Spotted Hemlock mb-31

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘I should like to speak to your temporary assistant, a woman named Palliser, if you please.’

  ‘Palliser?’

  ‘Certainly. She wrote to me for a position as children’s nurse and gave this as her temporary place of employment.’

  ‘I’m sorry, madam. No assistant of that name has ever been employed here. We had a Miss Chalmers.’

  ‘No, no. Palliser was the name. A woman of about thirty. Had been on holiday in Italy.’

  ‘I’m sorry, madam.’ It was final and brooked of no argument. Laura left the shop, her basket in her left hand and her enterprising son, who had had to be dispossessed of three pairs of woolly mits and a Teddy bear, under her right arm.

  ‘Home, George, and don’t spare the horse-power,’ she said dejectedly, tossing Hamish on to the back seat of the car, and climbing in beside him.

  ‘Pot!’ said Hamish insistently. ‘Pot, pot, pot!’

  ‘Oh, well!’ said Laura. ‘Sorry, George.’ She extracted herself and the infant and went back into the shop.

  ‘Well, there’s only our own,’ said the assistant who had served her. ‘The little staircase marked Staff Only on the second floor, madam.’

  When they returned to the ground floor, a young assistant, who had been standing by while Laura made her first purchases, went with her, ostensibly to open the shop door. Something about Laura must have appealed to the girl, for she said:

  ‘We don’t mention Miss Palliser here, madam. She was sacked for pinching money out of the till.’

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ said Laura. ‘That certainly settles that. You don’t know where she went, I suppose?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, madam.’

  Laura returned to the Stone House to report lack of progress. Dame Beatrice was sympathetic, but added that she had expected nothing to result from the visit.

  ‘They wouldn’t have known her address, even, I’m sure,’ she said. ‘Never mind. It was an outing.’

  ‘Especially for Hamish,’ said Laura. ‘Well, the next thing is to find this school she taught at. Did the mother give any clue?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then that would appear to be my next assignment,’ said Laura. ‘I think, perhaps, if you don’t mind, I won’t take Hamish this time. He tends to complicate matters.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Dame Beatrice, regarding the child with leering affection, ‘we ought to be fair. The only thing you found out—that Miss Palliser had retained her light-fingered habits—you owe to your son.’

  ‘Hm!’ said Laura, looking critically at her offspring. ‘Something in that, I suppose. I still think I’ll manage better without him. Have you Mrs. Biancini’s address? And can I have George again? I feel he lends an air of respectability to my excursions.’

  George, impassive as ever, drove her to Mrs Biancini’s house. Biancini was at home and opened the door to her. His wife, he regretted to say, was out at a local whist-drive.

  ‘Momma,’ said Mr Biancini, with an expansive, gold-toothed smile, ‘is apt to win prizes at whist-drives. Now it will be an umbrella, now a silver-rimmed flower-vase, at another time a tea-trolley. All very nice for the home, and will you wish to come in and wait, or can I, perhaps, take a message?’ He leered invitingly at her. Laura flexed her muscles.

  ‘Neither,’ said she. ‘All I want is a piece of information which I dare say you can give me. Mrs Biancini’s elder daughter, Miss Carrie Palliser, taught for a time at a small boarding-school. Would you mind giving me the name and address?’

  ‘Of the school?’ He looked both troubled and perplexed.

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘So?’ He brooded. ‘Carrie is in trouble again, eh?’

  ‘I’ve been to the shop where she took a holiday job,’ said Laura obliquely. ‘It appears that there was some trouble there. The till, you know.’

  ‘Naturally. You better come in. The neighbours, you know.’ He led the way to the nearest door, opened it, and stood aside so that Laura could go in. She found herself in a stuffy little parlour and immediately recognised the portrait of her host, once purloined by Dame Beatrice and now restored to its place. ‘May I ask why you have come here? Carrie is not in prison, is she?’

