“In theory, yes,” said Laura, “but would you say that it always holds good in practice? During my very short time as a schoolmarm we had a case of the theft of money from a kid’s locker. Of course, according to school rules, it shouldn’t have been there in the first place, but it was there, and, as the child herself said, it wented. Well, of course, there had to be an investigation which involved a wholesale turning out of blazer pockets and school holdalls and so forth. Wasn’t everybody except the thief having to prove innocence?”
Dame Beatrice cackled, but did not answer the very pertinent question.
“I shall tackle Lionel again while the police are checking airlines from Glasgow and Inverness,” she said. “He will have to give me an explanation of how he spent those days while Catherine and Clarissa were at the airport hotel. It is a great pity that he did not tell the police the truth about that stop-over, but reactions to fear are instinctive, unpredictable, and often very ill-advised.”
She did not take Laura with her, but, driven by her chauffeur George, she descended upon Lionel without warning. She found him alone. Clarissa, he explained, had gone shopping.
“I’ve had the police here again,” he said. “Have you come on the same sort of errand?”
“Yes, of course I have,” she answered briskly. “What did they want to know?”
“More about our stay on that nightmare journey home from Ardrossan.”
“Let us go back to the beginning of that journey. At what point did Catherine disclose that she knew you and Clarissa were not married?”
Lionel evinced no surprise.
“She did not disclose it at all. Why should she have done? I suppose, in the end, everybody knew it,” he said resignedly.
“Well,” said Dame Beatrice, with her crocodile grin, “if you really intended an innocent deception, you should at least have asked Professor Owen to book a double room for you at the hotels. There are such things as twin beds, you know. Many married couples prefer them to the wider, more connubial couch.”
“Clarissa suggested it. She said that if we were going to pass ourselves off as a married couple in our new job, we might as well begin by practising how to give a convincing impression. I couldn’t agree. If anything ever came out, no matter how innocent we really were—and I assure you, Dame Beatrice, that incest is to my mind the truly unforgivable sin—Clarissa would be branded for the rest of her life. We could never have lived down such an accusation.”
“Well, by taking this post as warden of a hostel with your sister passing herself off as your wife, you have laid yourself wide open to such an accusation in any case. It would not need a very intensive enquiry, I imagine, to prove the true relationship between the two of you. And what about your self-imposed status? Could you sustain it indefinitely?”
“I could have done, I think. From my observation of the married couples of my acquaintance, they appear to drift, after a year or two, into the same kind of easy comradeship as that which has always obtained between myself and my sister, and often have separate bedrooms, I believe.”
“Mr. Smith, what did you do, and where did you go, when you left your sister and Miss Owen at the Renfrew airport hotel?”
This time Lionel did betray surprise.
“So they found out about that, did they?” he said.
“Well, whether ‘they’ did or not, it is known. Please answer my question.”
“All right. At Ardrossan I was sure the story had got about that Clarissa and I were brother and sister. At Glasgow I got cold feet, took my car, and went to see the Dean of the college and confess to my lies. You may have noticed that at Kilmartin Clarissa and I were at loggerheads. It was on this very point. I said I was going to tell the Dean that we had got the hostel job under false pretences. This upset her very much, but in the end I talked her round to my point of view, so now my conscience is clear and all is well.”
CHAPTER 17
THE HUNT IS UP
“The hunt is up,
The hunt is up,
And now it is almost day;
And he that’s in bed with another man’s wife,
It is time to get him away.”
Old Song in the version collected by Geoffrey Grigson
The Dean was in residence and welcomed Dame Beatrice warmly. He was a man of about forty, impeccably dressed in a light-grey suit, dark-blue shirt, and a bold tie worthy of a BBC announcer. He was clean-shaven, beautifully manicured, and his handshake was agreeably firm.
“I won’t ask to what am I indebted; sufficient unto the day are the perks thereof,” he said. “Do sit down. Sherry?”
“I have come to ask a great favour concerning a very private and particular matter and am greatly concerned lest, in treading upon delicate ground, I find myself in a morass,” said Dame Beatrice. The Dean poured sherry, handed her a glass, seated himself, hitched up his immaculate trousers, and displayed socks which matched his shirt. He said unconcernedly, “Oh, you’ve come about Lionel Smith.”
“This omniscience is both startling and reassuring,” said Dame Beatrice. “He did come to see you, then?”
“Yes, the foolish, conscience-stricken fellow. What does it matter to me whether his housekeeper is his sister or his cousin or his aunt?”
“You take a broad view.”
“My dear Dame Beatrice, we live in the age in which we live. If we serve the conventions at all, it is only lip-service. In any case Smith told me no lies. He brought his sister to the interview and introduced her simply as Clarissa. I took it for granted that they were husband and wife. The young woman will be known as Mrs. Smith on the official documents merely for the sake of convenience, but I have no doubt that, among the students, a nickname will soon be found for her. This couple exactly fulfil our requirements. The girl has excellent qualifications in housecraft and dietetics and is a cordon bleu cook. The man has an excellent reputation as an organiser of school activities and a modern languages degree. The combination of talents is as rare as it is beautiful. The hostel is one for mature students, many of whom are married and most of whom have been given the opportunity to take a six-months’ course of study to further the requirements of their firms, so every two terms the population of the hostel will change to some extent. I foresee no complications and have told Mr. Smith as much.”
