The Domino Deaths

CHAPTER 1: Peace Threatened
April 27, 1946
The village of Pangbury-on-Thames, a cold spring morning, six-thirty Greenwich Mean Time. Dr. Toby Hunt and wife Sarah have just had a mild discussion which will change their lives and possibly result in at least three deaths. Maybe more if somebody doesn’t adjust their attitude.
Nothing much is moving, except Job’s Dairy electric cart whirring down the High Street hill. Trees drip this morning’s moisture on pavements; the Daily Telegraph and Mirror newspapers are withdrawn from letter-slots in front doors. Bostwick, the baker, is open on the High Street, but he’s the only one. Yeasty aroma drifts nearby. A door slams and reluctant footsteps trudge up to the railway station. Not Toby Hunt’s, not yet. The early train to Waterloo has already left, the next pulls out in half an hour.
Pangbury-on-Thames languishes seven leagues or so upstream from London. The High Street descends to the river, passes a scattering of pubs and small shops on its way. An occasional Victorian mansion lords over small dwellings, and at the bottom of the hill, a curiously assembled edifice, Bridge Cottage, clings to the downward sloping roads and footpaths, across from the war memorial.
Within Bridge Cottage, Toby and Sarah Hunt start their day. Dr. Toby Hunt hears the clip-clop of hooves. There comes the scrape of garden gate as he slips out for the coal merchant’s horse’s manure to feed his roses, his avocation these days.
Toby, now retired, found them Pangbury, and, with nothing but gardening to keep him occupied, he perked up immensely when his earlier ward, Ken Livingstone, erupted back into his life. That was the rub this morning. Toby Hunt, inspired police surgeon (retired), was about to take off on another do-good crusade to establish Ken as a civil person after the fellow’s rocky and criminal past. Never mind what wife Sarah thought about it. Toby wasn’t going to change his mind.
Sarah Hunt stood at Bridge Cottage’s scullery sink, plunged her hands into soapy water, found the nailbrush and began to scrub, going around each finger with meticulous attention. The surgery assistant routine—Lady Macbeth indeed. As if that could distance her.
Morning river mist lifted and a gleam of sunlight pierced the cottage, consoling her that summer would bring back the England of memory: restful, regal, the place one went to lick one’s wounds. Perhaps recover from overstretched ambitions.
Peace at last. Or so she thought.
Resistance was required. Sarah snatched off her apron and prepared for subversive action. She’d warn Harriet Parker what Toby was up to. Since Harriet’s family had introduced them to Pangbury in the first place, Harriet deserved to know that an unheralded relative was on his way, and that Toby was responsible.
Toby, in his respectable dark city-suit, gold watch-chain draped across his waistcoat, slammed out the front door, sending lawn chaffinches scattering in a whirl of feathers. A slight hesitation as he saluted the war memorial across the way—two fingers to his Homburg’s brim, as always. Nothing got in the way of Toby Hunt doing his considered duty. He’d swing that everlasting silver-tipped Malacca cane, jaunty as you please, heading for the train to London, trailing disaster.
Sarah put on sturdy shoes, wrapped herself in her raincoat, and left Bridge Cottage. Across the western marshes the chimes of St. Stephen’s struck eight, a pearly morning mist sank into eastern gravel pits, and she heard a cuckoo call. No comments from Mother Nature, thank you, crossed her mind. The slight incline of the High Street caused her stop to catch her breath. Hand on ribs, she stood for a moment and tried to frame her warning to Harriet. “Have you met your half-brother yet?” sounded a bit abrupt.
The iron gates of High Elms barred her way, but the geese were loose, which meant Harriet was home. She pushed a gate open and stepped into a garden where pink horse-chestnut blossoms swept across the path. Beads of moisture clung to the needles of the yew tree, a smell of mushrooms wafted over to her. A rook’s dark shadow swooped between the trees, the silence shattered with its raucous squawk.
At first glimpse of the house she halted, stunned to see the bomb-blasted windows finally being repaired. Four years ago the explosion blew the windows out of the High Elms dining room, shattered every piece of glass, and tore curtains to shreds. The rest of the house remained intact. A German bomber returning from a London raid ditched his load at random. But Harriet Parker and her ailing mother put off calling the glazier to replace the glass until peace had been declared. No point in mending something likely to be smashed again.
A workman’s cart near the entry, a cloth drooped over shrubbery beneath the window, the front door ajar—all signs of work in progress. Sarah pushed open the door and crept inside.
“Harriet?” she called up the sweeping staircase. Normally she knocked, but there seemed little point with the racket the workmen were making. Besides the rattle of the worker in the dining room, she could hear movement above her head. At the bottom of the stairs a strange smell reached her nostrils. She sniffed, and frowned. Soot.
“Harriet?” she called again. “It’s Sarah.”
Gasps of weeping came from one of the bedrooms. As Sarah climbed the stairs, she realized that she was trembling slightly. Perhaps the old lady had taken a turn for the worse. Footsteps sounded along the landing, and Harriet’s pale face appeared, looking even more exhausted than usual. Finding stoic Harriet crying made it seem as if the universe had twisted slightly on its axis. Sarah’s heart took a sudden lurch.