She tackled the obvious first, through her chauffeur George, who had driven her to Norwich and was there with the car.
“I want you,” she said, “to repair again to the village inn at Camber and contact the Adams, both father and son.”
“I know them well, madam. During my stay I was enabled to form some useful friendships and Mr. Adams senior is a man of parts, as is his son, young Mr. Adams. I learned more about sniggling eels from them than I had dreamt of in my philosophy.”
“Good. Do you think you could introduce tomatoes into the conversation?”
“Readily, madam. The Adams are fanatical gardeners and should respond readily to such a subject.”
“What I want to know is whether their late employer, Mr. Paul Camber, was interested in tomatoes and whether—but this is where you will need to be very circumspect and careful—whether he ever experimented with the growing of them. Do not, on any account, risk asking a leading question. They are not to know that they are being pumped.”
“I shall take pleasure in seeing that they don’t, madam. Would there be anything more?”
“Not unless you can get hold of some gossip about the girl Beresford and her baby. I would rather like to know whether the village is cognisant of the fact that Paul Camber married her.”
“Very good, madam, but, again …?”
“Again, great discretion, George. At present I would rather be without the information than have anybody suspect that I was seeking it.”
“I understand, madam. I will report to you tomorrow morning.”
“Right. You can take the car, George. I shan’t need it. And stay the night at Camber if they can put you up at the inn.”
“There will be no difficulty about that, madam.”
He made his report at half-past ten on the following morning. It was interesting, but it was very much what Dame Beatrice had expected.
“Old Adams knew nothing helpful, but, on his own, Tom told me. Mr. Paul Camber had a special tomato plant, madam, of which, it appears, he was proud. He’d made a grafting and took a great interest in the result. It seems that for two years he was unsuccessful, but the third year—the summer of his own and his son’s death—he obtained the result he had hoped for. That was all I was able to gain, madam, short of asking leading questions, which you desired me not to do.”
“Thank you, George. That from young Tom? My next move seems to be to contact the housekeeper, Mrs. Brunton, and that is an interview which I had better conduct in person. Fortunately, I need not apply to Mr. Camber for her address, as I have it already. In any case, I cannot spare the time to see her just yet. My researches are not completed.”
Searching the hotel registers was proving a lengthy business. It took her the whole of the following week, armed with a list of hotels, boarding-houses, and lodgings supplied by the City of Norwich police, to track down the entry she sought. She made a copy of it and, armed with this, went off to see Mrs. Brunton.
Mrs. Brunton was not anxious to talk to the bright-eyed, beaky-mouthed, reptilian visitor. She had left Camber Abbey months before, she asserted, and had no further interest in its concerns.
“But you have an excellent memory,” said Dame Beatrice, coaxingly. “I wish you would tell me why Mr. Paul Camber went to live in Norwich for a month before he went to Scotland.”
“Why? How should I know, madam? It was not Mr. Paul’s habit to confide in me. He went, right enough, and then, after Master Stephen’s death he went to see his lawyers and then straight up to Scotland so soon as he had been back to Camber to collect his fishing things. I knew he went away, but I don’t know why he went to Norwich. That wasn’t my business and I hope I know my place.”
“Oh, come, now, Mrs. Brunton! Surely you had an address to which to send letters?”
“I had nothing, madam. Mr. Paul told me he should travel and so it wouldn’t be any good sending anything on. I was to keep it all until he got back.”
“I see.” She did not attempt to press the point, as she already had the information she needed. Instead, she shifted her ground and was interested to notice how the housekeeper’s guard came up again immediately. She knew nothing about greenhouses and hot-houses, she averred, and did not want to know anything about them. Her work had lain inside Camber Abbey, not in the kitchen garden.
Dame Beatrice tried shock tactics.
“You do realise, Mrs. Brunton, don’t you, that Stephen Camber was murdered?”
The question shook Mrs. Brunton less than she had expected.
