I could not see how this catalogue was going to help the enquiry, but I trusted that Dame Beatrice had something constructive in mind and that she anticipated that Coberley’s opinions would shed some ray of light upon what still seemed to be the impenetrable darkness and mystery which surrounded Gloria Mundy’s death.
‘Well, my first choice would be Mrs Wotton,’ said Coberley. ‘It was easy to see that she detested the girl. Wotton and I had a couple of drinks too many when I was at his place one night. This was some time ago, before any of this murder and arson business. I have no doubt I unburdened myself in a way I would not do normally, but so did he, by Jove! I heard the full story of Gloria Mundy’s conquest of him and he finished up by begging me to forgive him for bandying a woman’s name and saying that he had made a clean breast of the whole affair to his wife before they married.’
‘It was Celia Wotton who asked the wretched girl to stay to lunch that day,’ I pointed out.
‘Yes, because she knew it was the last thing Wotton wanted. It was a mean little way of getting a bit of her own back,’ said Coberley.
‘Oh, come, now!’ I protested. ‘Any hostess would have felt bound to do the same.’
‘To an uninvited and obviously unwelcome guest? Still, you may be right.’
‘After the soup-splashing incident, everybody took it for granted that Miss Mundy had slung her hook. Nobody expected her to be seen at the old house,’ I said.
‘Nevertheless, that’s where she was,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Can you produce any evidence, apart from a somewhat weak motive, for your suspicions of Mrs Wotton?’
‘No, I can’t. I have no evidence against any of the ladies. The only two I don’t suspect at all are my wife and the elderly aunt. I have reasons for excepting these two. Apart from the fact that she later broke her leg, the old lady had scored a signal triumph with her quite disgraceful behaviour at table and was far too pleased with herself to plan any further assault on that young serpent, and my wife, having committed one murder, had the fright of her life when she was brought to trial and is utterly inhibited from murdering anybody else.’
I looked at Dame Beatrice and asked, ‘Is that good psychology, Domina?’
‘Oh, it could be,’ she responded. She turned again to Coberley.
‘So you knew your wife killed her first husband?’
‘I thought everybody knew it,’ he said. ‘I was the chief witness for the prosecution, you know. The deed was done in my office. Marigold was my secretary. Her husband had come to kick up a fuss about what he had made up his mind was our relationship with one another. I need hardly tell you that there was nothing in the least improper about it. I treated her like a daughter, but that is all. I am twenty-five years older than she is and, beyond admiring her beauty and finding her knowledge of Spanish, her native language, very useful in my business — for I had large interests in South America, particularly with the Argentine — I was (and still am, if it comes to that) merely a father figure in her life.’
‘So her hot Spanish blood got the better of her when her husband came to your office,’ I said.
‘I suppose so. I heard the shot and burst in to find her with the gun in her hand and the fellow lying on the carpet. Of course I wasn’t going to admit to anybody what I had seen. I said, “You silly girl! Now look at what you’ve done! Drop the gun beside him.” ’
‘Did she always carry a gun?’ I asked. He took no notice.
‘Of course there were voices outside and soon a knock on the door,’ he said. ‘I did not invite anybody in, but, of course, it opened and a scared typist asked whether everything was all right. I replied that a man had just shot himself and that she was to telephone for the police. That’s the whole story. When Marigold was acquitted I married her and bought the school after I had changed my name.’
‘You were not alarmed at becoming the husband of such a volatile young creature?’ asked Dame Beatrice.
‘Oh, no. Things came out, you know. He was an absolute waster, an undischarged bankrupt and a chap who had bought the gun and threatened suicide with it more than once. There were witnesses who supported Marigold’s statement about that. Of course there were her prints on the gun superimposed on his, so the defence relied mainly on a story of a struggle for the gun which then went off and killed the fellow. Of course I was called for the prosecution, but they didn’t get much joy out of me. You can’t run a business as successful as mine was without being able to tell a good big thumping lie or two when the need arises, but I really think it was Marigold’s outstanding beauty and a sort of defencelessness about her which really swayed the jury; neither could the prosecution find anybody who could produce evidence of previous quarrels between the husband and wife, although I’m pretty sure they led a cat and dog life. In fact, they both lived on Marigold’s salary, which I bumped up from time to time because, in a fatherly or avuncular way, I was very fond of her. I used to take her out to meals quite a lot. I got the impression that she often went hungry.’
‘Which of them had brought the gun to your office?’ I could not help asking.
This time he answered me. ‘She said that she had. Her story was that he had been in a deeply depressed mood when she left for work that morning and she had not dared to leave him in the house with it.’
‘And which of them do you think had toted it along?’
‘Oh, he had, of course. He had come to the office to shoot me. She had asked him for a divorce, you see. She told me exactly what had happened as soon as we were married. She saw him produce the gun and simply held out her hand for it, took it and shot him.’
‘Just like that?’ I said.
‘Just like that.’
‘But why?’
‘Because he had threatened that one day he would turn up at the office and shoot me. When she was acquitted I took her straight off to the south of France for a year and we were married as soon as we came back to England.’
At a signal from Dame Beatrice I had written down none of this story. I was astonished, in fact, that he had told it. I resumed my task, however, when Dame Beatrice said, ‘Well, we have mentioned some of the women who were at Beeches Lawn. What about the others?’
‘I don’t see any way of choosing between them,’ said Coberley. ‘The two unmarried girls are less likely murderers than Mrs Wotton, perhaps, simply because they were not only younger than she, but, because of that very fact, possibly had their fiancés under firm control. A fiancée is always stronger in most respects than a wife. No, on the whole I plump for Celia Wotton.’
‘What Coberley does not know,’ I said to Dame Beatrice when we got outside, ‘is that Kate McMaster had exactly the same motive as Celia Wotton for detesting Gloria Mundy. Before his marriage McMaster had a caper with her. One of the husbands-to-be picked her up at a night-club, the other on board a cruise liner, but that seems to have been the only difference. Kate McMaster would have known the address of Beeches Lawn because McMaster came to see me there.’
‘Yes, but she could not have known that Miss Mundy was to go there.’
‘Did you get anything helpful from Coberley?’ I asked.
‘I found the whole interview very interesting,’ she replied, ‘particularly the importance he attaches to the eleventh Commandment.’
‘Oh, about telling lies? In time of trouble thou shalt tell a lie, a good lie, and stick to it. Yes, indeed. Incidentally, I had to exercise a lot of self-control to avoid telling him what I thought of him for accusing Celia Wotton. I respect and admire her and it was hurtful to think that anybody should accuse her of stabbing another woman in the back.’