Spotted Hemlock mb-31

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘He told me—or, rather, I believe I told him—that he and Mrs Coles were the ghostly horseman seen by Miss Good.’

  ‘But I thought he was over here at the time!’

  ‘It seems that he thirsted for Mrs Coles’ society, but not connubially.’

  ‘What! Why, the man’s known to be a satyr,’

  ‘I am telling you what he told me.’

  ‘You don’t believe him, do you?’

  ‘I neither believe nor disbelieve. I suspend judgment until I know more. What he did not tell me is his real reason for getting Mr Simnel to impersonate him in Scotland while he came here to Ireland.’

  ‘Perhaps he really does want to study the Irish pig-market.’

  ‘He could have asked for leave of absence from the college, could he not? Why all this elaborate trickery?’

  ‘Probably because a Piggy with a broken leg gets paid his salary while he remains incapacitated, whereas a leave-of-absence Piggy has to forfeit the cash payments until he gets back on the job.’

  ‘Oh, I see. I confess I had not thought about the financial side of it. All the same, I cannot bring myself to believe that Mr Basil came here solely to study pig-marketing. There was some other reason, and, matters standing as they do, we need to find out what it was.’

  ‘Any basic ideas?’

  ‘Yes, but until I find out more than I can prove already, I am not prepared to disclose them.’

  ‘A pity. Hullo, here come the detectives. Shall we confer with them?’

  ‘No. If they have anything to tell us, they will do it without any prompting.’

  The policemen came up.

  ‘Do you mind if we ask a few questions, Dame Beatrice?’

  ‘I shall be happy for you to do so.’

  ‘Do you want me to go?’ asked Laura. The older officer smiled.

  ‘Certainly not, Mrs Gavin. You may have some information for us, too. We understand, Dame Beatrice, that you found out that Basil wasn’t in Scotland when he was supposed to be in hospital with a broken leg, but was here. What was his object in deceiving people about where he was?’

  ‘He told us he wished to study the Irish pig-marketing schemes.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what he told me. Is that all you know?’

  ‘Yes, although it is not all that I can guess.’

  ‘He confesses to abducting Mrs Coles, the missing girl, from the college, but swears that before it was daylight she sneaked out of his cottage and he hasn’t seen her since.’

  ‘It may be true, of course.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You see, from the girl’s point of view, it was surely a very risky thing to do, this breaking out of college to spend the night in a man’s cottage. I cannot help feeling that Mrs Coles had some stronger motive for taking such a risk, if, indeed, she did take it. She would most certainly have been sent down from college if she had been found out.’

  ‘You couldn’t suggest a reason, I suppose, madam? All we can think of, in view of the fact that she has disappeared, is that she wanted to meet somebody in secret, and that the person she wanted to meet could not be interviewed by daylight and in the normal course of events. If so, I suppose you couldn’t put a name to this person?’

  ‘Either her sister or her stepfather, I should think, if you are right.’

  ‘The sister who was murdered?’

  ‘And who was murdered at about that time, or some days before.’

  The policeman stared at her.

  ‘You’re not suggesting that this young woman murdered her sister?’

  Dame Beatrice shrugged.

  ‘I am neither suggesting it nor the reverse. I am putting it forward as a possibility. Young women have murdered their sisters before now. You see, the difficulty facing us in the case of that particular death has been twofold. Miss Palliser may have been the intended victim, or, as I thought at first (and I have not discarded the thought), she may have been killed in mistake for Mrs Coles. In neither case is there any apparent motive for the murder, and, of course, we cannot rule out the possibility that this was accidental poisoning and that somebody panicked and got rid of the body. If we could only discover the cellar where it lay before it was put into that coach we should be a very long step forward.’

  ‘You mentioned the stepfather, madam. What made you think of Biancini? It seems hardly likely that she’d need to meet him secretly.’

  ‘There is the same objection in the case of the sister, is there not?’