“I hardly think so, though, all the same, I wouldn’t be surprised, madam, but it happened months ago, and Mr. Paul’s dead, too. Nothing can be done about it now.”
“What was the attitude of father to son? Did they get on well together?”
“It was all right until Mr. Verith came.”
“Ah, yes, the tutor. What went wrong when he came, then? Was Mr. Camber jealous of his influence over the boy? I understand that Stephen was very much attached to Mr. Verith.”
“Yes, that’s right enough, he was. They used to go everywhere together. It seemed as if Master Stephen couldn’t bear Mr. Verith out of his sight.”
“A kind of hero-worship, would you say?”
“Well, madam, Mr. Verith gave Master Stephen an interest in life, as it were. All the things his father had thought too much for him, such as learning to swim and being able to take jumps on his pony instead of just walking it over the meadows, and learning judo, or whatever they call it, and taking longer walks and going fishing, Mr. Verith taught him and encouraged him to do.”
“And what kind of influence do you think he had over the boy, Mrs. Brunton? You were fond of Stephen. How did all the tutor’s innovations and Stephen’s obvious hero-worship strike you?”
“Well,” said the housekeeper thoughtfully, her serene old face smooth and unwrinkled as a well-stored apple, “as to that, there might be two opinions. I can’t say I thought Mr. Verith’s influence was bad in itself, but there’s no doubt it made Master Stephen wilful.”
“Wilful?”
“Yes, madam, or so I thought. Before Mr. Verith came he was what I should call a meek, obedient, biddable kind of boy, but he turned rather different. I once heard him call his father a fool.”
“Really? That does seem rather a strong term for a boy of his type and age to have used.”
“Another time he said he should go fishing in the rain if he wanted to. He said he was sick of being treated as if he was made of icing sugar.”
“I see. Yes, it does seem to have produced a metamorphosis, this companionship with Mr. Verith. Did you ever hear Mr. Camber reproach the tutor for the change in the boy’s attitude?”
“There was no trouble, so far as I know, madam, until the dreadful upset with the Beresfords. That ended in Mr. Verith being given his notice, as I expect you’ve heard.”
“We are inclined to think, Mrs. Brunton, that the Beresford baby is really a Camber; that Mr. Paul Camber married the young mother before the child was born and almost immediately after Stephen’s death.”
“Yet he willed the property to Mr. Hugh, madam. He told me he was going to. That was when we came home from Master Stephen’s funeral. Very white, he was, and very grim, and he called me into the library and said as how he was going to make Mr. Hugh his heir. ‘My boy’s gone,’ he said, ‘and there’s to be no nonsense of how the property’s to be disposed of,’ he said. ‘It’s not entailed; I can leave it where I like,’ he said, ‘and Hugh’s to have it and I shall want you and Bembridge’—that’s the agent, you know, madam—‘as witnesses. I’ll get Samuels—that’s the lawyer, madam—‘on to it at once,’ he says. And so he did, and had it all tied up to Mr. Hugh as tight as ever Samuels could tie it, and Mr. Bembridge and I were the witnesses.”
“Very curious and very interesting. So the Beresford baby and his mother got nothing at all?”
“Not a halfpenny in money and not a rod, pole, or perch of the estate, madam. But it woul
dn’t surprise me if, one of these fine days, they didn’t have a try to make a claim, if, as you say, that baby was born in lawful wedlock—not that I ever heard of it. We all thought it belonged to be Verith’s.”
“I gather that Stephen Camber was heart-broken when Mr. Verith was dismissed?”
“That he was, madam, poor little soul. Didn’t seem to know what to do with himself. Used to be out all day on his own. His father was worried to death about him, but he didn’t know what to do. He thought he’d get over it better if he was left alone. Anyway, the boy wouldn’t have his father at any price. He and Mr. Paul and the tutor used to have evening dinner together—Master Stephen had been allowed to stay up to dinner after his fourteenth birthday—but once Mr. Verith had gone, he used to take all his meals in my room. I spoke to Mr. Paul about it and asked what I should do, and Mr. Paul told me to put up with him, if I didn’t mind, until he got over his tantrums. But it wasn’t tantrums, madam, it was real, right-down, sick grief. I didn’t see him getting over it in a hurry. Those quiet ones brood and brood until something goes all bad inside them—and then it happens.”
