“Be interested to find out how the fracas ended. Why don’t you give Julian a ring?” asked Laura.
“What, worry the poor innocent after the kind of day he must have had?” cried Julian’s kindhearted aunt. “I only hope he isn’t drowning his sorrows too deep. He’s got to go to school again tomorrow.”
“I think you’ll find that, from his point of view, the pageant was a great success,” said Laura.
“With that awful battle at the end, Dog?”
“The usual give-and-take of an eighteenth-century election. I bet he’s delighted the yobs turned up in force and started a brouhaha.”
This view was confirmed by the young man himself. He held a long telephone conversation with Kitty at ten o’clock that evening and, professing himself delighted with the way things had gone, canvassed her opinion upon the proceedings. Kitty replied, without reserve (for she was a generous-hearted woman), that she thought the pageant had been an all-out success. She enquired whether there had been any trouble with the police.
“Not a whisper, after the gangs had scarpered,” Julian replied. “I indicated that the in-fighting had been a put-up job and received official disapproval for provoking a breach of the peace, but everything ended with goodwill on their side and malice towards none on ours. I have received innumerable tributes from my lads to the effect that they hadn’t had such a good time for months. I gather that there will be more than one oik with a nasty headache tonight. I must cultivate this game of rounders, complete with lethal weapons. It has its own attraction.”
“He’d talk himself out of anything,” said Kitty, returning to Laura and Twigg. “No wonder he got himself elected on to the Council.”
Two days later there was a different story, however. Laura had returned to Dame Beatrice’s Kensington house after lunching with Kitty on the morning which followed Julian’s pageant, and was rung up as she was dealing with Dame Beatrice’s correspondence. An agitated Kitty was on the line.
“That you, Dog?”
“Speaking.”
“I say, something terrible has happened.”
“Always something nasty in the woodshed. Say on.”
“While we were milling about in the Butts, that man Gordon—you know the one I mean?”
“He who took Edward III and the second servitor upon him? Spey’s schoolmaster buddy?”
“Oh, Dog, he hanged himself from the Druid’s Oak!”
“Half a minute, while I confer with the Great Panjamdrum.”
Kitty obediently stood by while Laura went to give the news to Dame Beatrice.
“Looks an open-and-shut case,” she observed, when she had given Kitty’s news to the head of the household, “at least, I suppose the police will think so. Falstaff is killed; Spey, who knew how and why, is done in; the murderer of both, either in a fit of remorse or because he has reason to believe that the police are wise to him, jumps out of the vicious circle. I don’t believe a word of it, you know.”
“Do you not?” said Dame Beatrice. “I am inclined to agree with you. Go back to the telephone and comfort Mrs Trevelyan-Twigg, and then we will ask our dear Robert for his reactions. He is not the man to come to hasty decisions, except in one particular.”
Laura grinned.
“Go on with you! Don’t rub it in,” she said. “Even now that I’ve had leisure to repent of marrying him, I don’t really think I do.” She returned to the telephone.
“Oh, thank goodness for that!” said Kitty, when Laura had slipped her the information that Dame Beatrice did not believe in Gordon’s guilt. “No more do I, and as for Julian, selfish little beast as he is as a general rule, I’ve never known him so upset about anything. He says Dame Beatrice must find the murderer.”
“I think she knows who it is, but it’s going to be awfully difficult to prove it,” said Laura soberly.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Some Questions Answered
“Now with the language of trees, and the literature of the running brooks we have no concern for the moment…”
« ^ »
Laura’s discovery of the head had produced some information. An examination by a leading authority on forensic medicine showed beyond doubt that Spey had been hit on the head with sufficient force to stun him if not to kill him. The inquest on Gordon resulted in a verdict of suicide without the merciful adjoinder that the balance of his mind had been affected.
“In other words, he’s supposed to have cheated the law,” said Laura. “Well, I stick to what I said. I still don’t believe it. I think he was murdered, the same as the other two.”
This opinion was stoutly upheld in another quarter. Miss Cattrick, headmistress of the Primary School at which Spey and Gordon had worked, took up the cudgels in the form of a letter to the local press. She could not believe (she wrote) that Gordon would have taken his own life in so extraordinary a manner; in fact, she did not believe that he had taken his own life at all. She realised that, in company with other members of the Brayne Dramatic Society, he had been under severe pressure since the death of Luton, and she realised, also, that the dreadful fate of Spey, his friend and fellow-teacher, had affected him greatly, as, indeed, it had affected everyone connected with the school. But if Gordon had committed suicide (she continued) he was “the gas oven type” or, if he was set upon hanging himself, there were the banisters in his own home. He had lost his wife and child in a road accident, and had lived alone for the past six years, so that there would have been nobody in the house to prevent or dissuade him. She reiterated that she did not believe he had committed suicide. If he had, she insisted, it certainly would not have been in the melodramatic fashion described. She added that she had had him on her Staff for fifteen years and understood his mind and character. She believed, in fact, that he had been murdered, and that the motive was the same as that in the case of Spey. He knew, or had guessed, the identity of the murderer of Luton, and so was as much a danger to this maniac (she used the word advisedly and deliberately, she said) as his fellow-teacher had been.
The editor of the local paper did not print the letter. He showed it to the police. These passed a copy of it to Gavin, knowing him to be interested in the extraordinary deaths at Brayne, and Gavin came down to the Stone House in Wandles Parva to show the copy to Dame Beatrice.
“I know our chaps weren’t altogether happy about that suicide verdict, any more than they still are about the Misadventure pronouncement on Luton,” he said. “Look here, Dame B., why don’t you have a private look-see into things? I’ll tip off the lads, so you needn’t look to having any of them interfere with your fun. You see, between ourselves, there are far too many question-marks with regard to these deaths. To begin with—well, look, I’ll list ’em, and perhaps you’d care to make a note or two.”
His list answered some of the queries which Dame Beatrice had already put to herself. It cleared up some doubtful points and spotlighted others. Exhaustive enquiries on the part of the police had shown that it was not only unlikely that the death of Luton had taken place during the interval at the Town Hall show, but that this was virtually impossible. If it had not taken place during the interval, then it had not been brought about through the agency of the sword which had been borrowed to replace the one which the costume people had neglected to send.
“Old hat. We worked that one out ages ago,” said Laura.
“I wonder,” said Dame Beatrice, looking up from her note-taking at this point, “why the Dramatic Society did not telephone for the missing foil when they discovered, at the dress rehearsal, that it was not among the properties? It seems to me that it would have been a very simple matter for the costumiers to despatch it in time for it to reach the Town Hall for the performance.”