[Mrs Bradley 41] - Three Quick and Five Dead

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘Oh, yes. He claims that he spent the day in the school library. Can that be confirmed?’ asked Gavin.

  ‘No, sir. I tried the head caretaker, but he, the boilerman and all the women cleaners had the day off as well. As you probably know, sir, as soon as the school closes of an afternoon, the women cleaners come in, but, as the school was not in session that day, no cleaning took place and the boilers were stoked last thing on the prize-giving afternoon – the school uses coke – and then were let die down, according to the official orders applying on such occasions and on school holidays and at the week-ends. All the head caretaker knows is that Mr James went to him as soon as the day’s holiday was decided on and told him he would be working in the library that day, probably all day long, and so he would want it left unlocked, so that he could get in.’

  ‘How soon, I wonder, was the holiday decided on?’ asked Laura. ‘I thought the school governors and the Ministry’s Inspectors had to be given a fair amount of notice if the school was to be closed for any reason.’

  ‘It seems the teachers were able to take the half-day extra – the one asked for at the prize-giving – for granted. It was a long-established custom. So they were able to give due notice all right, because they had the other half-day coming to them anyway.’

  ‘Why should James have had to ask to have the library left unlocked? I should have thought all keys would be hung up on little marked pegs in the secretary’s room or in the Staff Common Room,’ said Laura, ‘so that they were handy.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know that, Mrs Gavin. I’ll make a note of it. It adds a further bit to my suspicions of James. It makes it look as though he wanted to bolster up his alibi by mentioning it to the caretaker. It’s an old trick and doesn’t always work. However, it may be that the caretaker himself keeps the school keys and locks up the staffroom and the secretary’s office.’

  ‘He’s bound to have a set of keys, of course,’ said Laura, ‘and if the secretary’s room, or wherever the staff’s set of keys is kept, was locked, as, of course, it might well be – yes, yes, it’s my nasty, suspicious mind running away with me.’

  ‘It’s a point, all the same, Mrs Gavin,’ said Phillips weightily. ‘What was to stop him just hanging on to the library key from the day before? That would have been the sensible thing to do. Then he need not have bothered the caretaker at all.’

  ‘I suppose you’ve had a word with the two girls who shared the flat with Miss Schumann?’ said Gavin.

  ‘I have, sir, but they weren’t much help. They took a busride into Bournemouth, had a slap-up lunch and went to the big cinema near the Lansdowne with a couple of fellows they know who teach at the art school. They have no idea what Miss Schumann was planning to do.’

  ‘It’s a bit odd she telephoned her mother to ask whether Mrs Schumann was going to be at home that day,’ said Laura. Phillips cocked an eye at her.

  ‘How do you mean, Mrs Gavin?’

  ‘Miss Schumann went home every week-end. She took an interest in her mother’s job. She must have known that her mother was due to go over to Ringwood with that champion clumber to give a service. It’s big money when you’ve got a good dog at stud. Her mother is bound to have told her about the contract, so why phone her to confirm the arrangements? To make sure the house was going to be empty, do you think?’

  ‘So that she and James could have the day to themselves there?’ asked the Superintendent. ‘It’s a thought. And, of course, she wasn’t killed where you found her. We’re certain of that. On the other hand, knowing the other two girls were going to be out, she could equally well have invited the boy-friend to the flat, couldn’t she?’

  ‘Ah, but there might have been prying eyes there – the other flat-dwellers, you know – whereas her mother’s place is a detached cottage with lots of garden all round it and no company but the dogs and puppies.’

  ‘And there he could have killed her, and nobody the wiser? Something in that. But then he’d have had to get the body to those woods, and the difficulty there is that there’s no access from the main road except for that small wicket-gate. The main gate the woodmen’s lorries use is on the woodland side, you’ll remember, not so very far from where she was found. He couldn’t have brought a car in from the main Bournemouth Road.’

  ‘How do the lorries manage, then? They must get into the enclosure somehow, and that means there must be a way round,’ said Gavin.

