In the floor of the third vault she visited there was a hinged trap-door. She pulled it up with considerable effort and it fell back with a crash which echoed from the low ceiling of the cellar with noise enough to suggest that the house was falling down. Another stairway was disclosed, this time in the form of a broad-treaded wooden ladder which led down to a wine-cellar of later construction than that of the cellars above.
Evidence of its purpose lay about in the form of bins full of empty wine bottles and a tumbled group of brandy, whisky, and gin bottles in a cobwebbed corner. Dame Beatrice searched the floor diligently, lighting each separate flagstone with her torch until she discovered what she was looking for—a biggish, clean patch in one corner. It was not proof positive, but she felt justified in regarding it as proof presumptive, of the place where the body had lain before the murderer moved it and came back to wash the blood-stains from the floor.
She attempted to reconstruct what had happened. No woman of Hilary Beads’ experience would have permitted herself to be decoyed to such a place as this wine-cellar. That could be written off as a certainty. Nevertheless, the probability was that she had been murdered somewhere in the vicinity of the Manor House because the body had had to be transported to the top of the tower and it was reasonable to suppose that the murderer would have given himself as little trouble as possible.
The obvious place of sacrifice, Dame Beatrice reflected, was the toad-like Stone. She climbed up the cellar stairs and then, at the foot of the stone steps which led to the kitchen wing, she paused. Somebody else was in the Manor House. She remained where she was, and listened. The footsteps which had attracted her attention sounded loud and distinct, a confident masculine tread, she thought. Whoever it was, he was alone. What was more, he seemed to be searching for something, for, besides the footsteps, she heard doors being wrenched open and flung to, as though the seeker had no time to spare.
At last, having apparently exhausted the ground-floor rooms and cupboards, the man ascended the stairs. Dame Beatrice crept out of the cellar as quietly as a cat, listened at the top of the stairs in order to determine whether the unknown caller at the Manor was in the front of the house or at the back, placed him very easily because of the noise he was making, and so left the premises by the kitchen door and was soon on her way to the tower.
She locked the door behind her before she mounted to the top, for she suspected that the visitor to the house was Phlox Carmichael, returned from his excursion with the vicar, and she had no mind to let him find her alone and unarmed upon the probable scene of his crime.
From the top of the tower, in company with the corpse, she watched and waited, but the person who emerged eventually from the Manor House was not Phlox Carmichael, but Mr. Colson from the Pelican House Academy. He did not so much as glance toward the tower, but made his way with great, purposeful strides around the eastern side of the lake and up to the Stone of Sacrifice. Here he stayed, studying the Stone intently, the sunshine flashing with dazzling light from the magnifying-glass in his hand.
He crawled all over the Stone, missing not an inch of its surface, and every now and then he glanced about him as though he feared that his activities might be witnessed. He was not disturbed, however, and, his close inspection of the Stone completed, he hurried away and was lost to sight among the trees. Ten minutes later Laura arrived. She was unaccompanied. Dame Beatrice descended and unlocked the door of the tower.
“You should have waited for the police,” she said.
“They’re on their way,” said Laura. “I didn’t bother with the village bobby. I telephoned Culminster. They’ll be here directly. I didn’t want to hang about, knowing I’d left you here with It. Are we going aloft again?”
“It scarcely seems worth while. I do not suppose the body will be spirited away. Did you explain on the telephone where it was to be found?”
“Yes, but I don’t know whether they understood, so I emphasised the Manor House and told them that anybody in the village would direct them. It won’t take them any time to get here from Culminster in a fast car. I suppose they’ll go to the front gates. Wonder whether Daisy will open up, or whether she’ll chivvy them round to the wicket-gate?”
“I should not be in the least surprised to find that the lock on the front gates is too rusty to be opened. By the way, the Manor House has had another visitor since you left here.”
As they stood in the open doorway of the tower, Dame Beatrice gave Laura an account of Colson’s activities.
