‘Blackmail comes under the heading of dangerous trades, certainly. Not only is it a major crime, but the blackmailer can never be certain that one day one of the victims will not turn, like the proverbial worm. “Publish and be damned” is not only a courageous but the most sensible reply to blackmailers. If it came to the point, they would hardly dare to carry out their threats.’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I don’t know whether Coberley killed Gloria or not, but I don’t want to see Wotton or McMaster in the dock in his place.’
‘ “Why, gentle sweet, you shall see no such thing”,’ said Laura Gavin mockingly, and Dame Beatrice added, ‘Ring up Mrs Wotton and ask her to find out whether Mrs Coberley would care for me to call on her. I have my own reasons for believing in Mr Coberley’s technical innocence.’
‘His technical innocence?’
‘Oh, I think it more than likely that Mr Coberley might have killed Miss Mundy, if — ’
‘If somebody else hadn’t beaten him to it,’ said Laura Gavin. I returned to Beeches Lawn puzzled and perturbed.
To my astonishment, Marigold Coberley’s response to Celia’s call (which was in person and not over the telephone) was a blunt and apparently unalterable refusal to entertain a visit from Dame Beatrice.
‘But how extremely foolish of her,’ I said. ‘Surely she knows of the immense reputation Dame Beatrice has built up for herself? Surely she knows of her standing at the Home Office? Surely she realises that Dame Beatrice would not offer help if she didn’t believe that poor old Coberley is innocent of the charge? Can’t you tackle the silly girl again and persuade her to have a bit of sense?’
‘No, I can’t. I can’t say more to her than I have said already. Have a go at her yourself, Corin, if you think you can do any better than I’ve done. I’ve talked my head off and done no good at all. She must be mad to refuse such wonderful help, but there it is. She says it’s up to the lawyers. It’s their job now.’
With some embarrassment I informed Dame Beatrice of the result of my telephone call. She listened to my apologetic explanation that Marigold must be suffering from severe shock and depression and did not attempt to cut me short. At the end she said, ‘You have told me what I expected to hear.’
‘That Marigold Coberley would turn down your most kind and generous offer?’
‘Yes. Come and see me again, if you can spare the time.’
‘Right away,’ I said. When I arrived I repeated my question: did she know that Marigold would refuse her help?
‘Not exactly that. What you have told me confirms my view that Marigold Coberley believes that her husband did kill Gloria Mundy. Oh, well, if the cup is full, perhaps the saucer will be more receptive. I shall go to visit Cranford Coberley himself.’
‘If it’s a permitted question,’ I said diffidently, ‘do you believe that Coberley is innocent?’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘the time sequence may well be wrong.’
‘Oh? In what way?’ I enquired.
‘I think I agree with William Underedge’s theory that the murder may have been committed before Mrs Coberley slipped on the school-house steps and hurt herself.’
‘If that could be proved, it would go a long way towards removing Coberley’s motive for murder,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ agreed Dame Beatrice, ‘if it could be proved, but that proof may be difficult to find and it may be non-existent. I will hear what the man himself has to say. I doubt whether he will refuse to see me, although he would be within his rights to do so.’
‘He would be a fool to refuse help,’ said Laura. ‘As for his wife, even if she does think him guilty, surely she wants to do the best she can for him.’
‘Possibly she thinks she is doing the best she can for him,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘She may have heard that I have a passion for finding out the truth, so, if she really believes that he murdered Miss Mundy, she will do everything she can to keep him out of my clutches. Well, now, Mr Stratford, I need to know the address of the hospital. I shall look in on Miss Brockworth tomorrow morning at eleven. Would it fit in with your plans to meet me at the hospital gates at twelve?’
‘But they won’t let you in at eleven,’ I said. ‘The visiting hours, you know.’
She grinned at me with a mirthless stretching of her mouth. Laura Gavin told me impatiently not to be silly.
