‘The Little Copplestone Mystery’ 
NGAIO MARSH

OFFICER: Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn 
FORCE: Scotland Yard 
TIME: 1973

CASES: ‘A Man Lay Dead’ (1934), ‘Died in the Wool’ (1945), ‘Singing in the Shrouds’ (1958), ‘Killer Dolphin’ (1966), ‘Black As He’s Painted’ (1973) etc.

PROFILE: When Eton-educated Roderick Alleyn (pronounced ‘Allen’) joined the police in the ‘thirties he was undoubtedly a genuine original-the first aristocrat to enter the force. Tall and handsome, he has expressive hands and a deep, soothing voice. He is, in fact, very much a gentleman, elegant in dress, beautifully mannered and able to move freely in what are referred to as ‘the best circles’. He is, though, a man of iron resolve, never afraid to take physical action where necessary, and possesses a particular style of detection that can as easily comfort frightened women as alert criminals that he is not a man to be trifled with. In a career which has spanned over forty years he has risen from Inspector to Chief Superintendent, all the time aided by Inspector Fox, a dour little man he delights in referring to as ‘Br’er Fox’. He is married to Agatha Troy, a celebrated portrait painter, who frequently offers useful suggestions to her husband when he is involved on a difficult case. Even with the passage of time and all the changes in society, the Chief Superintendent has remained a man who stands by the same ideals of the police force as they were when he first joined.

CREATOR: Ngaio Marsh (1899-1981) named Roderick Alleyn after the Elizabethan actor who founded Dulwich College in London, to which she had paid a visit just the day before she began work on her first novel. Born in New Zealand, she devoted much of her early life to the theatre, first as an actress, then as playwright, director and producer-a dedication which was ultimately rewarded in 1966 when she was made a Dame of the British Empire in recognition of her services to the profession. Ngaio’s contribution to the crime genre in the form of the Alleyn mysteries is also highly regarded by critics, especially Howard Haycraft, who wrote that she had ‘helped to bring the English detective story to full flower’. Sadly, she produced only a handful of short stories about her formidable Scotland Yard detective, and ‘The Little Copplestone Mystery’ was the very last of these, written in 1973. It offers a splendid picture of the urbane officer who remains to this day a phenomenon in the history of Scotland Yard’s fictional detectives.

THE STORY:

When the telephone rang, Troy came in, sun dazzled, from the cottage garden to answer it, hoping it would be a call from London.
‘Oh,’ said a strange voice uncertainly. ‘May I speak to Superintendent Alleyn, if you please?’
‘I’m sorry. He’s away.’
‘Oh, dear!’ said the voice, crestfallen. ‘Er-would that be-am I speaking to Mrs Alleyn?’
‘Yes,’
‘Oh. Yes. Well, it’s Timothy Bates here, Mrs Alleyn. You don’t know me,’ the voice confessed wistfully, ‘but I had the pleasure several years ago of meeting your husband. In New Zealand. And he did say that if I ever came home I was to get in touch, and when I heard quite by accident that you were here-well, I was excited. But, alas, no good after all.’
‘I am sorry,’ Troy said. ‘He’ll be back, I hope, on Sunday night. Perhaps-‘
‘Will he! Come, that’s something! Because here I am at the Star and Garter, you see, and so-‘ The voice trailed away again.
‘Yes, indeed. He’ll be delighted,’ Troy said, hoping that he would.
‘I’m a bookman,’ the voice confided. ‘Old books, you know. He used to come into my shop. It was always such a pleasure.’
‘But of course!’ Troy exclaimed. ‘I remember perfectly now. He’s often talked about it.’
‘Has he? Has he, really! Well, you see, Mrs Alleyn, I’m here on business. Not to sell anything, please don’t think that, but on a voyage of discovery; almost, one might say, of detection, and I think it might amuse him. He has such an eye for the curious. Not,’ the voice hurriedly amended, ‘in the trade sense. I mean curious in the sense of mysterious and unusual. But I mustn’t bore you.’
Troy assured him that he was not boring her and indeed it was true. The voice was so much coloured by odd little overtones that she found herself quite drawn to its owner.
‘I know where you are,’ he was saying. ‘Your house was pointed out to me.’
After that there was nothing to do but ask him to visit. He seemed to cheer up prodigiously. ‘May I? May I, really? Now?’
‘Why not?’ Troy said. ‘You’ll be here in five minutes.’
She heard a little crow of delight before he hung up the receiver.
He turned out to be exactly like his voice-a short, middle-aged, bespectacled man, rather untidily dressed. As he came up the path she saw that with both arms he clutched to his stomach an enormous Bible. He was thrown into a fever over the difficulty of removing his cap.
‘How ridiculous!’ he exclaimed. ‘Forgive me! One moment.’
He laid his burden tenderly on a garden seat. ‘There!’ he cried. ‘Now! How do you do?’
Troy took him indoors and gave him a drink. He chose sherry and sat in the window seat with his Bible beside him. ‘You’ll wonder,’ he said, ‘why I’ve appeared with this unusual piece of baggage. I do trust it arouses your curiosity.’
He went into a long excitable explanation. It appeared that the Bible was an old and rare one he had picked up in a job lot of books in New Zealand. All this time he kept it under his square little hands as if it might open of its own accord and spoil his story.
‘Because,’ he said, ‘the really exciting thing to me is not its undoubted authenticity but-‘ He made a conspiratorial face at Troy and suddenly opened the Bible. ‘Look!’ he invited.
He displayed the flyleaf. Troy saw that it was almost filled with entries in a minute, faded copperplate handwriting.
‘The top,’ Mr Bates cried. ‘Top left-hand. Look at that.’
Troy read: ‘“Crabtree Farm at Little Copplestone in the County of Kent.” Why, it comes from our village!’
‘Ah, ha! So it does. Now, the entries, my dear Mrs Alleyn. The entries.’
They were the recorded births and deaths of a family named Wagstaff, beginning in 1705 and ending in 1870 with the birth of William James Wagstaff. Here they broke off but were followed by three further entries, close together.

