Spotted Hemlock mb-31

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘“What do you call that horrid beast?” asked James, “It is,” replied I, “the cocoa crab. I doubt if you would have succeeded in overcoming your antagonist without that lucky thought, for the cocoa crab has as much courage as cunning, and he may be a dangerous adversary for a child.”’

  Ibid.

  « ^ »

  Our guest,’ observed Laura, when Coles had been conveyed back to London, ‘spoke quite a piece when he suggested that there might have been naughtiness going on between the porcine Biancini and that girl.’

  ‘Don’t jump to conclusions,’ said her husband. ‘All the same, it won’t do any harm to check up on the Wop. I can drop a hint in the right quarter and make a slight unmeritorious police job of it, if you like.’

  ‘What sort of hint?’

  ‘To begin with, a hint to suggest that he may not be a naturalised British subject. If he hasn’t taken out naturalisation papers he is an alien, and if he’s an alien he may turn out to be an undesirable one. And so forth, until we’ve collected his dossier.’

  ‘While I am no critic of sexual indiscretions,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘it does seem to me that if Biancini did stay at that holiday camp with Mrs Coles and not with Mrs Biancini, it would do no harm to investigate further. Your scheme, my dear Robert, although ethically undesirable, sounds neat and practical. How soon may we expect results, I wonder?’

  ‘We shan’t be long,’ said Gavin, grinning. ‘We may not be as well documented in certain respects as the Sûreté, but we can soon get the tabs on people when it’s necessary. On the face of it, this murder of Mrs Coles looks like one of those messy little “got the girl into trouble and had better shut her mouth” crimes, and, if it is, then this holiday at the camp could bear investigation, especially if the Mrs Palliser of the register was indeed Mrs Coles.’

  ‘But that’s the odd thing,’ said Laura. ‘Ask Dame B.’

  ‘The autopsy revealed that the girl was a virgin,’ said Dame Beatrice.

  ‘Un mariage blanc? Good Lord! Then I don’t see where Biancini fits in. If he did take the girl away, it could only have been for one reason. I’m all the more determined to probe into this camp holiday. Of course, there’s strong presumptive evidence that the Mr and Mrs N. Palliser of the camp register were not verily and indeed the Mr and Mrs Coles of whom we know, if Coles did indeed spend that week in Paris, but that doesn’t necessarily involve Biancini.’

  ‘Of Calladale House, near Garchester, don’t forget,’ said Laura. Gavin wrinkled his nose.

  ‘Curious, that,’ he admitted. ‘Must have been the girl’s idea, I should think. Anyway, I don’t suppose she dreamed that anybody except the camp staff would ever bother about what was written in the book. I should imagine that the “Calladale House” business was sheer stupid snobbery, put on for the benefit of the camp officials.’

  ‘Well, what’s our next move?’ asked Laura.

  ‘I shall visit Mrs Biancini to find out what, if anything, she knew about the marriage,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I find it difficult to believe that she had no inkling at all, although I do realise that family relationships are anything but what they used to be. What did you make of Mr Coles?’ She was addressing Gavin, who nodded.

  ‘He may be a cunning young fox, of course,’ he said.

  ‘Sometimes the truth has the effect of pepper in the eyes. It leads to temporary blindness.’

  ‘I see that you understand me.’

  ‘Dashed if I do,’ said Laura.

  ‘Well, if he wasn’t foxing,’ her husband explained, ‘he more than ever laid himself open to being offered the position of Suspect Number One when he admitted that he married the girl for her money.’

  ‘Oh, that! But, to me, he’s always been the most likely person to have killed her.’

  ‘The choice of that coach as a hiding-place for the body?’

  ‘He would have heard from her about the Highpepper rag. It made quite an impression on the Calladale students, you know, and it’s become a legend in Garchester.’

  ‘Yes, I see. Oh, well, suspect him, by all means, but I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. What says Dame B.?’

  ‘She must speak for herself,’ said Laura, ‘but I am under the impression that she agrees with you. If only the body had been identified with more certainty! I expect the unfortunate mum took one quick, shuddering glance and felt sick. Rats! Ugh!’

