Fall of a Philanderer

by Carola Dunn

  “Let’s just go one more time over your route on Sunday afternoon.”

  Baskin sighed heavily and turned to the map. “Even if I’d made it up, which I didn’t, I’ve described it so many times already I could do it in my sleep.”

  “One more time, and this time try harder to think of anyone you spoke to. The bar at the Ferries Inn was crowded. Surely you exchanged a word or two with a customer or two. Who did you sit next to on the ferry? You’re not the sort of chap to sit in silence.”

  “I suppose Mrs. Fletcher’s told you how I butted in on the ferry here,” Baskin said with a grin. “Yes, I did speak to two or three chaps, but we didn’t exchange names. They were ordinary sort of chaps, fellow hikers, nothing distinctive about them, and all going off in different directions. I couldn’t give you a useful description of them to save my life, any more than Anstruther could tell you the make of motor-car he saw.”

  “Did you by any chance mention that you’re staying in Westcombe?”

  “Yes, we all talked about where we were staying and where we were going. As a matter of fact, I wrote down the Anstruthers’ address for one of them.”

  “For pity’s sake, why didn’t you say so? If we have to, we can probably track him down. What can you remember of where they all said they were staying? Come on, put your mind to it!”

  Baskin was busy putting his mind to it when Tumbelow’s leonine roar approached. Outside the hall it throttled down to a snarl. A backfire rang out like a gunshot, and the beast fell silent.

  Mallow and Puckle moved towards the door. Constable Smith stopped pounding on the typewriter keys and sat up straighter, alert. The general air of expectation diverted Baskin from his quest for an alibi. He and Alec both turned to watch.

  “What’s up?”

  “My two sergeants are supposed to be bringing in Alfred Coleman. He may or may not be a murderer, but he’s unquestionably a brute with an explosive temper. Altogether a nasty piece of work.”

  A couple of minutes passed in tense anticipation. Then voices were raised outside. Puckle went out, drawing his truncheon.

  Puckle returned, walking backwards. After him came Coleman, handcuffed, a mutter of mingled profanity and barnyard obscenity issuing from his lips. Tumbelow followed, also with drawn truncheon, and then Horrocks. Horrocks’s hand was tied up in a bloodstained handkerchief.

  “Set his dog on me,” he explained, his voice slightly shaky. “If Tumbelow hadn’t taken along his truncheon—”

  “I gave the beast a little tap on the head. Not to worry, sir, it’ll live to wake up with a headache. No signs of hydrophobia, just trained to be nasty, but his hand could do with a couple of stitches.”

  “Smith, ring up Dr. Vernon,” said Alec. “See if he or his nephew can drop by. If they’re both out, try the Vicarage. For heaven’s sake, sit down, man.”

  “I’m all right, sir.”

  “Good, because as soon as you’re stitched up, I have work for you. Go and wash the bite thoroughly for a start. Tumbelow, you did get the information I sent you for?”

  “Yes, sir. No trouble there.”

  “Excellent.” Alec contemplated Coleman. The farmer stood in sullen silence, having either run out of curses or bored himself with repetition. “Inspector, he’s all yours. Right-oh, Baskin, where were we?”

  With half an ear he heard Mallow suavely expounding to Coleman the penalty for assault upon a police officer in the execution of his duty. Baskin also seemed to have one ear cocked in that direction. Nonetheless, he managed to provide enough information about the hikers he had met to make it worth looking for them.

  Alec let him go, with the usual warning not to stray too far from Westcombe nor change his lodgings without notifying the police.

  “I don’t suppose you’d let me stay and watch?” Baskin said persuasively. “My boys are going to be thrilled to death that I’ve had a chance to see Scotland Yard in action, and they’ll think it a very poor show if I just walk out when you’re making an arrest.”

  “Unfortunately, we’re not, at least not for murder.”

  “Assaulting a policeman will do. Better, in fact, as an object lesson. It’s the sort of thing any high-spirited lad might contemplate, whereas murder is, I trust, rather beyond their purview.”

  “I hope so!” Alec was about to refuse his request when Andrew Vernon arrived, black bag in hand.

