Faintley Speaking mb-27

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘You remember Alice Boorman, who was a member of your particular trio at College, dear child?’

  ‘Very definitely. We still correspond. I met her the year before last in Paris, if you recollect, where she was in charge of some gawping lassies from the top class of her school. She was always an earnest old cuckoo.’

  ‘Am I right in believing that she was in the Advanced Biology group?’

  ‘You certainly are. What young Alice doesn’t know about cutting sections and sticking them under the microscope is not knowledge. Why, if I may be permitted to ask, does her name crop up in the present nostalgic and moving conversation?’

  ‘If it had not, the conversation would be neither nostalgic nor moving. Do not revert to the style of your mis-spent youth. Give me Miss Boorman’s address.’

  ‘Littledene, Bosworth Road, Graftonbury-under-the-Edge. Why?… and, equally, why a bloke with her talents wants to bury herself alive in a place like that is more than I can fathom. But, there! I never did understand the dear old scout, and that’s a fact.’

  ‘Mutual lack of understanding is not necessarily detrimental to mutual abiding friendship. Thank you. I shall send Miss Boorman a telegram to find out how much she knows about British ferns.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Laura, who had been squinting down her nose in disapproval of all Mrs Bradley’s remarks except the last one. ‘Oh, I see! Now why didn’t I think of that?’

  ‘Because you had not thought of laying a false trail for our friends. I will go ashore again and send my telegram, and by the time I get back it will be all right, I should think, for you to go to the harbour-master again. Of course, if the police have been non-co-operative, please do not attempt to watch the house from any other vantage-point. I do not desire to waste my time attending an inquest. In the harbour-master’s house you will be perfectly safe, but if these people are what I suspect them to be —’

  ‘What do you suspect,them to be? I’ve been rummaging in my head for three weeks now, and I can’t make a selection from my ideas. I’ve thought of every kind of illegality from various smuggled articles to Communist infiltration, gun-running, forged banknotes and piracy. They all seem equally possible. It must be something pretty steep if Trench was prepared to murder Faintley to keep their secrets.’

  ‘Or to keep secret the fact that he had failed to keep his appointment with her. Remember, we still do not know why he failed.’

  ‘Everything about that telephone business is dashed peculiar, you know.’

  ‘Indeed, yes. What prompted her to arrange that he should go to Hagford and collect that particular parcel we shall never know except by a stroke of good fortune, but it was probably some perfectly simple reason such as that she had already booked her holiday accommodation at Cromlech and did not see why she should postpone her vacation in order to get a parcel which could equally well be picked up and taken to Tomson’s shop by somebody else.’

  ‘Yes, I see. And she couldn’t ask anybody else because they would have wondered what the devil she was up to, having dealings with a scruff like Tomson. So it had to be Trench, who was partly in the swim, or else nobody.’

  ‘Exactly. Then what I think happened was this: Miss Faintley was very well paid for what she did, and it troubled her conscience (it is amazing to the amoral minds of our generation… or it would be if they ever used their brains for anything but their own personal advantage… to find how extremely, almost morbidly, conscientious are teachers and Civil Servants) that she had relegated a task for which she had agreed to take responsibility to someone who might or might not have carried out her instructions.’

  ‘So she sent Trench a telegram to ask whether all was well, and he sent back to say he’d left the phone-box before her message came through. So, feeling thoroughly windy, she sent for him and arranged to meet him in Torbury, taking young Mark with her as camouflage and bent on losing him immediately. Yes, I can see all that. What I can’t see is why she didn’t instruct Trench by word of mouth. Why all this risky and uncertain business of the public call-box method?’

  ‘Just that she found no opportunity of speaking to him privately at school. She could have sent him a note by one of the children to ask him whether he would agree to be in the call-box at a particular time as she had a message for him, and he could write back to agree. She would not commit herself further on paper, no doubt, as secrecy had been urged upon her from the beginning. You probably know better than I do how very difficult it can be… particularly on a mixed staff in a school… to obtain an opportunity for a really private conversation.’

