by Carola Dunn
‘Yes, I … It was already coming on a bit. Oh dear, was it so obvious?’
‘Not to people whose thoughts were where they should have been. I’m rather inclined to watch people, I’m afraid, as some people watch birds. Shepherding all those girls down the hill and back can’t have helped.’
‘No. Though they’re very good, really. Most of them, most of the time. You … watch people?’
‘That sounds awful, doesn’t it? As if I’m a terrible busybody! But I don’t go poking into people’s lives, let alone gossiping about them.’ Except, naturally, in the detection of murder, but that couldn’t really be classified as gossip. ‘I’m interested in people and I just can’t help observing.’
‘I know what you mean. I have to watch the girls, of course, mostly to help them with sports, but also to make sure they don’t get hurt.’
‘You have training in first aid?’
‘Oh yes. You have to to teach physical education – that’s what we really prefer to “games”, actually.’
‘I’ll try to remember,’ Daisy promised absently, glad to think that Miss Bascombe would have checked that Harriman was dead before moving him at the risk of causing his death – if her speculations had any foundation in fact.
‘It’s a different kind of watching from when I’m Duty Mistress.’ Miss Bascombe had a little colour in her cheeks now, her headache apparently forgotten as she became interested in the conversation. ‘Then it’s more a case of watching their behaviour. First you have to make sure they’re obeying the rules, but sometimes you can tell that someone’s upset about something, and then sometimes they’ll talk to you about it, and sometimes you can help them. That’s what I like best about this school. The school I went to, as long as you did your lessons and obeyed the rules, they didn’t care much if you weren’t happy.’
‘Mine, too. Sometimes it helps just to talk about what’s worrying you, don’t you find?’
‘I … Yes, but … It’s not … Other people are involved, you see. And it was all a dreadful accident in the first place! We couldn’t refuse to help, could we?’
‘If you’re quite absolutely sure it was an accident … ?’
‘Oh yes!’
‘And your help didn’t … um … didn’t make things worse for … anyone else?’
‘It was too late,’ Miss Bascombe said simply.
‘Then what’s done is done, and there’s no point worrying about—’ Daisy suddenly thought of a snag. ‘That is, as long as someone else isn’t blamed for it.’
Miss Bascombe looked horrified. ‘No, that would be terrible!’
‘Well, yes, but on the other hand, it may not happen.’
‘It may, though. We ought to talk about it, decide what we’d do if …’ She spoke with a new determination. ‘Thank you, Mrs Fletcher, you’ve helped me see things straight. I was so muddled before. Now I know what to do, or at least what we have to discuss. Even that’s better than just feeling completely lost. Do you know what time it is?’
‘Ten to ten.’
‘I must run. I’ve got a class in ten minutes.’ She jumped up. ‘Oh, I do hope your daughter is all right.’
‘I haven’t seen her yet, but I don’t suppose there’s anything much wrong.’
‘I hope not.’ With that she whisked away.
Daisy had heard that confession was good for the soul; also for headaches, it seemed – those caused by an uneasy conscience and no clear course of action, at least.
From Daisy’s perspective, the best thing about it was that no one, not even Alec, could expect her to report anything so vague to the police. She understood because it fitted in with her favourite theory, but Miss Bascombe hadn’t actually made any statement implicating anyone in anything criminal.
CHAPTER 27
Where was Sister? Daisy decided she had waited quite long enough – though admittedly the time had not been wasted – to justify ringing the bell again.
Ping!
Just as her hand touched the bell, Sister looked out of the door next to her office. ‘Mrs Fletcher, I thought I heard your voice. And someone else was here?’
‘Yes, Miss Bascombe, but she felt better and went to take a class.’
‘I’m sorry you’ve been kept waiting. As you didn’t ring again immediately, I assumed it wasn’t urgent so I just finished up what I was doing.’
‘Not at all urgent, Sister. I’d like to have a word with the girls, if I may.’
‘Of course you – What’s that, Mr Pencote?’
Daisy heard Pencote’s voice, though she couldn’t make out what he was saying except for her own name.
