The Man Who Grew Tomatoes (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  What he did not see was a press photographer, similarly equipped, who took pictures, in a snooping, hole-and-corner fashion, of the people of Camber, including Farmer Beresford, the Reverend Arthur Tolley, Hugh himself, the local doctor, Abel and Tom Adams, the agent Bembridge, the village postmistress, Ethel, the two Salamans, and, at the garage, some distance off, where he had found employment, the ex-chauffeur Crick. For good measure, at Dame Beatrice’s instigation, he also took photographs of Maitland and Tunstall.

  When these pictures were developed and printed, Dame Beatrice released Hugh from his promise to remain at Camber Abbey and off he went to Strathpeffer, driving his own car. He came back at the end of ten days, telephoned Dame Beatrice at the obscure riverside inn at which she had chosen to reside, and told her that he had nothing to report.

  “No co-operation up there,” he said. “I was as persistent as I knew how to be, but all they said was that the death had been purely accidental and that they were getting sick of being bothered.”

  “That’s interesting,” said Dame Beatrice thoughtfully. “It almost sounds as though somebody else has been bothering them since Laura and I were up there.”

  “That, you think, would be Verith?”

  “He certainly was not at the Osseuch Hydro merely to catch salmon or take the waters. Well, it is time now for me to have my turn.”

  “I’m afraid I may have queered the pitch up there with my probings about Paul’s death.”

  “Never mind. Laura and I will manage. You will continue to avoid Miss Tolley, will you not? And if there should be any significant developments at this end, you must let me know at once.”

  “The whole thing seems to be a stalemate. I can’t see that there can be any significant developments now.”

  Dame Beatrice shrugged as she put down the receiver. She could think of several things which might happen. She even foresaw the one that did, and wondered whether to warn Hugh. She picked up the receiver again.

  “On no account allow Mrs. Hal Camber and her boy to visit you while I am away.”

  “Oh, Héloïse has been choked off once and for all, thanks to you. I don’t fancy she will darken my doors again until I’m dead and she comes for the pickings. Thanks, all the same, for the warning. I’ll be ready to heave a brick at her if she turns up.”

  Dame Beatrice rang up Laura and ordered her to report at the inn as soon as she could if she wanted to pay another visit to Scotland. Laura, nothing loth, banished her husband to his club, left her child in the care of a devoted Nannie, and galloped up to Norfolk on the motor-cycle for which she had recently traded-in her scooter. Dame Beatrice relegated the motor-cycle to the garage of the inn and they went north behind the sedate and highly-respectable back of George, the chauffeur.

  The manager of the hotel did not seem overjoyed to see them, but he welcomed them politely and hoped that they would enjoy their stay. Dame Beatrice asked him no questions, neither did she speak to the receptionist except when she and Laura booked in. She produced her photographs for the benefit of the barman and barmaid and asked, casually enough, whether they recognised any of them. She drew blank. Paul Camber’s associate, the elusive Smith, evidently had been of Paul Camber’s way of thinking and had not patronised either the saloon lounge or the cocktail bar.

  She then tried the waiter who brought coffee and drinks to the lounge. Here she fared better, although not extremely well. The waiter, a remote, austere man with the soft sibilants of the Hebrides, studied the photographs and said that he thought perhaps one of the gentlemen had stayed there. He selected the pictures of Maitland and Tunstall and then, more doubtfully, one of three photographs (taken from different angles) of Beresford. Very doubtfully indeed he picked out Hugh.

  “Shows how much reliance can be placed upon his memory,” said Laura scornfully, when the waiter had gone. “Why, Hugh Camber was here only a very short time ago, didn’t you say? Yet he picked him out last of all and then he didn’t seem at all certain about him.”

  “And in neither of the bars did they recognise him at all. Does not that seem to you very interesting?”

  “Why should it?”