  ‘By Jove, yes, you’re right there. So the sweet Alice is to collect and transmit ferns, is she? No doubt she has sources from which she can obtain plants and things for her school work. Even I was told where to send to for my nature stuff, and told to be very economical!’

  ‘At any rate, we can see. The time-lag between the sending of my telegram and the receipt of her parcels may make a difficulty, but we must hope for the best. Thanks to the talking parrot, we know that we are on the right track, and now that the rusty-looking cruiser is in harbour with us, I feel that we may soon expect developments. I only hope we have selected the right house!’

  ‘There’s one more point: why did she need Mark for camouflage? She could have gone trotting off by herself, arriving with guide book and plan of city showing position of cathedral, etc., couldn’t she?’

  ‘My theory there is that she recognized one of the gang in Cromlech. It was surely not quite coincidental that she chose for her holiday the resort where the gang had one of their headquarters… the house on the cliff… but she may have had a shock at recognizing in the village someone whom she had not expected to see there. She probably thought that he had been following and spying on her because of her failure to collect the parcel, and she summoned Trench, in a fit of panic, to meet her and report that the parcel had indeed been delivered to Tomson… an assurance which Trench was quite unable to give. It was because he was unable to give it that he murdered her, I think… another example of panic. She took Mark to avoid being followed by the person she had recognized—’

  ‘This is where we want some dates, you know.’

  ‘We have them. I copied them from the visitors’ book at the hotel. Miss Faintley had been in Cromlech six days before she was murdered, counting the day she came down.’

  ‘So the man she recognized —!’

  ‘Exactly. The man she recognized could have been the left-luggage clerk at Hagford… the missing Price. Had it been anyone else I don’t think she would have worried. No doubt she had been summoned to Cromlech for some instructions which could not be confided in writing or over the telephone, and which the fern-code could not sufficiently clearly express. But when she saw Price, her conscience made a coward of her, and Trench’s fears made a murderer out of him.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  DAMP HOUSE

  ‘Let what there needs be done. Stay! with him one companion,

  His deacon, Dirvan: Warm twice over must the welcome be,

  But both will share one cell.’

  gerard manley hopkins – St Winefred’s Well

  « ^ »

  ‘So that’s the argument,’ said Laura thoughtfully. ‘Faintley had been summoned for a conference and recognized Price, who ought to have been at Hagford railway station. Still, he was on holiday. Something he said must have given her the clue, I suppose, that things had gone wrong about the parcel, so she sent for Trench. Trench realized that he was in a spot if she reported him to the bosses, so he met her at Torbury station and suggested they go to Cromlech Down House for a show-down, and there he murdered her. Maybe he had been instructed to murder her. Oh, well, it’s all speculation, so far, but it may be as far as we’ll get.’

  Mrs Bradley did not share this pessimistic view. The harbour-master, contacted on the telephone by the police, came off to Canto Five in his launch and invited Laura to make what use she liked of his house. There was an upstair window f
rom which she could watch the Damp House. He had never heard it called that, he observed. It had been used as a clubhouse by people calling themselves the Burgee Mariners, but that was before the war. It belonged now to a man named Shagg, who used it at week-ends and in holiday times, and often had friends to stay with him.

  ‘That’s his boat, that rusty contraption out there,’ the harbour-master added. ‘She’s got a Thames registration, so I suppose that’s where he keeps her when she’s not down here.’

  This information clinched the matter. The Damp House was identified. Laura settled down in a first-floor room to keep watch. Lunch was brought to her at one o’clock, and long before tea-time she was feeling extremely bored. There were very few people about and those that there were did not come into her view for more than a moment, but made for the shops, the post office or the hotel. After three in the afternoon there descended a kind of doldrums on the harbour channel also, and as the house she was watching seemed as empty as a robbed and rifled grave, Laura heartily wished herself back on Canto Five. Tea, brought at half past four, was an extremely welcome diversion, so much so that, although she dutifully kept her eyes on the window, Laura almost missed seeing the rusty cruiser putting out to sea. To her astonishment, Canto Five did not follow.

