‘Oh, didn’t I mention that? The fellow had taken so much umbrage over the accusation of having stolen the wine that he had handed in his notice, so for the time under consideration he was unemployed.’
‘With leisure to make as much mischief as he could,’ said Laura.
‘That’s it. He says he called several times on Miss St Malo after that, but she was not in residence. He questioned the other residents, but nobody had seen her leave, so he states that he thought it his duty to contact the police because of the quarrel in the pub and the threats he had heard the woman utter. We made enquiries and we turned up a very significant fact. Lawrence and Miss St Malo were married twelve years ago at a registrar’s office in Portsmouth and we can find no evidence that they were ever divorced.’
‘But that is impossible!’ exclaimed the High Mistress. ‘As I said, he is married to the Dean’s secretary.’
‘Well, he may be married to her now,’ said the Chief Constable drily, ‘but he wasn’t a few weeks ago, not legally anyway, because then this St Malo woman was still alive and we can prove it.’
‘You have nothing, then, except this servant’s somewhat tainted evidence, to indicate that she is not alive at this moment,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘The fact remains that she has disappeared from her lodging, and that the last time she was seen was in company with Lawrence. Then there was the demand for money and a quarrel.’
‘Are there any other witnesses, apart from this disgruntled manservant?’ asked Dame Beatrice.
‘The barmaid at the public house remembers the quarrel. It was too early in the evening for the bar to be much patronised, so she noticed the couple particularly, and states that they seemed ill-assorted. In her own words, ‘him being quite the gentleman and her as common as muck’. However, she also states that the man talked the woman round, bought her a second drink and that they left the bar apparently on friendly terms. Later, two women who have rooms in the same lodginghouse as Miss St Malo saw her come back that same evening with a man, but this was so common an occurrence that they were not even interested and cannot describe the man. Miss St Malo seems to have done a moonlight flit, however.’
Lunch over, Dame Beatrice and Laura took the path between the High Mistress’s and the Fellows’ gardens and reached Bessie’s Quad. Here they found the student awaiting them. Laura went over to where she had parked the car on the previous afternoon and Dame Beatrice greeted Miss Runmede.
‘I do hope you have not been waiting long,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but I am more than ever interested in your ghostly prowler. I wonder whether you will be kind enough to show me exactly where he was on the occasions on which you saw him?’
‘Yes, of course I will.’
‘And, after that, if you have no objection, I should like to be taken to the window from which you observed him.’
‘Well,’ said Miss Runmede, when the two ghost-walks were completed, ‘that’s as near as I can remember, but it seems very different by daylight and of course it’s different from down here. I was high up in the building when I saw him each time.’
‘Yes, of course. I am very greatly obliged to you. Have no further fear. I am convinced that nobody will ever see the prowler again. In any case, as I told you, you are not the only person to have seen him, therefore steps have been taken.’
‘You wanted me to show you where I think he disappeared. Why?’
‘Because, from what you have shown me, I think your prowler, wearing a white anorak or some other kind of white jacket over dark trousers, entered the Abbess’s Walk from the main quadrangle and that is why he seemed to disappear. He then, I think, went into the cloisters and left by the way you took me to visit them first of all. I want to go to your window to determine whether, if that is what he did, you would or would not have been able to witness his departure.’
They mounted uncarpeted stone steps until they reached the top-floor landing. Here a long, bare corridor, interspersed with white-painted doors bearing names slotted into metal holders, indicated those who slept in each of the rooms.
‘Not so different from what the convent itself was like, I suppose,’ said Miss Runmede, producing a key and unlocking the door which bore her name.
‘Not so different from a present-day convent, perhaps,’ said Dame Beatrice, surveying the somewhat Spartan simplicity of the room which, except for a bookcase, a good copy of Jan Molenaer’s Two Boys and a Girl Making Music and a few family photographs, was bare to the point of austerity, ‘but very different, I think, from the long, cold dorters or dormitories of the Middle Ages. The passage lacks, too, the stair into the church for night prayers.’
She established herself at the window. ‘Would Miss Peterson’s room be directly below this one?’ she asked.
‘Not quite, but near enough. She shares a scout with Miss Hastings and Miss Hastings’s rooms back on to Miss Peterson’s. In fact, her sitting-room is exactly below this room, but looks out the other way.’
‘So Miss Hastings would not have seen your ghost?’
‘Not unless she was in Miss Peterson’s room talking to her and looking out of her window, but I don’t think even the dons sit up as late as two o’clock in the morning.’
When she and Laura were on their way home that afternoon, Dame Beatrice said: ‘Tell me, did you ever know of workmen enthusiastic enough to do too much digging and then have to fill in part of the excavation they had laboured so hard to make?’
‘Oh, you mean that mess they’ve left in the middle of the cloister garth at Abbesses College. What has turned your mind in that particular direction?’ Laura asked.
‘Miss Runmede’s reference to the sack which appears to have aroused your interest. That earth in the cloister garth has been disturbed quite recently.’
‘And you don’t think that was done by honest British workmen? You malign the hardworking fellows.’
