by Leo Bruce
“Never mind that. We shall leave here as soon as possible.”
“There. And I was just getting used to moving the furniture about every time I wanted to cross the room.”
Carolus went after breakfast to pick up George Stump at the Palatial.
“Yes, I don’t mind coming out,” he said, “but I’m sorry you’re not going to finish the job. It doesn’t look as though the police are getting much farther, so perhaps we never shall know whether Lillianne and Alice Pink were murdered and if so, by whom.”
Bomberger was called for at Peep O’Day, and Carolus and Stump had to wait while he roused himself and dressed.
“I should like you to come out to the house,” said Carolus. “I have something to explain which I think will interest you.”
Bomberger did not hesitate to get into the car, but, to avoid a wearisome catechism of George Stump at this point, Carolus did not introduce the two men.
At Trumbles Carolus found that Fay had succeeded, for Gracie and Babs Stayer were with Ron and Gloria Cribb in the large room which Lillianne Bomberger had not scrupled to call the lounge. Carolus was interested to see that unless all five of them were brilliant actors Bomberger and his relatives by marriage were complete strangers.
There were a good many anxious looks towards Carolus, and he said at last: “I’m sorry if I am disappointing anyone or breaking any sort of verbal or implied contract, but I’ve decided to resign from this case.”
“Defeated?” suggested Gloria Cribb.
“I don’t quite know how to answer that. I know who killed Lillianne Bomberger and where and why. I know why she was buried in the sand and by whom. I also know who killed Alice Pink and how and why.”
“Then why are you running away?” persisted Gloria.
“Because I could not prove any of it. Both murders were ingenious and lucky, and it may be that no charge will be brought until the police obtain a certain piece of evidence which I do not wish to obtain. Please don’t ask me what it is, for if I answered that I should be revealing more than I ought. I will say only that it can be obtained, that it almost certainly will be, but that it is not for me to obtain it.”
“But if you can’t prove it, how can you say you know?”
“Perhaps I don’t, as Euclid knew things. But I’m as sure as Einstein. I mean, I’m satisfied, anyway. But every scrap of evidence I have is circumstantial, and I cannot make it anything else. If the Detective Inspector in charge of the case wishes me to do so I shall tell him my conclusions. On the other hand he may know very well and be about to act on what he knows. I cannot. It would entail doing something which I am constitutionally incapable of doing.”
“Do you think the police are so advanced?” asked George Stump incredulously.
“I don’t know. There is a basic difference between their approach to the problem and mine. I am trying to find out who has committed a murder. They are looking for the chance of a successful prosecution. I do not mean that they would go out to get an innocent man convicted. It would be too difficult, for one thing. It’s hard enough when he’s guilty. I mean, they want to know who is the murderer because it’s easier to prove a case against him than against anyone else. The whole business of the British police force is not what it was founded for, the maintenance of law and order, but getting convictions. A murder case is no exception.”
“And you don’t think they’ll obtain one here unless they get, or have already got, the mysterious piece of evidence you mention?” asked George Stump.
“That’s what I think.”
“So you’re leaving?”
“Tomorrow, yes.”
“Haven’t you suggested that there might be yet another murder?” asked Gloria.
“I have, yes.”
“And you think you are justified in leaving?”
“Certainly. I could do nothing to prevent it.”
“Except say what you know. That would prevent it, wouldn’t it?”
“I doubt it. I hope what will prevent it is that the murderer will realize the futility of going on. A murderer who sets out to eliminate everyone with evidence against him may end by having to take a Sten gun to an entire population. It’s a snowball process as the information is passed on.”
“Do you suggest any precautions that might be taken?”
“Only the elementary one on which I have been insisting ever since I came here—tell the truth. If everyone had told the truth from the first, Alice Pink would be alive. If everyone tells it now, at once, to the police, there will be no more murders.”
“Otherwise, you maintain, there may be?” asked George Stump.
“Otherwise there may. I’m sorry I can do no more.”
