Page 30 of Marriage and Murder
“Friendly?” Billy sneered. “She weren’t friendly with anyone here, well, except perhaps Mrs. Foswell. But other than that, she…” He stopped, then ended with “Well, she wasn’t what you’d call a nice lady.”
“Why do you say that?” Penelope’s words rang with genuine curiosity.
Billy was wary, but eventually, when they all waited for him to answer, he offered, “She always took against me. I never knew why. It was almost as if me just breathing or walking along was enough to set her off. She’d bail me up and rail at me—she’d stop me right in the street and have a go at me.”
“Over what?” Barnaby asked in mildly curious vein.
Billy shrugged, but when they waited again, rather sullenly, he replied, “She’d taken it into her head that I was getting into the wrong company. That’s what she called me mates—the wrong company. What would she know? Anyway, she said that because I don’t have a steady job and live with Ma and rely on her to keep me fed, that I was a burden on Ma’s shoulders. She—Miss Viola—was always railing at me to get a job and become a man and all that sort of tripe.”
“Well,” Penelope said, “it’s not entirely tripe, is it? How old are you?”
Grudgingly, Billy offered, “Nineteen.”
His tone rather harder, Barnaby observed, “Old enough to look for work, then, especially given all the farms around about.”
Billy continued to look sullen but had the sense to bite his tongue.
Stokes had been consulting his notebook. “On Thursday afternoon, did you see anyone heading to Lavender Cottage?”
“Nah,” Billy readily replied. “I was nowhere near there.” Then he ducked his head and shifted on his feet. “I was in the woods over Tollard Royal way, gathering conkers with me mates. We can get a good price for them in Salisbury.”
“When did you get back?” Stokes asked.
“After sunset, it was. Ma was waiting on me for dinner.” Billy nodded toward the cottage. “Must’ve been six when I got through the door.”
Barnaby was watching Billy closely. “Your route from the woods to here—you must have passed not far from Lavender Cottage.”
“Not so close,” Billy promptly countered. “I cut across the fields, didn’t I? I didn’t go by the lanes.”
Stokes looked at Barnaby and Penelope, then, to Billy, said, “That’s all for now, although we might have more questions for you later.”
Billy shrugged and tightened his grip on the axe. “I’ll be here. Nowhere else to go.”
They turned and walked away. As they neared the cottage, they heard the axe bite into wood again.
When they reached the lane, all of them were frowning, even Constable Price.
Stokes halted by the carriage and arched a brow at Barnaby and Penelope.
Penelope humphed. “Well, wherever Billy was on Thursday afternoon, it wasn’t with his mates gathering conkers in the woods. That was an outright lie.”
“I agree.” Barnaby glanced past the cottage to the rear of the lot. “There’s something he’s hiding—something about Thursday afternoon—yet I have difficulty believing he strangled Viola.”
Stokes nodded. “True, but he knows something he doesn’t want us to know. That’s the impression I got.”
“But,” Penelope said, “is it something to do with this case? Or something else entirely?”
“That, indeed, is the question.” Stokes glanced along the lane and frowned. “What’s this?”
A uniformed constable they hadn’t previously met was huffing and puffing as he jogged toward them. The man reached them and pulled up, then attempted a general salute. “Inspector Stokes?”
Stokes nodded curtly. “Out with it, man.”
The constable obliged. “Superintending Constable Mallard sent me to tell you that yesterday afternoon, a bloke tried to sell Miss Huntingdon’s stolen bracelet and necklace to one of the jewelers in Salisbury.”
Eagerly, Stokes asked, “And was this bloke apprehended?”
The constable’s face fell. “No, sir. He ran off as soon as he realized the jeweler knew who the bracelet belonged to. Turned out it was the same jeweler who made the bracelet long ago, and he knew it was Miss Huntingdon’s. The jeweler kept the bracelet and necklace and came in this morning to report that the jewels must have been stolen.”
