‘I think I do.’ Out of the corner of his eye Appleby could see Miss Godkin doing her best with Joan Cavenett, and Timothy Church glowering along by himself. ‘I should imagine it’s all right for a time.’
‘That’s just it,’ said Miss Bearup, and both she and Miss Fisher looked with sudden admiration at a stranger of such philosophic penetration. ‘And there are things one learns, I must say. Omelettes and amateur theatricals and what to do to the stalks of flowers. I expect it all helps later on. And how to speak distinctly. Not that I think people didn’t hear me pretty clearly before.’
‘And the Facts of Life,’ said Miss Fisher incautiously.
Miss Bearup laughed – engagingly, Appleby thought. ‘Miss Godkin gives little talks on that. And sometimes there’s a fact or two thrown in that might be really useful, if you ask me. But the rest requires a pretty strong stomach, as you might say.’ Miss Bearup now looked full at Appleby – and her stride lengthened on the grass. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘sometimes it’s just god-awful being a woman.’
‘I say’ – Miss Fisher too now was an ally – ‘why did that girl look at us that way when we were introduced? Is she something too frightfully grand?’
‘Not so far as I know. I believe she mistook you for other people.’
‘How very odd!’ Miss Fisher glanced cautiously over her shoulder. ‘You know, odd things do happen at St Cecilia’s from time to time. Particularly since these foreigners have taken to drifting through.’
‘The German girls?’ Appleby dropped the question casually. ‘How do you find you like them?’
Miss Fisher looked at Miss Bearup, as if this were a complex matter requiring the superior gifts of her friend. And Miss Bearup scowled with a frankness that would have occasioned Miss Godkin acute distress. ‘You get the facts of life from them, all right,’ she said. ‘Facts of death and hell let loose. And they’re nice kids, only a bit jumpy because of what they’ve been mixed up with. Not that we see a great deal of them, because they’re not really at the Hall. Miss Godkin just picks them up somehow.’
‘Parlour boarders,’ said Miss Fisher.
Miss Bearup remained serious. ‘I wouldn’t like to be made to feel about my own country like some of those people are. You know, all that will have to be stopped, if you ask me. Don’t you think?’
‘Hitler’s Germany?’ Appleby nodded. ‘Yes.’
Miss Fisher frowned. ‘It will mean our men being killed, and the children bombed, and people like ourselves going and making things in factories?’
‘Yes,’ said Appleby. ‘It will mean all that.’
‘Well, it must just be stopped, all the same.’ Miss Bearup kicked a divot out of the lawn with a vicious skill which might have frozen Miss Godkin’s blood. ‘Hullo, there she is.’
‘The latest one,’ said Miss Fisher. ‘A bit different from the others. In fact, an absolute… well, you’ll see for yourself.’
Appleby was already seeing for himself. He had no need of anyone to tell him that the girl in the black frock, who now stood waiting for the party by a French window, was Fräulein Schmauch. Nor did he need to be told that she was, too, Zuleika Dobson. The Germans are not strong in the production of fatal women but occasionally they produce a masterpiece. And Fräulein Schmauch was that. She was tall and perfectly proportioned; her features were regular, her skin was ivory, and her eyes and hair were black. But these and other charms were quite obviously only so many points d’appui upon which the total and uncommunicable effect of Fräulein Schmauch was based. Meet her, and clearly you had to make up your mind at once. Either you must let your thoughts dwell carefully on other things or resign yourself to the rapid and uncontrollable growth of sheer amatory obsession. And, likely enough, Fräulein Schmauch would pay no attention to you. But whether this neglect was that of the replete tiger or of the unspotted and milk-white hind it would not be easy to say. For of Fräulein Schmauch’s superlatively compelling attributes a large inscrutability was not the least.
