‘No, I can’t, unless Mrs Bly had some money hidden in the house. I don’t know very much about her, you see. This is my aunt’s cottage, and I’m just here for a fortnight’s holiday. Mrs Bly was rather a ghastly old witch, but to be killed like that…’ In spite of the heat, Daphne shivered a little.
Soon they were talking of other things. It transpired that Daphne was a stenographer in a City office, so they had at least a background in common. They were discussing the relative merits of various eating houses, and had each of them broached a second bottle of beer, when Stagge’s car drew up at the gate.
On arrival at the police station, Fen and Stagge had found a certain amount of information awaiting them.
First in interest came the experiment with the reports. An educated, rather sombre-looking young constable had carried it out. He said, ‘As you ordered, sir, I spoke to Mr Etherege, and he gave me a list of the reports which Mr Somers still had to do at ten o’clock last evening. I borrowed some blank forms from the headmaster’s secretary, and copied Mr Somers’ remarks as fast as I could. It took me fifty-five minutes.’
‘Pretty well what you prophesied, sir,’ said Stagge to Fen.
Fen nodded. ‘You write quickly?’ he asked the constable.
‘Yes, sir. More quickly than most people.’
‘There’s our minimum, then,’ said Stagge. ‘And it’s going to be very helpful when we get those alibi reports.’
The rest of their information was of a more negative kind. The post-mortem on Somers had revealed nothing out of the way, and a ballistics expert had confirmed Stagge’s opinion that both bullets came from the same gun. Stagge was engaged in drawing some heavily qualified inferences from this latter fact when Mr Plumstead’s call came through.
There was nothing for it, of course, but to set forth to the scene of this third disaster. Stagge drove, with Fen sitting beside him and the sergeant with his equipment in the back. The doctor followed in his own car.
‘This just about puts the lid on it,’ said Stagge. ‘Three murders and a disappearance, all in twenty-four hours. Though as far as I can gather, this thing isn’t the same class of crime as the others.’ He snorted with vexation. ‘Not that that helps,’ he added, ‘unless it means we can get it cleared up on the spot. And I’m not optimistic enough to expect that.’
At Daphne’s cottage they picked up Mr Plumstead, and Stagge had some difficulty, after Fen had observed the beer and been introduced to the girl, in getting him back again into the car. Then they drove on to Mrs Bly’s cottage.
All was as Mr Plumstead had left it, and the routine of investigation need not be described again. Mr Plumstead gave Stagge a detailed account of his own part in the affair, and submitted to have his fingerprints taken – in order, as Stagge remarked, to distinguish them from those of any other stranger who might have been in the place. The doctor’s report was brief and to the point: Mrs Bly had been hit once, presumably with the poker, and had died instantly. Fen, having ascertained that the all-shrouding dust bore no recognizable footmarks, wandered off alone into the other rooms of the cottage. Their squalor, being indescribable, will not be described. One thing, however, was noteworthy: in the kitchen a new iron cooking stove had been very recently installed, and the process had apparently involved the partial demolition of the old fireplace.
Subsequently Fen went out into the front garden, where he made overtures of friendship to the duck. He was still engaged in this profitless task when Stagge emerged and suggested that they should stroll a few yards up the lane.
When they were out of earshot of the others: ‘Well?’ Fen demanded.
‘Plumstead’s prints,’ said Stagge, ‘are the only ones on that poker.’
‘Which hand?’
‘The right.’
‘He’s left-handed.’
‘Yes. I noticed that.’
‘And they shouldn’t be the only prints on the poker. What about the old woman’s?’
They had reached the car. Stagge halted and put one foot on the running-board. The lane here was tarred, and the tar, melting in bubbles, made it sticky underfoot.
‘Oh, the poker’s been wiped all right,’ Stagge answered. ‘The question is – who wiped it? Plumstead, or someone else?’
Fen considered. ‘You might outline the case against Plumstead,’ he said mildly.
‘The case is that having killed the old woman he wiped the poker clear of prints, and then put his own right-hand prints back on it, relying on our assuming that to be a plant. The bump on his head would be self-inflicted; it isn’t a very serious one.’