  The young would-be Thorndyke was panting and his step had lost some of its accustomed bounce. “I ran all the way to my uncle’s and back to get my bag,” he announced breathlessly, giving Baskin a curious look and a nod of greeting before turning back to Alec. “Didn’t think I’d need it for the inquest. I say, sir, jolly clever of you to guess I was at the Vicarage.”

  Alec smiled. “Not at all.”

  Vernon’s cheeks turned pink. “Yes, well … A dog bite, is it? Not rabid, I hope! Those shots of Pasteur’s vaccine are a pretty painful business, and he’d have to go to Plymouth or Exeter to get ’em. Where is he—my patient?”

  “There’s a sort of scullery at the back.”

  “Oh yes, home of the dreaded urn tea. You’ve no idea what one suffers, being devoted to a vicar’s daughter!” He dashed off, bag swinging.

  Alec sent Baskin off, ironically aware that he would in all probability go straight back to the boarding-house where he’d spend the rest of the afternoon with Daisy and Belinda. Still, he never had fancied the schoolmaster as a murderer, and the possible alibi witnesses he’d come up with sounded pretty convincing.

  Setting Smith to telephone a bulletin to the police in the districts where those witnesses might be found, Alec glanced over at Mallow and Coleman. The farmer had sat down but he appeared to be stubbornly silent. The inspector’s voice, soft and insidious, continued its undermining efforts. Alec left him to it and went on into the scullery.

  The men stood by the sink. Vernon was examining the wounds, a set of tooth-marks and a nasty, ragged tear across the ball of the thumb.

  “It’s a bit of a mess all right. Hold on while I dissolve some permanganate.” He found a thick white china cup in a cupboard and ran some tapwater into it. With a glass rod he stirred in purple crystals from a phial in his bag. “Right-oh, hold your hand over the sink while I slosh it on, then we’ll stitch it up and paint it with iodine. You’ll need to get it re-dressed daily till the stitches come out, by someone who knows what to look for in the way of infection.”

  Sergeant Horrocks looked rather green about the gills. Tumbelow came in with a couple of the folding chairs and set them up. Patient and doctor sat, and Vernon delved into his bag for his needle and sutures. Alec and Tumbelow met each other’s eyes and quietly left the room.

  “Pop along to the Schooner and fetch him a tot of brandy,” said Alec, taking out his wallet. “Leave me your notebook with the names and addresses you got from Mrs. Coleman.”

  The elderly dairy-maid had spoken nothing less than the truth: in the past two years no fewer than five girls had come and gone from the Coleman farm. Mrs. Coleman had provided their names and the names of the farms or villages where their families lived, all in the Malborough area. What had become of them after they left her service she was unable or unwilling to say.

  PC Leigh of Malborough was sure to know some of the answers. Where he didn’t, Tumbelow could run out on his bike and ask the families. By this evening they should have found out where all the girls had ended up, and at latest tomorrow morning they’d know whether Olive Coleman had taken refuge with any of them.

  And if she hadn’t? Alec didn’t want to think about that possibility. It might mean she had somehow managed to run away to London, where finding her would be next thing to impossible, or it might mean she was lying dead or injured on the cliffs, or in the sea below.

  Tumbelow came back with brandy. Alec set him and a neatly bandaged Horrocks to follow up the leads on Olive. He and Vernon and Puckle in their turn set out for the Schooner, where the inquest was to be held. There they met Dr. Wedderburn, t
he police surgeon, and Mr. Wallace in his capacity as coxswain of the lifeboat.

  The coroner was a solicitor, and a friend of Wallace. Without fuss, he took a minimum of necessary evidence from the men, followed by Nancy Enderby’s identification of the body as her husband’s. His direction to the jury was a masterpiece of brevity. It brought an inevitable verdict of murder by person or persons unknown.

  24

  “Then I asked for the usual,” said Alec, “an adjournment for the police to pursue their enquiries. The coroner immediately granted it. I don’t know when I’ve had such an obliging coroner.” He had managed to get away for dinner—an especially lavish meal to celebrate Peter Anstruther’s vindication—and, over coffee in the sitting room afterwards, he was satisfying Daisy’s and Baskin’s curiosity about the inquest.

