“Have you met David Lester?”
“No. I shall make a point of speaking with him before I go to Saxonchurch.”
“As I see it, he would have had as much opportunity as anybody else to change over the daggers.”
“His lion-skin was on a table with the rest of the properties, it is true, but I adhere to my theory that the daggers were changed over before the play opened on the third night. I have my reasons for thinking so and I have not changed my mind, although I am willing to be convinced.”
Young David Lester, fresh-faced and looking less than his twenty-two years, was employed in a bank, but not at the branch of which his father was manager. He lived with his parents and his mother had answered Detective-Inspector Conway’s telephone call.
“You want to bring Dame Beatrice to see David? But why?” Robina had enquired. Conway’s answer had not reassured her and she admitted the visitors in a reserved manner which indicated that she regarded their advent as an intrusion.
“I don’t know how you think David can help you,” she said.
“We don’t suppose he can,” said Conway, “but Dame Beatrice has talked to most of the actors and wouldn’t wish to leave anybody out.”
“She has left me out, for a start.”
“If you can convince me that you had any reason to wish Mr Bourton dead,” began Dame Beatrice, pausing for an instant. Robina took up the challenge.
“Of course I hadn’t, and neither had David,” she said. “You will get nothing out of him because he knows nothing. Why has the inquest been adjourned? That’s what I’d like to know. Donald’s death was the result of a stupid accident due to somebody’s carelessness. Why couldn’t they leave it at that?”
“Because carelessness which results in somebody’s death calls for investigation,” said Dame Beatrice. David Lester, who had come into the room, said quietly,
“All right, mother. I can handle this. I’ve nothing to hide.” He eyed Dame Beatrice with interest, but without apprehension, as his mother went out of the room. “Won’t you sit down?” he said politely. “You think Bourton was murdered, don’t you? You’ve seen Susan and Caroline, I hear. I can’t tell you anything more than they did. My things were on the same table as theirs and my mother’s props. Mrs Yorke’s things were all in a tent in the woods because, to change for the hunting-scene and then back again, she had to strip practically starkers, which she could hardly do in full view of the rest of the cast.”
“When do you suppose the exchange of daggers was made?” Dame Beatrice enquired.
“As though I have any idea! My view, for what it’s worth, is that the harmless dagger fell out of its belt when the clearing-up was done after the second performance and got kicked under the table, so, when Bourton had to take on the part, he realised there was no dagger and simply picked up the one that was lying there, thinking it was the retractable one.”
“That point has been made before, Mr Lester, but why should there have been another dagger, and a lethal one, so handy? That is why we suspect murder. Besides, if the dagger was lying on one of the tables, presumably it was in full view of all those who had reason to approach the tables, yet nobody has mentioned it. Are you telling me that you were the only person who saw it there when you collected your lion-skin and mask?”
“No, I didn’t see it. I was only offering a rational explanation of how it got into the pocket of Pyramus’s belt.”
“Well, that didn’t prove much,” said Conway, when they had left the house.
“It went a long way towards proving young Lester’s innocence,” said Dame Beatrice. “I offered him a tempting chance to say that he had seen the lethal dagger lying on the table, but he did not rise to the bait.”
The town of Saxonchurch, still called by its inhabitants a village, was enclosed by earthworks put up on the only bit of high ground between its two rivers. It was otherwise surrounded by watermeadows, and was a pleasant, homely little place reached after a drive along roads which were bordered for miles by rhododendrons. It was the gateway to the wildest and most picturesque part of the locality, a land very different from its own immediate surroundings. It bordered a land of dramatic coastline, great stretches of heath, a castle which had withstood for months the assaults of Cromwell’s troops and, not far from the sea, there was the most perfect, unspoiled Norman church in the county.
At Dame Beatrice’s suggestion, her own car and not an official police car, had been used for the journey. The detective-inspector drove it and found a parking-space just off the ancient market square. The shop of which he and Dame Beatrice were in quest was in one of the many side-roads which led to the market-place and it turned out to be a fine example of a small Georgian residence. It had a tympanum arch to the doorway inset with a finely-designed fanlight, but the ground-floor front windows had been altered to make a shop-front.
A middle-aged woman wearing a flowered overall and a number of ornate bracelets came forward as the inspector and Dame Beatrice went in. Dame Beatrice left the preliminaries to her companion.
“Mrs Wells?” he asked. The woman fluttered her hands at him, causing the bracelets to make a not unmelodious jingling sound.
“Oh, you will be the police, “ she said. “Have you brought the rapier?”
“No, madam. It is a valuable piece of evidence and I am not authorised to tote it around the countryside. You will have to identify it at the station.”
“Oh, but I can’t leave the shop.”
“When do you close?”
“At five, if there aren’t any customers, but of course I never turn anybody away.”
“We will come back at five. We are anxious to get the weapon identified.”
“But, as I think I said in my letter, I don’t suppose for a moment that it’s the one you want.”
“Can you give us a description of the purchaser?”