‘But wouldn’t that be oversubtle? This lane isn’t much frequented, I imagine. Having killed her, the sensible thing to do would be to simply remove the traces of his presence and walk away. I understand that he’s a stranger here, so there’d be nothing on earth to connect him with the crime.’
Stagge drummed his fingers on the hot metal of the car. ‘I agree, of course. There’s no proof that Plumstead’s story isn’t true; it hangs together well enough, and I must admit that he doesn’t look like a homicidal maniac to me.’
‘You postulate a maniac, then?’
‘Not necessarily. I was speaking loosely. The old woman may have been a miser and have had something worth stealing.’
‘It’s all very hypothetical,’ said Fen. ‘Were there no clues other than the fingerprints?’
‘None that I could see.’ Stagge hesitated. ‘Do you think there’s any connection between this murder and the others?’
‘Apparently not. But until we get some line on motive it’s impossible to be sure. I don’t like all this lack of motive; it’s unnatural. The trouble is, not so much that we can’t fit the puzzle together, as that we haven’t got all the pieces.’ There was a short silence. ‘Well, what are your plans?’
Stagge looked at his watch. ‘It’s twenty past twelve…I shall take Plumstead down to the station to dictate and sign a statement, and ask him to stay on in Castrevenford for the time being; as he’s on holiday, that oughtn’t to inconvenience him. Then I’ve got to see the chief constable. This afternoon’ – Stagge sighed profoundly – ‘well, I’m not sure as yet. I’ve got more to do than I can really cope with.’
‘Let me know as soon as you get the alibi reports.’
‘Of course, sir. Shall I drop you at the school on the way back into town?’
‘Thanks, but I’ll stay here and snoop about. Luckily, my lunch isn’t till half past one. Are we far from the school?’
‘About three miles.’
‘Ah. I wonder if I can get a car to take me back there. I ought to have brought my own.’
‘If you like, sir, I’ll send up a taxi from Castrevenford.’
‘Good,’ said Fen. ‘Quarter past one at the village pub, whatever it’s called.’
‘The Beacon…Oh, there’s one other thing, sir. I found this in one of Mrs Bly’s pockets. Would it be valuable, do you suppose?’
He handed the object over. It was a miniature, painted on silver and with a very simple frame, much tarnished, of the same metal. The head, set against a bright blue background, was of a young man, wearing a slashed black tunic with a broad collar. The hair was dark brown, and the eyes were set rather widely apart, with prominent lids. Apart from the small moustache, the sitter was clean-shaven. His nose was rounded at the tip, and his lips were very shapely. To the left of the head, against the background, was the inscription: AE SVAE 29.
Fen gazed at it with considerable interest.
‘I’m far from being an expert on these things,’ he said, ‘but I should imagine it probably is valuable. It’s Elizabethan, of course, and conceivably by Hilliard. As the cottage is Elizabethan, too, I dare say Mrs Bly found it there.’
‘Ah.’ Stagge took the miniature and put it carefully away. ‘And if she’d found any other things of the same kind, theft might be our motive. Very well, sir. I’ll look after it. And now we must make a move.’
He returned to the
cottage. And Fen, after a moment’s thought, walked back along the lane to visit Daphne Savage.
9
Love’s Labour’s Won
Fen might have said about crime what Lewis Carroll said about children: ‘I’m not omnivorous – like a pig.’ He preferred its delicatessen to its bread and butter. If, therefore, Mrs Bly had been killed by some vagrant, out of mere cupidity, he was only too willing to leave the investigation to Stagge.
But the affair could not so easily be dismissed; it involved – if Plumstead were speaking the truth – subtleties beyond the mental scope of a tramp, and moreover its temporal and geographical coincidence with the other deaths was enough to arouse suspicion. A link might exist somewhere, and it would not be wasting time to attempt to ferret it out.
Through a cloud of dust thrown up by the wheels of Stagge’s car Fen came to the gate of Daphne’s cottage. She had settled down again on the rug on the front lawn, but she looked up with a smile of greeting as he approached.
‘You’d like some beer,’ she stated unarguably, and Fen at once conceived a high opinion of her intelligence. Without waiting for a reply she got up and hurried into the cottage, returning thence with some bottles and a pint glass.
