“Not much chance of seeing the monster today,” said Sally. “It prefers fine weather and a flat calm.”
Laura nodded and continued with her powerful, unhurried rowing. They beached the boat below the house and, in the fine rain which had begun to drift from the west on the wind, they followed the well-trodden, easy path from the shore up to the hunting-lodge.
“This is where I tossed the bottle,” said Laura. She crouched and began to grope among the wet bushes. “Yes, here we are. Don’t suppose it’s of the slightest importance, but Dame Beatrice wants to see it, although I expect I’ve man-handled it sufficiently to have mucked up anybody else’s fingerprints.”
“It couldn’t matter very much if you have,” said Sally, inspecting the treasure. “This is bound to be a bottle from Sir Humphrey’s stock—same wine, same firm of bottlers and all that—so he will have handled it for certain, so will his retailer and others in the trade, and so, probably, will four other people, those to whom he gave the bottle, you know.”
“Including, perhaps, the Benson sisters,” said Laura, “since they were in charge of this beat when Angela Barton died.”
“Yes, but not for long,” said Sally. “Before that, there were Nigel Parris’s lot. They are far more likely to have brought a bottle of wine over here than the Bensons are. The Bensons did take the job seriously. Nigel, Marjorie, and Jeremy certainly didn’t. I couldn’t answer for Hubert Pring, but he and Marjorie never came over here together, so far as I know.”
“Oh, well, you know them all, and I don’t. Shall we be getting back?”
“How long does it take for anybody to die of strychnine poisoning?” asked Sally.
“I put that to your grandmother, but you know what doctors are. She called canny and talked about dosage, precipitates, age and infirmity, allergies, Uncle Tom Cobley, and all. All I gathered was that death caused by taking strychnine isn’t necessarily immediate. I mean, it isn’t like taking hydrocyanic acid, for example, which can pop you off, I believe, in a matter of seconds.”
“I see. So Angela Barton’s death wouldn’t have been all that quick. What a monster the murderer must be! Oh, well, let’s present Grandmamma with your bottle, and see what she makes of it. Fingerprints wouldn’t help, anyway, if the police didn’t take any. They wouldn’t, would they, since they think it was suicide? Well, only Angela’s own, perhaps.”
“I think they might try to track down the source of the poison. It’s not easy stuff to get hold of.”
“She could have got hold of it from Nigel, perhaps. He’s a veterinary surgeon and can get it, same as a doctor can. If Angela could have got it from him, so could the murderer.”
“Oh, Lord! Had Nigel himself got anything against Angela?”
“It strikes me that everybody had something against her, because she was such a snake that she might have got hold of something even to my discredit, although I can’t think what it would be. Marjorie would be a likely victim, because there’s no doubt Angela knew she’d been having some sort of an affair with Jeremy, and I know how jealous and possessive Nigel is. They had a quarrel about it when they rowed over to our tent one afternoon when I was alone on duty there. Actually, Angela once hinted to me of dreadful things about Nigel, things I would have known nothing about if I hadn’t read some of Daddy’s stuff on forensic medicine.”
“I thought Sir Ferdinand was a lawyer. Is he a doctor as well?”
“No, but he knows what doctors have to know about the law.”
“But if Angela Barton—wasn’t she about forty-five?”
“Yes, I believe so.”
“Well, if a woman of that age began spreading that sort of tale about Nigel, people would just assume she was suffering change-of-life dottiness, wouldn’t they?”
“It still wouldn’t be very pleasant for Nigel, would it? You know what gossips people are, especially in a village.”
“So she could have harmed him, if she’d been spiteful enough, on two counts, Marjorie and Jeremy being the other. But what would she have got out of it?”
“Nothing but the satisfaction of spreading alarm and despondency, I imagine. I think she had the sort of lust for power that I suppose poison-pen writers have.”
“How did your telephoning go?” asked Laura, when she had handed over the bottle to Dame Beatrice.
