“Personally,” said Laura, “I couldn’t care less how much money the betting public is diddled out of. The sooner people realise just what a mug’s game betting is, the better, I should say—no play upon words intended. I’ll tell you what I think. I think John Mapsted died because he turned scared and began to talk of giving the game away—and Turnbull the same.”
“Why should Mapsted do such a thing if he were sitting pretty with the rest of the bunch,” demanded Gavin. “It was different for a schoolmaster like Turnbull, who’d got his reputation to lose.”
“I suppose he got wind up when that chap from the airfield came and had that row with him,” said Laura. “Oh, and I expect that the policeman’s warning got him rattled, too. John may not have been mixed up in a smuggling racket, but he wouldn’t have wanted the police taking too much interest in him. If you ask me, John Mapsted was all right on a horse, but he couldn’t stand up to tough people. You could tell that his mother ruled him, and he couldn’t even refuse Merial Trowse when she Leap-Yeared him in 1952, either.”
“When she did what?”
“Well, it stands to reason that’s what must have happened,” declared Laura stoutly. “If it wasn’t like that, why did she repudiate the engagement after John was dead? She was afraid old Mrs. Mapsted, who’s quite malicious in a humorous sort of way, would blow the gaff and make her a laughing stock. That’s obvious.”
As these were statements which could scarcely be proved or disproved, her hearer did not challenge them. Instead, like a wise man, he changed the subject.
“Another thing: to my mind the most astonishing feature of the business is the way those schoolmasters tested the mallet, found traces of blood and human hair, and did not at once inform the police.”
“I know. Mr. Simkin, I gather from the Dame, is so much engrossed in his own subject that nothing else is quite real to him, because, from his point of view, it’s irrelevant. The other two knew that, once a scientific conclusion had been established, he would forget all about the matter unless (as in this case) something happened to remind him. Turnbull and Spencer did not go to the police for the best of reasons, I expect—they had guilty knowledge of what had happened to Jenkinson. I bet you anything you like that Spencer had something to do with putting Jenkinson’s body among those plants and flowers. The way I look at it is this: placing the body where they did meant that they had no idea that Jenkinson was dying. You know, he used to do a lot of his drinking in New Seahampton, and there’s a pub not far from the school. Q.E.D.”
“I hardly think so, my love.”
“Well, didn’t we tell you what Sir Mallory told us about it?—the light left on in the flat, and the wood-shavings that the caretaker had to clear up? I’ve thought it over, and I’ve come to the conclusion that they decided they’d have a joke on the headmaster. Rather a poor show, I call it.”
“Tell me more,” said Gavin, unconvinced, but interested, as always, in the workings of Laura’s mind. “How did they get hold of Jenkinson, and when?”
“I’m telling you. He must have collapsed in that public house near the school. The masters often drop in there for a drink in the dinner hour. Their idea would be that he was simply blind tight and had passed out. Spencer then thought of this idea of annoying the headmaster by having Jenkinson come to in the middle of the official Opening, so they smuggled him to the school in Spencer’s car, parked him in Turnbull’s tool shed, made that mess in the flat to keep the caretaker occupied, and left the light on to attract his attention. That was to get him out of the way while they planted Jenkinson among the flowers. I can see that all right. What I can’t understand is that whoever killed John Mapsted should have returned the mallet to the school. After all, he’d only to wind a bit of chain or something round it and drop it into Seahampton harbour. I suppose Turnbull got frightful wind up when he got the mallet back with all that blood on it. He must have guessed the truth. That means the murderer was a member of the syndicate, and I bet I can guess who. You know, I’m the nigger in their woodpile, in a manner of speaking. Until I happened to see that lot together at the Blue Finn there was nothing to connect the others with Turnbull.”
“Ah, but you did see them together. Although Turnbull may not have thought there was anything to fear, Jed and Grinsted felt there might be, and tipped him off.”
“So that’s the bit of knowledge I didn’t realise I had, and that’s why the gipsy tried to kidnap me, is it?”
“What is more, an earlier attempt by the gipsy failed.”
“Oh, when he wanted me to go horse-riding and boating? Well, well, well! What do you know?”
“That it’s time we went to bed,” said Gavin. “But before we go, tell me what you were going to say just as we heard the telephone ring.”
“Can’t remember…oh, yes. The chestnut and the blue roan.”
“Enlarge. Expound. You are obscure.”
“No, I’m not. Perhaps you don’t know, but John Mapsted’s Tennessee and Grinsted’s Iceland Blue were the same horse. When it was the right colour, it ran as Iceland Blue, and when the gipsy turned it into a chestnut, it ran as Tennessee. But that wasn’t it really. No, sorry, I can’t work it out. Just as the telephone went I had the glimmering of an idea, but it’s gone. Wonder what Mrs. Croc. has found out? I think I’ll go down there tomorrow.”
“You’ll go when she sends for you. It isn’t healthy for you down there. I only hope she’ll be all right. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
“I don’t think she’s got a little knowledge. I think she’s got all the dope,” retorted Laura. “It’s a habit of hers, if you remember.”