  Daisy had been obliged to attend and even testify at a number of inquests. She frankly disliked them, but that didn’t mean she didn’t want to know exactly what had happened. “Nothing was said about whom you suspected? No mention of any of the Colemans?”

  ”Or me,” Baskin put in.

  “No, we’re playing the cards close to our collective chest, the few we possess. There was no need for evidence from any of the available suspects, and so no need to draw them to the attention of the press.”

  “Thank you!” said Baskin in heartfelt tones. “I’m already dreading what my headmaster is going to say about my getting involved in this business.”

  “You’d better hope the chap at the Yard finds out whatever it is you’re hiding,” Alec said grimly, “before we have to ask the papers to advertise for anyone who knows you to step forward.”

  Baskin’s good-natured face paled a little. “I hope you’ll let me know if it comes to that, so that I can consider what to do for the best.”

  “Why don’t you just go ahead and spill the beans?”

  “No. I’m sure one of the fellows I spoke to on Sunday will turn up and give me an alibi.”

  “Wishful thinking! It’s a long shot. You said yourself, none of them had fixed plans to stay in this area.”

  Daisy decided it was time to intervene. “Don’t be beastly, darling. What about Coleman? You had him in for questioning?”

  “And arrested him for setting his dog onto DS Horrocks.”

  “Oh no, is the sergeant hurt?”

  “Not seriously. A rather nasty bite on one hand.”

  “Did you shut Coleman up in Mrs. Puckle’s washhouse?”

  “No, he’s in the lock-up in Abbotsford. I’ll be surprised if the magistrate doesn’t bind him over to assizes. Assaulting a police officer is a serious offence.”

  “I’m sorry for poor Mr. Horrocks,” Daisy mused, “but in a way, it’s a good thing. Olive is more likely to cooperate if her father’s well out of the way, isn’t she?”

  “That’s a good point. I’ll make sure whoever brings her back tells her.”

  “You’ve found her?”

  “We think so. We’re pretty sure. One of the milkmaids from the farm now lives in Newton Abbot. She married a traveller in farm machinery, chap named Dabb. The local police sent someone round. No one was at home, so he spoke to a nosy neighbour, who says a young girl arrived Sunday evening, without luggage, and is staying. The husband’s gone off on his route. The visitor and Mrs. Dabb went to the pictures this evening. She’s calling herself by another name but I’d be astonished if it’s not Olive Coleman.”

  “In that case,” said Baskin, “she’ll tell you I wasn’t there and you can stop—”

  Vera drifted in, holding a telegram in one limp hand. Her vacant gaze was fixed, as usual, on some inner vision.

  “Who is the telegram for, Vera?” Daisy enquired.

  “Douglas Fairbanks, m’m,” murmured the maid.

  “No, really!”

  “Oh, I mean Donald Crisp, madam.”

  “Donald Baskin?” Baskin took it from her unresisting fingers and looked at the front. “Yes, it’s for me. Excuse me a moment.”

  As he opened the envelope, Vera drifted out again. He read the message, a brief one, and started to laugh. To Daisy’s ears, his laughter had a tinge of hysteria.

  “Good news?” she asked, with the unladylike “’satiable curtiosity” that so often got her into trouble. “Bad news?”

  Baskin dropped the telegram into her lap and flung himself into his chair. “Read it. Go on. Here I am practically getting myself arrested for obstructing the police, and all for nothing.”

  Daisy read aloud, “Consulted solicitor must have death certificate all my love Bethie.” She handed the form back.

  “Bethie,” said Baskin, “is Elizabeth Enderby. Otherwise, Mrs. George Enderby.”

  Daisy and Alec stared at him.

  “I don’t understand. What—?” Daisy began.

  “Great Scott!” Alec interrupted. “You don’t mean … bigamy?”

  “That’s just what I do mean. Let me tell you the story. It starts in the last year of the War.”

  To the military hospital where Elizabeth was training as a VAD nurse came Sergeant-Major George Enderby, with a nasty abdominal wound. Good-looking, smooth-spoken, charming, he swept her off her feet long before he was able to leave his bed, and married her the day he was discharged. Combining convalescence and honeymoon, they spent a month in Wiltshire with her family before he had to return to the Army and she to her hospital.