‘There isn’t a hospital in the land which would keep Dame Beatrice out,’ she said. I apologised. Dame Beatrice cackled and our next meeting was arranged forthwith. I parked in the hospital grounds at a quarter to twelve to make certain that I did not keep Dame Beatrice waiting, got out of my car to stretch my legs after having driven to the hospital from McMaster’s Dorset hotel where I had spent the night, and saw Laura Gavin at the wheel of another car. I went up to it and she wound down the window.
‘Good morning,’ I said. ‘I’ve been wondering why Dame Beatrice asked me to meet her here.’
‘I think she wants to tell you what she and Miss Brockworth have had to say to one another. Are you free for the rest of the day?’
At this moment Dame Beatrice emerged from the main door of the hospital. She was accompanied by nurses who were attending her as though she were royalty. I walked towards them and Dame Beatrice took her leave. I escorted her to her car.
‘We are all to lunch at Beeches Lawn,’ she said. ‘Will you lead the way and then Laura can follow you.’
It was clear that Anthony and Celia welcomed us with relief as well as with enthusiasm. Celia, in fact, went so far as to say that poor Cranford Coberley would be all right now.
‘Not necessarily,’ Dame Beatrice said. ‘So much depends upon when the murder was committed. Unless that can be established — and upon present evidence it looks almost impossible to say when the killing took place — it is the vexed question of an alibi which faces us. This afternoon I shall hear all that Mr Coberley can tell me about his movements after the last time that Miss Mundy was seen at the old house.’
‘The worst of it is,’ said Anthony, ‘that people living their ordinary lives and carrying out their normal duties have no idea that they may need to provide themselves with an alibi for any particular time. I doubt very much whether I could remember what I was doing or where I was at any particular time between when Gloria rushed out of this house in a blazing temper because of naughty old Eg and the soup, and the time the body was discovered after the fire.’
Over lunch the three of us, Anthony, Celia and myself, filled in the blanks to the best of our ability. After lunch Dame Beatrice went over the various points and Laura Gavin took down our answers. It did not seem to me that these helped very much. She had a complete list of the people who had been at lunch on the day that Gloria had shown up, and I had already told her of the visit paid by McMaster and how he had had to stay the night because of the storm, and we mentioned the departure and return of Kay Shortwood and Roland Thornbury on the same day.
‘They saw Gloria at the window of the old house, so she was certainly alive then,’ said Celia, ‘and Aunt Eglantine saw her after that.’
‘So that narrows the time a bit,’ said Anthony. ‘Aunt Eg met her at the old house when she elected to climb that rotten staircase and brought it down with her.’
‘She told me about that,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘It seems that she wanted to look at a valuable picture which was kept in the old house.’ She looked enquiringly at Anthony and added, ‘It seems a curious place to have kept it, if it really was valuable.’
‘Oh, my aunt got it into her head that it was a Rubens, but, of course, it was nothing of the sort. It was by an unknown artist and I shouldn’t think it was worth more than a few pounds.’
‘It was a striking bit of painting, though,’ I said. ‘I saw it when Coberley took me into the old house. It could have been a portrait of Gloria herself, as a matter of fact.’
‘So Anthony told me when he first came clean about his association with Gloria before we were married,’ said Celia.
‘So y
ou refused to have it in this house, I suppose,’ said Laura Gavin.
‘No. It had always hung in the old house,’ said Anthony. ‘My father would not have it in here.’ He told the story of his great-grandfather and the original of the portrait. ‘I imagine the woman had a child by the old reprobate,’ he concluded, ‘and Gloria was her direct descendant. To that extent I suppose she can claim — as she did — to be a distant relative of mine.’
‘What form did the portrait take?’ asked Dame Beatrice. ‘Was it a portrait-bust, a full-length study, or what? Was it in the clothes of the period, and, if so, what would that period have been? Miss Brockworth could not describe the portrait to me, as she said she had never seen it.’
‘We took care she didn’t see it,’ said Celia. ‘It was a reclining nude and, although the girl was so thin, there was a sort of horrible suggestiveness about it which was — well, would have been to anybody of my aunt’s generation — quite revolting.’
