar crossly, glancing round as he felt with one foot for a toe-hold. “What on earth have you got on your head, Ozzy?”

  Ozzy Two reached up, removed his cap, and regarded it with an air of jovial puzzlement. “Good Lord, I believe it must be your Jeremy’s. It did seem a trifle tight. I’ve mislaid my hat again, so I picked up the first which came to hand. And if you’re wondering about the gown, madam,” he continued to Daisy, “after so many years, I simply feel undressed without it.”

  As the Reverend Osbert Osborne reached the ground and dusted himself down, a cry of anguish arose.

  “Tinker’s got my shoe! Grab her, Bel, quick. Tinker, come back here, you rotter. Bad dog!”

  But Tinker Bell pranced away up the avenue with her prize. Derek hopped after her, then set socked foot to ground and took off in hot pursuit. Thrusting the Panama hat into the vicar’s hands, Belinda sped after them.

  The professor chortled. “Cave canem,” he observed. “I think I may be permitted that small jest, though I have promised Ozzy not to go about quoting Latin and Greek at people, a habit as difficult to abandon as my gown. My dear sister-in-law, who had not the benefits of a Classical education, finds it distressing. I trust you are not distressed, madam?”

  “Not a bit,” said Daisy with a smile. She rather liked his archly jocular manner, though she could imagine it might wear thin if one were forced to endure a great deal of it. “‘Beware of the dog’ is just within my capabilities.”

  “‘O quanta species …

  “Miss Dalrymple,” the vicar intervened, with an admonitory look, “may I present my brother, Professor Osborne? Lady John’s sister, Ozzy.”

  “How do you do, Professor.”

  “I do very well indeed, I thank you kindly. Being forced to forage for my own tea, since service in the Vicarage is quite as ineffectual as the services in my brother’s church, ha ha, I found a splendid gingerbread loaf, newly baked.”

  “For the WI committee’s tea tomorrow,” said Mr. Osborne gloomily.

  “Was it? One must hope the ladies have small appetites. I suppose I shall catch what-for from your missus,” the Professor said, with a delighted grin for his own descent into the vernacular. “Cheer up, Ozzy. You missed your tea, that’s why you’re feeling down in the mouth, I dare say.”

  “Gresham gave me tea. Oh, drat! Ozzy, don’t mention to Adelaide that I called on Gresham.”

  “My dear Ozzy, you are assured of my discretion. Now, if you will excuse me, my dear young lady, I shall continue my stroll. I find a little exercise after a meal extremely beneficial to the digestion.” And, raising his absurd cricket cap, he toddled off.

  “I do beg your pardon, Miss Dalrymple,” said the vicar. “It was very wrong of me to utter an expletive in the presence of a lady. Indeed, a man of the cloth ought not to use such language under any provocation.”

  “You could hardly have chosen a milder word,” Daisy reassured him. “If it’s a sin, it’s not much of one.”

  She felt sorry for him, caught between his overbearing wife and his subversive brother. No wonder he was despondent. His round, pink face was the wrong shape for melancholy; the best it could manage was a lugubrious cast difficult to take seriously. How painful to look merely doleful when what one felt was desperation.

  For, momentarily, something very like desperation peered like a caged creature from the vicar’s eyes.

  Had he received one of those beastly anonymous letters? Even a clergyman could have something to hide, especially as the clergy were held to a higher standard of conduct.

  If he was Johnnie’s fellow victim, Daisy wanted to know. The more letters she read, or at least heard about, the more clues to the identity of the Poison Pen. Even if he was not himself a victim, he could be aware of others. Johnnie had felt he’d go mad if he couldn’t tell someone, and had chosen Daisy to confide in. The vicar just might be equally anxious for a confidant.

  Daisy could not quite bring herself to ask him outright whether he knew of the letters. She decided to keep him in conversation for a while and hope something useful might emerge. For a start, she was dying of curiosity …

  “Don’t worry,” she said encouragingly, “I’ll be sure not to mention your call on Gresham—Mr. Gresham, is it?—to Mrs. Osborne.”

