“But they unloaded ropes and posts and things in that Leeds hotel,” put in Toby.
“I know,” said Sebastian. “We shall have to work on that. It does seem strange, certainly. I mean, why unload stuff like that just for one night? Why couldn’t it stay in the car?”
From Doncaster the party had gone on to Leeds. Dave did not know whether the fair had followed. This, with its vans, travelled slowly, so the car party would have been far ahead of it. The rest of Dave’s story tallied with what he had told Toby. Questioned about his reason for trying to stow away at Southampton, he said that the news of Gorinsky’s death, and the knowledge that his body had been found not far from the Swan Revived, had caused him to panic, as it was known he had knocked Gorinsky down.
“They’ll never bring it in as anything worse than a case of manslaughter with diminished responsibility,” said Laura. “After all, if Gorinsky was capable of driving away in Maverick’s car . . .”
“Ah, but was he?” asked Sebastian. “If he was, how did his body get into the quarry?”
“He could have turned giddy and tumbled in, couldn’t he? I’m sure that’s the explanation.”
“The doctor doesn’t think so, and we must accept the medical evidence, I feel. My own theory is that he was killed at the inn by one of the others after Dave and Biddle had been got out of the way, and I think that’s my grandmother’s theory, too.”
“But if Gorinsky was murdered at the inn, who drove Maverick’s car to London and abandoned it there?” asked Toby. “According to all the evidence, all five of the party drove to London together in Gorinsky’s car but without Gorinsky. Well, the story that he drove off in Maverick’s car must be a lie, because Gorinsky never arrived in London but the car did. Oh . . . unless . . .”
“Yes,” said Dame Beatrice encouragingly, “that solution has already been suggested, I think.”
“That young woman who came that night—the night before Gorinsky was killed! That’s the solution, of course. But could she be the murderer, or was she somebody’s stooge?”
“There is only the landlord’s evidence that she ever arrived at the inn, you know,” said Sebastian, “and, under pressure, he was prepared to retract it.”
“Well, we seem to be up a gum tree, don’t we?” said Laura, “and I agree with Toby. We must find that woman.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Georgics
“Old Satan’s a liar and a conjurer, too . . .
What you going to do when your lamp burns down?”
Anon.—Negro Spiritual
“Well, my own belief is that in pursuing this will o’ the wisp of a young woman we shall be wasting our time,” said Dame Beatrice, more flatly and forthrightly than was her wont. “We have a week before us in which to clear matters up to our own satisfaction and, I hope, to that of the police. The outstanding questions as I see them are, first, why are lies being told about Gorinsky’s driving away from the inn in Maverick’s car; second, why was he murdered; third, what caused the party to go first to London and then to Doncaster and Leeds . . .”
“I thought that was to travel with the fair and put on the boxing shows,” said Toby.
“No boxing appears to have taken place.”
“But wasn’t that because of Gorinsky’s death?”
“Then why go to London and Yorkshire at all? At least, London, possibly, but certainly not Yorkshire. When Gorinsky did not join them, even any innocent parties among them must have suspected that something untoward had happened to him. No. The expedition to Yorkshire had to be carried out with or without Gorinsky, and it had nothing to do with displays of boxing. Well, now, Toby, reverting to a previous plan, will you let your station residence to me while you and Laura are in Leeds? It would give me a convenient base from which to work, and would occasion no surprise in the neighbourhood, since I believe you told me that you make a practice of letting it from time to time.”
She took up her quarters there on the following day accompanied by her chauffeur George and her young maidservant Zena, leaving her French servants in charge at the Stone House. George, who had been in her service for very many years, made no comment, either in words or demeanour, at the sight of their new domicile, but Zena, young and uninhibited, exclaimed, as they inspected the station premises,
“Oh, madam! However shall we manage?”
“I have arranged that George shall sleep at the inn across the way. You will have the spare room here and I shall occupy the principal bedroom. You will bring me early tea, as usual. Our other meals will be catered for at the inn. It is only for a week,” replied her mistress, “and my business here is important.”
