“By putting Mrs Croc, on the job, official-like.”
“So we’ll get at the truth, thank goodness! When does she begin?”
“Well, we’ve moved into the Kensington house for the winter, so I imagine she’ll begin at once.”
“One thing—Julian isn’t a liar,” said Kitty, on a reflective note, “and he’s the sort of boy who, once you’ve fastened on to him, you’ve got him in a cleft stick, if you see what I mean. He’s quite brainy at academic things, and I believe he’s quite a good teacher, but he isn’t what I call practical.”
“How well does he know Giles Faudrey?”
“Not very well. There was some funny business about a girl, so what he knows he doesn’t like.”
“How right he is! Well, be seeing you! Hold the head high. Mrs Croc., in chasing Julian, will really, I think, be putting her finger into many another pie.”
They parted, and Laura returned to her employer.
“Old Kitty is in good heart,” she reported. “It had already occurred to her that the nephew’s conduct has been a trifle remarkable. She doesn’t think he’s a murderer, of course, but she’s worried enough to want to get at the truth. Where do we start?”
They started by inviting Julian Perse to spend the weekend with them in the Kensington house. Having spent Saturday morning in refereeing a school football match, he turned up at lunch, a personable, carelessly dressed young man who ate with a good appetite, asked permission to smoke a pipe when Laura produced cigarettes, and then cast a wary although quizzical look upon his hostess.
“And now, Dame Beatrice, what about the Third Degree?” he said. At these words Laura mentally exonerated him. Dame Beatrice merely cackled. “No, I’m perfectly serious,” he said. “My excellent aunt tipped me off. “Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, for matters must not be left where they are,” says she, staggering me by managing two word-perfect quotes in a single sentence. So now, fortified by your quite marvellous lunch, not to mention a claret which my totally uneducated palate probably did not sufficiently appreciate, I am at your service and am Ready to Tell All.”
“I can see why you got yourself elected on to the Council,” said Laura.
“Watch my progress, which will be upward and onward. As soon as they put up teachers’ salaries to the level which our talents should (but do not, alas!) command, I shall be Mayor.”
“How well did you know Mr Luton?” asked Dame Beatrice.
“Quite well, really, I suppose. I used to be a member of the drama club before I got on to the Council. That cut into my evenings, so I felt I had to resign. Rather sorry, in a way. Acting boosts one’s ego.”
“What did you make of his character?”
“He was one of these insufferably well-intentioned little men. You know that he used to run a Sunday School, of course, but that wasn’t the limit of his disinterested good works. He was a peacemaker, and I maintain that peacemaking causes a person to be so much disliked that none but those with the hide of a rhinoceros should attempt it.”
“Had Mr Luton such a hide?”
“I think he must have had—yes. There was such enormous scope for peacemaking in the drama club that anyone not possessing the said hide must have given up the unequal struggle, and Luton never did. I think somebody got sick of his public-spiritedness and bumped him off, you know.”
“Was peacemaking his only social error?”
“No, no. He was for ever putting in “a word in season”, if you know what I mean. “I don’t want to interfere in any way, and I expect you think it’s no business of mine, dear old chap, but mightn’t it be better if—” all that kind of thing. Well meant, I don’t doubt, but damned irritating, all the same.”
“Gosh!” said Laura. “No wonder he got himself murdered. Did he ever try it out on you?”
“Oh, yes, more than once. The first time I bore with him in a mood of silent contempt. The second time I treated him to some four-letter words he probably hadn’t heard since his schooldays. After that, he gave me up as a bad job, I think, although he did tell me that he had not voted for me at the local election, and deplored the fact that such as I should be in a position to put the morals of the people of Brayne in jeopardy.”
“How did he come to obtain the part of Falstaff in the play, I wonder?” said Dame Beatrice.
“I don’t know. I should guess that nobody else wanted it, so Sir Highmindedness nobly took it on. I expect that to shove him in the washing-basket gave the rest of the cast much pleasure.”
“I wonder what made the Dramatic Society choose an excerpt from The Merry Wives of Windsor?”
“There were two reasons, as I see it. First of all, there was the question of the title. We of Brayne are, for the most part, suspicious of and allergic to Shakespeare. The Merry Wives and A Comedy of Errors are probably the only works by the Bard which you could bill in our borough if you wanted to sell more than the first two rows of seating in the Town Hall. We go by titles. Even A Midsummer Night’s Dream would be suspect. Secondly, a play had to be chosen in which the talent and beauty of Mesdames Gough and Collis should be seen to be equally bright. Except for Cecily and the other gal in The Importance of Being Earnest—and, even then, both, to my possibly untutored mind, are completely overshadowed by Lady Bracknell…”
“Yes, we’ve met Mrs Gough and Mrs Collis,” said Laura, interrupting the flow. “Did you go to the performance on the night when Luton was killed?”
“No, I did not. If I had gone, it would have been in support of Timms, who runs our school choir, but I opted out, and the short straw fell to Manley.”
“You didn’t go?—and you a Councillor?”
“I pleaded that it would make the cast nervous if they knew that a former shining light of the drama club was in front. I was thanked personally by the Mayor for my public spirit.”
“What did you do, then?”
“Alas, darling Laura, I went wenching, and spent the evening in a very dull pub with a dead-from-the-neck-up blonde in the environs of the Charing Cross Road. I almost wished I’d gone to witness the downfall of The Merry Wives!”
“Who was the girl?”
“How should I know? I picked her up in a bus. Her name was Heliotrope and her boy-friends, so she informed me, (and, incidentally, everybody else in the bus), called her Hell. All I can say is, if hell is as dud as she was, I shall buy myself a nimbus and opt for heaven.”
“So you can’t produce an alibi for the evening of the performance in the Town Hall?”
“Well, I shan’t attempt to track down Heliotrope, if that’s what you mean, and I don’t suppose the barmaid would remember me after all this time. If she did, I’m certain she wouldn’t remember which evening I was there.”
“It’s a great pity you weren’t with the Mayor and the rest of the Councillors that night,” said Laura, sternly.
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve enjoyed today’s lunch, which I certainly shouldn’t have been given if I hadn’t been under suspicion of being a murderer, should I? Add to that my never-failing delight in your society, darling Laura…”
“Take it as read. Now, then, we know that you were well acquainted with Spey and Gordon.”
Julian’s lighthearted manner dropped from him.
“Yes,” he said, soberly, removing his gaze from Laura’s face and fixing it unseeingly on a corner of the handsome, old-fashioned room, “I was well acquainted with Spey and Gordon, and if anything I can say or do will help to find their murderer, you can count me in.”