Next, and he faced this conundrum with distaste, what about Mrs. Barrimore, alias the Green Lady? Did she fit in anywhere or had he merely stumbled down an odd, irrelevant byway? But why was she so frightened at the thought of her husband being told of her masquerade? The Green Lady episode had brought Barrimore nothing but material gain. Wouldn’t he simply have ordered her to shut up about it and, if anything, relished the whole story? She had seemed to suggest that the fact of Alleyn himself being aware of it would be the infuriating factor. And why had she been so distressed when she was alone in the garden? At that stage there was no question of discovery of her identity with the Green Lady.
Finally, of course, was Miss Cost murdered, as it were, in her own person, or because she was mistaken for Miss Emily?
The answer to that one must depend largely upon motive, and motive is one of the secondary elements in police investigation. The old tag jog-trotted through his mind: Quis? Quid? Ubi? Quibus? auxilis? Cur? Quomodo? Quando? Which might be rendered: “Who did the deed? What was it? Where was it done? With what? Why was it done? And how done? When was it done?” The lot!
He completed his notes and read them through. The times were pretty well established; the weapon; the method; the state of the body. The place — no measurements yet, beyond the rough ones he and Coombe had made on the spot. Bailey would attend to all that. The place? He had described it in detail. The boulder? Between the boulder and the hill behind it was a little depression, screened by bracken and soft with grass. A “good spot for courting couples,” as Coombe had remarked, “when it wasn’t raining.” The ledge…
He was still poring over his notes when the telephone rang. Mr. Nankivell, the Mayor of Portcarrow, would like to see him.
“Ask him to come up,” Alleyn said, and put his notes in the drawer of the desk.
Mr. Nankivell was in a fine taking on. His manner suggested a bothering confusion of civic dignity, awareness of Alleyn’s reputation and furtive curiosity. There was another element, too. As the interview developed, so did his air of being someone who has information to impart and can’t quite make up his mind to divulge it. Mr. Nankivell, for all his opéra bouffe façade, struck Alleyn as being a pretty shrewd fellow.
“This horrible affair,” he said, “has taken place at a very regrettable juncture, Superintendent Alleyn. This, sir, is the height of our season. Portcarrow is in the public eye. It has become a desirable resort. We’ll have the press down upon us and the type of information they’ll put out will not conduce to the general benefit of our community. A lot of damaging clap-trap is what we may expect from those chaps and we may as well face up to it.”
“When does the local paper come out?”
“Tuesday,” said the Mayor gloomily. “But they’ve got their system. Thick as thieves with London — agents, as you might say. They’ll have handed it on.”
“Yes,” Alleyn said. “I expect they will.”
“Well, there now!” Mr. Nankivell said, waving his aim. “There yarr! A terrible misfortunate thing to overtake us.”
Alleyn said: “Have you formed any opinion yourself, Mr. Mayor?”
“So I have, then. Dozens. And each more objectionable than the last. The stuff that’s being circulated already by parties that ought to know better! Now I understand, sir, and I hope you’ll overlook my mentioning it, that Miss Pride is personally known to you.”
With a sick feeling of weariness Alleyn said: “Yes. She’s an old friend.” And before Mr. Nankivell could go any further he added: “I’m aware of the sort of thing that is being said about Miss Pride. I can assure you that, as the case has developed, it is clearly impossible that she could have been involved.”
“Is that so? Is that the case?” said Mr. Nankivell. “Glad to hear it, I’m sure.” He did not seem profoundly relieved, however. “And then,” he said, “there’s another view. There’s a notion that the one lady was took for the other! Now, there’s a very upsetting kind of a fancy to get hold of. When you think of the feeling there’s been, and them that’s subscribed to it.”
“Yourself among them?” Alleyn said lightly. “Ridiculous, when you put it like that, isn’t it?”
“I should danged well hope it is ridiculous,” he said violently and at once produced his own alibi. “Little though I ever thought to be put in the way of making such a demeaning statement,” he added angrily. “However, being a Sunday, Mrs. Nankivell and I did not raise up until nine o’clock and was brought our cup of tea at eight by the girl that does for us. The first I hear of this ghastly affair is at ten-thirty, when Mrs. Nankivell and I attended chapel, and then it was no more than a lot of chatter about an accident and George Pender, looking very big, by all accounts, and saying he’d nothing to add to the information. When we come out it’s all over the village. I should of been informed at the outset but I wasn’t. Very bad.”
Alleyn did his best to calm him.
“I’m very grateful to you for calling,” he said. “I was going to ring up and ask if you could spare me a moment this afternoon but I wouldn’t have dreamed of suggesting you take the trouble to come over. I really must apologize.”
“No need, I’m sure,” said Mr. Nankivell, mollified.
“Now, I wonder if in confidence, Mr. Mayor, you can help me at all. You see, I know nothing about Miss Cost and it’s always a great help to get some sort of background. For instance, what was she like? She was, I take it, about forty to forty-five years old and, of course, unmarried. Can you add anything to that? A man in your position is usually a very sound judge of character, I’ve always found.”
“Ah!” said the Mayor, smoothing the back of his head. “It’s an advantage, of course. Something that grows on you with experience, you might say.”
“Exactly. Handling people and getting to know them. Now, between two mere males, how would you sum up Miss Elspeth Cost?”
Mr. Nankivell raised his brows and stared upon vacancy. A slow, knowing smile developed. He wiped it away with his fingers, but it crept back.
“A proper old maiden, to be sure,” he said.
“Really?”
“Not that she was what you’d call ancient: forty-five as you rightly judged, and a tricksy time of life for females, which is a well-established phenomenon, I believe.”
“Yes, indeed. You don’t know,” Alleyn said cautiously, “what may turn up.”
“God’s truth, if you never utter another word,” said Mr. Nankivell with surprising fervour. He eased back in his chair, caught Alleyn’s eye and chuckled. “The trouble I’ve had along of that lady’s crankiness,” he confided, “you’d never credit.”
Alleyn said “Tch!”
“Ah! With some it takes the form of religious activities. Others go all-out for dumb animals. Mrs. Nankivell herself, although a very level-headed lady, worked it off in cats, which have in the course of nature simmered down to two. Neuters, both. But with Miss Cost, not to put too fine a point on it, with Miss Cost it was a matter of her female urges.”
“Sex?”
“She spotted it everywhere,” Mr. Nankivell exclaimed. “Up hill and down dell, particularly the latter. Did I know what went on in the bay of an evening? Was I aware of the opportunities afforded by open dinghies? Didn’t we ought to install more lights along the front? And when it came to the hills round about the spring, she was a tiger. Alf Coombe got it. The Rector got it, the Doctor got it, and I came in for it, hot and strong, continuous. She was a masterpiece.”
Alleyn ventured a sympathetic laugh.
“You may say so, but beyond a joke nevertheless. And that’s not the whole story. The truth of the matter is, and I tell you this, sir, in the strictest confidence, the silly female was — dear me, how can I put it — she was chewed-up by the very fury she come down so hard upon. Now, that’s a fact, and well known to all and sundry. She was a manhunter, was poor Elspeth Cost. In her quiet, mousy sort of fashion she raged to and fro seeking whom she might devour. Which was not many.”