“Very good, madam, but it’s more like livin’ in a pig-sty after what we been accustomed to, me and you,” said the artless maiden.
The amenities of the station house were indeed far to seek, but her employer’s cheerful acceptance of draughty rooms and inadequate plumbing reassured the girl to some extent, although she remained convinced that the place harboured mice and that her employer was more than likely to end up with pneumonia. Dame Beatrice, however, lost no time in introducing her to Mrs. Smetton and Daffy, and she was immediately invited to spend her off-duty hours, which were many, in the kitchen of the Swan Revived.
George was more usefully employed. His first duty was to drive Dame Beatrice to the village of Heathcote Fitzprior to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Spreadapple. Owing to the fact that Dame Beatrice had been told that it was situated almost directly opposite the entrance to the churchyard, there was no difficulty in finding her cottage and even less in obtaining speech with its occupant, for, as soon as George, obeying instructions, had parked the car on the grass verge, Mrs. Spreadapple emerged after the manner of Betsy Trotwood and ordered that it should be moved.
“Oh, dear, I am so sorry,” said Dame Beatrice mendaciously but in her beautiful voice. “Are we obstructing your view of the lych-gate?”
“I don’t have cars on my verge.”
“Cars? I should hardly have thought it would run to the plural in so small and remote a hamlet. Do you have much trouble that way, then? Surely . . .”
“Trouble?” exclaimed Mrs. Spreadapple. “Nothing else but! You’d be surprised. Oh, well, no, I suppose you wouldn’t, seeing you’ve done the same thing yourself. You’ll have to move it unless you want a summons for trespass.”
“Dear me!” Dame Beatrice turned to the chauffeur. “Do you think you could find a parking-place which will not annoy anybody, George? When I have seen the Heathcote grave, perhaps you would return here and show me where you have left the car.” She leered benignly at Mrs. Spreadapple. “I’m so sorry you’ve been inconvenienced.”
“They all come to see the grave,” said Mrs. Spreadapple in a mollified tone, “but that gives them no right to park on my verge. I had the same trouble in London. Street parking, you know. Bang outside the front gate, with never a suggestion that one might be having visitors who might also want to park there. Most frustrating and annoying, and I must say I expected more consideration when I retired down here, but no! One does not get it. Modern manners and morals! Morals, indeed!”
This speech, and the appearance of her antagonist, solved one of Dame Beatrice’s minor problems. She had been puzzled and surprised to learn that a countrywoman in a Dorsetshire village had gone to the lengths of appealing to the local council, and then had had recourse to the village policeman, to abate what she considered a nuisance and a trespass.
Dorset villagers, like other country folk, have their prejudices and can display a certain amount of cunning in overcoming opposition and in getting the best of a bargain, but they are not belligerent and they are not, as a rule, inclined to appeal to the authorities, for these, in the main, they distrust. Moreover they are courteous and kind, make good neighbours and have a habit of keeping their word and of being pleasant and helpful to strangers. Mrs. Spreadapple did not appear to have perpetuated this image, and the reason for her attitude was a
t last made clear.
“You are a Londoner, and have suffered suburban frustration, I take it,” said Dame Beatrice, as George resumed his seat at the wheel and drove gently away from the cottage.
“I come from London,” said Mrs. Spreadapple, “but my husband was a Dorset man. That’s why I came down here to live, thinking to get a bit of peace, but all they do is to leave their beastly little cars on my verge. Well, I taught one lot a lesson. I had their horrid little bone-shaker driven away, and then called on the village constable and lodged a complaint.”
“That was very enterprising of you,” said Dame Beatrice. “That must have nonplussed them very considerably.”
“Considering that I made my son drive it away and leave it dumped, I should think it did,” said Mrs. Spreadapple, with an evil chuckle. “Come in and have a cup of tea. I always make one in the middle of the morning.”