  ‘Yes, there is,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘They use the old gravel road which skirts the common and comes out about three miles away from my house. If a car of almost any size, from the largest to the smallest, took that way, it could get into the woods and almost opposite the spot where the girl was found. Of course, if there are no traces of a car having been parked there …’

  ‘Yes, well, we had a good look at that gravel road, ma’am, but the autumn rains have made the rut-marks so soft and deep that there’s not much hope of tracing any individual wheelmarks. Anyway, James doesn’t own a car. Of course, he may have used Mrs Schumann’s, I suppose.’

  ‘Not if Mrs Schumann had taken her prize dog over to Ringwood in it,’ Gavin pointed out.

  ‘I think Miss Schumann must also have had a car,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘It would be a most tiresome cross-country journey by rail from the school to her home, and would involve a very long walk after she had left the train.’

  ‘So it might have been simplicity itself for Miss Schumann to have picked James up somewhere near the school and driven him to her mother’s house,’ said the Superintendent. ‘Well, well, well! So, if we can break this school-library alibi of his, we shall really be going places!’

  ‘Keep on plugging away,’ said Gavin, grinning. ‘I shall watch your progress with considerable interest. Seriously, though, Phillips, I’ve a feeling you’ve pin-pointed your man all right. It’s a question of proof now. The only thing that bothers me is the apparent absence of motive. Surely the two quarrels we’ve heard about were not of sufficient importance to lead to murder? They seem to be old hat, anyway. Do you think the girl was pestering for marriage, but that James wanted to oil out? Could he have preferred murder to a breach-of-promise case?’

  ‘I’m not sure a woman teacher would bring a breach-of-promise case,’ protested Laura. ‘Think how some of the beastlier kids and their horrible mums would react! I mean, however much you might vengefully soak the man for his dough, you must still look a pretty average fool if you let him walk out on you. Personally, placed in such a position, I should emigrate to New Zealand.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t,’ said her husband. ‘You’d throw the defaulting bloke into the nearest pond and then jump on his stomach. But, to proceed, there’s one other possibility I’ve just thought up. Don’t I remember we were told that Miss Schumann had a brother?’

  ‘Yes, named Otto,’ said Laura. ‘His mother doesn’t seem to have a good word to say for him.’

  ‘No, she hasn’t. She mentioned him to me,’ said Phillips. ‘Always dunning her and his sister for money, or so Mrs Schumann says.’

  ‘Have you tailed him?’ asked Gavin. ‘A known bad hat is always worth a second glance, I feel.’

  ‘He’s a merchant seaman, sir. Second officer on a biggish ship which picks up cargo anywhere between Spitzbergen and the Canaries. Calls regularly at Poole and Southampton. There doesn’t seem any reason to think he’s mixed up in any way with his sister’s death. He certainly couldn’t have been her murderer. He was at sea. We’ve checked that very carefully.’

  (10)

  ‘So that is the verdict of us all,’ said Laura, when they had left the Superintendent at his office and were on their way back to the Stone House. ‘I feel it’s a bit premature, considering that we haven’t a shred of proof.’

  ‘I know,’ said her husband. ‘All the same, I can’t help feeling, as I told him, that Phillips has got the right pig by the ear. As I see it, it’s one of the classic cases of a lovers’ quarrel followed by a manual strangulation – a routine set-up a
nd all according to the formbook.’

  ‘I agree that Edward James is an immediate and obvious suspect,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘but I should be far happier about your suspicions of him if the young woman had been pregnant.’

  ‘She may have told him she was,’ said Laura. ‘That trick is well known if a girl is trying to blackmail a man into marrying her when he doesn’t really want to, or if he isn’t in too much of a hurry to put up the banns. In this case, if James intended to get his doctorate before he married, the girl would have had to wait a jolly long time, and that means she might have been prepared to try pretty rough methods to hurry things up a bit. After all, he isn’t exactly young enough to have all his life before him.’

  ‘There’s another aspect to that, though,’ said Gavin. ‘James might have known that a story about a baby on the way could not possibly be true. As a theological student – and, I should be inclined to guess, a pretty cold fish at that! – he may be the most virtuous and abstemious of men, in which case he’d have known she was simply telling the tale.’