“More or less. He was quite a neatly-dressed well-spoken lad, about eighteen years old, I should think, and might have been five-seven or five-eight tall, a bit taller than I am, but not very much. He was slim-built, with fair hair just touching his collar. He had blue eyes—I noticed them particularly.”
“That’s a very helpful description, madam.”
“Does it fit anybody you’ve got your eye on?”
“Difficult to say at the moment, madam,” said Conway diplomatically, for his compliment had been a false one.
“Was the blade really of Toledo steel?” enquired Dame Beatrice. Tessa Wells smiled and shook her head.
“If the customer had been a collector and knowledgeable, I should never have said such a thing,” she admitted, “but the boy only wanted the rapier for school theatricals and Toledo blades are the only kind the general public have ever heard of except for the modern Wilkinson steel, so I told the lie hoping it would warn him not to go fooling about with the thing. You know what boys are.”
“You indicated in your letter that the purchase was an expensive one.”
“Well, I really thought he was wasting his money, but it wasn’t for me to say so. It’s hard enough to make a living without telling customers how they can do things on the cheap without buying from me. I was a bit suspicious, as a matter of fact, about his claim that he wanted the thing for theatricals. He seemed a respectable enough lad, but nowadays, what with their bicycle chains and flick-knives and all the horrors they go in for, you can’t trust any of them, can you?”
“I am myself somewhat of a connoisseuse of arms and armour. Will you give me what perhaps I may term a ‘trade description’ of the rapier?” said Dame Beatrice.
“Yes, if you think you know what I’ll be talking about. It won’t mean much to you if you don’t.” To Dame Beatrice’s amusement, Tessa Wells eyed her distrustfully before she went behind a curtain at the back of the shop and returned with a large ledger which she placed on top of a glass-topped show-case containing snuff-boxes and some ornate rings. There was also a small object on which Dame Beatrice had already fixed an ac
quisitive eye. “Here we are,” said the shopkeeper, opening the ledger and consulting a neat index. “Lot 20101. Rapier with flat quillons and sideguards ovoid, rather distinctive pommel, acorn button, rewired grip, ricasso three inches below quillons, swordsmith’s mark on blade, could be running wolf of Solingen. Overall length forty inches. Length of blade thirty-four inches. German, about 1620 if genuine. Ex private collection bombed in last war and sold among other things as salvage.”
“Thank you,” said Dame Beatrice, as Tessa closed the book. “What are you asking for the Babylonian cylinder seal?” She pointed to the tiny object in the show-case.
“That? You can have it for thirty pounds.”
“I think I will offer less. I think that you have little chance of selling it at that price. What does it represent?”
“Date-palms and date harvesting. Do you want me to roll it out for you?”
“Not at the moment, but we will talk again. Where can the inspector and I get some tea?”
“At the bow-fronted shop in the high street nearly opposite the Lion.”
“See you again at five, then, madam,” said Conway. “Much obliged for your help, I’m sure.”
At the police station that evening Tessa Wells was hesitant about identifying the weapon because, she said, the hilt had been somewhat altered.
“There was nothing so very special about the rapier itself. I expect they’ve got others like it in the Tower and other museums. They are sure to have a collection in Gratz and Vienna as well, and probably in the Musée Royal de l’Armée in Brussels, as well as in the Berlin and Solingen collections,” she said.
“To name but a few, as my secretary would say,” said Dame Beatrice, cackling.
“It does seem a shame to have cut this one down to this miserable sliver,” went on the dealer in antiques. “They’ve only left six inches of the blade and they’ve polished out the ricasso, although you can make out the different colour of the metal.”
“This weapon had to go in up to the hilt. It has killed a man, as I suppose you have heard,” said Dame Beatrice.
“You wouldn’t be bothering me otherwise, would you?”
“When we were in your shop you indicated, I think, that you thought the boy was wasting his money.”
“Well, if he only wanted the rapier for theatricals, I don’t see why he couldn’t have got a carpenter to make him a nice wooden one and painted it silver.”
“The hilt might have posed a problem.” Dame Beatrice signed to the inspector, who produced the dagger which had the retractable blade. “Tell me, Mrs Wells, if you do not think these hilts look very much alike.”
“Well, yes, to an untrained eye, I would agree they do. I’m sorry I can’t be positive about my rapier being cut down to this little dagger, but without the rest of the blade I couldn’t be sure.”
“What would you say if I suggested to you that the lad to whom you sold the rapier was not making the purchase on his own behalf, but was acting for somebody else?”
“For somebody else? But why?”
“Because, perhaps, the interested party did not want to appear in the transaction.”
“That boy in my shop seemed a good boy, but could have been got at, I suppose. They’ll do anything for money these days.”
“You did not recognise him as a local boy?”
“No, but I thought he might have come from a public school and that he was in the school play and wanted to show off a bit with a real rapier.”
“There is a public school just outside her town,” said the inspector to Dame Beatrice after they had taken Mrs Wells home, “so her idea would be valid enough.”
“Could the cutting down have been done in the school metalwork department?”
“It’s a line I can follow up. We know the date when the lad bought the rapier. Mrs Wells keeps good records.”