‘Are you sure?’ Sister asked doubtfully. ‘You—’
A vigorous affirmative came to Daisy’s ears.
‘Very well, I’ll ask. Mrs Fletcher, Mr Pencote would like to have a word with you.’ As she spoke, she came out of the room and closed the door. ‘I don’t know what bee he’s got in his bonnet,’ she said in a low voice. ‘He’s in quite a bit of pain. His legs, you know, and his shoulders from the crutches. I’ve been putting a healing unguent on the sores. He overdid things on sports day and ought to have rested yesterday, but didn’t. Men! But it can’t hurt him to talk, if you don’t mind, and it’ll take his mind off the pain.’
‘I don’t mind a bit.’ Daisy tried not to sound unnaturally eager. Look where soothing Miss Bascombe’s headache had got her! Still, it was too much to hope that Pencote was anxious to confide, and in her, of all people. More likely he wanted to make sure she encouraged Belinda to keep up with her English lessons while she was in the San.
And did she really want him to confess to her, anyway? What on earth would she do about it?
‘I’d better warn you,’ Sister continued, ‘I’ve managed to persuade him to take a dose of laudanum, so he may wander a bit. Not but what it doesn’t usually take him that way, like it does some people. You never can tell.’ She opened the door. ‘Are we decent, Mr Pencote?’
‘We are,’ he growled.
‘It’s my surgery, Mrs Fletcher, so it’s not set up for visitors. I want him to lie down for a little while – No, don’t get up, Mr Pencote! I’m sure Mrs Fletcher will excuse you—’
‘No, you mustn’t get up,’ Daisy interrupted.
‘I’ll tell the girls you’ll be with them very soon,’ said Sister and went away at last, with a rustle of her starched apron.
Covered to the waist with a folded sheet, Pencote leant back on the chaise longue, which served as an examination couch. Beside it on the floor, within reach, lay his crutches. A pungent medicinal odour hung in the air.
‘Excuse the smell, Mrs Fletcher,’ Pencote said wryly. ‘I’m sorry to inflict it on you.’
‘That’s all right. Just don’t blame me if I sneeze.’
‘I shan’t.’ The grin looked odd on his drawn face. It quickly faded. ‘I beg your pardon for taking up your time. I heard you say you were talking to Miss Bascombe and I wondered whether she … unburdened herself to you. I know … something was weighing on her mind, you see.’
‘She didn’t name any names, Mr Pencote. Nor deeds, come to that.’
‘Oh.’ He was silent for a few moments. Daisy waited. At last he went on: ‘My cursed temper! Belinda’s father’s a policeman, isn’t he? Belinda talks about him. It’s you she’s especially proud of though, your writing. I’ve read a couple of your articles, as I think I told you, and they’re very well written. But you’re her stepmother, so I can’t say she’s inherited her writing ability. She shows real promise.’
Cut the cackle and get to the ’osses, Daisy thought. Aloud, she said, ‘I’m glad. Perhaps she’ll decide to teach English, like you.’
‘As long as that’s the only way she imitates me! Mrs Fletcher, you know about Harriman’s death. In fact, there’s a rumour that you found his body … ?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘The girls did,’ he guessed instantly. ‘You’re trying to protect them. Perhaps you’ll be ab
le to understand my situation, then. I was too shocked – appalled! – at the time to see where the help of my friends would lead. Now I realise I ought to admit my guilt and take my medicine, hoping a jury will conclude that I had no expectation, no intention, of … such serious consequences. But no one would believe I’d be capable of moving him.’ He gestured at the place where his legs ought to be. ‘If I speak up, they’ll be in almost as much trouble as I will. I can’t do that to them.’
‘They must have foreseen the possibility.’
‘I don’t know about that. Tes – One of them is rather unworldly, and the other perhaps a bit naïve. They thought only of me. I wish they hadn’t been with me when it happened! Come to that, of course I wish it hadn’t happened. But it did. What I wondered is, you being somewhat familiar with police procedures, I assume, you might be able to advise me. Is there any way I can confess without implicating them?’
