“You think she was murdered?”
“I didn’t say that. I believe we should be given the chance to inquire: that investigation should not be stifled.”
“I see.”
“You know I steer clear of inquests: avoid them like I avoid fields with bulls in them. They’re not my scene. I grow impatient with them. Wrongly, perhaps, because they have a useful function. But that’s beside the point. It’s a question of confidence in our cause and I hope that that is what will come through in whatever I have to say at the inquest, and that it will help to sway the coroner as much as the cachet of my rank.”
“Good points, all of them,” agreed Green. “And there’s something else we might be able to count on. Hildidge said Gilchrist is an autocratic old sinner. That means—ten to one—that he’ll be strong for law and order. If you can hint that what you’re asking for is the chance to uphold old-fashioned L and O, you’ll get a sympathetic hearing, George.”
“Let’s hope so. Now the facts. As yet there is only one I can put forward as incontrovertible. And that is Miss Holland’s great knowledge of botany. I can ram home the fact that she would never take laburnum seeds by mistake.
“The other things which might help are first, her intention to go on holiday, with the chemist’s evidence of a stable, even happy, state of mind to back me up. Second, the letter to her mother talking about some piece of news so wonderful that properly to impart it she was intending to make an inconvenient and unnecessary journey to London.
“So I think I can argue that both accident and suicide would not be safe findings. And that, so far, is all I’ve got.”
“We’ll have to coach Fellows and Mrs Holland,” said Green. “Get them to emphasise how happy, successful and about-to-go-on-holiday a woman she was.”
“True. I’ll leave that to you, Bill. And also to see Mrs Gibson, the housekeeper, to see if she can back the other two up. Certainly we don’t want her to put a spoke in our wheel.”
“Right. Leave her to me.”
“Thanks. After dinner, then, you and Berger go to the School House and interview Mrs Gibson. Reed and I will try to see Sir Thomas Kenny at the same time.”
“For any particular reason, Chief?”
“He was one of the prime movers in getting us here, so he may have facts to back up his feelings. But, in any case, I don’t know who else to see at this stage, and we must try to get more ammunition for tomorrow.”
“Right. Dinner now?”
“Two phone calls first. Bill, would you ring the School House and see if Mrs Gibson is there? She should be, as it’s her home, and I can’t think that she’ll be out gadding about at a time like this. I’ll look up Kenny’s number and ask him to see me. After that, scoff.”
*
Luck was with them. Both interviews were on. Masters and Reed would drop Green and Berger at the school and then go on to see Sir Thomas. Whoever finished the interview first would ring through to the other to arrange the pick-up.
It was dark by the time Green and Berger were dropped at the main door of the school on Sinclair Hill. After the Rover left them, they needed to spend a few minutes to get their bearings.
The main door was of oak, solidly built and double-leaved, with small panes of glass so heavy that they had to be chamfered at the edges to go into the mouldings which held them. It stood, under an arched porch of stone, at the top of a wide flight of eight steps bordered by iron balustrades. The building line of the school was thus only a few feet back from the pavement of the hill. On either side of the steps was a carefully built brick wall, tapering off to a mere three feet high at the top end and a forbidding seven feet at the lower end. Behind this wall they could see—by the light of the lamp standards on the pavement—that the ground had been levelled and the area between it and the front of the building planted with scores of bushes, some evergreen but most, Berger commented, selected to flower at different times of the four seasons.
“Where do we get in?” asked Berger.
“Not here, at any rate. I’ll bet this is never opened except for parents and governors and such.”
“There are gates at both ends of the wall.”
They walked downhill. Here they came to a pair of large wrought-iron gates, tall, well-painted and carrying what Green rightly assumed to be the school crest picked out in colour.
“This is where the kids come in. That’s the end of a bike shed up there.” He looked along the side wall of the school building. “There’s four doors there.”
The light was not good enough to see details, but he had guessed correctly. The two middle doors of the four were the two leading directly into the cloakrooms. The more distant one was the staff door and gave directly onto the long, high corridor which ran the full length of the back of the school and off which, on the far side, opened the majority of the form rooms. The nearest of the four was different. This was a double door, through which could be carried any large item such as desks or pianos. And, though Green could not see it, it had a bell beneath which was a little brass plate bearing the word “Secretary”.
The big gates were locked.
“We’re not going to get in this way.”
They turned and climbed the hill to the other gate. This was a normal double gate to admit a car, such as any house might have. To assure them that they had at last found what they wanted, a name plate which said simply “School House”, was fastened to one of the pillars. They went through. The drive led past the end of the long front block of the school and there, tucked in round the corner, was the house. It looked—even in the dark—as though it had been built on as an afterthought to the secondary block which, like the one at the other end containing the four doors, linked the two large front and rear portions of the school.
“I’ve got it,” said Berger. “This place is built like an H with an extra cross-bit across the bottom. The house is in the top bit, and there’ll be a hole between the two bottom bits.”