  “Bethie had two letters from France, and then another from Germany, after the Armistice. After that, nix. She never saw him or heard from him again. Well, you’ll say there’s nothing really surprising in that.”

  “No,” Alec agreed, “soldiers still died after the Armistice, of mines, accidents, and so on.”

  “Of course. So when she hadn’t heard for several months, neither from Enderby nor from the Army, her father made enquiries. He’s a nice old boy, Justice of the Peace, trying to uphold the old standards when they can really only just make ends meet. To cut a long story short, George Enderby had been demobbed, leaving only an accommodation address. Apparently he had never listed Bethie as next-of-kin.”

  “Who was his next-of-kin?” Daisy asked. “Couldn’t they enquire of his relatives?”

  “According to what he’d told Bethie, his only living relative was an ancient cousin in a nursing home somewhere in the Midlands. He’d listed Emma Bovary as next-of-kin, believe it or not.”

  “Good heavens!” Daisy couldn’t help laughing at the man’s cheek. “No one questioned it?”

  Baskin grinned. “I don’t suppose many military clerks read Flaubert. As a matter of fact, Bethie’s father didn’t catch the reference and was all for trying to track down Madame Bovary. Bethie and her mother persuaded him it was more to the point to ring up every Enderby in the London telephone book—it’s not so common a name—but no one admitted to a George in the family. They couldn’t afford a private ’tec. I think, too, by then Bethie wasn’t at all sure she wanted to find him if he didn’t want to be found.”

  “What did she do?”

  “She went on living at home and got a job in Swindon to help out the family coffers.”

  “And where do you come into this appalling story?” Alec demanded, glancing at his wrist-watch.

  “Darling, that’s obvious. Mr. Baskin went on a walking tour of Wiltshire and met Miss Elizabeth—Mrs. Enderby. What does she call herself?”

  “Mrs. Enderby. All the village people know she married him and assume he was killed in the War. Yes, I met her last summer. They changed the divorce law last year, did you know? A woman can now divorce her husband on the same grounds on which he can divorce her. That means she no longer has to prove desertion as well as adultery—sorry, Mrs. Fletcher, but that’s the legal lingo—she only has to prove his adultery. Which, as you can imagine,” Baskin added with understandable bitterness, “is difficult if you have no idea where to find him.”

  “The two of you wanted to get married but couldn’t see how she’d ever be able to get a divorce.”

/>   “Got it in one! Desertion alone is insufficient cause.”

  “How did you discover his whereabouts?” Alec asked impatiently.

  “Pure coincidence. A friend of the family who had met him during their month of wedded bliss happened to stay here at the Anstruthers’ last month. She and her husband went to the Schooner for a drink. She had only met George briefly, once or twice, six years ago, and not unnaturally couldn’t believe it was the same man, now married to another woman. But she told Bethie, bless her, and I came down to reconnoitre.”

  “You concluded it was the same man? You had a photograph?”

  “Yes and no. Bethie only had a couple of snaps and she’d got rid of them. But she’d described him in detail—”

  “Including the scar,” Daisy said severely.

  “Yes.” He flushed. “I suppose it was obvious I wanted to know where it was on his body, not where he got it.”

  “I had a feeling that was the case, but I don’t think Cecily noticed.”

  “I hope not. I had no idea then that Mrs. Anstruther was one of his victims or, believe me, I’d never have asked. In any case, she said he was wounded at Ypres, which matched. And she said he’d turned up out of the blue three years ago, no one knew where from, and he never talked about his past. I was as certain as I could be.”

  “Then you had him cold, didn’t you?” said Alec, obviously sceptical. “Proof of adultery no one could argue with. No motive for murder. At least, I presume you consider the scandal of divorce somewhat less daunting than the scandal of being arrested for murder?”

  “You bet! As my pupils would say.”

  “So why hang about, asking more questions and awakening suspicions instead of rushing back to Wiltshire and starting divorce proceedings?”

  “Bethie was worried about the present Mrs. Enderby,” Baskin explained. “If George had settled down and was making another woman happy, even if it was a bigamous marriage, she’d have felt terrible about ruining things if there was the slightest possibility of avoiding it.”

  “Hence your questions about whether Nancy was happy with Georgie Porgie!” said Daisy.