Page 16 of Evidence of Evil
At the foot of a gentle incline—at least the path that she could see. It would be hard work pushing a dead person in a wheelbarrow up the slope as far as the lake. But then, it would be hard work from any direction. Bodies were not light. On those grounds alone, no one should even be considering Elizabeth.
“Who lives there?” Solomon asked ten minutes or so later, pointing ahead a few yards and to the left.
Constance could not even see a dwelling of any kind, only the hedge at the side of the road. Solomon, of course, had the height to see over it.
“A local character, you might say,” Sir Humphrey replied with an odd dryness. “Mrs. Phelps. She’s my tenant, with nominal rent, for a tiny farm. She was the village blacksmith’s wife, and when he died, a nephew inherited the smithy and threw her out. She had nowhere to go. So we let her have this pocket of land, and she makes it work. The kind call her eccentric. Others call her mad as a bag of frogs.”
“What doyoucall her?” Constance asked.
“Madam,” he replied.
“Can we speak to her?”
“That’s rather up to her, but we can see if she’s at home.”
As soon as they turned through a gap in the hedge, it was clear Mrs. Phelps was indeed at home. A large woman of at least fifty years, although her weathered face looked more like sixty, was chopping wood in the yard of a small, neat cottage. She swung her axe with such easy and effective energy that the first thought that struck Constance was that this woman had the strength and the muscles to carry anybody’s dead body anywhere.
Mrs. Phelps ignored their approach until the log was cut into the number of pieces she wanted, then she straightened, scowling.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said to her landlord without noticeable respect, though she managed a curt nod. Although she didn’t appear to be obviously out of breath, she wheezed faintly. “Morning.”
“Good morning, Mrs. Phelps. Just showing my guests around. Going to call at the Grange and stopped to say good morning to you.”
“Why?” she asked suspiciously, glowering at Solomon and Constance.
“Curiosity,” Constance said at once. “Sir Humphrey told us you run your farm all by yourself. I run my own business, too, so I was interested.”
Mrs. Phelps let out a cackle. “You don’t look like a farmer to me.”
“Oh, I’m not. Don’t know the first thing about farming. But you clearly do.”
“Ain’t about knowledge, it’s about hard work, morning till night. Even after dark there’s things can be done.”
With a leap of the heart, Constance glimpsed a wheelbarrow propped up by the woodshed.
“You clearly make good use of all your time. Might I ask you something? Do you see much activity after dark along this road?”
“Can’t see over the hedge, and they can’t see me neither. That’s the way I like it.”
“No, you certainly have privacy here,” Constance agreed. Apart from the narrow gap in the hedge. “But you would hear people passing.”
“Well I’m notdeaf,” came the aggressive reply.
“Which is why I think you are a good person to ask,” Constance said. “Did you happen tohearanyone passing—perhaps with a wheelbarrow—last Wednesday night?”
Mrs. Phelps looked at her incredulously. “How am I supposed to remember that?”
“It was the night before they found Miss Niall’s body in the lake.”
She stared at Constance, then deliberately hefted the axe. “I didn’t hear or see nothing.”
“Oh. Then you didn’t see her pass this way, going toward The Willows at about nine o’clock? Or just before?”
“She had her maid with her. Don’t usually when she’s floating about.”
“Floating about?” Constance repeated as though amused. “Did she do a lot of that?”
Mrs. Phelps smiled sourly. “Ask Jim Cranston about that. It’s him found her in the lake like an extra lily.”
