‘No, but Mrs Schumann was a breeder of dogs.’
‘You mean she might have had a legitimate use for this stuff? What is that to me? I know nothing about dogs. I don’t even like them.’
‘Do you deny that you knew Mrs Schumann had this compound in her cottage?’
‘Most certainly I deny it. I took no interest in her work with her animals. It was her husband who was my friend. Our interests were identical, and I was extremely sorry when he became ill and subsequently died. I missed his companionship and I found his mind stimulated mine. He was a very great loss to me.’
‘Yes,’ said Maisry. ‘Did he raise any objection when you became engaged to his daughter?’
‘I was not engaged to her during his life-time.’
‘Because you knew he would object?’
‘No. She was too young, that is all.’
‘Did you know that your school secretary, Mrs Clancy, had an Italian maid?’
The sudden change of questioning, part of Maisry’s technique, did not appear to disconcert James. Looking slightly surprised, but in no way put out, he replied,
‘But I thought the woman had been murdered.’
‘Please answer my question, Mr James.’
‘Oh, I see, yes. I suppose everybody on the staff knew about her. The women gossip and chat about their small concerns all day long, and Mrs Clancy always took the break-time tea with us.’
‘Did you ever talk about her servant to anyone?’
‘Not that I remember. I wasn’t interested.’
‘You don’t remember mentioning her to Mrs Schumann?’
‘Oh, that!’
‘What, Mr James?’
‘Why, Mrs Schumann was always very anxious to sell her puppies, of course. It was her livelihood, so occasionally she would ask me whether there was anybody new on the staff and, if there was, she would want to know whether they would like to buy a dog – a clumber spaniel if it was to be a pet, or a wolfhound if they wanted something to frighten away tramps or burglars or people selling things at the door.’
‘And you obliged by passing on the message?’
‘I? Oh, no. I wasn’t her errand boy. Karen used to make the enquiries for her, I believe.’
‘Ah, yes, of course, Mrs Clancy had had the Italian maid for some time before Miss Schumann’s death.’
‘As a matter of fact, now I come to think of it, I remember that Karen did approach Mrs Clancy about buying a dog, because the bungalow she lived in was so isolated, but Mrs Clancy said she was never alone in the place.’
‘And when Mrs Castle came on to the school staff, did you mention her to Mrs Schumann?’
‘No.’
‘Then how did they come to be acquainted?’
‘I had no idea that they were acquainted. That is news to me. I was not aware that they had ever met. All I know is that Mrs Schumann said to me that she supposed the school would have to find someone to fill Karen’s place, as, of course, was obvious. We could not, at a comprehensive school, do without a teacher of modern languages.’
‘Did the two young ladies who lodged with Miss Schumann and, later, with Mrs Castle, have any connection with Mrs Schumann?’
‘I believe Karen sometimes asked them to Saturday tea at the cottage, if you call that having a connection.’
‘But you know of no connection between Mrs Castle and Mrs Schumann?’
‘You are putting a very strange and unpalatable idea into my head, Inspector.’
‘Surely not,’ said Maisry, in his gentle voice. ‘I think the strange and unpalatable idea has been in your head for some time, Mr James.’
(2)
It was arranged that Phillips should make the arrest. A warrant was obtained and he drove over to Mrs Schumann’s cottage to discharge it, only to find the place empty. He first knocked several times, and then hammered on the door. As these actions provoked no response, he peered in at each window in turn. Everything was tidy and in place. He found a ladder in an outhouse and climbed it to look in at the bedroom windows, but there was nobody at home. He came again in the afternoon and at six o’clock on the following morning. Still unable to gain admittance by fair means, he broke a window and climbed into the kitchen. From here he made a tour and a search of the whole cottage. The absence of any article of clothing and of any form of luggage indicated that the occupant had flown. The barking of the dogs made him think of feeding them, but there was nothing to be found but a quantity of dog-biscuit, so he gave them that and some water and let them out into the yard for exercise.
There were only five of them, a clumber spaniel bitch, two dogs of the same breed, and a wolfhound dog and bitch. There was at first no sign of any puppies, but, strolling around while the dogs were loose in their paddock, he came upon a small pond, and what had happened to the puppies was obvious. He raked out the little bodies and buried them, then he went back to the paddock and shut the dogs up again in their new and expensive quarters.