Stewart Shakespeare Hadet. Died: Tuesday, 5th April, 1779. 2nd Samuel 1:10.
Naomi Balbus Hadet. Died: Saturday, 13th August, 1779. Jeremiah 50:24.
Peter Rook Hadet. Died: Monday, 12th September, 1779. Ezekiel 7:6.

Troy looked up to find Mr Bates’s gaze fixed on her. ‘And what,’ Mr Bates asked, ‘my dear Mrs Alleyn, do you make of that?’
‘Well,’ she said cautiously, I know about Crabtree Farm. There’s the farm itself, owned by Mr De’ath, and there’s Crabtree House, belonging to Miss Hart, and-yes, I fancy I’ve heard they both belonged originally to a family named Wagstaff.’
‘You are perfectly right. Now! What about the Hadets? What about them?’
‘I’ve never heard of a family named Hadet in Little Copplestone. But-‘
‘Of course you haven’t. For the very good reason that there never have been any Hadets in Little Copplestone.’
‘Perhaps in New Zealand, then?’
‘The dates, my dear Mrs Alleyn, the dates! New Zealand was not colonised in 1779. Look closer. Do you see the sequence of double dots-ditto marks-under the address? Meaning, of course, “also of Crabtree Farm at Little Copplestone in the County of Kent”.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Of course you do. And how right you are. Now! You have noticed that throughout there are biblical references. For the Wagstaffs they are the usual pious offerings. You need not trouble yourself with them. But consult the text awarded to the three Hadets. Just look them up! I’ve put markers.’
He threw himself back with an air of triumph and sipped his sherry. Troy turned over the heavy bulk of pages to the first marker. ‘Second of Samuel, one, ten,’ Mr Bates prompted, closing his eyes.
The verse had been faintly underlined.
‘”So I stood upon him,”’ Troy read,’ “and slew him.”’
‘That’s Stewart Shakespeare Hadet’s valedictory,’ said Mr Bates. ‘Next!’
The next was at the fiftieth chapter of Jeremiah, verse twenty-four: ‘”I have laid a snare for thee and thou are taken.”’
Troy looked at Mr Bates. His eyes were still closed and he was smiling faintly.
That was Naomi Balbus Hadet,’ he said. ‘Now for Peter Rook Hadet. Ezekiel, seven, six.’
The pages flopped back to the last marker.
‘”An end is come, the end is come: it watcheth for thee; behold it is come.”’
Troy shut the Bible.
‘How very unpleasant,’ she said.
‘And how very intriguing, don’t you think?’ And when she didn’t answer, ‘Quite up your husband’s street, it seemed to me.’
‘I’m afraid,’ Troy said, ‘that even Rory’s investigations don’t go back to 1779.’
‘What a pity!’ Mr Bates cried gaily.
‘Do I gather that you conclude from all this that there was dirty work among the Hadets in 1779?’
‘I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. Dying to. Thank you, I should enjoy another glass. Delicious!’
He had settled down so cosily and seemed to be enjoying himself so much that Troy was constrained to ask him to stay to lunch.
‘Miss Hart’s coming,’ she said. ‘She’s the one who bought Crabtree House from the Wagstaffs. If there’s any gossip to be picked up in Copplestone, Miss Hart’s the one for it. She’s coming about a painting she wants me to donate to the Harvest Festival raffle.’
Mr Bates was greatly excited. ‘Who knows!’ he cried. ‘A Wagstaff in the hand may be worth two Hadets in the bush. I am your slave forever, my dear Mrs Alleyn!’

