‘You’d be far better than I at that sort of game. Couldn’t we change places for the day?’
‘No. I have forgotten all I ever knew about the lesser hogweed. Besides, the Inspector won’t talk to you as he is going to talk to me. But be of good cheer! At the end of next week, unless our problem is solved, we are going back to Cromlech to continue our investigation from there.’
‘Lovely! All right, then. I’ll continue to wrestle with kids and conscience for another few days. I know now why T.G.I.F. is the harassed teacher’s favourite slogan! I wonder…’
‘Yes?’
‘I wonder whether Bannister could help us? He’s supposed to be a woman-hater, so he may have a line on Faintley that the others haven’t got.’
‘You could try, but I think the first step will be to establish which of the staff were and which were not at that end-of-term dance.’
‘All right. I can pump Cardillon on that. I’d have done it before, but she’s rather intelligent and I want to do it so that she doesn’t realize I’m pumping her. Any suggestions?’
‘Yes. Take her into your confidence if you discover that she herself was present the whole time at the dance. If she was not, she won’t be of very much help. She may, however, be able to tell you of somebody who was there the whole time.’
Laura tackled Miss Cardillon on the following morning before school began. She was lucky enough to find her alone in her classroom. It was a golden opportunity.
‘I say,’ she said, ‘when is half-term?’
‘I don’t know. We haven’t had the list round yet.’
‘I hope this isn’t a school where we’re expected to take parties of kids out, or run an Old Scholars’ evening, or something of that kind, in the half-term break?’
‘Oh, no. We have the Old Scholars twice… just before Christmas and at the end of the summer term.’
‘Does everybody turn up? I shouldn’t know any Old Scholars, you see.’
‘It’s optional… although, of course, Rankin does push it a bit to make sure that enough of us are here to make the thing go.’
‘How about you? Do you roll along?’
‘Oh, yes. It seems part of the job. We’re not asked to do much in the way of outside activities. Miss Golightly’s pretty reasonable like that, and I’m one of those who can be led but hates being driven, so I feel it’s the thing to show willing.’
‘Pity everybody doesn’t think the same, but my experience is that the willing horses always do the pulling for the slackers, especially in jobs like this.’
‘Yes, that’s pretty true. We don’t have much bother here, though. Miss Ellersby and Mr Trench are the only ones who never turn up to anything. She’s got an ancient father and he’s got an invalid wife, so we can’t say much, although we feel sometimes that their troubles aren’t really our business.’
‘Were they the only two who didn’t come to the end-of-term dance, then?’
‘Oh, well, except for Bannister. He never comes to dances. Says he hates them. Everybody else turned up either for the whole or part of the time, and on the evening in question Mrs Moles stayed on to help in checking the needlework accounts. But what’s all this in aid of? There’s something behind it. I’ve an instinct in these matters.’
‘Quite so. I’ll come clean on two conditions.’
‘This sounds interesting.’
‘It is. I’m not really a teacher, as you’ve probably guessed by now, although I was properly trained, but, before I say more, you’ve got to promise that not one word of this goes a step further… Miss Golightly knows it already, so that needn’t trouble your conscience… and, then, you’ve got to give me the names of at least two people who can swear that you were here the whole evening at that dance.’
‘Heavens alive! It sounds like a spy story!’
‘That’s just what it may be. I’m not, as I say, quite what I seem.’
‘Well, of course, I won’t breathe a word, and, as for the witnesses, well, Batt, Fennison, and I were running the thing, so we could all swear to one another. Then Welling, as cookery teacher, was in charge of all the refreshments, so she, and her helper, Franks, would have been on the premises all the time, too, if that’s any good to you. And now, do relieve my curiosity or I shall burst! It’s about Faintley, isn’t it? Are you a female sleuth? I don’t believe it!’
