The Murder of Busy Lizzie mb-46

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘Didn’t she even say goodbye?’ asked Margaret.

  ‘Apparently not. Then Marie told me something which absolutely astonished me. Who do you think Miss Potter turns out to be?’

  ‘I gave up guessing games when I left the nursery,’ said Sebastian.

  ‘Why, it seems that Marie had known all the time that Miss Potter was second cousin to that old Miss Chayleigh who left Eliza the hotel (only it was a house then) and the estate on Great Skua.’

  ‘Well, that accounts for two things,’ said Sebastian. ‘It accounts for Cousin Marie’s putting up with that crawler for all these years…’

  ‘Yes, Marie was always looking out for the main chance,’ continued Clothilde. ‘I suppose Miss Potter gave out that she had expectations and Marie hoped to cash in on them some fine day.’

  ‘It also accounts for their visit to Great Skua last year,’ said Sebastian. ‘I always thought that visit was a bit odd. Cheltenham and Bournemouth were their kind of holiday places, not a bit of granite stuck out in the Atlantic Ocean. I suppose there was something in Eliza’s acknowledgment of their booking which gave the Potter cause to think that Eliza was leaving her something substantial in her will. Perhaps she thought she owed her something, as old Miss Chayleigh had left her nothing.’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Margaret, ‘whether it was the Potter creep who altered the name on that tombstone?’

  ‘When they visited Great Skua last year?’ said Sebastian. ‘I should think that’s more than likely. The stone-cutting was very roughly done and wasn’t all that fresh.’

  ‘The red paint was, though. Done by Farmer Allen Cranby, the other relative, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘I say,’ exclaimed Sebastian, addressing himself to Dame Beatrice, ‘you don’t think Potter was Crimp’s accessory to the murder of Aunt Eliza, do you? I mean, somebody must have helped Crimp to haul the body out of Puffins and heave it over the cliff.’

  ‘Now that I have heard Mrs Lovelaine’s story, I certainly think the police would like to have an account of Miss Potter’s movements after she left your cousin’s cottage,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I wonder when she took her departure?’

  ‘Oh, I can tell you that,’ said Clothilde. ‘It would have been early on the Saturday morning before I got to the cottage.’

  ‘Well, that seems to settle one thing,’ said Laura. ‘If she was with your cousin up to that Saturday morning, she has a clear alibi for the time Eliza Chayleigh was murdered.’

  ‘But, from what I know of Eliza’s will, there was no mention of Miss Potter in it,’ said Marius. ‘All I learned was that the money and property were to be divided among Ransome, Miss Crimp and myself.’

  ‘She may have made a new will,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Testators are known to do that without reference to former or subsequent beneficiaries.’

  ‘I wonder how soon Miss Potter got to know about Eliza Chayleigh’s death, though,’ said Laura. ‘News travels slowly from Great Skua.’

  ‘There is such an object as Dimbleton’s fast motorboat,’ said Margaret.

  ‘And a trip the farmer and his wife took on it,’ said Sebastian. ‘Weren’t they away from the island rather longer than was expected?’

  ‘But that means they knew Miss Potter,’ said Laura.

  ‘Yes, they could have done,’ said Marius. ‘We know that Miss Potter and Cousin Marie visited Great Skua last summer. And there is something else which perhaps I should mention, since Eliza’s will has been questioned. It seems that, at her death, a reasonably substantial sum of money was to come to me under the will of our parents. It was to be held in trust for Eliza until she married, but, if she did not marry, it was to come to me and I am expecting to get it as soon as her affairs (which appear to be in some disorder) can be settled and her debts paid.’

  ‘And you are certain that she did not marry?’ asked Dame Beatrice. ‘A marriage, as you must know, would make any former will invalid.’

  ‘She did marry,’ said Clothilde, in a very subdued tone. ‘At least, I know she intended to, so I suppose she did.’

  ‘What!’ exclaimed Marius.

  ‘That is why I was prepared to throw myself on her mercy. I thought she would get the money.’

  ‘But what on earth makes you think she married, my dear?’

  ‘She wrote to me. I did not show you the letter because I knew how disappointed you would be not to get the money, but it seemed to me certain that she fully intended to marry and that it would be a fait accompli long before you and the children got there. I must say, in fairness, that it wasn’t a gloating, nasty letter, but it was rather a triumphant one. She put at the end of it: You may break the news to my brother Marius if you wish, but I would prefer to tell him myself now that he is bringing the children to see me in July. It came so near the end of term, when you were busy marking the students’ papers, that I didn’t bother you with it.’

