Burke and Stokes exchanged a look.
“Could the Wardens be suspects?”
“They were all in the bar when Trevors left, and they were still there when Fred Paxton came back there with news of what he’d found. They never left. Even Elsie was with them. They’re in the clear, as far as this is concerned.”
Waters reached into his pocket, withdrew a folded sheet of paper, and handed it to Burke.
“Thought you might want this. It’s a list of all the people who were in the bar that night. A star marks the ones who were there from the time Trevors left until the time the Paxtons returned.”
Burke took the list and read it. One name caught his eye.
“Mrs. Allinson was there that night?”
“And her husband. Saturday night’s the big night in the village. Most people find their way to the inn, sooner or later.”
Emily Allinson’s name was one of those marked with a star.
“And she never left,” he said, so quietly that nobody heard him utter the words.
The Paxtons, a young couple with no children, were both relative newcomers to the area. Fred was born about twenty miles west of Underbury, and after a period of city living decided that it was time to return to the countryside with his wife. The land at Underbury had cost them comparatively little, and they were now raising cattle and hoping for a good crop of vegetables to sell in the coming year. They fed the detectives bread and cheese, and brewed up a pot of tea large enough to sate a field of laborers.
“I remember I was walking along, my mind on getting home, and I just happened to look to my right,” said Fred Paxton. His left eye was yellowy white, with tendrils of red crisscrossing upon it. It brought back to Burke an image from his childhood: a visit to his uncle’s farm on the outskirts of the city, where his father had drunk milk fresh from the cow and the boy had seen blood in the creamy liquid.
“There was a shape draped across the fence,” Paxton continued. “It looked like a scarecrow, but there’s no scarecrow on that land. I climbed the gate and went to have a look-see. I never seen so much blood. I felt it under my boots. I’d say Mal hadn’t been dead more than a couple of minutes when I found him.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Stokes.
“His innards were steaming,” replied Paxton, simply.
“What did you do then?” said Burke.
“I went back to the village, fast as I could. Ran into the pub and told old Ken the barman to send for the constable here. I think some people might have been on their way to take a look at the body for themselves, soon as they heard, but as it happened the constable was passing when they came out and he went with them.”
“And you also went back, I presume?” said Stokes.
“I did. When all was done, I went home to the missus here and told her what had happened.”
Burke turned his attention to the young woman seated to his left. Mrs. Paxton had spoken barely five words since their arrival. She was a slight thing, with dark hair and large blue eyes. Burke supposed that she might even have been termed beautiful.
“Is there anything you can add to what your husband has told us, Mrs. Paxton?” he asked her. “Did you hear or see anything that night that might help us?”
Her voice was so low that Burke had to lean forward to hear what she was saying.
“I was asleep in bed when Fred came in,” she said. “When he told me it was Mal Trevors, well, I just felt something turn inside me. It was terrible.”
She excused herself and rose from the table. Burke watched her go, then caught himself doing so and returned his attention to the men around him.
“Do you remember how the people in the inn responded when you told them the news?” he asked Paxton.
“Shocked, I suppose,” he said.
“Was Elsie Warden shocked?”
“Well, she was later, when she found out,” said Paxton.
“Later?”
“Dr. Allinson said that Elsie’d taken ill not long before I returned. His wife was looking after her in old Ken’s kitchen.”
Burke asked if he might use the toilet, so that he could have a little privacy in which to consider what he had learned. Fred Paxton told him the facilities were outside, and offered to show him, but Burke assured him that he would be able to find them alone. He walked through the kitchen, found the privy, and relieved himself while he thought. When he went back outside, Mrs. Paxton was standing at the kitchen window. Her upper body was bare and she was washing herself with a cloth from the sink. She stopped when she saw him, then lowered her right hand so that her breasts were exposed to him. Her body was very white. Burke looked at her for just a second longer, then slowly she turned away, her back a pale expanse against the shadows, and disappeared from view. Burke skirted the side of the house, returning to the main room through the front door. Upon his return, Waters and Stokes stood and the four men walked together into the front yard. Paxton spoke to the constable about local matters, and Stokes ambled onto the road, taking the air. Suddenly, Burke found Mrs. Paxton by his side.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
She blushed slightly, but Burke felt that the only real embarrassment was his own.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said.
“I do have just one other question,” he said to her.
She waited.
“Did you like Mal Trevors?”
It took a moment for the answer to come.
“No, sir,” she said eventually. “I did not.”
“May I ask why?”
“He was a brute of a man, and I saw the way he looked at me. Our land adjoined his, and I made a point never to be alone in the fields when he was around.”
“Did you tell your husband of this?”
“No, but he knew how I felt, right enough.”
She stopped talking suddenly, conscious that she might have said something to incriminate her Fred, but Burke reassured her.
“It’s all right, Mrs. Paxton. Neither you nor your husband is a suspect here.”
She remained suspicious of him, though.
“So you say.”
“Listen to me. Whoever killed Mal Trevors would have been covered in blood afterward. I hardly think that description applied to your husband that night, did it?”
“No,” she replied. “I see what you mean. I don’t think Fred has it in him to kill Mal Trevors, or to kill anyone, come to that. He’s a good man.”
“But you felt distressed at Trevors’s death, despite what you felt about him,” said Burke.
Again, there was a pause before the reply came. Burke could see her husband over her shoulder, no longer distracted by Waters but now coming to his wife’s aid. There was little time left.
“I wished that he was dead,” said Mrs. Paxton softly. “The day before he died, he brushed against me when we were in Mr. Little’s store together. He did it deliberately, and I felt him push into me. I felt his…thing. He was a pig, and I was tired of being afraid to walk in our own fields. So, for a moment, I wished him dead, and then a day later he was dead. I suppose I wondered…”
“If somehow you might have caused his death?”
“Yes.”
Fred Paxton was now beside them.
“Is everything all right, love?” he asked, placing a protective arm around his wife’s shoulders.
“Everything’s fine now,” she said.
She smiled at her husband, but it was to reassure him rather than to express any real emotion on her own part, and Burke caught a glimpse of the real power behind their marriage, the strength hidden inside this small, pretty woman.
And he felt a surge of unease.
Everything’s fine.
Everything’s fine now that Mal Trevors is dead.