Murder in the Mill Race

E. C. R. Lorac

Description

A woman is found dead one morning, in the Mill Race, at the exact place where a young woman drowned a year previously. Are the two cases interlinked? The local police are up against it, as the local villagers are determined to say nothing, so the case is soon passed to Inspector Macdonald of Scotland Yard. Half of his job is convincing the locals to reveal what they know, to speak justly for the dead, an alternative title for the book itself. Eventually he begins to reap the rewards, but with locals not above fabricating evidence for a quiet life, will he discover who the killer is?

Sujets

• Fiction
• Mystery
• Detective

Informations

• Publié par: Rare Treasure Editions
• Date de parution: 11 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781774644386
• Langue: English

Extrait

Murder in the Mill Race
by E. C. R. Lorac

First published in 1952
This edition published by Rare Treasures
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Murder in the Mill Race

by E. C. R. Lorac
Chapter I
1
Milham Prior is a place-name familiar to motorists who take the shortest route from Taunton to Barnsford, on the north Devon coast.It is seldom anything more than a place-name, coupled to a visualisation of a rather tall church tower, and a long hill which you can rush in top gear if you have been able to take advantage of the down slope on the other side of the cross roads.It is a good stretch of main road, wide and well engineered, and by the time holiday-makers reach it from the east, they are aware that the Devon coast is not far away, and that they will soon see—and smell—the wide river estuary at Barnsford, where shining sands indicate the delights in store a few miles farther on.
Milham Prior has but little to attract the holiday-making hordes, neither—to do it justice—does it want to attract them.The Milham folk are not at all sorry that their High Street is at right angles to the new main road and not part of it.Milham is a prosperous, self-respecting market town, which caters for the country folk who live in the huge scattered moorland parishes of Milham Prior and Milham in the Moor.Conscious of a long history—it is one of the oldest Parliamentary constituencies—of a reputation for sound and shrewd dealing, Milham Prior is satisfied with its plain stone High Street, its old-fashioned Georgian Inn, and its ancient church (whose interior restoration is only regretted by busybodies from away).
Anne Ferens, sitting in the dining-room of the George Hotel in Milham, looked around her with amused and interested eyes, though most people would have found the room neither amusing nor interesting.It was rather dark, its long windows discreetly curtained and screened: its furniture was heavy mahogany of mid-Victorian date, and its tables had a full complement of enormous cruets.Anne smiled at her husband.“I like it,” she said.“It’s restful.Completely conforming to type without the least element of the incongruous.”
“That’s because you can’t see yourself sitting in it, angel.You look a complete anachronism.The meal, as you say, conformed to type, including the cabbage.The beer’s good—also true to type.” Raymond Ferens studied his wife with eyes that were at once affectionate and worried.“Milham in the Moor . . . It’s a sin and a shame to take you there, Anne.When I think of all those antiques and funnies, not a soul of your own age to amuse you, miles of moorland and Milham Prior for your shopping town.Seeing you now, against this musty background, I’m appalled to think what sort of life I’m taking you to.”
Anne laughed.“How little you really know about me, Ray.We’ve been married for four years, and you still don’t realise that I’m the most adaptable creature on earth.Chameleons also ran.You’d better leave off thinking of me as a sophisticated wench who is snappy at cocktail parties, and watch the emergence of a countrywoman.I shall be debating fat stock prices before the year’s out, and prodding pigs at the market.”
“I’ve no doubt you will,” he said.“You can pick up anybody’s jargon in two-twos—I should know—but how can you be happy away from all the things you value?—intelligent and amusing friends, and the sort of life you have made your own.”
“My good idiot, must I inform you again that I’ve put all my money on one value?” she retorted.“I can be happy anywhere provided I’ve got you.If you’d packed up on me the rest would have been Dead Sea fruit.And do get it into your thick head that I’m not being selfless in saying I want to live in the country.I’m sick to death of cities and soot and slums and factories and occupational diseases.Sick of them.” She drummed on the table with clenched fists.“Come off it, do,” she pleaded.“I took you at your word when I married you.Take me at mine, now.Give me another glass of sherry and let’s drink our own healths—good health and long lives—and no more arguments.”
2