“What happens, Mrs. Brunton?”
“Suicide, madam.”
The two elderly women stared at one another.
“But that suggestion puts a new complexion on the whole thing,” said Dame Beatrice. “Do you really think…?”
“I never took to the idea of an accident, madam, any more than I believed that poor little Master Stephen was drunk at the time.”
“He was not drunk; he had taken poison.”
“Poison? What poison? There wasn’t nothing but Ethel’s aspirins in the house, and well I know they never left her top short drawer in her chest of drawers, madam.”
“What about Ethel’s tomato-sickness? That seems to have occasioned a certain amount of excitement.”
“Ethel was drunk, madam, I am very sorry to say. Her one lapse, so far as I’m aware, but that time she slipped and fell. I was very ashamed of Ethel—and then to tell all those lies about she’d never touched a drop! ‘Really, Ethel,’ I said, when at last she’d come to herself, ‘you might get away with murder,’ I said, ‘but you cannot get away with acting like somebody that don’t know her own capacity. If you must drink, drink like the gentry. It’s a disgrace, that’s what it is,’ I said, ‘and I shouldn’t think you’d ever live it down. It’s a good thing Mr. Camber will never know,’ I said, ‘his principles being what they are, or you’d be out on the front gravel drive, with boxes beside you, this very minute,’ I said.”
“And how did Ethel take these remarks?”
“She sobbed and swore, madam. Not a nice exhibition. I left her, in the end. It was not my place to dismiss her, but she was not in a fit state of mind to heed anybody’s strictures just then. After that, I thought better to leave well alone, but she brought up the subject again, about a week later.”
“Oh, did she? Smarting under a sense of injustice, no doubt.”
“It did seem like that. ‘It was the tomatoes, Mrs. Brunton,’ she said. ‘Doctor told me so. And I’ve put all the nasty things on the bumby-heap, yes, and I’ve danced on them,’ she says. I told her not to be a silly girl, but to let bygones be bygones.”
“But she was not prepared to accept that as the last word on the subject.”
“I don’t know how you know, madam, but such is the case. ‘You’re doing me an injustice, Mrs. Brunton,’ she said, ‘a grave injustice,’ she said. ‘As God’s my judge,’ she said—not that I like to hear a young woman breaking the Commandments like taking His name in vain, which it seemed to me she was doing, but, anyway, she said it. ‘As God’s my judge,’ she said, ‘it was the tomatoes, not the drink, and Doctor knows it.’”
“She was right,” said Dame Beatrice flatly. The next move was to interview young Mrs. Beresford-Camber and to find the fisherman who had been upon the river’s brim before Stephen was drowned.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Marriage Lines
“I did not speak one word to her, as she came unasked.”
* * *
“As there was no moon to come home by, it was very disagreeable to come home thro’ the Wood…”
Parson Woodforde’s Diary
There was no welcome for Dame Beatrice at Beresford’s farm. She had timed her arrival for five o’clock, hoping to find the farmer and his family at home for tea. The door was opened by the daughter, who stared belligerently at the visitor.
“Yes?” she said.
“Who is it, Nessie?” called out Mrs. Beresford from the kitchen.
“You’d better come in,” said the girl. “We’re just going to have our tea.”
“Please do not interrupt it.”
“Who is it, Nessie?”
“I forget the name,” said the girl, in an undertone. Dame Beatrice gave it. “Oh, yes, of course. It’s Dame Beatrice from the Abbey, Mother!”
“Oh, dear, oh, dear! And I’m in my overall! Ask Dame Beatrice into the parlour and take her a cup of tea. I can’t come for a minute. I’m cooking.”