‘You’re most hospitable,’ said Fen, who by now was sprawling on the ground, chewing the stem of a long grass.
‘I’m most curious,’ Daphne answered. She sat down and poured the beer. ‘I want to know what’s been happening.’
Fen smiled at her. She looked very cool and fresh in the white frock. Her ash-blonde hair, done in a long bob, swung against her shoulders as she moved, and the widely spaced green eyes were full of humour and good spirits. She handed him the glass, and he drank deeply.
‘There are few young women,’ he observed dreamily, ‘who know that one wants beer, and that one wants good beer, and that one wants it in a pint glass. I envy the man who marries you.’
She laughed. ‘I’ve got corresponding disadvantages,’ she said, and added hesitantly, ‘You must forgive me, but I didn’t quite grasp who you were. Are you a policeman?’
‘Heaven forbid. I’m a professor.’
‘Of what?’
‘English.’
She sat up abruptly. ‘You’re not Gervase Fen?’
‘Certainly I am.’
Daphne grinned. ‘Then I’ve heard a lot about you. We have a mutual friend.’
‘Oh? Who’s that?’
‘A girl called Sally Carstairs.’
‘Good heavens!’ Fen exclaimed. ‘I haven’t set eyes on her since she inherited all that money from Miss Snaith. What is she doing? Is she married?’
‘No, not married. She’s got a flat in town.’
Fen reflected. ‘It must be nearly ten years now…Lord, how old I’m getting! Next time you see her, tell her it’s extremely wicked and ungrateful of her not to have kept in touch with me.’
‘She has a conscience about it,’ Daphne assured him. ‘And she’s always talking about the toyshop, and Miss Tardy, and Richard Cadogan, and all the rest of it.’
Fen sighed. ‘I was irresponsible and carefree in those days,’ he said. ‘I’ve sobered up a lot since then, and become nostalgic, which is a sign of diminished vitality…Well, well. My love to her when you next meet.’
‘Of course. But what are you doing in this part of the world?’
‘Giving away the prizes,’ Fen explained, ‘at Castrevenford School.’
‘And you just heard about this business of Mrs Bly and felt you must be in on it?’
‘Yes,’ said Fen, lying discreetly. ‘In itself it’s a crude and brutal crime, but – as Holmes would have said – it presents certain points of interest.’
Daphne wriggled to a more comfortable position and smoothed down her skirt. ‘Do tell me,’ she said. ‘That is, unless you’re anxious not to give things away.’
Fen gave her a brief outline of the facts. She listened attentively, a little frown of concentration puckering her face.
‘I suppose,’ she ventured, ‘that Mr Plumstead’s story is true? When I saw him pass in the police car, I wondered…’
‘Personally, I believe it is.’ Fen offered her a cigarette.
‘No, thanks, I’ve had to give up smoking since the budget…But what I don’t see is why anyone should kill her at all.’
‘That’s our problem, too.’ Fen lit a cigarette for himself and threw the spent match on to a flower bed. ‘I was wondering if you could help.’
She shook her head. ‘I know very little about Mrs Bly. You see, this is my aunt’s cottage, and I’m just here on holiday.’
‘Ah,’ said Fen. ‘I didn’t realize that.’ He drained his glass. ‘But you might know of some local person who could give me information. Your aunt, for instance.’
‘She’s away for the day. I really think the pub’s your best bet. I know Mr Beresford – that’s the landlord – quite well, and if I introduce you…’
Fen scrambled to his feet with an alacrity which nullified his diagnosis of waning vitality.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘That has the additional advantage that I’ll be able to stand you a drink. Is it far?’
‘No, only a few yards.’ Daphne emulated his movement, but with a good deal more grace. ‘But look here, there’s one thing I want to know.’
‘Yes?’
‘What are the police doing with Mr Plumstead?’
‘Only getting him to dictate a statement.’
‘He isn’t – he didn’t say if he was coming back here at all?’ Daphne spoke rather too casually for conviction.
‘If he has any sense,’ said Fen, ‘he’ll come back the first instant he can. They’re going to ask him to stay in Castrevenford for a bit.’
‘But he won’t be able to.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Because all the hotels and boarding houses are packed out with parents.’
‘Then I’ll advise him to come and stay at the pub here.’
