A Presumption of Death by Dorothy L. Sayers, Jill Paton Walsh

Mrs Spright. ‘Half the aristocracy are on Hitler’s side you know.’
    ‘Not me, I assure you,’ said Harriet. ‘Nor my husband.’ But what form, exactly, did the woman’s evident lunacy take?
    ‘There’s Aggie Twitterton, for one,’ said Mrs Spright.
    ‘Good Lord!’ said Harriet, nearly dropping her cup. ‘You don’t suppose Miss Twitterton to be a German spy?’
    ‘She goes out at night a lot. She’s over here rather a lot, for one who doesn’t live in the village.’
    ‘Well, she doesn’t live far away. Her little cottage is just outside Pagford, on the Paggleham road. An easy walk in fine weather.’
    ‘Friend of yours, is she? Someone should ask her what she’s doing after dark, just the same. Then there’s Bert Ruddle. Says he’s poaching when he goes by at night, but I’ve seen lights in the woods, and when did a poacher ever show a light? There are people here claiming to be what they aren’t, and they think nobody can see through them, but I can spot them. That Brinklow fellow. And what about the vicar? Why has he got an iron cross on the kitchen dresser if he isn’t a German? Why does he have Germans living in his house? Answer me that.’
    ‘I think I can, Mrs Spright,’ said Harriet indignantly. ‘The vicar has the iron cross because it was given to him by a dying German soldier at the Battle of the Somme. He was serving as a stretcher-bearer, behind the lines, being too old for any more active service. The man’s courage made a deep impression on him, and he has kept the cross all these years for that reason. As for the strangers living in the Vicarage, he has taken in some refugees.’
    ‘He’s taken people in, indeed he has. And then there’s that land-girl. Why was she murdered if she wasn’t a spy?’
    ‘Did you see who murdered her?’ asked Harriet. Not that anything this woman said could be thought reliable.
    ‘I could have murdered her myself,’ observed Mrs Spright. ‘I don’t like spies. They are the foulest of the enemy, and the most cowardly, don’t you think? Hanging is too good for them. I saw her running along the street in her tarty dress, but I didn’t see who killed her. No. Can’t help you there.’
    ‘Did you see anyone else around that night?’ asked Harriet, hope against hope.
    ‘And if I did who would believe me? The half of the country are in the pockets of the enemy. If you’ve finished your tea, Lady Peter, I’ll get back to my carrots.’
    Harriet walked back to Talboys feeling troubled. There was such a poisonous tinge to Mrs Spright’s conversation. Could Aggie Twitterton really have taken to night prowling? And if so what could it be about? More likely a lover than a bout of spying in aid of the enemy. Not that the one was hugely more likely than the other in the case of poor Miss Twitterton. Such a lonely person. Brought up too refined for her station in life, and left high and dry with ideas and manners and aspirations that made her poverty really painful to her. A sort of latter-day version of Miss Bates in Jane Austen’s Emma . But however unhappy she was, Harriet was sure Agnes Twitterton was not a German spy. She would stake her life on it.
    In that case, of course, there would have to be another explanation for the Twitters’ night wandering. And the simplest thing to do would be to ask her about it. Surely she was enough of a friend to meet the question without taking offence? She and Harriet had got to know one another quite well, and very quickly when Agnes Twitterton’s disappearing Uncle Noakes had turned up in the cellar at Talboys, and disrupted Harriet’s honeymoon. Harriet smiled to herself as this recollection brought into her mind a string of images of Peter: most particularly of Peter calling her Queen Aholibah, and riding a chair wildly like a rocking-horse, then a moment of such depth and stillness between them; and poor Miss Twitterton had burst in upon them, wailing that she could not bear it; a happiness so