‘Yes, but we already know, from that house on the cliffs at Cromlech and your own researches there, that we are investigating something bigger and more mysterious than a solitary murder. Miss Faintley was engaged in Kindleford upon work outside the scope of her school duties. She was not murdered for the sake of gain, nor was her murder a sex crime. She had no enemies of whom we know. Her death was brought about either because she had betrayed her trust, or because she had made some mistake which might prove dangerous to some other member of the gang. It seems to me likely, if not certain, that that member was Mr Trench.’
‘Ha!’ exclaimed Laura. ‘Of course! I see it now. Woodwork! Trench made the flat case which Mandsell collected. But why did Trench leave that telephone-box before Faintley’s call came through?’
‘That is what we have to find out. It is possible that neither of Trench’s explanations is the true one.’
‘If Trench did make that wooden case, he’s involved up to the neck, that’s one thing, whether he did the actual murder or not. He’s certainly got a murderer’s mind. What did he think he’d gain, supposing the chisel had knocked you cold?’
‘Reinstatement, I think. The gang must know that he killed Miss Faintley, and they must guess that she was killed because she was in possession of evidence that Trench had—’
‘Let the issue down by walking out on the telephone call? Oh, yes, of course. But I still don’t understand why Tomson didn’t smell a rat when Mandsell walked in with that parcel. Faintley couldn’t have described Trench so that it sounded like Mandsell. Tomson must have done a bit of swift thinking between Mandsell’s first and second appearance in the shop, and decided that the wrong man had turned up.’
‘But with the right parcel, child. Do not lose sight of that fact. It would, however, account, perhaps, for his refusing to give a receipt. It would give him a certain amount of bargaining power with his employers, the gang, if he could show (supposing that Mandsell turned awkward) that he had had his suspicions but had continued to carry out his orders. We had better ring up Inspector Darling the moment we’ve finished our coffee, and find out what he thinks of your suggestion.’
‘He’s bound to take it seriously,’ said Laura, highly pleased with herself. Before she could get to the telephone, however, it rang. She picked up the receiver and gave Mrs Bradley’s exchange and number.
‘Inspector Darling here,’ said his voice. ‘We’ve had a look round Trench’s woodwork centre at the school. There doesn’t seem much doubt of what he did in some of his spare time. Can I speak to Mrs Bradley herself, please?’
‘Bother it. He’s jumped my idea and got busy on it already!’ said Laura, in disgust, as she handed over the receiver. Darling had certainly come to the conclusion that Trench’s woodwork centre might repay investigation. He had taken with him what he hoped was a packing similar in size and thickness to the parcel which Mandsell had collected for Miss Faintley at Hagford Junction and which he had delivered to the rascally Tomson. Mandsell, only too anxious to co-operate with the police, had given, again to the best of his ability, the measurements of the parcel, but had anxiously pointed out that he was merely trusting to his memory. Tomson had remained unshakable in his two assertions that the parcel had been collected from him secretly, and that he had no idea of what it contained.
The inspector further reported the interview with Tomson.
‘If you could smash up a statue, you could have opened a flat parcel,’ Darling had pointed out. ‘Didn’t you ever have the urge, and open one?’
‘No, I never opened one. They was sealed, and I didn’t see how I could seal it up again with nobody being the wiser. And being as a plaster might get itself broke, well, a bit of wood wouldn’t. Take my meaning?’
‘Oh, the flat parcels did contain wood, then? You’re sure of that?’
‘How can I be sure when I tells you I never opened one? They felt like wood. That’s all I can tell you. So what?’
With this information, for what it was worth, and Mandsell’s evidence which corroborated it without adding to it, the Inspector had gone to the woodwork centre.
‘Yes, Laura thought of that, too,’ said Mrs Bradley.
‘Good. We’ve found sufficient evidence here to hold Trench, apart from the incident of the chisel. What about Faintley now?’
‘Trench is the murderer. Ask him how he disposed of the wooden cases when he had made them, and the date of the first one he made.’
