Spotted Hemlock mb-31

by Gladys Mitchell

  Laura took out a cigarette and Basil’s lighter was immediately brought into play. Laura thanked him again and asked how he liked the hotel.

  ‘Oh, I’m leaving tomorrow,’ he said. ‘At least’—with a gallant smirk—‘I was. Not so sure now, Mrs…?’

  ‘Gavin.’ (He had been quick to spot the wedding-ring, thought Laura. A mistake, perhaps, not to have removed it.) ‘You do like it here, then? Do you know the country well?’

  ‘So-so. You can’t do much without a car, and I didn’t bring mine over.’

  ‘Do you fish or sail or anything?’

  ‘I’ve sailed a bit. As a matter of fact, I’m over here on a job.’

  ‘How interesting!’

  ‘Pigs. Wanted to study the bacon industry over here. Been all over the place—up here, in Eire—everywhere.’

  ‘I adore pigs.’

  ‘Really? That’s surely very unusual in one of the fair sex. Tell me more about yourself.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not an interesting sort of person. I’d much rather hear about you. Has it taken you long to—er—study the bacon industry?’

  ‘I’ve been over here since the end of August.’

  ‘Indeed? I’m afraid I’m gregarious. I couldn’t do even an interesting job unless plenty of other people were doing it, too. My husband always says that I’d be the last person on earth to be a Robinson Crusoe.’

  ‘Oh, I had my Man Friday—or, rather, girl Friday—all right, but only for a week or two. She had to go back, then, to complete her education.’

  ‘Oh, your daughter, you mean?’

  Basil found this suggestion immoderately amusing.

  ‘Now, I ask you, Mrs Gavin!’ he protested. ‘Do I look the sort of bloke to cart adolescent daughters about with me? No, my dear lady, I want a chance to enjoy myself when I’m off the leading-strings.’

  ‘Oh, I see. A college student, then?’

  ‘Yes, and a very charming and quite sophisticated one.’

  ‘I should have thought a Youth Hostel would have suited a student better than a hotel like this, or, possibly, one of those holiday camps.’

  ‘Yes, but, you see, my dear Mrs Gavin, they wouldn’t have suited me. And as (if you’ll forgive a rather crude statement) I was paying the piper…!’

  ‘Yes, I see. Students aren’t usually very well off, although they certainly seem to have more money to play with than I was given when I went to college. I suppose they get paid jobs in the holidays.’

  She gave Dame Beatrice the sign they had agreed on, and Dame Beatrice got up from her chair and walked slowly towards the door. Laura said:

  ‘Ah, my boss is ready to go, so I’ll say good night.’ When she and Dame Beatrice were alone, she said disgustedly, ‘Not a word of sense did I get out of him. He was stalling the whole time.’ She repeated the conversation verbatim, and then added, ‘Wouldn’t it make you gnash your teeth?’

  ‘No,’ Dame Beatrice replied, after a moment’s pause. ‘I can see how to go on from there. I think you’ve done well. He has admitted coming here with a student and his denial of having stayed at a holiday camp is really immaterial because the police will soon prove whether it is the truth or not, and if it is the truth, that has cleared a red-herring out of our way, and if it is a lie there is some reason for his telling it, and that reason may be important.’

  ‘I’d better pass him on to you, then. There’s one thing, though. I don’t care a bit for his type. He’s definitely a bounder. But I can’t see him as a murderer. He might hit another man over the head with a bottle or a pewter pot if he had a row in a pub, but I don’t see him harming a woman beyond, perhaps, slapping down on her. I’m certain he wouldn’t use poison.’

  ‘We seem to have lost sight of the fact that poison, and a particular poison, was the vehicle. When we get back I think we might spend a little time in research. My knowledge of the properties of coniine could be more profound, I feel.’

  ‘You’ve changed the subject,’ Laura pointed out, ‘and rather unfairly. Shouldn’t you be agreeing or disagreeing with me on the question of Piggy Basil’s tendencies to commit murder?’

  ‘I understood from you that he has no such tendencies.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I meant. What do you think about that?’