“That hole you speak of,” said Green, “will as like as not be an enclosed quadrangle. Sort of hallowed ground with turf like velvet on which even the head groundsman will only be allowed to stand if he takes his boots off.”
“Places like this have some daft traditions, don’t they?”
“Daft? Maybe. But they get nice bits of grass because of them.”
They passed through another little gate, and up a short path to the front door of the house. Berger pulled the bell.
Against the light in the hall, the woman who answered the door was plumpish and grey. Green put her down as a matronly sixty.
“Mrs Gibson?”
She ushered them in politely enough, but she seemed nervous, suspicious even. Green guessed she had had her fill of callers—police, reporters, sympathisers, busybodies.
“I’m the one who rang you.”
“From Scotland Yard?”
“That’s right. My name is Green, and this is Sergeant Berger. We’d like to talk to you.”
“So you said. But I’ve been over it all once with that Lovegrove man.”
“I know. But we’ve taken over. You’d like us to get to the bottom of things, wouldn’t you?”
“I should just think I would. You come into my room, Mr Green.” She led them into a comfortable little sitting room. “Sit down. You can move my knitting off that chair. . . .”
“Cosy here,” said Berger, lifting the knitting on its needles and a long, rectangular tin which had once contained shortbread but which now, judging by the rattle of it, had been pressed into service as a sewing box.
“Miss Holland made sure I was comfortable. ‘Three armchairs you need, Mrs Gibson,’ was what she said. ‘No chesterfields or sofas unless you start courting again and want room for two.’ Always humorous, she was. Laughed at me, always knitting for my daughters’ kiddies. I used to have a knitting bag until it wore out and I started to use that tin. My nutting bag, she called it, and always laughed when she said it.”
“She was a c
heerful soul, was she?” asked Green, choosing the chair directly opposite Mrs Gibson. “Right up to the end?”
“As happy as Larry,” declared the housekeeper. “That’s why I think it’s about time you people arrived instead of those local men.”
“You haven’t much confidence in them?”
“The way they carried on?”
“What did they say, exactly?”
“First off, suicide. I told them they could think again, so they said accident. ‘How could it be an accident?’ I asked. Of course, we didn’t know then what she’d died of. But they told me this afternoon. Laburnum seeds.”
“And still said it was an accident?”
“Yes. But it couldn’t be. There isn’t a laburnum tree anywhere near this house. Or in the school grounds. Trees all round the playing field, I told them, but horse chestnuts and limes, mostly, with one oak and a few elms—all dead now and replanted with a few little saplings. I know what’s round here. My husband was head groundsman here at one time—before he became parks superintendent—and as far as I know there isn’t a laburnum anywhere near.”
“What did the local police say to that?”
“Silly chumps, they were; ‘She could have gone out and collected the seeds,’ they said. ‘Where from?’ I asked. ‘The headmistress of Bramthorpe going into somebody’s garden and picking up seeds? That would be the day!’ I said. ‘And when?’ I asked. ‘Any time,’ they said. ‘Oh, yes?’ I asked. ‘And when are laburnum seeds ripe?’”
“That’s a point,” said Green. “When do they ripen?”
“There you are, you see! You don’t know anything about them, either.” She explained as to a child. “The flowers come—they’re in yellow clusters, you know, called racemes—in May and June. Then you get the first pod with six or eight seeds in it. The seeds go dark brown when ripe and fall off.”
“Just a moment,” said Green. “Why are we talking about ripe seeds?”
“Because at this time of the year they couldn’t be anything else. Hard, dry, dark brown. And it was little dark bits the doctors found inside her.”
“I’ve not seen the forensic report yet, so I’ll take your word for it. What did the locals say to what you told them?”
“Nothing. They thought she could have eaten them instead of peas. But I wish I hadn’t said anything. I’d have been better to keep my own counsel, because then they went back to saying it was suicide if it couldn’t be accident.”
“What did you say to that?”
“‘Murder’, I said, and they laughed.”
“Why?”
“Because of what I’d told them about what happened yesterday.”
“What did happen?”
“Nothing. That’s just it. Miss Holland went into school as usual just before nine. As soon as she’d gone I did our bit of shopping. A bit of steak for her dinner—easy for her to cook for herself as I wasn’t going to be here to do it for her.”
“It was your day off?”
“Every Tuesday.”
“Who decided on steak? Instead of a chop or a nice bit of gammon, say?”
“I did. I always get her steak because it’s easy to do, and she was no great shakes as a cook.”
“Fair enough. What else did you buy?”
“Some mushrooms, bananas, and a packet of starch—oh, and some sweets for my grandchildren. Then I came back, put the things away, had a cup of coffee and set off to see one of my daughters.”
“Had Miss Holland told you what her programme for the day was? Did she say she was expecting anybody to call?”
“Nobody. She said so, at breakfast. She wouldn’t be in school on Tuesday afternoon, so she said she was going to wash her smalls and go to the chemist for a few things she wanted for her holiday.”
“She did her own washing?”
“Just her tights, pants and bras. I’d offered to do them often enough, but she reckoned any woman should do those for herself.”