  ‘But suppose she had told him that she was pregnant by another man,’ pursued Laura. ‘That would have put the cat among the pigeons all right.’

  ‘My dear girl, do stop using that famous imagination of yours! These are but wild surmises. No. If I may put forward a less picturesque point of view, my guess would be that if James is guilty – and remember that we have absolutely nothing to go on in supposing this, and are probably being disgracefully unfair to the chap – but if he is guilty, then I do agree that he and the girl must have had some far more serious row than the two quarrels the mother knows about. Either that, or he simply tired of his engagement and couldn’t face breaking it off. Some fellows would sooner murder a woman than have her weep on them.’

  ‘A good thing I’m not given to shedding tears, then!’ retorted his wife. ‘It seemed to me that you spoke those trenchant words with a wealth of sinister meaning behind them.’

  ‘I shall go to see Mrs Schumann again,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Another heart-to-heart talk with her seems indicated. She must know more about this than she has told us.’

  (11)

  For a reason known to herself but kept from Laura, Dame Beatrice did not ring up Mrs Schumann, but descended upon her, accompanied by Laura and Fergus, at three o’clock of a cold, cloudy, windy afternoon in December. They found her in one of the outhouses where she kennelled her dogs. It stood at one end of their exercise-paddock and was a reasonably roomy building and, although weatherproof, it was dilapidated and somewhat ramshackle in appearance. A man was with her. They were in animated discussion until Mrs Schumann was aware of the visitors.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Dame Beatrice, insincerely. ‘I am afraid we come at an unfortunate time.’

  ‘No, no, my dear friend, not at all. You have brought Mrs Gavin’s dog, I see. How nice. You want me to look him over, perhaps?’

  ‘Oh, no, I don’t think so. He seems in good health.’

  ‘His spirits are high?’

  ‘Well, he’s a quiet dog, but he seems quite happy with us.’

  ‘Leave him with me, and please to go inside. It is cold for you to stand about here. The back door is open, if you will be so good. Please to make yourselves at home. Mrs Gavin knows the way. She has been here before.’

  As it was very chilly in the garden, Laura took Dame Beatrice into the cottage. The back door led into a scullery which opened into the kitchen. On the kitchen table were several printed folders. Laura glanced at them in passing. Dame Beatrice gave them closer attention. They were from firms which specialised in properly constructed kennel ranges.

  Beyond the kitchen a passage led to the front door, and a couple of rooms opened off this passage. Laura tried the first of these, but it was locked. The second opened into a small sitting-room smelling strongly of dog.

  ‘I wonder what’s hidden in Bluebeard’s Chamber?’ said Laura lightly. ‘It wasn’t locked when Hamish and I bought the dog.’ She walked to the window and looked out. The view was of a tangle of bushes, a large paddock of unkempt grass and a half-dozen pine trees. Beyond the fence was the Forest. The cottage was a lonely one and a possible inference was that in some part of it or its grounds Karen Schumann had been murdered. ‘I wonder where it happened?’ Laura went on. ‘In that locked room, do you think?’

  ‘We do not know for certain that this is where the murder took place,’ remonstrated Dame Beatrice. ‘We know only that it was not where the body was found. The room is locked, I expect, because it was the domain of the master of the house and has been kept sacrosanct since his death.’

  ‘Oh, no, I don’t think that’s the reason, because I remember we were given tea in there. It was smothered in books from floor to ceiling. I had a look at them while Mrs Schumann was getting tea. A pretty mixed bag they were, as regards publication dates, but mostly they were hardly up my street – commentaries on the scriptures, sermons and such – all, or nearly all, in German. I imagine that they belonged to the husband, as you say. He was some kind of parson, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Mrs Schumann referred to him as a scholar and a pastor.’

  ‘Wonder how long she’ll be?’

  They were not kept waiting. Mrs Schumann came in and apologised for leaving them alone.