  “Hugh Camber could not have stayed here, child, when he is supposed to have done so. The photograph is an excellent likeness. Nobody could have failed to recognise it. Hugh Camber, although a reasonably abstemious man, is no fanatic respecting alcoholic beverages. Whatever he had not done here, he would certainly have patronised the bars.”

  “Then why did the waiter, however reluctantly, pick him out?”

  “While the people in the bars did not? For a very simple reason. The waiter was reminded, I suppose, of Paul. The bar-tenders probably never saw Paul while he stayed here.”

  “But Paul didn’t come here just once, did he? Wouldn’t they have seen him about the place, so to speak, even if he never went into the bars?”

  “The bar-counter staff rarely live in, you know. They come and go, and at such times as the licensing closing-hours are in force, they are either off the premises altogether or are checking empty bottles or taking in stock. I doubt whether they are aware of any of the guests except their customers.”

  “So you think Paul and Hugh—a family likeness, or something?”

  “That is what I suppose.”

  “And the lounge waiter was doubtful because he’d seen Paul months and months ago, but had never seen Hugh?”

  “Just so.”

  “But why should Hugh deceive you?”

  “A fascinating question to which, at the moment, we have no answer. What do you think of the waiter’s having picked out Maitland, Tunstall, and, after a long pause for thought, Farmer Beresford?”

  “Well, I’ve noticed that there’s such a thing as what I call ‘the Norfolk face.’ Tunstall and Maitland might not be all that unlike, to a Highlander, when you come to think of it, I suppose.”

  “Have you ever seen them?”

  “Not to my knowledge, but my argument holds good, because I’ve seen those photographs. You’ll have to ask them whether they’ve ever stayed here, and check their alibis for the time of Paul Camber’s death.”

  “I don’t think that will help very much, although I agree with you that it may have to be done. Did anything strike you about his choosing Beresford—apart from your theory that there is such a thing as ‘the Norfolk face,’ I mean—but only after hesitating over it?”

  “Yes. Beresford’s was the only photograph of a man with a moustache.”

  “That was the reason why the waiter was not sure about him. If Beresford was up here with Paul Camber, he may have shaved off that moustache.”

  “So you think Beresford’s the murderer?”

  “I have always thought he had the most convincing motive for murdering Stephen Camber, but I can see no reason for his murdering Paul. And, but for one thing, I should very much doubt whether Paul was murdered.”

  “What’s the one thing?”

  “The position of the body when it was found, and the fact that the deceased was without a jacket. According to the newspaper files which I consulted when we were in Edinburgh, the absence of a jacket was noted and commented upon at the time, but nobody seemed to know whether or not Paul Camber had been wearing a jacket when he left the hotel.”

  “I suppose the only person who could have made a statement about that is the mysterious Mr. Smith.”

  “Exactly. And he must be made to swear to it, one way or the other.”

  “But that means you know who Smith is!”

  “Well, it seems fairly obvious to me, child.”

  “You think he’s really Beresford?”

  “That is something which can be put to the test, I hope.”

  “And did he murder Paul Camber?”

  “You have been told that he caught the London train. Did nothing else in the story occur to you to be curious and informative?”

  “You mean Paul Camber’s behaviour on the river-bank when that coach party saw and heard him? It sounds lik
e the tomatoes all over again. It’s exactly like the description of Ethel and young Stephen, isn’t it?—And we do know that Paul wouldn’t have been drunk.”

  “It was neither drink nor poisonous tomatoes, dear child. That little demonstration, I think, was staged by Paul’s murderer. After all, how was a coach party from Lancashire to know that it was Paul Camber capering and shouting? It could have been anybody; but because of the truth of a psychological theory, propounded by a very observant German, that there are people—and there are more of them in existence than the psychologist may have realised—who must join up the gaps, so to speak, and see everything in the round, the coach party, having heard of the death, leapt to the conclusion that the noisy, gesticulating man that they saw must necessarily have been the man who was drowned. There is no proof at all that he was.”