Miss Hart was a lady of perhaps sixty-seven years. On meeting Mr Bates she seemed to imply that some explanation should be advanced for Troy receiving a gentleman caller in her husband’s absence. When the Bible was produced, she immediately accepted it in this light, glanced with professional expertise at the inscription and fastened on the Wagstaffs.
‘No doubt,’ said Miss Hart, ‘it was their family Bible and much good it did them. A most eccentric lot they were. Very unsound. Very unsound, indeed. Especially Old Jimmy.’
‘Who,’ Mr Bates asked greedily, ‘was Old Jimmy?’
Miss Hart jabbed her forefinger at the last of the Wagstaff entries. ‘William James Wagstaff. Born 1870. And died, although it doesn’t say so, in April, 1921. Nobody was left to complete the entry, of course. Unless you count the niece, which I don’t. Baggage, if ever I saw one.’
‘The niece?’
‘Fanny Wagstaff. Orphan. Old Jimmy brought her up. Dragged would be the better word. Drunken old reprobate he was and he came to a drunkard’s end. They said he beat her and I daresay she needed it.’ Miss Hart lowered her voice to a whisper and confided in Troy. ‘Not a nice girl. You know what I mean.’
Troy, feeling it was expected of her, nodded portentously.
‘A drunken end, did you say?’ prompted Mr Bates.
‘Certainly. On a Saturday night after Market. Fell through the top-landing stair rail in his nightshirt and split his skull on the flagstoned hall.’
‘And your father bought it, then, after Old Jimmy died?’ Troy ventured.
‘Bought the house and garden. Richard De’ath took the farm. He’d been after it for years-wanted it to round off his own place. He and Old Jimmy were at daggers-drawn over that business. And, of course, Richard being an atheist, over the Seven Seals.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Mr Bates asked.
‘Blasphemous!’ Miss Hart shouted. ‘That’s what it was, rank blasphemy. It was a sect that Wagstaff founded. If the Rector had known his business he’d have had him excommunicated for it.’
Miss Hart was prevented from elaborating this theory by the appearance at the window of an enormous woman, stuffily encased in black, with a face like a full moon.
‘Anybody at home?’ the newcomer playfully chanted. ‘Telegram for a lucky girl! Come and get it!’
It was Mrs Simpson, the village postmistress. Miss Hart said, ‘Well, really!’ and gave an acid laugh.
‘Sorry, I’m sure,’ said Mrs Simpson, staring at the Bible which lay under her nose on the window seat. ‘I didn’t realise there was company. Thought I’d pop it in as I was passing.’
Troy read the telegram while Mrs Simpson, panting, sank heavily on the window ledge and eyed Mr Bates, who had drawn back in confusion. ‘I’m no good in the heat,’ she told him. ‘Slays me.’
‘Thank you so much, Mrs Simpson,’ Troy said. ‘No answer.’
‘Righty-ho. Cheerie-bye,’ said Mrs Simpson and with another stare at Mr Bates and the Bible, and a derisive grin at Miss Hart, she waddled away.
‘It’s from Rory,’ Troy said. ‘He’ll be home on Sunday evening.’
‘As that woman will no doubt inform the village,’ Miss Hart pronounced. ‘A busybody of the first water and ought to be taught her place. Did you ever!’
She fulminated throughout luncheon and it was with difficulty that Troy and Mr Bates persuaded her to finish her story of the last of the Wagstaffs. It appeared that Old Jimmy had died intestate, his niece succeeding. She had at once announced her intention of selling everything and had left the district to pursue, Miss Hart suggested, a life of freedom, no doubt in London or even in Paris. Miss Hart wouldn’t, and didn’t want to know. On the subject of the Hadets, however, she was uninformed and showed no inclination to look up the marked Bible references attached to them.
After luncheon Troy showed Miss Hart three of her paintings, any one of which would have commanded a high price at an exhibition of contemporary art, and Miss Hart chose the one that in her own phrase, really did look like something. She insisted that Troy and Mr Bates accompany her to the parish hall where Mr Bates would meet the Rector, an authority on village folklore. Troy in person must hand over her painting to be raffled.
Troy would have declined this honour if Mr Bates had not retired behind Miss Hart and made a series of beseeching gestures and grimaces. They set out therefore in Miss Hart’s car which was crammed with vegetables for the Harvest Festival decorations.
‘And if the woman Simpson thinks she’s going to hog the lectern with her pumpkins,’ said Miss Hart, ‘she’s in for a shock. Hah!’