‘I am and I’m not.’ Laura gave a full account of how she and Mrs Bradley had first become involved in Miss Faintley’s affairs, and she had only just finished when it was time to go to her classroom. She was delighted, however, with the information she had received. It seemed that most people on the staff could be written off so far as the telephone call was concerned. Of the others, it was in the highest degree unlikely that the plump and shrill-voiced Miss Ellersby, the rather unsuitable music specialist, could have impersonated a man, so Laura decided that she also could be passed over. There remained, as possible, collaborators with Miss Faintley over the affair of the parcels, Messrs Taylor, Roberts, Bannister, Trench, and Tomalin. Therefore it had been a real man, and not a masquerading woman, who had walked away from the telephone on the night when Mandsell had taken the call intended for somebody else… not that Laura had ever thought otherwise. One thing only nagged at her. She felt that if Miss Faintley had expected to hear the voice of a colleague, she must have been surprised when Mandsell answered, particularly as he had made several attempts to explain that he was not the person who had arranged to take the call.
The surprise of the day was to come. Just after the mid-morning break a girl came in with a note. Laura opened it and read:
Can you go out to lunch to-day? Something important.
H.H.T.
Laura recognized these initials as those of Mr Tomalin. Full of zeal for her task, she decided at once that he had something to contribute about Miss Faintley, so she scribbled at the bottom of the note:
Many thanks. See you at 12.15. L.M.
She felt contrite. Obviously she had misjudged Mr Tomalin. He must be much more intelligent and perceptive than she had supposed. He had tumbled to the reason for her presence at the school and was prepared to offer important information. It was in the friendliest spirit that she greeted him after morning school.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Tomalin, shortly, ‘but it isn’t me, of course. It’s Bannister. I said I’d ask you on his behalf. He wouldn’t ask you himself in case you refused.’
Laura laughed, and said she never refused an invitation to eat. Three minutes later the misanthropic Mr Bannister was blurting out that he thought they had better go to Hagford. ‘If you don’t mind using your car,’ he concluded. ‘That would give us nice time.’
‘I’m going to drive, then.’
‘Oh, yes. I can’t, anyway. It’s like this,’ he went on, when they were in the car and Laura was on the straight road for Hagford, ‘I’ve been thinking about that woman Faintley and I want to give you a bit of advice, if you wouldn’t think it cheek. Anyway, I felt I ought to warn you that she wasn’t everything she seemed, not by a long chalk, either. Don’t you go getting mixed up in her affairs. If the school stock has to be called for at Hagford station, you let somebody else call for it. I don’t like to see a young girl taking risks, if you don’t think it impudent to say so.’
‘To begin with,’ said Laura, ‘I’m not my own idea of a young girl. But, be that as it may, I’m glad you’ve mentioned Miss Faintley and the parcels, because I had an idea that Miss Golightly was a bit diffident about my going and getting them. Actually it was rather nice, because of getting the time off from school. But what do you mean about taking risks? It was nothing to do with the school stock that Miss Faintley got killed.’
‘Not to do with the school stock, no. But that wasn’t the only thing she used to collect from Hagford Junction, you know. Turn left here. We’ll go to the Crown. It’s quite the best pub for lunch. I do hope you don’t mind my inviting you out? I know you usually go with some of the women, which would naturally be mo
re fun for you than this, but I didn’t see any chance of talking to you at school. Well, here we are. It’s all right to park outside.’
He took her into the saloon bar, and asked what she would drink.
‘Mustn’t be long,’ said Laura, accepting sherry and glancing at her watch.
‘It’s all right. I booked a table on the off-chance that you would come, and Williams knows me. He’ll see we get served nice and quickly. Now, look, this woman Faintley. I happen to know that she used the school parcels to cover another activity. I found it out by accident one day last term. A boy, fooling about while I was out of the room, got a jab with the point of a compass. It was so near the eye that Miss Golightly thought I’d better take him over to the hospital. On the way back by myself I saw Miss Faintley get out of her car and go with a parcel into a small shop. She didn’t see me because I was behind her. I glanced into the shop as I passed it, and there was rather an unsavoury specimen behind the counter who was shelling her out some pound notes. Just as I glanced in he leaned across and gave her a ringing slap in the face. I didn’t like that much, so I charged in and bellowed at him. But Faintley wasn’t grateful. She said, “Don’t interfere in family disagreements,” but I said I didn’t like to see women knocked about, even by their fathers. The chap turned suddenly very civil and said he did not often lose his temper with his niece, and he asked me whether I was a master at the school, and Miss Faintley told him I was, and invited me to go back with her in her car. As we were driving back she begged me not to mention that she had called to see her uncle, as she was out on school business and had had no business to have gone into the shop at all. I promised, of course, but I wasn’t satisfied. I couldn’t believe that he was her uncle, so, on the quiet, I made a few inquiries. The police superintendent is by way of being a pal of mine. He said the police suspected this shopkeeper… Tomson his name is… of being a burglars’ fence. It didn’t square at all with what I knew about Faintley, and then, of course, she got murdered. As soon as I heard about that, I went to the police station and told them about this parcel and pound note business, but it was too late to do any good, of course. Still, when I found that you’d been sent to the station for the goods, I thought it was very unfair if you got let in, unknowingly, for anything fishy, so I thought I’d like to tip you off, so to speak. Any more sherry? Then perhaps we’d better go in.’