“So bang goes Lionel’s motive for murdering Catherine and there can be nothing to connect him with the Lewis murder,” said Laura, when she heard the news, “so it boils down to Owen and Stewart, I suppose.”
“We have disposed of one motive, but the Smiths may have another,” Dame Beatrice pointed out. “In fact, were I in cynical vein, I might suggest that, if Lionel and Clarissa are guilty, the wisest move Lionel could have made was to dispose of his obvious motive for wanting Catherine out of the way in the hope that his real motive would not be investigated.”
“So you haven’t written him off?”
“Not yet.”
The next day they received a visit from Dame Beatrice’s friend the Chief Constable.
“Thought you’d like to know that Marsh has had a report from the London end,” he said. “There is no doubt Miss Catherine Owen made it as far as Heathrow. She was certainly alive up to that point. It seems the Smiths stayed there with her until she flagged down a cruising taxi and there is plenty of evidence that she got back to her Maida Vale flat all right. It’s true the other tenants were on holiday, but she waylaid the milkman next morning, and that date and that of the next day, when she had another pint bottle, are down in his book. He hasn’t been paid, and there were no more requests for milk. He wasn’t bothered. He assumed she was off on holiday again and would pay when she came back. She had been a regular customer for years. Before she went on the tour she had cancelled the milk for a fortnight, so he assumed she had popped in at home unexpectedly and was off again to complete her holiday.”
“Inspector, the hunt, I think, is up, and I have some indication of the line of country over whi
ch we must now follow the fox,” said Dame Beatrice.
“Do you approve of fox-hunting, then, ma’am?”
“I take Oscar Wilde’s view of the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable, but we must also give sympathetic consideration to the distress of Old Mother Slipper-Slopper.”
“Ma’am?”
“She jumped out of bed,” explained Dame Beatrice, “and out of the window she popped her grey head, saying, ‘Oh, John, John! The grey goose is dead, and the fox is over the down-O.’ One feels that the dead goose also merits more than a passing sigh.”
“I give up, ma’am, but if there’s something you can see that will help us, you’re more than welcome to your nursery rhymes.”
“Folk-songs, Inspector—although the two have much in common, since both often have a hidden meaning—hidden to us, I mean, but perfectly clear to the people of the time. Have you contacted Miss Owen’s lawyer?”
“The London end did. Motive, you mean? It’s only a guide, at best, ma’am.”
“As I know full well. Who stands to benefit?”
“Professor Owen.”
“He might be in a hurry to inherit.”
“His circumstances are being investigated, but there is no shortage of cash where he is concerned, no rash financial commitments and no outstanding debts.”
“Indeed, a model citizen! Neither wine nor women?”
“His private life can bear the closest scrutiny, Dame Beatrice, and I’m told he has no ear for song.”
“I am delighted, Inspector, that you not only possess a sense of humour but that you can cap a quotation.”
“The job doesn’t give all that much scope for either, ma’am.” He paused. Dame Beatrice waited. “Besides, there’s another thing,” he added at last. “You might think that, as Miss Catherine’s heir—she was worth about thirty thousand pounds, it seems, which isn’t a lot by present-day standards, but might be a temptation to some people—he might have been tempted to kill her and inherit, but as it happens, he wouldn’t have had very long to wait for his money, and it seems he knew it. The poor lady hadn’t got much longer to go. She would have died within a couple of years. He had no need whatever to hasten the end.”
“He knew as much? Yes, he told me so. When did she alter her will?”
“Alter it, ma’am”
“Yes. Professor Owen told me that the will might be in Mr. Stewart’s favour. I gather she was interested in Stewart’s researches and wanted to help him. If Stewart did not know of her terminal illness, he might have had a motive to kill her.”
When Marsh had gone, Dame Beatrice said to Laura, “Do you still have your shorthand notes of those answers to the Truth Game?”
“Yes. I don’t destroy anything until you say so.”
“Read me Catherine Owen’s answers. They may tell us something more than they did at the time.”
“ ‘I came on this tour to try to get copy for my next novel,’ ” read Laura aloud. “ ‘If I had not come I might have missed a most wonderful experience. My secret fear is of confined spaces.’ ”
“Many women are claustrophobic. There seems nothing in that statement worthy of comment.”
“ ‘. . . And my pet superstition is that hell has no fury like a disappointed man.’ ”
“They are interesting answers. She has begged one question and used a misquotation instead of a superstition for her last answer. I wonder whether by that time she had altered her will, or whether she was still only thinking about doing so?”
“And whether anybody else knew it was altered or was going to be altered?”
“I think somebody may have guessed, although Owen said that she was secretive and I believe she was. She was also cautious, I would imagine, but apparently not cautious enough.”