  “And rigor mortis and that sort of thing didn’t help; it doesn’t often. Who’s supposed to have found the body and dragged it out of the water?”

  “Members of a highly respectable salmon-fishing syndicate from Inverness. People it is impossible to suspect. It was all in the Edinburgh papers.”

  “So now what do we do? Home, James, and don’t spare the horses?”

  This suggestion was carried out on the following day when a telegram was delivered to Dame Beatrice at the luncheon table.

  Mrs. Hal with Peter here wire instructions refuses to go Hugh.

  “We must get back to Camber, I suppose,” said Laura. “What time shall I tell George?”

  “We must start at once. The one thing I was anxious to avoid has come about. Mrs. Hal is a criminally foolish woman. I’ll pack for both of us if you will get George to bring round the car.”

  “Is it really so important? Right. See you soon.”

  That it was both important and very serious was obvious as soon as they got back to Camber. Hugh met them in the hall as soon as they had been admitted.

  “Terribly sorry to call you back,” he said, “but Héloïse has passed out and been rushed to hospital in Norwich, and young Peter has been left on my hands.”

  “He’d better be sent to my house in Hampshire,” said Dame Beatrice. “He’ll be safe enough there.”

  “Safe enough? How do you mean?”

  “I mean exactly what I say. What is the matter with your brother’s wife?”

  “Héloïse has been playing the fool and went to a quack to get rid of the encumbrance. She’s really very ill. I sent for the doctor and he had the ambulance take her into hospital at once. A decent chap. But what are your fears for the boy?”

  “I am not prepared to say, but he must be sent away from here at once.”

  “I’m all in favour. I don’t want the brat! But, then, neither do you want him at Wandles Parva.”

  “No, I don’t. But if it means that by going to my house in Hampshire—a nice long way from here—his life can be saved, I shall not feel that I can hesitate.”

  “Well, he’ll have to stay the night here, I suppose, but he can go off first thing in the morning. How will that do?”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Safe in bed. Asleep, I hope, the poisonous little blighter!”

  “I will go up and take a look at him. It is as well to reassure oneself.”

  “He can hardly have been spirited away! I said good night to him myself not more than two hours ago.”

  “Two hours can seem quite a long time. Are you coming with me?”

  “Yes, I suppose so. What are you afraid of?”

  “I hardly know. Maybe nothing at all, but, in view of the other two deaths, we must take precautions. Who else knows he is here?”

  “Only the servants—the indoor servants, I mean.”

  “Abel and Tom Adams do not know?”

  “I can’t say. There is no reason why they should. As far as I know, Héloïse brought him straight here from the station, but, of course, that’s more than five miles away. Various people may have seen them.”

  “How long were they here before Mrs. Hal Camber was taken ill?”

  “I sent the telegram the morning after they came. It was too late to send it when they arrived. The post-office was shut. I didn’t telephone because I didn’t know whether you’d be there to take the call. Héloïse was taken ill—if we are to call it that !—almost as soon as I had sent it off.”

  Peter lay wide-eyed in bed. He greeted them listlessly.

  “I don’t feel well,” he said. “I want to go with Darling.” Dame Beatrice whipped out a clinical thermometer.

  “Don’t bite it,” she said. “If you do, you’ll expire in terrible agony.”

  Peter scowled at her.

  “I know. Powdered glass. I shan’t bite it,” he said. “You only take risks for other people; never for yourself.”

  “Out of the mouths of babes,” said Dame Beatrice indulgently. “Now, under the tongue. If you dribble, it doesn’t matter.”

  When she took it out the temperature was normal, but, sizing up the would-be patient, she gave him half a bismuth tablet and told him that it would make him sleep and that he would feel very poorly in the morning.

  “I won’t. Bet you I feel fine,” said the child. “You women are just a lot of old bolonies.”

  “You shut up,” said Hugh.