‘That’s what I thought. Have you any plans of your own?’
‘Yes. Laura and I return to Cromlech to-morrow.’
‘I thought that is what you would say. Good luck to you, and keep Miss Menzies out of trouble.’
‘The sparks fly upwards,’ said Mrs Bradley non-committally. ‘By the way, there may have been a fern in the parcel which Mr Mandsell collected from Hagford station – either Asplenium Marinum or Polypodium Phegopteris, I should say.’
‘Come again, please?’
‘Either the Sea Spleenwort or the Beech (read B.E.A.C.H.) Fern. That big case of ferns which two men, seen by Miss Menzies, removed from Cromlech House, went away by sea. But don’t bother about that. Push Mr Trench as far as he will go. It won’t help much, except negatively. You will find, I think, that he took the wooden cases to someone at Hagford station who sent them on to the plotters, who put the requisite variety of fern into them and sent them back to Hagford to be collected by Miss Faintley.’
‘But why such an elaborate arrangement?’
‘In order that the left hand should not know what the right hand was doing.’
‘Quite a sound principle on secret service, ma’am. I’ve no doubt that’s the right answer. We’ve quite lost the trail of that left-luggage clerk. He’s vanished. We’ve not even found the other two men named Price who went for the tour. They are obviously members of the gang who aided the real Prices’ getaway. We’ve pulled in the stammering clerk who refused to give Miss Menzies the parcel, but he seems as innocent as the day. We shall keep the tabs on him, of course, but I don’t think much will come of it.’
Mrs Bradley travelled at the sedate pace decreed by George the chauffeur from Wandles Parva to Cromlech, and Laura went by sea and joined her employer at the hotel where they had stayed on their previous visit. The manager made them welcome.
‘Funny,’ said Laura. ‘I thought they might hate the sight of us here, this time, what with Faintley getting herself murdered during our last visit, and the police dodging about, and all that.’
‘It is a mistake to assume that notoriety of that sort is necessarily harmful to a hotel, and in any case we were not much involved except that you discovered the body. Where did you leave the cruiser?’
‘The usual anchorage. There’s not much stuff about to-day, so it should be very easy to get away from there to-morrow. I take it you mean to go round by sea, as I did, and take that zigzag road to the house. I hope you are going armed and well prepared. Now Trench is arrested and Tomson is being pushed so hard that he may crack at any moment, and two real Prices and two pseudo-Prices are being hunted by the gendarmes, I can imagine healthier occupations than yours!’
‘I do not anticipate trouble up at that house. Adventure, I feel, will come later. And now, to bed, for we must be up betimes!’ said Mrs Bradley.
But bed was farther off than she anticipated, for as they went from the lounge to the foot of the stairs they were waylaid.
‘A telephone call for Mrs Lestrange Bradley!’
She took it whilst Laura waited. When she emerged her saurian smile was eloquent of excellent news. Laura asked no questions, and when they reached their first-floor landing Mrs Bradley drew her secretary into her room.
‘A most helpful piece of information,’ she announced. ‘Mr Trench seems to have decided to confide in the police on condition that they keep him in close custody. It is obvious that he is far more afraid of what he can expect from the gang than of being found guilty of attempted murder… a strangely disquieti
ng comment on our so-called civilization, but one to which, thanks to the Dictators, we are becoming more and more accustomed.’
‘What has he told the police?’
‘That he has sent a consignment of six wooden packings to a place called Damp House, Bridbay, Isle of Wight. Well, well, Inspector Darling, I have no doubt, will keep the gyves on him for more reasons than one. Well, now, we start at six in the morning, for if we are to add a trip to the Isle of Wight to our schedule we shall have a long day.’
The manager, who, far from deprecating Mrs Bradley’s activities, felt that they shed lustre upon his hotel, insisted upon giving them breakfast before they set out, and waited upon them himself. A discreet man, an ex-Regular officer, he asked no questions but wished them a pleasant trip.
