“Stop shrieking in the street. You’ll get us pinched,” he said. “What now?”
“Guide books—reference department—they were always trotting off somewhere. Try Egypt. I know they went there not so long ago.”
“Wouldn’t they buy a guide book for that?”
“Yes, probably, but they’d look at the stuff in the library first, I expect, to see what to buy.”
“Oh, well, it’s worth trying. Will you do the talking?”
“If you like. Friends of ours—understood them to say they’d come here for advice and to look at books and maps? That do?”
“Quite. Babble a bit. Woolly-headed enthusiasm brings home the bacon even better than a display of erudition and specialised knowledge when a woman seeks information from a man.”
“Right. This way, then.”
Laura did not use the technique her husband had indicated because the librarian in charge of the reference department, a large, particularly well-stocked one, happened to be a cool, quiet-voiced young woman with an Oxford accent.
“Books on Egypt?” she said. “Oh, we have numerous enquiries, I believe, but I’ve only been here a few months, so, if your friends left the district more than two years ago, I shouldn’t know them.”
“Checkmate,” said Gavin softly. Aloud he asked, “Is there anybody here who could help us?”
“There’s a catalogue you can look at, and it’s part of my job to give any help I can. Will you look at the catalogue first?”
“Please. Does it include books in the lending library?”
“I can always let you look at books from the lending department, if they are in.”
“Oh, well, I’ll leave my wife to look round here for a bit. Shan’t be long, dear,” he said to Laura. “Shall I find you here when I get back?”
Laura said that he would, and began to browse among the books. She had realised, as soon as he did, that the lending department of a municipal library keeps records of its borrowers’ names and addresses. If Phlox and Marigold had been borrowers, therefore, there would be a card to prove it.
So Gavin went off and returned to find Laura immersed in an ancient Baedeker. He seated himself beside her, pulled a more modern travel book towards him, and opened it at random.
“No Carmichaels on the books,” he murmured, “but the chief librarian thought he remembered Phlox from my description. Unfortunately, that isn’t much good, as he couldn’t put a name to him and said that he thought he used the reference library only.”
“What can we do, then?”
“Electoral registers, here and in Chelsea. If their names aren’t there, we’re stymied.”
The young librarian rustled papers in an irritable way, caught Laura’s eye, and nodded meaningly at a large placard which indicated that silence was to be observed. Laura looked apologetic, touched her husband’s arm, and they slunk out.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dame Beatrice Acts Independently
“. . . those highly magnifie him, whose judicious enquiry into his Acts, and deliberate research into his Creatures, return the duty of a devout and learned admiration.”
Ibid (Section 13)
* * *
THE electoral registers, consulted at the Post Office, did not get them any further, either.
“A complete blank,” said Laura. Gavin disagreed.
“Anything fishy is never a complete blank.”
“I meant that we’ve come to a dead end here,” Laura explained. “What do we do next?”
“Police station. Our fishy friends may not have a police record, but it will be hard luck if somebody doesn’t know something about them.”
“We’ve only the grudging evidence of that old boatman chap to suggest that the Carmichaels ever lived here, you know, and he may have been either pulling our legs or genuinely mistaken.”
“I’ll try him again—officially and with lurid threats—if I don’t get any help at the station.”
“He must know the name they went under, if he serviced their boat. Oh, of course! What lunatics we are!”
“Speak for yourself, woman. What’s biting you?”
“Can’t we find out the name under which they bought their house-boat?”
“It would most certainly have been Carmichael. But your words have rung a bell, all the same. We might be able to find the name under which they sold their motor cruiser, or whatever it was they had here.”
“We’re placing a good deal of reliance on that old man’s hint, aren’t we?”
“All we’ve got to go on at the moment. Anyway, you leave him to us. We’ll sort him.”
“When?”
“The morn’s morn. I’ll telephone Dame B. and tell her I’ll stay in London for the night. Do you prefer your own bed in Kensington, or would you rather get back to Wandles and come up here again tomorrow?”
“Do I get dinner at the Dorchester?”
“If I can get a table.”
“Kensington, then.”
Early next morning they were back in Chelsea. Of the boatman there was no sign. They made enquiries, but no progress. He had slipped away from the moorings. That was all.
“So there is something nasty in the woodshed,” said Laura cheerfully.
“We must get after him,” said Gavin. “You go back to Wandles and see what the Dame thinks of doing at that end, and I’ll stay up here and set the bloodhounds on this fellow Plinlimmon.”
Laura drove herself back to Hampshire after a lonely lunch in Soho and arrived at the Stone House to find that Hamish had been taken to the vicarage to be tended and fed, and that Dame Beatrice, according to Henri and Célestine, had taken George and the Jaguar to go off very early in the morning to a destination unspecified.
“Pollarded Reach, I expect,” said Laura. “Wonder whether she’d like me to go along? She didn’t say anything when she took our telephone call last evening.”
“Madame made no wishes,” said Célestine. “She calls for Georges and they depart.”
“Which way?”
“For Southampton, it seemed to me.”
“That means that house-boat all right. Be an angel, Célestine, and go and collect Hamish from the vicarage. I bet he’s played Mrs. Pierce up. He always does. I don’t know why she asks to have him.”
