“Mrs Croc. thought that had been done before the basket was dumped in the Thames,” observed Laura. “I’d wondered why the murderer bothered to do that. I suppose he thought the tide would come up and wash off the bloodstains. At first I thought he wanted the river to float the basket away.”
“Has anything more come out about the other two deaths?” asked Dame Beatrice.
“Nothing more than you already know. Spey’s wife has been interviewed, of course, poor woman, but she’s firm that her husband had no enemies. There doesn’t seem any doubt but that he was killed because he knew too much about Luton’s death—or somebody thought he did.”
“Well, doesn’t that absolutely prove that Luton was murdered?” enquired Laura.
“Not absolutely, no. Even if that death was by misadventure—not, as I say, that we think it was—it’s amazing the things people will do to avoid being blamed. Look at hit-and-run motorists. The majority of people, if you ask my opinion, will go to almost any lengths to avoid facing the music.”
“So the instrument which must have been used to decapitate Spey hasn’t turned up, then?”
“No, it hasn’t.”
“You should jolly well turn Squire’s Acre Hall inside out. Somebody there—and I plump for Giles—is the nigger in the woodpile, you know.”
“My dear girl, without the hell of a lot more evidence than the slight amount we’ve got, we’re not in a position to do anything of the sort.”
“What about my having found Spey’s head bang opposite the end of Squire’s Acre park?”
“Ask yourself! You found it easy enough to go along that path when you left the canal. What was to prevent the murderer finding it just as simple?”
“Well, he’d got the head in a bag. I hadn’t.”
“He’d have gone by night, of course. There wouldn’t be a soul along the towing-path after dark.”
“It would have been much safer, and ever so much easier, to have strolled down through the park with it. Don’t forget you wouldn’t even need to have a key to the gate in the railings.”
“I know. I’ve been along and had a look for myself. The fact that two of the railings have been wrenched apart doesn’t mean a thing. Boys are always up to that kind of lark.”
“You don’t convince me,” said Laura obstinately. “Added to the Batty-Faudrey sword, it seems to me that the thing’s in the bag.”
“Like the head,” said her husband. “Still, I hand it to you over that. It wouldn’t have occurred to me in a hundred years to connect the name Squire’s Acre Arm with the head tucked underneath same. I said a while ago that Colonel Batty-Faudrey isn’t mad. I take it that the same goes for Giles. And it’s a madman we’re looking for. I’m absolutely certain about that. What do you say, Dame B.?”
“I am not in agreement with you, except in so far as that all murderers are mad.”
“But this horrible historical pottiness!”
“I know. Shakespearian pottiness, too, if one thinks of Falstaff.”
“I suppose,” said Gavin, looking at his wife in an apologetic manner, “this young nephew of Kitty Trevelyan-Twigg’s couldn’t be involved in any way? Forgive me, Laura, but we may as well look at the thing from all angles.”
“I have never refused to turn over stones and explore avenues,” said his wife, with dignity, “and I’d say you’ve got something there. It was he who mooted the idea of Kitty’s beastly pageant in the first place, and it was he who insisted upon staging the second one, too—and that was entirely wrong-headed and unnecessary of him. Come to think of it, it was he who took us by way of the canal to that private road where Spey’s body was found, whereas we could have got there far more quickly by car. Besides, he’s a graduate, which means, presumably, that he’s well up in Shakespeare and so forth. Moreover, he’s a Councillor, and has the history of the borough at his fingertips. I do hope and trust it isn’t Julian, though. Break old Kitty’s heart, if it is. But I do think his bona fides should be subjected to scrutiny, and I can’t say fairer than that. After all, who else thought of dancing round Hangman’s Oak, of all the potty ideas!”
“That’s the one thing which gives me pause,” said Gavin. “Would he really have wanted his boys to do a ritual dance round a hanged man?”
“Well, of course, I’m as certain as can be that Julian isn’t the murderer. All the same, you ought to check up, if only to put him definitely in the clear. But before we begin tailing him, I must put old Kitty wise.”
“Not kind of you.”
“I’m not prepared to go behind her back. If we’re putting Julian under suspicion, she’s got to know. Don’t worry. She’s got plenty of guts. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t be where she is today.”
“Well, you know her better than I do, but if I were under suspicion, I’d hate to have somebody tip you off.”
“Sheer sentimentality! I like things to be brought into the open. Then I feel I know where I am. Let’s give Mrs Croc. the casting vote.”
Dame Beatrice, looking like a benign lizard, smiled with closed lips.
“I agree with Laura,” she said. “Mrs Trevelyan-Twigg must be told. You will find that she has had secret thoughts of her own. Her apparent woolliness of mind is deceptive. In her own way she is highly intelligent.”
“You think old Kitty has wondered whether Julian…?” said Laura, too much amazed to be able to finish the sentence.
“I do, indeed. As I say, Mrs Trevelyan-Twigg, under a natural coverage of simplicity and guilelessness, is an extremely shrewd woman. Of course she has wondered. You will find that, far from being distressed by your revelations (as our dear Robert fears will be the case), she will welcome an official enquiry. Some bad tidings can bring a sigh of relief because they lighten tension. I feel certain that the points you have listed, and which seem to tell against young Mr Perse, have already occurred to his aunt, so—cards on the table, as you rightly suggest, my dear Laura.”
“And stress that Dame B. is helping the police in their enquiries,” said Gavin, “although not in the sense in which those words are usually interpreted.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Dame Beatrice Puts In Her Oar
“Mr Carnegie then proceeded to open the door of the Building amid loud applause, after which the company passed to the Lecture Room by way of the grand teak staircase.”
« ^ »
Laura had not over-estimated Kitty’s courage, nor Dame Beatrice her secret anxieties.
“Of course I’ve wondered, Dog,” she said. “Mind you, I don’t believe for a single instant that Julian is mixed up in it, but ever since he insisted on staging that idiotic, unnecessary, stick-his-neck-out second pageant I’ve had some nasty moments. I haven’t said a word to a soul, of course—not even to Twigg—but that Edward III business cost me a lot of sleep. It was so potty of Julian to do a second pageant. I thought it was fairly potty when, in his cocky way, he put up for the Council, and I was quite staggered when he was voted in, but if he had anything to do with these murders he must be completely round the bend.”
“Wouldn’t his headmaster have noticed?”
“Well, he did carpet him when he found out that Julian had approached the girls’ school with a view to their taking part in the second pageant, and Julian was ass enough to talk back at him—something, I should have thought, judging from our own experiences at school when a row blew up, was the craziest thing in the world and simply pleading for a kick in the pants. So there you are! How will the police set to work?”