“The fiscal is convinced that Angela Barton committed suicide. The police, I presume, have established that she received a letter that day…”
“She did get one,” said Sally. “She picked it up at the post-office. You know, Grandmamma, I begin to be sorry I started all this. Suppose there is nothing in my suspicions after all, and the police and the fiscal are right and there isn’t a case to go to the sheriff? After all, there is very little to go on in thinking it was murder, and plenty to justify a verdict of suicide. Mightn’t it be better to drop our enquiry and leave things alone?”
“All very well, unless the murderer strikes again,” said Laura.
“How do you mean?” asked Sally.
“Well, that strychnine had to come from somewhere, and my bet is that it didn’t come directly from a chemist. Ask Mrs. Croc and she’ll tell you it’s most difficult stuff to get hold of, unless you’re a doctor or otherwise qualified to have it, and we do know of somebody in Sir Humphrey’s party who was.”
“You’re thinking of Nigel, but he’d never have given it to anybody. He wouldn’t have dared and, if he’s the murderer, he wouldn’t need to hand it over, anyway.”
“Let us re-examine our reasons for suspecting that Miss Barton did not commit suicide, but was murdered,” said Dame Beatrice, “and then the next thing is to submit Laura’s beaded bubbles for analysis.”
“Will analysis be difficult?” asked Laura.
“Oh, no, strangely simple. If the analyst can isolate the crystals of strychnine, he has only to add a minute quantity of H2SO4 and then touch the solution with a crystal of K2Cr207. This will cause the strychnine to turn purple, the purple will fade to rose-colour, and this will then disappear.”
“But the wine itself is between dark red and rose colour,” said Sally. “Won’t that make a difference?”
“Then they may try a drop of the wine on a harmless, necessary frog,” said Dame Beatrice. “Unkind but, I believe, infallible, since a frog is known to respond to a solution of one five-thousandth of a grain of strychnine.”
Sally groaned.
“I loathe using animals for experiments,” she said.
“In the laboratory to which I shall send Laura’s bottle, the frog will be narcotised and its stomach washed out and chloral or bromide left in situ. This is not done, I hasten to add, for humane reasons, but it is a recognised treatment for those who have taken strychnine accidentally or suicidally and is invariably practised on all subjects concerned with the laboratory’s experiments in order to make sure that the treatment works.”
“So glad they’re not sentimentalists,” said Sally bitterly.
The result of the laboratory tests on the bottle salvaged by Laura was sent to Dame Beatrice a week later. There were positive traces of strychnine in the few drops of wine it contained.
“Something definite to show the police at last!” exclaimed Laura. “Then we can leave them to it, I hope, and take ourselves home. Mrs. McLauchlin’s cooking is all very well if you’re passionately fond of cockaleekie soup and everlasting mutton, but I begin to find myself hankering after Henri’s inspired French menus and I wouldn’t mind tucking myself up again in my own bed.”
“And so you shall, and that right soon,” Dame Beatrice promised her.
“After you’ve shown that bottle to the police?”
“The laboratory is doing that, so that no unauthorised person meanwhile has access to it. What I should like to establish, before we leave Tannasgan, is where the bottle came from after Sir Humphrey presented it to some of the watchers. I think that might be useful, and there Sally can be of help. What was done, Sally, about the disposal of waste m
atter while the party was up here?”
“I can only answer for Sir Humphrey’s gang. We dug a bumby-hole and buried everything.”
“That calls for excavation, then. I am sure one of the villagers will lend us a spade.”
“Mrs. McLauchlin’s husband will,” said Laura. “What excuse shall I offer?”
“That Sally took off a gold bracelet when she was about to do the washing-up and thinks it must have been collected in with the rubbish and thrown away.”
“A bit late in the day for her to have thought of that, isn’t it?”
“She didn’t think of it. You suggested it to her, and she thinks it is worth a try.”
CHAPTER 16
Excavations and Enquiries
“Mr. Messiter, Mr. Philip Hays, and Mr. Holton of Mag. Coll. spent the evening with me, and sat up till 2 o’clock in the morning…Had 6 bottles of my wine.”
Parson James Woodforde.