“Thank you very much. You are very kind.” Dame Beatrice followed her unconventional hostess into the thatched cottage. “Does your son live with you?”
“Oh, no, but he was on embarkation leave from his regiment so I didn’t see how he could get into any trouble unless he was stopped by the police, and, of course, he wasn’t. He drove the car to London—that’s if he obeyed my instructions—and left it parked outside the Yelton town hall.”
“I wonder what happened to it?” said Dame Beatrice innocently.
“I’ve no idea. The police came here sometime later to ask me whether I was sure the number I had given the constable was the correct one. Well, of course I was sure. I’d made a special note of the number before my son left the village, just in case of anything cropping up later.”
“You mean a charge of unlawfully driving the car away? That, I believe, is an indictable offence nowadays, even if there is no intention to deprive the owner permanently of his vehicle.”
“Stealing it, you mean. Well, I know nothing about the law, but, if trouble came of what I’d done, I didn’t want my son to take the blame.”
“You would have found difficulty in exonerating him, you know.”
“Oh, well, it never came to that.”
“What happened when the owners came back and found the car gone?”
“I have no idea. I had no intention of being on the spot and answering questions. I saw my son off and then I walked round to Mrs. Purse, who keeps her own hens, and bought my usual dozen of fresh eggs. She likes a gossip, so I stayed an hour or so, by the end of which time I thought the car people would have come and gone.”
“Car people?”
“I said there were two, didn’t I? A man and a woman, and no better than they should be. They weren’t the sort to be visiting the poet’s grave! Don’t you tell me! If they went into the churchyard, it wasn’t to look at graves. You could see what they’d come for. It was written all over the pair of them. I suppose the car—if you can call a scrap-heap of old iron a car—wasn’t roomy enough for immorality.”
“And you never saw them again?”
“Nor heard of them, thank goodness.”
“Do you not read the newspapers?”
“Oh, if you mean do I know the car was found in London, yes, I do know that. The constable came round and told me. I complained to him, as I told you, thinking it would cover my son’s tracks.”
Dame Beatrice finished her tea, declined a second cup and, to cover her own tracks, walked across to the churchyard to look for the poet’s grave. She found it in a far corner, ornately headstoned, and the view from it was over fields and woods and away towards the stone quarries where Gorinsky’s body had been found. The quarries were her next objective. She returned to the lych-gate to find George loitering there.
“If you will be good enough to wait a moment, madam,” he said, “I will bring the car along.”
“Thank you, George, but I think I will walk with you to where you have left it. There are reasons why I should not wish to encounter Mrs. Spreadapple again just at present, although I may have to talk to her later on.”
The stone-quarries seemed to belong to a dead world. Dame Beatrice knew from Toby which direction to take upon leaving the village. There was a long U-shaped road which left the village street and joined the main road at some woods. Then these changed to open heathland. Halfway across this the quarries were scattered along a rough lane which ran eastwards on the brow of a low ridge of limestone until it met another main road which led ultimately to Poole.
“George,” said Dame Beatrice, “if you wanted to get to Poole from the Swan Revived, would you take this route?”
“No, madam. There is a far better road, and a much shorter one, by going to Morchester, which is in the opposite direction to the one we took to get to the village just now.”
“As I thought. The object of the motorist who found Mr. Gorinsky’s body was not to get to Poole, therefore, but, I think, to Weymouth. His only object in turning into this lane was for the reason we have been told. Well, I think we may infer from that that the nearest secluded spot would have suited his purpose, and that his discovery of the body was quite as inadvertent as he claims. Fortunately, the excavations seem to occupy only one side of the lane, so we may hazard a guess as to which of the quarries held the body.”
“Is it important to pin-point one in particular of these workings, madam?”
“Not important, no. It can make no real difference, since the police will have had it pointed out to them.”
“Then, if you would care to remain in the car, madam, the terrain being rough in the extreme, I will reconnoitre. It would probably be the deepest of the workings, if the object was to conceal the body, would it not?”