  ‘I am no judge. Probably everybody has the tendency.’

  ‘All right. Stall, if you want to. As for the hemlocks, spotted or other, I don’t see that they matter any more. The cause of death is known and the poor girl is buried, so what more can we do, apart from finding the murderer, or helping the police to find him?’

  ‘Well, child, as I pointed out just now, you believe that Mr Basil would not use poison, even if he were capable of committing murder by other means. It will be interesting to find out who would use poison, and, in particular, this poison. Opportunity is important; so is knowledge.’

  ‘Yes, I see. He could, so he did. That sort of thing isn’t evidence. It’s only a pointer. And why do you say so confidently that it will be interesting to find out who used the coniine? Are you hot upon the trail? If so, I think you ought to bring me abreast of the march of events.’

  ‘To say that I am hot on the trail is too optimistic a statement, I fear. All the same, I do feel that we have made some progress. We know now that Mr Basil never was a patient with a broken leg, and, apart from that, do you not realise that we have learnt one fact of primary importance since we have been here in this hotel?’

  ‘There’s only one thing I’ve learnt,’ said Laura, ‘and that is that, wherever Norah Coles may chance to be, she certainly isn’t with Piggy.’

  ‘And you do not consider that a fact of primary importance?’

  ‘Well, it means that he isn’t as black as some people would like to paint him, but that only bears out my argument that he wouldn’t commit murder.’

  ‘At any rate, the girl will have to be found. Finding her may or may not help to solve the mystery of her sister’s death, but as her complete disappearance, so far as we are concerned, is a mystery in itself, I feel a certain amount of interest in it.’

  ‘Yes, I see what you mean. If she isn’t here with Piggy, where is she? It’s quite a point, isn’t it? Shall you tackle him along those lines?’

  ‘Possibly. You remember that she disappeared well before the night on which Miss Good says she saw the large and ghostly horseman?’

  ‘Yes. Do you think they will exhume the sister if Norah Coles isn’t found soon?’

  ‘I have no idea. Of course, it is only a question of time before she is found.’

  ‘Yes, once the police hit the trail they don’t easily give up and they’re usually successful. She can’t remain hidden for ever.’

  ‘She might remain hidden longer dead than alive, child.’

  ‘Dead?’ cried Laura. ‘Good Lord!’

  ‘Let us keep open minds upon that subject,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I should have been happier, I confess, if we had found her here with Mr Basil. But there is one thing I am very glad to know.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I am very glad to know that the dead girl worked for a time in that agricultural college in Berkshire. It clears up the only point which has been troubling me. A little knowledge can sometimes be a useful thing, you know.’

  ‘Are you speaking of yourself and this “little knowledge” I got from Mrs Pock at the post office?’

  ‘No, not exactly. Think it out for yourself. Like most young mothers, you are neglecting your intellectual gifts, child.’

  chapter fifteen

  Piggy Comes Cleanish

  ‘…for if there are hours when it is good to reflect and be prudent, there are others when we ought to know how to take a sudden resolution, and execute it with energy.’

  Ibid.

  « ^ »

  My secretary informs me that you are interested in pigs,’ said Dame Beatrice, seating herself opposite Basil at a small table in the lounge. It was a quarter to ten. Laura had breakfasted early and h
ad gone for a walk. This was partly personal choice and partly to leave Dame Beatrice a clear field. ‘I am so glad to hear it. More people—many, many more—ought to take to pig-breeding. My nephew now—you may have heard of him—Carey Lestrange of Oxfordshire—has bred pigs almost from boyhood, and look what a fine man he is!’

  Basil, who had lowered his newspaper as soon as she had begun to speak, crushed out his half-finished cigarette and looked ready to take flight, but Dame Beatrice, emulating the Ancient Mariner, held him grounded as though by some magic spell.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve never heard of him,’ he said. ‘I only go in for pigs in a small way…’

  ‘But that’s just what I’m urging. People should go in for pigs in a small way. Just think.’ She gave him no opportunity to do this, but treated him to a lecture on small-scale pig-breeding until the unfortunate man was too much deflated to follow his first instinct and escape. It seemed easier, he decided, to humour the pestiferous old creature.

