‘But this would have been at the end of the summer. There wouldn’t be any fires.’
‘Not in a farmhouse?’ suggested George.
‘Good heavens! They did visit a farmhouse! What’s more, I know which one. They had tea there, too. To the car, George! There may be red-hot news for Dame Beatrice when we get back.’
The farmer’s wife remembered her and asked after her husband. Gavin (as usual, thought Laura, who, secretly, was proud of this quality in him) had made an impression which did not easily vanish from people’s minds. She made a suitable and acceptable reply, and then posed the question she was longing to ask.
‘That young friend of ours,’ she said, ‘about whom we enquired last time, if you remember. He seems to have thrown away a rather important letter. I suppose it didn’t, by any chance, get dropped into your kitchen fire?’
‘It wouldn’t be a valuable stamp, would it? the woman asked, rather anxiously.’Because I’m afraid I give the stamp to my Ernie. He’s stuck it in his album.’
‘Well, it was the letter, more than the actual stamp,’ said Laura, ‘But if I saw the stamp, or knew where it came from, I’d know whether it was on the right envelope.’
‘It didn’t seem a business letter,’ said the woman. ‘The young gentleman pulled it out of his pocket with some money he offered me to pay for their tea and says “Drat it! My pockets seem full of rubbish,” he says. “Mustn’t shed litter,” he says, laughing — looked just like a wolf when he laughed. Something to do with his mother when she was carrying him, I suppose — hare lip and all that — but it quite spoilt his good looks. “Mustn’t shed litter,” he says, “not on this lovely countryside,” he says, “so what the hell can I do with it?”
‘ “Our Ernie wouldn’t half like the stamp on that there letter, sir,” I says. So he tosses me the envelope and his other rubbish and I says I’ll put the lot on the kitchen fire for him, so long as he don’t mind our Ernie having the stamp.
‘ “I’ll come along and see fair play,” he says. But the girl gives his arm a tug and tells him they must be off.
‘ “If I says I’ll put your litter on the fire, sir, on the fire it will go,” I says.’
‘And it did?’ Laura enquired. ‘That’s a bit of a nuisance, because it was an important letter and got burnt by mistake.’
‘Important?’ said the woman, looking surprised. ‘I read it over, of course, when they’d gone, and all it said was something about, “Well, if this is what you want, here it is, and best of luck to your efforts.”’
‘Was it signed?’ Laura enquired.
‘That’s the funny part,’ the farmer’s wife replied. ‘It wasn’t exactly signed, but — well, I’ll show you, because I kept it, it being unusual and pretty, don’t you see? Something out of a Christmas cracker, I thought, and, seeing he was such a handsome young fellow, I made sure it was a romance as had gone wrong, and that was why he wanted to get rid of the letter.’
‘Well, I don’t think that was the reason,’ said Laura, ‘but you said you would show me how it was signed, and I should be ever so pleased if I could see the stamp as well.’
The signature (which, as the farmer’s wife had stated, was not a signature in the ordinary sense of the word) consisted of a small red stone stuck on to a very small piece of plain paper which had been torn off the end of the letter. The stamp came from Holland and had been postmarked at Amsterdam.
‘Not very clever of Ruby,’ said Laura, reporting to Dame Beatrice and Gavin, ‘but I suppose it isn’t evidence.’
‘It’s evidence of one thing,’ said Gavin. ‘He’s a murderer all right. He asked Aunt Ruby for the poisoned chocolate stuff and she sent it to him.’
‘Unless Opal forged Ruby’s signature, so to speak,’ said
Laura. ‘And, of course, he need not have been a would-be murderer, but only a would-be suicide.’
‘I would be inclined to accept that hypothesis,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘had I not been a witness to his ridiculous performance in the lake at Leyden Hall. That was done to excite our pity and terror, but, owing to Binnie’s commonsense view of the situation, it failed to do either. Besides, I do not think Florian has the temperament for suicide. What we have to find out is what Miss Ruby Colwyn-Welch has to say about the letter, and what reason, if any, Florian had for desiring to accomplish the death of the barmaid.’
‘I don’t see what the motive there could have been,’ said Laura.
‘I know. And that brings me to my new theory,’ said Dame Beatrice.
Gavin gave her a quick glance.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘The girl he took to Eldon Hole. We ought to have thought of it before.’
Laura glanced from one to the other. Then she caught on.
‘Good Lord!’ she said. ‘You mean it wasn’t Florian who gave the chocolate-cream to the barmaid. It was to this other girl he gave it — the girl he was going out with? She didn’t want it, and she passed it on? But, if that’s so, why did Florian confess he’d given it to Effie?’
‘For the very simple reason,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘that, while he had no reason whatsoever for wishing poor Effie — still less the friend with whom she shared the chocolate-cream — out of the way, he had the best of reasons for wishing to get rid of the girl he escorted to Eldon Hole. The garage proprietor hinted of that to you, didn’t he?’
‘We must find that girl,’ said Gavin. ‘That had better be my job. And I must tackle the landlady at the pub again. She may not have known she was giving false evidence, but what she told me seems to have led us a long way up the garden path.’
‘Then my part will be to interview the household in Amsterdam again,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘They won’t half be pleased to see you!’ said Laura, with relish. ‘They practically threw you out the last time you were there.’
‘I wouldn’t tackle the Amsterdam end just yet,’ said Gavin. ‘I want to get the goods more firmly on Florian first. Once we can really establish his guilt, we shall have a pretty heavy weapon with which to bludgeon his aunts into telling the truth. Now — this girl. We did hear her name once. I thought of the sunshine. Yes, I’ve got it! Gertie Summers.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Death of a Delft Blue
‘And she’s minded her on a little pen-knife
That hang’d below her gare,
And she has gi’en Young Hunting
A deep wound and a sair.
‘The deepest pot in Clyde Water
They got Young Hunting in,
With a green turf tied across his breast
To keep that good lord down.’
Old Ballad
« ^
At Gavin’s request, Dame Beatrice had caused Laura (who, from long practice, was almost the only person who could decipher her calligraphy) to transcribe the notes she had made from time to time on Florian and his affairs and let Gavin have a copy. He wrote to Dame Beatrice from Derbyshire:
‘The landlady refuses to confirm that F. gave the chocolate-cream to the barmaid. Says she herself was suffering from a heavy cold at the time, had understood that the sweet had come from Florian, but had not been in the bar when the stuff was handed over. Put it to her that the barmaid might have received it via Gertie Summers and she agreed that this was most likely. As you can see, this is not conclusive. Some people will fall in with any prompting if the suggested idea seems at all possible. Still, for what it’s worth, I’m certainly going to have a word with Gertie Summers. I don’t know why we didn’t think of her before.’
Gertie herself opened the door to him. She was an insipid-looking, hazel-eyed girl who became extremely alarmed when the visitor presented his credentials.
‘It wasn’t my fault! I’d no idea!’ she declared. ‘I just don’t like chocolate-cream.’