  ‘I have no reason to think so. I want a nursery governess for my small boy, and was given Miss Palliser’s name.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve really no idea. It was just that one of my friends thought…’

  ‘You have come here,’ said Mr Biancini fiercely, ‘to snoop. Nobody recommends Carrie. What do you want to find out? No one knows anything about her.’

  ‘That’s nonsense,’ said Laura sharply. ‘All I want you to do is to give me the name of the school at which your stepdaughter taught.’

  ‘Teaches.’

  ‘All right—teaches.’

  ‘You are not on the level. Are you from the police?’

  ‘No, of course not. Do you refuse, then, to give me the address I ask for?’

  ‘No, no. I think you are phony, but it is none of my business. Carrie is not a nice woman, so I expect her to have some not nice friends. The school is called How Red the Rose House. It is in the village of Seethe, in Suffolk. Now tell me why you want to know.’

  ‘Thank you very much.’ It was a triumphant Laura who returned to the car and ordered George to drive home. ‘So I go to this How Red the Rose place tomorrow,’ she said, when she got back to the Stone House.

  ‘Do you really think it is a good idea?’ Dame Beatrice enquired. ‘All this rushing about must be extremely fatiguing for you.’

  The Amazonian Laura laughed.

  ‘It’s fun,’ she said. ‘And, even if I’m not doing much good, at least I’m doing no harm. Besides, I’ve definitely established one thing.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘This Biancini certainly has no idea that it may be Carrie and not Norah who is dead.’

  ‘You mean he had no idea,’ said Dame Beatrice. Laura stared at her.

  ‘Could be,’ she said. ‘Oh, Lord! Talk about “the hounds of spring upon winter’s traces!” ’

  ‘Talk, rather, of “fills the shadows and windy places with lisp of leaves and rustle of rain.” That is what you may have contrived to do.’

  ‘It can’t be as bad as that!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘This Biancini isn’t capable of it, you know.’

  ‘Your meaning, obscure though it may seem, is not without interest.’

  ‘Well, honestly, now I’ve seen him I’m inclined to think it’s a case of Pass, Biancini, and all’s well.’

  ‘We are agreed.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I think so, child. I never did suspect poor Biancini of being anything but what he is.’

  ‘The child of God,’ said Laura, inconsequently, ‘and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven. I suppose,’ she added, ‘that the address of that school is the right one?’

  ‘You can but go and find out.’

  Laura studied her employer.

  ‘I thought you thought I shouldn’t interfere any more.’

  ‘Heaven forbid that I should stand between you and your desires.’

  ‘Hunches, not desires.’

  ‘Have you ever heard of Don Quixote?’

  ‘Ad nauseam. He tilted at windmills.’

  ‘That is what I mean. You will do no good by enquiring for Miss Palliser at that dreadful little school, but any harm you may do has probably been done already. What you propose cannot help us, but it will satisfy your curiosity without further prejudice to the enquiry.’

  ‘I don’t like you in this mood,’ said Laura. Next day she went to London and stayed the night in Dame Beatrice’s Kensington house. On the following morning she caught the fast train to Ipswich, had lunch and then hired a car and set out for the school. As she had expected, it was indeed a small one, but it was housed in a beautiful Georgian mansion with a fine, simply-designed doorway and the broad windows of the period. Laura studied the house apprec
iatively and then rang the bell. A girl in a dark-blue overall answered it.

  ‘Miss Palliser?’ she said. ‘I don’t think there’s anybody here of that name. Would you care to step inside?’

  Laura stepped into a squarish hall from which rooms opened on either side. She was not kept waiting long. A tall, thin woman swam towards her.

  ‘You have a child?’ she asked.

  ‘Actually, yes,’ Laura replied. ‘But he is of masculine gender and tender years.’

  ‘But of course! We have special teachers for the nursery age.’

  ‘It was about a former member of staff that I came to enquire—a Miss Palliser.’

  ‘Palliser?’