  ‘Yes,’ he said cautiously, ‘I agree with you almost entirely. But don’t you think that your scheme would bring down the price of pork until the game was hardly worth the candle?’

  ‘That may be so. I do not contest it. But think, Mr…’

  ‘Basil—er—Simnel.’

  ‘Mr Basil, of the effect on the human soul if everybody talked, bred and ate pig!’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Basil in a soothing tone. (She must be humoured, he supposed.)

  ‘Right,’ said Dame Beatrice, with sudden and startling briskness. ‘Now, Mr Basil, to the matter in hand. Exactly how did we persuade Mrs Coles to accompany us on our holiday? I refer particularly to the time spent at the camp at Bracklesea.’

  ‘Oh, that!’ He did not appear to be put out of countenance. ‘Well, yes, we did go there, of course.’

  ‘That is not what you caused my secretary to believe.’

  ‘Well, of course not. After all, how was I to know what she was up to? She might have… Oh, we’ll skip that!’

  ‘So there was something shady about the visit to Bracklesea?’

  ‘Shady? I don’t know what you mean by that. Your ideas and mine probably wouldn’t tally. However, for what it’s worth, I’ll tell you the truth. I’m an instructor at an agricultural college for women. I suggested to Miss Palliser—that is, Mrs Coles—that she might care to come with me to Bracklesea—strictly on the q.t., of course—for the fun of it. She agreed, and we went. At the end of a week we separated, she to go home, presumably, I to go to Scotland. It seemed providential, old Simnel breaking his leg. It gave me the chance I wanted of coming over here for a few weeks instead of going back to work. So there it is.’

  Dame Beatrice shook her head and pursed her beaky little mouth.

  ‘I fear not,’ she said gently. ‘For one thing, Miss Palliser had been Mrs Coles for some months before you took her to the camp. For another, although she returned to college at the beginning of term, she left it under circumstances which remain unknown. She has completely disappeared. It is possible that she was abducted.’

  ‘I read—there was a report of an inquest — ’ said Basil. ‘I understood that the poor girl was dead. You can’t call that a disappearance, exactly.’

  ‘Neither do I call it a disappearance, exactly or otherwise. As you may find yourself in a very awkward situation shortly, perhaps I had better remind you—for I am certain you know —that the dead girl was identified as Mrs Coles by her mother. However, the body was not readily recognisable, and it seems certain now that it was not the body of Mrs Coles but that of an older, unmarried sister. The police have been unable to trace Mrs Coles, and one is forced to wonder whether she, also, may be dead.’

  ‘If she was abducted from college, I can’t possibly be suspected of having anything to do with it. I was over here long before the beginning of term.’

  ‘Yes. That would clear you, of course. You know, in your place, I would go to the police and tell them about that week you spent at the camp with Mrs Coles. If you have this complete alibi, it could do you no harm to contact them.’

  ‘No. But what good would it do if it had no bearing on what happened? And how do you come to be mixed up in it, anyway?’

  ‘To answer that first, I come to be mixed up in it because my nephew has taken over your work at the college, pro tem., and when Mrs Coles disappeared I was asked to look into the matter.’

  ‘I’m a bit dense, so may I ask why? I mean, it doesn’t seem to me that being a pigman’s aunt is necessarily a qualification for tracing missing girls.’

  ‘I have traced people before, most of them candidates for life imprisonment or, in less enlightened times, the noose.’

  ‘You’re not—yes, of course, you must be! Oh, Lord!’ Dame Beatrice studied him. A porcine individual in a ferment was not that individual seen at his best. Piggy was perspiring. Leaving him to his thoughts and his too-obvious fears, she went to her room, put on a fur coat and a witch-like hat of black, white and scarlet, and went downstairs to get the hall-porter to summon a hired car to take her for a drive until lunch-time. She lunched alone, as Laura had not returned.

