“May I ask whether Mr. Gavin is aware of this theory, mam?”
“As I have formulated it so very recently, I have not had an opportunity of passing it on.”
“I should like to discuss it with him, mam.”
“You are welcome to do so. Is he still in London?”
“Working on the Plinlimmon end, but I don’t know that he’s got much further with it.”
“Yes, the problem of the murder of Plinlimmon is more likely of a solution which can be subjected to proof than either of the other two deaths. You might care, however, to effect a search of the Manor House cellars, including the wine cellar. It seemed to me, when I inspected them, that a body might have been removed and part of the floor cleaned.”
“My men are there at the moment, mam, and I shall be getting along there myself as soon as I’ve had a talk with Mrs. Gavin.”
Dame Beatrice went into the garden and Laura came into the library. She seated herself, and the Superintendent, who had been standing, took a chair and drew it up to the table. He laid a notebook and a fountain pen in front of him.
“Golly!” said Laura. “That looks horribly official.”
“I might need to make a note or two,” said the Superintendent, somewhat apologetically. “Dame Beatrice has just put forward a theory which you might be able to enlarge on for me.”
“I don’t know anything that she doesn’t.”
“No, no, Mrs. Gavin, I don’t suppose you do. ‘Enlarge’ was what I said, and what I meant. Now, the latest theory put forward by Dame Beatrice is that Miss Marigold Carmichael killed Mr. Phlox’s wife in a fit of jealousy or some such. What’s your opinion about that?”
“I don’t see that it matters, from our point of view, which of them killed his wife. What we’ve to prove first is that it was his wife whose skeleton was buried in that smallholding. One thing which Dame B. has shown to be possible, if not right down probable, is that a body can be exposed to the air on top of that observation tower for almost any length of time without being spotted. According to what I understand, in less than two years such an exposed corpse would be reduced to a skeleton.”
“I’m no medico. Is that Dame Beatrice’s opinion?”
“Backed up by other authorities. This being the case, it seems to me that it would have been the simplest thing for Phlox Carmichael to have carted the skeleton from the tower and buried it in the smallholding at some time during the period Wednesday, May 22nd, to Saturday, May 25th.”
“Quite feasible. But why should he have moved it?”
“Well, it seems that he planned to reduce Hilary Beads’ body to a skeleton, too, by leaving it exposed in the same place in the same way. Where he proposed to put it after that is anybody’s guess. I’d like to know what his reactions were, though, when the vicar decided to re-dig on Dickon’s small-holding. I bet he’d thought that particular bit of ground was not due to be touched again for months and months. He knew that the kids from Pelican House and the girls from the convent school had had a tremendous go at it, and had found nothing. He must have had a fearful jolt when the vicar took him there again.”
“By dint of making no protest about where the vicar proposed to dig, and by keeping his trap shut subsequently, he’s foxed us all right, though, Mrs. Gavin. We really haven’t a shred of evidence against him or his sister, not a shred.”
“Sweet Thames will have to run softly and catchee monkey that way,” said Laura.
“You’ve put your finger right on the spot, Mrs. Gavin. Let’s hope the Detective Chief-Inspector will soon have something for us. Now, is there anything else you can suggest?”
“I’d still like to know the Carmichaels’ real name. We drew a complete blank in Chelsea over that.”
“Not a complete blank, Mrs. Gavin, otherwise I reckon that old chap Plinlimmon would still be alive.”
“Another thing I’d like to know is how Phlox found out that we were snooping around Chelsea.”
“I should be inclined to say Plinlimmon tipped him off that enquiries were being made in the Chelsea area. Then Phlox got suspicious that Plinlimmon was bribable, and had better be put where he could do the Carmichaels no harm.”
“Couldn’t the police trace the call?”
“They can have a good try. That’s if he used the telephone, of course. He may have dropped a card.”
“The interval between our chasing round Chelsea and Fulham and Plinlimmon’s death in the river was too short for that. What about a telegram?”
