“There is much in what you say, and we must keep it in mind.”
“Well, I know you thought the intended victim was Bourton, but we’ve no evidence that Bourton and Rinkley had ever fallen out.”
“True, but you are going on the assumption that Rinkley himself changed over the daggers. That has not been proved.”
“He would have had the best opportunity.”
“Not so. There were others who had an equal opportunity. Robina Lester and her son, David, Caroline Frome and Susan Hythe, even Marcus Lynn with his scroll as Prologue, had every good reason for approaching the trestle tables and fiddling with the properties. The only thing is that unless all of them were in collusion (and that seems most unlikely, as Marcus Lynn was one of them) nobody could have changed over the daggers without being seen to do so, since all would have picked up their properties at about the same time.”
“What if the bold plotter, whoever it was, took advantage of the confusion caused by Rinkley’s collapse and changed over the daggers while the company was at sixes and sevens? I feel sure there is something in that. I suppose there must have been tumult and shouting, Dr Jeanne-Marie being called for, the audience warned of a stage wait, people tearing up to the house to telephone for an ambulance, Bourton being divested of that ornate Oberon outfit and getting into the Pyramus tunic and no doubt surrounded by a bodyguard of men to preserve the decencies, as there were ladies present. Anything could happen with a hoo-ha like that going on. How about that for an explanation?”
“It may be the right one. Let us keep it in mind.”
“If the dagger was intended for Bourton, it’s easy to see who benefits by his death, unless it was an act of revenge?”
“From what I hear, Mrs Bourton becomes a rich widow, yes, indeed. It seems that Donald Bourton left a considerable amount of money and all of it goes to her.”
“An amende honorabile for all his philandering?”
“Maybe, or maybe he had nobody else he desired to benefit. Well, we still have two unknown quantities to deal with and, except for the fact that both were in the play and that they are brothers and bachelors, we have no information about them whatsoever.”
“You mean the Woolidges, Tom and Peter,” said Laura, referring to the programme. “Tom Woolidge played Lysander and Peter Woolidge was the most enterprising and athletic Puck I’ve ever seen. My heart warmed to that lad. Moreover, Rosamund has announced her intention of marrying him.”
“The older brother breeds bloodhounds.”
“Is that significant?”
“No.”
“Well, we’ve lined up a few of the characters. Now there is this business of Jasper Lynn. You do think he went off with a girl, don’t you?”
“It is difficult to imagine that he would have exchanged one set of male companions for another without telling his parents of his change of plan. The fact that they know nothing of where he went, or with whom, does suggest the need for secrecy on his part.”
“So what do we actually know about him? He was illegitimate and he was adopted. Beyond being given a good education and, I suppose, a start in life when he left University, what had he to expect from Marcus Lynn? We know he bought the rapier, we know somebody turned it into a dagger, and we know that dagger killed Bourton. Where is the tie-up? I can’t see one, unless—”
“Unless?”
“Unless the girl he went off with was either Caroline Frome or Susan Hythe. If one of them had got it in for Bourton, she might have talked a young hot-head of Jasper’s age into doing something very foolish and very wrong, and then dared not leave him alive to tell the tale later. Well, if we cut out Tom Woolidge—oh, we can’t, though. On Rosamund’s evidence he was inclined to sport with Amaryllis in the shade. In other words, he and Barbara Bourton met for what the innocent little snooper called ‘rehearsals’ in the woods.”
“Oh, yes, Mr Woolidge must remain on our list and so must Mrs Bourton. Jonathan comes next in the programme, but I think we may ignore him.”
“Also the nine-year-old Yolanda Yorke. That brings us to the workmen and you’ve more or less dealt with them privately, you told me, so we need not go over them again, need we?”
“There remain Helena, Hippolyta and Titania. Deborah is out of it for the same reason as Jonathan, and we may ignore, I feel, Mrs Yorke and also Mrs Lynn.”
“Brings us back to Barbara Bourton and really it does seem as though she had the strongest motive of all. To get rid of a faithless husband and come in for all his money must have been a great temptation to an ambitious woman.”
“Yes, you are right. The difficulty in her case, though, is the same as in all the other cases. When would she have had any opportunity to change over the daggers?”
“When all the clearing-up was done after the second performance, perhaps.”
“Marcus Lynn appears to have kept a jealous eye on the costumes and properties, but there may be something in what you say. I am still convinced that the daggers were changed over before the third performance began.”
“Well, we don’t seem to have cleared the decks, do we? I wonder what happened to the lower half of that rapier? The rest of the blade must be somewhere, as we said before. Suppose Jasper Lynn was stabbed with it by whoever sent him into the shop to buy the rapier? Is that a far-fetched idea?”
“Not in the least, and I have already considered the suggestion. However, I think Jasper bought the rapier on his own behalf, as the antiques dealer thought at the time. Still, if we could find the rest of the blade it might help.”
“I have a hunch that I know where it is. What’s wrong with having a look round Castle Island?”
“Nothing is wrong with it, if that will please you.”