  Basil came to her table as she was about to leave it, and asked whether she could spare him a few moments in the hotel writing-room when she had had her coffee. It would be private in the writing-room, he added, and what he had to say was for her ears alone.

  He proved to be correct about the writing-room being private, for they had it entirely to themselves. He switched on the electric fire, drew forward an armchair for Dame Beatrice and another for himself and took out cigarettes. Dame Beatrice declined his offer of one, and prepared herself to receive confidences.

  ‘It’s like this,’ he said, taking the cigarette out of his mouth and gazing not at Dame Beatrice but at the toes of his shoes, ‘I’m in a bit of a spot. You see, I haven’t been over here quite all the time I said I had.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘You couldn’t be definite, I suppose, about the date Mrs Coles disappeared?’

  ‘Why do you not say at once that you were the ghostly horseman who abducted her?’

  ‘What ghostly horseman? What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘A student named Good was out on a late leave pass that night, and saw you.’

  ‘But—not to know me?’ He did meet Dame Beatrice’s eye this time.

  ‘She certainly did not recognise you or Mrs Coles. But what was the idea of the abduction?’

  ‘It was nothing of the sort. I was a bit bored with pigs and what not, and, as we’d had a pretty good time together at the camp place, I thought she might be willing to team up with me again.’

  ‘But what did you suppose the college would do when they discovered that she was missing?’

  ‘Oh, but she wasn’t going to be missing. That wasn’t on the agenda at all. I’ve got a cottage where I spend weekends sometimes. It’s quite near the college. I thought of going there with her and bringing her back in plenty of time for college breakfast.’

  ‘Then how was it she did not return to college at all?’

  ‘How should I know? I’d given her plenty of notice that I was going to see her again. The horse and the sheets were her idea. It was essential, of course, that neither of us should be recognised. She broke out of her hostel, as we had planned, we togged up in the kitchen garden, which isn’t overlooked in any way, and got to my cottage by about a quarter to twelve. We had a couple of drinks and a cigarette and went to bed, and when I went to rouse her in the morning she was gone. Naturally I concluded that she had woken up early and decided to get back to college while it was still dark. Equally naturally, I couldn’t follow her there. The arrangement had been for her to show up at the same time on the following night, but she didn’t come, and I thought she’d got cold feet at the thought of the risk she was running by breaking out at night, and that was that.’

  ‘Are you a sound sleeper, Mr Basil?’

  ‘No. I wake very easily. You do when you’re accustomed to looking a
fter animals.’

  ‘So Mrs Coles must have stolen very gently from your side, not to wake you.’

  ‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed Piggy, opening his eyes very wide. ‘You don’t think I slept with the girl? One of my own students! Really, the suggestion is most indelicate!’

  ‘This is astounding,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Of course I’m serious. The thing is, what am I to do? If I go to the police and tell them what I’ve told you, I’m going to find myself in a very, very awkward situation. They couldn’t help but think that I know more than I do. They might even arrest me. I shall have to think things over, unless you can help me. Where can the girl have gone, and why did she go?’

  Dame Beatrice shook her head.

  ‘I think you had better tell the police the truth,’ she said. ‘The whole truth,’ she added gently.

  ‘Then you don’t believe my story?’

  ‘It rings strangely in my ears. I also must think things over.’

  ‘If you go to the police, and tell them what I’ve told you, I shall probably deny it, you know. It would be your word against mine.’

  ‘The police are accustomed to accepting my word. I do not know how much experience you have had of confiding in them.’

  She got up, but, before she reached the door, it was opened and two men walked in. Although they were in plain clothes there was no doubt about their being police officers. Basil rose and looked at them.

  ‘The decision appears to have been taken out of my hands,’ he said quietly. ‘I suppose I am under arrest.’

  ‘Not at all, sir,’ said the foremost man, ‘but I shall be obliged if you will answer a few questions.’

  ‘The whole truth, mind,’ said Dame Beatrice, grinning at the younger policeman as he opened the door for her.

  ‘Well?’ said Laura, who had come in to a late lunch after her walk and was just finishing her coffee in the lounge. ‘Any luck? Did he spill any interesting beans?’