“But what on earth could he have been looking for?” Laura enquired. “There was nothing interesting except the bloodstains in the conservatory. And you don’t think they are bloodstains, anyway.”
“When the police have gone, I intend to look round in the house again, child. What Mr. Colson expected to find I have no idea, but I am reasonably sure of two things: one, that he did not find it and, two, that it is still there to be found. Oh, and there was a suspiciously clean patch on the floor of the wine-cellar. I wondered whether the body had lain there before it was carried here.”
“Here!” said Laura suddenly. “Inside, quick, and turn the key!”
Dame Beatrice obeyed with celerity. She, too, had heard the sound of whistling, hardly an indication of the advent of the police. Laura raced up the staircase first, ducked her head round the edge of the platform and crawled out upon the flat roof. Dame Beatrice followed and they peered cautiously over the parapet. This time Dame Beatrice was not disappointed. From the trees emerged Phlox Carmichael. He paused at the Stone and then, to the great interest of the watchers on top of the tower, he prostrated himself upon it.
“Just as he did before,” muttered Laura. “What’s the idea, I wonder? Is he insane?”
“He certainly seems remarkably superstitious,” said Dame Beatrice. Phlox stood up again after he had performed his strange ritual and walked slowly towards the tower.
“I suppose he’s got a key,” muttered Laura. “Stand by to receive cavalry. Wish I’d got a good heavy spanner with me.” She crawled across to the opening and waited to hear Phlox putting his key in the lock. Dame Beatrice remained on watch and, after a minute or two, while Laura limbered up a well-shod foot with the purpose of stamping on the intruder’s fingers as soon as these appeared in the opening, she announced:
“The police are here and Mr. Carmichael is gazing at his reflection in the lake. He looks a monument of contemplative rectitude. I had better go down and let the Superintendent in.”
She did this, and conducted him and his sergeant up the stairs. The two men looked at the body.
“Doctor and photographer will be along in just a minute,” said the Superintendent. “Nothing you can tell us about deceased, I suppose, mam?”
“I recognise her as the missing woman you have been trying to trace. She is Miss Hilary Beads.”
“We’d better get a relative to swear to her, although I’m certain you’re right, mam. There’s the aunt in Bournemouth you put us in touch with. She’s probably more reliable than the mother who went up north before. She won’t relish the job, I don’t suppose, but we’ll make it as easy for her as we can. Well, no need to keep you here any longer. Perhaps you’ll let me have a statement later on at your house.”
“Certainly, Superintendent.” She and Laura left the tower just as the doctor and the photographer arrived. Phlox Carmichael had disappeared.
“May be keeping an eye on things from some hide-out or other,” said Laura. “If so, he’ll guess we’ve sicked the police on to his little game. Better keep an eye skinned for him. He’s a very nasty type and might think that revenge is sweet,”
“He would be very foolish to attempt to revenge himself on us. He is in quite enough trouble as it is. There are several things he has to explain. By the way, I shall be glad to learn the verdict of the British Museum experts upon those finds from Dickon’s smallholding.”
“You’re hoping they’re fakes, of course. That might mean that Phlox Carmichael plant
ed them.”
“Why should he do such a thing?”
“To get the ground well dug over—he’d guess that tons of people would want to come and have a go, once the things had been found—and then, when nothing else was found, he buried the skeleton there, thinking that nobody would bother to dig there any longer.”
“It is a possible hypothesis,” said Dame Beatrice. “My own theory is that the idea of burying the cadaver in that particular spot came to Phlox with the suddenness of a Minerva springing, fully armed, from Jupiter’s head. I think it came to him as a result of that chance meeting with Hilary Beads here in the village and the further chance meeting with the boys of Pelican House. He saw what he thought was a very good opportunity of getting rid of the skeleton so that, if it did get dug up, later on, the conclusion would be that it was, in fact, Roman.”
“A conclusion which you knocked on the head. I wonder what Phlox feels like now?”
