Death of an Old Girl

by Elizabeth Lemarchand

  ‘What did you make of that?’ he asked Toye, rejoining him in the front seat.

  ‘O.K. I’d say, sir, on both counts. She strikes me as too — well, simple, to have been putting on an act. And it’s difficult to see how Torrance could have had a quarrel leading to murder, and stowed away the body and got down to the office in the time. We’ve got the secretary’s evidence that he turned up in a matter of minutes.’

  ‘I agree. Having checked up on that one point about which of them remembered the magazine, I think we’d better start on the interminable job of trying to find someone who saw the two Bayneses and Madge Thornton on their various comings and goings last Saturday evening. Dash it — there were about fifty people who were spending the night on the premises. I refuse to believe that they’d all turned in by about nine o’clock. Let’s make for the school, and see if we can get any of them eliminated.’

  Twelve

  ‘Behind

  The wall,

  The wall compounded of fossiliferous limestone,

  Voiceless fragments of an earlier creation,

  Stands another wall, articulated, ericacaean,

  Red-eyed in the agony of the year’s springtime,

  Impenetrable rampart of rhododendron.’

  CORINNA HISLOP. Lower VI (Arts)

  From The Meldonian

  Helen Renshaw was looking older, thought Pollard, noting the lines of strain about her eyes. As he put the evidence as to the place and method of the murder before her, he saw that she had anticipated the request that he was going to make, and was disturbed by it.

  ‘I can’t help realising,’ she said unhappily, ‘that this may lead to asking a great deal — in fact, a terrible thing from some member of the school.’

  ‘On the other hand, Miss Renshaw,’ he replied, ‘it may well be the means of completely clearing innocent people.’

  ‘That is true, of course,’ she admitted, and reluctantly took the list of names which he held out to her… ‘All these persons slept on the premises last Saturday night, to the best of my knowledge and belief, but some of them can be accounted for between nine and ten o’clock. That should simplify your enquiry. For instance, some of the very elderly were staying at the Sanatorium, and I saw Sister Littlejohn shepherding them over there from the dining-room, directly after supper… Then my coffee party up here didn’t finally break up until about a quarter past ten…’

  Pollard watched her as she carefully annotated the paper, and wondered how she would cope with the problem of a murder on the school premises when it came to dealing with the girls next term. When Toye had gone off to interview the resident staff, and contact a series of local police forces by telephone, he remained behind to talk to her about Bert Heyward. He learnt that the fullest enquiries had been made into the man’s health and character at the time of his appointment nine years earlier, and he had never shown the slightest sign of mental instability.

  ‘Naturally, if he had, we couldn’t have risked keeping him for five minutes in a girls’ boarding school,’ Helen Renshaw said. ‘As I told you, he isn’t a forceful personality, but most conscientious and very capable as a handyman.’

  ‘I think you said he hadn’t much initiative. Isn’t that rather a drawback in such a responsible post?’

  She smiled.

  ‘Have you met Mrs Heyward yet, Inspector?’ she asked. ‘She has more than enough for both of them. We really appointed her as much as him, and it has worked admirably.’

  ‘Yes, I see,’ said Pollard. ‘My sergeant rather deduced that. Apparently Heyward was upset by Inspector Beakbane’s questions.’

  ‘I think some nervousness of authority is a hangover from his concentration camp experiences. I’ve noticed it myself, and always make a point of dealing with him very gently.’

  An interesting point, thought Pollard. How would he react to an unexpected hostile challenge in the half-light, especially if he were feeling slightly guilty about being late?

  Thanking Helen Renshaw, and promising to keep her informed of any important developments, he left Old House and walked down the drive. He crossed the road and went in at the garden gate of Applebys, but did not enter the house. Standing in the porch, he tried to imagine the thoughts of Madge Thornton as she had stood there on the previous Saturday evening…

  I’m furiously angry with Beatrice, he told himself, and determined to see her. I’ve come back for the second time, and try the front door. No good — the catch is down, so I ring the bell…

  He listened to the oddly disturbing sound of a bell ringing and ringing in an empty house.

