‘Answer me one thing, Poirot.’ John McCrodden leapt to his feet. ‘Do you approve of this legal form of murder that we have in our country? Because as far as I’m concerned, you’re no better than a murderer yourself if you’re in favour of killing those who have committed crimes—even the most serious crimes.’
Poirot looked around. The market had started to fill with people and noise. Still nobody approached John McCrodden’s stall.
‘If I answer your question, will you answer one of mine?’ he asked.
‘I will.’
‘Bien. I believe that the loss of life, for whatever reason, is a tragedy. However, when the most heinous of crimes has been committed, is it not fitting that the perpetrator should suffer the most severe of punishments? Does justice not demand it?’
McCrodden shook his head. ‘You’re just like my father. You profess to care about justice, while not having the faintest idea of what it means.’
‘Now it is my turn to ask the question,’ said Poirot. ‘Think carefully, please, before answering. You have told me that you were not acquainted with Barnabas Pandy.’
‘I never so much as heard his name until your … until that letter arrived.’
‘Listen to these names and tell me if any of them are familiar to you: Lenore Lavington, Ivy Lavington, Timothy Lavington.’
McCrodden shook his head. ‘Never heard of any Lavingtons,’ he said.
‘Sylvia Rule, Freddie Rule, Mildred Rule.’
‘I have heard the name Sylvia Rule, but only from you,’ said McCrodden. ‘Or, rather, from the man who works for you. Don’t you recall? You had him come into the room and tell me that Mrs Rule had also received a letter in your name, accusing her of murder.’
‘Oui, monsieur, I remember.’
‘Then why ask me, if you know I know the name? Some sort of test?’
‘What about Mildred Rule and Freddie Rule?’ asked Poirot.
‘I agreed to answer one question,’ McCrodden reminded him. ‘You’ve used up your allowance, mate.’
‘Monsieur McCrodden, I do not understand you. You seem to disapprove of the taking of life when it is done by the law. Do you not also disapprove of the lives taken by unlawful murderers?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Then believe me when I tell you that I am trying to catch such a person: a meticulous and careful murderer, driven not by passion but by calculation. Why should you not want to help me?’
‘You sound as if you’ve worked out who killed this Pandy fellow. Have you?’
Poirot had not. All he knew was that there was a murderer to be caught: a dangerous and wicked person who must be stopped. He had never before announced, in advance, a date on which he would reveal facts of such importance that he did not yet know. Why, then, had he chosen to do so in the case of Barnabas Pandy? Poirot was not sure he knew the answer. He wondered if it might be a strange sort of prayer, disguised as an exciting and alarming challenge.
Avoiding John McCrodden’s question, he said, ‘I am still waiting for an answer from you.’
McCrodden cursed under his breath, then said, ‘No, I’ve never heard of Mildred Rule or Freddie Rule.’
‘What about Annabel Treadway, or Hugo and Jane Dockerill? Or Eustace Campbell-Brown?’
‘No. None of these names mean anything to me. Should they?’
‘Not necessarily, no. Do you know Turville College?’
‘I’ve heard of it, naturally.’
‘But you have no personal connection with the place.’
‘No. My father sent me first to Eton and then to Rugby. I was expelled from both.’
‘Thank you, Monsieur McCrodden. It seems that you are truly the solitary yellow square of cake, all alone at the edge of the plate. But why? That is the question: why?’
‘Cake?’ snarled John McCrodden. ‘Nothing that’s happened recently makes sense to me. That’s why I shan’t bother to ask you what I have in common with a piece of cake! I’m sure I wouldn’t understand, even if you told me.’
CHAPTER 23
Meaning Harm
As I set off to Turville College two days later, in the hope of talking to Timothy Lavington and examining all available typewriters, I could not help but feel hard done by. Poirot was also travelling, and I wished I could have swapped places with him. He was on his way to Llanidloes in Wales to talk to a woman by the name of Deborah Dakin. Vincent Lobb, we had learned the day before from one of Poirot’s mysterious ‘helpers’, had died some thirteen years earlier. Mrs Dakin, the widow of Lobb’s eldest son, was the only surviving member of the family.