  ‘Wonder what Mrs Croc. has got up her sleeve?’ thought Laura. ‘I should have been after them like a shot. Wonder whether they came from shore, or whether they were already there and popped up from the cabin?’

  Her speculations were cut short by the arrival of a small sailing boat of the Tumlare class, double-ended and fast, with only one man aboard her. That he knew his job was evident, and Laura, with one eye on Damp House, watched him come up to moorings with the appreciation of one expert for the work of another.

  When he rowed ashore in his tiny dinghy, she saw, to her astonishment, that it was Bannister. Very shortly afterwards there was a knock at the door, and the harbour-master’s wife came up to say that Mrs Bradley and a gentleman would be glad of a word and that she would show them up.

  ‘But what are you doing down here? You ought to be at school!’ exclaimed Laura, when her erstwhile colleague and her employer came into the room.

  ‘I’m on sick leave,’ said Bannister, grinning, ‘medical certificate and all, so I thought I’d come along and see what you were up to.’

  Laura glanced at her employer.

  ‘You sent for him,’ she said. ‘That means a rough-house. Anything for a change. I’m bored to tears. By the way, why did you let Rusty get away from us? I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw her going over towards Lymington.’

  ‘She won’t go to Lymington, child. She will alter course and make for the dredger. The birds are attempting to fly, but they will not get far. Detective-Inspector Vardon and the local police force already, if my message has not miscarried, are in possession of the dredger, and the Customs and Excise officials will, no doubt, take charge of the cabin cruiser.’

  ‘But it may not be a case for the Customs.’

  ‘If it is not, no harm will have been done. There are only two men on board. They came on a motor cycle combination over the toll-bridge. I do not think they will give the officers much trouble.’

  ‘So we miss the last of the fun, and we still don’t know what their game is, or what the ferns mean, or whether Trench really murdered Faintley!’

  ‘Be of good cheer. Mr Bannister has offered to remain here with you until nightfall, and as soon as it is dark you may return to Canto Five and he will go back on board his yacht.’

  Laura, who was feeling disgruntled, disclaimed any need for companionship, so Mrs Bradley grinning like an alligator and Bannister looking disappointed, the two left the harbour-master’s house and Laura was left again in solitude.

  The harbour-master produced a battery-operated radio set for her amusement, but the long summer evening passed slowly, and still nothing happened. Dusk fell at last, and Laura, thankful to the darkness and to her hosts, slipped out and was about to cross between the hotel and the post office when a light was put on in the house she had been watching. Laura took cover and was rewarded for her long hours of fruitless vigil when the front door opened and a man stood there silhouetted against the light. She could make out nothing but a black shape as he remained there, apparently with his hands in his pockets, softly whistling an unfamiliar tune which seemed to stop short each time, as though the whistler had forgotten or could not manage the last two bars. He had attempted the tune four times when, as though the whistling had been a signal, another man strolled casually up to the house, and handed something to the whistler. The next moment he had gone again, and was lost among the shadowy buildings. The door was shut and the light went out in the hall, but another immediately appeared in an upstair room.

  Laura was both puzzled and excited. She was loath to return to her boat now that the house had at last shown signs of life; on the other hand, she felt that Mrs Bradley must be informed of this development. She decided to wait another few minutes to see whether there would be anything else to report, and was well-rewarded. Out of the shadows crept two more men, and after them another man who seemed to wish to follow them without their being aware of him.

  The little port was deserted at that time of night, for the shops and the post office had long been shut and the local yacht club was down by the Hard. There was no reason for the hotel residents to roam about after dark, and the hotel bars were not open to the public. Sounds of the ten o’clock news, raucously loud, drowned all other noise except that made by a back-firing automobile in a back street. It was the time for treason, stratagems and spoils, thought Laura, tingling with excitement. Softly she crept after the two men, for the third had melted into the night and she had lost track of him. There was no approach by the front door this time, but a furtive slinking into the shadows at the side of the house. Laura halted and listened. She was anxious to know where the third man was. He made no sign. From the other two she heard first a slight cough, then a faint tinkling.