Of all this – and doubtless more – Miss Cavenett was rapidly aware. And if the awareness had the effect of returning Miss Fisher and Miss Bearup to a welcome obscurity in her regard it was far from contributing to the ease of the ensuing luncheon. This took place upon a dais from which Miss Godkin could survey the body of her charges, who sat at narrow tables and restrainedly conversed across a barrier of tastefully ordered flowers. Miss Godkin, while keeping an eagle’s eye upon the larger scene, directed the conversation of the immediate party into artistic channels. Miss Fisher and Miss Bearup were required to show knowledge of Mr Pasmore and Mr Duncan Grant; Fräulein Schmauch was consulted on Ernst and Klee. Fräulein Schmauch had little to say; as her voice when she did speak had a low, husky quality which played alarmingly upon the spine this was perhaps all to the good. Timothy Church, who might have been expected to eat in glowering or embarrassed silence, was unpredictably gay, his spirits being perhaps raised by a sense of some imminent resolution of his fate. But, all in all, it was an uncomfortable meal, and general relief was produced when Miss Godkin rose and pronounced grace. ‘And now, my dear Else’ – and Miss Godkin cast her conspiratorial glance at Appleby – ‘I want you to take Miss Cavenett and Mr Church and show them the new herb garden; it is really doing remarkably well. And you, my dear girls,’ – and she turned to Miss Bearup and Miss Fisher – ‘have work to do, I know.’ This was evidently a well-understood formula of dismissal; Miss Godkin’s two victims of the day withdrew after correct farewells; and presently Appleby and his hostess were in the garden again alone, with Fräulein Schmauch and her charges disappearing round a clipped yew hedge.
‘Well,’ said Appleby, following them with his eye, ‘I think perhaps they may work it out.’
‘Work it out? Really, Mr Appleby, you must understand that all this had puzzled me a great deal. I think I may say that commonly there is not much at St Cecilia’s that I don’t know about. Not that the girls are not allowed their proper privacy and reserve, of course.’
‘Of course,’ said Appleby politely.
‘But ever since Sir David arranged that these German girls should come to me from time to time–’
‘It was Sir David who arranged that?’
‘I am quite sure that it was really the dear Duke.’
‘A much more likely man to organize the thing, I should say.’
‘To organize the thing? Dear me, I am quite puzzled again. But I gathered that Sir David was merely carrying out the Duke’s wishes, and that there was a considerable inwardness to the whole affair.’ Miss Godkin looked cautiously round the empty lawn, as if fearful of being overheard. ‘Had it been Sir David alone I should scarcely have agreed. Particularly since–’
‘Particularly since Fräulein Schmauch has arrived and exercised such a fatal power over elderly men.’
‘Precisely so; you appear to know all about it.’ And Miss Godkin looked at Appleby in surprise. ‘It has been extremely embarrassing – particularly as I have sometimes feared that the thing could not but be remarked by the girls. Perhaps you know that Sir David Evans himself–’
‘And Pluckrose and Professor Prisk?’
‘And these as well. Dinners and theatres. In a place like Nesfield one just can’t behave in that way. I have been particularly apprehensive in regard to Mr Prisk, whose reputation is the reverse of good. Mr Lasscock, who is a close friend of mine, has recently discovered the most incontrovertible evidence of that. It has been most worrying.’
‘I am sure it has. And now with murder added–’
Miss Godkin gave what could only be called a yelp of dismay. ‘Mr Appleby, you can’t mean to suggest that there is any connexion between that horrible affair and St Cecilia’s!’
‘There has been this rivalry, as I suppose it may be termed, over your latest German protégée. And it is possible – well, to construct a tenable theory connecting either Evans or Prisk with the crime. Not that there aren’t other factors too. There are plenty of motives lying around, t
hough I don’t know that any of them is quite as strong as I would wish. And, for what it is worth, I am inclined to guess that Fräulein Schmauch’s place is merely on the outskirts of the affair… I wonder how those three are getting on.’
‘Else and Mr Church and this Miss Cavenett? Will you please explain what you mean by saying that they have to work something out? Do both the young women want to marry him?’
‘Dear me, no.’ Appleby halted and looked mildly at Miss Godkin. ‘One of them is married to him already.’
‘Mr Appleby! Have you had me arrange this luncheon to further some horrible collusive divorce?’ Miss Godkin was aghast. ‘Following upon a disgraceful clandestine marriage?’
Appleby shook his head. ‘I don’t know that anything of the sort will be necessary. For although Church is married to Fräulein Schmauch–’
‘Oh dear, oh dear!’
‘–I doubt whether the marriage is legally valid. You see, he has been married before.’