I should have liked to go with Poirot to speak to her. Instead, with time running away from us and Poirot’s quite unnecessarily self-imposed deadline of 24 February looming, I had been assigned the Turville trip.
I did not relish the prospect of venturing inside a boys’ boarding school. I attended such a school myself and, despite the education I received, I would not wish the overall experience on anybody.
I felt slightly more comfortable once I was inside Coode House, the boarding house run by Hugo and Jane Dockerill. It was large and wide with a flat façade and a symmetrical distribution of windows, like an enormous doll’s house. Inside, it was warm, clean and generally tidy, though as I waited to be shown to Hugo Dockerill’s study I spotted one pile of books and one of papers that had been abandoned on the floor close to the front door. Notes had been placed on top of the piles: ‘Hugo, please move these’ and ‘Hugo, please find a proper place for these’. Both were signed ‘J’.
A short, bespectacled boy appeared, the third who had helped me so far. This one, like the previous two, was wearing the full Turville uniform: maroon blazer, dark grey trousers, maroon and yellow striped tie. ‘I’m to take you to Mr Dockerill’s study,’ he said.
I thanked him and followed him past the foot of the staircase into a wide corridor. We had turned several corners before he stopped and knocked at a door.
‘Come in!’ called a man’s voice from within.
My pupil guide entered, mumbled something about a visitor, then ran away as if he feared there might be repercussions for his having introduced me to the room. The man, with almost no hair and a wide smile on his face, came towards me, hand extended.
‘Inspector Catchpool!’ he said warmly. ‘I’m Hugo Dockerill, and this is my wife Jane, whom I understand you have met? Welcome to Coode House! We like to think it’s the best of all the boarding houses, but of course we are biased.’
‘It is the best,’ said Jane Dockerill matter-of-factly. ‘Hello again, Inspector Catchpool.’ She sat in a leather armchair in the corner of the room. Books lined every wall from top to bottom, and there were many piles of them on the floor. Presumably this was where those wrongly positioned piles near Coode House’s front door would eventually be moved to.
On Jane Dockerill’s left, on a straight-backed sofa, sat a boy with dark hair that fell over his large brown eyes. He was a strange-looking character: he was tall, and the eyes, hair and bone structure suggested he ought to be handsome, but the lower part of his face had a clumsily-assembled look about it. He wore an embattled expression and had the bearing of someone who expected to be harangued or punished.
‘Good morning, Mrs Dockerill,’ I said. ‘A pleasure to meet you, Mr Dockerill. Thank you for fitting me into your busy day.’
‘Oh, we’re delighted to have you. Delighted!’ proclaimed the housemaster.
‘And this is Timothy Lavington, the late Barnabas Pandy’s great-grandson,’ said his wife.
‘Is it true that you believe Grandy was murdered?’ Timothy asked without looking at me.
‘Timothy …’ There was a warning tone in Jane Dockerill’s voice. She evidently feared the question might be the prelude to some impertinence on Timothy’s part.
‘It’s perfectly all right,’ I told her. ‘Timothy, I want you to feel free to ask me whatever questions spring to mind. This must be horrible for you.’
‘I would describe it as
frustrating rather than horrible,’ said the boy. ‘If it was murder and not an accident, is it too late to catch whoever did it?’
‘No.’
‘Good,’ said Timothy.
‘Though I think it most unlikely that Mr Pandy was murdered. You must try not to worry.’
‘I’m not worried. And, unlike you, I don’t think it’s unlikely,’ he said.
‘Timothy,’ warned Jane Dockerill again, obviously knowing that impertinence was now inevitable
He gestured towards her without looking at her and said to me, ‘As you can see, I’m prevented from speaking freely by Mrs Dockerill’s desire for me to say only the sorts of things that grown-ups think boys my age should say.’
‘Why don’t you think it unlikely that your great-grandfather was murdered?’ I asked him.