  To anybody of Laura’s naturally lawless nature, the sound of broken glass was apt to act as a clarion call to action. She was across the road and in the shadow of the house in no time. A light had been switched on in the downstair room into which she was looking, and, as the curtains had not been drawn together, she could see that the two men who had invaded the house were facing two others. Each man was holding a knife, three men in their right hands, the fourth, who had his back to Laura, in his left. One of the men facing her was the stammering left-luggage clerk who had refused to let her take away Miss Faintley’s parcel.

  Before the murderous fight began, four words were spoken. The stammerer… but he showed no trace of a stammer now… said:

  ‘Lastrea Filix-Mas!’

  The left-handed man replied, scornfully, ‘Asplenium Fontanum!’ Both men spat, and the battle was then joined. The most extraordinary thing about it, in Laura’s opinion, was its almost uncanny silence. The room was deeply carpeted so that, except for breathless grunts as the contestants circled round one another, no sound was heard. The room was a large one, running (with folding doors open) from front to back of the house, and, as though it had been prepared as an arena, it was unfurnished except for the carpet.

  Laura watched, fascinated. Suddenly the door into the farther room began to open very slowly, and round the opening peered the unlovely visage of Tomson. He also held an open knife.

  Now Laura knew nothing much about the other four, and, in any case, they seemed evenly matched; but she had a strong distaste for Tomson. The broken window had been forced open, and the combatants were far too much occupied to notice a silent spectator. She began to scramble over the sill.

  ‘No, you don’t!’ murmured Bannister’s voice behind her. (So he had been the third man!) He hauled her back, thrust her roughly aside into some bushes, and leapt into the fray. He tackled Tomson tigerishly. The naked knife shot out of Tomson’s hand and slithered along the carpet towards the open window. Laura,
who had crawled out of the bushes and was feeling murderous, shot in over the sill and picked up the knife. Then she pulled out the police whistle which Mrs Bradley caused her to carry, and blew and blew and blew.

  The electrifying sound acted with its usual magic. Except for Tomson, who was flat out in the middle of the carpet, and Bannister, who stood over him licking his knuckles, the contestants melted away, some by way of the door, the others through the window. One aimed a vicious blow at Laura as he shot past, but she hooked him up neatly, and his head came crashing against the wallpaper.

  ‘But why did you bring the police along so soon?’ complained Bannister, when he, Laura and Mrs Bradley were having a night-cap on board Canto Five before he returned to his boat to sleep. ‘I was just beginning to enjoy myself!’

  ‘That was the reason,’ said Laura, squinting into her empty glass. ‘I didn’t see why you should barge me into the shrubbery and hog all the fun yourself. And where did you come from, anyway?’

  ‘I hadn’t gone, you see. I was hanging about to keep an eye on you, because it don’t become a young woman to join in private fights.’

  ‘Was Tomson’s knife any good?’ asked Laura of Mrs Bradley.

  ‘It is hand-made, and closely resembles (so far as my memory serves me) the one with which Miss Faintley was stabbed to death. Detective-Inspector Vardon will no doubt compare them.’

  ‘And are all the gang rounded up?’

  ‘There is no means of telling at present. We took two on board the dredger… those who thought to escape by taking out the rusty cruiser… and, as you know, five were captured in or near the house. You will probably be asked to identify three of them.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Well, I can swear to the stammering bloke who wouldn’t let me have the parcel, but the other two… I suppose they’re the chaps who removed the case of ferns from Cromlech Down House… that’s going to be more difficult. I’m not hazarding any guesses. If I’m not absolutely positive… and I don’t see how I can be… I ain’t saying nothing.’