Laura enjoyed the lunch. It became more and more apparent that Mr Bannister, far from being a woman-hater, was simply and solely terrified of the whole sex. He was obviously chivalrous and kindhearted, and she began to like him and to hope that her suspicions about him were unfounded.
‘I suppose,’ he said hesitantly, when they were on their way back to school, ‘you wouldn’t care to come out with me on Saturday? We could walk over the hills, if you liked, and have tea somewhere, and perhaps have a bit of dinner afterwards and do a film. There’s quite a decent one this week over at Dashford Mills, and the kids don’t get out as far as that on a Saturday night, so there wouldn’t be any comment.’
‘I know a scheme worth two of that,’ said Laura, suddenly inspired. ‘You come and stay with us for the weekend. You’ll like my boss, I know.’
‘Your boss?’
‘Yes. Miss Faintley was not all she seemed, and I’m not, either. Will you come to Wandles Parva and make the acquaintance of Mrs Lestrange Bradley?’
Before she drove back that evening she telephoned her employer: ‘Bringing home suspect number one. Kill the fatted calf. He stood me a very good lunch to-day in Hagford. There’s something up his sleeve which I expect you’ll find some way of shaking down. He told me a most unlikely yarn about himself and Faintley. I’m dying to know the truth about him. It’s Bannister.’
‘Mr Bannister?’ Mrs Bradley replied. ‘You have indeed done well. Do you remember that I took Mark to visit Lascaux?’
‘Where the ferns grow?’
‘No, not ferns, but many more horses than the four horsemen of the Apocalypse ever dreamed of. Mr Bannister is well known at Lascaux. How lucky for me that I took Mark along with me that day!’
‘Kind hearts are more than coronets,’ said Laura ironically. She still did not believe that Mrs Bradley had had no ulterior motive in taking Mark to France.
Chapter Ten
MRS CROCODILE
‘… with gently-smiling jaws.’
lewis carroll – Alice in Wonderland
« ^ »
Mrs Bradley had spent the day in the way which she had outlined to Laura, but she was back at the Stone House in the little Hampshire village of Wandles Parva before Laura drove home from school, and received the telephone message immediately upon her arrival.
‘First things first,’ she said, after Laura had been up to bath and change before dinner. ‘We have Madras curry and Henri’s peculiarly luscious chutney.’
‘And those pancake things that always remind me of bits of fried fur coat?’
‘And those.’
‘Oh, good! I’m famished. And how did you get on in Kindleford to-day?’
‘Unexpectedly well.’
Mrs Bradley had indeed gained rather more information in Kindleford than she had considered possible. She had gone straight to Detective-Inspector Darling for news of the statue.
‘We took it to bits and found nothing inside but a fern leaf. That seems to prove that Tomson wasn’t lying to us, but it doesn’t help us over Mandsell’s flat parcel.’
‘Interesting. Which fern leaf?’ Mrs Bradley had inquired.
‘How should I know? I know nothing at all about ferns.’
‘A great pity. May I see it?’
Carefully and painstakingly mounted by a young constable who had a gift for handling delicate fragments which enabled him, later, as a detective-superintendent, to solve the notorious mystery of the blue butterfly murders, the fern leaf had been produced for her inspection.
‘Asplenium Ceterach – the Scaly Spleenwort, Inspector.’
‘Really, ma’am? You’re an authority, then, on ferns?’
