How to Get Away with Myrtle by Elizabeth C. Bunce

Author:Elizabeth C. Bunce
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2020-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Perverting the Course of Justice

Polstead, Suffolk: Site of the 1827 murder of Maria Marten. Little remains of the notorious “Red Barn” where her body was discovered, having been largely destroyed by souvenir hunters, but artifacts from killer Robert Corder (including death mask and a book bound supposedly in his skin) are on view at a local hospital.

—Hardcastle’s Practical Travel Companion

I had to hand it to Aunt Helena. She didn’t crack.

The constable wouldn’t let us in while Inspector Arkwright was questioning her, so we spent the next three hours in the Eelscombe police station, if you could call it that. It was an old country gaolhouse,* barely more than a dungeon of weepy stone walls, rusty iron bars for windows, and damp. Big new desks, filing cabinets, and a typewriter had been moved in to modernize the space, but they only made the rest seem even older. The gas lamps were fitted into torches. Miss Judson and I waited on a bench carved from a stone alcove, and I half expected an Inquisitor to come marching out with a black hood and thumbscrews.

“The Inquisition was Spain,” Miss Judson mur­mured.

“The Tudors then. Who did they have?”

“Hush.”

Poor Constable Hoskiss twitched about nervously, worrying a teakettle suspended in the fireplace. He’d been all but usurped from his own office; the stacks of paperwork on his desk surely belonged to Inspector Arkwright, leaving the constable like an old rocking chair someone had stuck up in the attic and forgotten about.

Outside, it had started to rain, and the ducks were lying in wait like an angry mob. I could hear their sinister quacking even through the thick stone walls.

None of it felt real. Aunt Helena, arrested for murder? It was too fanciful to be believed.

Constable Hoskiss managed to produce three mismatched cups of steaming tea and a tin of biscuits. “Me sister’s best,” he offered gently. “Jam-filled.”

Miss Judson accepted them graciously. “When do you suppose we might be allowed to see Miss Hardcastle?” Her voice was pitched exactly on the edge between question and command, and it made the constable fidget.

“Well, erm, that’s not up to me, I’m afraid, Miss.”

“But it is,” I said, encouragingly. “Inspector Arkwright’s jurisdiction extends only to the premises and properties of Eastern Coastal Railways—unless this station has been officially impressed for their investigation. Has it?”

“Er—”

“So you have control over prisoners in your jail, Constable. And English law requires that a prisoner be allowed access to legal counsel.”

“Er—”

“Or the clergy,” I added helpfully.

Miss Judson gave the constable a shattering smile and rose to her feet. I joined her. “Well, there you go, Constable,” she said. “We won’t take up much of your time.” Holding her new sketchbook as officially as possible, she brushed past him, straight back to the barred interior door, before Constable Hoskiss entirely understood what was happening.

“But the Inspector—” he protested, hastening to catch up.

“Can eat my hat,” invited Miss Judson, bobbing the same to the man in question, who had just appeared in the threshold, the old door groaning open like it was exhausted.

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