Fear Stalks the Village

Book 225: Murder Room

by Ethel Lina White

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

In a lovely English village of flowers, Tudor cottages and cobbled streets, Joan Brook works as companion to Lady d'Arcy, living in at the huge mansion with its surrounding park. And the village is not too small for Joan to have found a man whom she can love. Suddenly the peaceful surface of life is shattered as a poisonous letter is received by the town's most saintly citizen. It is followed by others; no one is safe from the anonymous letter writer. With the letters comes death. In the anguished days that follow, Joan realises that she too is in danger. For to receive one of these letters could mean the end of her love ... and her life.

Release date: March 14, 2015

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

THE village was beautiful. It was enfolded in a hollow of the Downs, and wrapped up snugly—first, in a floral shawl of gardens, and then, in
a great green shawl of fields. Lilies and lavender grew in abundance. Bees clustered over sweet-scented herbs with the hum of a myriad spinning-wheels.

Although the cottages which lined the cobbled street were perfect specimens of Tudor architecture, the larger houses on the green were, chiefly, of later date. The exception was a mellow
Elizabethan mansion—‘Spout Manor’, on Miss Asprey’s printed note-paper—but known locally by its original name of ‘The Spout’. This was the residence of
Miss Decima Asprey, the queen of the village—an elderly spinster of beautiful appearance and character, and possessed of the essential private means.

Miss Asprey’s subjects were not only well-bred and charming, but endowed with such charity that there was no poverty or unemployment in the village. The ladies had not to grapple with a
servant problem, which oiled the wheels of hospitality. If family feuds existed, they were not advertised, and private lives were shielded by drawn blinds. Consequently, the social tone was
fragrant as rosemary, and scandal nearly as rare as a unicorn.

A perfect spot. Viewed from an airplane, by day, it resembled a black-and-white plaster model of a Tudor village, under a glass case. At night, however, when its lights began to glow faintly, it
was like some ancient vessel, with barnacled hull and figure-head, riding in the peace of a forgotten port.

It was a spot which was rarely visited. There was no railway station, no floating population, and a stagnant birth-rate. Even Death seldom knocked at its doors, for the natives resented the mere
idea of dying in such a delightful place.

But local prejudice, which had discouraged the Old Gentleman with the Scythe, was not strong enough to bar the triumphant progress of the motor-bus. Denied passage through its streets, the
reeling green monster dropped its fares just outside the village, before it looped back to the London road.

One afternoon, in early summer, it brought a woman novelist from London—a thin, fashionable, attractive person, who wrote sensational serials, in order to live, although sometimes, when
slumbering dreams stirred, she questioned their necessity. Although her high French heels seemed literally wrenched from city pavements, she had made the sacrifice in order to visit a friend, Joan
Brook, who was companion to a local lady.

At the invitation of Lady d’Arcy—Joan’s employer—the novelist had been entertained at the Court, a massive biscuit-hued Georgian pile, surrounded with lush parkland, and
about a mile from the village. During their tea they had both been conscious of mangled strands of friendship, as they talked of impersonal matters.

Each viewed the other from the detached standard of criticism. Joan thought her friend’s lips suggested that she had been affectionately kissing a freshly-painted pillar-box, while the
novelist considered that the girl had run to seed badly. But when they walked back to the village they had been insensibly welded together in harmony, by the waving beauty of the fields, ripening
for hay and steeped in the glow of sunset. Joan’s sunburnt face proclaimed the fact that she never wore a hat, but the novelist, too, took off her tiny mesh of crocheted silk, without a
thought of the set of her wave. Smoking as they sauntered, they entered the shady tunnel of the Quaker’s Walk, half a mile of chestnut avenue.

“Like it?” asked the novelist.

“Love it.” Joan’s blue eyes glowed. “I know you think I’m buried. But this corpse hopes the Trump won’t sound just yet. I’ve never been so
happy.”

“Pray it may last. . . . Any social life?”

“Tennis and garden-parties, later on. The three big houses are the Hall, the Towers and the Court. The Court is ours. The Squire lives at the Hall. The rich people of the neighbourhood
live at the Towers, but they’re always away.”

“Any men?”

“Two. The parson and Major Blair. The Major’s a manly man and he belongs to Vivian Sheriff, the Squire’s daughter. Vivian and I are the only girls here.”

