“Probably took it in black coffee, the pathologist thinks,” said the Superintendent.
“And then went and chucked himself in the river? I thought the stuff laid you out with pains and vomiting. Would he have been in any state to leave his digs and go for a walk?”
“Wonderful what you can do when you’ve made up your mind to it. But, if you’re right, you see what you’re saying, don’t you?”
“Well, if I’m saying it, you’ve already thought of it. But who would want to poison a schoolmaster?”
“Some of the kids, perhaps!”
“Of course,” the Superintendent went on thoughtfully, “there’s quite a chance that he wasn’t alone when he took the stuff. He may even have been in somebody else’s house and passed out there. If these people (or the woman, if he was out on the tiles) had panicked and decided to get rid of the body, how would that do for an answer?”
“A lot of work for us to get busy on, anyway, but we’ll see what the inquest brings out.”
The medical evidence given at the inquest was clear. Judging by the fact that there was no water in the lungs, coupled by the amount of arsenic recovered from the body, Palgrave must have been dead when he was put into the water. The verdict was murder by person or persons unknown, and the inquest was adjourned while the police got to work on the case.
They began by rounding up his landlady, who had returned from Basingstoke and suddenly found herself the centre of attraction among her friends and neighbours. Her own alibi for the earliest and also the latest times at which the arsenic could have been administered was unassailable and she had nothing to say (in spite of her excited loquacity) which helped the enquiry in any way whatever.
“Such a nice, quiet, gentlemanly young man. Never any trouble. Always said when he would be out and whether he needed the key. I never give my tenants a key without they are going to be out too late for me or the maid to be up and about to let them in. Yes, he was my only paying guest at the time. I never like calling them lodgers. It’s demeaning to them and to me. Yes, you can question the maid if you wish, but, being as she is my niece, although willing to be referred to as the maid to oblige me and keep up the tone, if you know what I mean, I took her with me down my mother’s, so she knows no more than I do what poor Mr. Palgrave done or where he went, or who he had into his rooms, for that matter.”
“Hadn’t Mr. Palgrave the right to be looked after, then, while you were in Basingstoke?” asked the patient C.I.D. man who had been assigned to the case.
“Gentlemen being gentlemen, however gentlemanly,” said the landlady impressively, “I thought it best not to leave a girl what is still not turned twenty in the house alone with a gentleman, if only for the sake of her own good name, the lady next door being of a prying and enquiring nature and all too apt to think the worst, whether it happens or not.”
“So the chances are that Mr. Palgrave was alone in the house that weekend?”
“Chance is a fine thing,” said the landlady somewhat abstrusely. “He had friends.”
“Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. Did they visit him here?”
“There used to be a young lady come a lot at one time. They were an engaged couple. I know that, because I saw the ring on her hand one day when she come here, but that was—oh, a matter of two years ago or more. A young man come sometimes and they played cards or else played golf together, but I don’t know of nobody else. If he had other friends—and I reckon he did—he went to them; they never come to him. And that reminds me. When will you have finished with his rooms? I’m losing money all the time you’re keeping them sealed up.”
“I’ll just take a look around and take away his papers, and then the rooms are all yours, madam. Is the furniture his?”
“That it’s not! I let my apartments fully furnished and everything except the little bureau and his clackety old typewriter is mine.”
There was one piece of evidence from the lady who was of “a prying and enquiring nature and apt to think the worst, whether it happened or not,” for her prying nature had led her to go to her sitting-room window to witness the departure of neighbour and niece on the Friday morning. She had returned to it to see Palgrave, on his return from school, let himself in and (she virtuously stated) she had then gone along to see whether there was anything she could do for him.
“And was there?”
“He thanked me and said not, as he was going out to some friends for the weekend. He was dressed very careful, so I thought there was a lady in the case, but, of course, poor gentleman, he never come back at all and I never seen him again.”
The obvious line of enquiry was to find out where Palgrave had gone on that Friday evening, but his correspondence, as much of it as he seemed to have kept, dealt only with school or with business matters connected with his literary agents, or else it consisted of receipted bills. There was no private correspondence of any kind.
There were his professional certificates and a couple of testimonials from head teachers under whom he had served before he obtained an extra-mural academic degree and his post as senior English master at his last school and there was the signed contract from his publishers. There was also a typed carbon copy of a novel, but he appeared to have kept neither a diary nor an address book.
The detective removed such papers as there were. Some of these supplied the names and addresses of his publishers and his literary agents, one of whose letters regretted “your decision, which we hope very much that you will reconsider.”
“Wonder what that was?” said the Inspector. “He hadn’t read the letter. I had to slit it open.”
There seemed nothing useful about the papers so far as an explanation of the death was concerned. There was a cheque book with all the counterfoils carefully filled in, and there was a paying-in book hardly used at all, so both of these gave the name of his bank and the suburb in which the branch was housed, but were of no other assistance.
On inspection of the documents and of a recent bank statement which the police also found among his papers, Palgrave appeared to have had no money troubles and his bank manager endorsed this conclusion. Palgrave’s salary was paid in automatically and he merely received a monthly pay-slip recording the amount sent to the bank and listing the deductions for tax and insurance. None of it was helpful in tracing his murderer.
