Inspector Beakbane grunted.
‘A strong woman could have carried her. She was a bare four feet eleven inches, and I doubt if she weighed much over seven and a half stone.’
‘Still harking back to Miss Renshaw? She’s the build for it, all right. About the break-in, phoney or not, it looks as though there’s a connection, doesn’t it? If there is, the boys ought to be able to clinch it. What time was the locking-up done on Saturday night?’
‘I think Bert Heyward, the resident caretaker, is lying. He’s supposed to start off at nine, but Saturday night wasn’t normal, and he says he was a bit late. When I tried to pin him down he got flustered and said he hadn’t noticed the exact time, and that he might have been ten minutes behind schedule. I suggested that his wife might know, and he tried to put me off, saying everything was at sixes and sevens that night because of this Festival, as they call their old scholars’ reunion. I reckon he was a good deal later.’
‘Or possibly didn’t bother to go up to the top floor at all?’
‘In that case someone else locked and bolted the fire-escape door on the inside. Mrs. Bennett, the cleaner who found the body, opened it up herself this morning.’
‘I’ll put Toye on to him,’ said Pollard. ‘Assuming that Heyward did his round, is anyone else known to have been in the studio after seven on Saturday evening?’
‘Two people, anyway. The art teacher,’ Inspector Beakbane consulted his notes, ‘a Miss Cartmell, and a Mr Torrance, some high-up to do with pictures. He’d come in to help choose some of the kids’ work to go in for a competition. Miss Cartmell went home for the holidays yesterday, but we rang up and she’s coming back this afternoon. Miss Renshaw gave me Mr Torrance’s address: some gallery or other in London. Here we are — the Do-may-ni Gallery.’
‘Yes, I know it,’ Pollard said. ‘It’s off Regent Street. Smart work getting the girl back so quickly.’ He sat for a few moments with hands thrust in his pockets and chair tilted back, staring out of the window at the park. ‘A rum feature of this case,’ he went on, ‘is what Beatrice Baynes was doing after seven p.m. on Saturday. She must have had quite a tiring day for an old bird in her seventies, and then taken some buddies home for a drink, you say. You’d think she’d have been glad to get her feet up at home. But I simply can’t believe she was murdered in her own place, and carted across a public road, past the Lodge, and right up the drive to the studio. Out of the question in daylight, and if it was done after dark, how did the murderer get into the studio? Unless he was in cahoots with Bert Heyward… As he lives on the premises, I suppose he could have gone up to the studio during Sunday or early on Monday and locked the fire-escape door then. Would he have the stamina for the job, or any possible motive?’
‘Not the stamina, I shouldn’t think. Bit weedy. He was in a Jap prison camp in the war, poor chap, Freeth says. As to motive, well, it doesn’t seem likely, on the face of it, unless she’d found out something to his disadvantage and she was threatening to tell Miss Renshaw … chaps that’ve been through what he must’ve do go off the deep end sometimes, and that’s the truth.’
‘Was she well-off?’
‘Yes. Pretty warm, Freeth says. Lived quietly, but the lolly was there all right. Lots of it. My sergeant found her solicitor’s address, too, by the way; Mr Yelland of Linbridge. He’s a partner in an old-established firm: a very decent sort. I rang him, and said someone would be coming along.’
Inspector Beakbane passed over another sheet of paper.
‘Handing it to me on a plate, aren’t you? No, seriously, I’m dashed grateful to you for covering such a lot of ground. I’d better drop in on him at an early date, and find out who gets the lolly. It may turn out that the next-of-kin nephew’s crying out for a bit of our attention. The report from our people on how he reacted to the news ought to come along this evening. I hope the pub where you’ve booked us in has got a night porter — come in!’
The door opened to admit Detective-Sergeant Toye. Although impassive he conveyed an air of subdued triumph.
‘Perhaps you’d care to come up and take a look, sir?’ he said to Pollard.
‘What have you got?’
