‘But if it’s a proper question, Mrs Gavin,’ he said, ‘what do you expect to get at his landlady’s?’
‘I’m hoping to break down his alibi for the week Mrs Lawrence was murdered.’
‘Well, I wish you more luck than we’ve had.’
‘Woman to woman, and all that kind of thing, you know. What sort of woman is she?’
‘A most respectable old party. Has let rooms to the College for years and never a breath against her. If you don’t mind me saying so, Mrs Gavin, ma’am, I think you’ll be wasting your time.’
‘We’ll see. You never know.’
She drove off blithely to the address he had given her, but her visit proved to be as abortive as the superintendent had prophesied. Lawrence’s lodgings were in a much larger house than Laura had envisaged. It was a solidly built, three-storey Victorian mansion, well maintained; it had a neat front garden, a polished brass knocker, doorbell and letter-flap, and in answer to her ring the front door was opened by a maid capped and aproned and with a well-scrubbed, fresh-complexioned face. This girl stood politely awaiting the caller’s opening remarks.
Laura produced Dame Beatrice’s official card with her own name added to it in Dame Beatrice’s handwriting.
‘I wonder whether I could speak to Mrs Breaston?’ she said.
‘Come inside, madam, please. I’ll go and ask. Would it be about a room? – because I don’t believe we have a vacancy.’
‘Oh? Has Mr Lawrence’s room been re-let, then?’ asked Laura, who had not foreseen such a useful opening to her visit.
‘I’ll speak to Mrs Breaston, madam, if you’ll kindly take a seat.’
There was a small table in the hall with a chair at either end of it. Laura sat down and was not kept waiting. Mrs Breaston reminded Laura of nobody so much as of the enigmatic housekeeper at Manderley. She was a tall ramrod of a woman dressed all in black. She glided like a fictional nun and carried her hands clasped just below her waist. She was decorated with a large cameo brooch and a long gold chain at the end of which Laura could see a gold cross. Her hair was strained into a small bun at the back of her neck and she wafted before her a faint odour of aniseed.
‘I have no vacancies,’ she said, ‘but your card hardly suggests that you need one. The Home Office? Are you connected with the police force? If so, I am going to complain to my Member of Parliament. I really must protest about being badgered in this way.’
‘I am not a member of the police force, neither have I any intention of badgering you, Mrs Breaston. Did you know that Mr Lawrence has been sent to prison for dangerous driving?’
‘I have no wish to hear Mr Lawrence’s name spoken.’
‘I suppose he did leave you rather suddenly. Was he up-to-date with his rent?’
‘I have no complaints about that. Perhaps we had better go into my sitting-room. The servants are all ears.’ She led the way along the hall and opened a door. The room was papered in a gloomy shade of red which (thought Laura) would have been handy for covering up bloodstains. The curtains were red and so was the carpet, and such light as penetrated to the room came in through the slats of a Venetian blind. ‘Please be seated,’ the landlady continued. ‘Now what is your business here?’
‘If Mr Lawrence’s name is not to be mentioned, I can hardly answer that question.’
‘You say Mr Lawrence is in prison?’
‘Yes, for drunken driving and for insulting the judge.’
‘That astonishes me. I would not have thought he had the courage for either misdemeanour.’
‘Did you ever hear him mention a woman named Coralie St Malo?’
‘She sounds like an adventuress,’ commented Mrs Breaston remaining within the period which she and her sitting-room so ably represented.
‘She’s on the concert-party stage. At present she is playing in Blackpool.’
‘I know of no such person.’
‘Did Mr Lawrence have any women visitors while he was with you?’
‘He gave extra coaching to one or two of the female students, but one could hardly call them women visitors and, of course, I saw to it that they left at a reasonable hour. Supper here is at nine. They were always out of this house before that. What is more, if only one young woman at a time was involved, I sat in the room while the tutoring was going on. I thought it only right.’
‘I see. Had you any idea that Mr Lawrence was not going to renew his tenancy after the end of the summer term?’
‘Mr Lawrence was under notice to go.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘I discovered that he was having improper relations with one of my maids.’
‘Oh, dear!’
‘Of course that sealed his fate – and hers.’
‘I suppose so – yes. You can be certain that he was here…’
‘As I have already told the police, Mr Lawrence left this house on May twenty-fourth, having no more lectures to deliver, although it was not, strictly speaking, the end of the term, and he returned here, by my permission, in order to collect the rest of his possessions and work out his notice. I have not seen him since and have no wish to set eyes on him again.’
‘Well, I don’t suppose you will, Mrs Breaston. He has been given a two-year prison sentence. Now, those last nights after his return, he was in this house all the time, I suppose?’
‘He was.’
‘May I ask how you can be so sure?’
‘I kept my eye on him every day and my ears open.’
‘Can you be certain he did not slip out at night?’
‘Yes,’ said the landlady grimly, ‘that I can. I trusted him so little that I had all his possessions moved into the room next to mine. Since you appear to have official standing, I will show you how I can be certain he did not leave my house. Not that I should have been concerned about that. It was his morals inside my house which concerned me.’
She led the way majestically from the room and up the well-carpeted stairs. She unlocked a door on the landing.
‘This is your bedroom, I take it,’ said Laura, looking around.
‘That is so.’ The landlady traversed the room and opened a door which communicated with it. ‘And this is where I put Mr Lawrence with the door between us securely bolted on my side of it. You will notice that there is no other method of egress from this room. I always dressed early, tidied my room and then unbolted the communicating door.’
Laura walked over to what had been Lawrence’s bedroom window during his last short stay in the house, a stay which, according to the medical evidence, must have covered the period during which the murder of Mrs Lawrence had taken place. There was a sheer drop of more than thirty feet on to a stone courtyard. ‘He could have buried the body but not committed the murder,’ thought Laura.
‘I am sorry, but not surprised, that you had your journey for nothing,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘Well, it wasn’t quite for nothing, because I’ve satisfied myself that Lawrence must be in the clear so far as the actual murder of Mrs Lawrence is concerned. We know he went to Wayneflete College, where Sir Ferdinand spoke to him about the money that was embezzled, and Mrs Lawrence certainly wasn’t killed while he was there.’
‘No. The session at her university was not over, so she certainly would have been missed if she hadn’t turned up at Abbesses College during the last few days of term.’
‘Then we know that Lawrence spent a week with Sir Anthony in Norfolk. His alibi is clear for that time, too, and also for the five days which followed, for these included all the arrangements for Sir Anthony’s funeral and also the funeral itself. Still, according to Miss Runmede’s evidence, Lawrence may be covered for his wife’s murder, but he isn’t cleared of that business of the sack and the cloister garth. That means he had guilty knowledge of the murder, even if he didn’t commit it. For long enough we have been agreed upon that.’