Death of an Old Girl

by Elizabeth Lemarchand

  ‘No, sir,’ replied Pollard, mentally kicking himself.

  Crowe made another note, without comment.

  ‘Anything else?’ he asked.

  ‘Applying your principle of digging deep, sir, it might be as well to make some enquiries about Torrance and Cartmell, although they hardly seem to be in the running.’

  ‘Quite right. We’ll put that in train, although it may take a bit of time. Do you want to arrest young Baynes?’

  ‘On the breaking and entering charge?’ Pollard hesitated. ‘On the whole, I’d rather not, unless you feel I’m taking an unjustifiable risk. He’s being tailed, and I don’t think he’ll make a bolt at this stage. Much too keen to see how he comes out under the will. Seems to me a point in his favour, that. My guess is that he’ll go down to Linbridge tomorrow to see the solicitor, and I’d rather confront him with the evidence of the break-in down there. I think he’s more likely to give himself away. And if I confront Madge Thornton with him, I think there’s a good chance she’d crack up, if they were in it together. I still feel that’s a possibility, in spite of the lack of evidence of their dabs in the studio, and the fact that it seems to me to have been unpremeditated.’

  Crowe considered.

  ‘Who’s trailing him?’

  ‘Pitt and Longman, sir.’

  ‘All right. We’ll put on a more experienced man to cover the train journey. What else?’

  ‘There’s this girl Ann Cartmell, and her scholarship to America. Toye is now checking on a final point, but I think we can take it she’s got an alibi for the whole period, although admittedly she was in the studio alone with Torrance for about half-an-hour. I’ve got a hunch that he’ll see to it there’s a stink in the Press if we don’t let her go.’

  ‘I can’t see a man like Torrance laying himself open to being blackmailed by committing a murder in front of a witness,’ replied Crowe thoughtfully. ‘All the same we can’t let her go till we’ve screened her. Keep them quiet by saying not before Monday. You said this affair she’s going to didn’t start up till Tuesday, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Pollard, marvelling at his chief’s capacity to absorb detail from an oral report.

  ‘Right. You know where to find me. Keep going — and good luck. This case is giving you a chance a lot of chaps would like to have.’

  Eleven

  ‘Stark human tragedy has usurped the stage of the Meldon Marionettes whose delightful performances have so often featured in our pages.’

  The Linbridge Echo

  ‘It was just after we got engaged,’ Jane Pollard said. ‘You drove down to fetch me back at the end of the course.’

  ‘Strike me pink!’ ejaculated her husband. ‘So I did. And you say they were both there?’

  ‘Yes. It was one of the National Art Summer Schools. Clive Torrance was the director, and did some lecturing and teaching. I remember Ann Cartmell quite well.’

  Tom Pollard straddled a chair. ‘Spill the beans,’ he said. ‘All of them.’

  ‘Not until you’ve had a bath and we’re at the drinks stage. Actually they don’t add up to the smallest hillock, I’m afraid. Just my impressions, that’s all. Nothing that a famous detective would consider evidence.’ She indicated a scatter of evening papers, and put on a stage-struck expression.

  ‘Come off it!’ He cuffed the side of her head and departed in the direction of the bathroom.

  The Pollards occupied a small flat near the British Museum, on the top floor of a converted terrace house. There was no lift, and the set-up was old-fashioned, but their rooms were unexpectedly large, and the height above street level reduced traffic noise and petrol fumes. Jane had redecorated the flat herself, and they were gradually collecting pleasant pieces of furniture for a family house later on.

  Bathed and relaxed, Tom sat by the window and contemplated his wife. On this warm, close evening she was wearing a green and gold tunic and trousers which she had designed herself. He thought how well it set off her bright auburn hair, creamy complexion and brown eyes, and how, even in repose, she conveyed her dynamic quality and amused, appraising attitude to life.

  ‘To the case,’ she said, raising her glass. ‘And oneupman-ship.’

  ‘Cheers,’ he replied.

  Jane went to the point with characteristic directness.