“Or one which has been abandoned long enough for rough vegetation to have taken root in it, thus affording a modicum of cover for the cadaver. I can see why they chose this neighbourhood, George. I imagine that these workings have been abandoned for many years.”
George left his employer in the car and picked his way among the moon-dead heaps of stone and rubble. Some of the quarries were less than ten feet deep, but there was one by the side of which two right-angled roughly-built freestone walls had been erected, apparently to indicate that it was privately owned. Here the excavation went considerably deeper and there were stunted bushes clinging to the sides. One of these walls, George decided, would have given the motorist the necessary cover, and from either of them it was possible to glance into the quarry.
“I may have found the hole the murderers used, madam. Should you wish to examine it?”
“No, George, there is no necessity. Would you think that two people could have managed to convey a dead body to it? It is not so very near the side of the road.”
“They would have to watch their step, madam, the ground being very rough, but I don’t see why two persons could not have carried a body that far and tipped it over the edge, or even one man, if he was young and strong, could have done it.”
“I wonder why they went into the churchyard after they had left the car on Mrs. Spreadapple’s seemingly sacred verge, and what they thought when they found it had gone?”
“You think they had already dumped the body before they ever went to the village, do you, madam?”
“It is not possible to say.” She recounted what Mrs. Spreadapple had told her.
“Then I don’t see what their object could have been in going to the village at all, madam. I should have thought, if they’d got rid of the body, they would return immediately to the inn.”
“Yes,” said Dame Beatrice, thoughtfully. “I think you have a point there, George. It does seem likely—if they had got rid of the body.”
“I was endeavouring to put myself in the place of the criminals, madam. We have to assume, I take it, that the unfortunate gentleman met his death at the Swan Revived.”
“I do not think there can be very much doubt about that, George.”
“Person or persons, therefore, were left with the problem of disposing of the body.”
“Quite so.�
�
“Is it certain that the body was put into the quarry before the main party left the inn, madam?”
“You intrigue me, George. Pray continue.”
“Had I been the guilty person, madam, I should have left the body concealed at the inn, vacated the premises and left the landlord to find it. I am a student of the literature of crime, madam, and it has always seemed to me that the mistake many murderers make is in trying to get rid of the body. Suppose, for the sake of argument, this person did not make that mistake. The party of which he is a member leaves the inn in some haste and drives to London in a car whose number plates have been changed. They leave a second car—the one seen by Mrs. Spreadapple—and the landlord finds it after they have gone. We will assume that this car had been left unlocked and that the body had been put into the boot, or otherwise concealed in the car. This is supposition only, and does not really affect my argument. All I am assuming is that the body was left at the inn together with the car which was subsequently found in London.”
“By heavens, Holmes, this is wonderful!” said Dame Beatrice, in tones of genuine admiration. “It opens up a line of enquiry quite different from the one the police have envisaged, and certainly would solve some of the more difficult problems connected with the case. Pray go on.”
“Thank you, madam. The landlord, I imagine, soon finds out why the car has been left behind. Well, he has nobody to turn to but his wife, so he is obliged to confide in her.”
“Good gracious me, George! Mrs. Spreadapple mentioned a man and a woman. I took it for granted that the woman was this mysterious friend whom no one but Smetton seems to have seen arrive at the Swan Revived, but, if your guess is the correct one . . .”
“Just so, madam. It would clear up the question of that particular lady, would it not?”
“Indeed it would. You mean that Smetton invented her arrival at the inn to serve his own purpose. Yes, indeed, that seems extremely likely. So the man and woman who left the car opposite Mrs. Spreadapple’s cottage could have been Smetton and his wife. You suggest that Mrs. Spreadapple’s son never intended to drive the car further than the stone quarries. How he came to find that he was carrying a dead body we don’t know at present, but if your theory is correct, he must have done.”
Gory Dew (Mrs. Bradley) Page 15