‘I really think,’ said Daphne earnestly, ‘that it’s his only chance.’
‘I’ll see that he doesn’t miss it,’ Fen promised. ‘What do you think of him, by the way?’
Daphne was already making for the gate. ‘He seems all right,’ she replied airily.
The hamlet of Ravensward had never grown sufficiently to require a church of its own. It was a peaceful agglomeration of small buildings, scarcely any of them later in date than 1800. There was a small triangular green, and a little stream, now reduced to a trickle, which ran under a narrow humped bridge. Some cheerful, grimy boys were optimistically fishing it on their way home from school. Otherwise no one seemed to be out of doors.
The Beacon stood next door to a little shop which sold soap and string and boiled sweets and hair-pins and envelopes. It had a steeply sloping gabled roof and tall chimneys, and was timber-framed, its façade an agreeable pattern of black and white. There was a lounge bar, but it was obviously very little used. The public bar, which Fen and Daphne entered, was low-built, dark and cool, with old wooden settles, well scrubbed, and dented pewter tankards hung in rows. It was pleasantly free from facetious placards, and, apart from the landlord himself, was empty.
Mr Beresford proved to be a grave, elderly man with a complexion like a pippin. He welcomed Daphne and was ceremonially introduced to Fen; plainly anonymity was not encouraged at the Beacon. Fen ordered pints of bitter for Mr Beresford and himself, and a half pint for Daphne.
‘Professor Fen wants to know about Mrs Bly, Mr Beresford,’ said Daphne.
‘Do ’e, now?’ Mr Beresford replied judicially. He scrutinized Fen closely for a moment, as if to ascertain that this wish was not prompted by any kind of frivolity, and appeared satisfied by what he saw. ‘Well, seeing as ’e’s a friend o’ yours, Miss Savage…’
He came out from behind the bar, and they all carried their drinks to a table by a window. No one spoke while they were settling down; the surroundings made it unthinkable to do more than one thing at a time. Mr Beres
ford gravely proposed the health of his customers; they responded suitably; everyone drank. Then Mr Beresford set down his tankard, produced a pipe, thrust tobacco into its bowl with a callused thumb, and said, ‘Well…’
There was a question in Daphne’s eyes, and Fen nodded.
‘I don’t know if you’ve heard the news, Mr Beresford,’ Daphne said. ‘About Mrs Bly, I mean.’
‘News, Miss Savage? What news might that be? She come ’ome again this morning – that I knows.’
‘She’s been murdered, Mr Beresford.’
They waited while Mr Beresford assimilated this intelligence. It was clearly not a part of his code to display strong emotion, whatever the circumstances. After a very considerable hiatus he said, ‘Murdered, you tell me? Ah. That’s bad. Very bad. Very bad indeed.’
Upon this judgment, which though scarcely novel was spoken so impressively as to invest the word bad with the overtones of a whole ethical philosophy – upon this judgment he paused expectantly; and Daphne, taking her cue, narrated briefly the circumstances of Mrs Bly’s demise. Mr Beresford heard her out with close attention.
‘It’s bad,’ he repeated when she had finished. ‘Shocking bad.’ He seemed bewitched by the monosyllable, as if it were a rune. ‘And this gen’l’man’ – he nodded towards Fen – ‘’e’m one o’ the police?’
‘He’s working with them, yes,’ said Daphne. ‘And I told him that if anyone in Ravensward could help him, you could.’
With a swift, decisive movement Mr Beresford placed his pipe in his mouth and lit it. ‘Bad,’ he murmured, and made liquid noises inside the stem. Fen, who though appreciative of the leisurely tempo of rustic intercourse was mindful of his afternoon’s engagements, made a discreet effort to accelerate matters.
‘General information is what I need,’ he remarked briskly. ‘About friends and relatives and habits and so forth.’
‘Ah,’ said Mr Beresford, nodding. ‘Well, you shall hear what I’m able to tell you, sir.’ He continued nodding, apparently in order to keep them silent while he arranged his thoughts. Then he took a draught of beer.
‘She was a foreigner,’ he began abruptly. ‘Not been ’ere in the village more’n fifteen year.’
Love Lies Bleeding Page 11