Back at Wee Hoosie he found Priggley waiting.
“You’re not really throwing in the sponge are you?”
“Yes. Really.”
“But you can’t possibly. I’ve got more than a tenner out on your solving before the police. Apart from that you’ll never, in the language of your favourite authors, be able to lift your head again.”
“I want nothing more to do with it and I’ve told them so. The headmaster arrives this afternoon, by the way.”
“You don’t say! Why has he abandoned Ostende, with days spent in Bruges?”
“He’s worried about my investigations.”
“Is that why you’ve thrown up the case?”
“You know the answer to that.”
“Of course I do. But he’ll be tickled pink to hear you’ve chucked it.”
“But not that he has come home for nothing.”
Carolus found that afternoon that Mr Gorringer’s feelings about the situation were not quite as he had anticipated.
“Ah, Deene,” he greeted Carolus severely as he alighted from a third-class compartment. “Able to meet me, I rejoice to see. And splendid weather. Splendid. Only the one suit-case. I hope not to have to make a long stay. Ah, thank you. I am at your disposal. Whither?”
“I’ve booked a room for you at the Seaview Hotel. I thought your wife would be with you.”
“No. Mrs Gorringer has remained in Ostende. Now I am most anxious to have a few words with you, Deene. Most anxious. You, I gather, have taken a furnished house here?”
“That is an exaggeration. But we will go to it, and you can see for yourself. It is called Wee Hoosie.”
“Ah, Scottish, I perceive,” said the headmaster brightly, then seemed to recollect himself. “But we have graver things to discuss than house names.”
“Mrs Stick will give us a cup of tea and you can get whatever it is off your chest,” said Carolus.
“I cannot altogether approve of the levity with which you speak, Deene. It is not to ‘get something off my chest’ that I have abandoned a well-earned vacation in Ostende. It is to prevent, if possible, a major calamity, for you, for me, for the school and for the distinguished firm of Stump and Agincourt. I trust I am not too late.”
In the ‘front room’ Mr Gorringer looked large and out of place.
“Far be it from me,” he said after an awed glance at the wedding groups—“far be it from me to feel surprise at any pied-à-terre you may wish to choose, but I cannot help asking what induced you to rent such—may I say?—unsuitable apartments? Superabundance of furniture seems the most striking feature of your temporary home, my dear Deene.”
“It’s through her having come into all her sister’s things just after their mother died.”
“Ah, heirlooms,” said Mr Gorringer. “Now, Deene, what is this distressing business? I understand there has been a second death. The secretary.”
“Quite true.”
“You seem extraordinarily composed about it. I should have thought that a second demise in a case which you are investigating was not only a tragedy in itself but a reflection on your abilities.”
“I suppose it is, but the silly women would not tell me the truth.”
“The secretary’s name, I read in my newspaper, was Alice Pink. She had
relatives, I hope?”
“A sister. Rather your type, headmaster.”
“I beg your pardon, Deene. May I ask what you mean by ‘my type’?”
“Oh, I meant professionally. She’s the matron of a preparatory school. I should think a splendid one.”
“Indeed? By a strange coincidence I heard only a few days ago that our trusted Mrs Gritchley is not returning to us next term.”
“Grab this one then. You and she were made for one another. In a purely professional sense, of course.”
Mr Gorringer coughed.
“To return to our muttons,” he said. “What I am most anxious to know, indeed I do not exaggerate when I say that I am on tenterhooks to know, is whether Mr George Stump is in any way involved in this regrettable affair?”
“I don’t know. I resigned from it this morning. I want nothing more to do with it.”
The headmaster blinked.
“Can you be serious, Deene? Resigned, before the truth has been revealed? I almost said, deserted in the face of the enemy.”
“You’ve always told me that you wanted me to leave these things to the police. In the letter I received from you yesterday you reiterated this. I have decided to do as you suggest.”
