Murder Through the English Post

Book 6: Beryl and Edwina Mystery

by Jessica Ellicott

Genres: Historical Mysteries; Mystery

Synopsis

When a rash of poisoned pen letters envelops their sleepy English village, Beryl and Edwina, the delightfully mismatched friends and sleuths-of-a-certain-age, step up to stamp out the evil-minded epistles in Jessica Ellicott’s sixth historical mystery set in the wake of WWI.
What began for two dear if very different friends—an American adventuress and a prim and proper Brit—as a creative response to the lean times following the Great War has evolved into a respectable private enquiry business. So much so that
Constable Gibbs calls upon Beryl and Edwina to solve a curious campaign of character assassination.
A series of anonymous accusations sent via post have set friend against friend and neighbor against neighbor. In her new position as magistrate, Edwina has already had to settle one dispute that led to fisticuffs. Even Beryl has received a poison
pen letter, and while she finds its message preposterous and laughable, others are taking the missives to heart. Their headstrong housekeeper Beddoes is ready to resign and one villager has attempted to take her own life.
The disruption of the peace goes far beyond malicious mischief when another villager is murdered. Now it’s up to the intrepid sleuths to read between the lines and narrow down the suspects to identify the lethal letter writer and ensure that justice is delivered …

Release date: July 26, 2022

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

Beryl Helliwell found herself in a most unenviable position. Never one to stay in one place for long, Beryl had rarely felt the curious discomfort she was currently experiencing. In fact, it took her some time to put her finger upon what it might exactly be. She was familiar with restlessness, exhaustion, and even fear, but this was something both more subtle and far more distressing. It wasn’t until she found herself in the library at the Beeches, actually considering reading a book, that she was able to decipher what she was feeling. Beryl realized with an alarming jolt that she was bored.

This was simply not the sort of thing that happened to her. As a confirmed adventuress she was far more likely to experience that slight feeling of overwhelm that stemmed from an excess of stimulation and new experiences. But the sad fact of the matter was, she felt as though she was the one person in the household with very little to do.

Her dear friend Edwina had set off that morning for her very first session as the new local magistrate. Beryl had offered to accompany her and act as a cheering section from the gallery, but Edwina had declined. She had said she was feeling ever so slightly nervous and the notion that Beryl would be there to witness any false steps she might make only increased her sense of trepidation. So, Beryl had waved to her as Edwina set off for the village on her trusty bicycle, her second-best hat pinned firmly to her head.

Beddoes, the excellent domestic servant recently employed to assist them with the housekeeping, had continued to decline any offers of assistance with such cold ferocity that Beryl had finally given up suggesting them. There had been a real danger only recently of Beddoes actually leaving their employ. Beryl had made the egregious false step of offering to assist with a general bottoming out of the house. Beddoes had taken it to mean there was some concern about her competence for the task. Beryl did not wish to consider what might have happened if she and Edwina had not removed themselves from the property for several days.

After all, Edwina’s sudden ability to spread her wings and take on new challenges, such as becoming the local magistrate, was, in large part, due to the assistance Beddoes provided. No one in the household wished to do anything to offend their newly acquired paragon of domesticity. So, despite the fact that Beryl was always eager to learn new skills, such as blacking the stove or polishing pairs of silver candlesticks until they gleamed, she cast her enthusiasm aside for the greater good.

Which left the sole member of the household, Simpkins, as a possible source of entertainment. Of course, she could have considered spending time with Edwina’s terrier Crumpet, but the little dog was nowhere in sight. He tended to make himself scarce when Edwina set off without him. Every now and again Beryl would come across him perched on his hind legs in front of a window where he had the best view of whichever direction his mistress had headed off in. But, generally speaking, he found somewhere to curl up and sleep as if to put his consciousness on pause until Edwina’s return. No, an interaction with Simpkins was the only way to avoid something as tedious as reading.

She cocked her head and tried to make out where in the house she might hear the elderly gardener and his hobnail boots. The floors had taken rather a beating since he had moved into the Beeches permanently, but by and large, it had been a beneficial arrangement for everyone. What were a few scuff marks and scratches on the floor when one considered how generously Simpkins had contributed to the overall financial picture in the household?

A few months earlier Simpkins had unexpectedly come into the majority ownership of the nation’s most successful condiment company, and he had taken his responsibilities and privileges to heart. One of the first things he had decided to do with his newfound wealth was to invest in Beryl and Edwina’s fledgling private enquiry business, thus making it a going concern despite their modest number of clients. Not only that, Simpkins had thrown himself headlong into the product development side of his business. With the sort of enthusiasm that the company had not seen in a generation, he had undertaken a number of trips to London in order to meet with the product development staff and to taste-test some of the offerings under consideration. He had even taken over responsibility for much of the cooking at the Beeches, supplying it with vast quantities of sauces, chutneys, and pickles to perk up the ordinary poultry and roasts that Edwina dutifully churned out.