  ‘Quite,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘That cellar, or warehouse, or whatever it is, is being diligently sought for by the police. I wonder how Carey’s predecessor is getting along?’ she added suddenly. ‘I must find out from Miss McKay which hospital he is in, and send him a bunch of grapes. It is only fitting that one who has been the means of putting a fat salary, albeit a temporary one, into my nephew’s pockets, should be the recipient of tangible benefits. Not that grapes are everybody’s choice, of course.’

  ‘That’s one thing about broken limbs. You can still eat what you like,’ said Laura. ‘When do we visit Mrs Biancini? And how can we be sure that Biancini will be out of the way?’

  ‘That, of course, is the problem. I think we must take our chance. It seems unsporting to decoy him away, since some amount of suspicion appears to be attaching itself to him. I shall not attempt it. We must not lower our standards of fair play. It would be un-English. The English are now the keepers of the world’s conscience, having, in some respects, lost their own.’

  The visit to Mrs Biancini was paid by Dame Beatrice alone. Laura had been prepared for this decision and was in no mood to contest it. For several weeks her baby son had been with her own parents in Scotland, so, as Gavin had secured some leave, Dame Beatrice suggested that Laura should spend it with him and the baby boy. She saw them off at King’s Cross and from there was driven to the Biancinis’ unpretentious home. Knowing how unpopular Coles was likely to be with his mother-in-law, she was ready with a question which she felt would not be resented.

  ‘From a remark you made when you visited the college,’ she said, leaning forward from a comfortable armchair, ‘I gathered that you had expected financial help from your daughter as soon as she had secured a post at the end of her college course.’

  ‘Well, am I to blame for that?’ demanded Mrs Biancini, who, rather to Dame Beatrice’s surprise, appeared to be flattered by the visit. ‘I mean to say, bringing her up without a proper man’s money, as I’d done until she was seventeen, there was no harm in me thinking she’d do something to prove her gratitude, was there, do you think?’

  Honesty, and a strong sense of the deep injustice of this all-too-common parental attitude, caused Dame Beatrice to remain silent for a moment. When she spoke, it was not in answer to the question.

  ‘Mr Coles,’ she said, very mildly, ‘seemed to think that he had something to gain from marrying your daughter.’

  ‘Oh, that! He was quite right. As I told you before, Norah stood to come in for about two thousand pounds when she left college. That would be a lot of money for a penniless ne’er-do-well like him.’

  ‘What happens now?’

  The question was so appallingly crude that Mrs Biancini could scarcely think quickly enough to show that she resented it. She took no trouble to word her answer carefully.

  ‘We’ve got to get the lawyers on to that, unless Tony and I can do something about it on our own. Not a fiddle, I don’t mean. Tony will know. He’s good at finding the best way to go about things, but, of course, he’d never touch anything shady.’ Mrs Biancini sounded so much on the defensive that Dame Beatrice was immediately interested. ‘People call him Wop and Dago and Eye-tie, but he’s a nice fellow and a good husband. Of course, he’s got his faults. I don’t dispute that. But, there! Girls are such silly creatures nowadays that you really can’t blame a man, can you? What I mean, Tony has an eye for a figure, I’m bound to say that. But he’s harmless. He’d never think of misbehaving himself. He’s like all the Italians—just lively.’

  ‘I had the pleasure of meeting Mr Biancini at th
e college, if you remember,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘He has quite forgotten his summer holiday, I imagine, with all this trouble and upset coming upon you both?’

  ‘His summer holiday?’ (The trouble and upset were obviously sublimated by this time.)

  ‘Yes. The camp, you know.’

  ‘The camp?’

  ‘The holiday camp at Bracklesea. You were with him there, were you not? I’ve often wondered what these camps are like. Do tell me.’

  Mrs Biancini was more than surprised.

  ‘I’ve never been to a holiday camp in my life. They’re run for teen-agers,’ she declared. ‘And, anyway, we couldn’t have gone this summer because Mr Biancini and me were visiting relations in Italy. Not that I’d call it a holiday, not if you knew his relations, if we’d had to stop with them. I moved on to a posh hotel, I don’t mind telling you.’