‘I don’t know what we can do about them,’ he said to Dame Beatrice and Laura. ‘We’ve put a dragnet out for Mrs Schumann, of course. I suppose James tipped her off that we were on her trail. It’s a nuisance, but we’re bound to find her sooner or later. The fact that she’s taken all her clothes doesn’t make it look as though she’s contemplating taking her own life. We shall continue to watch the cottage, of course, but I think it’s a case of locking the stable door after the horse has been stolen. The car is still there, but I’m surprised, though, at her leaving the dogs like that, although I suppose she couldn’t have taken five of them with her.’
‘They’d have been rather a give-away, apart from anything else,’ said Laura. ‘It’s beastly about the puppies, but if she hadn’t drowned them they might have starved, which would have been even worse.’
‘Or the dogs, if nobody fed them, might have eaten them,’ said Phillips.
‘Well, I’ll feed the dogs,’ said Laura. ‘I’ll drive over every day. It can only be once a day, but they’ll manage if I make it a substantial meal, I think.’
‘You’ll look out for yourself, then, Mrs Gavin, won’t you? If she should turn up again, she’ll likely be a very dangerous customer.’ Phillips looked at Dame Beatrice, but she said nothing. ‘You’ll take Fergus with you, I hope.’
‘Hardly!’ said Laura. ‘Considering that she lured him away from me after her daughter’s death, he isn’t likely to take my part against her.’
‘We will both feed the dogs,’ said Dame Beatrice suddenly. ‘Fergus cultivates my friendship and I think he might ally himself with me, even against his former owner.’
‘The thing is,’ said Laura, ‘will he ally himself with the other dogs, or will they go for him? If we keep him with us we run the risk of having him mauled, and if we shut him in the car he’s no use to us as a guard.’
‘Then we will leave him at home,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘It is in the highest degree unlikely that Mrs Schumann will return to the cottage if she has decamped with all her personal effects, and, even if she does, I think Laura and I, between us, can manage her.’
‘Well, as I say, we shall keep watch on the cottage,’ said Phillips, ‘so you should be all right. If you’re willing to feed the poor beasts, that’s fine.’
(3)
The drag-net put out by the police for Mrs Schumann met at first with no success. Her description was circulated to all police stations and to ports and airfields, but either she had gone to ground successfully in England or she had made a clean getaway to West Germany, where she was known to have a sister.
‘We’ve sent a description to Interpol,’ said Maisry, ‘and we’ve arrested James as an accessory after the fact, because, unless he tipped her off, it’s very odd that she should have slipped through our fingers like this. All the same, to hunt for a woman who must bear a resemblance to about half the West German housewives and who has the name Schumann, well, it’s probably like looking for a man over here who is wearing a raincoat and a trilby and whose nam
e is Thompson or even Smith.’
‘We know she has a sister in Germany because she came over here to stay a week or two. I expect the son, Otto Schumann, knows the address,’ said Dame Beatrice. Otto, whose ship put into Southampton at the end of the following week, denied all knowledge of his aunt’s address.
‘I believe she did stay with my mother for a week or so,’ he said. ‘But I was at sea at the time and I’ve never even met my German relatives and haven’t the vaguest notion where they live, except that it must be in West Germany, because, if they were East Germans, I don’t suppose my aunt would have been allowed to come over here.’
As it was impossible to prove whether or not he did know his aunt’s address, his statement had to be accepted and the search for Mrs Schumann went on. The police watched the cottage for a full month and then, feeling that this was a waste of man-power, they called off the precaution and Laura and Dame Beatrice, briefed to report any suspicious occurrence, continued to feed the dogs every day.
This went on until Hamish, Laura’s son, was due to come home from school for his summer holiday. Laura, while fully appreciating that the teachers needed this break, felt, as she herself expressed it, sick and faint at the thought of having her son for the best part of nine weeks. As she had sent him to her parents for the Easter recess, she felt that something different must be done for him in the summer. A fortnight of the time would be accounted for by a school camp in the Dolomites, but that still left more than six weeks, two before the Continental holiday and four and a half after it was over, to be passed in some way or ways which would keep a lively boy from boredom and, consequently, out of mischief.
