by Anne Morice
“It would have been all of that, if Robin hadn’t telephoned.”
“Telephoned you?”
“No, it was Pauline who took it. The Harpers had just got back to the hotel and he realised there’d been some mix-up over your transport. He wanted you to stay put until he could get over to fetch you.”
“Did you speak to him?”
“No, Pauline told him to leave everything to her and she’d drive you there herself; and then of course got into a screaming panic when she couldn’t find you. So I thought it was time I took over.”
“That was very decent of you. How did you guess where I’d be?”
“It was very simple really. I enquired around and Madam told me she’d seen you getting into my car. Perhaps she’s keeping tabs on you.”
“Why would she do that?”
“No idea, but I was watching her while you handed out that massive great silver goblet and she was looking at you in a rather peculiar way. I get the impression of a little hostility there.”
“It’s mutual. Anyway, thanks for coming to the rescue.”
She did not reply, probably because we had now caught up with the line of parental cars heading in the direction of Gillsford and the driver in front of us belonged to that erratic variety who need careful watching. About a mile further on, when we had passed the junction with the main road to London and conditions were back to normal, she said:
“It seems she was taking slimming pills.”
“Hattie was? How do you know?”
“Patsy found them when she was packing up her belongings. They were wrapped in an oily rag inside the precious box where she kept her paints and brushes. The bottle was almost full, but all the same it does suggest that she was a lot more worried about her weight than she let on.”
“Were they quite harmless?”
“No one knows yet. The police have taken them away for analysis.”
“You mean to say the police have been there, crawling all over the place and still no one realised there was anything amiss? It’s incredible!”
“No, it’s not, since they evidently escaped even your vigilant eye. Besides, they weren’t crawling all over the place. There were just two men in plain clothes, being very circumspect, at the express request of one of our most prominent and distinguished ratepayers. Furthermore, Connie had already laid on about half the local police force to do car park duty, so one more Panda lurking in the drive wouldn’t have raised any comment. She really has all the luck, that woman.”
“Well, let’s hope it holds up for her until after the inquest, because that’s when she’ll really be needing some. Posh school, Ambassador’s daughter; even Connie won’t be able to stop the media making a picnic of that. It’ll be bad enough if the verdict is suicide, but . . .”
“What else could it be?”
“Who knows? Murder, perhaps.”
“Oh, honestly, Tessa! You shouldn’t let your lurid imagination get out of hand, you know. Who in the world would have wanted to murder Hattie?”
“I could name several people.”
“Are you being serious?” she asked, turning her head to glare at me with eyes which practically touched. It did not make for a very safe passage over Gillsford Bridge, now thronged with loitering Sunday visitors, and I watered the statement down a little.
“Improbable as it may sound, Teeny, there is nearly always someone who stands to gain by another person’s death. In my case, I suppose it would most likely be my understudy, unless there is some passionate policewoman secretly in love with Robin. I don’t know who yours would be.”
“There wouldn’t be anyone, so speak for yourself. If I were to drop off the hook tomorrow, I hope there’d be one or two tears shed, but I can’t think of a single individual who’d be glad. I’m not nearly important enough for that and neither was Hattie. Apart from Connie Bland, who’s probably cracked anyway, the only one who took her seriously was Pauline and you can be quite sure that was only because she’s too frightened of her mother to take an opposite view on any subject.”
Her last words coincided with our arrival outside the Nag’s Head and she pulled on the handbrake with a mighty tug, as though to emphasise that the subject was now closed. However, since I was no longer taking my life in my hands by contradicting her, I decided to re-open it an inch or two:
“That may be true,” I said, “but the fact remains that it is rapidly becoming clear to me that Hattie was very important indeed. Probably the most potentially powerful and dangerous female in the whole of Waterside.”
ELEVEN
(1)
Toby was reclining in a deck-chair in a corner of the hotel’s rather scruffy little back garden, with his head in a newspaper.
“Back so soon?” he enquired, dropping it on to the grass.
“No thanks to you!”
“Yes, an unfortunate misunderstanding. What are your plans now? Are you staying on in this hotbed?”
“No, I shall go back to London. My work here is done.”
“Really? From those rather heavy hints you let fell this morning, one had the impression that it had only just begun. There’s a policeman on your track, by the way.”
“Do you refer to Robin?”
“No, this one is called Dexter. Robin is out; watching the boats going through the lock. He likes to study human nature in all its many guises.”
“I know. What did this Dexter want?”
“Just checking up, I gather. That’s to say, on all the people who were in contact with the wretched girl just before her demise.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“No, I had it from Eddie, who had just been dragged through the mill himself. Not best pleased about it either, having been collared as he was setting off for London.”
“Was Vera checked on too?”
“No, and that was why he was in such a stew. It appears that Vera has been overcome by yet another migraine and they were in a hurry to get home. Eddie had to answer for her, which is something I should not care to do myself. But at least it shows how unjust you were to accuse her of feigning these attacks to get into the act. All it did this time was to keep her out of it.”
“What do you think of her, really?”
“Nothing whatever. I have better things to think about.”