“Not cautious enough to save herself from being murdered, you mean? It sounds like a revenge job to me, and that means Stewart. She may not have told him about the altered will, but I bet she had told him she was going to marry Owen, if only to choke him off. Owen told you Stewart was giving her a bit of a rush. Perhaps (although I dislike being cynical) that accounts for her first will having been made in Stewart’s favour. It wouldn’t be the first time a gigolo has benefited from some sex-starved older woman.”
“The shocking way in which your imagination works delights me. Let us have more of this Yellow Book reconstruction of events which will have to be proved.”
“You can rib me as much as you like, but you still see Stewart as the murderer, the same as I do. I bet he needed her money to further his stone circle researches.”
“I am not prepared to say more than that somebody—Stewart or Owen or another, maybe Capella, if we are thinking in terms of revenge—had cause to bear Catherine ill-will.”
“The disappointed man bit points straight at Stewart.”
“I think the sooner the young man is available for questioning, the sooner we may be able to get to the bottom of this business, but, since he is not available at the moment, others may be able to help us.”
“Able, yes, but willing?”
“Time will show.”
“There is just one point bothering me a bit,” said Laura. “This job which Lionel and Clarissa have got lined up is in Lancashire. Why didn’t Lionel wait until they got further south before going busting off to the Dean to confess to his innocent deception? I don’t know why he went at all. He hadn’t told the Dean any lies. Why get such a sudden rush of conscience that he left the two women at Renfrew and went careering off?”
“Perhaps we shall have an opportunity to ask him when we meet him again.”
“May I ask a civil but possibly unanswerable question?”
“I will answer before you ask it. Even in view of what has happened, I still have no idea which member of the party Professor Owen thought needed my watchful eye when he invited us to join the tour, or whether he really had any such thought at all. In any case, unless and until people ask for my services, there is nothing I can do, or would be prepared to do. Even when it was suggested to me that Professor Owen wanted a private eye kept on the party, I did not believe it. If he had said so, it would have been a different matter. As it was, I had no suspicions until he made me the judge in that Truth Game competition and Catherine’s answers were stolen. Even then I was inclined to dismiss the incident as an instance of idle curiosity on the part of somebody, probably somebody who saw Catherine as an enigmatic character.”
“Did you see her as that?”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“A terse, forceful, unequivocal, and interesting answer. Neither did I. How did she strike you, Laura? You are a shrewd judge of women.”
“I saw her as a lonely, rather bitter woman, poor soul. I’ll tell you another thing. I believe the reports of that lecture tour in the States were all baloney. I can’t supply chapter and verse, but that’s what I think.”
“In other words, it was an excuse to leave the party. Something had alarmed or alerted her by the time we left Ardrossan, you think? I am inclined to agree.”
“Do you know what it was?”
“I think she may have confided to Stewart that she intended to marry Owen, or to Owen that she intended to marry Stewart.”
“So the issue is still wide open.”
“We may be able to begin closing the door. Ring up the Smiths and put a query to them. Ask whose idea it was to break the journey at Glasgow.”
“What excuse can I make?”
“None. People taken completely by surprise will usually tell the truth because they have had no time to invent plausible lies.”
“Anyway, I thought it was Lionel’s idea.”
Laura went to the telephone and was gone for some time.
“Ah,” said Dame Beatrice when she returned, “do you require me to have three guesses?”
“I expect to you one will be enough.”
“Very well. It was Catherine’s idea that they should break the journey at Glasgo
w. She wanted to visit the museum there. You see, among other antiquities, it houses four bronze-age cists complete with contents. To see them would have provided for her, no doubt, a fitting conclusion to the tour,” said Dame Beatrice. “Stewart seems to have found in her an apt and appreciative pupil.”
“So poor old Lionel, torn between self-interest and his conscience, saw the way clear to nip along to the Dean and make his confession. Yes, that falls into place and seems to make sense, but it doesn’t get us any further in choosing between Owen and Stewart as our murderer.”
“Much may turn on the terms of Catherine’s will and whether she altered it, or intended to alter it, before she died, or never made a will at all, knowing that, as her next of kin, Owen would benefit in any case.”
“Everyone has a duty to make a will if they’ve anything to leave.”
“People are so reluctant to acknowledge in black and white that at some time they have to die.”
“Oh, Lord!” exclaimed Laura, who was opening what she called the official correspondence next day. “Here is an invitation from Professor Owen for us to attend a reunion party. Not in the best of taste, surely?”
“You are thinking of Catherine Owen’s death.”
“Well, what else have we been thinking about?”
“True. Write back and accept.”
“It won’t be a representative gathering, you know. Catherine won’t be there, and I don’t suppose the nuns will go. As for Stewart, so far as we know he is still chasing about and adding stone circles to his collection. That leaves you and me, Lionel and Clarissa, and Owen himself.”
“You are omitting Miss Babbacombe-Starr.”
“She’s got a tutoring job, hasn’t she? She mentioned something of the sort.”
“For what day of the week is the invitation?”
“A Saturday. Saturday week.”
“Well, we know the address of her father’s house and I suppose that is where she will be spending her weekends. Why not find out whether she has been invited and, if she has, whether she intends to accept.”
“Does it make any difference to us, whether she goes or not?”
The Whispering Knights (Mrs. Bradley) Page 19