Gavin, at his son’s urgent request, picked Hamish up at school on breaking-up day.
‘For there’s not much point in having a father who is an Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard if the chaps don’t get a good few looks at him, and quite often you can’t get along for school things – the sports and so on – like other fathers,’ wrote Hamish. ‘Can you come in a police car and have a policeman driver who will open the car door for you and give a crashing great salute when you get out? Canby’s father is a brigadier, but he only comes in a perfectly ordinary Bentley and not even a chauffeur to drive it, so if you can come in style it will be marvellous, and be no end of a credit to me.’
Gavin, however, turned up in a ‘perfectly ordinary’ Humber, self-driven and without a single uniformed constable on the horizon, and, having made arrangements to have the pony transferred from the riding-stables, where it was kept during term-time, to the Stone House, Wandles Parva, he drove his son home and stayed the night.
The news that Laura and Dame Beatrice were feeding five dogs, apart from Fergus and his now firmly-established pet, the Yorkshire terrier presented to him by his headmaster’s wife at Easter, reconciled Hamish to his father’s failure to provide pomp and circumstance, and he immediately offered to take the task of feeding Mrs Schumann’s dogs off their hands. To this Laura could not agree, neither was she prepared to disclose her reason for not accepting the proposal. She hedged by saying that she had become very much attached to Mrs Schumann’s dogs, but that he might accompany her each day if he so wished.
‘But where is Mrs Schumann?’ he asked.
‘Away from home for a bit,’ Laura replied. She did not add that, but for this fact, she would not have allowed Hamish to stay at the Stone House.
‘Oh, gone on holiday, you mean,’ said Hamish, accepting the situation as he saw it. ‘How long will she be away?’
‘We don’t know. She doesn’t know, either.’ This was the truth, so far as it went, for she would be away, presumably, until the police found her. ‘By the way, I don’t want you to go riding alone during these holidays.’
‘Why ever not, mamma? I shall be all right.’
‘All the same, I’d rather you didn’t.’ Wherever Mrs Schumann was, there was no excuse for failing to take precautions. ‘I’m in, well, rather a nervous state, and I should worry all the time.’
Hamish gazed at her with respect and awe.
‘I say, you’re not going to have a baby, are you?’ he demanded.
‘Stranger things than that have happened,’ said Laura.
‘Oh, then, of course you must have your own way! And in everything! Does my father know?’
‘I haven’t told him yet.’
‘Does Mrs Dame know?’
‘I haven’t told her yet, either – well, not definitely.’
‘Then do you mean that I’m actually the first person – the very first – to be told? Oh, mamma, how absolutely great! But why haven’t you told people?’
‘Because I can’t be absolutely sure until I’ve seen the doctor again.’
‘But, mamma, it’s wizard! Do you want a boy or a girl?’
‘I don’t much mind. Which do you want?’
‘I don’t really mind, either. I say! I shall be old enough to be its uncle, shan’t I?’
After this, there were no arguments about his not being allowed to go riding in the Forest on his own. The pony was put out to grass, and any riding which Hamish did was in the field attached to the Stone House grounds. Every day, after tea, he and Laura, accompanied by Dame Beatrice, Fergus and Lindy Lou, drove over to Mrs Schumann’s cottage to give her dogs food and fresh water, the huge wolfhound and the tiny terrier remaining in the car with Dame Beatrice while Laura and Hamish carried out their errand of mercy.
The climax to all this came in the middle of the following week. The three had left the Stone House at just after a quarter past five, and as the car drew up outside the cottage Dame Beatrice said,
‘I think I saw a large dog go into the woods about half a mile back. It looked, from the glimpse I had of it, remarkably like Fergus. I suppose, after they had had their run yesterday, the five dogs were safely fastened up again?’
‘Oh, yes, they were,’ said Hamish, who was on the back seat with Fergus and Lindy Lou. ‘We both tried the doors. We always do. It wouldn’t be at all the thing to let Mrs Schumann’s dogs roam loose when she’s trusted us to look after them.’