“I see. Please go on.”
“After that she’d have some clerical work to do. There’s always a lot of it, and as she was going on holiday she wanted to be sure it was all done before she went.”
“She was a well-organised woman?”
“Like clockwork. At one o’clock she’d have her lunch. Only biscuits and cheese and fruit.”
“Nothing else?”
“As it was Tuesday, she might have had a glass of sherry beforehand. Never on a full schoolday, though. She said it would make her too sleepy in the afternoon. And she’d have had a cup of coffee, too.”
“After lunch she did her laundry and went to the chemist and then came back to work?”
“I think her smalls were probably dry by the time she got back. Anyhow, she ironed them. They’re all in the airing cupboard.”
“Would she have made herself a cup of tea?”
“Nothing surer. With lemon was how she liked it. Never missed.”
“Even on full schooldays?”
“She only had three afternoons in school. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and she never taught in the last period. But even if she was staying in the school study I took a tray through there at a quarter to four.”
“When did school end?” asked Berger.
“At half-past four.”
“As late as that?”
“For the big girls. This is a proper school. Afternoon school starts at a quarter past two. Three periods of three quarters of an hour each, and no breaks in the afternoon either. Never any changes in timings, or timetable, and all teachers there on the dot. Stop one class at one minute before the bell and start the next one at one minute after. That is what Miss Holland laid down. Of course, she’d got it arranged so that there weren’t many forms of girls moving about unnecessarily. It was the teachers that moved. Her timetables were worked out a lot better than D-day operations and, I daresay, worked a lot better, too.”
Green said he was pleased to hear it, but he began to wonder whether such strict discipline—however kindly imposed—had not upset somebody in these days of no-discipline education. He kept the thought to himself, however, and asked: “After doing her ironing and having a cup of tea, then what?”
“I think it would have been five o’clock by then.”
“Would that be important for some reason?”
“That’s when she always did her marking.”
Berger looked surprised. “When I was at school we were lucky if we got anything marked, and when we did, the teachers didn’t do it in their own time. They did it in ours, or in all those free periods they spent drinking tea in the staff room.”
“This is a proper school,” reiterated Mrs Gibson, thereby consigning Berger’s alma mater and all other comprehensives to—perhaps—just one rung above Borstal on the status ladder of educational establishments.
“My headmaster didn’t teach classes. At least, not much.” Berger said this defensively, as though not doing what he was paid to do was a point in favour of the gentleman mainly responsible for his education.
“We don’t have classes here. Forms. Miss Holland taught the Upper Fifth and Sixth forms.”
“So she would do her marking at five o’clock,” said Green pacifically.
“And preparing the next day’s lessons. Just for an hour. Then she’d go for her bath.”
“At six?”
“She’d listen to the news.”
“Listen? Not watch?”
“The television is in the sitting room. She had a radio in her house-study where she did her marking.”
“So it would have been half-past six . . .”
“If she was going out, she only listened to the headlines.”
“But she wasn’t going out, yesterday?”
“She told me she wasn’t.”
“And she wasn’t expecting anybody?”
“No. Not at the time I left, that is.”
“Right. So she’d go and have a bath and come down again . . . . When?”
“On the
stroke of seven, always.”
“Why?” asked Berger. “Why was she always so precise?”
“Because it was the logical thing. She always said seven o’clock was right if she was going out, because everything in Bramthorpe starts at half-past. It was right if she was staying in, because we always had dinner at half-past, and I had to know when it would be wanted. And if she had guests they were always invited for half-past seven.”
Mrs Gibson obviously thought this explanation good enough for Berger, and turned to face Green. “We had this house going like clockwork, me and Miss Holland.”
“So it seems. But, unfortunately, you weren’t here to cook her supper last night.”
“I’ll never forgive myself for being away. Never. But not because of the cooking. I told you, I brought her in a nice bit of steak to grill. Wouldn’t take her more than the shake of a lamb’s tail to do it, being that tender. And she had it.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it had gone from the fridge.”
“She washed up after her?”
“Oh, yes. Grill pan as well.”
“What else did she eat besides steak? Do you know?”
“Yes. A bit of deep custard. I made it on Monday.”
“With nutmeg on top?”
“Smothered in it, just how she liked it. . . . Here, you’re not saying . . .?”
“Not saying what, Mrs Gibson?”
“That my nutmeg wasn’t nutmeg.”
“Did the locals test it?”
“No, they didn’t.”
“Is there any of the custard left?”
“No. I ate it myself. The last bit tonight, in fact, and I’m still here.”
“So it was nutmeg,” said Berger. “But you must admit, little brown bits . . .”
“Nothing in my kitchen was poison.”
“Something was, somewhere,” said Green.
“Not in my kitchen.”
“Let’s get on. Miss Holland cooked her steak and had her supper. She’d be finished well before eight if she started to cook at seven, wouldn’t she?”
“It all depends what she had with the steak.”
“What did you leave her?”
“Everything. Onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, carrots, peas in the freezer, potatoes. . . .”
Golden Rain Page 4