  ‘I thought Clive Torrance was ghastly,’ she said. ‘The most blatantly conceited man I’ve ever struck. He simply wasn’t true at times. Unpleasantly subtle conceit, too.’

  ‘Meaning? I thought it simply hit you in the face when I saw him at the Domani.’

  ‘The conceit’s all tied up with perfectly sound things. He is an artist, and genuinely keen on the country’s art education. A first-class teacher, too. But he gets the wrong sort of kick out of it. I mean, he enjoys the adulation of his protégées much more than seeing them push on into the do-it-yourself stage. And he plays to the gallery, too, which always makes me see red.’

  ‘Yes. There was a demonstration of that this afternoon. How amorous is he?’

  ‘Highly, I’m quite sure, but he doesn’t mix business and pleasure. He’s the kind of man who weighs up asking you to go to bed with him with the possible effect on his reputation if it gets out. Never mind yours. But he’d never take risks on a course, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘What about Ann Cartmell?’

  ‘She was rather pathetic, I thought. Very gifted artistically, but desperately unsure of herself. She’d come a cropper in her first teaching job, and all her educational ideals were in bits. She was talking about going into advertising, I remember, but of course she hasn’t the personality or drive for it. I gather she has stayed in teaching after all. I wonder how she got taken on by a school in the Meldon class?’

  ‘Torrance got her the job. Apparently their art woman died just before the school year started — it must have been soon after this course you were on. The Chairman of the Meldon Governors had met him, and asked him if he could find somebody at short notice. I gather that ever since, he’s constituted himself a sort of unofficial art director of the school. The H.M. has got him nicely sized up, but admits that he’s useful. Did he show any special professional interest in Ann Cartmell, as distinct from amatory?’

  Jane Pollard stared out of the window.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I can’t remember anything in that line either. But it was a big place, and there were quite a lot of us. And oddly enough, I was a bit preoccupied with my own affairs just then.’

  ‘You don’t say,’ remarked her husband, getting up and refilling her glass. ‘What sort of a show is the Domani?’

  ‘Pretty well thought-of. It belongs to a syndicate, but policy and all that is believed to be left to Torrance. It specialises in the work of young artists, but handles other stuff as well. I imagine it’s doing nicely.’

  ‘Torrance certainly is. He took me up to his rooms. Lush, but good. He’s got a sort of workshop-cum-studio up there, too, and showed me some marvellous panelling he’d carved.’

  ‘He’s an artist, all right. He doesn’t paint much these days, as far as I know, but he certainly knows how painting should be done, and can get it across.’

  ‘Them as can’t, teach,’ murmured Pollard.

  ‘I was waiting for that. Let’s eat. There’s a casserole in the oven.’

  Later, when supper had been cleared away, they discussed the case at length.

  ‘Wouldn’t it make a gorgeous stage thriller?’ Jane remarked. ‘That superb opening… I often think,’ she went on seriously, ‘that much more attention ought to be paid to the victim in a murder case. After all, the victim is the raison d’être of the crime. He — or she — must have got something, or know something or have done something which sparks off the killer. What do you really know about B.B.?’

  ‘The trouble is that you can only know the victim by hearsay. I’ve given you a biographical sketch incidentally. The thing about her that sticks out for me is the sheer waste of a human bein
g. I mean, she was able, and a fighter with tremendous staying power, and capable of generosity, and all it came to in the end was an obsessional hostility to changes in her old school.’

  ‘It sounds to me,’ Jane said, ‘as though it went deeper than that. Probably the only time in her life when she was stretched and fulfilled was when she was at school, and the opposition to the changes was an irrational attempt to protect something she valued enormously. How extraordinary of the parents, though, to send her to a pioneer school, and then simply keep her at home to do the flowers. Too much money, I suppose?’

  ‘I should think so. Not a very congenial family life, either. Apparently she couldn’t get on with her elder brother, and the younger one was killed in the First World War, while the Blitz accounted for her only nephew. That left the unsatisfactory George, who may have murdered her. And the goddaughter is quite definitely a flop, and also a suspect. Frustrated at every turn, poor old girl, and finally descending to getting a kick out of snooping.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure that it was the prospect of successful snooping that got her over to the school again after a whole day at an Old Girls’ Reunion. You wouldn’t know how exhausting they are. Old Boys just sit and guzzle at dinners.’

