‘It would have been a big help if the barmaid had been found to be pregnant, wouldn’t it?’
‘Barmaids are, in one respect, like Caesar’s wife, child. No, we must look elsewhere for a motive, for motives, although not necessary from a legal point of view, are most acceptable as a guide to the enquiring minds of the police and other interested parties.’
‘In other words — ourselves. I’ll get Gavin on the telephone, shall I?’
She did this, and gave him a guarded account of Dame Beatrice’s suspicions and surmises.
‘We’ve been thinking along the same lines ourselves,’ said her husband, ‘but it’s going to be very difficult to prove it. Meet you tomorrow in Buxton. Dinner at the Spa Flora at seven.’
‘Well, now,’ he said to Dame Beatrice, when he had met them in the hotel cocktail bar and had ordered, ‘where do we get the evidence we want? I think we’ve explored all Laura’s famous avenues and I’m afraid we’ve got nowhere. We know the chocolate-cream came from young Colwyn-Welch, and, although we presume he either knew or guessed that it was poisoned, we can’t be certain about that.’
‘What we want is evidence that he wanted to do in the barmaid,’ said Laura. Her husband smiled at her.
‘You find it, lovey.’ he said.
‘All right, I will,’ said Laura recklessly. ‘And I bet you ten pounds,’ she added, in response to her husband’s intolerable grin, ‘that I do find it, too.’
In bed at the hotel that night, Gavin asked her whether she wanted to cancel the bet.
‘Because you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, you know,’ he added. ‘And, if you do cancel it, not a cheep or a jibe or a sly allusion out of me, I promise you, Laura. You see, we’ve had our suspicions all along that Florian ain’t the innocent lad he makes out to be, and, honestly, we’ve combed out every nook and corner. I don’t see what else remains to be done, I don’t, really.’
‘I won’t cancel the bet,’ said Laura sleepily. ‘Like darling Yvonne Arnaud, in Tons of Money, I’ve got an idea.’
‘Are you old enough to have seen Tons of Money? I shouldn’t have thought so.’
‘Mrs Croc. is. Move over a bit. I’m hanging half out of bed.’
‘Well,’ said Gavin at breakfast on the following morning, ‘what was the big idea you had last night?’
‘Big idea?’ said Laura, squinting down her nose. ‘What big idea?’
‘So you are up to mischief!’
‘Not that I know of. Oh, that! Well, I wondered whether it might not be as well to trot over to Amsterdam and bounce the truth out of Aunt Opal.’
‘Good heavens, wench! We can’t do that kind of thing! It might create an international situation!’ said Gavin, greatly amused. Laura buttered a piece of toast.
‘Marmalade, please,’ she said. ‘I can see that you couldn’t do it, but Mrs Croc. and I could. Anyway, I vote we try it.’
‘If you think you can bounce the truth out of Aunt Opal, you can say that again,’ said Gavin. ‘I don’t know her, but a maiden lady of Anglo-Dutch parentage is going to be a pretty hard nut to crack. No, my lassie, you leave that one alone. It wouldn’t work and might be dangerous.’
‘As how?’
‘Well, we conclude that the prussic acid came from there. They may have some more of it hidden up the chimney, you know.’ He helped himself to a soft roll and more butter and marmalade, and added, ‘Look, let’s see what we can do in this neighbourhood before we go on wild goose chases in Holland. You try that garage where Colwyn-Welch was employed, Laura. We got nothing there that was any good to us, but you might be luckier. Look over their used cars and re-treaded tyres, and pass the time of day in a genial and hearty manner. You might work wonders.’
Laura glowered at him, but, on the advice of Dame Beatrice, (expressed in private after breakfast), she allowed herself to be taken in Dame Beatrice’s car to the garage.
Laura had her own very definite way of going about things. No, the car did not need servicing, she said, unless they still engaged a young man named Colwyn-Welch. The proprietor responded that the young man in question had left, and was not all that much good, anyway. He understood cars, but was averse to doing much of the dirty work on them. And dirty work was eighty per cent of what was needed, the proprietor added. He eyed Laura suspiciously. He thought he had seen her before, he stated. Laura blithely agreed.
