Page 35 of Marriage and Murder
Stokes turned, opened the door, and descended to the lane on the side of the carriage screened from the green. Barnaby followed, and as Penelope put a hand on his shoulder and negotiated the steep steps, Morgan dropped down from his perch above.
“You heard?” Stokes asked Morgan.
The constable nodded. “I’ll circle around.” He stepped past Barnaby and Penelope and, sinking his hands into his pockets and adopting an innocent-looking slouch, strode off along the lane toward the junction.
Stokes watched him go, then arched a brow at Barnaby and Penelope. “Right, then. Let’s go and have a word with Billy Gilroy.”
Stokes led the way around the carriage and onto the green, making directly for the group beside the pond. Barnaby and Penelope followed a yard behind, waiting to see what would happen.
Billy Gilroy saw them coming. For an instant, he dithered, then he turned and fled, making for High Street, only to have Morgan intercept him with a flying tackle and knock him to the ground.
The pair rolled once, then Morgan popped to his feet and hauled Billy up by his collar.
Stokes slowed his approach and murmured to Barnaby and Penelope, “I’ve always suspected that Morgan misses the more physical side of policing.”
Barnaby grinned, as did Penelope.
By the time the three of them reached the pair, Morgan had Billy firmly by the collars of both shirt and jacket, and the lad appeared rather limp and subdued.
Indeed, the face he showed them was filled with fear. Before Stokes could get out a word, Billy blurted, “I didn’t kill her!”
Stokes halted a yard away and considered their captive. “Didn’t you?”
Although Stokes’s intonation was distinctly skeptical, studying Billy, Barnaby was inclined to believe the lad.
From beside Barnaby, Penelope said, “But you can see how it looks, can’t you? Miss Viola is strangled, the house ransacked, and two pieces of jewelry go missing, and then you show up in Salisbury and try to sell those particular two pieces to a jeweler.”
Billy was shaking his head vehemently. “I didn’t strangle her! I never even went to the house—never been inside it in all my life.” His panic was evident, and the desperation in his tone lent credence to his statements.
Calmly, Barnaby asked, “Then how did you come by the necklace and bracelet?”
Billy’s gaze locked on Barnaby’s face. “I took them from where she put them. She left them where anyone could’ve found and taken them.” He shot a glance at Stokes. “No law to say I can’t take things others have left lying about, is there?”
Penelope frowned. “She, meaning Miss Viola?”
Plainly encouraged that they were listening, Billy nodded fervently. “She obviously didn’t want them anymore, and then she was dead, and I had them, and there didn’t seem any reason I shouldn’t see what I could get for them.”
Stokes was frowning, too. “Tell us exactly how you came to have Miss Huntingdon’s jewelry.”
Almost eagerly, Billy explained, “Early that afternoon—the day she was killed—I was heading home from Manor Farm. I’d been helping with the baling there, and we stopped a little after noon. I was walking home to get a bite, and the path runs along the back wall of the graveyard, on the other side of the trees, and I was on that stretch when I saw her—Miss Viola—come out ofthe church. She wandered into the graveyard sort of uncertain, looking this way and that. She didn’t see me because of the trees, and I thought she was acting strange, so I stopped and watched her. She went one way, then the other, then finally, she went to a very old grave with an urn on top of the gravestone. She crouched down and pulled something from her bag and stuffed it into the urn. Then she looked around sharpish like, as if checking no one had seen, then she stood up and walked quickly away, back around the church and down to the lane. Seemed she was off to her cottage.”
During Billy’s account, Stokes had pulled out his book and started taking notes. “So you’re saying Miss Viola put her favorite jewelry into an urn in the graveyard.” Skepticism weighted the words.
But Billy nodded earnestly. “She did. I can show you where, then you’ll believe me.” Billy made to head toward the church, having forgotten that Morgan still had hold of his collars.
Morgan pulled Billy up and held him.
“You have to let me show you,” Billy all but wailed.
His expression impassive, Stokes glanced at Barnaby and Penelope, then nodded to Morgan. “Let him go.” To Billy, Stokes said, “Try to run, and we’ll have you in manacles. Be sensible and just lead the way and show us what you think will convince us you didn’t kill Miss Viola.”
Billy nodded eagerly and turned and walked quickly toward the church, with Morgan keeping pace at Billy’s heels.
Barnaby, Penelope, and Stokes followed the pair off the green and onto High Street, then Billy turned under the lychgate and climbed the path to the church door. He went past the door and around the far end of the church, beyond which lay the graveyard.
Billy started along the central path. His steps quickening, he glanced back at them. “It’s just along here.”
The grave he led them to lay more or less at the center of the graveyard and wasn’t just old but ancient. On the cracked gravestone, in the shadow cast by the weathered and worn headstone, sat an equally ancient urn. Billy leaned over and peered inside it, then straightened, stepped back, and pointed into the urn. “I left the handkerchief she’d wrapped about the jewelry. It’s still in there.”