  There’s no answer, but she may possibly be in the garden, so I go round to see…

  Pollard went round the side of the house, and looked up at its uncommunicative façade with every window closed. The garden was already showing faint signs of neglect. The grass needed cutting, and the dead roses snipping off. Birds hopped about with an air of being in possession.

  I call up at the bedroom window if she’s gone to bed, I’m going to get her up… Again, no answer. She must have gone out to dinner somewhere… She’s hardly ever as late as this. I’m going to wait…

  Pollard’s eye fell on a garden seat. No, he thought. Beatrice might have invited one of her old friends to spend the night, and be bringing her back… So I decide against staying in the garden… I go round to the front of the house again, and hesitate for a minute or two…

  He stood just inside the gate and looked across the road at the wall of Meldon Park. The iron railings removed for scrap metal during the war had not been replaced. The wall itself was only about three feet high, and backed by tall rhododendron shrubs. With a sudden feeling of excitement he went over to the school gates and turned right, carefully scrutinising the bushes. Opposite the entrance to Applebys he found two small branches snapped off. They hung limply, their leaves already dry and curling. After satisfying himself that the ground was too hard to take footprints, he manoeuvred through a gap into the narrow space between the rhododendrons and the wall. It was a perfect observation post for anyone prepared to kneel or crouch. Moving cautiously he came on clear signs of a sojourn … twigs snapped off, and the carpet of dead leaves scuffed up. Dropping on to his knees he found that the top of the wall was only a little below his eye level, and estimated that he was about three inches taller than Madge Thornton. Examining the branches behind the disturbed area he came on a sandy-coloured woollen thread caught on a broken twig. He disengaged it with care, and put it into an envelope. A painstaking search of the leaves on the ground stirred up a good deal of dust and an acrid smell which made him sneeze, but failed to yield any useful result.

  Squeezing his way out to the park again, Pollard stood lost in thought, while automatically brushing himself down… Surely, if George Baynes had cut through the park after leaving Applebys, he wouldn’t have risked the gates under the very nose of the Eccles family? Much safer to go over the wall and dive into the shrubs, after peeping out to see the coast was clear. And if Madge was still keeping the house under observation he must have landed almost on top of her. Was this the explanation of her hysteria when he had asked her if she had seen anyone coming away from Applebys? If the encounter had taken place, could it have led to their joining forces to murder Beatrice?

  Going back to the road, Pollard walked along close to the wall, looking for any traces of George’s passage. Not more than a dozen yards beyond the place where he had found the woollen thread there were several more snapped-off branches suggesting that someone had pushed through in haste. He leant over the wall and saw signs of a heavy landing: a deep heel print in a patch of bare earth.

  After a second dusty and fruitless investigation among the dead leaves, he began to make his way back to Old House, thinking furiously. Since Ann Cartmell had overtaken Madge in the drive just after nine, it didn’t look as though the latter had been in her spy-hole between her two visits to Applebys. She might not, therefore, have seen George arrive. But if she took up her positi
on after her second call, she might quite well have seen him leave: she hadn’t turned up at the Staff house until about ten-twelve… The strand of wool of that hideous sandy colour was pretty conclusive evidence that she had been there at some stage, but it could have been in the afternoon, perhaps? She might have hoped that Beatrice would come home for a rest after lunch…

  Pollard switched his thoughts to George Baynes. Was it possible that he had come down by invitation? Madge didn’t seem to be in Beatrice’s confidence as far as the latter’s plans went. He might have found a note in the porch, hidden by arrangement, and telling him that his great-aunt had gone over to the studio. He could have followed her there, had a quarrel and killed her in a sudden blind rage… Not a very convincing idea, surely? How well did he know the layout of the school, in the first place? Mot men were extremely chary of invading female institutions… Then of course, if he’d arrived just before nine and gone straight over, he’d have met Madge coming down the drive… One kept on coming back to Madge… He’d simply got to see her again, and must tackle the doctor.