“I think the locals are right and the body was dumped from a boat.”
“I suppose that is as likely as my own theory that it was taken by car to the spot where it was found.”
“Islands are always fun. Do let’s go. By the way, isn’t there a suspect we haven’t mentioned?”
“Is there? Of whom do we speak?”
“Didn’t you tell me there was an Indian chap who brought his little boy to be the changeling child?”
“I dismissed Narayan Rao from my calculations when I discovered that he left the scene long before Rinkley’s illness and Bourton’s death. It is true that he was in sight of the tables which held the properties, but I see no way in which he could have tampered with the daggers without being seen to do so. Moreover, he had seen neither of the previous performances and could not possibly have known which belt held the theatrical dagger, neither could he have provided a lethal weapon which resembled it, since he could not have known beforehand what it looked like.”
“I am greatly impressed by your metal detector,” said Dame Beatrice.
“Oh, I’ve always wanted to test one of these things. This island will be the very place.”
The boat which they had hired, ran gently into shallow water. Laura stepped over the side into a couple of feet of rippling, innocent little waves and held out her arms to Dame Beatrice and carried her ashore before the placid local boatman could offer his help. She returned to the boat for the metal detector. Her shoes were round her neck. She sat down on deep dry sand, unfastened the laces and put on the shoes.
Behind the dunes the land rose a little and soon they were among trees. In clearings they came upon two very shallow but fairly extensive ponds and around these were traces of footpaths. Laura followed one of these, Dame Beatrice another. Their paths crossed and they met again after they had passed each other at the side of a small wood. They then found themselves in sight of the dunes and the mainland again.
“This,” said Dame Beatrice, “is opposite the road which runs between the Old Town and the ferry.” She led the way down the sandy slope to the shore. “Go to your left and I will go to the right.”
Laura demurred. The deep, soft, dry sand made very heavy going. She said:
“No point in both of us
ploughing through this stuff. I’m going to make for that belt of trees. I’m all agog to try the metal detector up there. I shouldn’t think it could locate metal down here. I don’t really expect to find anything worth while, but I must say that this is rather fun.” She ploughed upwards. Dame Beatrice seated herself on the warm, dry sand and gazed at the opposite shore. A constant procession of cars was using the road over there, coming and going between the town and the ferry, and she realised, even more clearly than she had done before, the risks that would have been run by anybody planting a body on the strand at any time before about one o’clock in the morning, for not only was the traffic to and from the ferry very heavy, but the road passed through one of the most desirable residential districts of the place, and even though the ferry closed down each evening, the local cinemas, theatres and concert halls, as she had known previously, did not, so there would be cars along the road until after midnight. There were also the numerous houses, flats and bungalows which overlooked the bay. During the small hours, however, anybody prepared to take a chance might have driven on to the grass verge and tumbled a dead body down on to the mud, hoping, perhaps, that the receding tide would carry it away. Tyre marks, if any had been left, would count for nothing. On grass the treads would be indistinguishable from those of other cars which had used the verge as a parking place. There were two cars standing on the grass verge already and a third was pulling up alongside them.
She decided that there was no reason to change her mind. She still felt certain that the body had been dumped from a car, not thrown into the water from a boat. The police had not only made an exhaustive search of yachts and cruisers for bloodstains or other crucial evidence, she was also certain that the presence of boats lying off the island had been carefully checked. Even if one had gone out at night, she felt convinced that it would have been reported by somebody or other, by a fisherman, perhaps, or from the ever-watchful coastguard station.
She sat there for the better part of an hour until Laura came bounding and slithering down the slope towards her.
“Fun, but no dice, not so much as an old tin can,” Laura said. “All the same, I’m going to produce a fifty-pence coin to show the boatman. I’ve put some dirt on it. That ought to convince him I’m not as dotty as he thinks I am. I observed a sly Dorset smile when he eyed the metal detector.”
“You think of everything,” said Dame Beatrice.
“I only wish I could think where the lower half of that weapon is.”
Chapter 17
Mute and Other Witnesses
“Nothing impaired, but all disordered.”
« ^ »
Yes,” said the Chief Constable, taking his cigar out of his mouth and studying the length of ash on it. “We’ve had what you might call fun and games after Mrs Wells clinched the identification of the lad who bought the rapier.”
“With poor Mr Lynn, I suppose,” said Dame Beatrice, “you had what you call the fun and games.”
“Yes, with Mr Lynn. Nothing would satisfy him but an exhumation. He demanded to be allowed to examine the corpse we found dumped on the shore opposite Castle Island. We applied for permission and got it. I don’t know what his idea was. Seems ghoulish to me to dig people up once they’re decently buried. It wasn’t as though any further identification was necessary. Mrs Wells’ evidence was quite clear.”
“Perhaps Mr Lynn was not satisfied that his adopted son had been decently buried.”
“That was part of his argument. The lad had been buried in a common grave as, at the time, nobody knew who he was, but once you’re dead and in a coffin, what does the rest of it matter?”
“It would matter to me,” said Laura, “if the deceased was any child of mine.”