‘He’s wanted,’ she said dramatically.
‘Wanted? By the police?’
‘I’m a stool-pigeon, or whatever they call it,’ pronounced Laura. ‘In other words, my husband is a police officer of the C.I.D. and I’ve been sent here to make enquiries.’
‘In that case, madam,’ said the proprietor, ‘I have no information to offer you. You don’t seem bona fides, as they say.’
‘So there is something fishy,’ said Laura, pleasantly. ‘Oh, well, thank you for your help.’
‘Look, don’t get me wrong. What proof have I got that you’re what you say?’ the proprietor pleaded.
‘You have nothing but my word for what I say, and that isn’t proof. What’s your headache, exactly?’ asked Laura.
‘I don’t know,’ the proprietor admitted, scratching his ear. ‘What do you want me to tell you?’
Laura’s West Highland sixth sense suddenly functioned.
‘Did any letters come for him here?’
‘Letters? What, for Colwyn? — the Welch is a new one on me. Letters for Colwyn, you say?’
‘Yes. There might have been one from Holland.’
The proprietor scratched his ear again. Laura looked at it. An early-autumn chilblain, she surmised. There was certainly a draught in the garage. The ear looked very red and had a badly swollen lobe.
‘Holland? I couldn’t say. He did have one letter addressed here, so far as I remember. He didn’t take much note of it, so far as I’m aware.’
‘What’s the matter with your ear?’
‘That? Nothing. Itches a bit, that’s all.’
‘What does your doctor say about it?’
‘Haven’t got a doctor. Don’t believe in ’em.’
‘But you must be registered under the National Health Scheme.’
‘Oh, I’ve got a doctor, but I don’t trouble him.’
‘That’s a pity. He might be able to do something for that ear. I wonder whether I could put you on to somebody?’
‘Not on your life! I don’t hold with doctors. They can’t do nothing for you.’
‘I’m not so sure, but just as you like, of course.’
‘Doctors can’t do nothing for you,’ the man repeated obstinately. ‘He took a girl to look at Eldon Hole,’ he added, ‘and not up to no good, he wasn’t, if you ask me. He cleared out, and that’s all as I can tell you.’
Laura left the garage and rejoined George.
‘Off to Eldon Hole,’ she said briefly. ‘I want to have a look round.’
George, who had been in Dame Beatrice’s service for many years, responded gravely,
‘A very dangerous spot, I am informed, madam.’
‘Of course it isn’t dangerous,’ said Laura. ‘Anyway, I want to go and see it.’
George drove off, and pulled up as near the natural chasm as he could. Without a word, having locked the car, he followed Laura at a discreet distance. She went up to the fence which guarded the hole, and looked over, into the cleft. George moved a little nearer. He gave a discreet cough. Laura turned.
‘If I may say so, Mrs Gavin, madam,’ he said, ‘you would jeopardise my job if you decided to climb over.’
‘George,’ said Laura, ‘supposing, in summer, you wanted to dispose of a compromising sort of letter, wouldn’t you chuck it down there?’
‘Young fellows on holiday climb down such places for a dare, or just for the hell of it, madam. It would not be a very safe place to deposit anything really dangerous — not if you were known in the neighbourhood, that is. A far more likely thing would be to throw it on the fire.’
&n
bsp; ‘But this would have been at the end of the summer. There wouldn’t be any fires.’
‘Not in a farmhouse?’ suggested George.
‘Good heavens! They did visit a farmhouse! What’s more, I know which one. They had tea there, too. To the car, George! There may be red-hot news for Dame Beatrice when we get back.’
The farmer’s wife remembered her and asked after her husband. Gavin (as usual, thought Laura, who, secretly, was proud of this quality in him) had made an impression which did not easily vanish from people’s minds. She made a suitable and acceptable reply, and then posed the question she was longing to ask.
‘That young friend of ours,’ she said, ‘about whom we enquired last time, if you remember. He seems to have thrown away a rather important letter. I suppose it didn’t, by any chance, get dropped into your kitchen fire?’
‘It wouldn’t be a valuable stamp, would it? the woman asked, rather anxiously.’Because I’m afraid I give the stamp to my Ernie. He’s stuck it in his album.’