“But, Deene, there is a sharp distinction between keeping yourself clear of a thing of this kind and leaving it in midstream. I find your conduct, if I may go so far, savours of pusillanimity. It leaves Mr Stump in a position which at any moment may lead to his interrogation and conceivably even some mistaken suspicion on the part of the police.”
“Oh, I should think he’s a suspect. The police have questioned him, anyway.”
“You cannot mean it! This is indeed alarming. I trust you told them that he is engaged at present in the most important matters of publishing? What possible reason can they have had for interrogating Mr Stump?”
“He went up to the house that evening.”
“An unfortunate coincidence, nothing more. Anyone might have gone up to the house that evening. I might have myself.”
“You were in Ostende. Or was it one of your days in Bruges? A long way from here, at all events.”
“I sometimes find you sadly lacking in a sense of humour, Deene. I was using myself merely as an illustration of the absurdity of questioning Mr Stump for no better reason than that he visited the house on the night of Mrs Bomberger’s death. Did he see the lady?”
“No. She had given orders that he must not be admitted.”
“You see? Typical police blundering. The sort of thing of which you, my dear Deene, would never be guilty, in spite of your occasional lapses of taste, if I may make so bold as so to describe them.”
“Apart from the fact that you have repeatedly told me that the police know their own business best, I myself grilled George Stump most thoroughly.”
“Then I despair of you!” cried Mr Gorringer. “I have rarely heard anything more far-fetched.”
“At all events, I’m out of it now. They can arrest whom they like, so far as I’m concerned.”
“You use words very lightly, Deene. You are not suggesting, I trust, that the police might even—but of course it is preposterous—might even go so far in monstrous folly as to apprehend Mr Stump?”
“If they think he is guilty, they will. He was in the middle of a most violent quarrel with Lillianne Bomberger.”
“Pooh! Royalties and dust-jackets!”
“But to a woman of Lillianne Bomberger’s kind every quarrel was one to the death.”
“What extravagant phrases you employ, Deene. But let us dispute no more. The important thing is that you should quickly, nay instantly, resume your investigations in order to solve this most infelicitous affair and reveal the truth in the shortest possible time, thus saving Mr Stump from any possibility of embarrassment.”
“Can’t do that, I’m afraid, headmaster. I’ve finished with it. Glad to be, in fact. It’s a beastly business.”
“Pardon me, Deene. But I do not think that you can have realized the full implications. I, your headmaster, to whom you owe at least a measure of loyalty and consideration, have entrusted the child of my brain, the fruit of a life-time’s experience, the composium of my varied interests and speculations, to the firm of which Mr Stump is the senior partner. Early next spring Stump and Agincourt are due to publish The Wayward Mortar-board”
“Or Thirty Years on the Slopes of Parnassus. I know. But I can’t do anything about it. I don’t see it would make much difference, anyhow. Agincourt would carry on even if Stump were nicked.”
“Deene! I forbid you to employ this flippancy in a matter of such vital moment. But let us be calm. Do you know that Mrs Bomberger was murdered?”
“Yes. But I can’t prove it.”
“Do you know who was guilty of that crime?”
“Yes. But again I have only circumstantial evidence.”
“And Miss Pink?”
“The same applies.”
“Was it the same person?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Then prove it, man! Prove it. It should be a challenge to you!”
“I’m sorry, headmaster; I’m leaving Blessington tomorrow. For good.”
But that Carolus was unable to do. For in the morning, before Mrs Stick had finished packing, the little town rang with the news that there had been another death at Trumbles. Babs Stayer was found in bed in the morning, having died some hours previously.
The cause of death was confidently thought to be an overdose of sleeping-pills containing morphine, a conclusion which was afterwards confirmed by autopsy. So for Carolus his escape became impossible.
18
CAROLUS remained all that day in the stuffy front room of the house he had so rashly rented, at first refusing to see anyone. But when Priggley arrived about noon, Mrs Stick obtained his unwilling permission to admit him.
“Achilles sulking in his tent,” said Priggley. “And small wonder. I don’t know which looks sillier, you or the police. How many more people do you expect to be poisoned? We’ve only had three green bottles hanging on the wall as yet.”