Mrs. McLauchlin did not laugh this time, but listened with sympathetic clickings of the tongue to Laura’s story and, at the end of it, her husband promised not only a spade, but the potboy to do the digging. With some difficulty Laura side-stepped this kindly offer, the spade was produced, and Sally took her two companions to the burial-ground of Sir Humphrey’s empty tins, bottles, and kitchen refuse.
Here, conspicuous among the debris, were two wine bottles. Dame Beatrice, who had come prepared, labelled them with Sir Humphrey’s name and the date, and they drove to where the second caravan had been parked, its wheel-marks plainly to be seen in the soft soil.
“Here’s where it’s going to be difficult,” said Sally, “because two lots used this caravan and both will have buried rubbish.”
“Then we must excavate carefully,” said Dame Beatrice.
“Why not try the further site first?” suggested Laura. “If we find two bottles there, we can conclude that any bottles buried here belong to the major.”
“I am afraid there is a flaw in that argument. It depends upon Mr. Parris and his party having drunk their burgundy before they shifted camp. Nevertheless, it is a sensible suggestion and is well worth trying out.”
At the furthest caravan site two different mentalities had been at work. All the kitchen refuse had been placed in bags (“brought by Hubert Pring, I’ll bet,” said Sally) and neatly buried and the dug-out earth replaced with finicking neatness. In the bushes nearby, however, were empty beer-cans imported (Sally said) by Jeremy and Nigel and carelessly flung out when they had served their purpose. The two wine bottles had followed suit. Laura preened herself when they were disclosed and Dame Beatrice labelled and dated them and placed them with the others in the back of Sally’s van.
“The assumption is that they belonged to Mr. Parris,” she said, “but we cannot take it as a certainty.”
“Have faith, dear Grandmamma,” said Sally. “Even if the major might chuck empty bottles into bushes, I’m sure his wife and the Bensons wouldn’t have left them there.”
But this point was not resolved. The most resolute excavation at the last, actually the middle, caravan site when they revisited it, disclosed no bottles at all.
“Needs some enquiring into, that,” said Laura, leaning on the spade when she had tidied up the ground after her labours. “Well, I’m for some lunch, and then what about telephoning Glasgow for tonight’s beds and beginning the long trek home?”
“Did you hae guid luck, then?” asked Mrs. McLauchlin, who served them in person with lunch. For answer Sally displayed an elegant gold bracelet (on loan from her grandmother’s jewel-box) and said that she had indeed been lucky. An hour later she was in her motorised caravan and, with Laura at the wheel of Dame Beatrice’s car, they were on the first leg of their homeward journey when Sally flagged down the following vehicle and Laura pulled up.
“What now?” she enquired, when she had wound down her window.
“Sorry and all that, but we’ve loads of time to get to Glasgow, so would you mind waiting while I go as far as where we had our tent? I’d like to say good-bye to the monster. I don’t suppose I’ll ever be this way again.”
She drove off, crossed the little stone bridge, passed the site where Sir Humphrey’s caravan had been parked, and took the van as far along the side of the loch as she could. Then she walked, not as far as where the tent itself had been pitched, but to the spot, as nearly as she could judge, at which the monster had reared its head out of the water.
The early afternoon was calm and fair. The surface of the loch was still and it was slightly shimmering in hazy, indeterminate sunshine. The distant mountains loomed like powerful but beneficent gods and all around and about there was silence until Sally spoke.
“Well, hail and farewell,” she said. “I’m glad I had a glimpse of you, anyway. Look after yourself and don’t swallow any spiny sticklebacks.” Then she spat into the water for luck and turned and walked back to the van, glancing now and again over her shoulder. The loch remained tranquil. Leviathan, presumably, slept.
A leisurely drive home, with overnight stops in Glasgow, Kendal, Leicester, and Witney, brought the car and the motorised caravan back to the Stone House.
“And now to get our priorities right,” said Laura, on the following morning.
“We begin with Major and Mrs. Tamworth and the Benson sisters,” said Dame Beatrice.
“The Bensons first, I suppose,” said Sally.
“It matters little. From your account of the various parties, the major’s weak link is his downtrodden wife and Godiva’s lesser partner is her sister.”