‘Oh, nonsense!’ said Anthony. Celia opened her mouth, but caught my eye and said nothing. Dame Beatrice asked what, to me, was a surprising question.
‘I know from William Underedge, who kindly attended the inquest for me, that you and Mr Stratford were called upon to identify the body,’ she said to Anthony, ‘and that it was the parti-coloured hair alone which aided you. Would you, Mr Wotton, have been equally sure of your identification if you had been shown the whole body of the deceased?’
Considering what, presumably, had been Anthony’s previous relationship with Gloria, I thought this was an outrageous question. Anthony did not look at Celia, but he answered Dame Beatrice steadily and seriously enough.
‘I don’t see what difference it would have made,’ he said, ‘because I suppose the body wouldn’t have been recognisable, either by me or by anybody else, if it had been burnt as badly as the face was burnt.’
Dame Beatrice turned to me.
‘Mr Stratford, from what you have told me, I gather that you were the first person to see Miss Mundy arrive at Beeches Lawn.’
I looked out of the window at the trees and shrubs which bisected the garden and, turning again to Dame Beatrice, I agreed and added,
‘She came along the front of the house, where we are now. I saw her from my bedroom window.’
‘So much I remember. She came in from the direction of the playing-field. To do that, would she have had to pass a convent which was mentioned to me in connection with quite another matter?’
‘It’s no longer a convent,’ said Celia. ‘You are talking about that car which was burnt up?’
‘And Miss Mundy arrived here on the Sunday I left?’ went on Dame Beatrice.
‘On the Sunday, yes. Some local craftsmen use the building now, but they wouldn’t have seen Gloria go past the place,’ said Anthony. ‘The old convent is empty at weekends.’
‘Splendid,’ said Dame Beatrice. I thought I knew the reason for her satisfaction. All the same, I wondered how Gloria could have known that the convent building would have been deserted on the Sunday of her arrival. Dame Beatrice, who appeared to be able to read my mind without asking questions of me, said calmly, ‘She asked what the building was, I suppose, and one of the local people or perhaps one of the schoolboys told her.’
‘I wonder whether she saw that burnt-out car,’ said Celia. ‘I don’t think the police knew about it until the lessee of the convent building reported it, though. It probably wasn’t there when Gloria came that way.’
‘I do not see how it could have been,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Does your gardener work on Sundays?’
‘Certainly not. I’m a churchwarden,’ said Anthony, ‘and am in honour bound to keep the fourth Commandment.’
‘Except in the case of cook and her scullery maid,’ said Celia. ‘There are limits to his pious observance of the Sabbath. He does love his midday Sunday dinner, although we do have a cold meal at night.’
11
A Conference with the Accused
« ^ »
The next question was put to me personally. Dame Beatrice asked me whether I wrote shorthand, adding that as, among my other activities, I was a newspaper reporter (or so William Underedge had told her), no doubt I numbered shorthand among my accomplishments. Wondering what this was leading up to, I admitted that this was so.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘You shall accompany me upon my mission.’
‘And we hope,’ said Laura Gavin, ‘that shades of the prison-house will not begin to close upon the growing boy.’
‘You mean you want me to sit in on your interview with Coberley?’ I said. ‘He won’t like that very much.’
‘Did you not get on well with him when you met?’
‘Oh, I saw very little of him, but he did show me over the old house one morning.’
‘Well, he can refuse to talk to me in front of you, but I think he would prefer you to Laura. He may even feel he has a friend at court when he sees you with me.’
So off we went. Apparently she had made all the arrangements beforehand, for we were taken straightaway to the governor’s office, where Dame Beatrice was received with deference.
‘You had better see Coberley in here,’ said the governor and he sent off the prison officer who had brought us into his presence to conduct Coberley to the sanctum. ‘I told him that we were expecting a visit from you and that he could have his lawyer present at the interview if he so wished, but he said that he had met you and needed no other help.’
