The Whispering Knights (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “And did Professor Owen and Mr. Stewart share your enthusiasm for the Clava complex?” Dame Beatrice enquired.

  “Oh, they did not accompany us. There was never any suggestion that they should,” said Sister Pascal. Observing Laura’s surprise, she added, “We were very much relieved when Professor Owen told us that the tour would include Inverness. We knew we could stay at our convent there instead of at a hotel. He said that Mr. Stewart had suggested adding Clava to the tour and cutting out the visit to Callanish, but we, Sister and I, were not going to Callanish, so it made no difference to us. He said goodbye to us, as you did, and added that as he would not be available to drive us home, he begged us to accept a sum to cover our railway fares to London and on to Exeter. We thought this most generous of him .”

  “So what about Stewart?” askeed Laura.

  “Oh, the Inverness convent had its own car and a Sister who, of course, could drive it, so four of us went to Clava and we had a most delightful day out, with the stop at Culloden on the way.”

  “So you saw nothing of the two men after they had deposited you at the convent on the evening of our arrival,” said Dame Beatrice. “That same evening Laura and I were with them at the hotel, of course, but we went off to Ullapool next morning early, having said goodbye the night before, as we did not know whether they would be up in time to breakfast with us.”

  “Well!” said Laura when she and Dame Beatrice were on their way back to the Stone House, “that’s put the cat among the pigeons with a vengeance!”

  “In what way?”

  “One or other or both those men could have hopped on a plane for Stornoway and made contact with that unknown woman and killed her.”

  “But we know of no connection between them and the woman. The equal chance is that Mr. Stewart had decided to visit other Scottish sites—there are many in north-east Scotland, including, I believe, the recumbent stone circles of Aberdeenshire only eighty miles from Clava—and, failing his company and masculine support, Professor Owen may have jibbed at the thought of escorting two nuns and having to book hotel accommodation for them, as well as for himself, on the long journey back to Exeter and so freed himself from his obligations.”

  “Well, your guess is as good as and probably better than mine, but I still smell stinking fish. Look, what’s to stop me from going up to Inverness and putting out a few feelers?”

  “By all means, provided that you will agree to take George with you as co-driver.”

  “I don’t need him, but as you wish. Do I have carte blanche, or do you want to suggest a course of action?”

  “I leave everything in your hands.”

  “Which means you don’t expect me to bring home any bacon. Och, weel, a jaunt’s a jaunt, for a’ that.”

  “Heaven bless your childishness! Have a good time, but I should try the convent first.”

  “You don’t suppose the two nuns were telling us fairy tales, do you?”

  “Certainly not, but two other nuns were involved in the expedition to Clava. There might be additions to Sister Veronica’s account. One never knows.”

  “Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall be gloriously surprised. G.K. Chesterton at his most controversial, wouldn’t you say? Then I suppose I go to the hotel and try to check on the two men. I think I ought to make the journey in two stages, making an overnight stop in Carlisle. That way perhaps I can find out what the police have failed to do, that is—”

  “If you think you can find out where Lionel, Clarissa, and Catherine spent the night on their way south from Ardrossan, I fear you will be disappointed. If the police did not find the hotel there is little likelihood that you will be luckier. There is a strong possibility, you know, that either failing to find accommodation or deciding, from motives of economy, to do without it, they all slept in Lionel’s car.”

  “I would still like to have a bash.”

  “Of course you would, and, of course, unless you come up with some very startling evidence regarding the Inverness activities of Professor Owen and Mr. Stewart, Lionel and Clarissa remain under a black cloud of suspicion as the last of our party known to have been with Catherine immediately prior to her death.”

  CHAPTER 16

  A SHOT IN THE DARK

  “I shot an arrow into the air . . .”

  H.W. Longfellow

  “Well,” said Laura, when she got back to the Stone House, “I have a tale to tell. Whether it will help the police, I don’t know. In any case, I think you had better hear it first.”

  “I trust,” said Dame Beatrice, “that it is not full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

  “It’s unlucky to quote from Macbeth.”

  “Only backstage in a theatre.”

  “Do you want to hear the news? It has some interest, although whether it signifies anything in particular I don’t know. You remember we were told that Lionel and Clarissa couldn’t remember where they had stayed in Carlisle? Well, either they’re freaks or liars, and I’m inclined to plump for the latter.”

  “You mean that they did not stay in Carlisle at all?”

  “That’s right. I’ve got what looks like evidence of it, too. As you forthrightly indicated, the police can do certain jobs very thoroughly indeed.”

  “So that if they failed to find the hotel where three people of known name and appearance spent a night on a certain date, that hotel is not in the town where it purported to be.”

  “That’s the conclusion I came to, so I decided I wouldn’t stop off at Carlisle, but push on to Glasgow and put up at the Renfrew airport hotel. Mind you, at that point I also had an idea that it might be possible to book in at a place like that pretty easily, because there would be people in and out all the time and anyway it would shorten the second hop up to Inverness. I had also jettisoned any idea of trying to find out where that couple and Catherine had put up for the night in Carlisle. It didn’t seem all that important, anyway.”

  “But you discovered that it might be important after all?”

