Free The Twelve Clues of Christmas by Rhys Bowen

I haven’t had the doctor’s report yet,” the inspector said, “seeing that he was off delivering a baby at Upper Croft Farm on the moor, but we reckon it had to be early yesterday morning. I can’t imagine that anyone would go tramping through an orchard and climbing trees in the dark, so that would make it seven thirty or later. And it had to be before Sir Oswald went on his morning rounds with his dogs.”
    “I was up by seven,” Granddad said. “But maybe I was shaving or getting the fires started and a little rifle like that doesn’t make much noise.”
    “It’s strange that nobody heard the shot, though,” the inspector said. He patted my grandfather heartily on the shoulder. “It’s going to be a boon to have someone like you on the spot here. You’d be in the position to notice any strange goings-on in this village, wouldn’t you? My men can’t be everywhere and there are so many little villages like this where the blighters could be hiding.”
    “These convicts,” Granddad said thoughtfully. “I did read something about the breakout when I was coming down on the train, but I didn’t take in the details. Local men, are they, then?”
    “No, I wouldn’t say that. Two of them were entertainers of sorts—an escape artist turned safecracker; we reckon he picked the locks on their shackles—then a bloke who used to have an act in the music hall and the third one was a bank clerk who’d been involved in a railway heist. We reckon he was the brains. Quiet little man on the surface but absolutely ruthless. Slit your throat as soon as look at you.”
    Bunty shivered.
    Granddad nodded. “But none of them with connections around here?”
    “Well, the bank clerk had a sister in Plymouth. You can bet we’ve got a close eye on her place. And of course that big heist was on the Penzance-to-London express, but further up the line in Wiltshire. You no doubt remember it.”
    Granddad nodded. “Very well,” he said. “The money was never recovered, was it?”
    “It was not. So the Wiltshire police will be keeping their eyes open near the spot where it happened. And both the entertainers had spent a fair amount of time in the West Country—played summer shows on the piers in Torquay and Weston-super-Mare. What’s more, this music hall bloke, Robbins, he was inside for swindling his landladies out of their life savings. And we reckon that he bumped off a few, including the last one down here in Newton Abbott.”
    “Why wasn’t he hanged for murder, then?” Bunty asked.
    “Got off on a technicality. Couldn’t actually prove that he pushed her down the stairs, so it was reduced to manslaughter and he got twenty years. Nasty bit of work he was, too.”
    “But he’d have no reason to linger in these parts, would he?” Granddad asked.
    “I wouldn’t if I were him. He was a Londoner. And they’d be queuing up to turn him in around here.”
    Granddad shook his head. “In my experience there’s not much that gets past the locals in a village like this. If someone were hiding here, they’d know it.”
    Inspector Newcombe sighed. “I reckon you’re right. And I am probably reading too much into a couple of unfortunate accidents. I don’t see how the first could be anything other than suicide, and the second—well, there’s no sign of a struggle. And those convicts—well, they’d have bashed someone over the head, wouldn’t they?”
    “Have you dusted the rifle for fingerprints?” I asked.
    The inspector seemed to be aware of me for the first time. “Ah, we’ve an amateur detective here, have we, miss? Like to read those Agatha Christie books, I’ve no doubt. They’ve turned half the population into know-it-alls.”
    “I have had some experience with murder,” I said. “And if I were you I’d have checked the rifle for prints and also I’d conduct an autopsy on the body. That way you can be sure nobody else was involved.”
    Inspector Newcombe gave me a patronizing smile. “If I