  Arriving at the front door of Old House, he went in and found Toye in the library, who reported that he had drawn a complete blank with Joyce Kitson, Jean Forrest and the various matrons. None of them had anything to report about the Bayneses, Madge Thornton, Bert Heyward or the purlieus of the studio between nine and ten on Saturday night or round about half-past eight either. George Baynes, met off the London train by Sergeant Toye and diverted to the police station, came in protesting indignantly.

  ‘I’ve come down to see Yelland by appointment,’ he blustered. ‘It’s the ruddy limit hauling me off like this as if I was a ruddy criminal. We’ve got important business to see to. Surely you can wait for an hour, whatever it is you want to see me about?’

  ‘Murder invariably takes priority over other business,’ replied Pollard. ‘Sit down, Mr Baynes. This may take a little time. Mr Yelland has been told that you will be late for your appointment. You are, of course, within your rights in refusing to answer any questions except in the presence of a solicitor.’

  There was no mistaking the alarm on George’s face as he subsided on to a chair, muttering that he had no need of a solicitor and making a creditable attempt to glare at Pollard.

  ‘As you please,’ said the latter. ‘Sergeant Toye, I think Mr Baynes may wish to amend the statement he made to me yesterday. I put it to you,’ he went on, looking steadily at George, ‘that everything in it relating to your actions between Saturday afternoon and roughly midday on Sunday is pure fiction.’

  ‘Try to prove it then,’ snapped George, with uncertain truculence.

  ‘We have, Mr Baynes. Up to the hilt.’

  ‘If you think I’m going to fall into that old trap, you’re doomed to disappointment.’

  ‘Very well, Mr Baynes. I’ll do the talking, if you’d rather have it that way. I put it to you that you were in a pretty tight corner financially last Saturday afternoon, and that your unlucky bet or bets brought matters to a head. You simply had to have some cash, and decided to appeal to your great-aunt. As you were broke, I expect you hitch-hiked to somewhere within walking distance of Applebys, probably where the minor road over the hills to Trill leaves the London road.’

  Pollard broke off, and nodded to Toye, who rose and went out of the room, returning a few moments later with an elderly man of the farm labourer type.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Aggett,’ said Pollard. ‘Do you recognise the gentleman who is sitting opposite to me?’

  The man favoured the discomfited George with a searching stare.

  ‘Aye, I met ’un Saturday night on the road up over Glintridge. On me way ’ome from the Plough, I wur. Roun’ ten to nine, must’ve bin.’

  ‘Are you quite sure?’

  ‘Aye. ’E be spruced up now, but wur dressed loike one o’ they ’ikers when I seed ’un, wi’ a green shirt an’ pack on ’is back. But ’tis same chap, I’d take me bible oath. Know ’un anywur wi’ they stick-out lugs o’ his’n’.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Pollard hastily. ‘Have you any comment to make, Mr Baynes?’

  ‘The fellow’s nuts. I was ill in bed on Saturday night.’

  ‘’Ere!’ broke in Mr Aggett indignantly. ‘’Oo’s sayin’ I’m a liar?’

  When he had been escorted out, and Toye had returned and resumed his seat, Pollard looked at George.

  ‘Shall I go on, Mr Baynes? I put it to you that you arrived at Applebys just before nine o’clock, but found the front door locked and could get no answer when you rang the bell. You were seen coming out of the porch in your green shirt at about five minutes past nine.’

  ‘Can it be that one or two other chaps in the country wear green shirts?’

  ‘Undoubtedly, but let me go on with my reconstruction. You got through quite a lot before you vaulted over the wall and crashed through the bushes, didn’t you? I’m not quite sure of the exact order of events, but perhaps it was something like this. You found that the kitchen window was open and got into the house. You went to the drawer in your great-aunt’s bureau where you knew she kept her money, unlocked it with the key which she kept in the jug on the top, and stole about fifty pounds. You also helped yourself to a valuable snuff-box from the drawing-room. You were hungry enough to raid the larder and take some food and a bottle of milk. It is never easy to remove all traces of one’s fingerprints, but you were quite remarkably inept at it. Really, you made it too easy for us.’

