Tup and Stern and the Skipping Rope Scandal at Tampin's Stern Mystery.
Written by S.
D.
Hudson.
Performed by Stephanie Poppins.
Chapter 10 Conclusion up and sloughed through the window of the General Registry Office.
Steeple Bloodstead was the sort of village that postcard manufacturers dreamed about.
And actual residents complained about in equal measure.
For a village,
This was certainly a very large one.
More like a town,
She mused,
But everyone around called it a village nevertheless.
Nostalgia,
She supposed.
Nobody wanted to admit in the last 10 years it had grown beyond all reasonably sized village proportions.
Although she wasn't sure why.
More murders per square mile than any town or village around.
Steeple bloodshed was known for its scandalous goings-on.
But this was part of its charm,
She thought.
It attracted people from all over.
Those that liked putting it all on red.
Let's face it,
" Tuppence thought to herself.
You're taking a bit of a chance coming here as an outsider.
The death of Malcolm Marshall is testament to that.
The church spire was leaning very slightly to the east.
The council had been monitoring it for 11 years without ever quite doing anything about it.
And there was the duck pond that froze picturesquely in winter and smelled distinctly less picturesque in the summer.
A warm memorial with a fresh wreath every November.
And an argument about who supplied it.
Every October,
And the pub,
Whose landlord had very strong opinions about the correct temperature for a pint of bitter,
And no opinions about anything else whatsoever.
Steeple Bloodstead was in short a place where everybody knew everyone's business,
Largely because everyone's business passed through the same three establishments,
The church,
The pub and the library.
Tup and smiled.
How Mrs Fenwick's gossip had helped her.
There was nothing like a little bit of gossip to oil the wheels as far as her investigations went.
Without Mrs Fenwick,
She'd have had no idea Alfred Moss,
The caretaker,
Was actually Reginald Frimley.
And this was the very reason she was here at the county register office.
The library itself was out the back,
Occupying a squat,
Ivory strangled building that had once been called a chapel of ease.
It still held the habit of hushed reverence.
And kept resolutely eccentric hours,
Open Tuesdays,
Thursdays and every other Saturday,
Subject to Margaret's hip and the weather.
Tappan's felt gloriously at home here.
This was the unofficial parliament of the village.
The place where feuds were adjudicated in whispers by the returns desk.
Where the Women's Institute pinned up notices about jammed competitions next to passive-aggressive reminders about overdue fines.
Even though its shelves contained Victorian sermons.
Comprehensive run of gardening pamphlets and an entire cabinet devoted to parish records.
She was here for the electoral rolls and a century and a half at the steeple bloodstained newspaper that was held on a microfiche machine in the corner.
Tuppence told the man on the desk she was researching her family tree.
It was technically not a lie.
Everyone in Steepleblood stayed with family in one grim,
Gossiping way or another.
And anyway,
He owed her a favor after the unfortunate business with the overdue E.
M.
Forster novels the previous spring.
Maths,
Unfortunately,
Was not his strong suit.
Tuppence Stone had paid a fine much larger than she should have for those.
I'll let you on now,
" he said,
Looking left and right to see who was watching.
Tuppence smiled,
Well aware there was a waiting list.
But aren't favours the currency of village life?
She thought.
Considerably less expensive.
She started with the electoral rolls.
Then the parish records.
Then following a hunch and three custard creams,
The wartime register,
Where an entire coachload of London children had once arrived in steeple bloodstead,
Clutching gas masks and cardboard suitcases,
Their names chalked onto luggage labels and pinned to their lapels as though they were nothing more than parcels.
It hadn't taken long for Tuppence to put two and two together.
Alfred Moss was of a certain age.
There is no doubt about that.
And there it was.
Reginald Frimley,
Age 9,
Evacuated from Bethnal Green.
Billeted along with his younger sister Iris at Steeple Bloodstead.
It was starting to make sense.
St.
Ethelberg's had been requisitioned at the time,
And that was where he ended up.
But what happened to his sister?
Perhaps this was the reason he committed murder.
After all,
Malcolm Marshall had clearly discovered the truth.
But what exactly was the truth?
Why did Reginald frimly have to hide who he was?
And did Malcolm Marshall have any connection to him?
People didn't kill each other for no reason at all.
Love.
Probably wasn't that revenge.
It might be,
Perhaps they were connected somehow.
She checked the census records,
The council housing files.
And there it was,
A heartbreaking letter,
One amongst many,
Kept for all the investigations that went on at the time for missing persons.