  “I’m afraid you must think it very odd. The fact is, Amos Gresham is an unregenerate atheist.”

  “But part of your duties, surely, is to attempt to lead straying sheep back to the flock?”

  Mr. Osborne shook his head. “No chance of that with Amos. He may be only a tenant farmer, but he is an intelligent man, and his beliefs, or disbeliefs, rather, are the result of deep reflection. Adelaide knows I visit him as a friend, not as a pastor. I would not offend him by trying to persuade him to return to the Church, even if I …” He cut himself off, with obvious consternation. “But I am keeping you standing, Miss Dalrymple. I must be on my way.”

  Abruptly, he raised his hat, and he turned to his bicycle while Daisy was still expressing her thanks for his rescue of her nephew.

  Puzzled, her curiosity further aroused instead of satisfied, she watched him wheel the cycle across the lane to the Vicarage. His somewhat rude departure was wholly at odds with his previous courtly manner. He had found himself on the point of disclosing something he had rather keep quiet. What had he been going to say?

  Even if he had any hope of succeeding? Perhaps it was rather remiss of a clergyman to relinquish one of his flock without a fight, Daisy thought vaguely, but not bad enough to explain Mr. Osborne’s alarm. Surely not enough to warrant a reprimand from the bishop, let alone defrocking!

  Even if he received anonymous letters on the subject? A vicar was probably no more immune to Poison Pens than anyone else.

  A movement off to her right distracted Daisy from her cogitations. A woman trotted down the steps of the Parish Hall, a high-roofed stucco building of the same vintage as the Vicarage, set well back from the lane on the far side of the churchyard. She passed through a gate in the churchyard wall. As she crossed the burial ground towards the lych-gate, passing behind a row of mausoleums and large monuments, her mud-brown dress and hat vanished at intervals from Daisy’s view. The effect was oddly sinister, as if the earth kept swallowing her up and disgorging her.

  “Mud to mud and ashes to ashes,” Daisy muttered to herself.

  But the plump, white-haired old lady who stepped through the lych-gate was very much alive and vigorous, with pink cheeks and bright eyes. These she fixed on Daisy with a querying gaze.

  “Good afternoon,” she said kindly, “have you lost your way?”

  “No,” Daisy said in surprise. She was beginning to think all she had to do was stand there and half the inhabitants of Rotherden would come to talk to her.

  No doubt she looked as if she was lost, or ha
d lost her wits, she realized. “Oh, no, thank you. I was just waiting for two children and a dog, but I suppose the shop will be shut by the time I get there.”

  The old lady turned to glance up at the church clock, which promptly began to strike the half hour. “I fear so. Mrs. Burden has no regard for the convenience of others. Often enough I have seen her lock the door when I was just a few steps away. A selfish woman, alas, as I have upon occasion felt obliged to mention to our dear vicar. You are staying at Oakhurst, then?”

  “Yes, I’m Violet’s sister, Daisy Dalrymple.”

  “Ah yes, I had heard you were coming to visit. How delightful for Lady John. I am Mabel Prothero, by the way. I live just two doors down.” She gestured.

  “Next door to Mrs. LeBeau?” Daisy asked, grasping at another suspect. “I’ve just met her. I thought her charming.”

  “All is not gold that glitters,” said Miss Prothero darkly. So the kindly, rosy-cheeked old bird had sharp talons, did she? “Much as I dislike speaking ill of my fellow creatures,” she continued, “I hope you will not take offence if an old lady advises you not to pursue that acquaintance.”

  A promising opening, and Daisy quickly jumped in: “Why, what … ?”

  “Aunt Daisy!” The footsteps galloping down the drive towards her sounded like a herd of elephants, not a mere two children and a dog. “Aunt Daisy, I got my shoe. Now we can go to the shop. Oh, good afternoon, Miss Prothero.”

  “Hold that dog! I will not have him putting dirty paws on my skirt.”

  “Her,” Derek corrected, grabbing Tinker Bell’s collar.