‘Not that I can see,’ Daisy said frankly. ‘The officer in charge is astoundingly incompetent and seems to have a genius for omitting to ask the right questions, but even he worked out quite quickly that you couldn’t have done it. If you told him you did, even he would realise you must have had help.’
‘I could refuse to tell him who helped me.’
‘An awful lot of people know the three of you are good friends, Mr Pencote.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, on present form, I rather doubt Inspector Gant will solve the case. Solve it correctly, I mean. He may arrest someone who had nothing to do with it.’
‘That would solve my problem,’ Pencote said emphatically. ‘I couldn’t stand by and let an innocent person suffer, and I’m quite sure Tesler wouldn’t.’
Daisy pretended she hadn’t heard the name. ‘It’s possible, however, that the other two people involved might continue to try to protect you. In fact, I’m pretty sure some such thought is in the mind of one of them.’
‘If you mean they’d take responsibility for the whole business, I couldn’t allow that, either.’
‘No. The only alternative I can see is that Gant will admit he’s beaten and Scotland Yard will be called in.’
‘They’d hardly fail to come up with a conspiracy theory! We might as well just confess at once and be finished with it.’
‘Don’t do anything precipitate. You’ll have to talk to the others first, anyway, and I wouldn’t advise confessing to Gant if you can avoid it.’
‘Then I take it you don’t intend to give us away?’
‘What do I know? I’ve had a couple of decidedly ambiguous conversations. If they happen to accord with any theories I may have developed, I have no duty to present Gant with my theories. If he’d been a different sort of person … Well, I don’t know what I might have done. Or if you three were different sorts of people. But that’s the way it is. Besides, I doubt he’d be willing to listen to me. He happens to have a grudge against my husband.’
That surprised a laugh from Pencote, a rather feeble one. ‘Somehow one thinks of the police as a united body of men. If your husband were in charge, would you tell him?’
‘I can’t be sure. Probably not. He tends to pooh-pooh my theories. In any case, I don’t know how it all happened so I don’t actually have any facts to offer.’
‘Would you like to know how it happened?’
‘I can guess. What I can’t quite picture is where. I may suffer from “satiable curiosity,” but that’s no reason for you to tell me.’
‘It was on the school field, where you witnessed my inexcusable exhibition earlier. A beautiful evening – we were sitting on the bench against the wall of the swimming pool, after the children went to bed. Harriman was running laps, round and round the track. He altered course to come and offer his usual insults. I took it for granted he’d keep moving, as he usually did, but he stopped. I can’t imagine why he should have wanted to prolong the “conversation”, if such it can be called. In fact, he stooped – perhaps he had a stone in his plimsoll—’
‘That’s enough,’ Daisy said firmly. ‘You’ve satisfied my curiosity and I don’t want to hear any more. It was an accident, as I presumed. Now I really must go and talk to the girls.’
‘Amidst all the rest, I’m extremely sorry that an action of mine should have troubled them.’
‘That’s one apology I shan’t be passing on! Goodbye, Mr Pencote, and good luck.’
Daisy found the three girls sitting in a row on the chairs in the hall, whispering to one another. Belinda jumped up and came to hug her, saying in a voice barely louder than a whisper, ‘Sister said if we make any noise she’ll send us back upstairs to get on with our lessons. We’re doing them sitting on our beds!’
The other two gathered round.
‘Where’s my mother, Mrs Fletcher?’ asked Deva.
‘She had some letters that had to be written, darling. She’ll come and see you later. Lizzie, my dear, how are you holding up?’
‘All right, thank you, Mrs Fletcher.’
‘She had a bad dream last night, though, Mummy. I woke her up.’
‘Oh, Lizzie, I am sorry.’ Daisy hugged her, and then had to hug Deva to make it fair. ‘Do you want to talk about it? Would it help?’
‘I told Bel and Deva all about it, what he looked like and everything. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Of course not, darling, if it made you feel better.’
‘I didn’t have any more nightmares afterwards.’
‘Bel and I didn’t, either, Mrs Fletcher.’