  “I don’t know, but I thought perhaps you would tell me. You see, it seemed rather a short hop before staying the night. Even Carlisle isn’t all that far from Ardrossan when you’ve got a car. My first bet was that if Carlisle wasn’t the answer, then those three probably stopped off somewhere further south, and that could have been absolutely anywhere.”

  “How did you find out that they had stayed at the airport hotel?”

  “Don’t spoil my story! I found out by asking the sort of direct question to which people are bound to give you a direct answer unless they have something to hide. When I paid my bill I asked the girl at Reception whether some friends of mine had stayed there recently, a Mr. and Mrs. Smith accompanied by a Miss Owen. I gave the date, not dreaming that the receptionist would come up with anything, but she very obligingly turned back the register and found the names. Moreover, she produced a most startling bit of information. The gentleman had checked out after staying one night, but the ladies had stayed three nights. Of course the girl remembered me from our own homeward stop there, otherwise she might not have been so obliging.”

  “I cannot imagine why you questioned the receptionist. As you said yourself, it was most unlikely that the three would have broken their journey at that early stage.”

  “I suppose it was because I thought perhaps they had changed their minds and gone up to Inverness after all. It certainly looks as though that is what Lionel did. If he had taken the car he could have got to Inverness the next day, after their overnight stay at Renfrew, done whatever he intended on the second day, and picked up Clarissa and Catherine the day after.”

  “But Catherine was supposed to be in a hurry to get home. Surely, if Lionel had been as disobliging as you suggest, she would have taken the train. After all, her home is in London and it is a direct run to Euston from Glasgow and takes only about five hours in a fast train.”

  “Perhaps a couple of days didn’t make all that much difference to her.
Perhaps she did not expect Lionel to be gone so long. Perhaps Clarissa begged her to stay as she did not want to be alone in the hotel. Most likely of all, Catherine didn’t see the fun of paying a pretty heavy railway fare when, by hanging on for a couple of days, she could get a free ride in Lionel’s car.”

  “You seem to have covered all the possibilities,” said Dame Beatrice admiringly. “I wonder whether Lionel did go by car?—and whether he stayed a night in Inverness.”

  “And whether Owen or Stewart spotted him there. It’s a nuisance about Stewart. He ought to be available for questioning, and he isn’t.”

  “Time will remedy that. Tell me of the rest of your adventures.”

  “I didn’t have any, except that Clava is an adventure in itself. I’d seen it before, of course, but this tour has made a difference to the way I look at such things. I didn’t run into Stewart or Owen, if that’s what you mean. I didn’t expect to. They must have left Inverness days ago. I put up at the same hotel as the one Owen booked for our party and there I pursued a few enquiries, but beyond establishing that the two had checked out (and both on the same morning) I got nothing except (I rather thought) some suspicious looks. I half thought of telling the extremely grim-looking lady at the desk that I was a policewoman in plain clothes and flashing Gavin’s card at her, but I thought it might lead to complications, so I passed up on that little bit of fun.”

  “Your mind works in a mysterious way, its wonders to perform.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that by making a connection which only your subconscious mind recognised as being a connection, you have advanced our enquiry to a stage at which theory can be discarded and facts can be checked.”

  “I don’t know what you mean and I don’t suppose it’s any good asking questions.”

  “There is one question you can ask, but not of me. Ask the airways people for a timetable of flights to and from Stornoway. It may be useful and it may not, but it is one of the stones which we ought not to leave unturned.”

  The next thing was that Dame Beatrice had a visit from Marsh. His news was that the Scottish police had obtained identification of the woman found at Callanish. He was obliged to admit that the identification did not help his own enquiry. It did not seem as though there could be any connection between this woman’s death and the murder of Catherine Owen except the manner of both.

  “She was simply on holiday on Lewis,” Marsh said, “staying on one of the crofts. The crofter did not report her as missing until he and his wife got back from the mainland, where they had been spending a fortnight with the wife’s mother. Then they found that their tenant’s suitcase was still in the house, but that she herself was not. They had expected that she would be gone by the time they got back, so the presence of the suitcase puzzled them. After a bit they examined it, but it contained nothing except the woman’s clothes. There was nothing suspicious about it.”

  It appeared that, being cautious people, they had waited a couple of days and then decided that her absence had better be reported. All that they had expected to hear was that she had been taken ill, or had met with an accident and was in hospital and so had not missed the suitcase or enquired after it.

  They did not work the croft, any more than many of the islanders do. The man had a car and a job in Stornoway and they let the house, a comparatively modern one, for a fortnight in the summer, but only upon recommendation. They did not advertise it. Their first tenant had been the wife’s cousin, who lived in Liverpool, and from that time, six years ago, they had never needed to leave the house empty while they were absent.

  “Not that they would have troubled about that, Dame Beatrice,” Marsh explained. “Never even bothered to lock the door. Nobody on the island would pinch anything from another islander. Why, lots of ’em have got the same surname. They’re mostly MacLeods unless they’re MacDonalds, Morrisons, Mackenzies, MacIvers, or MacLeans. There are other names, of course, but those are commonest.”