“The headmaster is here,” said Carolus. “He arrived yesterday.”
“It only needed that. Look, sir, are you going to give your theory of the case now? I frankly don’t see how you can do anything else.”
“I suppose so. If the police want me to.”
They were interrupted by knocking at the front door, and Rupert went to open it. Almost before he had done so Mrs Plum had passed him and was inside.
“Wait a minute. Let me get my breath,” she said. “I didn’t want any of them to see me coming here, though one or another’s bound to have been on the watch.” She walked into the room as she spoke and nodded to Carolus. “What did I tell you? I saw it coming from the first. The lady from next door told me just now, when I was putting my washing out. ‘I suppose you’ve heard what’s happened now where you were working?’ she said, and I told her anything could happen up there. ‘Another one gone,’ she said, and told me it was Babs. I wasn’t surprised, mind you, after what I’ve seen, but it gave me a nasty turn, all the same—I could hear my heart going bang, bang, bang and thought my legs would crumble under me. So I nipped round to hear what you had to say about it.”
“Nothing,” said Carolus wearily.
It seemed that Mrs Plum had not heard.
“It’s a nice thing, isn’t it?” she reflected. “You start with one Going and you never know where it will end. I saw her yesterday morning, too. In the High Street, she was, just coming out of Cupperly’s. I little thought it would be the last time I’d set eyes on her, poor thing. It’s enough to make anyone feel queer, isn’t it? Poisoning anyone like that. I wonder whatever people do it for. Oh well, I must get back. I thought I’d just pop round.”
After peering furtively from the door, Mrs Plum made a dash for it.
But not ten minutes later Carolus had another visitor.
“Eyt was almost empossible to faind you
r hading-place, Mr Deene, though Ey hed the eddress. Ey have a little enformation for you.”
“Oh. Do sit down. I’d really given up the case.”
“Ey know. Et must be fratefully complicated. End so many daying. Ey’m sure you must be quate worn out. Ey thought jest in case mey little piece of enformation mate be helpful Ey would neep een end tell you.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh, not et ell. Et’s just that the lady who has now dayed, Miss Bebs Stayer, Ey mean, keem into the hotel yesterday. For a dreenk, Ey fency. She went to the Bavarian Weinstube; thet es one of our bars.”
Carolus nodded.
“Et must have been about twelve meed-dey. Soon she was joined bey anether lady and gentleman whom Ey know by sate. A farmer neemed Cribb and hes wafe. Very nace people, also connected with Mrs Bomberger, Ey believe.”
“Yes. He is.”
“Thet es ell, reelly. Ey jest thought you should know.”
“Thank you.”
“Thenk you. Ey can faynd mey way out, thenk you. Goodbey.”
The door closed quietly behind her, and her pinnacle heels could be heard on the pavement.
“Ey’d lake to strengle her,” said Priggley. “Though I suppose she was trying to be useful. I should think that the news would just about have come to the ears of the headmaster and we shall have him trundling round. Ah well, never a dull moment.”
It was not, however, until after lunch that Mr Gorringer arrived, and when he did so it was with Miss Ethel Pink. Between them they filled the small room.
“Miss Pink chanced to be staying at the same hotel,” said Mr Gorringer, “and I was lucky enough to gather her identity from a reference by the hall porter. A natural affinity of anxieties in this most deplorable business, Deene, brought us into conversation.”
“Good. I thought you would get on,” said Carolus cheerfully.
“But this is no time to be talking of anything but the new and appalling development. What have you to say of that?”
“Nothing. I told you yesterday I had left the case.”
“Come, Deene, you can scarcely expect to throw off your responsibilities now that things have taken this ugly turn. You owe it to Miss Pink to give her the fullest details in the matter of her sister’s death. You owe it to everyone to explain the truth about Mrs Bomberger. And you have a double, a triple obligation in the matter of this latest tragedy.”