“Personally, I find something altogether phoney about her.”
“If I hadn’t better things to think about, I’d probably agree with you.”
“I even have moments of doubting whether she’s a genuine, bona fide Iron Curtain refugee and, whatever you say, I’m certain the migraine is partly put on. I was talking to Billy Bland about it, in a general way, at lunch yesterday and he told me that migraine is not an affliction that people slip in and out of as easily as trying on clothes. You get a lot of warning, as a rule, before an attack, and once you’ve got it you’re stuck with it for anything up to thirty-six hours. Still, I agree that I may have been doing Vera an injustice by saying that she only uses it to draw attention to herself. To be fair, it’s probably equally useful for getting her out of things she doesn’t want to do.”
A waiter appeared on the terrace and then came across the grass towards us.
“Your turn now,” Toby said. “This, presumably, is the Dexter summons.”
It was a summons of a kind, but not the one we had been expecting. It appeared that I was wanted on the telephone. He did not know the caller’s name, but, since there was only one person besides Toby who was up to date on my whereabouts, it came as no surprise to hear Tina’s voice on the line.
“They’ve got the results of the post-mortem,” she announced in a tight and rasping voice. “Thought you might be interested.”
“Oh, I am. What was it?”
“Sodium nitrate.”
“What’s that?”
“Highly dangerous chemical, apparently, even in small doses.”
“How very strange!”
“But not unheard of, they tell me. There wa
s a case in Oxford a couple of years ago. Some student, I gather. Still, he was known to be on drugs, so it’s not quite the same.”
“What form does it come in?”
“Tablets for one. Could be mistaken for something harmless, like aspirin.”
“Or slimming pills?”
“Yes, but that would mean . . . Oh well, no use speculating at this stage. I just rang to pass on the news, knowing you’d be gasping for it.”
“How did you hear?”
“Madam told me. The telephone was ringing when I walked into the flat.”
“How’s she taking it?”
“Not very cheerfully, as you might expect. Listen, Tessa, it’s been great fun seeing you again and let’s keep in touch and all that, but I’ve got to hang up now. Connie Bland has called a staff meeting for eight o’clock and God knows when I’ll be back, but when you come to collect your stuff, do remember not to walk off with the keys.”
I had been thinking fast during this conversation and now asked her:
“Are you throwing me out, by any chance?”
“No, of course not. What on earth are you on about?”
“That’s what it sounded like.”
“Well, it wasn’t intentional. It simply never occurred to me that you wouldn’t be going back to London this evening. Do you mean you want to stay on?”
“If it’s not inconvenient?”
There was silence for a moment or two and then she said coolly:
“Not in the least; I’m deeply flattered. Okay, in that case, I’ll see you later. Bye for now.”
It was not the most ecstatic of welcomes and I concluded that her feet, as Miss Lawrie would have put it, had warned her that she was making a mistake, but on this occasion had been over-ruled by her Waterside training in manners.
There was a tall, dejected-looking man lurking in the lobby when I emerged from the telephone kiosk and he came up to me, enquired my name and introduced himself as Sergeant Dexter, all of which was superfluous because I would have recognised that particular lurk from a mile off.
“Sorry to bother you like this, but if you could just spare me a few minutes? I thought we might sit in here,” he said, producing a key and unlocking the door of the Lounge Bar, this being five-thirty p.m. He then ushered me inside and relocked the door behind us. He had a diffident manner, a low, soft voice and a friendly, rather appealing smile, but conceivably all these traits had been cultivated purposely to disarm people and encourage indiscretions, so I cautioned myself to keep my guard up, while at the same time adopting an eager, co-operative expression when, having glanced through some notes, he said:
“I am here in connection with the death of Constance McGrath of Waterside School. Just a few preliminaries to get out of the way first, if you’d be so good. Is Theresa Crichton your full name?”
“My professional name,” I explained. “I’m an actress, you see. I don’t normally sign myself in that way, but it happens to be the name I’m known by at Waterside. I was at school there, for one thing.”
“Yes, I gathered. And your non-professional name?”
“Theresa Price,” I replied and left it at that, having decided it would be safer to omit any reference to Robin. If by some remote chance, the Sergeant’s confidence was really so shaky as appearances suggested, it might have collapsed altogether on learning that he was interrogating the wife of a Scotland Yard Inspector, and it could have ended with his hustling me out of the room in a courteous fashion before I had learnt anything at all.
“And your address?”
“At present it is Flat 3, Queen Anne House, Gillsford.”
“Really? You live in Gillsford?”
“No, I live in London, but I’m staying here for a few days. My permanent address is 51, Beacon Square, S.W.1.”
“It seems to me that I’ve come across that Gillsford address somewhere before,” he said when he had written all this information down. “Ah yes, here we are! Tina Blundell, Assistant Ballet Mistress. Would that be right?”
“Quite right. She didn’t mention that I was staying with her?”
“I haven’t had a chance to speak to her yet,” he replied sadly, as though the omission was a matter for lamentation. “Getting the addresses of the non-resident staff was simply routine, but at the moment we’re concentrating on people outside the school who were known to have been in contact with Constance within a short time of her death. I see from the Visitors’ Book that you were one of them.”