“Old chaps with Plinlimmon’s education and background only send telegrams to announce serious illness in the family. He wouldn’t have thought of telegraphing a casual thing like a police snoop. Of course, we shall find out whether he did, by any chance, think his news important enough for a telegram—but I know the answer all right. That brings us back to a phone call, and as it would have been a call he couldn’t dial, it means he’d have had to talk to the operator. Something might come of that.”
“Any good asking the vicar about any calls for Phlox at about that time?—oh, no, he’d have been back on his boat then. And that’s another thing: he didn’t usually pay two visits to the vicarage with such a short interval in between. Any good having a chat with Mr. Pierce about that? Phlox is there again, you see.”
“I think you’ve got something there, Mrs. Gavin. It’s a suspicious circumstance, and any suspicious circumstance (in this case, in particular) ought to be looked into. I’m much obliged for the tip. Well, if there’s nothing else, I might as well get back to the Manor House to see whether my chaps have found anything, and to have a look at a clean patch I hear Dame Beatrice found on the floor of the wine-cellar. After that, I’ll tackle the vicarage.”
“I don’t suppose a clean patch on the cellar floor will get you anywhere,” said Laura. “You couldn’t prove anything from it.”
“I’d like to see it, all the same. Have you seen it yourself?”
“No, I haven’t. Dame Beatrice snooped around while I’d gone to telephone to you.”
The Superintendent took himself off to the Manor House and Laura rejoined Dame Beatrice. She informed her that the Superintendent proposed to visit the vicarage and of what Laura’s own suggestions had been.
“Yes, it does seem slightly odd that Phlox should have returned to the vicarage and left his sister in hospital. I don’t know what the Superintendent will get out of him about it, though,” said Dame Beatrice.
“His name ought to be Fox, not Phlox,” said Laura. “He’s as cunning as he can be. I don’t believe we’re ever going to prove anything against either him or Marigold.”
“Where the wife’s death is concerned, it may be difficult, but I really think we shall unearth some evidence in connection with the deaths of Plinlimmon and Hilary Beads, you know. We shall be bound to hit upon somebody who has seen something suspicious. There is always the handbag.”
“Gavin will certainly ferret out the river business,” said Robert Gavin’s wife. “Oh, yes, I’m sure you’re right.”
“I am going to get hold of Marigold Carmichael again,” said Dame Beatrice. “I think I will do it before the Superintendent gets to the hospital and frightens her.”
“I can’t help wondering whether a good fright wouldn’t get more results than the kid-glove stuff we’ve been handing out so far,” said Laura bluntly. “She’s obviously the weaker vessel and might be scared into talking.”
“A frightened witness is apt to lie. In any case, whatever line the Carmichaels may choose to follow, open confession is hardly likely to be one of them. If only we could discover the Carmichaels’ real name, the proof of their guilt would be easy enough to establish.”
“You mean, we could soon find out what the connection was between them and Hilary Beads?”
“That, among other things. I’ll go to the vicarage and pump Mrs. Pierce again.”
“Is there anything you want me to do while you’re gone?”
“Nothing.”
“T
hen I think I’ll push along to the Manor House and obstruct the police. Nothing like taking advantage of having dwindled into becoming the wife of Robert Gavin.”
They walked together as far as the vicarage and then Laura, who had no great hope of finding entertainment at the Manor House and who, therefore, did not feel pressed for time, struck out for her destination by a path across the edge of the New Forest. Dame Beatrice walked across the vicarage lawn to the open french windows and tapped politely on them. She had already spotted that Marigold Carmichael must have been discharged from hospital, for she was back at the vicarage and, at this moment, the sole occupant of the room.
“Oh, dear!” said Marigold, coming forward at once. “I’m so sorry, but everyone else seems to be out. Phlox has gone off with Mr. Pierce to see the nuns’ church at Romsey, and Mrs. Pierce is in the village with the Women’s Institute. Can I possibly be of help?”
“Well, you might be,” said Dame Beatrice, entering the room. “I am sure you can answer one question at any rate. Does your brother still suffer from hallucinations?”
