‘If “proceedings” means what I think it means,’ said Laura, ‘I don’t think there are any. The police more or less admitted they were baffled. Though I say it myself, they could do with the help of the Yard. I wish they’d call them in, and be quick about it, unless you’ve got something up your sleeve.’
‘Nobody would need to employ the conjuring feat you mention if the police could find Norah Coles,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘We ourselves have not the resources for such a search, and although I have given thought to the matter, no idea of where she may be has come into my mind, except that she must have gone back to England.’
‘Has the Biancini house a cellar?’
‘No, it has not. I visited it, as you know, and it has none. Neither can I think of any other cellar where the body of Miss Palliser might have been hidden, except, of course — ”
‘The college has cellars. The main building, you know,’ said Laura. Dame Beatrice gazed so fixedly at her that she added, ‘Didn’t you know?’ Without waiting for an answer, she added, ‘Then it’s “boot, saddle, to horse and away,” I suppose, leaving no avenue unexplored.’
‘Will you tell George that we shall need the car in half an hour from now?’
‘I will do that one little thing. Good gracious me! And here have we been eating, sleeping and continually thinking in terms of cellars, with one, so to speak, right under our noses.’
‘It is always the obvious which is overlooked, child, as Edgar Allan Poe pointed out.’
But Laura knew better than to suppose that Dame Beatrice had overlooked the fact that the Georgian house, with its butler’s pantry, possessed, for example, at least a wine-cellar.
chapter sixteen
A Confusion of Students
‘These were our recreations; other labours abridged the hours, which sometimes seemed very long.’
Ibid.
« ^ »
Dame Beatrice gave considerable thought to the problem of balancing the gain to the enquiry against the possible harm to the college of her next step, and decided that the step must be taken.
She paid another visit to the college to put her proposals before Miss McKay. The Principal, deeply shocked and horrified by Dame Beatrice’s revelations and inferences, nevertheless agreed without reluctance to all the suggestions made to her and promised to make the necessary arrangements.
These involved a visit to the college cellars, an interview with the men in charge of the boiler-room and a visit to the hostel in which Mrs Coles had been resident. The chief caretaker, a man of melancholy aspect, accompanied her to the cellars. These were deep and vast and were reached by a door next to what had once been the butler’s pantry when the house had been privately owned. The cellars followed the plan of the ground-floor rooms, but only one, that at the foot of the steps they descended, was in use and was electrically lighted. The floor had been concreted and the room was shut off from the rest of the subterranean chambers by a steel door.
‘It’s the rats,’ said the caretaker, who had no inkling of the purpose of the visit. ‘Miss McKay puts her trunk down here, as you can see, and so do some of the lecturers what lives in the college itself. ’Ostels makes their own arrangements for the dishposal of students’ ’eavy baggage.’
‘I see. Is that steel door kept locked?’
‘Why, no. Rats can’t push open a door what’s closed.’
‘Don’t the rats become ravenously hungry? There’s nothing to eat, is there, in the cellars beyond this one?’
The caretaker wagged his head.
‘My perdecer,’ he said, ‘ ’e ’ad the idea to keep all the artificial fancy manures down ’ere. My oath! Them rats must of ’ad a good time! Hop manure, now! If they eat one sack, they must of eat ’undreds! It got ’em in, you see, and now we can’t get ’em out. So we ’as this steel door put in, what they can’t gnaw their way through, and we puts down concrete and reinforces the walls, and leaves ’em in outer darkness. Bless you, they uses the cellars now as an ’ome and gets their provender from the veg. the young ladies grows ’ere. Rats! Don’t talk to me about rats! If you wants my opinion, the Pied Piper of ’Am’lin didn’t ’ave nothink on us when it comes to rats.’
‘I take it you do not come from these parts, Mr Potts?’
‘I comes from ’Appy ’Ampstead on the ’Eath, and that’s where I’m goin’ to be buried.’
‘Do we risk the rats and see what is on the other side of that door?’
‘Preferably not. I don’t want rats in ’ere. Although, that’s a funny thing. I comes down one time and finds rat-dirts all over the place. Couldn’t account for it nowhow. Carn’t see ’ow they could get through the steel door.’
‘It must have been opened.’
‘But who’d open it? I thought of that meself. But who’d bother to come down ’ere? Not the young ladies, I promise you.’
‘All the same, you say that the door is not locked. We shall now return to the ground floor. It would tax your memory too heavily, I imagine, if I asked you to tell me when you saw the rat-dirts in here?’
‘That it wouldn’t. It was midway through third week of this term.’
Dame Beatrice knew better than to question the memories of the semi-literate. She accepted their evidence at its face value. She and the caretaker returned to the ground floor and when they were half-way back to Miss McKay’s sitting-room she asked where the boiler-room was. The caretaker looked somewhat disgusted, and told her that they would need to go into the new wing to find that. She replied immediately that she was not interested if that was the case, and returned to Miss McKay, who had promised to accompany her to Miss Paterson’s hostel.
The head of the hostel, as it happened, was neither lecturing nor demonstrating, and they were shown into her sitting-room where she sat correcting a pile of written work and, at the same time, nursing a large pet rabbit.
‘Dame Beatrice wants to talk to you, Miss Paterson,’ said Miss McKay, ‘about the Palliser girl. Some extremely disturbing circumstances have come to light. After you have heard what she has to disclose, she may need to question some of your students.’
Miss Paterson rang the bell, handed the rabbit to the maid, drew up two armchairs for her guests, and put more coal on the fire.
‘I’m not staying,’ said Miss McKay. ‘Ring me if you need to.’ Upon this, she departed.
‘The murderer has been located, then?’ asked Miss Paterson, taking the armchair she had drawn up for the Principal. ‘Jolly good thing, too.’
‘He or she has not been located, so far as my information goes. What we seem to have located is the cellar in which the body was hidden before it was conveyed to the old coach at the inn near Highpepper Hall,’ replied Dame Beatrice.
‘Really? Not—Oh, good gracious me! Not the college cellar?’
‘It seems more than likely. At any rate, as soon as I have finished here, I am going to telephone the police to that effect. They can brave the rats in the inner cellar to find clues. Now, you had a better opportunity of studying Mrs Coles than any other lecturer or tutor here. In your opinion, what kind of person was she?’
‘Extremely reserved and not very sociable. She appeared to have no very close friends, but then, of course, if she had secretly married and wanted to keep it dark, she was wiser not to make close friendships here.’
‘She had confided in one of the students, though—a girl with whom she’d been at school, I believe.’
‘Oh, yes, Miss Bellman. They came up together and asked to be housed in the same hostel.’
‘I shall have to talk to Miss Bellman again. Then there is Miss Good.’