By seven they were on board the Canto Five and were nosing out to give the great headland a wide berth in a choppy sea. It was not long before Laura was anchoring in the bay.
‘Now what’s the programme?’ she inquired.
‘I want you to put me ashore and then come back on board.’
‘Thus missing any possibility of some fun! I call that hard.’
‘Yes, but I have been thinking things over. We are almost as far off as ever from solving the mystery of Miss Faintley’s death, although we assume that we know now who murdered her. We know she worked for people whose desire for secrecy is so keen that they have invented this fantastic code based on the names of British ferns in order to communicate with one another. Their actions are probably, but not undoubtedly, criminal, and Miss Faintley may or may not have been murdered at their instigation… personally, I don’t think she was, but let that pass.’
‘But we know the house up there was their haunt, and that’s where her body was found!’
‘True; so you are justified in assuming that they were concerned in her death. Unfortunately, except for their (to us unimportant) satellites, Miss Faintley, Trench, and Tomson, we have not the slightest idea of the identity of any members of the gang, unless the police find Price and Mr Mandsell can swear to him.’
‘I wish we could get hold of one of those ferns they pack in the flat parcels.’
‘So do I, indeed. Those sent in the plaster statues appear to be warnings, but those packed in Mr Trench’s wood blocks must be instructions or information of plans. I have toyed with the notion of sending a similar package to Hagford Junction to see what happened, but I doubt whether the results would be helpful.’
‘Quite so. Let us make for the shore.’
Laura rowed her ashore, watched her until she rounded the first bend of the zigzag path to the house, and then moodily returned to the cruiser. She smoked a cigarette and then decided to bathe. It was while she was in the water, fairly close inshore, that the dredger turned up. For some time Laura was unaware of its approach, for it was hidden from her by the hull of her own boat, and, by the time she spotted it, it was drawing towards an anchorage in the eastward arm of the bay. It anchored, and set to work, an uninspiring bucket-dredger of ancient pattern, setting its chain of buckets to dredge up sand from the sea-bed. Laura, wiping salt water from her face with a wet wrist, gazed interestedly, for there seemed no purpose in dredging at such a spot. There was no river-mouth and no harbour. The apparently pointless work went on for more than two hours, during which time she got dry and dressed. She ate some chocolate, sunbathed on the cabin roof in suntop and linen shorts, ate an apple, smoked another cigarette, went down to the tiny galley and made some tea, and speculated all the time on the chances of Mrs Bradley’s having walked into trouble up at the mysterious house.
There were a fair number of people on the beach by this time, and a couple of boys, on floats, came out to have a look at her boat. Laura was glad of company and conversed amiably with them as they paddled slowly round the cruiser.
She asked them whether the dredger was often there, and if they knew why the bay needed deepening. One of them volunteered the information that she was dredging on the site of a supposed wreck which had had bullion on board. He had gathered this from talk at the hotel where he was staying. One of the local boatmen, it was understood, had gone out to the dredger to pass the time of day and ask whether they wanted to buy shellfish. He had never heard of any wreck, but thought it must date from the war and had been hushed up for some reason.
‘I thought they generally used divers to get stuff up from wrecks,’ said Laura. ‘I don’t see what you could expect to get up in those buckets, unless it might be proof that you’d found the right spot. And they haven’t got a hopper alongside, and nothing is dumped in the hold. All that sand and stuff just keeps getting put back again. It all seems such a waste of time.’
The boys paddled shorewards, and Laura went below to scrape potatoes. She had no idea of when she might expect Mrs Bradley, but there seemed no harm in getting lunch ready to cook. When she came on deck again the dredger was entertaining a visitor. A rusty-looking sea-going cruiser had joined her and was taking on board some wooden crates. After a bit, with a farewell toot of her siren, she was off, bumping choppily but going fast, and was soon out of sight round the headland. The dredger had ceased work some time previously, and now sheered off, out to sea. Laura watched until she disappeared over the horizon. When the girl looked shorewards again, somebody was signalling from the beach. Laura turned the binoculars on to the small figure and was relieved to discover that it was, as she had hoped, Mrs Bradley.