‘No, no. But I have a reasonably good visual and verbal memory. I recognize this specimen because it is exactly like one I saw in a glass case in the house at Cromlech.’
‘The house outside which Miss Faintley was found murdered? That’s remarkably interesting, ma’am. But as we already know that Miss Faintley was connected with the parcels, I don’t see quite how it helps us.’
‘It tails in with a theory I have formed, Inspector. The fact that two men thought it necessary to remove the case of mounted and labelled ferns from Cromlech Down House, coupled with the very different type of package which Mr Mandsell collected from Hagford when Miss Faintley was prevented from going to get it, causes me to think that the fern in the statue may possibly form part of a code.’
‘A code, ma’am? Yes, we had something of the same idea ourselves, but – well, I don’t know, I’m sure.’
‘Well, what else can you suggest?’
‘Nothing, until we get the whole truth out of Tomson, and that isn’t going to be easy. Though, of course, he did confess he broke a statue Miss Faintley had once collected.’
‘Asplenium Ceterach – the Scaly Spleenwort,’ repeated Mrs Bradley thoughtfully. She took out a pocket mirror, glanced at her reflexion, and chuckled. ‘Extraordinary. Do you suppose it was the same parcel as the one which the zealous station official refused to allow Miss Menzies to collect? I should like to believe that. Although he did not let her have it, for us the result is the same as though he had yielded it up, it seems to me.’
‘A substitute parcel, ma’am? No, I hadn’t thought of that!’
‘Miss Menzies has very sharp eyes. The parcel she saw was a flat one. You think that your brains have not received their due meed of appreciation from the enemy? I feel certain, you know, that they have, and it seems to me that the common-sense thing for the gang to do would be to make certain that the police were not presented with the right bit of the code. What is more, their leader
has a grim sense of humour. The Scaly Spleenwort! Quite the raspberry, Inspector, in other words.’
‘Are you going to have a talk with Tomson, ma’am?’ asked Darling, after a pause during which he had appeared to cogitate.
‘It can do no harm. In fact, I must do it, although not much is likely to come of it. Tomson, I daresay, has been carefully briefed. But first I’ll go and see your Mr Mandsell.’
Mandsell was out when she called. Mrs Deaks suggested that she should wait.
‘He won’t be long, madam. Just gone to look up the library, so he said. The trouble with him is that he goes to look up one thing and finishes up with half a dozen things quite different – or so he says. Still, he ain’t a mite of trouble, even if he don’t pay up, but I think his intentions is honourable, and I wouldn’t turn him into the street no more, whatever my husband may say. If you’d seen the way that poor boy came in sopping wet the time we give him his notice – well, you wouldn’t treat a dog like it, let alone a young fellow what is on his beam ends and acts to you like a gentleman, not for Deaks nor for nobody do I do it, not never no more.’
‘You’re a kind woman, Mrs Deaks. It is not everybody who would feel like that. He is greatly in your debt.’
‘Well, not so much as you might think,’ replied the literal-minded landlady. ‘He give me four pound the next day, although goodness’ knows where he got it, and then he’ve got twenty pounds since then for some story or other he wrote, so I’m very pleased to think we should keep him on, for anybody less trouble as a lodger you couldn’t find, and that I’ll maintain to my dying day.’
‘In other words, you like Mr Mandsell. Does he have friends here to visit him?’
‘No, he don’t. Not one extra meal have I ever been asked to provide, and that’s something in these days. Mrs Froud, down the street, she’s got two young ladies in her top front, shorthand typists – one at Mr Fuller’s, the lawyers’, and the other at the shoe factory office – and they’re always having people in to tea. She charges, of course, but that don’t make up for the trouble, and dirty shoes in and out, and the getting ready and the washing-up and that, not to speak of all hours and a lot of stale tobacco smoke and the wear and tear on the carpet and furniture, and face powder over the dressing-table and cigarette ash on the floor. I tell her to tell ’em to go, but it ain’t all that easy to get double money with two young ladies sharing, and they will sometimes do a hand’s turn for theirselves, which is more than my young gentleman does. Still, I’d rather have a man. It don’t seem natural in a woman of my years to wait on bits of girls.’
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