Raymond Ferens was a doctor.Born in 1915, he had qualified in 1939, joined the R.A.M.C., been posted out in the Far East, been taken prisoner by the Japanese and survived the experience.After a few months’ rest, he had taken a partnership in a practice in the industrial midlands and had worked in a Staffordshire mining town.It had been a strenuous practice involving interminable surgeries, a lot of night work and a minimum of free time.In such leisure as he could wrest from the exigencies of occupational diseases, Ferens had tried to continue the specialist work which had fascinated him when he first qualified—the study of asthma and kindred nervous disorders.He went up to London, when he could make the opportunity, to consult with the physicians at his old medical school, and on one of these visits he had met Anne Clements.They had fallen in love and got married without any dilly-dallying.They had been very happy, but excessive work had undermined Ferens’ constitution, already weakened by two years of a Japanese prison camp.He had been ill, on and off, for a year, before Anne persuaded him to take the advice of his colleagues.“Get right out of this and take a country practice,” they said.“You’ll then have a useful life of normal duration.Go on as you’re going now and you’ll have had it in a twelve-month.”
Both Anne and Raymond had favoured the west country, and when they heard of the approaching retirement of an elderly doctor at Milham in the Moor, Anne fairly bullied her husband into investigating possibilities there.The practice covered an enormous sparsely populated area on Exmoor: apart from the driving involved, it was not a heavy job, and the moor fascinated Raymond Ferens.The fact that a good house was offered him was an additional inducement.Anne paid a whirlwind visit to view the house, and after that formalities were concluded with record promptitude, so that by Lady Day, Anne and Raymond had seen their furniture into the pantechnicon, packed themselves into their own car, and had set out to Milham Prior, to spend a night at the George there, since their goods would not be delivered until the following morning.
3
When Raymond Ferens had started enquiries about taking over the practice at Milham in the Moor, one of his first questions had been about a house to live in.Old Dr.Brown, who had been in practice there for over thirty years, did not want to give up his own house, but informed Ferens that the Dower House belonging to the lord of the manor would be available.Ferens decided to go and have a look at it, and he had driven to Milham by himself, telling Anne that he wasn’t going to let her in on it until he had decided if he wanted to take the job on: she could then have her say, a final yes or no, taking house, locality and amenities into consideration and weighing the pros and cons for herself.
Ferens drove to Milham one bitter day in January, when the industrial towns of the Midlands were wretched with sleet drifting down from a drear grey sky and smoke mingling with the sleet in a grimy pall.He drove by Gloucester and Bristol, and once clear of Bristol the snow and sleet had disappeared, the country looked rich and green and Raymond Ferens found his spirits rising.Milham Prior was clear of snow, but a keen wind was blowing: beyond Milham Prior the road rose steadily to the moor, and though the sky was clear the country became whiter and whiter with crisp dry snow.When he had his first glimpse of Milham in the Moor, Ferens thought, “Why, it’s like a French hill town.” The village was built well and truly, on the top of a hill.Its tall church tower stood out in silhouette against the clear saffron of the western sky, and snow-covered cottage roofs were piled up against the church as though they, too, were aspiring heavenwards.It was a lovely sight, but Ferens found himself thinking “Ten miles from anywhere and nothing but the moor beyond, all the way to the sea.”
He had stayed the night with Dr.Brown and been thankful that there was no question of taking over the old man’s house.It was a dark, cold, dreary house, shut in with overgrown shrubberies and tall conifers, auraucarias, Irish yews and cedars pressing almost up to the windows.Brown seemed a very old man to Ferens, and rather a snuffly, grubby old man, but he was clear-headed and businesslike enough.He produced large-scale maps and gave details of the scattered steadings and hamlets and their inhabitants, and eventually spoke of the Dower House.It belonged to Sir James Ridding, who lived at the Manor House.“They’ve been trying to let the Dower House for some time,” said Dr.Brown, “but what with folks not wanting to come to anywhere as remote as this, and the Riddings being fussy about who they let it to, well, it’s still on their hands.I think you’ll be able to make them see reason.The fact is, Sir James and his lady don’t want to be without a doctor in the village.Anyway, you