“I think you cured him. He never complains now. He has such happy dreams.”
“It would be most unfortunate for him if disclosures were made which interrupted those, would it not?”
“Disclosures? I don’t know what you mean.”
“Are you aware that I have discovered the dead body of Miss Hilary Beads and that the police are now investigating the cause of her death?”
“Really?” said Marigold, with widening eyes. “Of course, I didn’t know her, but I have heard the Pierces speak of her. What a dreadful shock for them!”
“You may not have known her well, but you and your brother have met her.”
Marigold shook her head violently.
“Never!”
“To my certain knowledge you met her in this very village.”
“You can’t prove that! You can’t!”
“Dear me!” said Dame Beatrice, regarding her with interest and mild astonishment. “You seem to have become extremely heated over what would seem a trivial remark of mine.”
“You say she is dead, and that the police are at the Manor House, and then you accuse Phlox and me of knowing something about it, and then you call that a trivial remark!”
“I said that you had met her.”
“But the police! The police! We have never been mixed up with the police before we came here! First that horrid skeleton—as though we wanted it dug up and all that fuss made!—and now this other—this Beads woman! It’s terrible!”
“I am afraid you will have to face more police questioning, however terrible you may think it.”
“So will you,” said Marigold, nastily, “as it was you who discovered Miss Beads’ body!”
“I face the prospect with equanimity. What were you going to say before you changed your sentence?”
Marigold looked at her suspiciously.
“What sentence?” she asked.
“You said, ‘and now this other—this Beads woman! It’s terrible.’ Did you not say that?”
“I don’t remember. I don’t see that it matters, anyway. You are trying to trip me up.”
“I have tripped you up.”
“No, you haven’t, and I shan’t answer any more questions. You can ask Phlox anything else you want to know. He’ll make mincemeat of you.”
“Dear me!” said Dame Beatrice. “I sincerely hope not! What a bloodthirsty person he must be!”
With this Parthian shot, she turned and left by the way she had come in. When she reached the vicarage gate she met Veronica Pierce.
“Hullo,” said the vicar’s wife, “what are you doing here? I’m so sorry I was out. Are you too busy to come in again for ten minutes?”
“I am not too busy, but I must ask you to excuse me. I have been endeavouring to frighten Marigold Carmichael and I have left her both frightened and angry.”
“Oh, dear! Well, if you feel it would be more tactful not to encounter her again so soon, I’ll say good-bye until next time.”
She passed on and Dame Beatrice glanced back. Marigold was standing in the open french window, leaning against the left-hand side of the door-frame with her right arm curved theatrically across her eyes. Dame Beatrice faced about and returned to the french windows. As Veronica Pierce reached these, Marigold abandoned the pose only to produce another histrionic gesture.
“Ah, you! You, my saviour!” she exclaimed, and cast her arms around Veronica, who staggered back under the impact. Dame Beatrice, who could move deceptively quickly, caught up with her as she recovered her balance.
“I would like to have another word with Miss Carmichael, if I may,” she said, contradicting this mild and polite statement by stepping with alacrity past the speechless Marigold. “I quite forgot to ask her how far she felt she had recovered from her accident. Do tell me, Miss Carmichael, how it happened. We have nothing to go on except for the laconic statements over the telephone of Detective Chief-Inspector Robert Gavin of the C.I.D.”
“The C.I.D.?” repeated Marigold, turning in the doorway and regarding her tormentor with wide and frightened eyes. “What has it to do with them?”
“They investigate that sort of thing, I suppose,” said Veronica, who had come into the room.
“What sort of thing?” demanded the ex-invalid.
“Miss Carmichael,” said Dame Beatrice, with unwonted severity, “do not attempt dissimulation. Robert Gavin visited you while you were in hospital.”
“But I satisfied him!” screamed Marigold. “I did not expect him to carry the matter any further! I don’t see why he’s interested!”