“It’s going to be a bit tricky asking them to account for a couple of wine bottles, isn’t it? We’ve found five empties, including the one Laura found up at the hunting-lodge, so one of the major’s party has to explain away that one and then produce or otherwise account for the missing one. How are you going to approach the subject? He’ll see at once that you suspect some hanky-panky, won’t he?”
“Especially if he’s got a guilty conscience,” said Laura.
“I don’t believe he has. I don’t believe he had anything against Angela Barton except that he detested her on the usual grounds that everybody disliked her,” said Sally. “For my money, the Bensons are far more suspect than he is. They really did have a motive for wanting Angela out of the way and, if you ask me, Godiva has a strong enough character to take the obvious course and murder the woman if that was the only way to get her out of the vicarage.”
“Very well. We begin with the Benson sisters,” said Dame Beatrice, “although, really, you know, if the bottles of wine were handed to the major as leader of his small party of four, I do not see him handing them over to two spinsters who may not even care for alcoholic beverages.”
“Everybody cares for alcoholic beverages in this day and age,” declared Sally. “The Bensons aren’t living with the March family from Little Women.”
“Even they drank wine on occasion,” said Laura. “Wasn’t old Mr. Lawrence asked to produce ‘a couple of bottles of old wine’ for Mr. March when he was ill, and didn’t Meg drink champagne at the Moffats’ house-party ball, and isn’t there a reference somewhere else in the saga to the family ‘drinking a toast’ to someone or something?”
“Well, Cranford, then,” said Sally.
“Home-made wine, I’ll wager ten shekels,” said Laura, “although I can’t at the moment quote an instance. All the same, I bet the Cranford ladies had their cowslip wine and their ginger wine and their elderberry ditto stashed away in the cupboard under the stairs ready for the burials and christenings.”
“There weren’t any christenings in Cranford,” said Sally. “Babies were an indelicate subject among the ladies there. How are you going to tackle the Bensons, Grandmamma?”
“By the way of Major Tamworth, to begin with.”
“Do you want me to go with you?” asked Sally.
“Neither you nor Laura. I shall make no secret of the object of my visit. Nothing, at this early stage, is to be
gained by subterfuge.”
Immediately after lunch she sent for her car and George, her chauffeur, and was driven the forty miles which lay between the Stone House and Sir Humphrey’s residence. Here she made enquiry of the maid who answered the door and by whom she was recognised immediately.
“No, I need not trouble the family this time,” she said in answer to the woman’s enquiry. “No doubt you can direct me to Major Tamworth’s house.”
“You’ve come past it, mum, I daresay, if you’ve come from the Forest direction. It lays back a piece from the road and is called Dunkirk Lodge. The name is cut on the pillars which hold up the gate.”
The major was at home and affected delight.
“Good show, Dame Beatrice,” he said. “Nice to see you again so soon. You must have some tea. She must have some tea, Catherine.”
“Yes, of course, dear. I had better go to the kitchen myself, as Mabel will not be expecting to get tea ready at three in the afternoon.”
“My wife will never learn how to manage servants,” said the major, when she had gone out of the room, “and if I take over and, well, bark at ’em a bit, the undisciplined fools give in their notice and then it’s the very devil of a job these days to get replacements. Damn’ girls seem to think it’s beneath them to put on a cap and apron and wait on people. Who do they think they are, for heaven’s sake?”
Dame Beatrice agreed that servants were a problem, but forbore to mention how long her own had been with her. Instead she said, “You will have guessed, Major, that I had an object in calling upon you so soon after your return from Tannasgan.”
“Why, as to that, no need for an excuse, dear lady. Always pleased to see you, always!”
“Thank you. I may tell you, however, that doubts have arisen as to the way in which Miss Barton met her death.”
“Eh? Doubts? Thought the doctors were satisfied the wretched—the poor woman did for herself with poison. Rotten way to go, but there it is.”
“There is no doubt about the poison, but it is no longer thought that the thermos flask of coffee was the vehicle.”
Winking at the Brim (Mrs. Bradley) Page 16