The bank manager, in answer to a question, said that he had no idea as to whether Palgrave had ever made a Will. He said he doubted it. Men of Palgrave’s age and financial circumstances seldom bothered unless they were married, and not always then.
“Had he any life assurance or any other insurance policies which could mature at his death? We’ve found nothing of the kind among his papers, but people do keep such things at the bank.”
“I suppose you are looking for a motive,” said the bank manager. “I know of none. So far as I can see, money wouldn’t enter into it. Why don’t you get in touch with his Union? He’s bound to have belonged to something of the sort. They may be able to help you.”
Palgrave’s death was reported in two or three local papers, first as suicide and then, after the inquest, more excitedly and at greater length, as murder. The big dailies took up the story, one of the more sensational sheets heading it The Golden Treasury Murder, because of Palgrave’s surname. The report came to the notice of Gerda, who showed it to Miranda at the art school and said: “Didn’t you once say you knew a man named Palgrave? Didn’t you tell me he stayed with you and Camilla St. John when you went on holiday?—and didn’t you send that terrifying Dame Beatrice to see us? Well, somebody fed him arsenic and dropped him in the Thames. It tells you all about it here. It seems a funny kind of business to me and I think there must be a tie-up somewhere with Camilla’s death, which we heard about from Dame Beatrice’s visit. There’s a kind of Greek tragedy feeling about it—mudflats, and tides carrying bodies about, and no obvious or particular reason for either death.”
“Oh, a number of people might have had reaso
n to wish Camilla dead,” said Miranda. “I don’t know about Colin.”
To Detective-Inspector Pinhurst of the C.I.D., a very bright and up-coming young man, there was one aspect of the case which posed a most interesting problem. Not only had he gone through all Palgrave’s papers not once but several times; he had also read the carbon copy of Palgrave’s novel, once with a quick skim through, the second time more slowly, thus following the pattern with which he was accustomed to take his drinks when he drank at all.
Going by that instinct (for want of a more accurate word) which was to stand him in excellent stead for the furtherance of a distinguished career, he found himself certain that the key to the mystery of Palgrave’s death lay somewhere or other in the contents of the novel.
For one thing, he could not make out why the author had withdrawn the book from publication. Pinhurst was well-read, and the story seemed to him well constructed and well written and to contain no legally objectionable matter whatsoever. He submitted the book to a solicitor well versed in libel cases, and received complete confirmation of his views.
“Even if somebody in the know thought he was one of the characters,” said the lawyer, “there is nothing which would stand up in the courts and certainly nothing, so far as I can see, which would lead the author to decide to withdraw the book from publication, let alone cause somebody to want him out of the way.”
“All the same,” said Pinhurst, “I think I’ll get a psychologist on to the thing. He may be able to read between the lines and find something which I can’t.”
“She, not he,” said the solicitor. “Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley is your answer. She’s not only at the top of her profession, but she’s the mother of Sir Ferdinand Lestrange, Q.C., and a noted criminologist, attached to the Home Office, at that. Besides, I happen to know that she took an interest in that case of drowning at a place called Saltacres. The girl was found dead on the mudflats there and the mystery of her death has never really been cleared up.”
“There’s still a doubt as to whether that was murder, accident or suicide, though, Mr. Billington,” said Pinhurst. “That’s how I understood it; whereas there’s no doubt about Palgrave. That was murder all right. But I’ll certainly contact Dame Beatrice. Further to what you said, her secretary is the Assistant Commissioner’s missus, so it’s all in the family, so to speak.”
“I can add one more item. Palgrave knew the Hoveton St. John girl. I stayed with my brother and another chap at the same place as where the girl got drowned. Dame Beatrice came to us about it and, of course, it was in all the local papers anyway.”
CHAPTER 16
FAINT, BUT PURSUING
“Oh whaur hae ye been, Lord Rendel, my son?
O whaur hae ye been, my sweet pretty one?”
Lord Rendel (Border ballad)
Before contacting Dame Beatrice, Pinhurst said:
“I reckon the first thing to do is to go through this lot again.” He pushed the gleanings from Palgrave’s bureau across the desk to his sergeant. “You take first knock. Damned if I can come up with anything from them. If there were large, unaccounted-for sums of money in his bank account, I might suspect he’d been blackmailing somebody and the worm had turned, but there aren’t. The book is about blackmail, of course, but so are lots of thrillers.”
“Schoolmasters don’t blackmail people, sir. If there was anything of that sort, the boot would be on the other foot, and, anyway, he wouldn’t have written about it.”
“Suppose he’d got the goods on a colleague?”
“It’s too melodramatic, sir.”
“Well, you make a suggestion.”
“A second bank account in another name?”
“But you don’t believe in my blackmail theory.”
“I believe in trying anything once, sir, but, no, I can’t swallow the blackmail idea, not with a schoolmaster. I’d as soon believe it of a parson.”
“I knew a parson—knew of him, I mean—who was had up for paederasty, so you can’t go by a man’s calling. The thing is, where do we go from here?”
“I’ll make a start on these business letters and bills for the second time of asking, as you suggested, sir. There just might be something.”