  ‘A man I needed to see. In early spring I re-house my dogs. Expensive, but what? The old sheds, they almost fall down. Besides, nobody will buy my puppies if the place looks so bad. Bad housing, bad dogs, they think. Dame Beatrice, you are a psychiatrist. You believe I am right?’

  ‘Yes, I think most people are influenced by their surroundings,’ Dame Beatrice agreed. ‘But, tell me, do you not keep a kennel-maid?’

  ‘No, no, I manage. My Karen helped me at week-ends, in holidays, and so on. Otherwise I manage. My husband did not help, but I did not mind, and now that he is dead, Karen also, the more I have to occupy me the better.’

  ‘I understand that very well.’

  ‘Edward tells me you have been to see him. Did you find him helpful? I fear not.’

  ‘No, we did not find him helpful, although I am sure he did his best. We wondered whether he could help us to reconstruct the manner in which your daughter spent that day. The school was on holiday …’

  ‘Yes, I told you.’

  ‘You also told us that your daughter telephoned to find out whether you would be at home.’

  ‘So. And Edward? He was not with Karen. He spent the day with his work.’

  ‘Studying in the school library, it seems.’

  ‘It would be like that, yes. Sometimes I think he paid too little attention to my Karen. It is not a good plan to neglect a young woman. She went out with her friends, perhaps?’

  ‘If you mean the two young women with whom she shared a flat, Superintendent Phillips has been to see them. It appears that Karen did not go out with them, and gave them little indication of the way in which she proposed to spend her day.’

  ‘If only she had been with them, or with Edward or with me, this terrible thing would not have happened!’

  ‘Who can tell? You cannot suggest any reason why your daughter should have telephoned you?’

  ‘It is simple, is it not? To find out whether I should be at home, but, as I told you, I could not be at home that day. Perhaps you think I should have broken my engagement with my client? But that is not the way to do business.’

  ‘Of course it is not. Neither is it the way in which I think you should have acted. All I meant was that I should have thought your daughter would have known that you had this engagement, and therefore would not be at home that day.’

  ‘I cannot remember whether I told her of it or not. I think most likely I did not, as I would not have expected her to be on holiday that day, and therefore my engagements would not concern her.’

  ‘I see.’ There was a pause, and then Mrs Schumann said,

  ‘One thing I do not understand. The doctor at the inquest says that my Karen died not later than at m
idday.’

  ‘I came to the same conclusion myself when I first saw the body. I would have put it even earlier than the doctor did, but, of course, it is not possible to make an exact estimate.’

  ‘But at what time in the morning, then, did she leave her flat?’

  ‘The police, no doubt, have worked that out, but their findings may not tally with the evidence of the two young women who lived there.’

  ‘You do not know this? – what the police have worked out?’

  ‘I have not asked.’

  ‘But, to arrive in those woods, only a few miles from where you live, she must have set out as soon as it was light. Why would she wish to start so early? She was a girl who loved her bed. Often and often she has said to me that she looked forward to Saturdays and Sundays because she had no need to get up early to go to school. As for the holidays, well, I would be half-way through my morning before she would come downstairs.’

  There was another pause. Mrs Schumann gave the impression that she was waiting for a remark from Dame Beatrice, but, although the latter realised this, she remained silent, and it was Laura who spoke next.

  ‘As it was only an extra day, I expect Karen wanted to make the most of it,’ she said, ‘and perhaps there wasn’t much peace with the other two bustling about and getting ready to go off to Bournemouth.’

  ‘She had her own room. She could shut herself away from them,’ said Mrs Schumann. There was another pause, and then, in a brisk tone, she added, ‘And now, my good friends, you have come for a purpose. Is there any news?’

  ‘No, I am afraid not. Our purpose is to ask you to answer even more questions, if you will,’ Dame Beatrice replied.

  ‘But of course! Ask me anything you want. I will do anything which will help to find out this madman who has killed my Karen.’

  ‘A madman? Do you mean that literally, I wonder?’

  ‘I think so, yes. She was so kind, so peaceable – who but a madman would harm her? Ask your questions. I will answer everything.’