The novelist raised her painted butterfly brows.

“Let me get this straight,” she said. “There’s the Vivian-girl and the biological specimen. That leaves you and the padre. What’s he like?”

“Rather a thrill. Big and black, with a voice like a gong. You should hear him hammer and bellow on Sundays. But I believe he’s the genuine thing.”

“Going to marry him?”

Joan was conscious of a slight recoil, so that she had to remind herself of her former standard of modern frankness.

“If he doesn’t break away, I may,” she replied. “After all, I’ve had to submit meekly to employers all my life, and I’d like to do some bossing myself, for a
change. Purley, can’t you see me telling the cottagers to boil their potatoes in their skins, and not to have any more babies?”

“I’d believe anything of you, Brook,” remarked her friend. “By the way, what’s your Lady d’Arcy like?”

“Big and vague, and drifts about aimlessly. I’ve nothing to do but to act as some sort of anchor. I get a big salary which I can’t spend here. But it’s not wasted at
home. They’re nearly sunk, bless ’em.”

The novelist’s face was not painted to be revealing, but she nodded to show her sympathy with the prevailing economic depression as she studied Joan through her monocle. The girl was tall
and strong, with a face expressive of character, and fearless eyes. She wore a sleeveless white tennis-frock and silver slave-bangles on her brown arms. Although she had grown more solid, she
seemed to be of compact virtues and charm.

“Well? The verdict?” asked Joan.

“Guilty!” replied her friend. “You’re a last year’s model. You’ve put on weight. Your lips look indecently like lips. And—darling, I’m
jealous as hell.”

“I know I wouldn’t swop jobs with you.” Joan gave a contented laugh. “This is really a marvellous place, Purley. Everyone has a pedigree and a private income.
Everyone’s kind. And, my dear, everyone’s married.”

“I get it. No love-babies, no drains. Gosh, what a picture!”

As the two women emerged from the gloom of the avenue they saw the village with its ancient cottages and choked flower-gardens, all steeped in the carnation glow of sunset. At each step they
seemed to turn a fresh page of a fairy-tale, with illuminated borders jumbled with box-edging, sage, damson-trees, beehives and a patchwork quilt of peonies, pinks and pansies. Golden girls and
boys skipped in the street, while cats were growing mysterious as they awaited the herald—twilight. Soon their real life would begin.

The novelist surrendered herself to the enchantment, although her lip curled at evidence of the survival of the Feudal System, for all the children bobbed to the ‘quality’.

As they lingered on the green, Joan pointed to a solid house of buff stucco, adorned with a clock-tower.

“That’s ‘Clock House’ ”, she said. “The Scudamores live there. I hope we’ll meet them, for they’re types. They’re terribly nice and terribly
happily-married. I call them ‘The Spirit of the Village’. You’d find them ‘Copy’.”

The novelist stifled her groan, as Joan proceeded to do the honours of the village. She waved her cigarette towards a grey stone house which was backed by the Norman church.

“The Rectory. My future home.” She forced the note of impudence. “Just behind us is the doctor’s house, but the walls hide it. It’s Queen Anne and rather
sweet. He and his wife always play tennis after dinner. You can hear them.”

As they stood, listening, the dull thuds behind the rose-red bricks mingled with the faint laughter of children and the cawing of rooks in the elms. Suddenly, the novelist fell prostrate before
the cumulative spell of the village.

“It’s perfect,” she declared. “I wonder if I could rent a cottage for the summer.”

“If you did you’d never go back to London,” Joan told her. “Nobody ever goes away, not even for holidays. Look out. Here are the Scudamores.”

She guiltily hid her cigarette behind her back, as a middle-aged couple advanced, arm-in-arm, over the cobbles. The man had a clean-shaven, long-lipped, legal face, to proclaim him a lawyer with
the best County connection, together with a nose which had been in his family for centuries.

His wife was also tall, and possessed of bleached beauty and elegance. Her luxuriant fair hair was fast fading to grey, and her draperies were indefinitely grey-green in colour, like a
glacier-fed river.

She greeted Lady d’Arcy’s companion with a gracious bow, but did not even glance at her companion.

“She didn’t really like me,” murmured the novelist when the Scudamores had passed. “Do I look like a fallen woman? Tell her I’m respectable, if painted.”

