Episode 2 - Burton's barn

The two sleuths were soon driving to Kelly’s farm via Dorothy’s cottage, where they could pick up the army pistol. Cleo's car was leased, ostensibly because she was inspecting boarding schools for a client. She had not told Robert that Gary had ordered a car for her as he would have been angry and remorseful. The car had not been ordered from Silver’s. The deal was that she would pay for the car. Gary had other ideas.

***

"How well do you know Mrs Kelly, Dorothy?" said Cleo as she negotiated the roundabout leading into Lower Grumpsfield road. Driving on the left had not yet become second nature.

"Only by sight, but everyone knows who she is. Between outings in her finery she sometimes helps at a little vegetable stand on Middlethumpton market. The Kellys don’t grow vegetables, but she helps out for some friend or other. Totally incongruous for a woman doing what she otherwise gets up to, except that she probably gets new clients for her other activity that way. I don't go to the market very often. It's too expensive when you add the bus fares. Verdi's emporium can supply me with all the vegetables I can eat at half the cost if I’ve eaten all the ones I grow in my garden."

They remembered Mr Bontemps, the former assistant at the shop. He had committed suicide thinking he was a murderer. He had maintained that the produce he sold was all local, even the oranges and lemons.

"I used to dislike Mr Bontemps," said Dorothy. "He always kow-towed to Laura and she gave him gratuities. Bontemps was often quite rude to me. He made a sport of setting me off against Laura. But I miss him now he's been replaced by Mr Verdi's nephew. That man short-changes and puts his hand on the scales to weigh them down a bit."

"Yes, Claudius Verdi is dreadful," said Cleo. "His latest ruse is to buy up as many of Robert's home-made sausages as he can, rewrap them and resell them as having been made on the emporium premises, at twice the price."

"Isn't there a law against that?" said Dorothy.

"I doubt it. You can’t patent pork sausages."

Dorothy eventually hopped out at her cottage to retrieve the pistol, which was kept hidden under the lining of the washing basket. Now it was hidden in the depths of her capacious handbag, where Cleo fervently hoped it would stay.

***

Cleo was enjoying being independent of public transport. Two weeks driving around had changed her life beyond belief. No more waiting for buses that came late or not at all. No more making Robert take her to inaccessible places he didn't want them to go to. Her new car would be even nicer, especially as it would be a constant reminder of Gary’s caring policy. The hiatus in their trysts had been short. Their reunion had been sweet. All it needed now was for enough investigations to appear so that she could actually pay for the new car herself. She was determined not to be a ‘kept woman’, though Gary would have found that idea ridiculous.

***

"This is such a nice car," Dorothy remarked as she got back in. "I can't understand why you waited so long to get one."

"I didn't think I needed one before I had one. This one is only borrowed, Dorothy. My own car is not available yet.” Cleo did not tell Dorothy that Gary had ordered her a car so.

“I thought you were getting one from Silver’s. Didn’t Mrs Silver arrange that?”

“Yes, but Mr Silver discovered that Colin was investigating his philandering and put a stop to the order.”

“But didn’t Robert help to order the car?”

“Mr Silver put two and two together when Mrs Silver threw him out, Dorothy. I think Robert got some of the blame for that happening.”

“Oh!”

“So you ordered the car elsewhere, did you?”

“Yes,” said Cleo, not telling Dorothy the rest of the story.

***

Kelly's farm buildings were at the end of a long, potholed, gravel-sprinkled lane. Cleo parked the car some yards from the path leading to the front door of the farmhouse. It stood open. Mr Kelly must have seen them approaching and formed a welcoming committee, if you can call it a welcome when someone points a double-barrelled shotgun at you.

“It would have taken  much longer to get here walking,“ said Dorothy, as they got out of the car.”

“We may need to make a quick getaway, Dorothy,” Cleo whispered back. “That would not have been practical on foot, either.”

“Don’t make me shudder, Cleo.”

***

"You know me, Mr Kelly," said Dorothy. "Put that thing away!"

"So I do, begorrah," replied Mr Kelly with a grunt. He propped the rifle up against the door-jamb. "Better safe than sorry, though."

"This is my friend, Cleo Hartley."

"I know her. Snoops around a lot but did not find my milk churns."

"People don’t usually put their stolen goods out for collection, Mr Kelly, and I only investigate when I’m asked to," said Cleo. “You were lucky that I made any attempt to help you since you had ‘borrowed’ the churns from a farm the other side of Middlethumpton. You didn’t offer me a fee, either.”

“Are you investigating that now?”

"We're looking for Mr Burton," said Dorothy. "Is he at home?"

"I wouldn't know that now, would I? What do you want to see him for?"

It was none of Mr Kelly's business, but Dorothy thought it wiser to be diplomatic and had discarded the aunt idea as being unworkable.

"We have an important message for him."

"What message?"

"Now, now, Mr Kelly. It's private," rebuked Cleo. She was not as diplomatic as Dorothy.

Kelly snorted.

"Well, he's not at home. He let me down with the sheep this morning. Lives here almost rent-free and doesn't keep to the arrangement. I phoned the police. I can’t have my farm workers not turning up for work."

"He might have overslept."

"Not him. I told the police he was missing.”

“Since when, Mr Kelly?”

“Two days.”

“Really.”

“I had to tell them something that would make them look for him, didn’t I?”

"There's always a first time to oversleep, Mr Kelly," said Dorothy. "We'll tell Mr Burton to get up."

"If he's out we can leave him a note instead," said Cleo. "We'll push it under his door if you haven’t got a key."

“He never locks up,” said Kelly.

Cleo deduced that Kelly liked poking around when Burton was out. Had he poked round this morning?

“Didn’t you go and wake him this morning, Mr Kelly? She asked. “Or have you just got up yourself?”