CHAPTER 20
WITH THE LADIES INSIDE
And the deep knowledge of dark truths…
THOMAS CAREW
Having sent away Laura, Dame Beatrice went to visit old Mrs. Mapsted. Before she set out, however, she telephoned the chief constable, at his house, and the superintendent, at Seahampton police station, and laid certain conclusions before them.
Arrived at Elkstonehunt, Dame Beatrice went straight to the pig-sties, whose occupants, she could tell from the noise, were indicating to their owner that it was feeding time. Old Mrs. Mapsted, a yoke across her venerable shoulders, appeared presently with a malodorous couple of buckets from which she tipped sustenance into troughs. A contented sound of sloshing took the place of the earlier mass hysteria of the pigs, and old Mrs. Mapsted looked up to see Dame Beatrice standing by.
“Come and help hump potatoes,” said the old lady.
“How did you get Jenkinson’s body to the Seahampton Grammar School?” demanded Dame Beatrice. Mrs. Mapsted looked bewildered.
“I’ve never been near the Grammar School since Jack left the old building. Understand there’s a new one now. Jack was invited to the official Opening,” she said.
“You don’t deny that you administered a large, and (as it turned out) a lethal dose of tetraethyl-thiuram-disulphide to Jenkinson, I suppose?”
“Jenkinson was a nasty old soak. Was it the Nonalc that finished him?”
“There is no actual proof, but I think so. I have read of one or two cases in which a big dose to an unaccustomed stomach turned out to be fatal.”
“Oh? Well, good riddance to bad rubbish. Cissie Gauberon is always nicking my books. Still, one can’t say it didn’t cure him of his boozing.”
“I should very much like to know how his body got to the Grammar School, but, since you cannot help me, I now take my leave of you. In the absence of fact, I must rely upon psychology.”
She returned to the Stone House and rang up Mr. Bond.
“Discontented, antagonistic, reactionary, and anti-social? Oh, you mean Spencer,” he replied, in answer to her question. “Speak to him? Certainly, Dame Beatrice, if you wish.”
Spencer, for once in his misguided young life, contrite, humble, and, Dame Beatrice gathered, thoroughly alarmed, confessed to his share in the disposal of Jenkinson’s body. He affirmed—and she be
lieved him for reasons other than those he gave her—that he had had no hand in causing Jenkinson’s death, and had not even realised that the man was in a dying condition when they installed him among the plants.
In other words, Laura’s recapitulation of Spencer’s and Turnbull’s activities—conclusions at which Dame Beatrice had arrived independently and more certainly, since, earlier in the case, she had identified the public house which Jenkinson frequented and had noticed how near the new school it was situated—proved to be correct.
Of the death of Turnbull the wretched Spencer denied all guilty knowledge. He admitted that it had “put the wind up” him, as “all the gang seemed to be getting it in the neck.”
Dame Beatrice did not press for further details of this rash admission that he himself was mixed up in the crooked running of the racehorses. She rang off. She knew who had murdered Turnbull, and had already given this information to the police. The obvious suspects had been Grinsted, Zozo, and Jed Nottingham. Of these, Nottingham had been the one to fall out with him at the Blue Finn and to tell the others that “he was a bastard”; Nottingham had been around when Turnbull took flight from the house on the Point to the bungalow by the lasher. It appeared, therefore, that Nottingham was the person who could have known where Turnbull was, and followed him and killed him. The motive was fairly obvious. Turnbull, who had shouted his intention, in Laura’s hearing, of “getting out,” might smash the syndicate by “blowing the gaff.” Nottingham, reckless and unscrupulous, had kept his word and taken Turnbull’s number—a euphemism for his life.
So much for the sordid, inescapable facts, for Nottingham, once the game was up and he was under arrest, did not contest them. There remained the more interesting problems surrounding the deaths of Mapsted and Jenkinson. Dame Beatrice picked up the receiver again and told Laura she might return to the Stone House whenever it suited her, but that she was not to cut short her stay in London if she was enjoying herself.
Gavin was called away to Hereford on a case, as it happened, and so Laura felt herself at liberty to return to the Stone House at once.
“It was really providential that he had to leave London,” she confided to Dame Beatrice when she got back. “My curiosity would have killed me if I hadn’t been able to hear your news at once. Has anyone been arrested?”
“Jed Nottingham for the murder of Mr. Turnbull, and, by this time, Miss Gauberon and Miss Trowse for the murder of John Mapsted.”
“I thought of Jed. It was pretty obviously his work. But—Cissie and Merial? It’s incredible! How did you ferret it out?”
“I did not—to employ an idiom which, applied to the science of deduction, I deplore—ferret anything out. I merely argued (logically, I hope) from the first fact which seemed to have any significance in a very puzzling case.”
“Yes?”
“The fact that, although, upon Jenkinson’s evidence and not contradicted by hers, Miss Gauberon was ‘up and about’ when Percheron began his squealing and so could have reached the horse more quickly than Jenkinson, she did not go to the horse at all. That puzzled me very much as soon as I thought of it.
