Chapter 3: Day Three

Another day couldn’t help but dawn over the stricken smial of Lobelia Sackville-Baggins when two luckless sleuths reported for work in the parlour. Merry, who had at last convinced his cousin that there were no more clues to be gained from the corpse, had a quiet word with Mr Bracegirdle, and half an hour later two stout village women appeared to prepare the body for the funeral. The removal of this particular piece of evidence improved, if not the prospects of solving the crime, then at least the smell in the room. Pippin, who had until then bustled about with the grace and serenity of a nervous beaver,  immediately settled into the armchair and assumed an aspect of deep concentration.

“Let me think…” he mumbled.

“Yes, I will let you think. I hope you will think up something sensible.”

But Pippin didn’t reply, he was already lost in a peculiar world of his own. Merry decided to have a look around the smial and garden, because he began to suspect that Pippin might very well have overlooked important evidence during his initial inspection. However, he uncovered nothing out of the ordinary. Whatever else one might have thought about Lobelia, she had kept her home in good order, and there seemed nothing at all out of place. He looked in on Mr Bracegirdle, who sat at the elegant rosewood desk in Lobelia’s study and industriously scratched his quill over the parchment.

“Is everything all right with you?”

“Oh, yes, thank you for the asking, Mr Brandybuck. I’m so relieved you’re getting on with the investigating. I’m just compiling a list of valuables which I know to belong to this household and which should be collected as soon as possible so they can be distributed according to Cousin Lobelia’s will. Her silver spoons, her amber collier, her heirloom vase, those kinds of things.”

“Very conscientious, Mr Bracegirdle,” said Merry  and left with a friendly nod.

Back in the parlour he found Pippin busy. He had a ball of pink yarn on his lap and two clicking needles in his hands.

“What are you doing there, Pippin?”

“I’m knitting.”

“Why?”

“It helps to concentrate the thoughts.”

“Pink?”

“It’s all I found in the sewing basket.”

“Pippin, I don’t want to put any pressure on you, but there’s a Bracegirdle sitting in the study who expects you to solve a crime, and the whole village is full of people who entertain much the same idea. Do you really think it’s the right time to knit a pink…scarf?”

“You know,” replied Pippin, undisturbed by this mild reproach, “this whole affair puts me in mind of old Mrs Goodbody over in Whitwell. She was also always nagging people and she was believed to have creatively acquired the odd silver spoon or two. And she came to a sticky end.”

“Did she?”

“Yes. She drowned in a vat of treacle.”

“Really, Pippin, I don’t see what this has got to do with anything here. We’re not in Whitwell here.”

“Ah, but hobbit nature is the same everywhere. And then,” continued Pippin, “there was that widow who lived in the cottage near Frogmorton, remember her? Had a sharp tongue, and no mistake. Remember, one winter morning, she went out to get her firewood and slipped on a frozen puddle. She hit her head on a stone, and after that she was never the same again.”

“No, she wasn’t, Pip. She was dead. And I still don’t understand how this can help us at all with this investigation for which you have so wisely volunteered. You’d better come up with a more convincing theory.”

Pippin glared at his knitting and tried to pick up the stitches he’d dropped five rows before. This kept him occupied for the best part of ten minutes. Merry‘s fingers drummed on the armrest of the sofa, but since it was a well-upholstered sofa, he produced barely a sound. Eventually, Pippin looked up, his face lit by another ludicrous idea.

“What about this then? I’ve just thought of it. You know the old children’s song?

Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet
Eating her curds and whey,
Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away

That rhyme is giving us an important clue, Merry! Miss Muffet, I mean, Lobelia sat here in her armchair on this cushion which might well be called a tuffet. We had already agreed on the first day that she was probably eating a cake, which could be the curds and whey. The window was open – and in came a spider! Merry, one of the Mirkwood spiders must have escaped and come here into the Shire. The spider sat down beside Lobelia and –“

“What nonsense!  If there was a Mirkwood spider on the lose here, we’d have heard all about it. And spiders are not known for hitting their victims over the head. We can’t look for clues in nursery rhymes. Honestly, Pip, you might as well try to solve the mystery by singing Ten Green Bottles Hanging On The Wall.”

“Not a bad idea at all, Merry. I’m glad you’re getting into the spirit of things at last.  Let me see. There were ten green -“

“Pippin! I was joking!”

“Oh.”

They concentrated on the respective occupations of their hands for a while, Pippin on his knitting, Merry on his finger drumming, and then Pippin said wistfully,

“It seems a shame that I don’t have a nephew.”

“You have three older sisters, Pip, I think there’s a good chance that one day you’ll have a nephew.”

“But it would be so good to have one now,” insisted Pippin.  “I would imagine he would be a poet of sorts, and he would support me in my old age. I think I will ask whichever of my sister first has a son to call him Raymond.”

“Pippin, I think you’re going mad. Wait, listen, there’s someone coming up the path. I’ll get the door, save disturbing Mr Bracegirdle. It’s probably for you anyway.”