‘The heel-marks, sir, just as you thought. Only traces: they’ve been walked over a good bit, and cigarette ash trodden in. But they’re perfectly clear beside the table for about six inches, and again roughly in the middle of the room, say a couple of inches, and in a curve over in the corner, where she must’ve been swung round into the puppet theatre. Boyce has photographed the lot, and we’ve noted the measurements.’
‘Nothing coming from either of the doors?’
‘Not a sign, sir. I’ve been over every square inch.’
‘We’d better give that table the full treatment. It looks as though she might have been knocked out beside it.’
‘It’s a fair headache, sir. Covered with paint stains, and what-have-you, and no end of junk stacked on it. I’ve ringed one or two stains which look a bit fresher. The fire-escape rail’s one mass of superimposed palm prints, Strickland says.’
‘Right,’ said Pollard. ‘Jolly good work. I’ll be along when I’ve settled one or two things with the Inspector.’
Detective-Sergeant Toye withdrew.
‘I’d better be getting along too, and putting in a report to the Super,’ said Inspector Beakbane, getting up. ‘The inquest’ll be fixed by now. The Linbridge coroner always takes evidence of identity and adjourns, unless it’s absolutely straightforward. Cuts both ways. See you later, then, or early tomorrow. This great barrack fair gets me down,’ he added, looking round the magnificent room. ‘Feel I want to search all these cubby-holes every time I come in. Lumme, what do girls want with all these books? You and I could teach ’em all they need to know without a single one, I bet!’
The two men grinned at each other.
‘Decent picture, though,’ said Pollard, going over to examine an excellent reproduction of Velasquez’s Infanta. ‘My wife teaches at a College of Art, so I’ve picked up a bit.’
‘Come off it,’ said the Inspector. ‘You’re educated up to the place, you are, and I hope you enjoy it, that’s all. I don’t know one flaming picture from another — except that simpering kid in a blue bonnet by the door, and that’s only because you London cops never found out who pinched the original from some museum or other.’
‘Touché,’ said Pollard.
They went out amicably.
After prolonged scrutiny of a small, irregular stain through a powerful lens, Pollard straightened himself up. He experienced the hunter’s thrill at the first trace of a quarry’s spoor.
‘Blood, I think,’ he said, ‘and a minute bit of hair embedded in it. When you’ve done, Boyce, we’ll get it up for the lab boys…’
He watched anxiously as Sergeant Toye carried out the delicate operation of removal, and sealed away the result in a sterilised container, the under-layer of his mind aware of the complexity and potential publicity of the case … the biggest job he’d handled on his own.
‘What do you make of it, Strickland?’ he asked, noticing that the young constable was bursting with a suppressed idea.
‘It’s how it comes to be just there, sir. There’d’ve been more of it if she’d fallen and cut her head open, and that would’ve been on the edge, surely? I was thinking maybe the murderer put down whatever he’d slogged her with, and the blood on that made the mark.’
‘So was I,’ said Pollard. ‘Go up one. But where’s our old friend the blunt instrument now?’ He peered at the assorted objects on the table. ‘You’ve been over all this lot, Strickland, I suppose?’
‘Yes, sir. A lot of blurred old prints, and some clear fresh ones — the small ones, same that keeps cropping up. They look like a woman’s.’
‘The art teacher’s, I expect. I’ll get hers this evening; she’s coming back. I’m afraid there’s the heck of a lot of work ahead of us tonight.’
‘You’ve helped me a lot,’ Inspector Pollard said. ‘I’m
grateful to you for being so frank.’
‘Well,’ replied Helen Renshaw, ‘the strained relations between Miss Baynes and myself were common knowledge. You would soon have got on to them.’
‘Tell me something about what she was like as a person, apart from this obsession with the affairs of the School.’
Helen considered.
‘Quite able. She had never been stretched by marriage or a career and that was the root of the trouble, I think. She often reacted to any opposition with outbursts of temper, as frustrated people are apt to do, but they blew over quite soon and in a good mood she could be entertaining … she had vitality. She was generous over money, on her own terms. She had plenty to spare, but I do know of several instances in which she gave away considerable sums anonymously.’