  ‘I suppose,’ Pollard said meditatively, ‘that she might somehow have found out that Torrance and Ann Cartmell were going to be up in the studio, and hoped to burst in on what police reports call a compromising situation. But if so, it was a forlorn hope, from your account of Torrance. Even if it had come off, I take it that you’d discount the idea that he’d go as far as murdering her to safeguard his public image?’

  ‘Of course I should. It’s a fantastic idea. Personally, I think she was after the caretaker. Perhaps she’d found out that he sits a bit lightly to locking-up in the holidays. If she could report to the Governors that the place had been left open all night it would reflect on the Renshaw regime.’

  ‘The difficulty about this is the timing,’ said Pollard. ‘Madge Thornton says that she couldn’t get an answer at Applebys when she went there at about 8.20. Heyward wasn’t due to start on his round until 9.00. Surely B.B. wouldn’t have gone over so early?’

  ‘You’ve only got Madge’s word for it, after all. Suppose she found B.B. in, and discovered that she was going over to snoop on Heyward? Madge could have hung about in the grounds, and then followed B.B. up to the studio and killed her. There is the money motive, and the strong probability that something had come to light at the time of Mrs Thornton’s death which involved B.B. Do you think there could possibly be anything in that by-blow remark of George’s?’

  ‘Theoretically, yes. Madge is in her mid-forties, so would have been born during the First World War. I’ve wondered if B.B. was allowed to go off and be a V.A.D. or something of the sort? But anyway, the question of Madge’s parentage is being looked into… One’s got to remember that no prints of hers have cropped up in the studio.’

  ‘That’s not conclusive proof of her innocence, is it?’

  ‘No, especially as the blasted puppet theatre wouldn’t take prints. But think of the fun Counsel for the Defence would have over it… Anyway, if Madge is guilty, where does George come in, and why did he break into Applebys? While I was driving up this morning I got quite excited over an idea that they might have worked the whole thing between them, but the more I think about it, the more unlikely I think it is.’

  ‘Because it seems to have been so unpremeditated, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. I simply can’t believe that they were secretly such buddies that they’d team up and murder B.B. the moment an unexpected chance turned up. I wonder…’

  Jane looked at him.

  ‘Let’s call it a day. My head’s going round, and you’re beginning to look glassy-eyed. How early must I set the alarm?’

  Pollard examined a squalid little heap of food scraps which had been brought into Linbridge police station. An empty milk bottle had yielded excellent fingerprints. He passed one of the photographs which he had brought back from the Yard to Inspector Beakbane.

  ‘Sticks out like a sore thumb, doesn’t it?’ remarked the latter, trying to conceal his gratification under a show of nonchalance. ‘Thought our chaps would soon pick him up for you. We’d better get along the bloke who met him, hadn’t we?’

  ‘I’d be grateful. This has been an enormous help. How far away was this barn where Baynes dossed down on Saturday night?’

  ‘About a couple of miles out on the Whitesands road. Reckon he got going again as soon as it was light, and just melted into the holiday crowds when he got there. Plenty of trains back to London.’

  ‘Which way would he have gone, do you think?’

  ‘The usual way would be along the Trill road, and then take the left fork just short of the village.’

  Pollard, who had a good bump of locality, looked interested.

  ‘Then he could have cut through the park?’

  ‘Sure. Cut off a big comer that way, and less risk of being seen, too. But getting out on the far side might have been tricky. They don’t use the gate, and it’s kept padlocked. He’d have to get over a pretty hefty wall.’

  Pollard reflected that George Baynes looked reasonably athletic.

  ‘Do you think he and Miss Thornton may have met in the park?’ asked Toye.

  ‘It’s possible. But whether they were in cahoots is another story, and one I find it difficult to swallow. But it’s been suggested to me that Miss Thornton may have known that Miss Baynes intended to go over and snoop on Heyward on Saturday night, and followed her there, and that all her subsequent antics were to cover her tracks.’