  Miss Prothero ignored him. “Children these days are so dreadfully undisciplined, are they not, Miss Dalrymple? A great deal has changed since the War, and not for the better, as I was saying to the dear vicar only the other day. Well, I’d better be getting home. My Puss will be waiting for his fish. Perhaps we shall meet again while you are here.”

  “I hope so,” said Daisy sincerely, or rather purposefully. Miss Prothero was the perfect suspect. As Johnnie had said, Poison Pen letters were practically always written by frustrated spinsters, and by all accounts that description by no means fit Mrs. LeBeau!

  Daisy turned to the children, and caught Derek sticking his tongue out at Miss Prothero’s retreating back.

  “Well, she was rude to me,” he said, catching his aunt’s admonitory frown.

  “Yes, she was,” Daisy agreed candidly, “but there’s no need to lower yourself to her level. Though, actually, I don’t suppose she realized she was being rude. Her generation had a different view of children.”

  “Pos-it-ively hu-mil-iating.” Derek was joined by Belinda on the second word. They looked at each other, but gravely, not laughing. “We’re people too,” said Derek.

  “Our feelings can be hurt too,” Bel agreed.

  “So can Tinker’s,” Derek claimed, and now they laughed.

  “Sticks and stones may break my bones,” chanted Bel, and Derek added his voice to the second line: “But words will never harm me.”

  “Far less Tinker,” Daisy said with a laugh, “who didn’t even know she was being insulted. And dirty paw-marks wouldn’t have shown on that dress anyway. Come along, you two—you three—we might as well go home. The shop is closed now.”

  “Race you, Bel!” said Derek, and off they ran, hurt feelings forgotten.

  Daisy remembered Professor Osborne’s Latin tag. “O quanta species …” wasn’t it? The way his brother had cut him off with a frown had made her wonder whether it was insulting. When she reached the house, she asked Johnnie, who hotly denied recalling a word of Latin from his schooldays. He directed her to a dictionary of quotations in the library, which he rather thought might have some scraps of the Classics in it.

  With some difficulty, for it was indexed under species, not quanta, Daisy found it: “O quanta species cerebrum non habet!” The translation read, “O that such beauty should be so devoid of understanding!”

  Just because she had never been taught any dead languages! Daisy was furious. No wonder Mrs. Osborne disliked her brother-in-law, if she had to put up with such underhanded denigration.

  Words were not always harmless, Daisy thought, whatever the old rhyme asserted.

  Look at Johnnie’s distress over those horrible letters. She was determined to find out who had written them, and she felt she already had a foot in the door. An invitation to morning coffee with Mrs. LeBeau, and acquaintance with the Osbornes and Miss Prothero—not bad going when she had only arrived this afternoon. Surely she could make something of such opportunities.

  The door opened wider that evening, just before dinner, when the vicar’s wife rang up and asked for Daisy. The speaker for the Women’s Institute meeting on Thursday had scratched. Mrs. Osborne wondered whether Miss Dalrymple would be so kind as to stand in. She was sure a lecture on the writing profession would interest members far more than the planned annual lecture on flower-arranging.

  Daisy’s first impulse was to reject the proposal outright. Let Mrs. Osborne organize her husband’s parishioners to her heart’s content; Daisy had no intention of being organized.

  She hesitated, trying to word her refusal politely. Mrs. Osborne, no doubt adept at assuming that silence gave consent, went on, “That’s settled, then. Excellent! Would you care to come to tea at the Vicarage tomorrow to meet the committee members?”

  Would she ever!

  If anything in the world was guaranteed to be an absolute hotbed of village gossip, a veritable School for Scandal, it was a WI committee meeting combined with a vicarage tea-party.

  4

  “ … A-and this the burden of his song forever seemed to be-ee,” Daisy sang to herself as she went up to her room to put on a hat, “I care for nobody, no not I, and nobody cares for me.” Now why on earth should the Miller of Dee be circling irritatingly in her head?

  Mrs. Burden at the shop, of course, and Miss Prothero’s view of her as disobliging. Daisy did not care for Miss Prothero, and was not at all sure she wouldn’t put up the shutters if she saw her coming. The two or three times Daisy had popped into the shop before, for odds and ends, the shopkeeper-postmistress had not struck her as an awkward customer, so to speak.