‘Several reasons. Mother, Aunt Annabel and Ivy were supposed to come to the Christmas Fair here on the day Grandy died. They cancelled at the last moment, and couldn’t explain why—not to my satisfaction. Something must have happened at home, something they all decided not to tell me. Whatever it was, that something might have led to one of them killing Grandy. Even the weakest woman could easily have pushed him under the water and held him there. Physically, he was weaker than a daddy-long-legs.’
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘Well, then someone stuck a dress belonging to my Aunt Annabel to the bottom of my bed here—a soggy dress. And Grandy died while in the bath. That’s extremely suspicious—don’t you think so, Inspector?’
‘It’s certainly something that requires an explanation,’ I said.
‘I’ll say! And what about the letters that were sent, accusing four people of killing Grandy? One of them was sent to Aunt Annabel.’
‘We perhaps should not have told Timothy as much as we did,’ said Jane Dockerill ruefully.
‘Ivy would have told me, if you hadn’t,’ Timothy said. ‘Oh—Ivy won’t have killed Grandy, Inspector. You can cross her off your list. And Kingsbury—it definitely won’t have been him.’
‘Are you suggesting that your mother or your aunt might have done it?’ I asked.
‘One of them must have, I suppose. They’ve both got heaps of money now he’s dead.’
‘Timothy!’ said Jane Dockerill.
‘Mrs Dockerill, I’m sure the inspector wants me to tell the truth—don’t you, Inspector? I can quite see Mother killing anyone who crossed her. She does so like to be in charge of everything. Aunt Annabel is quite the opposite, but she’s a strange lady, so who knows what she might do?’
‘Strange in what respect?’ I asked.
‘It’s difficult to describe. It’s as if … even when she’s at her happiest, one sort of feels she might be pretending. Rather like …’ Timothy nodded to himself, as if pleased with the idea that had just struck him. ‘Have you ever known anyone whose skin is ice-cold, even when they’re sitting in front of a roaring fire in a swelteringly hot room? If you substitute feelings for body temperature, you’ve got Aunt Annabel.’
‘That doesn’t make an awful lot of sense, Timothy,’ said Jane Dockerill.
‘I think I understand,’ I told her.
‘It’s been difficult for Timothy since his father died a few years ago, Inspector.’
‘Mrs Dockerill is right,’ said Timothy. ‘I was sad to lose my father. That does not, however, invalidate my thoughts and observations on other matters.’
‘Were you also sad to lose your great-grandfather?’ I asked him.
‘In a theoretical sort of way, yes.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The end of any life is sad, isn’t it?’ said Timothy. ‘I definitely thought it was sad that Grandy was dead, but he was old, and we weren’t close. He didn’t speak to me much. It was amusing, actually: sometimes, at home, he saw me coming and pretended to remember something that required him to turn and walk in the opposite direction.’
‘Why would he avoid you?’ I asked, feeling that I knew the answer.
‘He thought I was hard work. I am rather hard work. He was too—which meant that he preferred to speak to Mother, Aunt Annabel, Ivy and Kingsbury. They all pandered to him.’
‘It did not upset you, that he displayed a preference for your sister?’
‘Hardly. Mother prefers me, so it all evens out. I’m her precious little boy who can do no wrong. We have preferences, in our family. Grandy never liked Aunt Annabel anywhere near as much as he liked Mother—while I think I like Aunt Annabel more. She’s a far nicer woman.’
‘Come now, Lavington,’ said Hugo Dockerill vaguely.
‘One cannot choose how one feels and about whom, Mr Dockerill. Can one, Inspector?’
I had no intention of taking sides.
‘Don’t look so shocked, Mrs Dockerill,’ said Timothy. ‘You like Freddie Rule more than all the other Coode House boys, and I’m sure you can’t help that any more than I can help the way I feel.’
‘That’s not true, Timothy,’ said Jane Dockerill. ‘I would treat any boy who was lonely exactly as I treat Freddie. And you need to learn the difference between truthfulness and giving voice to every idea that passes through your mind. One is helpful; the other is not. I think you have said enough this morning. Please can you return to your lessons now?’
Once Timothy had been dismissed, I asked about typewriters. Hugo Dockerill said, ‘By all means, old chap—you may inspect mine to your heart’s content. Oh … I wonder where it is. Jane, dearest, do you happen to know?’