  ‘Bit risky to go up after her with Heyward due to arrive at any moment, surely, sir?’

  ‘You can’t commit murder without taking risks,’ replied Inspector Beakbane. ‘It often holds me back.’

  ‘Come on, Toye,’ said Pollard. ‘I’ve got a feeling we’re outstaying our welcome here. Besides, we’ve got a day’s work to do.’

  In another room they viewed the timetable together.

  ‘I got confirmation from those girls all right,’ said Toye. ‘Pair of young baggages, if you like. Mr Rivers sat doubled up in the corner. I thought playing their game was the best line to take. They did their best to date me, if you please. The Cart’s Heart Throb’s what they call Mr Torrance… Still, they were good witnesses, for all that. Absolutely definite that they were with Miss Cartmell the whole time, from when she came into the Quad from seeing him off, to when she drove away in the car, just after nine o’clock.’

  ‘Well, that’s one more loose end tidied up… And we know that both Cartmell and Thornton were at the supper… Any luck with the secretary?’

  ‘I found her a bit sticky, sir. Chip on her shoulder, I’d say. Said it had been a tiresome interruption, and she hadn’t noticed the time particularly. But in the end she agreed that it was about half-past eight, and that Miss Cartmell was only there for a very short time before Mr Torrance arrived. He didn’t come in — said goodnight very graciously from the door — and after they’d gone, she’d heard a car start and drive off almost at once.’

  Pollard put another tick in the timetable.

  ‘Let’s get cracking,’ he said. ‘I want to make the most of this breathing space before George Baynes arrives, and we get a report from the Yard on the Baynes-Thornton connection.’

  As the police car drew up outside the Staff House, Ann Cartmell came running out, her face anxiously interrogative, an expression which quickly turned to near-despair.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, almost in tears, ‘nothing more definite than not before Monday? I did hope that now the inquest’s over, I’d be allowed to go on Thursday after all.’

  ‘It isn’t over, you know,’ Pollard told her. ‘Only adjourned, for more enquiries to be made. But a lot of ground will have been covered by Monday, and I think the sensible course for you is to go home and start getting your things together. We’ve got your telephone number, and I’ll get into touch with
you the moment my superiors come to a decision about your going. And you know you don’t have to worry about cheap fares. Mr Torrance told me he was seeing to that.’

  Her face lighted up.

  ‘He’s wonderful to me.’

  Golly, thought Pollard, you poor little boob… ‘Suppose we hop into the back of the car,’ he said aloud, ‘while I just make sure there’s nothing more I want to ask you before you go —’

  Getting out, he opened the rear door for her, and sat beside her with his notebook on his knee.

  ‘Let me see,’ he said casually, turning over some pages. ‘Oh, yes. Just a small point, but we have to get everything absolutely clear. When I saw Mr Torrance yesterday, he said something about having gone back to the studio to fetch a copy of Artifex, on Saturday evening.’

  Ann Cartmell looked at him with a sudden startled expression.

  ‘Oh, dear! I forgot to tell you that, didn’t I? It must have gone straight out of my head. He’d shown me a reproduction in the August number which he had with him. I must have put it down on the table, and we both forgot about it. It wasn’t until we had got down to the Quad that I suddenly remembered, and asked him if he’d picked it up. He wasn’t a bit cross, although it was all my fault.’

  Pollard suppressed a strong desire to shake her.

  ‘It was you who remembered about it?’

  ‘Yes, fortunately, or he’d probably have gone off without it.’

  ‘Now, I want to get this quite straight, Miss Cartmell. While Mr Torrance went back to the studio, you hurried on to the secretary’s office. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How long was it before he joined you?’

  ‘Oh, hardly any time. I ran ahead, and luckily Mrs Kitson was still there. She gave me the form, and I only had to fill in the three names: everything else was done. I was just sticking up the parcel when he came to the door. Then we went out to the car together, as I told you.’

  With this, Pollard let her go.