He certainly looked like it, but Kelly always looked scruffy.

“Mind your own business,” he grunted.

Dorothy took her memo pad out of her hand-bag.

“I’ll just write that message for Mr Burton,” she said.

"I can do that," said Mr Kelly. "Give it ‘ere!"

"It's no trouble at all, Mr Kelly," said Dorothy, holding her memo pad out of reach. "I'm sure you have better things to do, and I haven't quite decided what to write yet.”

Cleo thought Dorothy was doing a great job. What an unpleasant character Mr Kelly was.

“Brent might be at home, after all, Mr Kelly. I'm his mother's distant cousin, so he won't mind if I pop in."

Now Dorothy had had to use the old aunt excuse, except that she thought a cousin might be more believable.

“I’ll let you into a secret, Mr Kelly. Brent is coming into money,” she added for good measure.

Mr Kelly was persuaded by Dorothy’s confidentiality and the thought that if Burton inherited money, he would make sure that he got his share, probably via Magda.

"Well, mind you don't touch anything. He don't like nobody touching nothing."

"We'd better get there now, Dorothy," said Cleo, with urgency in her voice. She had no idea how they would deal with Mr Kelly if he got curious.

Dorothy was amused by the enigmatic grammar. He had fortunately not relapsed into an authentic Irish brogue.

Mr Kelly braced himself.

"I'll go with you to make sure you don't get up to anything."

"No need, Mr Kelly," said Dorothy, with great presence of mind. "You know me and I can vouch for Miss Hartley."

“Not as a sleuth, you can’t,” grumbled Kelly.

"And you aren't going anywhere, Paddy," a raucous voice shouted from behind him.

Magda Kelly must have been hovering somewhere near, eavesdropping. Now she stepped out of the shadows to take a closer look at the two women.

Cleo was surprised that the woman was quite old. Dorothy decided there was a hag in the making. Uncombed and dressed shabbily, she bore no resemblance to the tart Dorothy had seen trotting off to Middlethumpton to ply her wares.

Ignoring any contact between the Kellys, Cleo and Dorothy marched off round the side of the farmhouse. Dorothy thought Magda Kelly might be more than they could handle if Mr Kelly could wince like that at the sound of her voice. What an odd couple.. Was Magda involved with Burton when she was tarted up? Was Kelly jealous? Worse still, did he encourage Magda to ‘have it off’ with Burton because he paid. They would have to improvise the rest of the mission. Either the Kellys did not know about Mr Burton's fate, or they were putting on a splendid show of ignorance.

***

The door of Burton's barn was wide open. The sleuths wondered if Burton had left it like that. Or had Kelly been in there that morning? In that case he must have known that Burton was not in there, asleep. Surely he would not have gone in otherwise.

Cleo and Dorothy stepped in quickly and had a look round. There were no signs of a struggle, but there were two used glasses and a half empty bottle of whisky on an upturned shabby leather trunk that had served as a coffee table. That suggested that Burton had recently entertained a visitor in the lounge section of the big old barn, thought Dorothy..

"It's creepy," whispered Cleo. "Like a mausoleum, knowing that Burton is dead."

"Listen to the bats, Cleo. Or do you think it could be rats?"

"Probably both. Let's get out of here. There's nothing we can do for the dead guy. We've gained a general impression and I think that's all Gary expected."

Kelly he was just in time to see the two women emerging from the barn.

"Find him, did you?"

"No, Mr Kelly. We just peeked round the corner. We couldn't see anyone."

***

Dorothy was quite relieved to be back in the sunlight. Mr Kelly took up a guard position in front of the barn door, but at least he didn't point his rifle at them this time.

"Did you leave the message?" he wanted to know.

"Not yet," said Dorothy, ripping a page out of her memo book. "Do you want to write it, Cleo?"

"No, go ahead."

Dorothy scribbled a personal sort of message to Dear Cousin Brent, ending with “phone me urgently” and folded the paper twice. She had played safe and written Cleo's office number on it rather than her own. Mr Kelly was sure to read that note as soon as they had left. Dorothy put the message under the plant pot just outside the barn door. That was not an easy task as Kelly was watching every move. Dorothy knew Mr Burton would not find it himself. For a moment she felt a little dizzy.

Cleo went to support Dorothy. Surely she was not going to cave in.

"I'm OK, Cleo. I need my second breakfast, that's all."

They thanked Mr Kelly for his cooperation and walked in silence to Cleo's car, got in and drove off. They did not speak until they were back on the main road.

"That was a nasty experience," said Dorothy. "It almost knocked me for six having to post that note."

"I'm glad you came along, Dorothy. You were brilliant."

"Did you see Magda Burton peeping round the corner?"

"Making sure her husband behaved himself, I should think,” said Cleo. “What goes on in the brain of a man who lets his wife go out to get hired for paid sex and what goes on in her brain to make her jealous that he will go off with someone else?”

"What a dreadful pair they are!" said Dorothy. “And we didn’t tell them that Burton is dead. I don’t think they knew.”

"We'll leave that to Gary or some other cop. I don’t think we should get involved…and we forgot the eggs."

"We are already involved," said Dorothy. "Your office number is on that piece of paper, Cleo. Even if Kelly thought the visit was in aid of Burton’s fictitious legacy, he’ll start cogitating as soon as he finds out what happened to Burton, and I didn’t want him phoning me."

“It’s OK to have my number on the note because the guy knows me, Dorothy. But I think we can rule Kelly out as the killer. What about Magda?”

“Kelly was probably paying her for services rendered, Cleo. Then he married her and continued to enjoy her services for free. She was not dressed for business, though, was she?”

“I don’t suppose there are many clients about looking for what she has to offer early in the morning.”