By this time they were leaving the lake behind them and were in full sight of the Stone. This time, squat, enormous, and baleful, it was untenanted except for a fat, lethargic wood-pigeon which scarcely bothered to fly off at their approach. There was no sign of Phlox Carmichael anywhere in the wood into which the path plunged, although Laura, leading the way, kept as sharp a look-out as though she were pioneering in the territory of hostile tribes.
They picked up the car at the lodge and Laura asked, in an off-hand way, whether anybody else had called there that afternoon. Daisy was voluble on the subject. First the gentleman as stayed with vicar had been to her for a key to the house and Daisy had had to tell him as there was not no such thing unless he cared to ask the County Council about one. Then he had demanded the key to the tower and she had had to tell him as another party had got it already but no doubt they would not have no objection to letting him up if he hollered. He had been up before, with vicar, so he knowed his way all right.
“Did you tell him who we were?” asked Laura. Daisy had not told him that, it being no blessed business of his who had tooken the key so be as they made no objection to having him along of them. Then there had been the police; not as Daisy would have known they was police excepting as they had it on their car. Two lots, there was. Surely Mrs. Gavin and Dame Beatrice had seen them. Wanted Daisy to let them in by the big gates, they had, but Daisy had been obliged to inform them that not elephants, no, nor rhinoceroses could not shift them gates a single inch without the keys, and them she had not got. She could not help wondering what their business was. She could only suppose that there had been complaints about the way them boys had mucked up the Manor House and were hoping to catch some of them at it, but, if that was the case, why was one of them the police doctor?
“How did you know it was the police doctor?” Laura demanded. “It wasn’t our own Doctor Stall, was it?”
Daisy had known he was the police doctor because she had been called as a witness once at Culminster when John Marshall had been run over by his own tractor and killed, and the police doctor had given evidence at the inquest. She would know him again anywhere. She glanced sharply at Laura and then said pointedly:
“You went off in the car here to fetch them, I suppose, Mrs. Gavin?”
“To telephone, actually,” said Laura. She did not volunteer any further information, but got into the driver’s seat. Dame Beatrice said:
“When the vicar borrowed the key to show Mr. Carmichael the tower, did you get it back the same day?”
Daisy did not hesitate.
“No, that we didn’t,” she replied. “Best part of a week that key was gone. The gentleman said as he’d mislaid it. Mrs. Pierce found it in his bedroom after he’d gone off home.”
“So Phlox had a key cut, and could get into the tower when he liked,” remarked Laura, as they drove home. “But I’d still like to know what Colson was doing.”
This problem was solved by Mr. Colson himself in a telephone message to the police, as Laura heard a little later on.
“Blood—fairly fresh—on the stone of sacrifice?” she said. “But it was obvious that’s where Hilary Beads was murdered. Why else should Phlox have prostrated himself on it like that?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Dark Suspicions
“For our endeavours are not only to combat with doubts, but always to dispute with the Devil.”
Ibid (Section 19)
* * *
DAME BEATRICE and Laura had been at home for the better part of two hours when the Superintendent called. He asked to interview them separately, so Laura took herself off into the garden where she sat in a deck chair by the side of a grass tennis court while Dame Beatrice, in the library, was interrogated politely but ruthlessly.
“What caused you to go to the Manor House today, mam?”
“I believed that there would be a dead body on top of the tower.”
“What gave you such an impression?”
“It was not an impression. Ever since she disappeared I have felt certain that Miss Hilary Beads was dead, and I have spent some time in working out where the body could have been concealed. It seemed to me that the tower was the place.”
“We’re interested, mam, in your reactions. We know your reputation, of course, and I’m bound to say we’re proud to have you on our side of the fence. Now, mam, if you would just . . .”
“Come clean, you mean,” said Dame Beatrice, recollecting a cliché she had heard Laura use in past times. “Very well, Superintendent, I will. We shall begin with the body found on Dickon’s smallholding. I held the view—and it proves to have been the correct one—that the body was that of a comparatively recently murdered person.”
“We still haven’t established the identity of that person, mam.”