  ‘Well, there is one good thing about it, Mrs Lovelaine,’ said Laura bluntly. ‘If you knew there was no money in it for you, you can’t be suspected of having had any hand in causing Mrs Chayleigh’s death.’

  ‘But who on earth could she have married?’ asked Marius. ‘There was nobody on the island who would have been suitable.’

  ‘Except J. Dimbleton, boatman, perhaps,’ suggested Laura. ‘I always thought it was a bit fishy that he had money enough to buy himself a place in the syndicate.’

  ‘But Eliza would have disapproved strongly of the smuggling!’ said Marius. ‘Was not that her reason for wanting to visit the mainland, even though she knew how busy the hotel would be when all those ornithologists turned up?’

  ‘We don’t know why she wanted to go over to the mainland,’ said Laura, ‘but if the hotel was in debt, and if Crimp, as partner, was turning nasty about it, Mrs Chayleigh may have decided on any port in a storm and married Dimbleton in order to get the money your parents left in trust for her.’

  ‘I doubt very much whether she did marry,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Surely the news would have leaked out? Ransome seems to have made no mention of it to Sebastian and Margaret. Apart from that, Dimbleton himself would hardly have kept it a secret if he expected to gain by it. I think you will find that his part in the smugglers’ syndicate was bought out of his own savings.’

  ‘So my journey to Great Skua would have been all in vain, even had Eliza been alive?’ asked Clothilde.

  ‘Oh, Boobie! Well art thou named!’ exclaimed her son.

  ‘Oh, don’t repeat yourself!’ said his mother crossly.

  ‘Well,’ said Laura’s husband, when next he saw Dame Beatrice and his wife, ‘armed with your information our fellows got busy and Miss Crimp and Dimbleton are now in custody. They are being held on a charge of smuggling weapons. We can’t pin anything else on either of them at present, although I’d like to get Miss Crimp on a capital charge. She’s vindictive, which Dimbleton is not, although I’m sure he helped to dispose of the body.’

  ‘But they didn’t dispose of it,’ said Laura. ‘It was caught up in those rocks outside the witches’ cave. Dimbleton knows those waters well. He wouldn’t have pitched the body in unless he was sure it would be carried right out to sea. I think you’ve got the wrong pig by the ear. What has he to say for himself?’

  ‘Denies that he had any hand in it at all, as I said. Confesses to helping the gun-runners and says that three of them (whose names he refuses to divulge) were responsible for punishing Ransome Lovelaine because they believed him to be an informer…’

  ‘To whom, though?’ asked Laura.

  ‘To Sebastian and Margaret. They regarded that friendship as suspicious. Ransome and his father knew all about the gun-running, as did everybody else on the island, including Miss Crimp, who, as you yourself suspected, was in it up to the neck.’

  ‘But Ransome and Allen Cranby were not involved, were they?’

  ‘No, they were known to disapprove of it.’

  ‘Did the smugglers really intend Ransome to drown?’


  ‘He himself says not. They merely intended to frighten him. It was Allen Cranby who confessed, as you know, to attacking Marius Lovelaine when he left Puffins that night.’

  ‘Why on earth did he do it, though?’

  ‘He has nursed a grudge against the Lovelaines ever since Eliza was turned out by her parents. He also tried to force his way into the children’s chalet with the intention of beating up Sebastian.’

  ‘But the kids and their father were entirely innocent parties,’ protested Laura.

  ‘Yes, he admits that his ideas weren’t rational, but that Eliza’s death had triggered off his resentment of the way her family had treated her.’

  ‘What about the red-paint slogans on the gravestones and the Devil’s ladder Sebastian saw in the church tower? He told me about that when we were bathing one morning,’ said Laura.

  ‘Oh, that was the church cleaner herself. She wasn’t quite such a white witch as she made herself out to be.’

  ‘So all the abysmal Potter did was to deface the headstone of Gwendolyne Chayleigh and the other Chayleigh ancestors.’

  ‘Yes, and last year, at that. We’ve been to see the Lovelaines’ cousin and (upset and resentful as she is over losing her friend from whom she had hoped to gain so much) she is adamant that Miss Potter did not leave the cottage until the Saturday morning after Eliza died.’