“One thing about the purchase surprised me and that is why I suggested that the boy was only an agent in the affair. I was surprised that he appears to have been alone when he bought the rapier. One would have supposed he would have had friends— possibly envious ones—with him when he made such an ostentatious and costly purchase.”
Enquiries at the school produced nothing. The school provided for boys whose hobby was woodwork, but there was no metalwork centre, neither had a school play been under contemplation. “You will appreciate, Inspector, that this is our examination term.”
“So, unless something turns up out of the blue,” said the Chief Constable to Dame Beatrice, “and, as I see it, that means getting our hands on the blacksmith, or whatever, who cut down that rapier, we’re stymied.‘”
“The antiques dealer came forward; why should the metalworker not decide to do the same?”
“I reckon there’s an answer to that one, ma’am,” said the inspector, who was present at the conference. “While the weapon was sold as a rapier, the dealer could afford to come forward, but whoever cut it down to dagger length might be asked some very awkward questions, don’t you think? Nobody likes getting mixed up with the police, however innocent they are.”
“No doubt you are right, but we need that man.”
“What, ma’am, is a ricasso?” asked Conway.
“Oh, a practice begun in the fourteenth century, and extensively used in the sixteenth century, of leaving a few inches at the top of the blade unsharpened, rough and unpolished as a protection to the fingers of the swordsman. The amount of protection was increased in some cases by the provision of a hook or a bar below the quillons, which are these side-pieces which form the cross-hilt of the weapon. In this case, as Mrs Wells saw, the original ricasso had been polished and sharpened because in order to sustain the resemblance to the retractable dagger, it was essential that when the actor used it, it should go in right up to the quillons, as the harmless dagger would be expected to do if it were to remain in place after the actor had struck himself with it.”
“You say we need this blacksmith, Dame Beatrice,” said the Chief Constable, “and we most certainly do. One thing, there are not so many independent blacksmiths nowadays.”
“Oh, now we’ve got this far, we shall turn him up sooner or later. It’s just a question of time, sir, and the usual spadework,” said Conway.
“I am hoping that he will not turn himself up,” said Dame Beatrice.
“I thought that’s just what we could do with,” said the Chief Constable. “You said so yourself, didn’t you?”
“I mean that I hope he will not present himself to us in the form of a corpse. I have a feeling that Mrs Wells may have started a landslide by coming to the police with her information about the rapier and I am sure no time should be lost in locating this man who turned it into a dagger. I hope he has sense enough to realise that his own safety may depend upon getting in touch with the authorities as soon as possible.”
“Depends whether he knows what the dagger was to be used for, ma’am,” said Conway. “I wish we could find the rest of the blade. There must be quite a length of it somewhere, if the rapier was the length the lady specified.”
“She refused to identify the dagger as having been part of the rapier she sold,” said Dame Beatrice, “but the circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that it was.”
Chapter 14
Body on the Foreshore
“… and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attain’d a beard.”
« ^ »
Some few miles eastward along the coast there was a resort which served as a place of retirement for the moderately affluent elderly. It had built up a reputation for great respectability and a certain exclusiveness. Bath-chairs had been a feature on the broad promenade and the hotels often had permanent residents who established little cliques among themselves and looked with jaundiced eye on any interlopers who commandeered their favourite armchairs in the lounges.
Both residents and visitors were proud of the town, its health-giving properties, its broad sands, its denes and public gardens,
the good taste, range and scope of its entertainments, its balmy air and its interesting hinterland.
Times change, however. Because it was prosperous the town grew, shops and restaurants were added, a sprawl of back streets spread out around the railway station, a large bus station and then a coach station came into being and gradually but inexorably the character of the town altered. With the advent of the motor-coaches came the day trippers; when the motor-car became ubiquitous visitors came who no longer booked in for a week, a fortnight, or a month at the hotels and boarding houses, but required only an overnight stop with breakfast before going their way to the next overnight stop.
The next development was more serious still. The formerly insular, prejudiced, stay-at-home English began to seek holidays abroad. The resort’s hotels began to depend more and more on letting their accommodation for political and other conferences, the annual meetings of learned societies, coach parties who would move off on the following morning and who were bitterly resented by even the equally transient birds of passage who had booked privately instead of en bloc, and the occasional wedding reception.
Then, on noisy, ton-up motorcycles, helmeted, black-jacketed, witless, destructive and ruthless, came the Bank Holiday gangs for a short orgy of window-smashing, drunkenness and terrorisation, the modern equivalent of shooting up the town. More frequent nuisances were the local gangs which grew up to combat the invaders and soon infested the back streets. They had their own territories, jealously guarded, which included a favourite pub and a favourite disco, and to enliven life further they made sporadic war on one another, combining only when the motorbike invaders arrived.
However, the town had been free from any major disturbances since the police had had to make a number of arrests on the May Day bank holiday following a bout of shop-window-smashing and insulting behaviour on the part of the invaders, so it was with some surprise that the Superintendent received a report that the stabbed body of a skinhead youth had been found on the foreshore which bordered the busy road to the ferry.
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