‘That may or may not be so. All the same, I have suggested to the Chief Constable that an investigation of the cloister garth at Abbesses College might yield spectacular although macabre results. What with the report of a quarrel, with or without a reconciliation, Miss Runmede’s ghost, Miss Peterson’s prowler, and the apparent disappearance of Miss St Malo, I am wondering whether the surname of the apparition is Lawrence.’
‘I wonder whether Miss Peterson spotted the sack?’
‘I think that if Miss Peterson had noticed the sack she would have reported it.’
‘The idea would be that she saw the prowler the first night he came, but not the second.’
‘What makes you say that? It could be the other way round, could it not?’
‘Well, assuming – as I take it we are assuming – that the sack contained a body, I should imagine that the murderer came the first time to spy out the lie of the land and the second time to dispose of the contents of the sack.’
‘We are assuming, then, that it was the same man both times. That, I think, is likely, although not, of course, certain. As for your theory concerning the two visits, is it not just as likely that it was on the first one that he got rid of the body and that the second visit was to make sure that all was well? However, the matter can soon be settled. Get Abbesses College on the telephone and ask the porter to put you through to the New Buildings, so that you can speak to Miss Runmede. She should still be in College.’
‘She may be out for the evening,’ said Laura, going to the telephone. Miss Runmede, however, was working in her room and was soon answering the call. She was certain that the man had had the sack with him on the first occasion only.
‘It sounds now as though he was a burglar,’ she said, ‘but, if so, why should he appear from Bessie’s Quad? You can’t get in that way once the gatehouse portal is locked. Have they arrested him?’
‘Not yet. You mentioned two o’clock in the morning and that it was at the same hour, approximately, that you saw him each time.’
‘More or less. I remember heari
ng a clock strike and I hate hearing a clock strike at night. It sounds so sinister – “for whom the bell tolls” and all that.’
‘And it was moonlight both times, you stated.’
‘Moonlight and a clear sky, but even if they catch him, I couldn’t possibly identify him for the reasons I gave you.’
‘So what now?’ asked Laura, later.
‘Nothing. I have drawn the Chief Constable’s attention to the excavation in the cloister garth, and have told him that the man was dragging a sack. We can do no more.’
PART TWO
Seepage in the Cellar
CHAPTER 7
« ^ »
The hastily-rigged machinery of the law
Chief Superintendent Nicholl was a man of slow thought, but once an idea had lodged itself firmly in his mind he took immediate action. From the moment he had been told that a prowler had been spotted after midnight in the grounds of Abbesses College he had seen to it that two of his men were stationed on duty with reliefs every two hours. One was to remain in view of the gatehouse and Bessie’s Quad, the other to be on patrol duty around the grounds. They would remain until the arrival of the porter in the morning.
The news which he received from the Chief Constable following the luncheon at the High Mistress’s lodging urged him to take further measures, but he retained his bump of caution and proceeded with care.
The first thing he did was to ring up the firm of contractors who had undertaken to establish the lily-pond in the middle of the cloister garth. Their address he obtained from the senior porter. They were not a local firm, but were domiciled in Reading.
The job, he was told, would have been finished during the College vacation following the Lent term which had ended in the last week of March, except for the fact that the Lady Bursar (complained the manager with resigned but scathing emphasis) kept changing her mind. First she wanted a concrete pond, but then she demurred on the score of expense. Then she settled (or so the firm thought) for a pre-fabricated arrangement in glass fibre but, shown a specimen, was not certain that it would meet with her requirements as it was ‘not quite what she had thought of’.
Finally the workmen had excavated to the required depth for a green-painted, metal, kidney-shaped container of more or less the size she specified, but work was held up again when she discovered that to bring the vessel from the cloister into the garth would involve removing stone from two narrow arches, one giving admittance to the cloister itself and the other leading out of the cloister on to the square of grass it enclosed.
‘So there we are and there we’re stuck until she finally makes up her mind,’ said the manager, when he was interviewed by the Chief Superintendent, later.
‘So anybody could have known all about this job,’ said Nicholl.
‘I suppose so, if they’d visited the College. Some parts of it, I dare say, are open to the public during vacations.’
‘And this hole of yours…’
‘Begun in the third week of March and we should have had the whole job finished by the time the students came back at the beginning of April. The Lent vacation is a short one, but quite long enough for a little job like that, especially when we thought the lady had settled on a pre-fab pool. She planned to plant the lilies and things herself, you see. We had only to sink the pond.’
‘I’ve been along to the site. Your men don’t seem to have put up a workmen’s hut of any kind. I suppose it wasn’t necessary.’
‘Not really. We did suggest a hut, if only so that the men could have somewhere to leave their tools, but the lady pointed out that there was shelter in the cloister which of course we couldn’t gainsay. It was quite evident that she didn’t intend to let us put up a hut. She pointed out that it would spoil the amenities as far as visitors were concerned and that the excavation itself was eyesore enough. She is a very difficult, masterful lady and you can’t get the better of her.’
‘You never thought of suggesting that she should take her contract elsewhere, I suppose?’
‘Well, we’d already begun our excavation in preparation for the pool before all these difficulties cropped up. Also – well, we rather wanted to be able to put on our prospectus and our advertisements that we were contractors to the University.’