  ‘I did not think, for that reason, that she could have had any hand in Eliza’s death,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I still think you should look closely at the farmer’s wife as Miss Crimp’s accomplice in the murder.’

  ‘Yes, but why?’

  ‘I think a long-standing grudge, fed by Miss Crimp, may have flared up, you know. Such things do happen.’

  ‘After thirty years?’ asked Gavin, doubtfully.

  ‘I think so. Left to herself, I doubt whether Ruth Cranby would ever have taken any action. From what I know of her, she is a remarkably placid woman. But old resentments burn deep, and there was always Ransome to remind her that, whereas Eliza, in her busy and headstrong way, had borne Allen Cranby a son, she herself was childless.’ .

  ‘But this is nothing but surmise, Dame B. You haven’t really anything to go on.’

  ‘Yes, I have two things. I firmly support Laura’s argument that, had Dimbleton been a party to the murder, he would have made certain that the body was safely disposed of. I have also a conviction that if two people took tea together in Puffins a day or two before my servants moved in to make ready for Laura and myself, those tea-drinkers are much more likely to have been two women than one woman and a man.’

  ‘And Dimbleton never drank tea,’ said Laura. ‘The only thing which bothers me, though, is why Eliza consented to take that food down to Puffins and, more than that, why she and the Crimp took tea together there. Eliza wouldn’t have wanted to linger if she was planning to catch the boat. In any case, the Crimp must have followed her up pretty quickly, yet we’ve heard of nobody who saw her leave the hotel that morning.’

  ‘I think I would like to have a word with that chambermaid who confessed to the Lovelaine children that she left her duties and descended to the landing-stage to have a word with her young man,’ said Dame Beatrice.

  ‘Well, if you’re going back to Great Skua, I wish you’d see what more you can find out,’ said Gavin. ‘I think the local police have come to a dead end and they can’t hold Crimp much longer merely on suspicion. There’s such a thing as habeas corpus. We can’t even prove, to the satisfaction of the courts, that Crimp was a prime mover in the smuggling racket. We can hold Dimbleton, on his own confession, for smuggling but smuggling isn’t murder.’

  ‘In this case it probably led to it, if the guns were shipped to Northern Ireland or to one of the Arab guerrilla bands,’ said Laura. ‘When do we go?’

  ‘Tomorrow. If we start early, we shall be in time to catch the boat. You know, there is an important witness who has not yet testified.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘The pig. Let us ask Henri to join us.’

  Dame Beatrice’s chef was a corpulent, jovial man, the husband of her somewhat vinegary maid. He presented himself without his apron and cap of office and appeared in a brown suit of undistinguished cut and a waistcoat of peculiar splendour.

  ‘Madame wishes to give orders for lunch?’

  ‘It would be a needless departure from custom, my accomplished one,’ Dame Beatrice replied in French. ‘No,’ she added, in English, ‘it is about pigs. You are an authority on pigs?’

  ‘Of the human kind, madame?’

  ‘No, no. I believe you buried a pig at the house called Puffins on the island of Great Skua.’

  ‘It was the flies, madame. Much good money gone to waste.’

  ‘I understand. Can you describe this pig?’

  ‘It was of a kind extraordinary. Figure to yourself, madame, a large pig which has but one large circle of black upon the flank, this being natural to it, not a bruise, not a wound, not a brand mark, but a part of the animal bestowed on it at its birth and by the good God, no doubt.’

  ‘A Gloucester Old Spot,’ explained Laura. ‘Not a breed to be seen everywhere. Large White, Berkshire, Essex and Wessex, even Tamworths, apart from all the crosses, yes. Gloucester Old Spots—where are we getting to, by the way?’

  ‘I do not know, but Henri’s description of the pig may help. However, as soon as we get to Great Skua, a word with the chambermaid.’

  The chambermaid was willing, indeed anxious, to talk.

  ‘Not as we know what’s to become of us,’ she said, ‘with no wages and all that, while Miss Crimp is with the police and poor Mrs Chayleigh dead and gone.’

  ‘Who is in charge here, then?’ Dame Beatrice asked.

  ‘Miss Crimp told the head waiter to carry on until one of the other two came to take over, but it don’t seem nobody’s interested.’

  By ‘the other two’ Dame Beatrice understood that Miss Crimp must have meant her fellow legatees Marius and Ransome. She made no comment, but came to the reason for her visit.