  ‘Well, yes, except that they don’t seem to have had much to do with one another and may have had some reason for not wanting people to know that they had met. It’s all very unsatisfactory, from our point of view. Usually, in murder cases, there’s something to get your teeth into so that you can make a start, but in this case there doesn’t seem to be a thing. We don’t want to call in the Yard, but we may not be able to help ourselves. I’m going to have another talk with Mr Basil. The reason he gives for coming here, instead of going back to his job, is a lot too thin to hold water. He’s mixed up in this business somehow. I’m certain of that.’

  Dame Beatrice nodded several times, but in thought as well as in agreement. The police officers returned to the writing-room and, as they opened the door, they almost knocked into Basil, who was in the passage and in the act of closing the writing-room door behind him.

  ‘Just half a moment, if you please, sir,’ she heard the first policeman say. His voice was sharp. It was obvious that he had requested Basil to remain where he had left him and that Basil had not seen fit to obey.

  ‘Looks bad, don’t you think?’ murmured Laura.

  ‘It does not appear to have inspired confidence in Mr Basil, so far as the police are concerned,’ Dame Beatrice admitted. ‘Was he proposing to make his escape, I wonder? Extreme measures of that kind would be most inadvisable at this stage. The proceedings must take their course.’

  ‘If “proceedings” means what I think it means,’ said Laura, ‘I don’t think there are any. The police more or less admitted they were baffled. Though I say it myself, they could do with the help of the Yard. I wish they’d call them in, and be quick about it, unless you’ve got something up your sleeve.’

  ‘Nobody would need to employ the conjuring feat you mention if the police could find Norah Coles,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘We ourselves have not the resources for such a search, and although I have given thought to the matter, no idea of where she may be has come into my mind, except that she must have gone back to England.’

  ‘Has the Biancini house a cellar?’

  ‘No, it has not. I visited it, as you know, and it has none. Neither can I think of any other cellar where the body of Miss Palliser might have been hidden, except, of course — ”

  ‘The college has cellars. The main building, you know,’ said Laura. Dame Beatrice gazed so fixedly at her that she added, ‘Didn’t you know?’ Without waiting for an answer, she added, ‘Then it’s “boot, saddle, to horse and away,” I suppose, leaving no avenue unexplored.’

  ‘Will you tell George that we shall need the car in half an hour from now?’

  ‘I will do that one little thing. Good gracious me! And here have we been eating, sleeping and continually thinking in terms of cellars, with one, so to speak, right under our noses.’

  ‘It is always the obvious which is overlooked, child, as Edgar Allan Poe pointed out.’

  But Laura knew better than to suppose that Dame Beatrice had overlooked the fact that the Georgian house, with its butler’s pantry, possessed, for example, at least a wine-cellar.

  chapter sixteen

  A Confusion of Students

  ‘These were our recreations; other labours abridged the hours, which sometimes seemed very long.’

  Ibid.

  « ^ »

  Dame Beatrice gave considerable thought to the problem of balancing the gain to the enquiry against the possible harm to the college of her next step, and decided that the step must be taken.

  S
he paid another visit to the college to put her proposals before Miss McKay. The Principal, deeply shocked and horrified by Dame Beatrice’s revelations and inferences, nevertheless agreed without reluctance to all the suggestions made to her and promised to make the necessary arrangements.

  These involved a visit to the college cellars, an interview with the men in charge of the boiler-room and a visit to the hostel in which Mrs Coles had been resident. The chief caretaker, a man of melancholy aspect, accompanied her to the cellars. These were deep and vast and were reached by a door next to what had once been the butler’s pantry when the house had been privately owned. The cellars followed the plan of the ground-floor rooms, but only one, that at the foot of the steps they descended, was in use and was electrically lighted. The floor had been concreted and the room was shut off from the rest of the subterranean chambers by a steel door.

  ‘It’s the rats,’ said the caretaker, who had no inkling of the purpose of the visit. ‘Miss McKay puts her trunk down here, as you can see, and so do some of the lecturers what lives in the college itself. ’Ostels makes their own arrangements for the dishposal of students’ ’eavy baggage.’