‘Still in one piece,’ thought Laura. ‘Thank goodness for that! Wonder whether she’s found out anything useful?’
She cast off in the dinghy and rowed to the beach.
‘The house has been used again,’ said Mrs Bradley, when they were once more on board Canto Five. ‘An unwithered frond of Asplenium Septentrionale, the Forked Spleenwort, was lying just inside the front door. I climbed in by means of the back window, which, since the police broke it, has not been mended.’
‘Anything else interesting?’
‘No, not to me. Apart from Asplenium Septentrionale, there was nothing to discover except the cellar.’
‘I don’t remember seeing a cellar door.’
‘No. It is a trap-door, covered by matting, in the floor of that one furnished room.’
‘I wonder why they didn’t shove Faintley’s body into the cellar? Nobody would ever have found it.’
‘The cellar is not very large and a body might have been in the way. Besides, bodies do decompose, you know.’
‘Did you expect to find a cellar?’
‘No, but I always look under rugs and mats and the like as a matter of course because of my interest in priest’s holes and church crypts.’
‘Anything interesting on the cliff-top?’
‘I regret to emphasize that there was nothing interesting at all. Nevertheless, I was inclined to be sorry I had not taken you along. You would have enjoyed it. It was gloriously hot on the headland, and the scent of the gorse was very pleasing.’
‘It’s been a bit boring here except for the dredger that dredged up sand, and the story of a wreck that doesn’t seem to have happened.’ She described her morning while the potatoes were boiling. Mrs Bradley was interested in the story of the dredger. ‘I wonder whether you’d mind if I shifted over after lunch and dropped anchor just about where they did?’ Laura concluded. ‘There must have been some method in the madness, but I’m hanged if I can spot what it was. You don’t think there was any connexion between the dredger and the people we’re after, do you? It wasn’t doing its proper job, and it did unload those packing-cases on to the cruiser.’
‘I was wondering, child. If there were some reason for hanging about, to pretend to be dredging would be as good a way as any of appearing to have legitimate business, I should think. Move over, by all means. I doubt whether we shall learn anything, but one never knows. You cannot tell, of course, whether the cabin cruiser was the one which may have shipped away the case of ferns?’
The move, made as soon as the washing-up was done, ga
ve them no help. Mrs Bradley, while Laura lazed and digested her lunch before dropping overboard for a swim, studied the cliff-face earnestly through binoculars, but there was nothing to be seen but the gulls.
Laura’s deep dives, when she had gone in for her dip, were equally unproductive. After tea she took up anchor and slid away on a longish north-east slant to attempt to get some satisfactory evidence from the clue supplied by Mr Trench’s confession to the police. The sun began to dip, the sea grew calm as the breeze died, and Laura, who had studied the Yachtsman’s Pilot until she could have drawn in her sleep the plan of the harbour entrance she wanted, took the wheel from Mrs Bradley as the Isle of Wight loomed larger, and made for the western end of the island.
Mrs Bradley, standing beside her with the binoculars trained on the land, said suddenly:
‘There’s your dredger, child, in that little bay ahead of us. Put your helm over. We don’t want to get near enough for the men on board to recognize this as the cruiser which shared the bay with them this morning. It won’t matter if they are on their lawful occasions, but, if they are not, we don’t want to give the impression that we are following them about. I also find that rusty cruiser interesting. I wish I knew whether it took off those two men and the large case of ferns – and, if it did, whether the people on board her recognized Canto Five when they saw her again.’
‘They seemed too busy loading those stores — whatever they were – to notice anything, but you never know. Anyway, even if they did recognize her, there’s no reason why they should connect her with anything to their disadvantage, is there?’
‘No, but if their occasions are unlawful they are bound to be deeply suspicious. I am very anxious not to arouse their suspicions, because, if we do —’
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