St Cuthbert’s was an ancient parish church round whose flanks the tiny village nestled. Its tower, an immensely high one, was said to be unique. Near by was the parish hall where Miss Hart pulled up with a masterful jerk.
Troy and Mr Bates helped her unload some of her lesser marrows to be offered for sale within. They were observed by a truculent-looking man in tweeds who grinned at Miss Hart. ‘Burnt offerings,’ he jeered, ‘for the tribal gods, I perceive.’ It was Mr Richard De’ath, the atheist. Miss Hart cut him dead and led the way into the hall.
Here they found the Rector, with a crimson-faced elderly man and a clutch of ladies engaged in preparing for the morrow’s sale.
The Rector was a thin gentle person, obviously frightened of Miss Hart and timidly delighted by Troy. On being shown the Bible he became excited and dived at once into the story of Old Jimmy Wagstaff.
‘Intemperate, I’m afraid, in everything,’ sighed the Rector. ‘Indeed, it would not be too much to say that he both preached and drank hellfire. He did preach, on Saturday nights at the crossroads outside the Star and Garter. Drunken, blasphemous nonsense it was and although he used to talk about his followers, the only one he could claim was his niece, Fanny, who was probably too much under his thumb to refuse him.’
‘Edward Pilbrow,’ Miss Hart announced, jerking her head at the elderly man who had come quite close to them. ‘Drowned him with his bell. They had a fight over it. Deaf as a post,’ she added, catching sight of Mr Bates’s startled expression. ‘He’s the Verger now. And the town crier.’
‘What!’ Mr Bates exclaimed.
‘Oh, yes,’ the Rector explained. ‘The village is endowed with a town crier.’ He went over to Mr Pilbrow, who at once cupped his hand round his ear. The Rector yelled into it.
‘When did you start crying, Edward?’
‘Twenty-ninth September, ‘twenty-one,’ Mr Pilbrow roared back.
‘I thought so.’
There was something in their manner that made it difficult to remember, Troy thought, that they were talking about events that were almost fifty years back in the past. Even the year 1779 evidently seemed to them to be not so long ago, but, alas, none of them knew of any Hadets.
‘By all means,’ the Rector invited Mr Bates, ‘consult the church records, but I can assure you-no Hadets. Never any Hadets.’
Troy saw an expression of extreme obstinacy settle round Mr Bates’s mouth.
The Rector invited him to look at the church and as they both seemed to expect Troy to tag along, she did so. In the lane they once more encountered Mr Richard De’ath, out of whose pocket protruded a paper-wrapped bottle. He touched his cap to Troy and glared at the Rector, who turned pink and said, ‘Afternoon, De’ath,’ and hurried on.
Mr Bates whispered imploringly to Troy, ‘Would you mind? I do so want to have a word-‘ and she was obliged to introduce him. It was not a successful encounter. Mr Bates no sooner broached the topic of his Bible, which he still carried, than Mr De’ath burst into an alcoholic diatribe against superstition, and on the mention of Old Jimmy Wagstaff, worked himself up into such a state of reminiscent fury that Mr Bates was glad to hurry away with Troy.
They overtook the Rector in the churchyard, now bathed in the golden opulence of an already westering sun.
‘There they all lie,’ the Rector said, waving a fatherly hand at the company of headstones. ‘All your Wagstaffs, right back to the sixteenth century. But no Hadets, Mr Bates, I assure you.’
They stood looking up at the spire. Pigeons flew in and out of a balcony far above their heads. At their feet was a little flagged area edged by a low coping. Mr Bates stepped forward and the Rector laid a hand on his arm.
‘Not there,’ he said. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Don’t!’ bellowed Mr Pilbrow from the rear. ‘Don’t you set foot on them bloody stones, mister.’
Mr Bates backed away.
‘Edward’s not swearing,’ the Rector mildly explained. ‘He is to be taken, alas, literally. A sad and dreadful story, Mr Bates.’
‘Indeed?’ Mr Bates asked eagerly.
‘Indeed, yes. Some time ago, in the very year we have been discussing-1921, you know-one of our girls, a very beautiful girl she was, named Ruth Wall, fell from the balcony of the tower and was, of course, killed. She used to go up there to feed the pigeons and it was thought that in leaning over the low balustrade she overbalanced.’
‘Ah!’ Mr Pilbrow roared with considerable relish, evidently guessing the purport of the Rector’s speech. ‘Terrible, terrible! And ‘er sweetheart after ‘er, too. Terrible!’
‘Oh, no!’ Troy protested.
The Rector made a dabbing gesture to subdue Mr Pilbrow. ‘I wish he wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘Yes. It was a few days later. A lad called Simon Castle. They were to be married. People said it must be suicide but-it may have been wrong of me-I couldn’t bring myself-in short, he lies beside her over there. If you would care to look.’
For a minute or two they stood before the headstones.
‘Ruth Wall. Spinster of this Parish. 1903-21. I will extend peace to her like river.’
‘Simon Castle. Bachelor of this Parish. 1900-21. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes’
The afternoon having by now worn on, and the others having excused themselves, Mr Bates remained alone in the churchyard, clutching his Bible and staring at the headstones. The light of the hunter’s zeal still gleamed in his eyes.

Troy didn’t see Mr Bates again until Sunday night service when, on her way up the aisle, she passed him, sitting in the rearmost pew. She was amused to observe that his gigantic Bible was under the seat.
‘We plow the fields,’ sang the choir, ‘and scatter-‘ Mrs Simpson roared away on the organ, the smell of assorted greengrocery rising like some humble incense. Everybody in Little Copplestone except Mr Richard De’ath was there for the Harvest Festival. At last the Rector stepped over Miss Hart’s biggest pumpkin and ascended the pulpit,
Edward Pilbrow switched off all the lights except one and they settled down for the sermon.
‘A sower went forth to sow,’ announced the Rector. He spoke simply and well but somehow Troy’s attention wandered. She found herself wondering where, through the centuries, the succeeding generations of Wagstaffs had sat until Old Jimmy took to his freakish practices, and whether Ruth Wall and Simon Castle, poor things, had shared the same hymnbook and held hands during the sermon; and whether, after all, Stewart Shakespeare Hadet and Peter Rook Hadet had not, in 1779, occupied some dark corner of the church and been unaccountably forgotten.
Here we are, Troy thought drowsily, and there, outside in the churchyard, are all the others going back and back-
She saw a girl, bright in the evening sunlight, reach from a balcony towards a multitude of wings. She was falling-dreadfully-into nothingness. Troy woke with a sickening jerk.
‘-on stony ground,’ the Rector was saying. Troy listened guiltily to the rest of the sermon.