‘Well, it was the letter, more than the actual stamp,’ said Laura, ‘But if I saw the stamp, or knew where it came from, I’d know whether it was on the right envelope.’
‘It didn’t seem a business letter,’ said the woman. ‘The young gentleman pulled it out of his pocket with some money he offered me to pay for their tea and says “Drat it! My pockets seem full of rubbish,” he says. “Mustn’t shed litter,” he says, laughing — looked just like a wolf when he laughed. Something to do with his mother when she was carrying him, I suppose — hare lip and all that — but it quite spoilt his good looks. “Mustn’t shed litter,” he says, “not on this lovely countryside,” he says, “so what the hell can I do with it?”
‘ “Our Ernie wouldn’t half like the stamp on that there letter, sir,” I says. So he tosses me the envelope and his other rubbish and I says I’ll put the lot on the kitchen fire for him, so long as he don’t mind our Ernie having the stamp.
‘ “I’ll come along and see fair play,” he says. But the girl gives his arm a tug and tells him they must be off.
‘ “If I says I’ll put your litter on the fire, sir, on the fire it will go,” I says.’
‘And it did?’ Laura enquired. ‘That’s a bit of a nuisance, because it was an important letter and got burnt by mistake.’
‘Important?’ said the woman, looking surprised. ‘I read it over, of course, when they’d gone, and all it said was something about, “Well, if this is what you want, here it is, and best of luck to your efforts.”’
‘Was it signed?’ Laura enquired.
‘That’s the funny part,’ the farmer’s wife replied. ‘It wasn’t exactly signed, but — well, I’ll show you, because I kept it, it being unusual and pretty, don’t you see? Something out of a Christmas cracker, I thought, and, seeing he was such a handsome young fellow, I made sure it was a romance as had gone wrong, and that was why he wanted to get rid of the letter.’
‘Well, I don’t think that was the reason,’ said Laura, ‘but you said you would show me how it was signed, and I should be ever so pleased if I could see the stamp as well.’
The signature (which, as the farmer’s wife had stated, was not a signature in the ordinary sense of the word) consisted of a small red stone stuck on to a very small piece of plain paper which had been torn off the end of the letter. The stamp came from Holland and had been postmarked at Amsterdam.
‘Not very clever of Ruby,’ said Laura, reporting to Dame Beatrice and Gavin, ‘but I suppose it isn’t evidence.’
‘It’s evidence of one thing,’ said Gavin. ‘He’s a murderer all right. He asked Aunt Ruby for the poisoned chocolate stuff and she sent it to him.’
‘Unless Opal forged Ruby’s signature, so to speak,’ said
Laura. ‘And, of course, he need not have been a would-be murderer, but only a would-be suicide.’
‘I would be inclined to accept that hypothesis,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘had I not been a witness to his ridiculous performance in the lake at Leyden Hall. That was done to excite our pity and terror, but, owing to Binnie’s commonsense view of the situation, it failed to do either. Besides, I do not think Florian has the temperament for suicide. What we have to find out is what Miss Ruby Colwyn-Welch has to say about the letter, and what reason, if any, Florian had for desiring to accomplish the death of the barmaid.’
‘I don’t see what the motive there could have been,’ said Laura.
‘I know. And that brings me to my new theory,’ said Dame Beatrice.
Gavin gave her a quick glance.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘The girl he took to Eldon Hole. We ought to have thought of it before.’
Laura glanced from one to the other. Then she caught on.
‘Good Lord!’ she said. ‘You mean it wasn’t Florian who gave the chocolate-cream to the barmaid. It was to this other girl he gave it — the girl he was going out with? She didn’t want it, and she passed it on? But, if that’s so, why did Florian confess he’d given it to Effie?’
‘For the very simple reason,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘that, while he had no reason whatsoever for wishing poor Effie — still less the friend with whom she shared the chocolate-cream — out of the way, he had the best of reasons for wishing to get rid of the girl he escorted to Eldon Hole. The garage proprietor hinted of that to you, didn’t he?’
‘We must find that girl,’ said Gavin. ‘That had better be my job. And I must tackle the landlady at the pub again. She may not have known she was giving false evidence, but what she told me seems to have led us a long way up the garden path.’