  “Good night, dear boy,” said Dame Beatrice, using coals of fire by popping a sweet into Peter’s mouth. She detached the key from the inside of the door as she went out and inserted it on the outside. As Hugh followed her out, she turned it in the lock.

  “I say, I do hate locking the damn kid in at night,” protested Hugh. “Suppose the house caught on fire!”

  “That contingency is remote at this time of year, but, to ease your mind, let us inspect the boy once more before we retire for the night.”

  They looked in on Peter at half-past eleven to find him asleep but restless in his slumber. Dame Beatrice straightened the tumbled bed-clothes with a practised hand and she and Hugh left the boy’s room, again locking the door behind them. At six o’clock next morning Dame Beatrice unlocked it and peered in. Peter was awake. He said:

  “Tell Uncle Hugh it’s a lousy bed and a lousy room. I didn’t sleep all night and I want my mother.”

  “Breakfast is at eight,” said Dame Beatrice, “so I have brought you a banana and a glass of milk. Boys who haven’t had a wink of sleep must keep up their strength. What do you say?”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Taking my banana and my glass of milk with me? Very well.” She retreated, carrying the viands.

  “Come back!” yelled Peter. “I’m hungry!” He began to bellow. Dame Beatrice went serenely downstairs. In a few moments a tousled, pale, furious child followed her into the dining-room. “I want my banana!” shrieked Peter.

  “I’m afraid it got scorched. Hell has rather too hot a temperature even for bananas,” said Dame Beatrice, calmly peeling the specimen she held and feeding it in bits to the fire which Ethel had lighted. “As for the milk—dear me! It should always be kept in a very cool place and I’m afraid I haven’t done that. However, as my throat is scorch-proof, perhaps it will do me no harm.”

  In front of the inarticulate and fermenting boy she sipped the milk with every appearance of enjoyment. Peter found his voice again. He screamed and screamed and screamed. Dame Beatrice, with a beatific leer, finished the milk and strolled out to the kitchen carrying the empty glass. She brought a full one back with her.

  “Stop that noise, or you’ll choke,” she said, proferring the glass. Peter seized it, tried to drink too fast, and did indeed begin to choke, making a horrid mess of milk to mingle with the tears which had already damped the front of his dressing-gown. He recovered in time and continued to drink, eyeing her appraisingly over the rim of the glass.

  “I met a nice man,” he said, lowering the empty glass. “He said I could go with him to look at his pigs.”

  “There are lots of nice men in the world. They all keep pigs, so there’s not a great deal in that,” reto
rted Dame Beatrice. “I could show you a man who keeps dozens and dozens of pigs.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Oh, a nephew of mine.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Mr. Carey Lestrange.”

  “Will you take me to see his pigs? Has he got a boar?”

  “He has two boars, a Tamworth and a Large White.”

  “What’s a Tamworth?”

  “Rather an interesting fellow. A throw-back, possibly, to the wild hogs which roamed Britain during the Palaeolithic period. He has a long, thin snout and is sandy and black in colour. This one has a very short-tempered disposition and answers to the names of Abbot Thomas of Gruesome Memory. You know your Montagu Rhodes James, perhaps?”

  “Will you take me to see these pigs?”

  “Certainly I will. When can you be ready to set out?”

  “Today?”

  “This afternoon, then. I will telephone my nephew and tell him to expect us. And now you had better get dressed.”

  “I’ve made a mess on my dressing-gown.”

  “That can be dealt with. Leave it in the bathroom and the housemaid will cope. If she does not know what to do with it, I can tell her.”

  “I don’t believe your nephew has any pigs.”

  “Seeing is believing. Pop upstairs and get your bath.”

  “I shall be sick with that milk if I do.”

  “Cleopatra bathed in asses’ milk. Get along.”

  “Why don’t you say, ‘there’s a good boy’?”

  “Because, although I spoil and indulge children, I do not pander to them.”

  “Don’t you like boys?”

  “Real boys, yes. Crying, screaming, milk-gobbling, disgusting little objects—no.”