Mr Bates emerged on the balcony. He laid his Bible on the coping and looked at the moonlit tree tops and the churchyard so dreadfully far below. He heard someone coming up the stairway. Torchlight danced on the door jamb.
‘You were quick,’ said the visitor.
‘I am all eagerness and, I confess, puzzlement.’
‘It had to be here, on the spot. If you really want to find out-‘
‘But I do, I do!’
‘We haven’t much time. You’ve brought the Bible?’
‘You particularly asked-‘
‘If you’d open it at Ezekiel, chapter twelve. I’ll shine my torch.’
Mr Bates opened the Bible.
‘The thirteenth verse. There!’
Mr Bates leaned forward. The Bible tipped and moved.
‘Look out!’ the voice urged.
M r Bates was scarcely aware of the thrust. He felt the page tear as the book sank under his hands. The last thing he heard was the beating of a multitude of wings.

‘-and for evermore,’ said the Rector in a changed voice, facing east. The congregation got to its feet. He announced the last hymn. Mrs Simpson made a preliminary rumble and Troy groped in her pocket for the collection plate. Presently they all filed out into the autumnal moonlight.
It was coldish in the churchyard. People stood about in groups. One or two had already moved through the lychgate. Troy heard a voice, which she recognised as that of Mr De’ath. ‘I suppose,’ it jeered, ‘you all know you’ve been assisting at a fertility rite.’
‘Drunk as usual, Dick De’ath,’ somebody returned without rancour. There was a general laugh.
They had all begun to move away when, from the shadows at the base of the church tower, there arose a great cry. They stood, transfixed, turned toward the voice.
Out of the shadows came the Rector in his cassock. When Troy saw his face she thought he must be ill and went to him.
‘No, no!’ he said. ‘Not a woman! Edward! Where’s Edward Pilbrow?’
Behind him, at the foot of the tower, was a pool of darkness; but Troy, having come closer, could see within it a figure, broken like a puppet on the flagstones. An eddy of night air stole round the church and fluttered a page of the giant Bible that lay pinned beneath the head.

It was nine o’clock when Troy heard the car pull up outside the cottage. She saw her husband coming up the path and ran to meet him, as if they had been parted for months.
He said, ‘This is mighty gratifying!’ And then, ‘Hullo, my love. What’s the matter?’
As she tumbled out her story, filled with relief at telling him, a large man with uncommonly bright eyes came up behind them.
‘Listen to this, Fox,’ Roderick Alleyn said. ‘We’re in demand, it seems.’ He put his arm through Troy’s and closed his hand round hers. ‘Let’s go indoors, shall we? Here’s Fox, darling, come for a nice bucolic rest. Can we give him a bed?’
Troy pulled herself together and greeted Inspector Fox. Presently she was able to give them a coherent account of the evening’s tragedy. When she finished, Alleyn said, ‘Poor little Bates. He was a nice little bloke.’ He put his hand on Troy’s. ‘You need a drink,’ he said, ‘and so, by the way, do we.’
While he was getting the drinks he asked quite casually, ‘You’ve had a shock and a beastly one at that, but there’s something else, isn’t there?’
‘Yes,’ Troy swallowed hard, ‘there is. They’re all saying it’s an accident.’
‘Yes?’
‘And, Rory, I don’t think it is.’
Mr Fox cleared his throat. ‘Fancy,’ he said.
‘Suicide?’ Alleyn suggested, bringing her drink to her.
‘No. Certainly not.’
‘A bit of rough stuff, then?’
‘You sound as if you’re asking about the sort of weather we’ve been having.’
‘Well darling, you don’t expect Fox and me to go into hysterics. Why not an accident?’
‘He knew all about the other accidents, he knew it was dangerous. And then the oddness of it, Rory. To leave the Harvest Festival service and climb the tower in the dark, carrying that enormous Bible!’
‘And he was hell-bent on tracing these Hadets?’
‘Yes. He kept saying you’d be interested. He actually brought a copy of entries for you.’
‘Have you got it?’
She found it for him. ‘The selected texts,’ he said, ‘are pretty rum, aren’t they, Br’er Fox?’ and handed it over.
‘Very vindictive,’ said Mr Fox.
‘Mr Bates thought it was in your line,’ Troy said.
‘The devil he did! What’s been done about this?’
‘The village policeman was in the church. They sent for the doctor. And-well, you see, Mr Bates had talked a lot about you and they hope you’ll be able to tell them something about him-whom they should get in touch with and so on.’
‘Have they moved him?’
‘They weren’t going to until the doctor had seen him.’
Alleyn pulled his wife’s ear and looked at Fox. ‘Do you fancy a stroll through the village, Foxkin?’
‘There’s a lovely moon,’ Fox said bitterly and got to his feet.

The moon was high in the heaven when they came to the base of the tower and it shone on a group of four men-the Rector, Richard De’ath, Edward Pilbrow, and Sergeant Botting, the village constable. When they saw Alleyn and Fox, they separated and revealed a fifth, who was kneeling by the body of Timothy Bates.
‘Kind of you to come,’ the Rector said, shaking hands with Alleyn. ‘And a great relief to all of us.’
Their manner indicated that Alleyn’s arrival would remove a sense of personal responsibility. ‘If you’d like to have a look-?’ the doctor said.
The broken body lay huddled on its side. The head rested on the open Bible. The right hand, rigid in cadaveric spasm, clutched a torn page. Alleyn knelt and Fox came closer with the torch. At the top of the page Alleyn saw the word Ezekiel and a little farther down, Chapter Twelve.
Using the tip of his finger Alleyn straightened the page. ‘Look,’ he said, and pointed to the thirteenth verse. ‘”My net also will I spread upon him and he shall be taken in my snare.”’
The words had been faintly underlined in mauve.
Alleyn stood up and looked round the circle of faces.
‘Well,’ the doctor said, ‘we’d better see about moving him.’
Alleyn said, ‘I don’t think he should be moved just yet.’
‘Not!’ the Rector cried out. ‘But surely-to leave him like this-I mean, after this terrible accident-‘
‘It has yet to be proved,’ Alleyn said, ‘that it was an accident.’
There was a sharp sound from Richard De’ath.
‘-and I fancy,’ Alleyn went on, glancing at De’ath, ‘that it’s going to take quite a lot of proving.’