It was from a Miss Iris Frimley of Bethnal Green,
Hidden at the bottom of a pile.
Iris was asking whether anyone at Steeple Bloodstead might know the whereabouts of her brother.
Last seen boarding a train back to London.
He'd never gone back home.
This was a very important clue.
But what had Malcolm Marsh got to do with all this?
When the war had ended and every other evacuee climbed back onto their trains,
Reginald Fringley had stayed.
And changed his name to Alfred Moss.
What was he trying to hide?
Why would he leave his sister?
Tuppence made her way to the telephone box in the centre of the square,
And after some enquiries,
She found out Iris Frimley was no longer alive.
She had died,
Leaving behind her only son,
Malcolm.
There was a lot to be said for having an old university pal still working for the London Papers.
And this was the turning point.
Now it was straight back to St Ethelberg's,
Where Bart was eagerly waiting for any updates.
By the time she cycled back through the gates,
Gravel spitting under her freshly mended tyres,
She had already decided how this was going to go.
Not with a quiet word to Martin in his study,
Brandy in hand,
The way these things were usually done at St Ethelberg's.
This one deserved a staff room.
An audience.
By half past two,
They were all there.
The Religious Department,
The Languages Department,
The Maths Department.
And a very bitter-looking science department.
Miss Pevensey had bought her rosary just in case.
Miss Luck had bought a hip flask for the same reason.
Miss Trollope had bought her Jilly Cooper on the basis if she was going to be murdered live in front of witnesses.
She'd rather go out mid-chapter.
As for Mr Smith from maths,
He sat as far away from Alice Weed as the furniture would physically allow Right then,
Said Tuppence,
Standing on the good armchair because the room had no stage and she wasn't about to let that stop her.
Then in walked Martin and she started to wobble.
Tappans,
He said.
Martin,
She replied with a smile.
He turned to face the entire staff cohort,
And Tuppence was thrilled to see he shot Alice Weed a particularly violent stare.
Nobody leaves until I say so,
He said.
Tuppence is solving the murder and this,
I need not remind you,
Is technically also part of the job description.
Alice Weed opened her mouth and shut it again.
Sit down,
Alice,
" said Tuppence,
Without even looking at her.
And to the mild astonishment of the entire room,
Alice Wee did just that.
Sharon first,
Tuppence announced,
Consulting her little black board.
You had motive,
Didn't you?
Tuppence adjusted her pants knee.
Malcolm Marshall two-timed you with the bursar's niece,
And there's no woman alive who takes that line down,
Least of all one who owns a knife that sharp.
Sharon folded her shoulders and put her chin up,
Entirely unbothered.
Never said I didn't want him strangled,
I just said I didn't do it.
She said.
And you didn't,
Said Tuppence.
So there's that.
Because whoever picked the lavender did it in the dead of night,
In a blind spot only visible from one direction.
And you,
Sharon Stanning,
Sleep in the main block.
No one can leave the main block undetected.
There was a shuffle of feet and Martin Bonas stepped forward.
Mr.
Dunforth,
" Tuppence continued,
Swinging her book round to point at him like a conductor's baton.
You had a blazing row with Malcolm,
So we heard in the locker room two days before he died.
But was that true?
I fear not.
Mr.
Dunfall smiled.
I don't know where these girls get their gossip from.
But it certainly wasn't for me on that day.
Quite,
Said Tuppence,
And unlike our perpetrator,
Mr.
Dunforth is right-handed.
Not to mention,
According to our investigation,
She looked across at Bartholomew Bowman.
He was writing up the fixtures for an inter-house match.
At the precise hour,
Malcolm Marshall's stomach contents suggested,
He ingested the fatal dose.
They incidentally ended up covering the gym vault.
You had an alibi.
You had no motive.
And I might add a surprisingly weak throwing arm.
You are off the hook,
Mr Dunforth.
Tuppence looked at Alfred Moss,
Then diverted her attention to the rest of the staff and continued.
Mrs.
Fenwick.
As front desk,
Matron cum general housekeeper for the girls after hours,
You are accounted for.
And as for you ladies,
She gestured to the rest of the cohort.
No one else,
It appears,
Has the strength or the motive And no student is strong enough or has a reason in the world to want Malcolm Marshall dead.
Every single one of you are in the clear.
Next,
She said,
Turning her gaze to the science department and the head,
Who had spent the last 24 hours under formal arrest,
And now sat in the corner nursing both a cup of tea and a considerable grievance.
I do apologise for Inspector Tryhard and his flair for the dramatic.