  It was Dame Beatrice’s turn to appear to be surprised, but she did not take advantage of the opportunity. What she did take, feloniously, secretly and actionably, was a portrait of Biancini which had stood on the mantelpiece half-hidden by a fairly large clock. It disappeared while her hostess was interviewing a tradesman who chose an inopportune moment to call, and so terminated what might have proved to be a fruitful conversation.

  Armed, unobtrusively (since it had been slipped into the brief-case she carried) with this adjunct to the enquiry, Dame Beatrice took her leave. There seemed no point in staying until her hostess missed the portrait, and, apart from that, she doubted whether she could work the talk back to any point which might seem to be profitable.

  A police report, inspired by Gavin, came in reasonably soon. Biancini had taken out naturalisation papers in 1937 and nothing was known against him. He had been employed as a waiter, rising to head waiter in a respectable West End restaurant, had gravitated from there to being demonstrator for a firm of processed-food manufacturers—this on a commission basis—and had saved money. At the time of the enquiry he was stated to be a man of independent means who added to these from time to time as a stand-in for the waiters at important hotels and restaurants.

  ‘A blameless life, in fact,’ commented the deeply-disappointed Laura, when she came back from Scotland accompanied by a contented husband and a lively son and heir. ‘And now what? We spent last night at Carey’s. That’s why we’re so beautifully early.’

  ‘There’s plenty to come in yet,’ said Gavin soothingly, in a tone which never failed to annoy his wife. Laura snorted belligerently.

  ‘It will all prove useless,’ she declared. ‘I picked this Biancini as the villain of the piece as soon as Dame B. described him.’

  ‘I thought you’d plumped for Coles,’ said Gavin mildly.

  ‘Biancini’s summer holiday activities can bear a little further investigation,’ said Dame Beatrice. She produced the purloined photograph. ‘Not, I imagine, the portrait of a blinking idiot,’ she added, ‘but possibly that of a rather daring philanderer.’

  ‘You think he’s the holiday camp Lothario?’

  ‘His wife would not admit it. She says that they were together in Italy.’

  ‘I don’t see how you’re going to prove or disprove that. To find out whether one particular man, giving a false name, visited that Bracklesea place last August is a sheer impossibility, anyway. Who’s going to remember him out of all the thousands who attend?’

  ‘I am optimistic. I think someone on the staff of the holiday camp will remember him if, indeed, he went there and not to his relatives. Italians are sociable and lively. He would not have hidden his light under a bushel. Then, too, he looks what he is—a man from a foreign clime. Oh, yes, I have great hopes of finding someone who remembers him if he did go to the camp. There is one problem, however, to be solved.’

  ‘It need not be a problem,’ said Gavin. ‘Put a private enquiry agent on the job. Give him the photograph and let him snoop around.’

  ‘Why can’t I go?’ asked Laura.

  ‘Not if you’re going to represent yourself as Biancini’s indignantly suspicious wife,’ said Gavin, grinning.

  ‘Nothing of the sort. I shall be—now, then, what shall I be? I wasn’t very convincing in my last rôle. I must think of something really fool-proof, this time.’

  ‘Do as I say, and leave the job to an expert.’

  ‘No Percy Pilbeams for me, thank you. I’ll hit on something. Don’t you worry.’

  ‘But the thought of you “hitting on something” does worry me. Don’t forget that you’re the mother of my child.’

  ‘Well, Dame B. can’t very well go there again, now that she’s established her bona fides as a member of next year’s intake. They’d be certain to think she was a tile loose, if nothing worse.’

  ‘I see that. That is the problem. No, Laura. For once I’m going to put my foot down. You are not going to get yourself mixed up in Biancini’s private stew-pond. In spite of the apparent cleanness of his copy-book, I suspect some well-disguised but very present blots. Back me up, Dame B.’

  ‘With pleasure. Do you know of a man we might employ?’

  ‘Yes, there’s an ex-C.I.D. chap I can put you on to. He’s a reliable type and retired from the police only last year. He’ll turn the whole camp inside out for ten guineas. Here’s his address.’

  Their bloodhound sent his report to the Stone House in the following week. He employed the professional jargon of the “private eye,” but his account made interesting reading.