“My dear,” gurgled Joan, “she’s so charitable that she would not take a chance of disliking you. That’s why she wouldn’t look. She’s a bit overwhelming,
but a real Christian. . . . I say, Purley.”

As Joan paused and regarded her friend intently, the novelist braced herself to meet the inevitable question.

“Can’t you make a story out of this village?”

“You would say that.” The novelist’s tone was acid. “But, my good woman, what possible copy could I find here? Jane Austen’s beaten me to
Cranford. The truth is, my child, if there’d been no Fall, there’d be no Publishers and no Lending Libraries.”

“But there must be a story everywhere,” persisted Joan.

“Not for me.”

“Oh, come, Purley, have a shot at it. I want to be amused.”

The novelist puckered up her painted lips in a whimsical smile.

“All right,” she conceded. “But I’ll have to follow my own special line. Something like this. This village seems an earthly paradise, with a population of kindly gracious
souls. But the flowers are growing on slime. When twilight falls, they light their lamps and draw down their blinds. And then—when no one can see them they lead their real
lives.”

“For example?” urged Joan.

“Well, to begin with, that highly-respectable married couple, who disapproved of my lips, are not really married to each other, but are living in sin.”

“You priceless chump. Tell me the story of their double life.”

“No, I must outline my synopsis first and collect my characters. . . . Hum. The Parsonage is hidden by those discreet yews, so the Rector hasn’t got to wait until dark. I think, at
this moment, he’s throwing a bottle-and-pyjama party with some very hot ladies from town. As for your doctor, he’s slowly poisoning his wife, and their tennis is his opportunity. When
they’ve finished their game, she’ll be thirsty, and her devoted husband will see to it that she gets the right quencher. Something safe, and very painful.”

“Ugh,” grimaced Joan. “When I’m Mrs. Padre, I’ll ban your novels in our village library.”

Once again she was urged to speak recklessly of her designs on the Rector, from a clouded feeling that she was protecting herself from the unforgivable charge of sentiment. Lighting another
cigarette, she strolled after her friend, who was peering through the scrolls of lacey iron-work which ornamented the gates of ‘The Spout’.

In the distance, against a background of laurels, the novelist saw an austere, silver-haired woman, seated on a bench beside a lily-pond. Her hands were clasped and her eyes raised as though in
meditation. She held her pose so rigidly that the folds of her white gown appeared to be carven marble, creating the illusion of an enshrined saint.

But even as the novelist readjusted her monocle, the statue dissolved into life at a touch of warm humanity. Down the yew alley, pottered a little dumpy woman, carrying a glass of milk on a
tray. The tall lady patted her shoulders, in thanks, and then drained the glass hastily, as though in obedience to the laws of nutrition, but with a supreme contempt for digestion.

When she walked towards the house, followed by her companion, the difference in their heights was ludicrous, for she was above the usual stature, while her employee was below the average.

“Miss Asprey and her companion, Miss Mack,” whispered Joan. “She’s an earthly saint, and so good she’s not quite human. Miss Mack simply worships her, and runs
after her like a little dog.”

“Then they shall go into my serial,” announced the novelist. “Listen. In reality, your pure, saintly Miss Asprey is a secret sadist. Directly the blinds are drawn, she will
begin to torture her poor little companion.”

“Can you help being a fool?” asked Joan unkindly.

“You asked for this story, didn’t you? Now I’ll outline the plot, while we’re waiting to go to the ’bus.”

Leaning against the white posts which ringed the green, Joan listened dreamily to her friend’s sensational story, which foamed with melodramatic incidents. But even while she laughed at
its utter absurdity, she resented it, subconsciously, as an outrage.

‘What’s the matter with me?’ she wondered. ‘Purley’s really terribly funny. It’s only a leg-pull. But—it’s cheap.’

She was grateful when her friend grew tired, and glanced at her watch.

“Better be pushing on,” she remarked. “Although I just hate to leave this.”

The grass was like water-silk, mottled with bars of sunken gold and the cottages rocked through a lavender mist. Twilight was veiling the street as they walked towards the inn, but there were no
lights in the village. People sat at open windows, or hung over gates, exchanging greetings and gossip with passers-by. Everyone seemed to be sharing the universal friendship of this interval
‘between the lights’.

The moment of withdrawal was at hand.