You had the equipment,
Yes.
The strength,
Arguably.
And you are,
I'll grant,
Left-handed.
But you were in your room on the night in question.
We have the testimony of your female companion to verify that.
Thank you Sharon.
Miss Pevensey shifted in her seat,
But no one else appeared even in the slightest surprised at this.
And quite frankly,
Tubman said,
It seemed a poor way to repay a man who'd spent the morning before helping you lift boxes.
Yes,
It seems that Malcolm Marshall was an amiable chap,
As they say.
So who exactly would want to kill such a man?
Indeed,
Agreed Martin Bonas,
All six foot four of him still covering the staffroom door.
Not to mention,
I brought you a scraping from the vaulting box.
If you recall,
Said Tuppence,
You and your team ran it through,
With every test that ancient gas burners and a strip of chromatography paper could manage.
You confirmed it was lavender oil,
Concentrated well beyond anything you would use in a lesson.
That is not the behaviour of a guilty man.
That's the behaviour of one who wants to help.
Sipping his tea,
The head of science looked pleased.
Which leaves,
" said Tuppence,
Closing her little black book with a satisfying snap.
Our esteemed Deputy Head,
Miss Alice Weed.
Protested Miss Weed.
Now the colour of the laminated Breathe card she still apparently carried everywhere.
I know you were in the gym,
Alice,
" said Tuppence.
I found the footprint.
You were sniffing about,
Trying to build your own case,
Before Inspector Tryhard could,
So you could hand him the credit and finally get shot at this place and back to the police station.
The entire staffroom gasped.
Bar Bart,
Tuppence and Martin.
You have been reporting on this call ever since the day Lord Heffingway parachuted you in over Martin's head.
It's just extremely irritating.
It's not murder.
And we can't even get rid of her for that,
" Martin muttered half to himself.
Alice Weed,
Meanwhile,
Said nothing.
Which brings us,
Toppens continued,
To the only person in this room who has size 11 feet is left-handed.
And has a motive.
Don't look at me!
" joked Bart,
Easing his way round with a large lopsided sponge cake held out proudly in both hands,
A single sprig of plastic lavender pressed into the icing on the top.
I thought we could all do with something sweet,
" he announced.
Then,
Heading straight for Alfred,
He said.
Seemed fitting given the circumstances and I thought you were all right.
Just goes to show,
Doesn't it?
Goes to show what?
" said Tappance.
I think they call it fatal attraction.
Bartholomew Bowman,
Dublin Smile.
What a warped sense of humor you have!
Learned it from the best,
He said,
Setting the cake amongst the now abandoned mugs of tea.
OK,
Now let's get back to the case,
" said a disgruntled voice from the staffroom door.
Thank you,
Bartholomew.
Tappan's glanced at Martin Boners.
He looked ill amused.
For a moment,
No one in the staff room said anything.
Then Tuppence turned to face the man she'd been investigating for the last 24 hours.
She considered the pocket under her bike basket.
Her little black book could go back there tonight,
She decided.
Some things deserved a proper resting place once they'd done their job.
Malcolm hadn't come to St.
Ethelburg's for the salary.
Or even the scenery she began.
He'd come for the company.
Because a dying mother's stories had finally added up to an address.
And because some things you simply have to see through,
Whatever they cost.
The whole of the staff room were on the edge of their seats now.
He'd found Alfred in the archives,
In the school records,
In a face he half recognized from an old photograph tucked inside his mother's Bible.
And he confronted him.
Alfred because that was who he was now whatever the registers said had not reacted the way all those years of guilt might have suggested he should.
He hadn't confessed,
He hadn't wept,
He hadn't fallen at his nephew's feet.
He'd smiled his easy Werther's original smile.
And told Malcolm how glad he was to have him back.
Family,
He said.
After all these years.
That at least is what I guess happened.
By all accounts,
The two were quite friendly to start with.
But that was just a lie,
Wasn't it,
Alfred?
Having your name exposed,
Your past excavated,
Unpicked thread by thread in front of everyone.
Lord Heffingway,
The governors,
The whole of steeple bloodstead,
Who value nothing quite so much as the appearance of things staying exactly as they've always been.
So Alfred,
You did what men like you always do when a problem grows too large to charm away.
You made the problem disappear.
The distillation kit in the science block wasn't yours,
Of course,
But you had watched,
Listened to what your niece did,
And then doled out boiled sweets from the sidelines.
Laced with exactly that.
