by Anne Morice
“He needs a good woman to confide in.”
“Oh, undoubtedly.”
We ate our dinner in silence for a while and then I said:
“Since we’re going to Roakes this weekend, I might leave a bit early and take in Gillsford on the way. The trouble is that I’ll need the car. Would you mind awfully coming down by train?”
“Not if it’s that important to you. What is it this time? All part of the search for the good woman?”
“A good one and a bad one,” I answered in suitably cryptic tones.
(2)
Tina had told me that the Blands always departed to their villa in France as soon as the school broke up for the summer, but since this had occurred ten days early, I hoped to find them still in residence at headquarters.
On the drive down from London I invented and rejected half a dozen explanations to account for my calling on them and by the time I turned into the Waterside drive had still not been able to hit on one which entirely satisfied me; or rather, which I could convince myself would have much chance of hoodwinking Connie Bland.
The only solution was to keep my fingers crossed that the moment would produce the inspiration and, in the meantime, I had another call to make first, over at The Lodge.
She looked older and more frail than ever, huddled in her armchair by the fireplace. An electric fire was burning in the grate and she had a rug over her knees, although the temperature in her little room already verged on the sweltering.
On top of the rug was a book, which she closed when I had knocked and been bidden to enter, and I saw that it was an old favourite by E. Nesbit. I could not swear that, for lack of a human audience, she had been reading aloud to the two dachshunds, but that was the impression I received, for they had both been sitting up on their haunches, looking very alert, but became supine as soon as I walked in, eyeing me inimically as though in disgust at the interruption of a much prized treat. Patsy’s welcome fell short of the rapturous too:
“What? Back again?” she enquired in a voice which, by her standards, was noticeably sharp.
I hadn’t bothered to invent any subtle excuses for this visit and simply said I had heard she was not well and, being now on my way to Oxford, had taken the opportunity to stop and see how she was getting on.
“Not as well as I had hoped,” she replied, still rather tetchy.
“You need a holiday.”
“Oh, I know, that’s what they all say. We’ll see. I may go to my sister in Folkestone for a week or two later on. The trouble with her is, though, that she doesn’t like dogs and I couldn’t leave these two babies behind, could I now? It would be different if Pauline were going to be here. She’d look after them, I know. She loves taking them for walkies; but she’ll be abroad with her parents.”
“But there must be someone you could leave them with? I’m sure those jolly Spaniards would look after them like their own children.”
“Everyone seems very anxious to get me away from here all of a sudden. Even you, Tessie.”
“You can’t blame us. You’ve had a rotten, worrying time and you need a change of scene.”
“No, I don’t. I have all the scene I need here, in my own cosy room, so stop beating about the bush and tell me what you’ve come for.”
“Well, I’ve just done that, Patsy.”
“Oh, you think I’m a silly old fool, don’t you? You always have done, all you girls, and you may be right; but even I know that you don’t have to go within miles of Gillsford to get from London to Oxford. So come on now! Out with it!”
“You’re only half right,” I told her. “I really did want to find out if you were feeling better and I’d probably have come anyway; but I admit there was something special I wanted to ask you.”
“That’s better! Fire ahead, then!”
“You remember telling me about your petty pilferer? The one who began by rifling the chocolate box and then moved on to bigger hauls?”
“I do indeed.”
“You said you knew who was responsible and I thought you were referring to Hattie, but you weren’t, were you?”
“Hattie? Good gracious, no. Whatever can I have said to give you that idea?”
“Well, for instance, that it wasn’t worth stirring up a fuss because this girl would be leaving at the end of the term, which was certainly true of Hattie; and I already knew that she had this terrible addiction for sweets and suchlike.”
“Oh, my dear child, that has nothing to do with it. Overeating is eating for eating’s sake and kleptomania is stealing for stealing’s sake. Didn’t you know that?”
“I do now.”
“If I’d left the box open on the table and invited Hattie to help herself, I’ve no doubt she’d have scoffed the lot, but taking them behind my back, without asking, oh dear me, no! I didn’t always see eye to eye with poor Hattie, but to give her her due, she was as honest as the day. Besides, she had no need to take things which didn’t belong to her. She could have bought up the lot of us with all the pocket money her father kept lavishing on her. Whereas . . .”
“Whereas Belinda Jameson was another kettle of fish? Belinda, who was also leaving at the end of the term, only in such unorthodox circumstances that I failed to make the connection.”
“Yes, poor Lindy was quite a separate problem. She couldn’t keep her hands off other people’s property and she had a most dreadful obsession about money. She always wanted to be top dog, you see, poor child; to excel in everything and to be envied and admired by the others. Even her underclothes had to be smarter than theirs, although goodness knows what sacrifices her mother must have made to send her back with all that expensive, lacy stuff. It was so unnecessary too, because she would have excelled without any of that show. She was as clever as paint and a wonderful little actress. But there was just one thing she lacked and she ended by getting it out of all proportion.”
“But you still didn’t think of reporting her? It might have been better for her in the end, if you had, surely?”
