One morning, when Dame Beatrice’s manuscript was typed and had been posted, she said at breakfast:
‘There must be some way of breaking Lawrence’s alibi.’
‘Unless he committed the murder, he does not need an alibi, dear child.’
‘I don’t like that visit he paid you when George and I were both away. I think he’s our murderer all right and if only that alibi isn’t an alibi at all, the police ought to be in a position to charge him.’
‘I believe him to be the murderer of old Sir Anthony, and I think Mrs Lawrence had some evidence of this. I believe he may have wanted to kill her, and I believe he was the prowler with the sack who buried her, but I do not believe he carried out the actual murder. I believe he was capable of poisoning Mrs Lawrence; I do not believe he was capable of cutting her throat. Now that I have met him I believe it even less than I did when I had his early history from Ferdinand, who got it from the Warden of Wayneflete.’
‘All the same, I’d like to have a go at that landlady of his, to see whether I couldn’t break her down.’
‘You are hardly likely to succeed where the police have failed.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Woman to woman might dig up some information which wouldn’t have been given to a male copper, don’t you think?’
‘I hardly know what reason you could give for calling upon and questioning her.’
‘I bet I could think of something. Anyway, I won’t attempt to go up there so soon after Lawrence’s visit to you. I think that at present the more able-bodied citizens we have in and about this house, the better prepared we shall be if he has any rough stuff in mind.’
‘He hardly gave that impression,’ said Dame Beatrice. The next news came from the Warden of Wayneflete himself. It was relayed to the Stone House by Sir Ferdinand. He telephoned his mother to ask whether he might come to dinner and stay the night, as he was defending in Winchester on the following day.
‘I shall put up at the Domus after that, while the case lasts, to be handy for the court,’ he said, ‘but it does seem a good opportunity to come and see you, if you can have me.’
The news he brought was interesting and, in Dame Beatrice’s opinion, significant. Sir Ferdinand himself regarded it as having a somewhat humorous aspect.
‘These smart-Alecs,’ he said, ‘they will do it, you know, even if their solicitors advise against it. What they expect to get out of it, I don’t know.’
‘Of what do we speak, my dear boy?’
‘This insane decision to go for jury trial instead of biting the bullet on what the magistrates dish out. This lunatic would have got off with four months at the most if he’d opted for summary conviction. As it is, the judge has given him two years.’
‘And his offence?’
‘Drunken driving.’
‘And who is this rash speculator? I gather it is somebody we know.’
‘Our friend Thaddeus E. Lawrence, none other. Even going before a judge he might have got off more lightly except that, before sentence was passed, he decided to turn cheeky and called the judge “you misbegotten bastard by Colonel Blimp out of the Band of Hope”. That cooked his goose, of course, and to clinch it he biffed his warder.’
‘I wish I’d heard him say it,’ remarked Laura. ‘I wouldn’t have believed he was such a sportsman. So he’s behind bars for two years, is he? Less, if he behaves himself, of course.’
‘I fancy there is method in his madness,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘At least in prison he will be safe from his enemies and from the hand of all that hate him.’
Laura looked at her employer with astonishment.
‘You mean he feels we’re on his track and may be getting warm?’ she asked. ‘I didn’t think that, up to the present, we’d managed to get anything on him which would stick. You must have said something which frightened him pretty badly when he called on you.’
‘Oh, it is not I and it is not the police he fears. My reading of the matter is that he is being pursued by an avenger and that he sees prison as his only chance to put off an evil day. There is a porpoise close behind him, or so I think. He must be in fear of his life to have chosen prison as his only safe hiding-place.’
‘Elucidate, mother,’ said Ferdinand.
‘Well, as I have been known to suggest, the relationship between brothers and sisters is a strange one.’
‘And Mrs Lawrence had a brother,’ said Laura. ‘Yes, but, according to the folklore of the Border ballads, brothers don’t kill their sisters’ husbands, only their boyfriends or the sisters themselves. See “Clerk Saunders” and “The Cruel Brother”.’
‘Six of the seven brothers were unwilling to murder Clerk Saunders,’ Dame Beatrice pointed out, ‘and, in the case of the cruel brother, we are given to understand that it was pique which caused him to stab his sister to death. He had not been consulted about the marriage or asked for his consent to it. We are told of the prospective bridegroom:
He has sought her from her father, the King
And sae did he her mither, the Queen.
He has sought her from her sister Anne;
But he has forgot her brother John.
With good reason, perhaps.’
‘Knowing that John would have refused his consent and that might have ditched the marriage, you mean? Do you think Mrs L’s brother objected to her marriage?’
‘At any rate, he appears to have had an affectionate regard for her. You will remember our hearing of frequent visits, walks and boating. If he thinks Lawrence had any hand in her death he well might meditate upon revenge.’
‘And that’s what you think Lawrence knows?’
‘According to what Ferdinand has just told us, it seems very likely.’
‘Yes, he’s an offensive little swine in private life,’ said Sir Ferdinand, ‘but I would say that his outburst in court was so uncharacteristic that I’m sure my mother is right and that he was determined to get himself jugged.’
‘But that could mean the brother knows something against him,’ said Laura.
‘It cannot be anything he can prove, or surely he would have gone to the police with it,’ said Sir Ferdinand. ‘Besides, if mother is right – and I’m sure she is – Lawrence fears private vengeance. Actually, I feel pretty sure that he is not the murderer, although he well may be the accessory after the fact. It looks to me as though the actual killing was done by an accomplice who then left Lawrence’s flat.’
‘How long do you expect your case at Winchester to last? Shall we see you again when it is over? ’ Dame Beatrice enquired.
‘Yes, thanks, mother. The wife of my bosom has taken her own mother to Madeira for a period of convalescence, so I’d like to drop by again, if I may. By my reading, my case should last the best part of a week or maybe longer. It’s a little matter of theft followed by death. My client stole from a warehouse and, interrupted by the night watchman, hit the latter and killed him. The prosecution will quote R. v. Jones, of course, when Jones was convicted of murdering a store-manager and had his appeal dismissed. There was a reasonable doubt, in my opinion, whether Jones intended to do more than disable the manager of the store which he had burgled, but I doubt whether, in the case I am defending, I can do any better than a verdict of manslaughter, although I shall do my best to “soften the evidence”, as that rascal Peachum would say.’
‘The murder of Mrs Lawrence could hardly boil down to a charge of manslaughter,’ said Laura. ‘It was deliberate murder, premeditated, workmanlike and callous.’
Chief Superintendent Nicholl looked dubious.