  Dame Beatrice had sent to Calladale for a copy of any college group in which Mrs Coles had appeared. The three which were sent by Miss McKay showed the girl variously costumed—in a suit, in sweater, breeches and gaiters, and in a dance frock. The ‘private eye’ took these as well as the portrait of Biancini. It transpired that Mrs Coles had certainly spent a week at the holiday camp that August. She was picked out in all three groups by independent witnesses. (The reason for asking for group photographs rather than for a portrait was to secure this sort of independent judgment.) The portrait of Biancini—a very good likeness—drew a blank.

  ‘Well, if she didn’t go there with Biancini—and she’d hardly have gone by herself—who on earth did she go with?’ asked Laura.

  ‘A fairly simple bit of deduction should supply the answer to that,’ said Gavin, smiling in a superior and irritating fashion. Laura kicked him. ‘No, really,’ he said. ‘Don’t you see?’ He moved out of range. ‘If she didn’t go with Biancini and didn’t go by herself, she went with a pretty obvious somebody else. No, and I’m not being funny,’ he added hastily, catching a dangerous glint in Laura’s eye. ‘There’s definitely a nigger in the wood-pile and it shouldn’t be so very difficult to spot him. Look again at the set-up. Here we have a situation in which a girl still at college gets married, without her parents’ knowledge and consent, to a young fellow who, himself, is still training and can’t possibly support her, perhaps for years to come. She has the sympathy of a friendly but probably misguided aunt who enters into a conspiracy (she thinks) to let the young people spend a holiday together when the girl’s mother believed her daughter to be staying blamelessly with the said aunt, and — ”

  ‘Yes?’ said Laura, drawling it out as far as the broad vowel would let her.

  ‘The young man, we may infer from the available evidence, cared little about the conspiracy, but took himself blithely off to Paris with a party of fellow-students. The girl (his wife, remember) went to a holiday camp so vastly and variously populated that she felt it unlikely she would be singled out for notice. She did not want to be noticed because she had gone there with a man whom we shall call X.’

  ‘How original of us!’

  ‘I know it isn’t, but who are we to dispute the mathematicians’ conception of what constitutes an unknown quantity? Now, then, this is where we enter the realm of guesswork. We know the marriage of this young Coles was not a love-match. We know that the young man expected it to advantage him financially. What we don’t really know, although we may hazard a conjecture, is what the gi
rl got out of it.’

  ‘Conjecture away.’

  ‘At least she obtained the status of a married woman.’

  ‘So did I,’ grunted Laura, still rebellious, ‘but I don’t yet notice any particular advantage. All I’ve got is a husband who thinks I’m a moron and a baby who apparently lives to eat, sleep and provide other people with laundry-work.’

  ‘Besides being a considerable financial responsibility. I know. I sympathise with both his parents,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘But, to return to the point at issue, I can imagine certain circumstances in which to be married is a distinct advantage. You, whose acquaintance with the English classics is wide, if not profound, should be able to furnish instances.’

  ‘Oh, that sort of thing!’ said Laura. ‘But that’s all outmoded and unnecessary nowadays. I mean, nobody expects that an unmarried girl will be chaperoned to a dance. Nobody even seems to care much if she has a baby or goes off with somebody else’s husband.’

  ‘It matters if the somebody else’s husband is in the kind of employment which the least breath of scandal would take from him,’ said Dame Beatrice, who had followed the last speech with critical attention. ‘If I understand our dear Robert’s train of thought, that is the line he is taking. To take a married woman to a holiday camp would not, perhaps, seem the same as taking her to an hotel.’

  Laura looked puzzled.

  ‘Do you mean a parson?’ she asked. ‘I shouldn’t have thought it would make any difference at all. The scandal would ruin him in any case.’

  ‘I was not thinking of a parson. Perhaps I am a little too close to this particular case to be able to take a broad enough view of it. I had better return Mr Biancini’s photograph and then I have two telephone calls to make, so you two can count on a nice tête-à-tête if you wish. Lunch is at half-past two today because the butcher punctured a tyre. If you like, you can take over the other room and put on the electric fire, and then I shouldn’t need to disturb you when I’ve finished making my calls.’

  ‘What I should be doing at this hour,’ said Gavin, glancing at the clock, ‘is getting back to Town, I’m afraid. What about it, Laura? Like to drive up with me and come back tomorrow by train?’