‘Hearing about it is not the same as seeing it,’ said Belinda. ‘I’m glad it wasn’t a teacher we liked. It spoilt the Garden, though. Not what Lizzie said, just that it happened there. I don’t ever want to go back into that maze.’
‘I wouldn’t mind,’ said Deva. ‘It was fun, till … There are so many dead-ends, and all the hedges look just the same – you’d never know if you happened to go to the same place.’
‘That’s what’s so creepy.’ Lizzie shivered. ‘Not knowing.’
‘What about the other part of the Garden, the one with all the winding paths and the look-out?’ Bel asked. ‘Would you—’
‘Girls!’ Sister popped out of her office. ‘Sorry, Mrs Fletcher, but I can’t have all this racket going on.’
‘Sorry, Sister. I didn’t realise we were getting louder.’
‘Sorry, Sister,’ echoed the girls.
‘Is there somewhere out of the way outside where we could sit and talk?’
‘I think the girls ought to be getting back to their lessons,’ Sister said severely. ‘It’s most irregular to have parents visiting on a Monday, specially during school hours. I only permitted it because of the unusual situation.’
‘My—’ Deva stopped as Daisy put a finger to her lips. Forewarned, Sister might forbid Sakari’s visit this afternoon, but if she turned up without advance notice, Daisy would bet on Sakari over Sister any day.
‘Back to lessons you go,’ Daisy said. ‘You don’t want to find you’ve fallen behind when you get back to school.’
‘Are you staying in Saffron Walden, Mummy?’
‘Yes, darling. We won’t go back to town without saying goodbye, I promise.’ She gave each of them a kiss.
Walking back down the hill, she thought about her conversations with Pencote and Miss Bascombe. Had she been out of her mind to tell Pencote she wouldn’t report him to the police?
She repeated to herself the arguments she had offered him. She didn’t actually have any facts to go on. Nothing specific had been said about any specific person committing a specific crime. As far as she was concerned, the stories were no better founded than idle rumour, even considering her sources. Rumour from third parties, thoroughly mixed with her own speculation: detectives in general objected vigorously and vociferously to the speculations of anyone but themselves, and heavily discounted rumours not backed by solid evidence.
Coppers weren’t keen on confessions, either. All sorts of eccentrics were liable to confess to crimes fo
r a variety of peculiar reasons, from a desire for notoriety to vague and general feelings of guilt. Weeding them out just wasted valuable police time. What they wanted was for criminals to confess after they had been arrested on good, solid evidence.
Daisy had no evidence whatsoever. Moreover, she wasn’t a police officer, and a confession made to her had no value in the eyes of the law. Nor had there been any witnesses to back up her story.
She might have decided differently if Ghastly Gant were not in charge of the case. She couldn’t possibly go to him with such a vague tale. If it had been Alec, or even the Hampshire policeman she had encountered a few months ago, who had at least been intelligent … But no, she wouldn’t have told either of them what she had heard from Miss Bascombe and Pencote.
The whole affair was all too likely to end in disaster for the two of them, and for Tesler, with or without her interference.
She reached the Rose and Crown in dire need of a cup of coffee.
‘Do you know where Mrs Prasad is?’ she asked the receptionist.
‘In the writing room, madam. With Inspector Gant.’
‘Not again!’
‘I’m afraid so, madam. The management would be very happy to find a legal way of excluding the inspector from the premises, from troubling our guests. So far they have failed to find one.’ She gave Daisy an interrogative look.
Daisy sighed. ‘It’s no good asking me.’
‘The inspector’s instructions were to tell you to join him when you returned, madam. I said that I would convey his request. I’m extremely sorry that you should be inconvenienced. The management wishes me to convey their apologies—’
‘Don’t worry, I don’t hold the hotel responsible.’
‘Such a thing has never happened on our premises before, I assure you, madam.’
‘And probably never will again. Just send lots of coffee and lots of cakes to the writing room, will you, please? Two cups will be sufficient.’
‘Very good, madam.’ The receptionist almost smiled. ‘Two cups. There will be no charge for any refreshments you or Mrs Prasad choose to order for yourselves as long as the inspector is on the premises.’
