Dame Beatrice, who had visualised something of this situation and who, privately, congratulated the young on their enterprise, thanked the student warmly. The case was taking shape at last. She returned to Miss McKay to take her leave and indicated that the police would require to have access to the cellars, probably on the following day.
chapter seventeen
The Gentlemen Raise Their Voices
‘Fritz, who was never taken by surprise by events of this kind, had time to fire before the birds were out of reach.’
Ibid.
« ^ »
There was one last port of call and Dame Beatrice, having telephoned the local police, made it before she returned to the village of Wandles Parva. She went to Highpepper Hall.
‘I want,’ she said to Mr Sellaclough, whom she found sipping his mid-morning glass of Madeira, ‘if I may, to interview those of your students who were responsible for introducing dead rats and rhubarb into the Calladale soil. Let me hasten to add that this is no punitive expedition. It is from the highest motives that I desire to possess this information.’
‘Take a glass of Madeira with me, and tell me more, Dame Beatrice. I have no doubt that the students responsible will give you every assistance in their power if the matter is one of importance.’
Dame Beatrice accepted the glass of Madeira and recounted as much of the story as was necessary for the object she had in view.
‘So, you see,’ she concluded, ‘it would help a good deal if I could establish, once and for all, that the Calladale horseman was not one of your students dressed up to alarm the young women. If it was not, then there is only one thing for me to think, and I have thought it already.’ She told the Principal what she thought had happened.
‘Good heavens!’ said Mr Sellaclough. ‘But what a bizarre notion! Why not a car?’
‘I have no doubt that a car was waiting, if what I suspect is true. The reasons for choosing to leave Calladale on horseback may have been to avoid making the noise a car would be bound to make and also because the ghostly hood and voluminous attire made an effective disguise. It would be too much to expect that you know of a heavy grey horse in the neighbourhood of Calladale? It had not occurred to me until very recently that the horse must be traced, but my latest researches have revealed that it is essential to find it.’
‘I’ll put it to the college at lunch about the rats and rhubarb, unless you’d care to address the gathering yourself. It might be quite a good idea if you did. I don’t suppose young men in the mass hold any terrors for you, do they?’
So the midday meal at Highpepper was enlivened by the presence at the staff table of a small, black-haired, very sharp-eyed old lady who was introduced by Mr Sellaclough as ‘that very distinguished psychiatrist and investigator of crime, Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley,’ and who rose to the sound of slightly ironical cheering.
‘I will not detain you for more than a moment, gentlemen,’ she said. ‘I am here to invite two of those who interred the rats and the rhubarb to dine with me in the private room of the hotel which I am led to believe you are accustomed to patronise in Garchester. Perhaps I might be permitted to have a word with my guests at the conclusion of the meal.’
‘In my study,’ said Mr Sellaclough. ‘And I am asked by Dame Beatrice to say that nothing in the nature of disciplinary action is contemplated. The matter under review is an exceptionally serious one, but has nothing to do (so far as we know) with the college.’
He took his guest straight to his sanctum and in a few minutes there came a tap at the door. Mr Sellaclough pressed his buzzer and Soames and Preddle came in.
‘I’ll leave you,’ he said. ‘Sit down, Mr Soames and Mr Preddle. Gentlemen, you may smoke.’
‘I know that your time is very fully occupied,’ said Dame Beatrice to the students, as soon as the door had closed behind their Principal, ‘so I will come straight to the point. Where did the rats come from?’
The two young men looked at one another. Then Soames replied that they had come from ‘an old rat-catcher chap named Benson.’ He added that he hoped the girls at Calladale had not been annoyed.
‘Where can I get hold of Benson?’
Preddle told her that, far from his time being fully occupied, he had little or nothing to do that afternoon and would escort her to Benson’s cottage if she would give him time to change. Beautifully dressed and carrying an impeccable hat, he returned in short order. Dame Beatrice found Mr Sellaclough, with Preddle’s help, thanked him for his co-operation and his hospitality and was introduced to Soames’ new car, a dashing sports affair in silver and bright blue.
Old Benson’s cottage proved to be about a mile from the front gates of Highpepper and to be picturesquely situated in front of a small wood. The old man was chopping some kindling, but looked up when the car braked opposite his garden gate.
‘Good-day, sir,’ he said to Preddle. ‘Job for the college again?’
‘No, not this time, Benson. Dame Beatrice wants a word with you.’
‘It’s the drains,’ said Benson. ‘If there wasn’t drains, there wouldn’t be varmint. You wants your drains clearin’ out.’
‘She doesn’t want you to go ratting for her, you old chump! I said she wants a word with you.’
‘Not about rats?’
‘Yes, about rats, but not my own personal rats,’ Dame Beatrice explained. ‘What I want to know, Mr Benson, is where the rats came from that you sold to Mr Soames and Mr Preddle at the beginning of this term.’
‘It was a bit before the beginning of term, actually,’ said Preddle. ‘You remember, Benson? You got us a splendid collection. We told you we were experimenting with them as manure.’
Benson received this reminder with wheezy mirth.
‘Tell you anything, the young,gentlemen will,’ he confided to Dame Beatrice. ‘Course, I never believed it. Up to one of their larks, I reckoned. Why, I could tell you…’
‘Yes, another time, you old liar,’ said Preddle. ‘Dame Beatrice hasn’t got all the afternoon to waste listening to your tall stories. Fire away, Dame Beatrice, or he’ll talk you into a coma.’
Dame Beatrice accepted this advice.
‘All I want to know,’ she said, ‘is where those rats came from.’
‘Where they come from? Why, all over the place. The farms round ’ere is fair drippin’ wi’ rats. Drop from the thatch, they do.’
‘Do you know Calladale, the agricultural college for women, twenty-five miles from here?’
‘Ah, that I do. Why, I remember, one time, they ’ad to fetch me in to put down their varmint. Somebody ’adn’t ’ad no more sense than to store ’op-manure in the cellars. They was knee-deep—ah, waist-deep—in rats. My word! I never seed so many o’ the varmint in my life, and when Mr Soames and Mr Preddle came along orderin’ me to find ’em an ’underd rats, I says to ’em, I says, “Why don’t you gennelmen go to Calladale College?” I says. You’ll mind me makin’ the remark, Mr Preddle, sir? “Why don’t you go over to Calladale College?” I says. “That’s where they grows rats on their gooseberry bushes.” Them was my words, wasn’t they, Mr Preddle, sir?’
‘Just about.’
Old Benson chuckled and threw a bit of stick at a cat which was creeping up on a robin.
‘And do you know what?’ he said, an expression of great cunning spreading itself over his wizened and grimy countenance, ‘That’s just where the bulk o’ they rats o’ yourn came from, Mr Preddle, sir. Never knoo that afore, did’ee?’
‘Good Lord!’ exclaimed Preddle. ‘Talk about carrying coals to Newcastle!’
‘But this is fantastic!’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Tell me, Mr Benson, did you find any difficulty in getting into the Calladale cellars?’