The polite fiction that Laura and Dame Beatrice had arranged with Mrs Schumann to feed and exercise the dogs while she was away from home had, of course, been allowed to stand.
‘And they couldn’t possibly get out on their own,’ said Laura. ‘It must have been someone else’s dog you spotted.’ She and her son left the car, carrying the food they had brought with them. Since Phillips had broken the kitchen window there was no difficulty in obtaining a supply of drinking-water for the dogs. Hamish climbed into the kitchen as usual and had unbolted the back door preparatory to emerging with an enamel pitcher filled with water from the scullery tap when he heard a shout and a horrid snarling noise.
He emerged to see his mother flat on her back outside the shed where the two wolfhounds were housed and, standing over her with all his hackles up, was an enormous, unkempt, crossbred dog.
‘Oh, mamma!’ he cried, in fright and dire dismay.
‘Don’t come any nearer,’ said Laura, calmly. ‘He won’t attack unless I try to put up a fight. Go back to the car as steadily and confidently as you can, and ask Mrs Croc, to get help. Don’t hurry. Above all, don’t run.’
Hamish did exactly as he was told, although his heart was thumping until it made him feel sick. He reached the car and said, in a voice which came out in a curious croaking tone,
‘A big ugly dog has flown at my mother and knocked her down. He’s standing over her with his teeth bared, and he’s snarling like anything. She says he won’t hurt her so long as she keeps still. She says will you go for help. Oh, Mrs Dame, dear, what on earth shall we do? Would Fergus tackle him?’
‘I have no idea, and I do not think we will risk it,’ said Dame Beatrice. She produced from a capacious skirt pocket a small, elegant, but sinister revolver. ‘You had better stay here with the dogs. They may be alarmed when they hear the shot.’ Her real reason was that she did not want the child to se
e the other dog killed.
(4)
‘Well,’ said Laura, ‘that was quite an experience.’ She switched on the engine and drove with apparent composure along the woodland track and on to the road which led ultimately to the Stone House.
‘What happened exactly?’ asked Dame Beatrice.
‘Why, I went to open the wolfhounds’ shed, as usual, but the door stuck, so I gave it a bit of a kick. It flew open, and, instead of Sean and Maire, a beastly great lurcher jumped straight out at me, full tilt, caught me off balance and ditched me. I realised that my only chance was to lie quite still and hope for the best. I didn’t know you had your little gat with you. What a bit of luck!’
‘Oh, I expect Mrs Dame always carries it in the Forest,’ said Hamish, speaking airily to cover the fact that he had had a terrible fright. ‘I don’t know why, but I have a feeling that she does.’
‘Oh, yes, there’s been some rumour of a mad bitch roaming loose,’ said his mother. ‘That’s why I said I was nervous about your riding in the Forest this holiday.’
‘Oh? Not the other, then?’
‘Well, I don’t think that, in itself, would make me nervous, but it wouldn’t be much fun having that, if anything happened to you, would it?’
‘Of course, there is only one conclusion to be drawn from today’s episode,’ said Dame Beatrice, when Hamish had gone to bed.
‘That there is a mad bitch loose in the Forest. Yes, I know,’ said Laura, ‘but if she’s been in the Forest all this time – let’s see – it must be the best part of six weeks – where on earth can she have been hiding? I mean, the police have combed the country for her.’
‘I do not think, (and I base my idea on the dog which, unfortunately, I had to destroy), I really do not think that she has been at any great distance from her cottage. She has been overlooked, in fact, because she was so near to it.’
‘But she’d have to eat. Surely, with her description circulated as widely as it has been, somebody would have spotted her and given her away, wherever she’s been hiding?’
‘I can think of an explanation and I have just passed it on to Detective-Inspector Maisry over the telephone. He has announced his intention of discussing it with Superintendent Phillips. I think it possible that she may have been staying at a gipsy encampment. There are still gipsies in the Forest and they are the last people to mix themselves up with the police. Indeed, I am not at all sure that they read the newspapers or listen to the radio.’
[Mrs Bradley 41] - Three Quick and Five Dead Page 21