‘Married before!’
‘Quite often. In fact to all those German girls – or at any rate to a good many of them. And now he wants Miss Cavenett.’
Miss Godkin, with a complete failure of the principles of deportment, grabbed wildly at a garden chair. ‘Mr Appleby,’ she gasped as she sank down, ‘am I mad?’
‘I am quite sure you are not. But a fair part of the world is – and the disease is particularly bad round about the centre of Europe.’
‘This is wholly bewildering. I quite fail to follow you. I cannot see what possible connexion there may be between the state of Europe and this Church’s monstrous career of bigamy.’
‘Bigamy? Well, I’d hardly call it that. Knight-errantry sounds better by a long way.’
‘Knight-errantry! Are we to understand that Mr Church tours dragons’ caves and tyrants’ dungeons picking up wives?’
Appleby sat down. ‘Yes,’ he said soberly. ‘He does. Or he tours Himmler’s Germany, which is much the same thing. And I believe that other young men have been in on it too, and that it is something which the Duke of Nesfield has found a good deal of satisfaction in financing and organizing. Suppose, Miss Godkin, that you’re the daughter of a Jewish professor in Berlin. Or suppose you’re a Munich girl who has worked for the Social Democrats or for anybody those gentry don’t like. What’s your best chance? To marry an Englishman or an American quick and get away while the going is good.’
‘But surely–’
‘And it’s happened quite a lot. Plenty of men have made formal marriages with German women just to get them away. And so far the Nazis haven’t come down on it. But this of Church I suspect to be an ingenious and organized affair, given a romantic, Scarlet Pimpernel top-dressing by a nicely calculating brain at the top. So far, Church has refused to divulge the truth even to his fiancée… By the way, who is Fräulein Schmauch?’
‘I’m afraid I really haven’t any idea.’ Miss Godkin looked particularly distressed as she made this appalling social confession. ‘Though I was assured by Sir David that she was a girl of good family. And clearly she is well-bred–’
‘In fact, clearly not Fräulein Schmauch. In other words the scheme – which has been using this beautiful place of yours as a sort of clearing house, if the term may be used – has a little more to it than simple knight-errantry, after all. There must be plenty of important people in Germany who might act more freely one day if their daughters, say, were out of the possible clutches of the Gestapo.’
‘Mr Appleby, this is most astounding! I had, of course, some idea that these girls were more or less in the position of refugees who wished to live quietly here for a while. But I had no idea of the adventurous and – and matrimonial circumstances in which they came to me. Though I felt, you know, that some diplomatic element might be involved. The Foreign Office–’
‘Quite so.’ Appleby sheered hastily off this delusory topic. ‘What is important at the moment is that we should keep quiet about the whole thing. Which is why I particularly hope that it will prove wholly unconnected with Pluckrose’s murder. And now I am afraid I must be getting back to the university.’
‘But, Mr Appleby, whatever am I to do with those three young people? They may be having a most fearful row at this moment.’
‘Miss Godkin, I am quite sure that you are very capable of dealing with any three young people. And probably – now that we have forced an issue – they have got it settled by this time. I rather expect that Church and Miss Cavenett will announce their engagement straight away.’
Miss Godkin, though visibly gratified by Appleby’s assertion of her competence, looked extremely perplexed. ‘But I don’t see how they can do that. If he has been married several times already–’
‘The records will be in various consulates about Germany – and it wouldn’t be at all surprising if they were all unaccountably mislaid. Moreover there has probably been a whole jungle of false passports and the like through which a court would just refuse to cut its way. To which we may add the great improbability of any of the girls concerned making any claim that a real marriage occurred. On the whole I think Miss Cavenett will see that the right thing to do is to go straight ahead.’