  ‘I see. Is that steel door kept locked?’

  ‘Why, no. Rats can’t push open a door what’s closed.’

  ‘Don’t the rats become ravenously hungry? There’s nothing to eat, is there, in the cellars beyond this one?’

  The caretaker wagged his head.

  ‘My perdecer,’ he said, ‘ ’e ’ad the idea to keep all the artificial fancy manures down ’ere. My oath! Them rats must of ’ad a good time! Hop manure, now! If they eat one sack, they must of eat ’undreds! It got ’em in, you see, and now we can’t get ’em out. So we ’as this steel door put in, what they can’t gnaw their way through, and we puts down concrete and reinforces the walls, and leaves ’em in outer darkness. Bless you, they uses the cellars now as an ’ome and gets their provender from the veg. the young ladies grows ’ere. Rats! Don’t talk to me about rats! If you wants my opinion, the Pied Piper of ’Am’lin didn’t ’ave nothink on us when it comes to rats.’

  ‘I take it you do not come from these parts, Mr Potts?’

  ‘I comes from ’Appy ’Ampstead on the ’Eath, and that’s where I’m goin’ to be buried.’

  ‘Do we risk the rats and see what is on the other side of that door?’

  ‘Preferably not. I don’t want rats in ’ere. Although, that’s a funny thing. I comes down one time and finds rat-dirts all over the place. Couldn’t account for it nowhow. Carn’t see ’ow they could get through the steel door.’

  ‘It must have been opened.’

  ‘But who’d open it? I thought of that meself. But who’d bother to come down ’ere? Not the young ladies, I promise you.’

  ‘All the same, you say that the door is not locked. We shall now return to the ground floor. It would tax your memory too heavily, I imagine, if I asked you to tell me when you saw the rat-dirts in here?’

  ‘That it wouldn’t. It was midway through third week of this term.’

  Dame Beatrice knew better than to question the memories of the semi-literate. She accepted their evidence at its face value. She and the caretaker returned to the ground floor and when they were half-way back to Miss McKay’s sitting-room she asked where the boiler-room was. The caretaker looked somewhat disgusted, and told her that they would need to go into the new wing to find that. She replied immediately that she was not interested if that was the case, and returned to Miss McKay, who had promised to accompany her to Miss Paterson’s hostel.

  The head of the hostel, as it happened, was neither lecturing nor demonstrating, and they were shown into her sitting-room where she sat correcting a pile of written work and, at the same time, nursing a large pet rabbit.

  ‘Dame Beatrice wants to talk to you, Miss Paterson,’ said Miss McKay, ‘about the Palliser girl. Some extremely disturbing circumstances have come to light. After you have heard what she has to disclose, she may need to question some of your students.’

  Miss Paterson rang the bell, handed the rabbit to the maid, drew up two armchairs for her guests, and put more coal on the fire.

  ‘I’m not staying,’ said Miss McKay. ‘Ring me if you need to.’ Upon this, she departed.

  ‘The murderer has been located, then?’ asked Miss Paterson, taking the armchair she had drawn up for the Principal. ‘Jolly good thing, too.’

  ‘He or she has not been located, so far as my information goes. What we seem to have located is the cellar in which the body was hidden before it was conveyed to the old coach at the inn near Highpepper Hall,’ replied Dame Beatrice.

  ‘Really? Not—Oh, good gracious me! Not the college cellar?’

  ‘It seems more than likely. At any rate, as soon as I have finished here, I am going to telephone the police to that effect. They can brave the rats in the inner cellar to find clues. Now, you had a better opportunity of studying Mrs Coles than any other lecturer or tutor here. In your opinion, what kind of person was she?’

  ‘Extremely reserved and not very sociable. She appeared to have no very close friends, but then, of course, if she had secretly married and wanted to keep it dark, she was wiser not to make close friendships here.’

  ‘She had confided in one of the students, though—a girl with whom she’d been at school, I believe.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Miss Bellman. They came up together and asked to be housed in the same hostel.’