While she certainly would not wish for Edwina to feel insulted, and under no circumstances would she consider taking over the culinary responsibilities herself, Beryl had to admit that she preferred the sorts of things that Simpkins came up with compared with most of the other meals she had eaten since arriving back in England some months earlier. She would never consider herself a gourmand, but she did prefer foods to be spiced with a heavier hand than Edwina generally felt a chop and mushy peas would require.

It was with these thoughts in mind she made her way towards the small sunroom at the back of the house, which Simpkins had converted to an office to fit his modest needs. She found him seated at a small gate-legged table that he used as a writing desk, drumming his gnarled fingers upon its surface. He looked up at her and gave one of his snaggledtoothed smiles as she entered the room.

“I thought you’d be off to the village with Miss Edwina this morning, considering it’s her big day,” he said.

“She said she’d be too nervous if I were there to observe, so she went off on her own,” Beryl said.

“So what are you up to this morning instead?” Simpkins asked.

Beryl wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to answer that question. Although she was not occupied, she had a feeling he had something particular in mind, and knowing Simpkins it could be unexpected and not necessarily in a way she would find pleasant. While she did not consider herself above physical labor, she might actually prefer to read a novel than to spread manure over one of the garden beds he lackadaisically tended. However, confident in the knowledge that she could turn down a request without feeling any guilt whatsoever, she decided to answer honestly.

“I am free of obligations and entertaining opportunities.”

“I don’t suppose you would care to join me at the farm for a spot of fruit picking, would you?” Simpkins asked. “Norman Davies was supposed to help out, but he’s had to cancel at the last minute without so much as an excuse.”

“Perhaps. What sort of fruit?” Beryl asked.

“Greengages,” Simpkins said.

“What in the world is a greengage?” Beryl asked.

“It’s a variety of plum. I don’t believe they are as popular in the United States as they are here. They ripen about this time every year and I thought they might make an interesting new addition to the Colonel Kimberly’s condiment line, so I’ve asked Mrs. Prentice if she wished to help me come up with some recipes,” Simpkins said.

Simpkins had inherited his wife’s family farm after the death of her younger brother. As he had moved into the Beeches with Beryl and Edwina and no longer had need of the cottage at the farm himself, he had generously offered to allow the Prentice family to live there rent free in exchange for keeping an eye on the place. The Prentice family was one of the many in the village who had seen hard times of late. Not only had they experienced the same dire impact of the economic downturn the entire country was enduring, but they also had to contend with the fallout of Mr. Prentice’s shell shock from the Great War. He had developed a close relationship with the bottom of whiskey bottles since returning from the front and had had trouble holding down a job. He had actually worked at Simpkins’s farm in the past but had been a casual laborer rather than someone who lived on the premises.

While Beryl did not particularly interest herself with children, she had a very soft spot for Jack Prentice, the oldest child in the family, and a rather bright lad who took on more responsibility than a boy his age should have to expect to do, selling newspapers on the corner and collecting his father at the pub most nights of the week long after he should have himself been abed. Beryl was always happy to see Jack, and the idea of taking her motorcar out into the countryside on a run set her heart aloft.

“Sounds like fun. I’ll drive,” she said.

Edwina looked down from her spot behind the bench at the assembled townspeople before her. She forced her eyes to remain on them rather than allowing them to turn towards her dear friend Charles Jarvis, who had promised to guide her through whatever might be needed of her. It was Charles who had first suggested she take on the responsibility of local magistrate after the recent death of Gordon Faraday. Women had only recently begun to serve as magistrates, and while Edwina was flattered that Charles had thought her capable of the job, she was not quite sure she shared his confidence in her.

The room was decidedly stuffy, and matters were not helped by the great number of people who had assembled. Unable to reconcile the vast number of people in the gallery with the short number of cases to be brought before her, she turned to Charles with a question. She dropped her voice low enough that she hoped no one besides him would be able to hear her. He leaned in close as if he understood she wished discretion. Or, as Beryl might likely point out, Edwina thought to herself, perhaps he simply wanted a chance to draw near to her person. Whatever the reason, she was grateful that she did not need to explain herself. It seemed that everyone was watching her every move, and she had no desire to add to their interest.

“Is it always this crowded?” Edwina asked.

“Not generally. There are always those who like to come to the court to gawk at their neighbors and to collect any juicy bits of gossip that might unfold, but this is an unusually large crowd.”

“So they don’t all have business before the bench?” Edwina asked, feeling a sense of relief wash over her.