“Oh, well, anyway, we got official permission and a fine old how-de-do it all was. The decree went forth, as from Augustus Caesar, that the job was to be done in the small hours of the morning to avoid publicity and forestall morbid sightseers. What a hope! Avoid publicity? My God!”
“Yes, I have read Professor Keith Simpson on the subject of exhumations, particularly that of one of the Rillington Place victims,” said Dame Beatrice.
“Yes, I’ve read it, too. Well, our experience was much the same as his. First of all there was the need to screen off the grave which had been opened. That was done the day before, so any attempt at secrecy was doomed from the moment the hoarding went up. We had to do this the day before, so as to save time on the actual day, but we might as well have put up a notice to say that an exhumation had been arranged and would shortly take place.”
“All the same, I suppose there was some point in getting confirmation of identity,” said Laura.
“Well, perhaps, but what Lynn wanted was a slap-up funeral for his boy. I’m certain he had no more doubts about identification than the rest of us had. Anyway, we drafted in twenty uniformed coppers to keep a guard on the cemetery, put up barriers closing the place to the public and the press, and at the witching-hour of half-past five a.m. all those legitimately concerned surrounded the heap of gravel, clay and so forth which had been dug out on the previous evening and waited for the lifting of the coffin.”
“It sounds like something out of Edgar Allan Poe,” said Laura. “I should have expected something besides the coffin to pop up. I think exhumations are horrible.”
“Of course we didn’t allow Lynn himself to be present. He had to wait until we got the body to the mortuary, and there was really no need for me to be there, either, but I thought he would expect it, my being a friend of the family, so to speak, and being on dining terms with them and what not, so I showed up. The other people there besides the Super and Conway, were the pathologist, another doctor (in case any of us was overcome by the bizarre nature of the proceedings, I suppose), the grave-digger, the mortuary superintendent and the undertaker.”
“The last three to certify that the right coffin was being lifted, I suppose,” said Laura.
“It was the top one of five, but, even so, it had been buried five feet down. Well, of course you can’t patrol a place the size of that cemetery with only twenty policemen, so we couldn’t keep the newshounds at bay, especially their long-range cameras. Anyway, they didn’t dare come too close, although some of them must have seen the coffin come up out of the ground. Well, the box was cleaned up, the metal plate identified and then off we went to the mortuary. Apart from the reporters and camera crews, it was surprising what a number of citizens were on their way to work so early in the morning. I should think there were a couple of dozen of them outside the gates.”
“It’s the same mentality as that which will collect round a hole in the road,” said Laura. “Why they do it, goodness only knows.”
“Well, the grisliest part of the business was yet to come. I won’t describe it. A body which has been dead for any length of time is not a thing of dignity or beauty. However, Lynn said he was satisfied and had already arranged for what he called ‘a proper burial’, so the only thing left, so far as the official records were concerned, was to resume the inquest, confirm the identity of the corpse as being that of Jasper Lynn and get the coroner’s verdict of murder by person or persons unknown. Conway is still working on the identity of the murderer, but with no expectation of success. He says it must have been ‘one of those dark alley jobs’. His only hope is to find out where Jasper went, and with whom, during the time he was supposed to be touring on the Continent with his friends.”
“That means finding the lady,” said Laura, looking at Dame Beatrice for confirmation of this obvious view. “It shouldn’t be all that difficult, surely? As the son of a wealthy and prominent man, Jasper must have been very well known in the town.”
“Mrs Wells could not identify him until some hair had been added to his head,” said Dame Beatrice. “Baldness, it seems, can be as effective a disguise as a beard.”
“Of course he wore a beard in the play,” said Laura. This sidetrack remark was ignored by both her hearers. “Besides, there’s
the weapon,” she went on, somewhat defiantly. “That must be somewhere. Could he have been stabbed with the lower part of that rapier?”
“If the shaven head was intended as a disguise,” said Dame Beatrice, “the answer to our problems may be nearer to us than we think. As for the weapon, where better to hide an object, as wiser tongues than mine have pointed out, than in a collection of similar objects?”
“Mr Lynn’s collection of swords and daggers!” said Laura.
“Mrs Wells may be able to help us there,” said Dame Beatrice.
“But Lynn didn’t murder his son!” protested the Chief Constable. “He was in Italy when the boy died!”
Lynn’s collection of weapons occupied two rooms on the second floor. One housed the firearms, the other what the Chief Constable referred to as ‘the cutlery’.
“I don’t want to be longer than I can help, “ said Mrs Wells, the expert. “You don’t tell me what I’ve got to look for?”
“One mustn’t prompt the witness, Mrs Wells,” said Dame Beatrice. “What do you think of the collection?”
“There’s some good stuff here.” The exhibits were mostly in glass cases and were neatly laid out and meticulously labelled. Only such items as lances, halberds, pikes, bills, boar-spears and partizans were outside the cases, although they were firmly attached to the walls.
Mrs Wells paid them no attention. She went methodically from case to case, but gave no sign of having made any discovery. At the end she shook her head.
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