“I couldn’t say about that. Obviously, this weakness or whatever you like to call it had its origins in her father’s crash, when she and her mother were reduced to dreadful poverty almost overnight. It happened at the very worst time, when Lindy was about thirteen. It’s not surprising that it left some terrible scars. I tried to help her, build up her confidence and so on: I was always preaching that looks and brains and good health are what really count, but I can’t claim to have made much impression.”
“A psychiatrist might have had more success, don’t you think?”
“Well, as to that, Tessie, I really couldn’t say. I don’t altogether hold with them, as you know. Sometimes I think they can do more harm than good and I’ve always believed that Lindy would grow out of this, once she was over the adolescent stage and no longer surrounded by these very rich girls, as most of them are. It was an artificial environment for her, you know. Being comparatively poor in the real world is very different from being a poor girl at Waterside.”
“You saw an awful lot of what went on, didn’t you, Patsy? How arrogant we were to . . .”
“Dismiss me as a silly old fuddy duddy, who couldn’t see an inch in front of her nose? Well no, not really; I am a silly old fuddy duddy in lots of ways, and you girls are none the worse for it. Most of you have turned out fairly well, even though I did spoil you so dreadfully. And now, my child, are you going to stop for a cup of tea, or is it time to be moving on to your appointment in Oxford?”
“Yes, I ought to go, but I’ll come and see you again.”
“Yes, do, dear, and if you should happen to look in at headquarters before you leave, I wonder if you’d be kind enough to take this blouse for Mrs. Bland. I’ve been shortening the cuffs and I know she wants to take it to France with her, so she’d better try it on and make sure it’s right.”
Watching her as she folded the blouse and wrapped it in tissue paper, I wondered whether it was sheer fluke which had provided me with this erra
nd, or whether shock and illness had so sharpened up Patsy’s intuition that she had guessed that I needed some such excuse. On the other hand, the suspicion was dawning that she had always possessed such powers and that I had been the blinkered one, not to have recognised it. It was mortifying to discover how diametrically opposed everyone at Waterside was turning out to be to my childishly patronising view of them.
The interview with Connie provided few surprises, however, possibly because I was at last beginning to get her measure. She refused to answer any of my questions, saying that she had never heard such impudence in her life and I needn’t imagine that just because I had always been rather a favourite it gave me the right to cross-examine her on matters which were no concern of mine. So I braced myself, drew a deep breath and gave her the answers myself. She heard me out, her snapping brown eyes fixed on me inscrutably, but she did not deny a single word and at the end spoke quite kindly, telling me to run along now, as she had important things to see to; also counselling me to work hard and not forget to eat occasionally.
So I drove into Gillsford and put my final question to Tina.
(3)
“It is another picture question,” I told her. “And here is your starter for ten. Please cast your mind back to the art exhibition. I know you went on the opening day because I saw your name in the Visitors’ Book, but can you remember exactly what time?”
“How can you expect me to be exact about a thing like that?” Tina asked with a horrible scowl.
“Be approximate then.”
“Late afternoon . . . five-ish, five-thirty.”
“After school tea, at any rate?”
“Yes.”
“Which I remember as a rather festive occasion on Saturdays. Choccy bicks and so on; and, if anyone had had a birthday during the week, that was the day when the cake from home was ceremoniously cut and handed round. Is that custom still observed?”
“Yes.”
“Good!”
“What’s good about a lot of silly girls gorging themselves?”
“I’ll tell you later. First, another question, and you can stop grimacing because we’re nearly through now. Think carefully, please, Miss Blundell. When you visited the exhibition at five-ish or five-thirty, who was on reception duty?”
“No one. It wasn’t necessary. All you official visitors had done your bit and the next lot weren’t due till Sunday.”
“Although we do know that Hattie went back later, either to collect something or because she couldn’t bring herself to stay away. However, that’s beside the point; so now cast your mind back for the last time. You are standing in the main gallery, so called, and facing you and dominating the whole scene is the portrait of Hattie’s father. Remember?”
“Yes, perfectly.”
“Right. And immediately to the left of it are a whole lot more of Hattie’s pictures, including some rather dreary abstracts, as well as pen and ink drawings in the same style as the celebrated birds and fishes and my ‘Judgement Day’ cartoon?”
“Yes.”
“Among the latter, was there one of a masked girl in chains and an emaciated young man lying at her feet, apparently dead?”
“No.”
“Quite sure? You’ve never seen it?”
“I’d have remembered if I had.”
“And I believe you.”
“However, since my evidence appears to be entirely negative, perhaps you’d explain why you’re looking like the cat who swallowed the canary?”
“Well, you see, Tina, it was there earlier in the day and, more important still, it was there when the first visitors went round.”
“How do you know it was?”
“Connie told me so herself. Or rather, I suggested that it might have been and she did not deny it, which amounts to the same thing. Apart from yourself, I cannot imagine a more reliable and observant witness.”
“Oh, flattery now! And would you mind telling me what this new hare is that you’re chasing?”
