‘Of course, I was only twenty-three when Norah was born,’ she stated, ‘and I had Carrie at sixteen, although he did marry me later. I don’t deserve this trouble should come upon me.’
‘No, of course not,’ said Miss McKay, in a sympathetic voice. ‘Nobody deserves this sort of trouble. Is there any light you can possibly throw on the matter?’
‘You’re only thinking of the college,’ said the woman, beginning to sniff. ‘But it’s worse for us than it is for you. People are beginning to say my daughter must have been a bad girl.’
‘Was she?’ Dame Beatrice gently enquired. The question was put in such a beautifully-modulated voice that the mother could scarcely take offence at its essential baldness.
‘I don’t know. That’s the trouble. I just don’t know. We’ve talked it over…’ she glanced at her husband… ‘Mr Biancini and I…’
‘So he is an Italian,’ thought Dame Beatrice. ‘I wonder what light that might shed?’
‘Yes?’ said Miss McKay.
‘But we can’t come to any conclusion. We were relying on you to give us… well, a lead.’
‘If I had had any reason to suppose that your daughter was an undesirable member of this place, she would have been sent down long ago.’ Miss McKay’s voice was extremely firm.
Mrs Biancini burst into tears. Her husband rose from the hard-seated chair he was occupying, went over to her, seated himself on the broad and comfortable arm of hers, and put an arm around her shoulders.
‘O.K. Take it easy, Dee-an,’ he said. ‘So Norah was à la whatever it takes, with you?’ he enquired of the Principal. Miss McKay replied curtly:
‘I have already said so.’
‘You called in the police at once?’
‘Yes. We called the doctor, too, of course, in case there was anything to be done. Unfortunately, there was not.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Biancini, mollified, ‘I’m sure you did everything you could. Shall I—I suppose I’ll be allowed to see her before they nail her down?’
‘Of course. In fact, I’m afraid that you will be called upon at the inquest for proof of identity. Haven’t the police told you that? You must be prepared. It is not a pleasant task, and I’m sorry you have to be called upon to face it.’
‘I’ve been so upset I haven’t taken much notice of the police. They’ve come bothering round, of course, but there was nothing we could tell them about Norah that they didn’t know already.’
‘Did you tell them she was married?’ The question was put by Dame Beatrice in the deceptively dulcet tones she had used before.
‘Married?’ Mr Biancini almost fell off the arm of his wife’s chair. ‘You’re not serious?’
‘Perfectly serious. You did not know, then?’
‘Certainly not! Since when?’
‘Since the beginning, or near to it, of the summer,’ said Miss McKay. ‘More probably during her first Easter holiday from college, or at the end of the Easter term.’
‘Did you know, Dee-an?’ Mr Biancini still appeared to be dumbfounded.
‘Of course not.’ Mrs Biancini was entirely mistress of herself again. ‘How could I? She never used to tell me a thing. Neither of them tells me a thing.’
‘In other words, she did not care for the idea of your second marriage,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Children are odd, in that respect. They never seem to think that their mothers have a point of view, too. My own son, Ferdinand Lestrange, although a broadminded man and one of some vision, never quite accustomed himself to my second marriage and its aftermath of a half-brother. Children, especially sons, are curiously self-centred, one finds.’
This speech had the effect that Dame Beatrice had anticipated.
‘Sons!’ snorted Mrs Biancini. ‘I don’t know about sons! Daughters are quite enough for me! Norah’s father died when she was ten. I brought her up, working my fingers to the bone, until she was seventeen. Then I met Tony.’
Mr Biancini smirked.
‘It was at a dance,’ he explained. ‘I was bored, frustrated —no, I’ll be honest—just plain bored. Then Dee-an turned up, an older, more sophisticated woman. I fell for her and married her.’
He and his wife exchanged glances of mingled congratulation and caution. Then Mrs Biancini smiled.
‘Just like that,’ she said. ‘Norah, of course, didn’t like it. She adored her mum.’
‘But not sufficiently so to prefer your happiness and sense of security to her own,’ suggested Dame Beatrice.
‘Oh, well, that’s all over now, poor girl,’ said the stepfather. ‘Let’s hope none of it was her own fault.’
‘It couldn’t be suicide,’ said Mrs Biancini quickly. ‘I’ve told you I don’t know whether Norah was a good girl, but she wouldn’t do a thing like that to us.’
‘Do you wish the murderer to be found?’ asked Dame Beatrice. ‘I agree with you that it was not suicide.’
‘Yes, that I do—and punished!’
‘Then tell me all you know.’
The woman glanced at her husband.
‘Perhaps, Mr Biancini…?’ suggested Miss McKay, beginning to rise. Mr Biancini got up.
‘O.K.! O.K.!’ he said, and followed her out. Dame Beatrice and the mother were left alone.
‘Was it that artist boy?’ asked Mrs Biancini. ‘She was always bringing him to the house for free meals. I got quite sick of it.’
‘A Mr Coles?’
‘That’s the one. What’s he got to say for himself?’
‘But little; he is armed and well prepared.’
‘Oh? Prepared for what?’
‘I was quoting from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. You are familiar with the passage?’
‘I dare say we did it at school. Just let me get at that young beauty! He’ll need a suit of armour to protect himself, I can tell you! Leading my girl astray! How dare he think of marrying her? I never heard of such a thing!’
‘There are worse things than a legal union, surely?’
The woman’s face darkened.
‘I know I made a mistake myself,’ she said, ‘but that’s as may be. I looked forward to a bit of Norah’s company and… I won’t deny it… a bit of her money when she’d finished her college course. I mean, when you’ve kept a girl until she’s in her twenties, you can’t be blamed for wanting some return.’
Dame Beatrice wagged her head. ‘And when she was at home, what kind of person was she? Did she seem discontented, for example?’ she enquired.
‘Not as long as she got her own way. It was me marrying again that unsettled her. You’re right about that. I did wait until after she’d sat for her General Certificate, too, before I told her what I was going to do. Of course, she wasn’t with me very much, in a sense, between sixteen and seventeen. She had her school-friends and Saturday morning games—she was in all the school teams—a proper open-air type—and then, of course, I saw nothing of her, evenings, because I’d have the radio on in the dining-room and she’d be doing her homework on the kitchen table.’
‘What about holidays?’
‘I couldn’t afford them,’ said Mrs Biancini. ‘She had her bike, and that was all I could manage. She only had that because it saved the fares going to school.’
‘But you wouldn’t call her an unhappy girl?’
‘She seemed happy enough to me, but what I say is that children confide in anybody rather than their mothers, once they’re turned fourteen.’
‘Was she a quiet girl?’
‘Very quiet. I used to wonder, sometimes, if still waters ran deep. And now I know they must have done. Whatever could have made her rush into marrying that boy? He hasn’t got a penny to his name! What did she want to do it for? He didn’t get her into trouble, I hope?’
‘He says not.’