And Appleby took his leave. Out of the corner of his eye as he went down the drive he saw Mr Church, Fräulein Schmauch, and Miss Cavenett returning from the herb garden; he saw too Miss Godkin rise from her chair and stand for a moment as one who ranges some necessary battalion of small talk about her. Perhaps her guests would stay to tea and there would be more discussion of Paul Klee and Max Ernst, of Mr Pasmore and Mr Duncan Grant. And Appleby chuckled. So much, surely, for Zuleika Dobson. And if now he could confine himself to the central aspect of the case, to what might be called its Pickwickian core… But before he reached the bottom of the drive Appleby was frowning thoughtfully again. He was not, after all, entirely sure that he had wholly disengaged the thing from that tiresomely magnetic German girl. What, for instance, was the wholly fantastic information that Tavender possessed? Appleby had a disturbing feeling that it might point back to St Cecilia’s. And to St Cecilia’s, somehow, he had no wish himself to return.
13
It is further evidence of the compelling personality of the young woman who called herself Else Schmauch that Inspector Hobhouse, as he munched sandwiches gratuitously by the university refectory, had her pretty constantly in mind. Never having met the girl, he was not in a position to meditate her charms; and it was therefore necessarily as a mere unknown force that he regarded her. But, even so, his reflections must be taken as a weighty tribute to her allure. Hobhouse put a good deal of trust in allure; it was his experience that it was generally to be found in one corner or another of any sanguinary case; and in the Pluckrose affair Fräulein Schmauch appeared to be the only person capable of providing it.
Pluckrose had been murdered; to Hobhouse this at least appeared certain. And then there had been an attempt to murder Prisk; from this conclusion one could only escape by the difficult hypothesis that Prisk had ingeniously staged the affair of the motorcar himself. And then Sir David Evans, knowing about Pluckrose and hearing about Prisk, had gone into a blue – or green – funk. Now Pluckrose, Prisk, and Sir David had, it seemed, been as three elderly moths fluttering round the ineluctable lamp that was Fräulein Schmauch – and from all this might not a tolerably clear picture be built?
Suppose that this unknown girl had already an established lover; suppose him to be a man passionately jealous and homicidally inclined. Might he not have killed Pluckrose, attempted to kill Prisk – and even now be preparing a similar short way with that third amatory nuisance, Sir David Evans? And might not an awareness – or a sense – of this well account for Evans’ panic? That these men should pursue an amour until even the most unbalanced lover felt that they must be so dealt with was sensational and fantastic in the extreme. But Prisk, at least, was definitely a person of loose principles – and then had not the fellow Tavender hinted at knowledge so extravagant that it just wouldn
’t be believed?
Having got so far Hobhouse stopped short – stopped short because, on his present information, he had come up against a brick wall. He had no present means whatever of providing the German lady with her necessary lover. At Nesfield University just nobody of the right sort appeared to be about. The place might hold its natural complement of quiet sensualists, effective and ineffective, practising and theoretical; but the homicidally passionate proprietor of a fatally attractive female Teuton was just not there. In the experienced judgement of Hobhouse only Marlow had a touch of any such temper. And Marlow, as far as was known, belonged to another context; his only known grudge was against Prisk alone; and that had nothing to do with a girl, Teutonic or otherwise. An attempt to take this theory further must, in fact, await the return of Appleby. Of the young man Church, about whom Appleby had given those mysterious intimations of bigamy, Hobhouse would have liked to have hopes. As far as the Pluckrose affair went Church appeared to be without an alibi for the fatal fifteen minutes round about eleven o’clock.
Eleven o’clock… Hobhouse, his brow suddenly darkening, swallowed down his last crust – for refectory sandwiches have crust all round – and rose to his feet. For before him of a sudden was the vision of the unspeakable Theodore Almeric de la Tour Lasscock, of whom there was such good reason to believe that he had witnessed a quite grotesquely bloody murder and straightaway picked up himself and his cushion and toddled off in quest of undisturbed peace of mind. Hobhouse sharpened a couple of pencils – when really hot on a trail he often snapped one off at the point – and went in search of this extreme exponent of non-cooperation.
In Lasscock’s room he found two girl students sitting on the absent scholar’s table comparing snapshots. They were waiting, they explained, for Mr Lasscock, who was known to be with the Vice-Chancellor and due presently to return. Hobhouse might have waited too; instead – and on no very clear premises, except that his impatience was great – he formed the design of confronting Lasscock with his turpitude in the presence of Sir David Evans. Having decided on this more or less dramatic procedure he proceeded to march without ceremony into the Vice-Chancellor’s room.
The Weight of the Evidence Page 20