He went to open and to his surprise, Sam walked in and brushed the dust of his light brown travelling coat. Merry eyed the garment with curiosity. It had large buttons down the front, square pockets at the sides and an overall crumpled look that didn’t fit the neat habits of Samwise Gamgee.

“Well, hullo, Sam! Whatever brings you here?”

“My Elven cloak‘s in the wash,” said Sam, who must have noticed Merry’s look. “Hullo, Mr Merry! I hope you won’t mind, but I thought, when I got your message – and thank you very much for that – so, as I said, I thought it would be best if I came up here and saw what was going on. I asked my wife, too, and she quite agreed.”

“Well, come in, come in. Pippin’s in the parlour. He’s pretending to be a sleuth, you know.”

Pippin greeted Sam with moderate enthusiasm but didn’t put his knitting aside. Sam pulled a long, cylindrical object from his coat pocket, lit it and began to smoke.

“What is that, Sam?”

“Oh, it’s my little new invention, Mr Merry. I’m quite proud of it, I must say. You see, when I came up here this morning, I found that I had forgotten my pipe, but since I had leaf in my pouch, I thought of rolling it up into this sausage shape, and it lights up real nicely. See?”

He took a puff and waved about the hand that held the strange new smoking device.

“That’s all very well, Sam, but it won’t help us find the murderer,” said Pippin with what might have been called impatience in his voice, if such a thing was thinkable among such dear friends. Sam’s hand dropped and his eyes widened.

“Has there been a murder? Bless me, Mr Pippin, why didn’t you tell me earlier? Who was killed?”

“Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, of course. Didn’t Merry write that in the note he sent you?”

“But she wasn’t murdered!”

“Oh, yes, Sam, she was. Someone cracked her skull. We have Doctor Hornblower’s word for that. And we’ve found all sorts of clues.  A bit of fabric on the windowsill, broken fingernails, a hatpin, a piece of cake. We’re almost certain that Lobelia had tea and cake shortly before she was murdered. And I’ve had several theories about who killed her, though I need to think about them some more…”

Sam shook his head sadly.

“No, Mr Pippin. Begging your pardon, but I know it was an accident.”

“Nonsense, Sam, how would you know that?”

“Her maid told me.”

“Her maid?”

“Yes, Bluebell, the old lady’s maid. You see, when I came up here earlier, I thought I should really call on my cousin Elodie – she’s my third cousin, once removed, on my mother’s side, you know, my mother was a Goodchild from Bywater – and, as I said, I thought I’d better call on her, seeing how I hadn’t visited her for years, and there she was all pale and shaky and saying that her girl Bluebell, who’d been maid to that Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, was come home all in tears and couldn’t speak a word for a whole day, but last night, after Elodie had given her a good, strong camomile tea, she’d told her the whole story, if you get my meaning. So I asked what the story was, since how you and Mr Merry had send me a message about that Mrs Sackville-Baggins being dead and all, and so Bluebell told it all to me, poor lass, all in tears she was again. And that’s how I found out.”

“Found out what, Sam?”

“Well, it was like this, Bluebell said. She was standing on a ladder dusting things on a high shelf when that Mrs Sackville-Bagging left the room, probably to follow a call of nature, if you get my meaning. She slammed the door behind her, or else the wind blew it shut, ‘tis not quite sure, and little Bluebell got such a fright that she knocked over a green vase what her mistress held precious and it smashed on the floor. So as soon as she heard the noise,  that Mrs Sackville-Bagging came running back in and when she saw the broken vase, she began wailing and scolding and getting herself in quite a state. She walked up to the window and then she fainted or her heart stopped, in any case she fell right over and hit her head on the windowsill. Bluebell rushed up to her and turned her over, and when she saw all the blood she began to scream. She shoved the broken pieces of the vase under the sofa and ran outside to call for help. And that’s all she said, Mr Pippin, with your leave. But you can go over herself and ask her; ‘tis quite true.”

In the ensuing silence, Merry imagined he heard a faint rush as the blood rose in Pippin’s face. Eventually, Pippin got up, walked up to the sofa and peered underneath.

“Oh,” he said.

Merry leaned forward and took a look himself. Sure enough, a pile of green porcelain shards lay under the sofa. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the piece he had picked up two days before.

“What’s that, Merry?”

“Oh, just a shard I found here on the day of the murder.”

“The day of the accident, if you don’t mind. Mr Merry.”

“The day of the accident, yes. I didn’t think anything of it then and later I forgot about it.”

Surprisingly, a look of relief spread over Pippin’s face.  He lifted his head and put his hands on his hips.

“Ah,” he said smugly. “No doubt I would have solved this case in the most brilliant manner, but there is nothing even the shrewdest investigator can do if Merry withholds crucial evidence.”

There was a pause, filled with all manners of boding as such pauses usually are, and then a crashing noise when Merry’s forehead very firmly and deliberately connected with the table top.

“Just one more thing,” said Sam from the doorway. “Why were you knitting with a hatpin, Mr Pippin?”

The End