“Certainly not. I would guess that they are here to get their eyes on you. It’s not every day we have a new magistrate in Walmsley Parva and certainly this is the first time the magistrate has been a woman,” Charles said.

Edwina was not sure how to take that. She already felt a great deal of pressure to perform in a new role. She did not relish the idea of being some sort of oddity to be stared at. However, she had become more and more adept at shaking off the rules of convention and all of the curiosity that went with such decisions. After all, when she and Beryl had decided some months earlier to open a private enquiry agency, a great deal of notice had been taken at the time. The novelty of it had still not worn off for most of her fellow villagers.

Thinking back to the successes they had achieved in that sphere, Edwina felt her spine stiffen and she lifted her chin slightly as she looked out over the assembled crowd. Here and there she spotted people she would consider friends, like Alma Poole, the hairdresser who flashed her a smile and an enthusiastic waved from a seat near the back. Nora Blackburn was there, too, but she looked more worried than pleased to see Edwina sitting on the bench. Edwina had to wonder why, considering Nora was a woman employed in a nontraditional profession herself as a co-owner of the local garage along with her brother Michael.

Before she could give it a great deal more thought Charles cleared his throat and shuffled some papers on the desk in front of him. Edwina took that to be a hint she ought to call court into session. She reached for her gavel in the way that she had been schooled by Charles at a practice session in the living room at the Beeches the day before. All talking in the room ceased and every eye turned towards her at the same time. She felt a bead of sweat rolling down the back of her neck and under her collar and could not attribute it entirely to the warmth of the room.

But despite her concerns, the first few cases passed before her with relative ease. She stumbled a few times with procedure and relied upon Charles a great deal to assist her in her protocol, but as time went by, she felt her confidence grow. Charles had encouraged her to accept the position based on her civic mindedness as well as her ability to listen impartially to different perspectives on any given occasion. In his opinion she would make the perfect magistrate for a small village that required an intimate understanding of how trivial matters took on great importance in such a tightly knit community.

It wasn’t until they had been at it for about an hour that she understood why Nora had looked so uncomfortable. There in front of her in black and white was a summons for brawling in the street, handed out by local constable Doris Gibbs. The altercation had taken place on the high street between Nora’s brother Michael Blackburn and another young man from the village, Norman Davies. Edwina was quite surprised to see that something so unpleasant had erupted between that particular pair of young men. Both of them had generally genial dispositions and had been known to be on friendly terms.

When she called them both to stand before her, she could feel anger pulsing from Michael in a palpable wave. Norman, on the other hand, simply seemed baffled by his presence in the courtroom and also by Michael’s attitude. She looked out across the room and saw that Constable Doris Gibbs was seated near the front of the room. She was wearing her police uniform and looked every bit a capable official. She returned Edwina’s questioning glance with a curt nod as if to encourage her to simply get on with the proceedings.

“Now, what seems to have brought the pair of you in front of the bench?” Edwina asked.

Both young men gave each other a poisonous look and then began speaking at once, raising their voices to be heard over the other. Edwina held up a small, sturdy hand to silence them, to no avail. The two young men had begun shouting and stepping closer towards each other. Edwina wondered if her first day on the job would end in bloodshed. She looked towards Charles for guidance, but he shrugged subtly as if to say he had no idea what could possibly be going on. With a growing sense of annoyance, she rigorously employed her gavel to attract their attention.

“I’d like to call Constable Doris Gibbs before the bench,” she said.

Constable Gibbs got to her feet and came forward, positioning herself between the two young men like a human buffer. It was a testament to her ability to manage mischief in the village. Both of the young men took a step away from her. They fell silent and both looked sheepishly down at their shoes.

“Constable Gibbs, would you please describe for the court the circumstances around the summons of these two men,” Edwina asked.

Constable Gibbs pulled a notebook from her uniform jacket pocket and flipped it open to a carefully marked page. No one could say that Constable Gibbs was not prepared to defend her position.

“On Thursday, August fifteenth, at approximately two o’clock in the afternoon, I was making my rounds through the village when I spotted Michael Blackburn and Norman Davies locked in a physical altercation. There was a great deal of shouting and shoving and, unfortunately, it actually came to blows. Before I could convince them to separate, Michael Blackburn landed a few of them on Norman and a final one on my own person,” Constable Gibbs said.

She turned her face towards Edwina, exposing her left cheekbone, which allowed Edwina to make out traces of a fading bruise.

Edwina was aghast. While drunken brawling was not something unheard of in Walmsley Parva, she had never before heard of an assault upon Constable Gibbs. She turned towards Michael Blackburn and reminded herself to breathe in slowly through her nose.

“You must have had a great deal of provocation to have lost your temper so thoroughly. Would you care to share with the court why I should take that into consideration before I sentence you to either an uncomfortably large fine or time in the local jail?” Edwina asked.