‘I’m afraid not, Hugo. I haven’t seen it for weeks. Last time I saw it, it was in this room, but it’s not here now.’
I tried to look as if this piece of information was of no great interest or relevance. ‘Do you remember moving the machine, Mr Dockerill?’ I asked.
‘No. No, I’m afraid I don’t. I don’t think I did move it. Yet it’s not here. How funny.’
‘Why do you need to see our typewriter?’ asked his wife.
I explained to her about the faulty ‘e’s in the four letters, and told her that if possible I should like to examine all of Turville College’s typewriters.
‘I suspected as much,’ she said. ‘Inspector, you said your visit here today was not official police business.’
‘That’s true.’
‘Then there is no Scotland Yard investigation into the sending of those four letters?’
‘No. For the time being, Poirot and I are simply poking around, with your kind permission, to see if we can make sense of this perplexing business.’
‘I understand, Inspector—but there’s a difference between a short conversation of the kind we’ve just had, and allowing you to test all our typewriters. I’m not sure how the boys’ parents would feel about that, or the headmaster. I think he might say that, really, you ought to supply a warrant if that is what you wish to do.’
Hugo Dockerill’s missing typewriter was becoming more intriguing by the second.
‘May I ask a blunt question, Mrs Dockerill? Are you hoping to protect somebody?’
She looked at me carefully before speaking. ‘Whom do you think I would wish to protect? I can assure you, I have not stashed Hugo’s typewriter away in a secret place. Why would I have? I could not have anticipated that you would ask to see it.’
‘Nevertheless, now that I have, you might not like the idea of me finding it and perhaps identifying it as the machine on which the four letters were typed.’
‘Jane, dearest, you don’t imagine I sent those letters?’ Hugo Dockerill sounded alarmed.
‘You? Don’t be ridiculous, Hugo. I am simply suggesting that Inspector Catchpool ought to speak to the headmaster. Turville is his kingdom. If he finds out that a detective was allowed to prowl around without his permission, inspecting school property, we will never hear the end of it!’
To the credit of Jane Dockerill, she did her best to convince the headmaster that cooperating with me would be the sensible and correct thing to do. He seemed amenable to her arguments until h
e heard of the involvement of Hercule Poirot, at which point his demeanour changed and he became as impassable as a road buried under heavy snow. He made it abundantly clear that, although there were many typewriters at Turville College, I was to be shown none of them.
As I crossed the main quadrangle on my way out, I was thinking of one of these unseen machines more than any of the others: Hugo Dockerill’s. Who might have made it go missing? I wondered.
‘Inspector Catchpool!’
I turned to see Timothy Lavington, satchel over one shoulder, hurrying towards me.
‘Do you have any more questions you’d like to ask me?’ he panted.
‘I do, as a matter of fact. I’d like to ask you about the Christmas Fair.’
‘You mean the day Grandy died?’
‘Yes, but I’m interested in the fair.’
Timothy winced. ‘Why? It’s a stupid waste of time, every year. I wish they’d abolish it.’
‘Were you there all day?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘Did you see Freddie Rule there, and his mother? And Mr and Mrs Dockerill?’
‘Yes. Why are you asking? Oh, I see! You’re wondering if one of them might have murdered Grandy. No, they were all here.’
‘Can you be certain they were here all day? Would you have noticed if one of them left, then returned an hour or two later?’
Timothy considered the question, then said, ‘No, I don’t suppose so. Mrs Rule, in particular, might have done that.’
‘Why do you say that?’ I asked.
‘She drove herself here on the day of the fair. I saw her arrive, because Freddie rushed over to greet her. And she is hardly a paragon of virtue—though Mrs Dockerill would say “Timothy!” if she had heard me tell you that.’
‘You are referring, I take it, to the rumours about Sylvia Rule?’
Timothy’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘Do you know about her? I didn’t think you would. Who told you?’
‘It is possible to pick up a lot of information wandering around a large school,’ I said, pleased with my carefully-chosen words.
‘Then … you know that she kills babies? Oh! You didn’t know.’
The Mystery of Three Quarters Page 17