Presently the novelist stopped, arrested by the sight of a dim, low, lath-and-plaster building, enclosed within a paved garden.

“Gosh, I can smell mildew,” she said. “I take it, that is the oldest house in the village.”

“I knew you’d make that mistake,” exulted Joan. “Every tripper does. That’s only a fake-antique, built from fragments of old barns, and it’s got
every sort of modern improvement. I love it, but the village resents it, especially as its owner is a newcomer. She’s only been here eleven years.”

“Who’s the lucky woman?” sighed the novelist.

“Our local novelist—Miss Julia Corner.”

Instantly the writer registered that automatic non-recognition of her profession towards other members of the tribe.

“Never heard of her. What name does she write under?”

“Her own, and she does jolly well, too. She’s a dear old Jumbo, with a perfectly grim sense of humour.”

“Hum.” The novelist thought of her own tiny mansion-flat. “Evidently, she makes virtue pay. Any special line?”

“Yes, she’s the President of our local Temperance Society, and she makes the children sign the Pledge.”

“Then, to pay her out for having a better house than me, I’ll put her into my serial. She’s a secret drinker and hides a bottle of whisky in her wardrobe. At this minute, she
is lying under the bed, dead drunk.”

Even as she spoke, the oaken door, white with age, was opened, and a massive figure blocked the entry, waving a teapot, in welcome.

“Come in for a cup of tea,” she shouted.

“Sorry, but we’re catching the ’bus,” called Joan.

Instantly Miss Corner swayed down the flagged path to the garden gate, moving with the deceptive speed of an elephant. The writer from London saw a big red face, radiant with good-nature, bobbed
iron-grey hair—cut in a fringe—and beaming eyes behind large horn-rimmed spectacles. Miss Corner wore an infantile Buster Brown blouse, adorned with wide collar and ribbon bow, and a
grey tweed skirt.

“I’m just writing a short tale for the Christmas Number of a Boy’s Annual,” she announced proudly. “It’s commissioned, of course. I take a generic interest in
boys. Won’t you come in and be introduced to my collaborator—Captain Kettle?”

She laughed heartily at her joke, but the source of her amusement was the stranger’s painted lips and monocle. When Joan introduced her friend, she held out her big hand cordially.

“A fellow-writer?” she exclaimed. “What name do you write under?”

“I’m sorry, but we mustn’t stop,” said Joan hastily.

“Pity,” remarked Miss Corner. “I should love to talk shop. For instance, do you let yourself be grabbed by your characters, or do you go out deliberately to collect
copy?”

“She’s already found a story in this village,” said Joan.

“Then I presume it’s for your Parish Magazine,” grinned Miss Corner. “Well, since you persist in going, I must return to my boys. Good-bye. Give my love to my special
boy—Eros.”

They heard her chuckle rumbling from behind the sweetbriar hedge as they walked away.

“What’d you think of her?” asked Joan.

The novelist did not reply, for she was suddenly gripped with overwhelming nostalgia. At that moment, London seemed so far away—a place to which she would never return. She felt as though
she were being held by the village—no longer a sunset pool of beauty—but a witched, forgotten spot of whispers, and echoes, and old musty twilight stories.

“Are we far from the inn?” she asked wearily.

“No. Nearly there.”

“Good. I could do with a gin-and-it.”

The King’s Head was a long, low, ancient building, with the faded oil-painting of some dead monarch pendant above its doorway. A faint glow from a hanging ironwork lantern flickered feebly
on peeling plaster walls and tiny lattice windows. The writer flopped down on an old settle and stared out at the spread of dark silent country.

“Didn’t you want a drink?” asked Joan hospitably.

“No. Desire is dead.”

The friends sat in silence, which was presently broken by the novelist.

“Do people ever try to get away from here?” she asked.

“They don’t want to,” replied Joan. “Miss Asprey has a housemaid—Ada—who’s the most beautiful girl I’ve seen. You’d think she’d want
to go on the Stage or the Films, but her only ambition is to be Miss Asprey’s parlourmaid. It would take about a ton of dynamite to shift her to Hollywood.”

The writer made no comment, for her very mind seemed root-bound.

And then—suddenly—the miracle happened. Two golden sparks appeared in the distance, while a murmur vibrated through the darkness. As they watched, the lights grew brighter and
larger, and then were lost in a dip of the landscape. But the hum deepened into a snarl, and round the bend of the road reeled a green monster motor-bus, with brilliant windows and the magic name
‘LONDON’ glowing in flaming letters.