  ‘You remember me, I expect,’ she said, ‘but you do not know that, in a sense, I represent the forces of law and order. I mention it, as I feel it may give you reassurance. We go back to the day on which Mrs Chayleigh left this hotel alive for the last time.’

  ‘I’ve no wish to recall it, madam.’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘If I ’adn’t a-gone down to the beach, would it ’ave made any difference?’

  ‘Not the slightest, so do not think of that again. Can you recall what you heard Miss Crimp say to Mrs Chayleigh about a parcel or basket of food which was to go to the house that my secretary and I subsequently rented?’

  ‘I think so, madam, though p’raps not the exact words. So far as I recolleck, Miss Crimp says, “Well, if you must, you must.” Mrs Chayleigh says, “It’s my dooty, Constance, as I’ve told you before.” ’

  ‘Are you sure that she meant she had told Miss Crimp?’

  ‘Oh, yes, madam, and I knowed what she meant, too. We all knowed. It took Mrs Chayleigh to do something about it.’

  ‘The gun-running?’

  ‘Don’t matter sayin’ so now, ’cos it’s all over, ain’t it?’

  ‘But the two women seemed to be on friendly terms?’

  ‘So far as I could tell.’

  ‘Where were you when you overheard this conversation?’

  ‘In the entrance doin’ of the floor before I started in on the chalets.’

  ‘And your employers?’

  ‘Be’ind the counter where the guests clocks in. I don’t reckon they knowed I was there, ’cos they couldn’t see me from where they was.’

  ‘And Miss Crimp asked Mrs Chayleigh to leave this food at Puffins.’

  ‘Ah, her did.’

  ‘And Mrs Chayleigh made no demur?’

  ‘I don’t know, madam, do I? I ’eard Miss Crimp ask, and then I goes off to get me gear for doin’ out the chalets.’

  ‘But intending to slip away
down to the beach.’

  ‘I never let up on me work. I made it all up when I come back.’

  ‘Of course. You saw Mrs Chayleigh set off for Puffins…’

  ‘Yes, I did that.’

  ‘How long afterwards did Miss Crimp follow her?’

  ‘Miss Crimp?’

  ‘That is what I said.’

  ‘But she couldn’t of follered ’er, could she?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, I watched ’er goin’ the other way, didn’t I?’

  ‘How was that?’

  ‘Well, Mrs Chayleigh went one way and Miss Crimp went the other, over towards Farmer Cranby’s.’

  ‘Are you sure of this?’

  ‘Well, yes. I had to be careful, didn’t I, seein’ I was sneakin’ off to the beach.’

  ‘But you did see Miss Crimp leave the hotel?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I seen her go.’

  ‘And Mrs Chayleigh, too?’

  ‘Oh, yes, but about ’arf an hour after. I thought at the time it was funny.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, with the boat comin’ in, and all that, it seemed funny them both goin’ out of the ’otel like that.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell the police about it?’

  ‘That inspector never asked me, and I didn’t want it to come out as I’d been out of the ’otel myself just when they think poor Mrs Chayleigh got killed.’

  ‘Well, you must certainly tell them now.’

  ‘Well, this is the first bit of evidence we have that Miss Crimp was out of the hotel at what must have been the crucial time,’ said the inspector. ‘We questioned all the servants, of course, but it’s always a busy time when the summer boats come in, and nobody could say for certain whether Miss Crimp was in or out until you got a definite statement from this girl. I’ll talk to her and get her evidence down in writing. At your suggestion we’ve managed to trace Miss Potter. It seems that while she and her friend, Mrs Lovelaine’s cousin, were over last year, Miss Potter wormed her way into Eliza Chayleigh’s good graces by pleading extreme poverty owing to the fact that Mrs Chayleigh had been given the inheritance which she thought should have been enjoyed by herself and Farmer Cranby, as old Miss Chayleigh’s nearest relatives. She had heard nothing about Eliza’s death when she left her friend’s house. She had saved the money Eliza gave her and fled because Miss Crimp, who certainly seems a right one, had been threatening to accuse her of blackmailing Eliza on the score of the smuggling. It was nothing but impudent bluff, of course, but people like Miss Potter are easily frightened. Well, when I’ve got this girl’s evidence down on paper, I’ll face Miss Crimp with it, and we’ll see how she reacts. She’ll have to produce chapter and verse as to where she went and what she did on that particular morning.’