Coberley looked better than I had expected. He was well-shaven and was wearing a good suit. His demeanour was cheerful. In fact, he looked fresher and more alive than he had appeared at Beeches Lawn. I think he had shed the image of the headmaster and had reverted to that of the business tycoon who, no doubt, had been in tight places before and had come out of them unscathed. He greeted us with an impartial, ‘Very good of you both to come,’ shook hands with us and the governor, and then the prison officer left us and we, so to speak, settled down, myself at the desk ready to take notes, the other two in chairs adjacent to one another.
‘I take it that you know the magistrates have decided I must stand trial,’ said Coberley. ‘It means the end of the school, so far as I am concerned, of course, but my first assistant will carry on and if the boys stay he will buy me out and take over completely. That is all arranged. Whatever the result of the trial, I can hardly go back there myself. I shall miss the boys, of course, but Marigold will enjoy living in our villa in the south of France. I am pretty sure I shall be able to join her there. I don’t see how this charge can possibly stick. There isn’t enough evidence against me to hang a dog.’
‘A pity the magistrates did not share that view,’ said Dame Beatrice drily.
‘Oh, the Bench always believe the yarns the police cook up,’ said Coberley, appearing less and less like my previous picture of him. ‘The Chief Constable brought pressure to bear on that rather obtuse detective-inspector, I think, so an arrest had to be made and I drew the short straw.’
‘Why was that, do you suppose?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I’m an old lag, you know. I’ve done time for assault and battery. I was an obvious choice, since a choice had to be made.’
‘Who, in your opinion, were the other candidates for incarceration?’ asked Dame Beatrice.
‘Well, I don’t want to sound unchivalrous, but, speaking quite objectively, I see this as a woman’s crime. There were a number of guns in the house — ’
I looked up and said, ‘I never saw any. Wotton prided himself on not being one of the hunting, shooting and fishing crowd.’
‘His father was one of them, though,’ said Coberley, ‘and he left a little armoury in that room Wotton uses as a den. I don’t suppose you have ever seen inside the big cupboard in there. My point is that a man would have shot the girl, not stabbed her in the back.’
I apologised for the interruption, but Dame Beatrice waved a benedictory yellow claw at me and remarked that it was a good thing to get these matters clear.
Then she turned again to Coberley and said: ‘So you think that a man would have shot Miss Mundy.’
‘At least a man would not have needed to stab her in the back, as I said. She was a slight, waif-like little thing whom a man could have strangled with one hand. That would have settled the thing if he thought a shot would be heard.’
‘Before we continue this interesting discussion,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘apart from your record of violence, what other evidence do you suppose the police have against you? I have my own theories, of course, but what are yours?’
‘Oh, that’s an easy one,’ said this new and, to me, astonishing Coberley. ‘It boils down, as I see it, to a question of alibis. Before I was arrested we heard a load of codswallop about gangs of town hooligans. They are supposed to have buttered the steps of my house, mugged Gloria Mundy, set fire to the old house and all the rest of it.’
‘You mentioned a question of alibis.’
‘That’s right, so I did. Well, upon thinking things over and also consulting with my lawyer, it seems likely that the men who were at Beeches Lawn can more or less account for one another. I’m the odd man out because, of course, I was over at the school a good deal of the time and, when I hang a notice on the headmaster’s door asking not to be disturbed — which, in effect, means I don’t want naughty boys brought to me by incompetent masters who can’t keep order and on whose behalf I am expected to cane their boys, an operation I dislike intensely and resort to as few times as possible — nobody, not even my wife or my head assistant, can account for my movements. The fact that on such occasions I merely put my feet up, have a quiet drink and a smoke and study the stock market, in which I still have an interest, is neither here nor there. For the space of, say, a couple of hours, I do not exist, so far as is known, and, thus disembodied, could be up to anything, including murder and arson.’
‘Excellent,’ said Dame Beatrice in an absentminded way which made me think that she had spotted something in all this which might be a help to her. ‘To resume our previous topic at the point where I digressed from it, granted that you are right and that the murder of Gloria Mundy was a woman’s crime, which woman have you picked for the rôle of villainess?’
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