After that, events, as Fox observed with resignation, took the course that was to be expected. The local Superintendent said that under the circumstances it would be silly not to ask Alleyn to carry on, the Chief Constable agreed, and appropriate instructions came through from Scotland Yard. The rest of the night was spent in routine procedure. The body having been photographed and the Bible set aside for fingerprinting, both were removed and arrangements put in hand for the inquest.
At dawn Alleyn and Fox climbed the tower. The winding stair brought them to an extremely narrow doorway through which they saw the countryside lying vaporous in the faint light. Fox was about to go through to the balcony when Alleyn stopped him and pointed to the door jambs. They were covered with a growth of stonecrop.
About three feet from the floor this had been brushed off over a space of perhaps four inches and fragments of the microscopic plant hung from the scars. From among these, on either side, Alleyn removed morsels of dark-coloured thread. ‘And here,’ he sighed, ‘as sure as fate, we go again. O Lord, O Lord!’
They stepped through to the balcony and there was a sudden whirr and beating of wings as a company of pigeons flew out of the tower. The balcony was narrow and the balustrade indeed very low. ‘If there’s any looking over,’ Alleyn said, ‘you, my dear Foxkin, may do it.’
Nevertheless he leaned over the balustrade and presently knelt beside it. ‘Look at this. Bates rested the open Bible here-blow me down flat if he didn’t! There’s a powder of leather where it scraped on the stone and a fragment where it tore. It must have been moved-outward. Now, why, why?
‘Shoved it accidentally with his knees, then made a grab and overbalanced?’
‘But why put the open Bible there? To read by moonlight? “My net also will I spread upon him and he shall be taken in my snare.” Are you going to tell me he underlined it and then dived overboard?’
‘I’m not going to tell you anything,’ Fox grunted and then: ‘That old chap Edward Pilbrow’s down below swabbing the stones. He looks like a beetle.’
‘Let him look like a rhinoceros if he wants to, but for the love of Mike don’t leer over the edge-you give me the willies. Here, let’s pick this stuff up before it blows away.’
They salvaged the scraps of leather and put them in an envelope. Since there was nothing more to do, they went down and out through the vestry and so home to breakfast.
‘Darling,’ Alleyn told his wife, ‘you’ve landed us with a snorter.’
‘Then you do think-?’
‘There’s a certain degree of fishiness. Now, see here, wouldn’t somebody have noticed little Bates get up and go out? I know he sat all alone on the back bench, but wasn’t there someone?’
‘The Rector?’
‘No, I asked him. Too intent on his sermon, it seems.’
‘Mrs Simpson? If she looks through her little red curtain she faces the nave.’
‘We’d better call on her, Fox. I’ll take the opportunity to send a couple of cables to New Zealand. She’s fat, jolly, keeps the shop-cum-Post Office, and is supposed to read all the postcards. Just your cup of tea. You’re dynamite with postmistresses. Away we go.’

