‘So his marriage to Miss Caret might have been bigamous if it took place before you divorced him?’
‘I suppose so. I wished her joy of him when I found out, which wasn’t until after my divorce, and much joy she’s had, poor girl, with her throat cut and buried in a nasty, dirty sack!’
‘I am interested in your opinion that Lawrence is a murderer. May I ask what may seem to be an impertinent and very personal question, Miss St Malo?’ said Dame Beatrice. Coralie looked anxious and, for the first time during the interview, her self-confidence seemed to falter.
‘I don’t take offence where there’s no call for it,’ she said, twisting her hands together.
‘Thank you. We – the police and I – were told that after the meeting at the public house near Bicester you invited Mr Lawrence to your lodgings, where he stayed for about an hour.’
‘He drove me home from the Bicester pub, same as he drove me out there, but I never asked him in and he never came in. Who told you he did?’ Her tone was sharper than before.
‘One of the scouts at Wayneflete College. At least, he is no longer in service there. He resigned because of an accusation made against him by Mr Lawrence.’
‘Oh, Alf Bird! He’s a snout and a liar. Everybody knows that. Never happy unless he’s got hold of some tit-bit of muck about somebody. He’s the original Little-Bird-Told-Me. Thaddy took me up to my front door, took my key like the gentleman he always pretended to be, let me in and then handed back the key and drove off. Bird was just spreading dirt, as usual.’
‘Could be true, I suppose,’ said Laura, when Dame Beatrice, brought back to Stone House by her chauffeur George, had given an account of the interview. ‘Shall you see this man Bird?’
‘At this stage it would be useless. He will repeat his story, whether it is true or not. Miss St Malo herself may be lying. Some of the time, in fact, I am sure she was. The next thing, as I see it, is to find that watch. Even if one of the porters did steal it – a matter difficult of credence in the case of men who held a position of such trust – it cannot still be in the possession of either Oates or Wagstaffe.’
‘No. I imagine their hut and their homes have had a pretty fair going-over by the police, and if either of them had sold or popped the watch locally, that would have come out long before this. Are you proposing to go and look for the watch yourself?’
‘No,’ replied Dame Beatrice, pretending to take the question seriously. ‘That would be beyond my scope, I fear. I shall suggest to the Chief Constable that he put it to the inspector that another attempt be made to extract information from old Sir Anthony’s servants. It would not surprise me to learn that the watch was never posted at all, but was stolen from Sir Anthony’s own house.’
‘By Lawrence?’
‘According to Ferdinand’s report of his conversations with the Warden of Wayneflete College, it would be quite in keeping with Lawrence’s reputation. But, to turn to a pleasanter subject, what have you done with my rusticated god-daughter? I expected and hoped to find her here.’
‘Sorry, but I wasn’t sure how much we’d be here ourselves while this business was still going on, so as it is so near her school summer holiday I’ve shipped her up to my brother and his wife in Scotland. She was due to go there in a few days’ time, anyway.’
‘I am sorry to have missed her, but perhaps she is safer out of the way.’
‘Safer?’
‘I do not like this particular murder.’
‘I see. You mean we don’t need to offer hostages to fortune and all that. It hadn’t occurred to me that the murderer might know that we are interesting ourselves in his affairs.’
CHAPTER 10
« ^ »
Afraid of honest men with honest minds.
Afraid, even, of an old woman like me.
‘That watch has turned up again, so the inspector informs me,’ said the Chief Constable, when Dame Beatrice telephoned him again after her return to the Stone House. ‘You’ve been to Blackpool, have you? Any news?’
‘A little, but, so far as the College porters are concerned, perhaps yours is better worthwhile. Could you spare the time to come over and have a chat? I should like very much to hear about the watch.’
‘And I should like a detailed account of your visit to Blackpool. You gave me an outline, so perhaps you would be good enough to fill it in?’
‘Most willingly. May we expect you to lunch tomorrow?’
‘Could it be the following day? The inspector is planning an identity parade, putting both porters in it. It will take a bit of arranging because for obvious reasons he doesn’t want to call upon local people to join in. Following the message which you telephoned on your way home – from Preston, I think you said – he’s putting Lawrence in the parade, too, I believe – not that I can see much point in it – the parade, I mean.’
‘Where is Lawrence now?’
‘Still in Sir Anthony’s old house. He owns it, of course, and, although it is on the market, it has not been sold yet.’
‘Can the inspector insist that he appear in a parade?’
‘Oh, well, I suppose that so long as he has nothing to hide, there is no reason why he should refuse to appear. A police car will be sent to bring him here and take him home afterwards. If he has a guilty conscience he will hardly dare to refuse the inspector’s request. I have had a talk with the inspector and he has suggested that if Lawrence seems reluctant to appear in the identity parade, he should tell him that the man dragging the sack was seen and that it is necessary for him to prove that he was not that man. I’m dubious about the ethics of this, but it’s the inspector’s case now. I could wish we hadn’t had to divert Nicholl to this bank robbery.’
‘As I am certain that Lawrence was that man, the procedure does not affront me as it might do under other circumstances,’ said Dame Beatrice, with an eldritch cackle which disconcerted her hearer at the other end of the line.
When the Chief Constable arrived he was able to report that the Mrs Lawrence case, as he called the murder of the second wife, had shown some interesting developments.
‘We photographed a similar sort of watch by permission of the horological section of the University Museum,’ he said, ‘and got the BBC and ITV to put it out on all networks.’
‘Not merely in case of its having been stolen, I assume,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘Oh, no. We told them it was connected with a murder enquiry.’
‘And you obtained a result?’
‘Yes. An antique dealer in London rang us and said that he had purchased such a watch and gave us the date of the sale. It fitted well enough and it also fitted with the story told by the two porters when they were brought before the magistrates. Those, as you know, released them on bail while we continued our enquiries into the murder, for that, of course, far more than the theft of the watch, was the point of interest.’
‘And the porters’ reaction?’
‘They repeated what they had already told the magistrates: that they knew nothing about the watch. At last we believe them.’
‘What makes you believe their story now, whereas previously you doubted it?’
‘The identity parade. The antique dealer came along and scanned the ranks. He had, at our request, brought his woman assistant with him. The inspector had produced seven men and five women, let Lawrence and the two porters stand anywhere they liked in the line and then had in the dealer and, after him, his assistant. When the dealer had made his pick he was not allowed to meet his assistant until she, too, had made her choice. Do you want to make a guess, Dame Beatrice?’