‘If I spill anything to my own disadvantage, he will be,’ said Coles, with a cocky grin. ‘Mud in your eye!’
‘Then there are Dame Beatrice’s nephew, Mr Carey Lestrange, his wife, his son and his daughter, and that’s the lot. Not so bad, eh?’
Coles stared into his glass, then swallowed the rest of his drink. He shook his head, but before he could speak there was the sound of voices outside, his hostess and her relatives came in with Gavin, introductions were made and acknowledged and shortly afterwards dinner was announced and the company sat down, in informal fashion, to dine.
Coles found himself between Carey’s wife and Laura Gavin and, once he had conquered a tendency to give nervous half-glances at Laura’s husband, that disarmingly quiet and handsome officer of the law who happened to be seated opposite him, he told the company various anecdotes and appeared to enjoy the meal.
When it was over, and coffee had been served, Carey drove his wife and children home. The other four, at Dame Beatrice’s suggestion, went into the smaller drawing-room to take chairs round the fire. When they were comfortably settled, Dame Beatrice opened the proceedings with a warning.
‘We are going to ask questions, Mr Coles. Remember that you are under no compulsion whatever to answer them. Detective Chief-Inspector Gavin is here quite unofficially and only so that we may all benefit from his experience.’
‘Yes, quite,’ said Coles. He cleared his throat. ‘You won’t mind my saying that I feel about as happy as a rat in a trap, will you?’
‘Can’t expect you to believe it, but there’s no trap,’ said Gavin. ‘I expect you’ve been badgered quite a bit, though, haven’t you?’
‘My instinct when I spot a police uniform is to run away, screaming. I dream of policemen. Do they really believe I made away with Norah and hid the body in that old coach? Because I didn’t, you know.’
‘Well, they’ve no line to go on at present. I expect you’ll find they’ve been equally embarrassing to her stepfather and her mother. They’ve got to ferret, you know, until they can start something moving. It’s all routine for them. Try thinking of it that way.’
‘It comes hard on innocent parties, all this probing.’
‘I know it does. The only thing is, the innocent parties have nothing whatever to fear.’
‘Never?’
‘Well, hardly ever,’ Gavin was impelled to reply. ‘Look here, listen to the questions, and answer them, but only if it suits you, as Dame Beatrice suggests. All right?’
‘Not by a long chalk. Very well. Carry on. I suppose it may help, in the long run.’
‘That’s the spirit. Fire away, Dame B.’
‘I visited a holiday camp the other day,’ Dame Beatrice began. ‘It was the big one at Bracklesea, the one I believed I mentioned to you when we met at your lodgings.’
‘Oh?’ Coles glanced at Laura. ‘And you made some enquiries and decided that Norah and I had stayed there together last summer. Well, as I told you and Mrs Gavin, I have never stayed at one of those places in my life.’
‘I know you said so. Do you agree that your wife’s maiden name was Palliser?’
‘I do. But she isn’t the only Palliser in the phone book, and she’s got a sister, don’t forget.’
‘If I told you the dates concerned, would you be prepared to tell me where you were and what you were doing that week?’
‘I won’t commit myself to that, but you may as well tell me the dates.’
‘Saturday, August eighteenth to Saturday, August twenty-fifth.’
Coles’ face cleared.
‘I was in Paris. The art school has a scheme. You go cheap. Horrible pensions and lousy grub, but at least it’s Paris. I can get you twenty witnesses.’
‘Where was your wife?’
‘Staying with that aunt in Harrafield, the aunt who keeps that glorified pub—she calls it an hotel—the Hour-Glass.’
‘That corresponds with our information.’
‘What does that mean? Have you contacted the aunt?’
‘Yes, we have. Her information, as far as it goes, is interesting. Look here, Mr Coles, you will have to face the fact that it is to the last degree unlikely that your wife spent that particular week with her aunt.’
Coles looked bewildered, but as an actor might do.