“I agree that we have not, but you have been working in collaboration with Detective Chief-Inspector Robert Gavin and his views coincide with mine.”
“Yes, mam, I agree with both of you, but until we find some means of identifying that skeleton, we’ve no proof. We can hardly expect Mr. Carmichael to confess he murdered his wife, and there’s nothing to go on there. We’ve been working the dentists in the Chelsea area and also around Reading and Oxford. The skeleton was so short of teeth that there must be a record of a denture or dentures somewhere. Trouble seems to be a change of name. Nobody recognises the name Carmichael or, if they do, it turns out to be the most innocent and law-abiding parties—people you couldn’t possibly suspect.”
“I am convinced, Superintendent, that the evidence we require exists.”
“Oh, we shan’t give up, mam.”
“Of course you won’t. Well, now: this skeleton was dug up on Dickon’s smallholding by the vicar of Wandles, the Reverend Gascony Pierce, assisted by his paying guests Phlox and Marigold Carmichael, who turn out to be—not husband and wife, as most people supposed—but brother and sister. Now I cannot help feeling, Superintendent, that the two deaths you are investigating and the death of the Thames boatman are connected.”
“The brother and sister relationship may be a fact, but it’s a fact that doesn’t seem to hinge on any other facts, mam. That’s the trouble. From what I’ve been told, Mr. Phlox Carmichael didn’t attempt to deny that Miss Marigold was his sister. He didn’t try to bluff it out in any sense. Just admitted it with a ‘so what,’ as I understand it. Doesn’t sound much like a guilty conscience to me.”
“But I don’t think Mr. Carmichael has a guilty conscience, you know, Superintendent. From my reading of his character, I am of the opinion that whatever Mr. Carmichael has done he can account for in his own way. He will have justified himself fully in his own mind, whether he has committed murder or not. His is a strange but undivided character. I am interested in him. He does not lack ideals.”
The Superintendent stared at her suspiciously and did not reply for a moment. Then he said:
“So this Mr. Phlox Carmichael doesn’t know right from wrong. Is that your contention, mam?”
“Not exactly. He ta
kes the responsibility of creating his own conception of what is right. That is not quite what you meant, I think.”
“I don’t pretend to understand you, mam. Are you prepared to explain?”
“Well, as I said before, the whole case turns upon the question of whether Phlox Carmichael has been married at some time and whether his wife’s skeleton was found on Dickon’s smallholding.”
“Even if he has been married at some time, and even if that skeleton is the remains of his wife, I don’t see that it gets us any further until we can prove it. Anything more, Dame Beatrice?”
“I think that Mrs. Carmichael was in somebody’s way and that the marriage was spoiling somebody’s life. The conclusion to which I have come is that this person is not (as I first supposed) Phlox himself, but his sister Marigold.”
“You mean she killed the wife? I’d never have thought of such a thing!”
“Neither did I until Miss Hilary Beads disappeared.”
“But you don’t think she killed Miss Beads as well, do you?”
“I suggest that Phlox did that. I also suggest that he killed the old boatman, Jack Plinlimmon. Both murders were committed to save his sister from the consequences of her crime.”
“I know Mr. Gavin has been working on the theory that the Carmichaels knew Miss Beads in London and that she knew something to their disadvantage. If you’re right, there’s a tie-up there all right. I begin to see what you mean about Mr. Carmichael.”
“His whole attitude towards his sister is that of a benevolent despot, with the emphasis on the word “benevolent.” He has constituted himself her mentor and her protector.”
“Wouldn’t you expect him to have resented the murder of his wife, mam?”
“I doubt whether he has ever felt resentment—certainly not since his childhood, I should say. His is a deeply philosophical nature. I am sure he felt no resentment towards Miss Beads, although, to the best of my belief, she was attempting to blackmail him and his sister. He removed her and Plinlimmon as he would have removed two harmful snakes and with just as much lack of emotion. He saw them both as dangerous obstacles to his sister’s safety and happiness, and that was that. Such is my theory.”
Say It With Flowers Page 19