‘Were the same men employed all the time on this particular job?’
‘Oh, yes. Even without any mechanical aid – impossible, of course, in such an enclosed space – it was only a three-day job for three chaps and a wheelbarrow.’
‘I’d like to speak to those men and, more than that, I’d like to take them along to look at the excavation with me.’
‘Why? Anything wrong? Somebody been burying a body?’ asked the manager jovially. His face altered when Nicholl replied that his guess was as good as the next man’s and that stranger things had been known to happen.
‘Look here, now,’ the manager said anxiously, ‘I mean, my chaps are in the clear, I hope?’
‘No reason to suspect them and of course yours and mine may be nothing but wild guesses. I hope they are,’ said Nicholl. ‘Anyway don’t broadcast them.’
The workmen were named Bob, Ernie and Bert. Assured by Nicholl that nothing to their detriment was involved, they abandoned their first determination to ‘get our Union on to this,’ and (reluctantly on their part, even on the assurance of the head of the firm that their day’s pay was not in jeopardy) they were taken in police cars to Abbesses College.
Their comments were illuminating. Their first care was to inspect their tools. These had been stored in a dark corner of the cloister in readiness for a resumption of operations.
‘Them ent our tools,’ said Ernie. Bob was less precipitate.
‘I reckon them’s our tools,’ he said, ‘but not where we left ’em. Clean my shovel was, too and all. Look at her now!’ The excavation, when the men had ducked under the archway which was still partly choked by the trailing rose-stems, also came in for criticism. ‘That ent the way us left un. Somebody ben mucken around wi’ her, I reckon,’ Bob averred.
‘Ah,’ said Nicholl, ‘that’s so, is it? I suppose you’re sure?’
Bert, who had not, so far, committed himself to speech, grunted a mild oath and spat into the excavation. The others, with similar oral embellishment but without the added emphasis of expectoration, declared that they were certain.
‘Know the look of your own job when you sees her again,’ added Bob.
‘Right. That’s what we wanted to know. Well, I’m afraid we’re going to muck up your job still further, but we’ll make it all right with your firm.’
‘Struck oil, have us?’ asked Ernie, with heavy irony.
‘You never know,’ replied Nicholl. He sent them home in one of the police cars, and the remaining couple of his men, having returned to the cloister to impound two of the shovels, removed their tunics and rolled up their shirt-sleeves.
The already twice-worked soil was light and easy to shift, but even so they sweated for nearly three-quarters of an hour before they uncovered and retrieved the sack with its grisly contents.
‘The Lady Bursar didn’t bargain for the answer to all her shilly-shallying about what kind of pond she wanted,’ said the Chief Superintendent, reporting to the Chief Constable later. ‘If she’d made up her mind at the beginning to have the concrete basin instead of belly-aching about the cost and so on, we’d never have had a body, never in this life. That unfinished hole was an open invitation to a murderer.’
‘Yes, if the murderer knew the hole was there, and that throws the whole thing wide open. It isn’t possible to check on all the people who visited the College between the time the excavation was abandoned and the time that prowler with the sack was spotted in the grounds of the College.’
‘Let alone that we can’t be sure that that particular sack contained the body, sir.’
‘True. It’s proof presumptive, but not proof positive.’
‘It’s just over a week since the student and this lecturer spotted the pr
owler. Added to that, there’s no confirmation of the student’s story that the man was dragging a sack. The lecturer didn’t see it.’
‘But she only saw the chap once, so that isn’t important.’
‘The next thing is to get the body identified, assuming (without prejudice, of course) that it’s this woman, Coralie St Malo.’
‘Because she’s disappeared it doesn’t follow that she’s dead. She may have skipped her digs just because she couldn’t pay the rent. It’s a chancy kind of life for these chorus and bit-part people, I believe.’
‘Yes, there’s that. Well, we’d better get hold of Lawrence and see whether he recognises her. There was that row in the pub, sir. It could be a pointer.’
‘I suggest, as she was found on their premises, we try the College authorities first. If she’s who you think she might be, nobody here will recognise her, so then we can get on to Lawrence, although it’s chancing our arm a bit.’
‘Not a very nice job for these College ladies. She’s not the prettiest of sights, sir.’
‘We’ll try the College porters, then. They won’t be quite so squeamish and they may have spotted some suspicious character about the place. I wonder how the fellow got in after dark?’
CHAPTER 8
« ^ »
The lie in the twisted thought that travesties the truth
‘Hullo, what’s this?’ said Laura. She was sorting out the morning’s correspondence and the question was rhetorical. From a foolscap envelope she extracted a typed letter and, with it, a clipping from a newspaper. She was perusing the clipping when her employer came down to breakfast. She looked up from her reading.
‘The fun seems to be under way,’ she said. ‘I opened this envelope because it was typewritten, but it’s from the Chief Constable and I think the contents are for your personal information. The newspaper bit is all about that cloister garth at Abbesses College. They’ve found a body in it and the police are calling upon a man to assist them in their enquiries. I bet that means Lawrence!’
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