“That’s true, although not by any means the last. I went round the exhibition immediately after lunch.”
“Nevertheless, whatever you are able to tell us may be of some help. I understand you had a rather special relationship with her?”
“Who told you that?” I asked, a fraction more sharply than I had intended.
“We found this,” he replied, handing me a stiff brown envelope, “tucked inside the Visitors’ Book. There’s no name on the envelope, as you see, but we think it must have been intended for you.”
I opened it and drew out the sketch which Hattie had captioned “Judgement Day”. Something had been added since I last saw it and the blank space below the three heads was now covered with the following message, in large, flamboyant script:
“To T.C., with admiration, love and gratitude, C.M.”
Being sentimental by nature, it was no surprise to find the tears starting to my eyes.
“I told her I would hang it in my dressing room,” I explained, blinking them away. “And I will too.”
“Not just yet, though, if you don’t mind awfully,” the Sergeant said, holding out his hand. “We’d rather like to hang on to it for a few hours, if you’ve no objection?”
For all his winning ways, it was hard to believe that any objection I could have raised would have made a jot of difference, so I handed the drawing back without a word and he went on:
“Do you deduce anything from the fact that we found it where we did? Also that it had been neatly parcelled up, as it were?”
I thought it over for a minute and then said: “Presumably, you are suggesting that she was anxious that it should get to me, but knew she wouldn’t be around to see to it herself, since she intended to commit suicide. Is that what you’re saying?”
“No, I’m not saying it, I’m asking you.”
“Then the answer is No. I don’t think anything of the kind.”
“You sound very positive,” he said sorrowfully, as though acknowledging with some regret that this was not an epithet which could be applied to himself.
“I am because, although I wouldn’t describe it as a special relationship, I did talk to Hat . . . Constance on two occasions before that last one and each time she struck me very forcibly as someone who enjoyed life immensely and was looking forward with confidence to the future. As for putting her sketch inside an envelope and then into the book, if you’d ever met her you’d realise that it had quite another significance. The fact is, she took her work very seriously and would have taken great trouble to protect it.”
“Yes, I see. Well, I’m most grateful and I’ll certainly bear your remarks in mind. You’ll probably be pleased to hear that they almost mirror the impressions of Mr. and Mrs. Harper.”
My astonishment on hearing this was so profound that it must have been revealed in my expression and I hastily attempted to account for it by asking:
“Oh, have you talked to them as well? I thought they’d gone back to London?”
“They have now, I believe. It seems Mrs. Harper wasn’t at all well. Suffers from migraine, poor lady, but Mr. Harper was kind enough to spare me a few minutes and he was able to speak for his wife as well. Neither of them had exchanged more than a few words with Constance and they hadn’t noticed anything at all out of the ordinary in her behaviour.”
“Which suggests that it must have been an accident?”
“One certainly wouldn’t care to think of such a young person being driven to take her own life,” he repl
ied smoothly, evidently taking no account of a third alternative, and I did not mention it either. For one thing, I was not even sure that it would have been grammatical.
“By the way,” he said in a voice of deep sadness, while unlocking the bar door, “I think you must be the Theresa Crichton who’s married to Robin Price?”
“Yes, I am. Don’t tell me you know him.”
“Know him? Oh yes, I think you could say that. Known him . . . must be getting on for twenty years now.”
(2)
“A thumping exaggeration, I need hardly tell you,” Robin said, “but typical of Dexter. He enjoys dropping his tiny bombshells and is not above using a dash of poetic licence to enhance the effect.”
“You do surprise me! I had him down as a very sober-sided, unimaginative sort of man. How long have you actually known him?”
“Eight or nine years would be nearer the mark. Just before you bobbed up in my life, in fact. We used to meet fairly regularly when I was at Storhampton. There were numerous occasions when our territories overlapped.”
“He must be pretty dim if he’s still a sergeant eight or nine years later?”
“Or rates euphony above promotion?” Toby suggested. “Inspector Dexter, after all? It has an element of the absurd.”
“Not dim at all,” Robin said. “It’s just that something in his temperament or nervous system got switched off a few years ago. Domestic troubles.”
“What happened?”
“His wife ran off with someone else. Said she couldn’t stand the unsocial hours. Silly fool! Why marry a policeman if what you really want is someone who comes home at five o’clock every evening and gets ready to take you to the golf club dinner?”
“Why, indeed?” I agreed. “How did the social hours suit her?”
“Badly. The other man left her after a couple of years and she slipped quietly out with an overdose. Tiresome woman! Needless to say, Dexter blames himself for the whole silly shambles.”
We had adjourned to Tina’s flat by this time and were awaiting her return, hoping for more first-hand news from Waterside. The plan was for Toby to drop Robin off at the main line station, so leaving the car for me, although I had promised that both of us would be back in London before the end of the week. In the meantime, he was sitting out the delay quite amiably and I half suspected him of being almost as eager as I was to hear Tina’s report on the emergency staff meeting.