It looked so utterly incongruous in that forsaken wilderness, as to appear unreal, like a vision of the Mechanical Age of the Future projected before the incredulous vision of some dreamer in
the Past.

At the sight of it, the novelist’s heart leaped in welcome. London. It reminded her that she was going back to grime and noise—to pavements and city lights. In her joy, she
was swept away on a wave of insincere enthusiasm.

“I’ve loved every minute,” she declared. “Good thing I’m going back, or the village might have got me, too.”

“Too?” echoed Joan. “What d’you mean by that?”

The writer looked at her friend and was suddenly aware of the origin of her change.

“You’re in love, Brooky,” she said accusingly. “The village can’t get you, because a man’s got in first. Well, good-bye. Don’t forget to tell me how my
serial works out.”

“I won’t,” promised Joan. “Shame you’ve got to go back.”

“A shattering shame.”

Joan was guiltily conscious of relief as she watched her friend climb briskly into the bus. In her turn, the novelist sank gratefully into her seat, and waved her hand in farewell. She was
leaving peace and beauty, and she left them gladly. When the dark countryside began to slide slowly past the window, she watched it flow behind her, with a smile on her lips.

She was going back to London.

Joan stood before the inn and watched the motor-bus, until it had roared out of sight. Slowly the dust sifted down again, to mingle with the soil of its origin. The fumes of petrol rose higher
and higher, until they were dissipated in the aether. The faint snarl of the engine sped on its journey to the last lone star.

‘I’m glad old Purley’s gone,’ thought Joan, lighting another cigarette for company.

When she walked slowly through the village, the moon had risen and was silvering the old Tudor buildings, transforming them to ebony and ivory. Everyone had gone indoors; the lamps were lit and
the blinds were drawn. Once again, the old ship rode at anchor in the dead port of Yesterday.

Joan was reminded of her friend’s serial, by those screened windows, and her lip curled with derision. She knew each lighted interior so well, and was familiar with the evening’s
procedure. Miss Corner was tapping away at her incredible epic of how the Mile was won by the smallest boy in the school. The doctor and his wife were reading, for they subscribed to a London
Library. In this big house they listened in to classical music on the air, and in that small one they drank cocoa and played Patience.

Everywhere was domestic drama, staged in the peace of Curfew. There were contented servants in comfortable kitchens; well-fed cats and dogs sleeping on rugs; clocks ticking away serene
hours.

There was nothing to tell her that her friend’s fantastic melodrama was justified by even one instance of insecurity and misery, or what was really happening behind drawn blinds. Only the
walls heard—and they kept their secret.

TWO days had passed since the novelist’s return to London, and nothing survived her visit but a few gnat-bites on her ankles and a filmy
memory. The village retained even less of her personality; Joan washed her entirely from her mind, while no one mentioned the painted stranger with the monocle. The picture-paper which was printing
her current serial was not in local circulation, so not even her work remained.

But, although life flowed on with the tranquillity of a brimful glassy river, the peace and security of the village was about to be shattered. Like a certain small animal which precedes a
beast-of-prey, the novelist had been the herald of disaster. The communal harmony was static; but the first disrupting incident was timed for that evening.

Dr. Perry was late in coming home to dinner. He pushed open his garden-gate with his habitual sense of a mariner returning to port, as he saw the mellow red-brick front of the Queen Anne house.
The shaven lawn was veined with evening sunlight, and the wide border of tall pink tulips and forget-me-nots—although imperceptibly past perfection—was still a cloud of shot azure and
rose.

He was met on the steps of the porch by a reproachful wife. He had married his dispenser—the daughter of an impoverished Irish peer—and, therefore a stranger; but the village had
accepted her on the credential of her husband.

At first sight, they appeared an ill-assorted couple. The doctor belonged to one of the oldest families, and was pale and thin, with a pleasant manner and a tired voice, while his wife was very
dark and possessed a parched, passionate beauty.

The black rings around her eyes and her crumpled evening-gown of golden tissue gave her the appearance of a disreputable night-club hostess greeting the dawn; but a strong scent of violet-powder
was a clue to a domestic occupation. She had just finished the job of bathing tw. . .