Mrs Simpson sat behind her counter doing a crossword puzzle and refreshing herself with liquorice. She welcomed Alleyn with enthusiasm. He introduced Fox and then he retired to a corner to write out his cables.
‘What a catastrophe!’ Mrs Simpson said, plunging straight into the tragedy. ‘Shocking! As nice a little gentleman as you’d wish to meet, Mr Fox. Typical New Zealander. Pick him a mile away and a friend of Mr Alleyn’s, I’m told, and if I’ve said it once I’ve said it a hundred times, Mr Fox, they ought to have put something up to prevent it. Wire netting or a bit of ironwork; but, no, they let it go on from year to year and now see what’s happened-history repeating itself and giving the village a bad name. Terrible!’
Fox bought a packet of tobacco from Mrs Simpson and paid her a number of compliments on the layout of her shop, modulating from there into an appreciation of the village. He said that one always found such pleasant company in small communities. Mrs Simpson was impressed and offered him a piece of liquorice.
‘As for pleasant company,’ she chuckled, ‘that’s as may be, though by and large I suppose I mustn’t grumble. I’m a cockney and a stranger here myself, Mr Fox. Only twenty-four years and that doesn’t go for anything with this lot.’
‘Ah,’ Fox said, ‘then you wouldn’t recollect the former tragedies. Though to be sure,’ he added, ‘you wouldn’t do that in any case, being much too young, if you’ll excuse the liberty, Mrs Simpson.’
After this classic opening Alleyn was not surprised to hear Mrs Simpson embark on a retrospective survey of life in Little Copplestone. She was particularly lively on Miss Hart, who, she hinted, had had her eye on Mr Richard De’ath for many a long day.
‘As far back as when Old Jimmy Wagstaff died, which was why she was so set on getting the next-door house; but Mr De’ath never looked at anybody except Ruth Wall, and her head-over-heels in love with young Castle, which together with her falling to her destruction when feeding pigeons led Mr De’ath to forsake religion and take to drink, which he has done something cruel ever since.
They do say he’s got a terrible temper, Mr Fox, and it’s well known he give Old Jimmy Wagstaff a thrashing on account of straying cattle, and threatened young Castle, saying if he couldn’t have Ruth, nobody else would, but fair’s fair and personally I’ve never seen him anything but nice mannered, drunk or sober. Speak as you find’s my motto and always has been, but these old maids, when they take a fancy they get it pitiful hard. You wouldn’t know a word of nine letters meaning “pale-faced lure like a sprat in fishy story”, would you?’
Fox was speechless, but Alleyn, emerging with his cables, suggested ‘whitebait’.
‘Correct!’ shouted Mrs Simpson. ‘Fits like a glove. Although it’s not a bit like a sprat and a quarter the size. Cheating, I call it. Still, it fits.’ She licked her indelible pencil and triumphantly added it to her crossword.
They managed to lead her back to Timothy Bates. Fox, professing a passionate interest in organ music, was able to extract from her that when the Rector began his sermon she had in fact dimly observed someone move out of the back bench and through the doors. ‘He must have walked round the church and in through the vestry and little did I think he was going to his death,’ Mrs Simpson said with considerable relish and a sigh like an earthquake.
‘You didn’t happen to hear him in the vestry?’ Fox ventured, but it appeared that the door from the vestry into the organ loft was shut, and Mrs Simpson, having settled herself to enjoy the sermon with, as she shamelessly admitted, a bag of chocolates, was not in a position to notice.
Alleyn gave her his two cables: the first to Timothy Bates’s partner in New Zealand and the second to one of his own colleagues in that country asking for any available information about relatives of the late William James Wagstaff of Little Copplestone, Kent, possibly resident in New Zealand after 1921, and of any persons of the name of Peter Rook Hadet or Naomi Balbus Hadet.
Mrs Simpson agitatedly checked over the cables, professional etiquette and burning curiosity struggling together in her enormous bosom. She restrained herself, however, merely observing that an event of this sort set you thinking, didn’t it?
‘And no doubt,’ Alleyn said as they walked up the lane, ‘she’ll be telling her customers that the next stop’s bloodhounds and manacles.’
‘Quite a tidy armful of lady, isn’t she, Mr Alleyn?’ Fox calmly rejoined.

The inquest was at ten-twenty in the smoking-room of the Star and Garter. With half an hour in hand, Alleyn and Fox visited the churchyard. Alleyn gave particular attention to the headstones of Old Jimmy Wagstaff, Ruth Wall, and Simon Castle. ‘No mention of the month or day,’ he said. And after a moment: ‘I wonder. We must ask the Rector.’
‘No need to ask the Rector,’ said a voice behind them. It was Miss Hart. She must have come soundlessly across the soft turf. Her air was truculent. ‘Though why,’ she said, ‘it should be of interest, I’m sure I don’t know. Ruth Wall died on August thirteenth, 1921. It was a Saturday.’
‘You’ve a remarkable memory,’ Alleyn observed.
‘Not as good as it sounds. That Saturday afternoon I came to do the flowers in the church. I found her and I’m not likely ever to forget it. Young Castle went the same way almost a month later. September twelfth. In my opinion there was never a more glaring case of suicide. I believe,’ Miss Hart said harshly, ‘in facing facts.’
‘She was a beautiful girl, wasn’t she?’
‘I’m no judge of beauty. She set the men by the ears. He was a fine-looking young fellow. Fanny Wagstaff did her best to get him.’
‘Had Ruth Wall,’ Alleyn asked, ‘other admirers?’
Miss Hart didn’t answer and he turned to her. Her face was blotted with an unlovely flush. ‘She ruined two men’s lives, if you want to know. Castle and Richard De’ath,’ said Miss Hart. She turned on her heel and without another word marched away.
‘September twelfth,’ Alleyn murmured. ‘That would be a Monday, Br’er Fox.’
‘So it would,’ Fox agreed, after a short calculation, ‘so it would. Quite a coincidence.’
‘Or not, as the case may be. I’m going to take a gamble on this one. Come on.’
They left the churchyard and walked down the lane, overtaking Edward Pilbrow on the way. He was wearing his town crier’s coat and hat and carrying his bell by the clapper. He manifested great excitement when he saw them.
‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘What’s this I hear? Murder’s the game, is it? What a go! Come on, gents, let’s have it. Did ‘e fall or was ‘e pushed? Hor, hor, hor! Come on.’
‘Not until after the inquest,’ Alleyn shouted.
‘Do we get a look at the body?’
‘Shut up,’ Mr Fox bellowed suddenly.
‘I got to know, haven’t I? It’ll be the smartest bit of crying I ever done, this will! I reckon I might get on the telly with this. “Town crier tells old-world village death stalks the churchyard.” Hor, hor, hor!’
‘Let us,’ Alleyn whispered, ‘leave this horrible old man.’
They quickened their stride and arrived at the pub, to be met with covert glances and dead silence.