  ‘I shall have to talk to Miss Bellman again. Then there is Miss Good.’

  ‘She’s not one of mine.’

  ‘No. I must seek her in Miss Considine’s house. What is the rule about visitors here?’

  ‘Students’ visitors?’

  ‘Yes. Is it ever possible, for example, for the college to put them up?’

  ‘Oh, yes, if there is any special reason.’

  ‘What sort of circumstances would furnish a special reason?’

  ‘At half-term, when most of the students take a long weekend, it is possible for a girl staying up to have a sister or friend to spend the weekend here to keep her company or to use the college as a base from which to go sightseeing.’

  ‘I was not thinking of holiday times.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Well, during term we can accommodate very few visitors. In fact, we don’t encourage them at all, except for tea on Saturdays and Sundays, and then they are expected not to arrive before three and to leave before eight.’

  ‘How many visitors could you accommodate here at any one time, apart from during half-term?’

  ‘Two only, unless any students have taken a weekend pass. I have two rooms with twin beds. College rules allow each student a room to herself because she has to use it for study as well as for sleep, so, you see, it would be possible for those two extra beds to go to visitors.’

  ‘Have you so allotted them at any time during this term?’

  ‘No, I have not been asked to do so.’

  ‘Suppose that a student in another hostel, or living in the students’ wing of the main college building, wanted to have a visitor for the weekend who could not be accommodated there, would it be possible for an exchange of rooms to be made?’

  ‘I should strongly oppose such an arrangement. In fact, unless Miss McKay made a personal approach to me over such an exchange, I certainly shouldn’t sanction it. The students get quite enough distraction here without dodging about from hostel to hostel, swapping beds.’ She grinned disarmingly.

  ‘I certainly sympathise with your point of view,’ said Dame Beatrice, returning the grin with an alligator leer which appeared to startle her companion.

  ‘Of course,’ Miss Paterson added, ‘what the students can contrive by means of private arrangements among themselves is another matter entirely.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Dame Beatrice, with a wealth of satisfaction in her tone. ‘May I have a word with Miss Bellman?’

  ‘Certainly, so far as I’m concerned. The trouble may be to find out where she is and what s
he’s doing, and it may be something that she can’t stop doing until she’s through with it. You know what this place is like! I’ll ring through to the secretary’s office and find out which group she’s in, and then the big time-table outside the Principal’s room will show where she’s most likely to be, or, at least, who’s supposed to be in charge of her.’

  It turned out that Miss Bellman was in Private Study, which was (or should have been), by interpretation, in the library. She was not to be found there. This did not appear to cause Miss Paterson the least degree of surprise.

  ‘The little cormorants spend all their private study periods at the buffet counter,’ she explained. ‘I should have been surprised if we had found her in here. Still, one was bound to try. Come along. I could do with a coffee and doughnut myself. It’s astonishing how hungry one gets. It’s the very good air about these parts, I suppose. And the students do a great deal of really tough physical work, of course.’

  The buffet counter was at one end of the college dining-room and was thronged with students, some of whom looked guilty, some smug (those who had a Free, Miss Paterson explained), some slightly defiant. They made way for the lecturer and her visitor, and Miss Paterson ordered coffee and doughnuts and then arrested the flight of Miss Bellman with a peremptory announcement that Dame Beatrice would like to speak to her and that she was to bring ‘that revolting repast’ to one of the dining tables so that they could obtain a little privacy away from the other students.

  Miss Bellman, bearing two Cornish pasties and two cakes lavishly decorated with synthetic cream, followed her hostel head to a table and returned for a jug of cocoa and a large china mug.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, don’t stop eating,’ said Miss Paterson, herself dunking a doughnut, ‘and do try to answer Dame Beatrice intelligently. Now, Dame Beatrice.’

  ‘I think,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘that Miss Bellman might prefer that my questions be put and replied to in private. Let us all refresh ourselves, and then, perhaps…’