“Then came the conflict of evidence about John Mapsted’s movements on the night of his death. On my advice, the police tried to trace the telephone call which John Mapsted is supposed to have made to Miss Gauberon from Seahampton. I need hardly tell you, at this stage, that such a call, which was supposed to be made late at night and so could be easily traced, was never made.”
“But—if I may interrupt, ma’am,” said Laura, “what of the blood-stained mallet that went back to Seahampton Grammar School? Cissie Gauberon would never have returned it. In any case, how did she get it? Was she a member of the syndicate?”
“No. Mr. Spencer has confessed to the mallet. It was a private, not very humorous, practical joke. It was so obviously a red-herring of some sort that I soon ceased to take it seriously. No murderer would have been so insane as to attempt to return it to Turnbull when the obvious thing was to weight it and drop it in Seahampton Channel.”
“That’s what Gavin and I thought. But the science master found it was human blood.”
“Boys are accident-prone,” said Dame Beatrice. “It’s not difficult to come upon human blood in a boys’ school.”
“Well! I say, I don’t like Spencer much! Go on about Cissie Gauberon.”
“I prefer to take the case of Miss Trowse. First, you yourself supplied the rather interesting information that when you were talking about a killer-horse, she jumped to the conclusion that you were talking about a killer-man, and was obviously relieved when she found out her mistake. That looked to me very much like guilty knowledge.
“She also gave you to understand that Farmer Grinsted’s stallion, Iceland Blue, was a vicious horse. That was a lie, as you very soon found out, and at first I could not see why she had told it. Then it dawned on me that it was to distract your attention there and then from her own establishment and send you off on a wild-goose chase to Grinsted’s farm. From this, I began to wonder whether John Mapsted could possibly have been killed at Hurst St. Johns, and not the Elkstonehunt stables.”
“Merial hasn’t a vicious horse, though. Hers are the mildest old crocks.”
“Nevertheless, the police are making a thorough investigation of her stables. It is no more than a theory of mine at present, but I believe that John Mapsted was bamboozled by Miss Gauberon into going over there that night, inveigled into an empty stable, and murdered there.”
“Coshed—but not necessarily with a mallet?”
“Yes.”
“That would be Merial. She’s tall enough, and as tough as they come. But why should she? And why should Cissie Gauberon aid and abet? And how did they get John Mapsted over there?”
“I can answer your first two questions with a fair degree of certainty, and the answer to the third can be surmised. Old Mrs. Mapsted has gone to bed. Her bedtime is an established one. People know when she is certain to be out of the way. The telephone rings—a prearrangement between Gauberon and Trowse. Gauberon goes to John Mapsted. ‘Poor Merial is in terrible trouble! For goodness’ sake drive me over there at once! No, I can’t tell you! You’re a man! But do for heaven’s sake, be quick!’ Something like that, don’t you think?”
“Oh, yes. That would fetch him. Curiosity alone would do the trick. And he was a good-hearted chap was old John.”
“That,” said Dame Beatrice, with unwonted sharpness, “is exactly what he was not! He was very heartless indeed. I will remind you of two remarks which you reported to me directly after they were made. Old Mrs. Mapsted: ‘It was all I could do to keep that idiot Jack from marrying her.’ That is, Cissie Gauberon. And yet Mr. Paddy Donegal told you that John Mapsted was going to marry Merial Trowse.”
“Good heavens!” said Laura. “He was playing with both of them, and didn’t really intend to marry either! And Merial Trowse is forty-two, and on the rocks financially. Men can be terribly cruel. Must you have these wretched women arrested?”
“A dutiful question, upon my word, for a police officer’s wife to ask! But, you see, dear child, there is Jenkinson to consider. For a short time, I put his death at old Mrs. Mapsted’s door, but once it became clear that Jenkinson, of all people, would refuse to swallow the story that the horse had killed Mapsted at midnight, and yet had not fussed about it ’til seven, it also became clear that Jenkinson must be eliminated. He probably expressed himself so plainly to Miss Gauberon that he alarmed her terribly. I don’t suppose that she or Trowse had realised that the doctor would automatically assess the time of death, and so would arouse suspicions that Percheron might not be to blame.”
“But they couldn’t have known that the tetra-stuff would do the trick for Jenkinson, old swill-tub though he was!”
“I have no doubt that they had other means at their disposal if that one failed, but the beauty of the tetraethyl-thiuram-disulphide was that, if it did work, no coroner’s court could possibly bring in the death as
anything but accidental.”
“Well, what do you know?” asked Laura—not that she needed an answer.
About the Author
Gladys Mitchell was born in the village of Cowley, Oxford, in April 1901. She was educated at the Rothschild School in Brentford, the Green School in Isleworth, and at Goldsmiths and University Colleges in London. For many years Miss Mitchell taught history and English, swimming, and games. She retired from this work in 1950 but became so bored without the constant stimulus and irritation of teaching that she accepted a post at the Matthew Arnold School in Staines, where she taught English and history, wrote the annual school play, and coached hurdling. She was a member of the Detection Club, the PEN, the Middlesex Education Society, and the British Olympic Association. Her father’s family are Scots, and a Scottish influence has appeared in some of her books.
Twelve Horses and the Hangman's Noose (Mrs. Bradley) Page 21