With a brief retort that Hamish was an angel—a flagrant distortion of fact which, in order to avoid argument, Laura allowed to pass unchallenged—the Frenchwoman departed to get ready to go on her errand. Laura took her motor-scooter from the garage and was soon making a somewhat noisy progress along the Southampton road.
Meanwhile Dame Beatrice was at the riverside home of Phlox and Marigold Carmichael, engaged in the risky but exciting pastime of taking the bull by the horns. She had taken the chance of finding the couple on their house-boat and had not been disappointed. They had left the vicarage on the previous day and, for once, were not on their travels.
“I hope,” she said, “that I shall not need to detain you very long.”
“It is a great pleasure to welcome you,” said Phlox, his expression indicating that it was nothing of the kind. “We are, as always, entirely at your disposal. Won’t you come on board and sit down?”
Dame Beatrice accepted this invitation to enter the spider’s parlour and was given a deep basket chair in the saloon, from which, she realised, it would not be easy to get out in a hurry.
“Now?” said Phlox, seating himself in a commanding position on the table. “Sit down, Marigold, for goodness’ sake!”
The crude exclamation betrayed his state of mind, Dame Beatrice thought. It was out of character for him to be discourteous, at any rate in public. She said:
“I have come, of course, in connection with the disappearance of Miss Beads and the discovery of the skeleton of an unnamed woman on Dickon’s smallholding.”
Phlox seized on the operative word.
“You say ‘unnamed,’ I notice; not ‘unknown.’ Is her identity known?�
�
“Not with any certainty. It is in an attempt to dispel what, for want of a more exact definition, I shall call ‘rumours,’ that I am here.”
“Rumours?” Phlox repeated the word and, at the same time, flicked his fingers at Marigold, forbidding her to speak. “Such as?”
“Such as,” said Dame Beatrice, fixing her sharp black eyes on his, “that you two are brother and sister, not husband and wife.”
Phlox again signalled to Marigold that she was to leave the conversation to him.
“So what?” he asked, flicking a speck of fluff from his golden-yellow corduroy trousers.
“Interesting,” commented Dame Beatrice. “There must be a reason for it, of course.”
“Yes, there is.” He uncrossed and re-crossed his long legs. “It is an arrangement we came to some years ago when we were travelling in far Arabia. Several times I received well-intentioned hints to sell my sister to a sheikh, and, to save embarrassment all round, I found it desirable to present her as my wife.”
“Simple, admirable, and intelligent,” said Dame Beatrice, “but it does not explain why the Pierces also take you for a married couple.”
“Do they? I don’t know why. We always insist on separate rooms and do not behave in any sort of sentimental manner, I believe. In any case, since the rumours can do us no possible harm, I do not see why they need to be dispelled, particularly by one who—forgive me—can have no possible concern with what is, after all, our own business.”
“I would say ‘touché’ but for a further rumour,” said Dame Beatrice, placidly accepting the obvious setting-down which she had received.
“And that is?” Phlox drew a box of cigarettes towards him, selected one with exaggerated care, tapped it on the box, put it between his lips, and struck a light from a jar of harlequin matches. Dame Beatrice waited until this performance was concluded; then she said:
“The further rumour is that the skeleton found on Dickon’s smallholding is that of your wife.”
There was a brief silence before the muzzled Marigold released the tension by falling forward in a dead faint. Phlox was on his feet in an instant. Dame Beatrice’s movements were more controlled, but she rose from the deep chair with a celerity many younger women might have envied and crossed the unstable floor of the house-boat which, at the moment, was being rocked by the wash of a passing river-steamer. She stood looking down at the brother and sister. Phlox was now on his knees, raising Marigold’s limp head.
“Slowly,” said Dame Beatrice. “It’s all right. She’s coming to.”
“She can’t stand shocks,” said Phlox. “Would you be kind enough to get me the brandy out of the sideboard? And then some water, please. There’s a tumbler on the draining-board in the scullery.”
Dame Beatrice complied with these requests and soon the colour was back in Marigold’s rather characterless little face and she was apologising for “being so very foolish, but I’m emotional—Phlox will tell you.”
“You had a shock, silly girl,” said Phlox. “It was hearing Dame Beatrice remark upon something we have discussed between us—that, having been present when the—that ugly thing was found, we might be thought to have some connection with it. There! Lie back and relax. You’ll be all right now. You are still suffering from the inquisition of the police, that’s what it is.”
“I’ll get Dame Beatrice some coffee,” said Marigold feebly. Dame Beatrice waved a skinny claw and said that she must be going.
“Well, we must thank you for the information about these malicious rumours,” said Phlox. “I’ll just see you ashore.”
“No, no. I can find my way,” said Dame Beatrice firmly. She lost no time in leaving them and walked ashore to find Phlox’s neighbour on the bank. Phlox immediately disappeared. The woman laughed sardonically.
“I’ve been keeping guard,” she said, “ever since I spotted you going aboard that lazar-house. One scream out of you and I should have been there with my little hatchet.” She waved it proudly. “I don’t trust that couple. No dirty work they’re not capable of putting across. Yes,” she continued, raising her voice, “I know you can hear me, you couple of murdering devils. You know what I think of you, well enough! Dog-killers! Child-drowners! Blood-suckers!”