“One knows little of what goes on in the minds of Scotland Yard officials,” said Dame Beatrice. “Do tell me, in your own words, exactly what happened when you fell into the Thames. Mrs. Gavin had a swim recently, although not on the same day,” she added, with apparent inconsequence. Marigold seized upon this statement in an obvious attempt to change the subject.
“Mrs. Gavin? Did she fall into the water?”
“By her own voluntary act. She took a swim in that lake in the grounds of the Manor House.”
“The Manor House? Where is that?”
“Oh, come, Marigold!” protested Veronica Pierce. “You know perfectly well where it is! Don’t you remember that Gascony took Phlox to visit the Stone of Sacrifice in the grounds there? It would have been on your first visit. Perhaps, though, you’ve forgotten,” she concluded kindly.
“Oh, there?” said Marigold. “Yes, I remember now that Phlox did say something about it. But what has it got to do with me and my accident?”
“I was wondering where your brother was when you fell into the Thames,” said Dame Beatrice.
“On our house-boat, of course. Where should he have been?”
“On your house-boat. Was he near you when the gang-plank broke?”
“No, he was in the galley melting glue.”
“Glue?”
“Yes, for mending the gang-plank. I said it wasn’t necessary, because I loathe the smell of glue, and I stamped on the gang-plank to show him it was quite safe, but, of course, it wasn’t, and I fell in.”
“I see,” said Dame Beatrice. “By the way, Mrs. Gavin saw your brother in the Manor grounds on the morning when she bathed in the lake. He was lying on the Stone of Sacrifice in a ritualistic attitude and did not notice her.”
“Phlox does the loveliest, most unexpected things,” said Marigold.
“Such as saving your neck?” asked Dame Beatrice, with unwonted venom.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Thames-side Gleanings
“This cryptick and involved method . . .”
Ibid (Section 17)
* * *
DETECTIVE CHIEF-INSPECTOR ROBERT GAVIN, the river police, and his own men had been conducting one of those mammoth enquiries so well known to Scotland Yard and so boring in retrospect, all along the river from Chelsea to Chiswick Eyot.
> Every master of craft, boat-owner, wage-hand, lighter-man, longshoreman, bargee, rowing boat lessor, riverside-pub landlord, Thames Conservancy workman, and anyone else who, by any conceivable flight of imagination, might be supposed to have noted the last cruise of the drowned Plinlimmon, was pinned down and questioned and the meagre scraps of information collated.
At the very moment when Dame Beatrice re-entered the Stone House to await the arrival of Laura from the Manor, Gavin, in his office in New Scotland Yard, was saying to an inspector of River Police:
“Now, then, what have we got? He was seen by your chap Ferris near Hammersmith Bridge, and appeared to be alone on the boat. As the boat was a cabin cruiser, that needn’t mean that he was actually alone. Same story from that fellow whose tug passed him at Barnes. Others confirm, but are a bit vague as to description.”
“In fact, having knocked him on the head and chucked him overboard . . .”
“No, no! We’ve been barking up the wrong tree,” said Gavin, interrupting. “We started from the wrong end.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean we ought to have started from the Oxford end. Don’t you see? Whether he was killed on his own boat or on Carmichael’s house-boat the body was dumped somewhere off Brentford or Chiswick from another boat. Look here, I’ll go up to Oxford and see whether I can’t trace his boat somewhere in the upper reaches, and I’ll get my sergeant to go and have a look-see around and on board that house-boat. Hope they’ve installed a new gang-plank by this time! And that reminds me that I’ve still got to talk to Carmichael about Marigold’s ducking when I get time. Now, what else have we got? Nothing that’s of any use, I’ll wager.”
Gavin went to Oxford by car on the following morning very early. He treated himself to breakfast at the Randolph and then chartered a small launch and set out on his tour. It was holiday weather and he felt extremely light-hearted as his craft chugged gently past the college barges and the Long Bridges with their bathing pools. There followed the newish concrete footbridge dominated by its ugly, tall railings, and very soon Iffley came into view.
Say It With Flowers Page 20