As the scent of grilled bloaters was in the air, the last statement was redundant. Dame Beatrice was shown into the parlour and given an armchair. Then the girl disappeared and the self-invited guest could hear the acrimonious conversation which ensued.
“I’m not taking her any tea. Didn’t ask her to come, did we?”
“I’m not having people at meal-times and give them nothing. That’s not the way I was brought up, and it’s not the way you’ve been brought up, either. You do as I say, and take along that cup of tea and some cake, now.”
“I don’t see why I should wait on the snooping old…!”
“All right, then. You’d better see to your father’s bloaters, and I’ll go myself. Though how, after what you’ve done, you dare to set yourself up, I don’t really know. No pride at all, you girls nowadays!”
“I’m married, aren’t I?”
“You weren’t married when it happened. There’s your father! Now will you do as you’re asked?”
Dame Beatrice accepted the tea, refused the cake (both with a polite leer), and said that she would be very glad of a word with Mrs. Camber when the latter was at liberty.
“Oh,” said the girl, turning at the door, “so you know Paul married me? That’s something!”
She shut the door behind her with a slight but unmistakable slam and was away some twenty-five minutes. During that time Dame Beatrice sipped tea and was aware of a booming male voice whose actual words were indistinguishable but which appeared to hold the floor for some considerable time. When the girl came back to the parlour, she was flushed and looked even more resentful than before. She flung herself into an armchair opposite Dame Beatrice and raised her eyebrows.
“I am still investigating the deaths of Mr. Paul Camber and his son Stephen,” said Dame Beatrice. “There is one small point over which you can help me, if you will.”
“And if I won’t?”
“I have no doubt that there are people in the village who would be only too ready to tell me what I want to know.”
“Well, what is it you want to know?”
“I want to know whether there was ever any sort of understanding between you and Tom Adams.”
“What? Me look at a jobbing gardener when I could, and did, get his master?”
“Tom Adams is not a jobbing gardener. Did you give Tom any reason to think that you might marry him?”
“No!”
“Not even when he gave you peaches, apricots, and nectarines from Paul Camber’s fruit trees?—as I am quite sure he did.”
“No! I never encouraged Tom Adams!”
“I have evidence to the contrary.”
“What evidence?”
“Since you decline to help me, that is my affair.”
“If you know all about it, why have you come here?”
“It is preferable, I always think, to keep discreditable facts from reaching too many ears. Come, now
. You did have an understanding with Tom.”
“Suppose I did? A girl can change her mind, can’t she?”
“Certainly, but it can be extremely disconcerting for her, and can cause her some sleepless nights if she has reason to believe that her change of mind has led to murder being committed.”
The girl went white.
“It wasn’t my fault! How was I to know what Tom would do?” she said.
“You could not know. I am not sure that you know now.”
“How do you mean?”
“You have had some sleepless nights, then?”
“Of course I have! Tom made some very wild threats and I felt sure he’d had it out on Stephen Camber.”
“What caused him to utter threats? Not your marriage to Paul Camber?”
“He knew nothing about that! I didn’t think anybody did except my mother and father, and now you. How did you guess?”
“It was not altogether a guess. It was a matter of logical deduction worked out from various small scraps of information which I have picked up and put together and which I have now been able to prove. I asked you what caused Tom Adams to utter threats. Whom did he threaten?”
“Paul.”
“But why, if he knew nothing of the marriage?”
“He thought Paul was the father of my baby.”
“As, of course, he was.”
“Yes, he was, and then, when I knew, I said he’d got to marry me, or else I’d put it all over the village that it was him, and not that Verith who got me into trouble.”
“You blackmailed Paul Camber into marrying you?”
“Blackmail had nothing to do with it! How dare you use that word about a respectable married girl?”
“Would Paul Camber have married you if you had not threatened him with exposure?”
The Man Who Grew Tomatoes Page 16