  If Mrs. Burden could be persuaded to violate the sacred confidentiality of the Royal Mail, she might be able to tell who else had received anonymous letters. Johnnie had not kept the envelopes, but he remembered them as all being postmarked in the village and addressed in thick pencil in block capitals. Assuming there had been more than Johnnie’s half dozen, Mrs. Burden must have noticed them, even if she could not recall to whom they were addressed.

  Hatted, gloved, and stockinged in anticipation of her elevenses with Mrs. LeBeau—lucidly the morning was still cool, though the sky was delphinium blue—Daisy collected Derek, Belinda, and Tinker Bell.

  “No climbing gates,” she commanded as they set out for the shop.

  “It’s all right, Aunt Daisy,” Derek said blithely, yesterday’s fright forgotten, “the shop won’t close for hours and hours.”

  “But I have an engagement at eleven. No climbing gates. Or trees. Have you brought a lead for Tinker?”

  “Yes, though she doesn’t need one.” From the capacious pocket of his grey flannel shorts, Derek produced three toffee papers, a grubby hankie with something tied up inside, a pebble, a rabbit’s foot and two pennies. “Must be the other side,” he muttered, restoring his treasures to their nest. From the other pocket he triumphantly drew a tangle of stout string. “It’s a bit knotted.”

  “I’ll untie the knots,” Belinda offered. “I’m good at knots. Aunt Daisy, may I get shorts with big pockets?”

  “We’ll have to see what they have in the shop.”

  By the time they reached the bottom of the drive, Belinda had reduced the tangle to a useful length of string. Derek tied it to Tinker’s collar, much to her disgust, and wrapped the other end around his hand.

  While he was thus occupied, Daisy glanced at the lodge
. In one of the upper windows a curtain moved. The casement was open a few inches, but there was not the slightest breath of a breeze.

  Someone had been watching them. Had the same person watched when Johnnie visited Mrs. LeBeau, all those years ago? If Mr. Paramount was the Poison Pen, his venom was probably directed only at the usurping nephew who had inherited Oakhurst, not at other victims. But why wait so long?

  Daisy frowned. The old man might just have grown more and more embittered, or nutty, until something had to give. Yet the letters surely would have at least touched upon his chief grievance—the injustice of his exile from his childhood home—not harped solely on the LeBeau incident. More likely the writer was his servant, either aiming at eventual blackmail or gone round the bend himself after so many years shut up with his dotty master.

  Daisy sighed. She would have to try to talk to them, though it was quite possible today’s watcher had nothing to do with the letters but simply had his attention drawn by the children’s chatter.

  As they turned left into the lane, here beginning its transmogrification into Rotherden’s main street, Mrs. LeBeau’s small front garden caught Daisy’s eye and nose. She had been too interested in its owner yesterday to notice the fragrant rambler roses. White, pink, and yellow with deep golden hearts, they filled the garden with sensuous profusion, and a crimson climber draped the front porch.

  In startling contrast was the garden next door. Miss Prothero favoured rigid ranks of scarlet salvia and Oxford blue lobelia, as cultivated by a thousand municipal parkkeepers. They grew in rectangular beds surrounding a rectangular lawn where no daisy dared raise its head amidst the short-trimmed grass. The modern bungalow, in a hideous yellow brick, was equally rectangular, with symmetrical windows. The front door, dead centre, was painted the same mud-brown shade as Miss Prothero had worn yesterday.

  The whole thing shrieked “repressed old maid” at Daisy.

  On the other hand, the bungalow was set back farther from the street than Mrs. LeBeau’s house, and was separated from it by a high privet hedge, rigorously clipped. From indoors Miss Prothero could not possibly observe her neighbour’s front door. In autumn, she’d be able to see the garden gate and path through the hedge, but probably not clearly enough to recognize a person. Of course, she would have watched Johnnie pass her own gate first before stopping at Mrs. LeBeau’s, and then entering.