  ‘Carrie—I’m sorry that I don’t know the full name— Carrie Palliser.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s rather important,’ said Laura. ‘The police…’

  ‘I am not in the least surprised. However, you can hardly expect me to jeopardise the good name of my school. I fear that I must decline to assist you, Mrs…’

  ‘Gavin. I may add that my husband is a Detective Chief-Inspector at Scotland Yard and that what we are investigating is a case of murder.’

  ‘I cannot help you.’

  ‘But Miss Palliser did teach here?’

  ‘Certainly, but that is hardly the point now.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Laura. ‘The point is that somebody has done away with Miss Palliser. Surely you are interested in that fact?’

  ‘Why should I be? Miss Palliser was thoroughly unsatisfactory in every way. Her teaching was slovenly and incompetent and her character was undesirable. Do you wish me to say more?’

  ‘Lots more,’ said Laura crisply. ‘You seem just the person to be able to tell me why she should have got herself murdered.’

  ‘Murdered? But…’

  ‘Oh, yes, I know it looked like the younger sister, and that the mother identified the body as such, but there seems no doubt now that it was Miss Palliser and not Mrs Coles who was killed.’

  ‘But—we had better go in here, Mrs Gavin. This news comes as a great shock. You see — ” She opened a door on her right and led the way into a large, high-ceilinged room panelled in white. ‘You see, Miss Palliser left here under a cloud.’

  ‘Stealing?’

  ‘Please sit down. Embezzlement, I suppose one would term it. Money collected for a school journey, you know. I had to make it good, and there isn’t much margin when one runs a school of this type. I had to dismiss her. I could not keep her on.’

  ‘But you didn’t go to the police?’

  ‘For the sake of the school. I cared nothing about Miss Palliser. In fact, she had caused me so much worry and expense that I own I felt vengeful. But it would not have done to take her to court on such a charge—the parents, you know. There would be a lack of confidence in me if they thought my staff capable of stealing money paid in by the children. Of course, I could not give her a testimonial which would have helped her to secure another teaching post and she left here threatening suicide. It was quite dreadful. And now you say that she is dead.’

  ‘Murdered.’

  ‘But who would have wanted to do such a terrible thing?’

  ‘That is what we hope to find out.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Laura, resolved not to be more enlightening.

  ‘I did not know that the police took their wives into partnership.’

  ‘Oh, it happens.’

  ‘Dear me! I had no idea! But, then, of course, I know very little about police procedure. In any case, I don’t see why you have come to see me.’

  ‘We are leaving no stone unturned. We are trying to reconstruct Miss Palliser’s past life to see whether something will come to light which will give us a clue to her murderer.’

  ‘I see. Well, there is no way in which I can help you. It won’t be necessary, I hope, for you to make it public that a—that a murdered woman was once on my staff?’

  ‘That shouldn’t be at all necessary. I understand…’ Laura hesitated a little in order to choose a tactful wording for her next remark, ‘… that is, I believe you have a system here by which the staff do not receive an annual salary, but are employed from term to term, so to speak.’

  ‘That is so. It is often done in schools of this type. It is necessary. We have no government grant of any kind.’

  ‘No, I appreciate that. Then… for how many terms did you employ Miss Palliser?’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘Have you any idea what she did during school holidays? Where she worked? With whom she stayed?’

  ‘None at all. She was well aware of the terms of her employment. She had agreed to them. What she did when she was not teaching here was none of my business.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Laura, ‘you would have no objection to my speaking to any member of the staff who was here with Miss Palliser?’

  ‘There is none.’

  ‘None?’

  ‘Staff changes are very frequent, Mrs Gavin. There is nobody, except myself, who was here in Miss Palliser’s time.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Well, thank you very much for giving up your own time like this. So far as you are concerned then, the dead woman is still Mrs Coles, not Miss Palliser.’

  The thin woman smiled in frozen fashion and rose. A minute later Laura was standing outside the front door with it closed behind her. Suddenly it opened again.’

  ‘Mrs Gavin!’ The blue-overalled girl was standing on the step.

  ‘Yes?’ said Laura, filled with a sudden, wild hope.

  ‘Miss Cummings wants to speak to you again. Will you come in?’

