4. THE ANGRY CHOIRMASTER

Christie’s Detective Agency PART 4

   “Well, I like that!” spluttered Jennifer Marple as they walked back down the vicarage path, “not a very Christian thing to do at all, sending us off like that as if we were gypsies selling pegs!”

“I’ve never seen him like that before,” added Horace, “I mean, when I was a nipper I used to have to come here for Sunday School while my mum and dad did whatever it mums and dads do on Sunday afternoons, and he was always as nice as pie to us.”

Jennifer paused for a moment and cast her eyes over the area under the one small second floor window. There was the tell-tale remnants of scratches and a suspicious looking stain that may well have been blood.

“That must be where he fell,” she sighed, “poor man.”

There was no further sign that anything as tragic as a man falling to his death had occurred. The concrete path and bordering grass verge were tidy and the single obstruction, a metal support for some sort of bin similar to the one on the street, was sufficiently far back not to be in the way.

“What’s that?” asked Horace, and he tip-toed past the door and gazed at a small round tin that was pushed against the wall.

“A tin of something?” suggested Jennifer in a disinterested voice, “come on: let’s go.”

“Axle grease,” murmured Horace, examining it.

“Why, if it isn’t young Horace,” came from a man scurrying along towards the vicarage gate, “what brings you down here?”

He looked at the man and smiled a greeting.

“Why, hello Mr Saint Maurice,” he replied, and he hesitated before answering the question. “I’ve joined the Christie Detective Agency,” he said, “and we’re looking into the death of Mr Stubbs.”

“The poor man fell,” sighed Cedric Saint Maurice, “I was here when it happened. So sad, but then he was no angel.”

“What was that?” asked Jennifer Marple, “you say he was no angel. Does that imply he was into something wrong?”

Maurice glanced at her. His eyes, she thought, those eyes are steely. I wouldn’t trust a man with steely eyes, not more than once in a million years…

But then, years ago she’d had a run in with a husband whose eyes were very much like those of the man standing before her, and had it not been for her own wit she might have come off second best. After then, she tended to judge people by what their eyes told her.

“Oh, he only turned the head of my wife,” explained the other, scowling, “and I’ve been obliged to leave the family home! I ask you! Me, a choirmaster and respected member of our society being cuckolded by a window cleaner! At least I have the satisfaction of knowing that it was my window he was cleaning!”

“You mean, you love up there…?” pointed Horace.

“I do. And all because a window cleaner made eyes at my good lady when I was out,” he snarled, “marriage for thirty years, and then this!”

“Very sad,” mused Jennifer.

“Very sad indeed! I’m glad the man’s dead!” snapped the choirmaster, “now if you’ll forgive me I’ve got a score to annotate.”

He marched off, through the gate and up to the side door, for which he had a key.

“Do you annotate scores?” asked Horace.

Jennifer shrugged. “I wouldn’t know,” she replied.

“Then if there was anything dodgy about Mr Stubbs’ accident I’d say he has enough anger in him to have been at the root of it,” pondered Horace.

“You’ve got the hang of this already,” smiled Jennifer Marple, “it seemed that when your folks gave you that middle name they knew the sort of man you’d turn out to be!”

“I’d like to hear his wife’s side of the story before I was certain,” continued Horace, “things can be misinterpreted, you know.”

“Then let’s go and see if she’s in,” decided Jennifer, “I’m pretty sure I know where she lives. Come on. To the car!”

She drove the half mile or so to where Cedric Saint Maurice had lived, and they were gratified to find that his wife was in the garden hanging out a bowl of washing. She was fifty or so, dark haired and neatly dressed in a loose and flowing floral frock. And she was singing quietly to herself, not the sort of sombre music you’d expect from a choirmaster's wife but a Beatles love song from the sixties.

“Excuse me,” called Jennifer as they approached her, “Mrs Saint Maurice?”

“You could call me that,” replied the woman, and she laughed, “my husband, who apparently owns me lock, stock and barrel, thinks I ought to be that. But for the time being I also answer to my maiden name, Miss Clover. But you can call me Mavis. That’s what I normally answer to these days.”

“I can see what old Stubbs saw in her,” murmured Horace, nudging Jennifer, “she’s a good looker for her age.”

“Shh!”

“I hope you don’t think this insensitive, but we’d like to ask you a few questions about Mr Bill Stubbs,” began Jennifer when they had reached her. “Here, Horace, help the lady with that sheet!”

“It’s all right. I can handle it,” replied Mavis Clover, as she liked to be called, “Bill Stubbs? You’ve been talking to my absurd husband, I assume? Who are you, anyway?”

“Sorry. I should have introduced us. We’re from Christies, the detective agency on the High Street.”

“Detectives, eh? Well what has he said, then? Cedric, I mean? There never was anyone so capable when it comes to getting the wrong end of a stick and not letting it go.”

“We did speak with him,” acknowledged Jennifer, “and he suggested that Mr Stubbs had managed to get in between you and him, so to speak.”

“That Cedric! There never was such a possessive man in all the world! Look, I made Bill a cup of tea because it had started to rain and he didn’t like cleaning the windows in the rain. It was only a shower, I could tell that, so he came into the kitchen and sat down to have his cuppa, and Cedric came in. What he saw was a window cleaner relaxing over a cup of tea but what he thought he saw, thought, mark you, was a romantic liaison between his wife and a good looking man who wasn’t him!”

“And that was it?” asked Horace.

“The row we had once Bill had got his leather and gone,” sighed Mavis, “he always was the jealous sort, but this was the worst I’ve seen him since we were teens together! We had a bust-up back then, and it should have been a warning, but I didn’t heed it. Anyway, he reckons he’s gone for good. Got a room at the vicarage, which’ll suit him down to the ground being right next door to the church. But how is you’re interested?”

“Mrs Stubbs hired us,” replied Jennifer, “she doesn’t think it was an accident.”

“You mean … you suspect my Cedric? You’ve got it wrong there, dear. He might get to be as jealous as hell, but he wouldn’t even squash a fly let alone kill a window cleaner! He’s all sound and fury and not much else.”

“We don’t suspect anyone, Mavis,” explained Jennifer, “but you must see that if we’re going to earn our fee we’ve got to look into every possibility.”

“Fancy her having the dosh to hire a fancy firm like detectives,” said Mavis, “but he did say as he’d won a bit on the lottery, Quite a bit, I reckon. So that’s how she’s spending it, is it?”

“Must be,” smiled Jennifer, “sorry we disturbed you, Mavis, and we’ll probably not see you again. I like your frock, by the way. Very pretty.”

“Cedric didn’t like it. Said it made me look like a floozy,” smiled Mavis, “but I like a bit of colour and I’m going to wear it no matter what he thinks, the old stick in the mud!”

At that the two detectives made their way back to Jennifer’s car.

“What do you reckon?” asked Jennifer when they were on their way back to her office on the High Street.

“He’s got a motive,” replied Horace after a moment’s thought, “and quite a motive it is if he’s been obliged to leave his home and live in an attic room at the vicarage. Mind you, his wife is a tidy looking woman and might catch a window cleaner’s eye if that’s what he wanted.”

“Maybe,” sighed Jennifer. “Come on: coffee time.”

© Peter Rogerson 13.09.21