‘Then my part will be to interview the household in Amsterdam again,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘They won’t half be pleased to see you!’ said Laura, with relish. ‘They practically threw you out the last time you were there.’
‘I wouldn’t tackle the Amsterdam end just yet,’ said Gavin. ‘I want to get the goods more firmly on Florian first. Once we can really establish his guilt, we shall have a pretty heavy weapon with which to bludgeon his aunts into telling the truth. Now — this girl. We did hear her name once. I thought of the sunshine. Yes, I’ve got it! Gertie Summers.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Death of a Delft Blue
‘And she’s minded her on a little pen-knife
That hang’d below her gare,
And she has gi’en Young Hunting
A deep wound and a sair.
‘The deepest pot in Clyde Water
They got Young Hunting in,
With a green turf tied across his breast
To keep that good lord down.’
Old Ballad
« ^
At Gavin’s request, Dame Beatrice had caused Laura (who, from long practice, was almost the only person who could decipher her calligraphy) to transcribe the notes she had made from time to time on Florian and his affairs and let Gavin have a copy. He wrote to Dame Beatrice from Derbyshire:
‘The landlady refuses to confirm that F. gave the chocolate-cream to the barmaid. Says she herself was suffering from a heavy cold at the time, had understood that the sweet had come from Florian, but had not been in the bar when the stuff was handed over. Put it to her that the barmaid might have received it via Gertie Summers and she agreed that this was most likely. As you can see, this is not conclusive. Some people will fall in with any prompting if the suggested idea seems at all possible. Still, for what it’s worth, I’m certainly going to have a word with Gertie Summers. I don’t know why we didn’t think of her before.’
Gertie herself opened the door to him. She was an insipid-looking, hazel-eyed girl who became extremely alarmed when the visitor presented his credentials.
‘It wasn’t my fault! I’d no idea!’ she declared. ‘I just don’t like chocolate-cream.’
‘Perhaps I might come in?’ suggested Gavin. ‘You wouldn’t prefer to come to the police station, would you?’
‘I’ve never been to a police station in my life. Yes, come in, t
hen. But I do declare to you…’
‘There’s no need. I believe you,’ said Gavin soothingly. He followed her into a small sitting-room which smelt of mothballs. A voice from the kitchen called out:
‘Who is it, Gert?’
‘A policeman, ma!’
‘Half a mo, then, while I change me apron.’
‘I don’t want you, ma. He believes what I says.’
‘So would anybody with any sense, but you hang on before you tells him anything. I’ll be with you in a couple of ticks.’
She was as good as her word, and joined them — a small, resolute woman with hair going grey and a mole on the left cheek. She had the air of one going into battle.
‘I have only one question to put to your daughter, madam,’ said Gavin, getting his shot in first.
‘And that is?’
‘From whom did she receive the chocolate-cream which she tendered as a gift to Miss Effie Harlow?’
‘From him, of course, the dirty little (expurgated) hound!’ replied Gertie’s mother, with the venom that these words suggested. ‘Got our Gert here into trouble, which, lucky enough, her new boy’s willing to marry her quick and the vicar not to be told because I’ve set my heart on a white wedding, and such early days yet as the little ’un can be passed off as premature…’
‘Thank you, madam. That’s all I wanted to know. You need fear no more visits from the police. We now have all the evidence we need.’
‘What for, then?’
‘To charge Mr Colwyn-Welch with the attempted murder of your daughter and with the deaths of Miss…’
‘Oh, yes, Effie and that there other gal, poor souls. But when I think it was meant for my Gert — and all because he didn’t have no honourable intentions
Gavin extricated himself and went back to the Superintendent.
‘My only fear,’ he said, ‘is that Gertie may tip him off and he’ll slip through our fingers.’
He telegraphed Dame Beatrice:
‘Enough on Florian may bolt.’
‘So now for North Norfolk!’ said Laura.
‘No, no. We go to Amsterdam,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Our dear Robert can take care of affairs in England. If Florian has been warned by the girl he seduced — how extremely odd girls are, by the way! — he will make for Holland and throw himself on the mercy of his relatives there.’
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