‘Not?’
‘I am afraid not. The aunt seems to have thought that you and your wife went to this holiday camp. The aunt believed she was covering up for you by pretending to Mrs Biancini that Mrs Coles was still staying at the Hour-Glass. According to you, you did not go to any such place as the camp, but were in Paris. My investigation indicates that it is more than likely that your wife went for a week to this place at Bracklesea while you were in Paris. What do you say to all that?’
Coles looked troubled but not angry.
‘I don’t say anything. It may be so. By that I mean she may have gone away with somebody else. She might even have mentioned it, for all I know. She’d be certain I wouldn’t mind. I don’t believe in being a dog in a manger. I wonder whether she did tell me? I couldn’t possibly say, after all these weeks.’
‘The two people who booked at the camp in the name of Palliser were a man and a woman,’ said Dame Beatrice. Coles nodded.
‘That’s what I meant when I said I wouldn’t have minded. We’d agreed to live and let live and not get jealous or anything idiotic like that. I mean, one must be civilised.’
‘It’s so terribly civilised to murder somebody,’ said Laura. Coles jumped to his feet, but Gavin laughed. Dame Beatrice put another question:
‘Are we really to understand that your marriage was one of convenience rather than of love?’
Coles sat down, deflated and perplexed.
‘It’s what I told you. She talked, or, rather, nagged me into it, but I didn’t murder her,’ he said. As a ripost to Laura’s inexcusable observation it was more than inadequate. Dame Beatrice glanced at him sharply, caught Gavin’s eye and grimaced.
‘All right, Mr Coles,’ said Gavin. ‘We’re quite prepared to accept that— at this stage. How far do you trust the aunt’s word?’
‘Which aunt? Oh, you mean Norah’s aunt! Well, she was jolly good to us. Rather a romantic sort of woman, one might say.’
‘Romantic?’ It was Dame Beatrice who repeated the word. Coles, who had been crossing one knee over the other, now straightened his legs and stretched both feet towards the fire.
‘She—well, all her geese were swans, I expect,’ he said. ‘She really thought we were in love, I suppose. We weren’t, of course. I had no idea of marrying Norah when I did. It just became one of those things.’
‘So you don’t exactly grieve for her?’ asked Gavin.
‘No.’ The embryo artist frowned. ‘If I had to tell the truth,’ he said, ‘I’d say I was jolly well out of it. Her death, you know. I’m free again. It’s all I want now. In most ways the whole thing was a ghastly mistake. In some ways your news that she went off with somebody else for a week doesn’t really surprise me. She’d done it before.’
There was a long silence, then Gavin said:
‘So that’s that.’
‘And that’s the fellow who murdered her, I’ll bet.’
Laura caught her husband’s eye, nodded, rose to her feet and said her goodnights. Coles looked agonised.
‘Don’t go,’ he said. ‘Don’t leave me! I don’t know what I might be talked into saying!’
‘You won’t be talked into anything,’ said Gavin. ‘What’s the name of this fellow?’
But Coles shook his head.
‘I never asked and I haven’t a clue,’ he declared.
‘You will say no more,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Personally, I think we might all go to bed.’
But her guest, it seemed, was not prepared for this.
‘I do wish you’d listen,’ he said. ‘I didn’t love Norah. You might as well know it first as last. I have no money. I thought she’d come in for something substantial from her father, and, heaven knows, I can do with every penny I can get. You see, I’ve got talent. Not a lot, of course, but, with a bit of money behind me—have you any conception of what it costs to hire even a small art gallery for a one-man show?—I could make good. I saw my chance, as I thought. But then I weakened. Norah wasn’t really what I wanted. Then I thought it all over again and decided that it might work. I was prepared to be perfectly fair as long as all she wanted was an uncritical husband. But, naturally, she wanted a good deal more than that. She wanted complete devotion, and that shot wasn’t on the board. You can’t mortgage your soul.’