  “Are there any Smiths on the island?” asked Dame Beatrice. The inspector consulted a printed leaflet. “They sent me this,” he said. “Just a courtesy gesture, I guess. Yes, ma’am, Smiths come in seventh place, followed by MacKay, Murray, Campbell, MacAulay, Nicholson, and Graham. You’re thinking of Mr. Lionel and Mrs. Clarissa Smith, no doubt, as they are the last people known to have seen Miss Owen alive, but there is no connection at all. The tenant’s name was Lemon, and she was recommended by a Mr. and Mrs. Counter, who had rented the croft the year before. The owners remembered the names of their various tenants, but don’t seem to have kept records of their home addresses. Anyway, this woman Lemon was a Londoner. That much they do remember. Her murder was a London job, I reckon. Nobody resident on the island would have murdered her. Her past must have caught up with her somehow.”

  “Her very recent past, I imagine, Inspector. Surely the stone circles in which both bodies were deposited, combined with Professor Owen’s tour, must be more than a matter of coincidence? Are you keeping in touch with the Scottish police?”

  “Oh, yes, Dame Beatrice. They don’t believe in coincidence any more than you do.”

  “Oh, I do not discount it, by any means, but I prefer to test human action and reaction before I admit to it. They do not think that the deaths of Miss Owen and of this Mrs.—or Miss—Lemon were connected, then?”

  “No, ma’am. Still, work shared is work halved, like trouble and grief, I suppose, so, while we shall be prosecuting our enquiries here, well, if it helps at the Stornoway end, so much the better, although I think they’ve put their problems in the lap of the Metropolitan Police; since the woman came from London.”

  “Here is the current timetable for British Airways’ Scottish flights,” said Laura, producing it with something of a flourish. “It goes from the beginning of April to the end of October, so it covers the period we want. What did you mean about my subconscious mind? How does it connect with my questions at Renfrew?”

  “Airport hotel. Flights from Glasgow to Inverness. Flights from Inverness to Stornoway and,” said Dame Beatrice, who had been turning over the pages of the timetable while Laura was talking, “I see that there is a non-stop flight from Stornoway to Glasgow and on to London.”

  “But the Smiths and Catherine wouldn’t have flown from Glasgow. Lionel had his car.”

  “True, but I must acquaint Inspector Marsh with the result of your enquiries.” She laid down the timetable and Laura picked it up.

  “It still leaves everything wide open,” she said. “I see what you mean, of course. Lionel could have flown from Renfrew, changed planes at Inverness, gone on to Stornoway, murdered this woman—”

  “Lemon. The Scottish police have got as far as knowing her name and that she came from London.”

  “So did Catherine come from London and so do millions of other people. If Doctor Johnson loved it so much, I wonder why he called it the Great Wen?”

  “Perhaps he was enamoured of steaming, festering slums and stinking suppuration.”

  “Well, he knew how to distinguish between ‘to smell’ and ‘to stink,’ anyway. To return to what I was saying: if Lionel could have made the flight from Glasgow to Stornoway, so could either Owen or Stewart from Inverness, so I can’t see we’re any further forward.”

  “As I believe I pointed out earlier, there is this much: the police will want to know why Lionel and Clarissa stated that they had spent one night in Carlisle whereas they broke their journey in Glasgow and the two women spent three nights at the airport hotel while Lionel was off on his mysterious journey. I really think we must talk to him and Clarissa again.”

  “You know, it looks pretty bad for Lionel.”

  “There is certainly some explanation due from him.”

  “Those two could have told the police about the stop-off at the airport hotel instead of handing out all those lies about Carlisle. The fact that they didn’t is going to make things very awkward for them. The whole thing turns now on whether the police can
prove that Lionel went to Stornoway.”

  “And, if he did, what connection he had with the woman who was murdered. That you found it so simple a matter to find out that those three had stayed at the Renfrew airport hotel, added to the fact that Lionel appears to have checked in and out of it in a perfectly open and proper manner, disposes me to think that there may be some innocent explanation of his actions.”

  “If only he’d said that they stayed where they did, instead of giving out all that rubbish about Carlisle, I might agree.”

  “Please remember that by the time they were questioned by the police, and then by us, Catherine’s body had been found and they were the last people known to have been in her company. Anybody, innocent or guilty, can be excused for panicking under such circumstances.”

  “If they are brother and sister and Catherine had found that out and was blackmailing them, wouldn’t that have been a motive for murdering her to save a nasty scandal? After all, they were passing themselves off as a married couple. There is this job they’re so keen on. If it calls for a husband and wife partnership, well, it doesn’t call for a brother and sister set-up, does it?”

  “You raise an interesting point. So long as the hostel gets a warden and a housekeeper, I cannot see that it makes the slightest practical difference whether they are husband and wife or brother and sister. As for Lionel and Clarissa, their claim on the tour to be a married couple was weakened, it seems to me, by their refusal ever to book a double room. That was bound to encourage speculation, one would have thought.”

  “Do you mean you think they are innocent of causing Catherine’s death?”

  “At the moment I have no idea. I would remind you, however, of a basic principle. It is not innocence which needs to be proved, but guilt.”