  Laura followed her and was shown into the white-panelled room. The proprietress of the school was standing at the window. She turned as Laura came in.

  ‘You did say murdered?’ she asked.

  ‘No doubt about it.’

  ‘It couldn’t possibly have been suicide? She did threaten it when she left here.’

  ‘The police don’t think it was anything but murder.’

  ‘But a mistake was made in identifying the body?’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘That must be very unusual. Who…?’

  ‘The mother.’

  ‘The mother? Oh, but surely, of all people, a mother would know!’

  ‘There were good reasons, in this case, for making a mistake, but I’m afraid I can’t disclose them.’

  ‘Of course not, of course not! I just wanted to be quite sure it wasn’t suicide. Not that I should feel the moral responsibility of it. I mean, people must expect to be dismissed if they show they can’t be trusted. But—well — ”

  ‘I quite understand. Well, it doesn’t seem that you can help us. Still, thank you, all the same.’

  ‘You could have a word at the village post office if you wanted to know any more about Miss Palliser. Mrs Pock is renowned for being indiscreet and loquacious.’

  ‘Thank you very much.’ This time Laura was not called back at the front door. She strode down the gravel drive to the waiting car and told the man to drive into the village and stop outside the post office.

  The post-mistress turned out to be a brisk, grey-haired, bright-eyed little woman with a Suffolk accent so pronounced that Laura, waiting while she conversed with a woman who was buying bacon at another counter, wondered whether she would be able to make head or tail of any information about Carrie Palliser which might be forthcoming. She discovered, however, that Mrs Pock’s conversation was not, after all, very difficult to follow. Laura opened the floodgates by buying a book of postage stamps and asking to be directed to the school. She was coming away from it; must have passed it, she was told; not that that was any wonder, for the board saying it was a school was almost hidden by that laurel hedge, and, anyway, it looked like a gentleman’s house, which is what it had been throughout Mrs Pock’s girlhood and almost up to the time that Pock was taken. Of course, it brought trade to the village. There were the children, just twenty o
f them, poor little things, with their pocket-money to spend, and then there were the parents coming down to see them, and take them out, which was why the Devil’s Advocate had been able to build on a dining-room and call itself an hotel, and then there were the sales of paint-brushes and crayons, exercise books and pencils…

  Laura wanted to keep the school in the foreground as a subject of conversation, but could perceive no opportunity of stemming the tide of Mrs Pock’s reminiscences long enough to put the questions she wanted to ask. Her opportunity came with the entrance of another customer. Mrs Pock broke off in mid-sentence to wish the newcomer good afternoon. It was not long before Laura gathered that this customer was the vicar’s wife. She wanted a packet of macaroni, and appeared to be able to cut short Mrs Pock’s remarks by addressing her sternly as Lizzie and adding that she was in a hurry.

  ‘And who’re you?’ she demanded, turning on Laura. ‘Don’t seem to know your face.’

  ‘It would be extraordinary if you did,’ retorted Laura, whose worst instincts (she told Dame Beatrice later) were aroused by the vicar’s wife. ‘This is the first time I have ever been in Seethe.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Looking for a murderer.’

  ‘What!’

  (So the Colonel’s lady and Judy O’Grady were sisters under their skins, thought Laura, as both her hearers made the same exclamation.)

  ‘I am helping to investigate the murder of a certain Mrs Coles, sister to a Miss Carrie Palliser, who, I am credibly informed, once taught at the How Red the Rose School in this village.’ (It was better to stick to the newspaper reports in talking to these two, Laura thought.)

  ‘A chair, Mrs Pock,’ said the vicar’s wife, ‘and another for the woman police-constable.’

  Mrs Pock, apparently hypnotised by the incumbent’s spouse, disappeared into the room behind the shop and came back with two dining-room chairs. These she brought round and placed one at each end of the counter.

  ‘Now!’ she said, beaming at Laura. ‘This is something like!’

  It seemed a good plan to Laura to accept this as an invitation to speak, so she plunged in before Mrs Pock could continue.