“No, when the time comes, I shan’t mind at all. In fact, I shall positively enjoy it. And you were right, of course; you always are. You said all along that if one of Hattie’s sketches revealed such dangerous knowledge that she was killed for it, then the murderer would have lost no time in destroying the sketch. How true that was! Actually, the picture may have been destroyed before the victim was dead, but that only proves you righter than ever.”
“How you enjoy playing your little suspense games, don’t you, Tessa? But, if you do mean to explain, I wish you’d get a move on.”
“All in good time. I need a larger audience and, in the meantime, you and I have work to do.”
“Work, she says! And me thinking the term has just ended and I could slacken off a bit!”
“This won’t be very arduous. Billy Bland and I have a plan afoot to take you out of yourself.”
“Very kind of you, but I prefer to stay inside myself.”
“I know; that’s your big trouble, but it’s going to end. The wise old doctor considers there is too much work and not enough play in your life and he is relying on me to get the balance right. I have no intention of letting him down, so we shall now take the first step by tarting ourselves up to go out to dinner.”
“Out to dinner where?”
“At Roakes Common. You haven’t been there since you were fourteen years old, when Toby came over to fetch us out for lunch one Sunday. We spent the whole afternoon playing croquet and we never stopped quarrelling for a single minute, so it’s high time to expunge that memory and show them all what sweet and civilised adults we’ve grown into.”
“I must say I didn’t realise what I was letting myself in for when I took you under my roof all those years later,” Tina said.
“You don’t know the half of it yet,” I remarked, thinking of another little shock I had up my sleeve for her.
TWENTY-ONE
(1)
“It was Mrs. Jameson who started the ball rolling,” I observed. “Gratifying how often it rebounds in one’s favour when one sets out to do a good turn.”
This was towards the end of dinner which, on that mid-summer evening, had been served on the flagged terrace at the back of Toby’s house, by the light of candles and the setting sun.
The party was bowling along tolerably well, but there had been one major set-back, in the continuing absence of one of the guests. Having arranged to spend the weekend at Roakes, which was a frequent custom of ours throughout the year, I had asked if I might invite Tina for dinner on Saturday. This proving acceptable to our host, I had then suggested, as though as an afterthought, that we might as well try and cheer up poor lonely old Dexter by including him in the party. He too had accepted, although with certain reservations. He would be on duty until seven, so was almost bound to be late and on no account should we wait dinner for him.
This necessarily had an addling effect on a small plot I had been hatching, whereby Tina would make the journey to Roakes in his car, rather than mine. I still retained hopes of their doing the return trip together, but even these now looked in danger of being dashed on the rocks which Fate strews in our path, Robin having greeted us with the news that Dexter had telephoned only ten minutes earlier to say that he had been called out on an urgent case and was unable to estimate how long it might take him. He was therefore obliged to cancel the engagement altogether.
“What did you say?” I asked quickly.
“Oh, that he should try to make the effort to get over, however late, and we’d keep something hot for him. Knowing how keen you are to launch him into the social whirlpool, I told him that any time up to ten o’clock would be all right with us. I trust Tina won’t mind, but I rather shoved the onus on to her.”
“To me?” Tina demanded, sounding as though his trust had been misplaced.
“I’m afraid so. I told him we were depending on him for transport for one of the other guests. All nonsense, I need hardly say. Toby or I can easily run you back to Gillsford, but I co
uldn’t think of anything which would induce Dexter to shuffle in on his own, halfway through dinner, except the belief that he would be letting someone else down by staying away.”
It seemed to me that I detected a note of over-earnestness in Robin’s voice as he related all this, and also that he gave me the flicker of a wink, but unfortunately even such masterly tactics as he had deployed appeared to have failed and by half past nine our party was still incomplete. It was then that I threw out my remark about Mrs. Jameson.
“Where did she roll it to?” Toby enquired, getting up to refill our glasses.
“All over the place. She said that however high her Lindy jumped she would still land on her feet. Mind you, she had already come out with a number of illuminating remarks, but that one really set everything in place and as soon as I heard it I began to picture Belinda as a cat.”
Robin and Toby looked quite as bemused as I had expected, but Tina said:
“The cat on the ladder?”
“Which led to something more. What do you associate with cats, apart from leaping about and landing on their feet?”
“Speaking for myself,” Tina replied, “canaries, cream, mice and, of course, burglars.”
“Right, as usual! I should explain here that when Patsy was telling me about the petty pilferer who operated so successfully at The Lodge, she mentioned that there had also been a genuine, professional break-in at headquarters and that cash and jewellery had been stolen from Connie’s bedroom. She claimed there was no connection, but she was wrong. Belinda knew the Blands were spending the night in London and she really is as agile as a cat. She could easily have nipped up the front stairs and done the job in a couple of shakes, taking care, of course, to chuck a brick through the scullery window before she left. Patsy told me she was a girl who would risk anything for money and I believed it. In fact, I wouldn’t mind betting it was she who pinched five or six pounds out of my coat pocket one sunny morning. She was clever about covering her tracks too. She let Patsy believe that her mother paid for all the expensive finery she brought back to school and she told her mother it was given to her by the other girls, because she was so popular.”