‘What about this godchild, Miss Madge Thornton, who’s had a collapse?’
To Pollard’s surprise he sensed a sudden slight constraint in Helen Renshaw.
‘Miss Thornton is one of our music mistresses,’ she said smoothly. ‘Not an inspiring teacher, but as she had been here some years when I arrived and had got the post through Miss Baynes, I decided it was the lesser evil to let her carry on. There were plenty of bigger issues I had to fight over. With regard to her collapse this morning, she unfortunately heard the news in a very brutal way, blurted out by the caretaker. She was already upset by her mother’s death a week ago, and worried by Miss Baynes’s continued absence, and the shock was obviously the last straw.’
‘Quite,’ agreed Pollard, feeling his way. ‘Most unfortunate, as you say. Was she very devoted to Miss Baynes?’
‘Oh, yes. She was often over at Applebys in her free time.’
‘How did you feel about the relationship in view of the general situation?’
Helen shifted slightly in her chair.
‘It was bound to present some difficulties,’ she said. ‘As you will see, Miss Thornton is rather lacking in confidence, and was dominated by Miss Baynes, who was disappointed in her, I think. I gather that she had paid for Miss Thornton’s education — here and at college — and hoped that she would turn out a success.’
‘I see. Miss Thornton was really a projection of herself, in which she encountered still further frustration.’
He noted Helen Renshaw’s quick glance of approbation.
‘Exactly,’ she replied.
He made a show of consulting his notes.
‘About your caretaker, Bert Heyward. Do you consider him a steady, reliable sort of chap? Naturally, the exact time of locking-up on Saturday night is important.’
‘He’s been here for nine years, and I’ve never found him anything but reliable over his duties. He doesn’t show much initiative or forcefulness, partly for health reasons, I think. He was a prisoner of war in Malaya, and has never really got over it. He may have been late in locking up on Saturday after all the upheaval, but I’m quite sure it was done eventually.’
No constraint on this issue, Pollard noted…
‘You say Miss Baynes habitually snooped on everyone, and wrote letters of complaint to the Governors and yourself, trying to discredit your regime. Was Heyward one of the sufferers?’
‘Not very often. She had less opportunity of snooping on him. The gardeners were sitting targets: she couldn’t — or wouldn’t — understand that we can’t keep up the grounds as they were kept fifty years ago.’
‘She had unrestricted access to the grounds, I suppose?’
‘Oh, yes. All O.Ms have, and to some extent to the buildings, but they are expected to use their discretion in term-time, of course.’
He turned over another page.
‘I shall be seeing Miss Cartmell after this. Can you give me any line on her?’
Without hesitation Helen gave him a full account of the circumstances of Ann’s appointment, and its successful outcome.
Interesting, he thought, as he listened. She’s anxious about this one, for some reason, but not definitely scared as she is about the Thornton woman. He cast about in his mind, and decided on a direct approach.
‘Was Miss Cartmell one of the chief snoopees?’ he asked. Helen Renshaw looked up quickly, half-smiling at the absurdity. ‘If you’re convinced that she had nothing whatever to do with the murder, as you clearly are, the more you tell me about her the better. I shall be able to question her much more intelligently and worry her less. Contrary to popular belief the police aren’t out for an arrest at any price, you know, Miss Renshaw. A wrong one in this case could easily put paid to my own chances of promotion.’
To his relief, this technique was successful. He listened attentively to an account of Beatrice Baynes’s particular hostility to the changes in the art department and her various attempts to discredit Ann Cartmell, culminating in the scene at the Annual General Meeting on Saturday.
‘You will find her rather rattled, of course,’ Helen Renshaw concluded, ‘and very agitated in case she can’t get off to America on Thursday. After all, a scholarship of this sort is a big thing to anyone in her position.’