And of course,
Once the Werther's Originals were ingested by our dear Mr Malcolm Marshall,
It was a done thing.
It took but minutes for the toxic concoction to do its job.
And disorientated,
He fell against the gym vault.
And was promptly sick all over it.
By the time his droughtiness took place fully,
Malcolm hadn't the coordination left to fight back.
The skipping rope had been almost an afterthought.
A tidying up,
I suppose,
Was it?
You locked the gym doors behind you as you always did.
Then you went home to bed with the quiet satisfaction of a man who believed once again his secret was safe.
You hadn't reckoned on this song,
Had you?
It was the strangest,
Smallest thing.
But it was the thing that undid you.
The sun streaming through those high windows in the gym.
The alarm went off because that light fell on the body of Malcolm Marshall,
Whose unexpected shadow set it off.
I don't see you've got proof,
" said Alfred Moss belligerently.
Alfred,
Tubbence insisted.
Or should I call you Reginald?
Alfred started.
No one's called me that in a long time.
But your sister Iris called you that,
" said Tuppence,
Right up until the day she died.
She never stopped writing letters.
The parish kept every one.
She wanted her brother back.
She was the apple of my parents' eye.
She was all right,
" said Alfred.
Clearly not according to her son.
Potatoes potatoes.
All right,
That's enough,
" said Martin,
Stepping forward.
Mr Moss,
I put it to you,
You're a cold-hearted man.
Moss do not.
But he was no match for Martin Bowness.
So he sat back down again.
He wanted to take all this away from me,
Said Alfred quietly.
Everything I'd built.
My independence from that cheap abusive family.
It's a nice life in Steeplebloodstead.
One conversation,
It would have all come out.
Lord Heffingway would have had me out of my ear by tea-time.
I only meant to talk to Malcolm,
I swear it.
I only meant to slow him down.
But to take advantage of your niece like that.
Tuppence persisted,
Who is of course the daughter of your late wife's sister.
Yeah,
That's where the brains come from,
" said Alfred.
My wife would never even have looked at me if she thought I came from such a rough family.
So you told her your family died in the war?
I told everyone that if I'm honest.
I told the whole village.
I was ashamed of my background.
If you want it plain,
A poor working class lout from Bethnal Green don't go down exactly too well in a place like Steeple Bloodstead,
This middle class village,
This middle class school.
And all the middle class friends my wife had.
No one round here was ever going to want anything to do with the likes of where I came from.
So I made sure they never had to find out.
When everyone got back on the train bound for London.
I just got lost in it all,
So to speak.
I got back off and I made my way into the village.
Changed my name,
Made a new life for myself.
And then eventually came back to St Ethelberg's.
You'd be surprised in the charity people would get if you speak a bit more nicely and you tell everyone your parents are dead.
But in the end the truth always comes back to haunt you,
I suppose.
Thanks to you,
I've lost everything.
Thanks to me?
You're the one who committed the murder.
And why on earth would you leave Malcolm naked?
Oh,
That was to kind of put people off the scent,
Like.
I thought there's so many women in this school infatuated with him.
It could have been put down to some kind of sexual quirk or something.
If only he'd have just let bygones be bygones.
But my nephew couldn't help himself.
He had to come at me.
And of course I was forced to defend myself.
This does not sound like self-defence to me.
Said Martin Boners.
But we'll let the court decide.
Come along,
The police are waiting downstairs.
And has Alfred Morse left the staff room for the last time?
The entire cohort of staff heaved a sigh of relief.
It was early evening.
And as the sun set on an unusually mild day,
Martin Boners waited for Tuppence in the courtyard.
Book by his side in case she didn't turn up after all.
She arrived later than expected in a particularly flattering dress.
Crossed over her ample chest and floating over her slim figure.
Martin looked at her for a long moment.
The way he had the very first day they met.
You know,
Tuppence,
" he said.
When I called you the school confidant,
I don't believe I fully understood.
What I was unleashing on St.
Ethelburg's.
No,
Said Tuppence,
Her dimple appearing right on cue.
I don't believe you did.
I suppose I owe you a rather large debt.
Tuppence glanced down at the book he'd been reading.
Then you better start paying it off,
Martin,
" she said.
You can start with that book of yours.
Picking it up without taking his eyes off her,
Martin began as the mortarboarded ghosts of St Ethelberg's looked down upon them.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Tuppence Stern beamed.
All the while staring into his serious face.
St.
Ethelberg's Academy for Girls might be the keeper of many secrets.
But this one.
.
.
She intended to keep.
All for herself.
The end.