“Well, if you can find it you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din. And that wouldn’t surprise me,” said the Detective-Inspector dispiritedly. “This is my first case of murder—classical murder, I mean, not pub-brawl stabbings and beating up the Pakis and all that sort of thing—and I’m falling down on it. There doesn’t seem to be a lead anywhere.”
The young sergeant got to work on Palgrave’s papers and some time later made his report.
“Only one thing strikes me, sir, and I don’t suppose it’s important. There’s a bill here—a receipted bill—from an agency which does typing for authors.”
“Yes, I know. I didn’t miss it.”
“Of course not, sir.”
“So what?”
“The bill is for typing a top copy and two carbons of a book called Lost Parenthesis.”
“Granted. Don’t think much of the title. Wouldn’t tempt me to pick it up off a bookstall or even off the shelves in a public library, if I hadn’t felt bound to read the typescript as being one of the documents.”
“There is also a bill for two photo copies. The thing is—where are they?”
“Oh, they would have been sent off to different publishers, I expect, in hopes that one copy would strike oil. That’s the way these authors work, no doubt.”
“But Palgrave wouldn’t need to do that sort of thing, sir. He already had a publisher. This was his second book and we’ve got the original signed contract agreeing to publish his first novel called If Wishes Were Horses and calling for an option on another book from him. He wouldn’t have needed to go touting for a publisher. No doubt this option book is Lost Parenthesis.”
“I still think—oh, no, I don’t, though! You’re quite right. He had no need to shop around.”
“No, sir, but that’s another matter which struck me. There is no letter from the publishers about Lost Parenthesis at all. There is the first letter from the literary agents, Peterhead and Peterhead, to say that they’ve received the typescript and are looking forward to reading it before they pass it on to the publishers, Kent and Weald, but it doesn’t look as though Kent and Weald ever received the typescript. I’m wondering whether that other letter from Peterheads, which Palgrave never read because he must have been dead when the landlady put it in his room, was in answer to one of his asking Peterheads not to send Kent and Weald his novel.”
“That sounds a bit strange. I think I’ll get on to Peterheads and find out what they’re up to. Probably got a lot of scripts to place and haven’t got around to reading Palgrave’s novel yet. Perhaps, when they do, they’ll see why he wanted it withdrawn—if he did!”
“Likely enough, sir, but then there’s another thing. He would have sent Peterheads the top copy, no doubt, but that still leaves the photo copies and one of the carbons (there is only one of the carbons among his papers) unaccounted for.”
“Oh, that’s easily explained, I think. He probably lent them around among people he thought would read them uncritically and tell him what a genius he was. These writer chaps are all pretty conceited, I expect, especially when they’ve only had one book published. I remember my nephew getting a letter printed in the Daily Courier. Talked about it for weeks. Oh, yes, ten to one he distributed the copies among his friends. I can’t see that it matters what he did with them, anyway.”
“No, sir. It just struck me as peculiar, that’s all. And there’s another thing, sir. Why the photo copies if he already had two carbons?”
“Surely that’s an easy one. If his own publisher turned the book down—always a possibility, I suppose—he would need new fresh-looking copies to send to other firms.”
“Then where are they, sir? That was only a carbon we found. You can’t mistake a carbon for photo copy. I’ve done enough
typing in this office, sir, to know. I can’t help feeling there could be something funny about the other copies, even if a friend has the missing carbon, sir.”
“Well, you’d better go in chase of his friends, then, but I think you’ll be wasting your time. Still, we’ve no other lead. Start with that young fellow from the school. He seems to have known Palgrave pretty well. He may know where he went that Friday evening.”
The headmaster was inclined to be peevish.
“I really must protest, Sergeant,” he said. “I cannot have my staff harassed in this manner.”
“We are investigating a case of murder, sir.”
“I am fully cognisant of that, but it had nothing to do with my school. I am, of course, horrified that Mr. Palgrave should have been set upon, robbed and murdered. All too much of that sort of thing goes on at the present time, and the police seem powerless to prevent it. However, what happened, however unfortunately, to Mr. Palgrave during a weekend, has nothing to do with his work here. The whole thing has led to considerable unrest in the staff commonroom and given rise to a most undesirable degree of speculation and excitement among my boys and girls. I really cannot countenance further disruption.”
“All I need is five minutes’ conversation with Mr. Winblow, sir, and it will be less noticeable if I have it here than if I go to his private address or ask him to come down to the station.”
“Oh, very well.” He rang through to his secretary. “Chase up Mr. Winblow, please, Mrs. Wrack, and ask him to spare me a moment. He should be in the history room with 4A. I suppose,” he added to the sergeant, “there is no objection to my being present at this interview? It will enable me to determine whether Winblow ought to have a solicitor to watch his interests. He is a young, inexperienced man and may need professional advice.”
“Remain by all means, sir. You may be able to help both Mr. Winblow and my enquiry.” They waited in silence until Winblow appeared.
“You sent for me, Headmaster?”
“Sit down, Winblow, and remember that you are not obliged to answer any of the sergeant’s questions unless you wish.”
The Mudflats of the Dead (Mrs. Bradley) Page 17