  ‘You haven’t got any fingerprints,’ said George hoarsely. ‘I suppose this is one of the ways the police try to trap people into admitting things.’

  ‘You left impressions on that photograph you handled at Scotland Yard, Mr Baynes.’

  George swallowed, but said nothing.

  ‘The only thing we’re not quite clear about,’ Pollard continued in a conversational tone, ‘is whether you broke into Applebys before or after you murdered Miss Baynes.’

  There was a violent crash as George Baynes leapt to his feet, sending his chair flying backwards.

  ‘It’s a bloody lie,’ he shouted. ‘I never set eyes on her the whole time.’

  ‘Sit down,’ ordered Pollard brusquely, as Toye, who had also sprung up, replaced the fallen chair. ‘Now that you find you can’t deny being at Applebys last Saturday, I suggest that you make a truthful statement this time. Perhaps you don’t realise that it’s an offence to try to mislead the police?’

  George Baynes, now ashen-faced, looked at him steadily. When he spoke, it was with unexpected dignity.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I admit what I told you yesterday wasn’t true. What I’m going to say now, is. But before I start, I want to say that I never saw Aunt Beatrice from first to last, and that I’d sooner have chucked myself under a bus than done her any harm. We didn’t see eye to eye over a lot of things, but I was fond of her, and she was my only living relative.’

  ‘What you have just said will be included in your statement,’ replied Pollard. ‘Now, I suggest that you start from the point at which you were listening to the racing results on the radio.’

  He followed intently as George described his sudden decision to go down to Applebys and ask for an advance on his birthday cheque, and how he had tried in vain to get through to his great-aunt on the telephone. George confirmed that he had hitch-hiked, arriving at the crossroads at 8.20 p.m., and his encounter with Mr Aggett. Arriving at the school gates, he had seen the parking notice and deduced that something was on at Meldon. He had found Applebys locked up, and just as he was going away from the front door, had seen a girl drive out of the gates and turn along the road to Trill.

  ‘What did you do next?’ asked Pollard.

  ‘I went round to the garden. You can’t always hear the bell if you’re out there. But there was no sign of Aunt B., so I peered into the dining-room and drawing-room windows. While I was doing that I heard the gate click, and skipped behind some bushes.’

  ‘Why did you do that? I should have thought t
hat you would have gone round to the front door again, expecting to see Miss Baynes.’

  ‘You didn’t know Aunt B.,’ replied George, with the first gleam of humour he had shown. ‘I’d come down in hopes of touching her, and was terrified of queering my pitch. I wanted to get a clue on the sort of mood she was in.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘I heard the front door bell ring and wondered who on earth could be calling at that hour. Aunt B. liked to doss down awfully early, and evening visitors weren’t encouraged. After a bit I heard someone coming round to the garden, and Madge Thornton appeared.’

  ‘Were you surprised?’

  ‘Completely baffled. I’d taken it for granted that Aunt B. was over at the school, but I realised that she couldn’t be, because Madge would have known about it, and was almost certain to have been there herself. So I decided that Aunt B. must have gone out to supper, probably with some old pal.’

  ‘What did Miss Thornton do?’

  ‘Dithered a bit, and peered in at the windows as I’d done, and then called up at the bedroom window. Nothing happened, so in the end she went away again. I waited till I heard the gate, and then popped out.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Go on, Mr Baynes,’ said Pollard crisply.

  ‘All this will sound pretty unconvincing,’ George Baynes said unhappily, ‘but it’s the honest truth. My one aim was to step off on the right foot when Aunt B. came back. Sometimes the thing that paid off best with her was cheek. I was jolly hungry, so when I found the kitchen window was open, I nipped in and vetted the larder and the fridge. There was plenty of grub about, but my tongue was hanging out, so I thought I’d take a look round and see if there was any sherry going: there usually was. The drawing-room door was open, and there was a decanter and four glasses on a side table. They’d been used, so I felt sure I was right about her being out to dinner. I took the decanter and went on into the dining-room, with the idea of taking some grub in there… I wish to God I hadn’t…’