‘Naturally. Of course I can’t promise anything at this stage — I don’t even know when they’ve fixed the inquest — but we’ll do our best for her, under the circumstances. Just one more question. This Mr Torrance: has he any official connection with Meldon? It strikes me as a little unusual that anyone of his standing should bother about schoolgirls’ entries for a competition.’
‘Nothing official,’ Helen replied. ‘He’s simply continued to take an interest in the art department since he found us Miss Cartmell. It sounds rather ungrateful when he does so much for us, but he’s a conceited man, and gets a kick out of the success of his protégées. I’m quite aware that we’re simply a means to an end.’
‘Is Miss Cartmell?’
‘I don’t think she’s sufficiently mature. I suspect she is flattered by his interest and has a romantic passion for him.’
‘Is it reciprocated?’
‘I think it’s most unlikely. Mr Torrance is a highly-sophisticated gentleman.’
Inspector Pollard smiled as he put his papers together.
‘Now I really have done. Thank you once more for all your help.’
To Detective-Sergeant Toye and his assistants, busy at Applebys, the trail of the intruder was as obvious as that of a bull in a china-shop. From the clumsy attempts to obliterate footprints outside the kitchen window, by way of the trail of inadequately-wiped and overlooked fingerprints from the larder to the bureau in the dining-room, his progress stood out like a sore thumb, as Detective-Constable Strickland put it.
‘Blooming amateur,’ he commented, plying his insufflator.
Sergeant Toye agreed, but as he investigated the bureau he mulled over certain odd features of the break-in. The theft of food was usual enough, but the bee-line for this one particular drawer in the bureau was highly suggestive. The others hadn’t even been touched, let alone wiped. The fingerprints were on the shopping-list which he’d retrieved from the floor. Unless the thief was familiar with deceased’s habits, it was odd, to say the least of it, that he’d made straight for the right drawer, the second one down, without even trying the others. As to the key, of course, anyone standing by the bureau could see into the jug…
No prints on the other things in the drawer. Sergeant Toye, examining a cheque book, saw that fifty pounds had been drawn to Self on the previous Friday. There was no trace of the money. Going upstairs he encountered Detective-Constable Strickland and Blair coming out of Beatrice Baynes’s bedroom, carrying their equipment, and learnt that there were no signs of the intruder having entered it. After a brief search Pollard discovered a handbag of very good quality in a drawer. Among other things it contained four pounds in a note-case, and loose change in a purse… I don’t believe she’d run through forty-six pounds or more between Friday and going to that meeting on Saturday, he mused. If she was going to spend at that rate, she’d’ve drawn out more. There had been cheque stubs for what looked like monthly household bi
lls…
As he scrutinised the room, he noticed a pair of shoes lying on the floor in front of a chair. Smart of the boys to have printed these… Just the same size as the ones on the corpse, but newer and smarter-looking. It looked as though she’d changed into an older and more comfortable pair when she came in. Perhaps her feet were hurting her, poor old girl.
He went downstairs to the dining-room again, reflecting that the odds were that somebody had lifted a nice little wad of notes very neatly, and sitting down at the bureau he studied some bank statements, raising his eyebrows. The whole house smelt of money, of course. Not the easy-come, easy-go sort, but a big, steady income, and always plenty in the kitty. The old style: nothing showy, but everything of the best. Replacing the contents of the drawer, he went into the adjoining drawing-room. Silver everywhere, period stuff if he knew anything about it, and a smashing little clock… It wouldn’t have taken a split second to lift that as well as the snuff-box the daily woman said had gone… The front-door bell rang, and he went to let in his superior officer.
‘I’ve rung through to Linbridge for a car, to get Strickland and Boyce on to a London train,’ Tom Pollard said as he came hastily into the house. ‘The sooner all these dabs are sorted out and checked up the better. One of the most urgent things is to find out if the ones down here are in the studio lot too. Tell them to finish up as soon as they can, and then I’d like to go through the place with you.’
They progressed from the kitchen and larder to dining-room, and stood in front of the bureau while Sergeant Toye summarised his findings and deductions.
Death of an Old Girl Page 6