‘All the time except when his vision is directed elsewhere. A porter’s lodge is a place of comings and goings, Inspector. The porter’s attention must often be claimed and therefore distracted. Moreover, the murder, it seems, must have taken place at the beginning of the Long Vacation. Well, during the Long Vacation, visitors are freely admitted to the College grounds. There would be no embargo on a quietly behaved, apparently respectable person gaining entrance to Bessie’s Quad when he or she knew that Mrs Lawrence was in her cellar darkroom. By watching for an opportunity and then descending into the depths while the porter’s attention was elsewhere…’
‘She’d have heard the murderer and screamed out, ma’am, and if the porter on duty was innocent of the crime, he’d have heard her and come down the cellar steps to investigate.’
‘Have you stationed a woman constable in the cellar and instructed her to scream, so that you could find out whether that scream could be heard in the porter’s lodge?’
‘No, ma’am,’ replied the inspector, assuming a wooden expression. ‘We didn’t think it necessary.’
‘You preferred to suspect the porters and leave it at that?’
‘Look, we’re certain one of ’em did it, ma’am. Our job is to find out which one, that’s all.’
‘It may be “all” from the police point of view. It certainly is not “all ” from mine. However, I doubt whether any scream emanated from the victim. The attack would have been sudden and the killing mercifully swift. It is not the easiest thing in the world, in any case, to scream loudly enough to attract attention when one’s head is pulled violently backward and the assailant’s knee, most probably, is in the small of one’s back. Besides, absorbed in her task, the victim may not even have heard her assailant come down the cellar steps.’
‘Very well, ma’am. You don’t need to labour the point. Perhaps we haven’t looked quite far enough. When we found her husband had an unbreakable alibi, you see, there was nobody left but the porters and we knew she’d had some bitter words with them because of the missing parcel.’
‘I will ask you another question, Inspector, if I may.’
He looked resigned; then, to his credit, he grinned.
‘Don’t mind me, ma’am,’ he said.
‘Well, have the police asked themselves why the murderer removed the body from the cellar and interred it in the cloister garth?’
‘Why, that’s an easy one, ma’am. He couldn’t just leave it in the cellar. I reckon it had begun to niff a bit by the time he moved it.’
‘Yes, that is true, but, you know, Inspector, the only time the porters needed to go into that cellar seems to have been when the deck-chairs had to be brought out for the High Mistress’s annual garden-party. If one of the porters was the murderer, would he not have removed the body long before that? – or are you assuming that both porters are guilty?’
‘We still don’t know what happened to that parcel, ma’am.’
‘And if both are guilty, why move the body at all? Nobody used the cellar except themselves and Mrs Lawrence. What is important, as I have said before – but it will bear repetition – is that the parcel which disappeared was never proved to have been delivered at the porters’ lodge at all. Besides, it would be interesting to know why it was not sent to the victim’s lodgings. One would have thought that a gift such as a valuable watch would have been sent straight there rather than to the College.’
‘Yes, indeed, ma’am, but the donor, the old gentleman who sent the watch, is gone where he can’t be questioned.’
‘Unfortunately that is so. You have questioned his servants, of course?’
‘Yes, ma’am, but they recollect little of the matter, except that, if such a parcel was sent, none of them was told to get it registered.’
‘What about Mr Lawrence, the husband, Sir Anthony’s heir?’
‘He reckons to know nothing about the watch and, as you will have been told, we’ve checked his alibi for the time the doctors think the murder took place and it stands up, there’s no doubt about that. He’d come back from Norfolk and was with the old gentleman when he died and then went back to his digs up north, where his landlady swears he stayed put until well after the murder.’
‘Alibis are like promises and pie-crust,’ said Laura, when they had parted from the inspector. ‘We ought to get on to that rascally College scout and turn him inside out about that meeting between Lawrence and Coralie St Malo.’
‘If it was Coralie St Malo whom he met in that public house,’ said Dame Beatrice suddenly. ‘Have you ever visited Blackpool?’
‘No. My education has been faulty, I’m afraid.’
‘A matter which can readily be adjusted. Let us set out tomorrow for the famous resort.’
‘Then we had better set out this afternoon for the Stone House to collect a few necessities and I’d better ring up and engage a couple of rooms in Blackpool. Have you a favourite hotel?’
‘No, I have never been to Blackpool. My education has been as deficient as your own.’
‘The hotels may be full in a place like that at this time of year.’
‘That we can soon find out when we get home. We have a guide to hotels and the telephone is at our disposal.’
‘And we’d better stay the night at a half-way house; not that I can’t manage the distance in one day, but…’
‘Yes, a two-day journey will be more enjoyable in every way.’
Laura, however was fated not to make the journey to Blackpool. A telephone message to the Stone House informed her that measles had broken out at her daughter’s boarding school and that all pupils who were not affected were being sent home and should be met at Waterloo railway station.
Before they left the inspector, Dame Beatrice had obtained from him the name of the concert party which enjoyed Coralie St Malo’s services and Dame Beatrice’s official card sent in at the morning rehearsal brought a beaming Coralie round to the hotel for lunch.
She was somewhat of a surprise. She was a big woman, quietly dressed, and her make-up was discreet; also, although she spoke in a rather strident, self-assertive voice, her manners would have passed muster anywhere. She appeared to be about thirty years old and she gave an impression of toughness and natural self-confidence. She refused a cocktail and drank very little wine with her meal. They took this at twelve-thirty so that she could get back in good time for the afternoon performance.
‘That heel?’ she said, when Dame Beatrice introduced Lawrence’s name. ‘Yes, I met him and we had a drink together. He wanted to re-marry me, but I thought, “Once bitten, twice shy”. He said he was coming into a lot of money and couldn’t we try to make a go of it again.’
‘Re-marry?’ asked Dame Beatrice.
‘Yes, of all the impudence.’
‘You mean that you had been divorced?’
‘I’ll say! I divorced him at the end of the time allowed for desertion. The suit was undefended. That’s why you won’t have heard of it, I expect.’
‘You know, of course, that he had married a Miss Caret?’
‘Told me his divorce from her was pending. Instead, he cut her throat.’
‘There is surely no evidence of that?’
‘Who needs evidence? You’ve only got to know him. My belief is he did in that poor old gentleman, Sir Anthony, too, who was always so good to him.’
‘Oh, you knew Sir Anthony, did you?’
‘Of course not. Thaddy – he didn’t like me shortening his name, but how can you be expected to call anybody Thaddeus? – it wasn’t his real name, anyway. Well, Thaddy wouldn’t ever let me meet Sir Anthony. Kept me dark because I was common, you see. Thought perhaps he wouldn’t get Sir Anthony’s money if the old gentleman found out he’d married somebody on the concert-party stage and, like a fool, I played along with it and let him go off up north where he said he’d send for me when he’d saved enough to put down on a little house. Well, of course, that never came off, so when the time was up I divorced him for desertion and irretrievable breakdown, as they call it, but I didn’t know that in the meantime he’d taken up with this Caret girl. I found that out later.’