‘Presumably somebody who did not know of the imposture.’
‘Old Biancini!’
Dame Beatrice shook her head.
‘Do not forget that, although the prosecution does not need to show motive in a case of murder, it is, from the layman’s point of view, a matter of enormous importance. A motiveless, or apparently motiveless, murder, unless it is committed by a homicidal maniac, is a murder unrelished by the public, who, after all, are represented by the jury. “But why should you think he did it, if he had no reason to do it?” they are apt to enquire.’
‘One can see their point,’ said Laura. ‘Anyway, in this case, we do know that he disliked the girl.’
‘Not at all. It was the girl who disliked him. Besides, the strongest motive in the world (according to the available statistics) is the hope of financial gain. Now, Biancini had no such hope. Mrs Coles’ inheritance was already in her possession, and, unless she made a will, it would revert to her husband upon her death.’
‘Coles? But Coles wouldn’t hurt a fly! He’s the complete art student, absorbed in his painting and in his future, and all that sort of thing.’
‘Mr Coles has no particular reason to love his wife, you know, and he does need money very badly, I’m afraid. Besides, by that time, he must have known that he’d been cuckolded, and that is not a situation to appeal to most husbands. I think that, although his motive was the expectation of money, he salved his conscience by reminding himself of the other things. He had even found out Basil’s name.’
‘It sounds likely enough, when you put it that way. The only trouble is that I can’t connect it with the man himself. He just doesn’t seem the type for a cold-blooded killer. And another thing: how did he know about the coniine? I shouldn’t think it’s generally known that the spotted hemlock can be deadly. Again, how was it administered? He could hardly have gone to the college and poured it down the girl’s throat. Besides, if he had, he’d have known that the person he was poisoning wasn’t his wife. How do you work all that out?’
‘I don’t know how he knew about the coniine, but I suspect that Norah Coles had told him, probably just as an item of interest. There is lots of spotted hemlock about the Calladale grounds and she may have—indeed, I think she must have—told him of its properties. It would have seemed to him a sort of poetic justice to poison her with it, I dare say.’
‘I wonder how long it took him to distil the stuff?’
‘He may have experimented for months.’
‘When you said he would have shown more imagination if he hadn’t talked so much, were you thinking about the coniine?’
‘Chiefly, yes. He felt himself perfectly safe at our last interview and made the mistake all murderer’s make—he underestimated the opposition’s brains.’
chapter twenty
Painter’s Colic
‘ “What, do you think it is a fox?” “Yes,” replied Ernest, “I think it is a golden fox.”’
Ibid.
‘ “ …you must know that, according to naturalists, the jackal partakes the nature of a wolf, a fox, and a dog.”’
Ibid.
« ^
We find ourselves confronted by a tortuous mind,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Nevertheless, I think we have enough to convince ourselves of the truth. Whether, on the evidence we can offer, Coles will be arrested and charged, I cannot say, but I believe the inspector is prepared to take the risk. The strength of Coles’ position is that he took nobody into his confidence except, to some extent, the dead woman.’
‘What! How do you know?’
‘By inference, added to a remark made to me by Mrs Biancini when I visited her at her home. She said that nobody on earth would want to hurt Norah, a statement which gave me food for thought.’
‘Well, we both ought to have seen that it was in the college cellar the rats had got at Miss Palliser. An old house like that was bound to have cellars.’
‘The ghostly rider was such a very suspicious character, too,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘And then there did seem to be a smell of rats everywhere, both literally and metaphorically, did there not?’
‘I’m not going to rack my brains any longer. Has Piggy Basil another job yet?’
‘Miss McKay has another lecturer coming next term, so Carey has promised Mr Basil a position at Stanton St John. He regards him as a steady character now. Even if he is not, he seems to be a first-class pigman. Later, I imagine he will emigrate. He says he wants no more to do with Norah Coles, but at present he is not quite himself, so we shall see.’
‘Well, let’s have the order of events, with your interspersed comments, can we? I think I’ve grasped the general drift, but I prefer my explanations to be made in words of one syllable.’
‘Very well. Norah Palliser, as she was at the time, met and was attracted by Coles. He was handsome, poor, boorish and gifted—in all, just the sort of young man to appeal to a girl who had had to endure the approaches of stepfather Biancini, that crude, gross, amorous foreigner.’
‘Don’t forget that one of the students diagnosed her as a fast worker. She may have encouraged Biancini,’ said Laura.
‘Very likely she did at first, until she found that she could not control him. She tucked herself away at the agricultural college, having already planned (I deduce) to marry Coles. I think she must have told him that she was in possession of a useful sum, her inheritance under her father’s will. Coles did not want to marry Norah, but he did want to inherit her money. He could see no way of obtaining the latter without doing the former, but Fate played into his hands when Norah fell in love (violently, this time) with her instructor, Mr Basil. She confided this infatuation to her sister and begged her to take her place on the college rota so that she could stay with Basil in Northern Ireland. I imagine that she thought and expected that Coles would divorce her when she could let him know what she had done. Her sister, Carrie Palliser, in trouble all round, impecunious and out of work, and, in any case, thoroughly irresponsible (as her criminal record shows) was only too glad to agree, particularly as she probably saw a chance to blackmail her sister afterwards by threatening to disclose the plot to Miss McKay.’
‘Let sisterly love continue! But that wouldn’t work, would it? I thought Norah was so besotted by Piggy that she wouldn’t give a hoot what anybody thought or did about it. Of course, there was Piggy’s job to consider, I suppose.’
‘There is no way, at present, of showing that Carrie did think of blackmail. What we do know is that, true to her nature, she stole from the other students. You remember the thefts of money and valuables mentioned by Miss McKay?’
‘Carrie seems to have been a charming soul! Perhaps the rest of us are none the worse for her demise. You still haven’t covered the actual murder, though.’
‘Here we are on more speculative ground. It is a pity that the letter sent by Coles to his wife, but received and read by her deputy at the college, has been destroyed.’
‘What letter?’
‘A letter which must have been written and received if anything else is to make sense, child. The letter was mentioned, anyway, by Miss Elspeth Bellman when we first knew of Miss Palliser’s disappearance from college.’
‘Oh, yes, of course. Well?’
‘I believe the letter was sent with some photographic negatives. It would have run something after this fashion: I took these pictures in Paris and cannot let anybody in a chemist’s develop and print them. You will realise why not when you see them. Be a good sport and do them for me in your college cellar. Didn’t you say you were allowed to use it as a dark room? You’ll get lots of laughs. Don’t show them to anybody with no sense of humour, though. You know what I mean. To help you pass the time, there’s something for you to drink if you care to collect it from the station. Home-made but potent. Don’t worry about the taste. Just wait for the effects. In with it is the hypo. Both bottles plainly marked, so don’t go mixing them up.’