The smoking-room was crowded for the inquest. Everybody was there, including Mrs Simpson who sat in the back row with her candies and her crossword puzzle. It went through very quickly. The Rector deposed to finding the body. Richard De’ath, sober and less truculent than usual, was questioned as to his sojourn outside the churchyard and said he’d noticed nothing unusual apart from hearing a disturbance among the pigeons roosting in the balcony. From where he stood, he said, he couldn’t see the face of the tower.
An open verdict was recorded.
Alleyn had invited the Rector, Miss Hart, Mrs Simpson, Richard De’ath, and reluctantly, Edward Pilbrow, to join him in the parlour and had arranged with the landlord that nobody else would be admitted. The public bar, as a result, drove a roaring trade.
When they had all been served and the hatch closed, Alleyn walked into the middle of the room and raised his hand. It was the slightest of gestures but it secured their attention.
He said, ‘I think you must all realise that we are not satisfied this was an accident. The evidence against accident has been collected piecemeal from the persons in this room and I am going to put it before you. If I go wrong I want you to correct me. I ask you to do this with absolute frankness, even if you are obliged to implicate someone who you would say was the last person in the world to be capable of a crime of violence.’
He waited. Pilbrow, who had come very close, had his ear cupped in his hand. The Rector looked vaguely horrified. Richard De’ath suddenly gulped down his double whisky. Miss Hart coughed over her lemonade and Mrs Simpson avidly popped a peppermint cream in her mouth and took a swig of her port-and-raspberry.
Alleyn nodded to Fox, who laid Mr Bates’s Bible, open at the flyleaf, on the table before him.
‘The case,’ Alleyn said, ‘hinges on this book. You have all seen the entries. I remind you of the recorded deaths in 1779 of the three Hadets-Stewart Shakespeare, Naomi Balbus, and Peter Rook. To each of these is attached a biblical text suggesting that they met their death by violence. There have never been any Hadets in this village and the days of the week are wrong for the given dates. They are right, however, for the year 1921 and they fit the deaths, all by falling from a height, of William Wagstaff, Ruth Wall, and Simon Castle.
‘By analogy the Christian names agree. William suggests Shakespeare. Naomi-Ruth; Balbus-a wall. Simon-Peter; and a Rook is a Castle in chess. And Hadet,’ Alleyn said without emphasis, ‘is an anagram of Death.’
‘Balderdash!’ Miss Hart cried out in an unrecognisable voice.
‘No it’s not,’ said Mrs Simpson. ‘It’s jolly good crossword stuff.’
‘Wicked balderdash. Richard!’
De’ath said, ‘Be quiet. Let him go on.’
‘We believe,’ Alleyn said, ‘that these three people met their deaths by one hand. Motive is a secondary consideration, but it is present in several instances, predominantly in one. Who had cause to wish the death of these three people? Someone whom old Wagstaff had bullied and to whom he had left his money and who killed him for it. Someone who was infatuated with Simon Castle and bitterly jealous of Ruth Wall. Someone who hoped, as an heiress, to win Castle for herself and who, failing, was determined nobody else should have him. Wagstaff’s orphaned niece-Fanny Wagstaff.’
There were cries of relief from All but one of his hearers. He went on. ‘Fanny Wagstaff sold everything, disappeared, and was never heard of again in the village. But twenty-four years later she returned, and has remained here ever since.’
A glass crashed to the floor and a chair overturned as the vast bulk of the postmistress rose to confront him.
‘Lies! Lies!’ screamed Mrs Simpson.
‘Did you sell everything again, before leaving New Zealand?’ he asked as Fox moved forward. ‘Including the Bible, Miss Wagstaff?’

‘But,’ Troy said, ‘how could you be so sure?’
‘She was the only one who could leave her place in the church unobserved. She was the only one fat enough to rub her hips against the narrow door jambs. She uses an indelible pencil. We presume she arranged to meet Bates on the balcony, giving a cock-and-bull promise to tell him something nobody else knew about the Hadets. She indicated the text with her pencil, gave the Bible a shove, and, as he leant out to grab it, tipped him over the edge.
‘In talking about 1921 she forgot herself and described the events as if she had been there. She called Bates a typical New Zealander but gave herself out to be a Londoner. She said whitebait are only a quarter of the size of sprats. New Zealand whitebait are-English whitebait are about the same size.
‘And as we’ve now discovered, she didn’t send my cables. Of course she thought poor little Bates was hot on her tracks, especially when she learned that he’d come here to see me. She’s got the kind of crossword-puzzle mind that would think up the biblical clues, and would get no end of a kick in writing them in. She’s overwhelmingly conceited and vindictive.’
‘Still-‘
‘I know. Not good enough if we’d played the waiting game. But good enough to try shock tactics. We caught her off her guard and she cracked up.’
‘Not,’ Mr Fox said, ‘a nice type of woman.’
Alleyn strolled to the gate and looked up the lane to the church. The spire shone golden in the evening sun.
‘The Rector,’ Alleyn said, ‘tells me he’s going to do something about the balcony.’
‘Mrs Simpson, nee Wagstaff,’ Fox remarked, ‘suggested wire netting.’
‘And she ought to know,’ Alleyn said and turned back to the cottage.