“I was grievously provoked,” Michael said. He stepped towards the bench; his face suffused with color. “It’s one thing to make up lies about a man. It’s another to deny it to his face when he calls you out on it.”

“Are you suggesting that Norman Davies was making up stories about you in some way?” Edwina asked.

Michael nodded and shot a glance over at Norman. “He called my honor into question, and when I taxed him with it, he denied knowing anything about it. I completely lost my rag, and any man here would have done the same,” he said, turning towards the gallery behind him and including them all with a large sweeping motion of his hand.

“I still don’t know what you’re on about,” Norman shouted. He turned towards Edwina as she banged her gavel on the bench. “Miss Davenport, the whole thing is just beyond me. I have no idea what set him off.”

Edwina looked over at Nora Blackburn, Michael’s sister, for any sign she had a notion of what was involved. All color had drained from Nora’s face and Edwina suddenly had a sickening suspicion. Could Michael be taking one of his turns again? She looked over at Charles, whose eyes had widened ever so slightly. She could tell from the stricken look on his face that this was not the sort of matter that generally came before the court. She wondered if he was thinking the same thing about Michael’s mental stability. It wasn’t exactly a secret in the village that he had had a very bad war experience and had not been entirely the same since he had returned from the front.

“Michael, I’m afraid you’re going to have to share with us what exactly it is that you think Norman was saying about you. You need to give him a chance to dispute it and to put your mind at ease,” she said.

“He’s been spreading lies about how I got my injury,” Michael said, pointing to his damaged arm with his good hand. “And that from a man who didn’t serve at all.”

“I have never said any such thing,” Norman said. “And I’ll have you know I did my best to serve here on the home front. If I’d been allowed to enlist like you, I would have done so in a heartbeat. Do you think I wanted to be left at home planting potatoes and harvesting peas?”

Norman’s shoulders sagged with discontent. Edwina remembered the way so many young men who had been part of reserved occupations had been treated during the Great War. Norman had borne up remarkably well in the face of that difficulty, and she had always admired the fact that he never seemed to try to bring down those men who had served. The two of them had often been seen together fishing at the river or entering or leaving the Dove and Duck, the local pub together. None of it seemed to make sense.

“Do you have any proof of your claim that Norman was speaking ill of you?” Edwina asked, not sure if such a question would help matters.

“I thought you’d ask, so I brought this with me.” Michael dug inside the pocket of his trousers and fished out a folded envelope. He stepped forward and placed it on the bench in front of Edwina.

The envelope seemed to be a perfectly ordinary sort. In fact, there was nothing about it that called any notice. It certainly did not seem the sort of thing to provoke offense. In fact, the handwriting was extremely tidy and legible. It was addressed to Michael Blackburn at the garage and had been neatly slit open with a letter opener. There was no return address and it had been postmarked for the previous week. Edwina slipped her hand inside and extracted a sheet of paper. She unfolded it and to her surprise saw before her a document comprised of letters and words cut from newspapers and magazines. She quickly read through the information it contained and then looked back at Michael.

“I can see why it is that you would be infuriated by receiving this.” She turned towards Norman. “Norman, did you tell customers at Mr. Scott’s shop that Michael had not in fact received his injury by fighting the enemy but rather had been shot while trying to desert his unit?” Edwina asked, tapping her finger against the offensive document.

She kept her eyes trained carefully on Norman Davies’s face. She considered herself to be quite a good judge of dishonesty and all she saw flickering across his face was complete and total bafflement. He shook his head slowly as if stunned by what he was hearing.

“I would never say a thing like that. I would never even think of things like that. Michael and I have been friends since we were boys and I know exactly what kind of man he is. Who would say such a hateful thing about him or about me?” Norman said, turning back towards the assembled crowd in the gallery.

Who indeed? Edwina wondered. She looked out across the assembled crowd as well and a cold, sick feeling filled her stomach. The letter unfolded before her was calculated to cause just the sort of painful disturbance it had done. Was it some sort of a distasteful joke? Was there someone in the village with a slightly unbalanced mind? Did someone simply have it out for either Michael or Norman? Whatever the reason, she couldn’t shake a feeling of discomfort at the notion that someone had sent this to a neighbor in her own village. Still, she had formalities to honor.

“Are you denying that you made such a statement?” she asked.

“I am absolutely denying it.” Norman looked over at Michael, and Edwina was relieved to see that something in his tone must have convinced the injured man that he was telling the truth. Michael’s posture relaxed ever so slightly, and the high color began to fade from his face.

“Michael, have you considered that it’s possible that someone simply wanted to drive a wedge between the two of you for reasons of their own and that perhaps Norman said no such thing?” Edwina asked.

“I suppose that makes as much sense as the idea that Norman would have. . .