Dame Beatrice cackled and began to move towards her car in which George, the chauffeur, sat like a statue. Her protector accompanied her, carelessly swinging the axe.
“It was good of you to think of my welfare,” said Dame Beatrice. “Good-bye. I look forward to meeting you again.”
“Don’t go yet,” said the woman. “I’m quite sane and normal in the ordinary course of events. It’s just that those two get my goat—him particularly. Otherwise my bark’s much worse than my bite. Ask anybody on the Reach; they’ll tell you.”
“There is something I’d like you to tell me,” said Dame Beatrice, conscious that a curtain in the Carmichaels’ houseboat had been drawn slightly aside and that she and her companion were being watched. “How does one set about acquiring a boat and hiring moorings on this stretch of the river?”
“Fellow called Tompkins will fix you up. Across the bridge, past the garage, you’ll see his place. Tompkins. I don’t think there are any moorings vacant at present, though. Still, no harm in asking. So long, then. Be seeing you!”
George opened the door of the car and his employer got in, waved a skinny, ungloved claw, and settled herself.
“Home, madam?” asked George.
“Ultimately. When we are across the bridge, look out for the name Tompkins. It may be on a boat-house and it may be over a shop.”
“Very good, madam.”
Tompkins’ place proved to be an open shed containing rowing boats, a pram dinghy, two canoes, and a racing skiff. By the side of it was a small office through the window of which could be seen a man smoking a cigarette and making entries in a ledger. George descended and tapped on the window. The man removed the cigarette and placed it in the saucer he was using as an ashtray. He put the top on his fountain pen, opened the window, and said, “Well?”
“Mr. Tompkins?”
“Ah. Want to hire a boat?”
“No. Madam would like a word with you.”
“Madam?”
“Dame Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley,” said George impressively.
“Who’s she when she’s at home?”
“Squire of the village of Wandles Parva in Hampshire.”
“What’s she want?”
“You had better ask her, mate,” said George. He turned on his heel and walked back to the car. “A difficult subject, this man Tompkins, madam,” he said. “I don’t know what you’ll make of him.” He opened the door of the car.
“We shall see,” said Dame Beatrice. She walked to the window. “I shall not take up much of your time, I hope, Mr. Tompkins,” she remarked to the face at the window. “May I come in?” She entered the shed. Tompkins cleared some clutter from a chair.
“Sit down, mam,” he said. “If it’s moorings, I can’t do you nothing until them Carmichaels sells their boat.”
“I have just been visiting them, but they said nothing about selling.”
“Matter of fact, they ain’t said nothing to me neither. I’ve heard at second-hand from the people who’s got the next moorings.”
“Wishful thinking on their part, perhaps, don’t you think?”
The man gave her a sharp glance and their eyes met. He nodded, picked up the cigarette and gave a thoughtful pull at it.
“Could be, I s’pose. I dunno about wishful what’s it, but I do know there’s been nothing but trouble since they been there. Complaints? I ain’t had nothing else but. What they thinks I can do about it beats me. They don’t break no laws and the rent for the moorings always a month in advance. You can’t turn away people like that.”
“I suppose not. How long have they been here?”
“Matter of two years.”
“Not more than that?—and already thinking of selling? Whe
re did they come from, I wonder?”
“Why, from your part of the country, mam. The Hamble-River, so they said.”
“Really?”
“Well, that’s what they said. I don’t know no more than that.”
“Whom should I approach if I wanted to buy a house-boat?”
“Hereabouts you’d likely hire one. But I tell you there ain’t none to hire because there ain’t no moorings.”
“I quite understand. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Tompkins. Perhaps I’d better try nearer Maidenhead.”
“Staines way is nice—Laleham and that. Or Twickenham. You want to look around a bit before you decides. If you care to leave your address, I’ll let you know if there’s any more talk about them Carmichaels going.”
“Oh, I’m in touch with them, as I told you,” said Dame Beatrice. She turned away as two people came up to hire a boat. Just as she reached the car, a motor-scooter pulled up beside it.
“I suppose you haven’t bothered about lunch,” said Laura. “There’s still plenty of time. Can George ride the scooter home and will you let me drive you into Maidenhead or Henley?”
“No. I would rather go to Oxford. It will be much quicker. On the way we will exchange information and air our theories.”
So George rolled sedately away on the scooter, after having been charged to get himself some lunch on the way home, and Laura drove the Jaguar to Oxford and recounted the abortive tale of the Chelsea Embankment.
“So Gavin may get somewhere on his own, or he may not. My bet is that the police will find this old boatman all right, but will get nothing out of him,” she said in conclusion.
“It almost looks to me as though the Carmichaels were never resident in Chelsea,” Dame Beatrice observed. “On the other hand, I find it difficult to believe that they had a house-boat on the Hamble River.”
“Why?”
“I hardly know, except that, if they had, one would have thought it unlikely that they would opt to put up at our vicarage, unless, of course, they had the same reputation on the Hamble as they seem to have made for themselves on the Thames.”
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