Death of a Delft Blue

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Pursuit of a Delft Blue

‘I winna spare for his tender age,

Nor yet for his hie hie kin;

But soon as e’er he born is,

He sall mount the gallows pin.’

Old Ballad

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Florian was perfectly willing to talk to Dame Beatrice.

(‘Thinks he got the better of my cautions but not foolish husband,’ said Laura later).

Florian, his wolfish smile even more pronounced than before, received Dame Beatrice graciously.

‘Oh, hullo again,’ he said. ‘Very nice of you to come.’

‘I am not so sure about that,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘What made you say that Bernardo Rose sent you the poisoned chocolate-cream?’

Florian’s smile faded. He stared at her.

‘Why, who else could have sent it?’ he demanded. ‘It must have been Bernie. He’s the only person who dislikes me.’

Dame Beatrice did not dispute this. She asked:

‘What made you guess it was poisoned?’

‘Guess it was poisoned? But I didn’t! Of course I didn’t!’

‘Why did you present it to the barmaid?’

‘An act of kindness and goodwill, that’s all.’

‘It must have been, since you yourself are said to be fond of all kinds of sweetmeats.’

‘I’m fond of girls, too. I thought Effie would like the stuff, and that’s the reason I gave it to her.’

‘Yet you suspected that it contained poison.’

‘No, no! You’ve got it all wrong. I didn’t suspect it contained poison. I would never have thought of such a thing. But when the girls died and the chocolate-cream was suspected, I guessed Bernie had sent it.’

‘Why should he want to kill you?’

‘I don’t know, except — well, there might be two reasons, I suppose. He knows I’m opposed to the marriage and then — well, there is the question of the van Zestien money. Being a Jew, he’s very fond of money.’

‘’Aren’t we all? — and Mr Rose is half Jewish and half Dutch, I believe. Incidentally, since you say you suspect him, have you any theory as to where he procured the poison?’

Florian stared at her again, then shook his head.

‘No idea,’ he said decisively. ‘I dare say he’s in with all sorts of shady people, both here and abroad, who could get him anything he wanted, and no questions asked. All those trips to the Continent are not only in connection with the diamond business, I’ll bet. I wouldn’t put it past him to smuggle dope.’

‘That is a very serious charge!’

‘Oh, it’s not a charge. I couldn’t care less about what he gets up to on those trips of his. But I don’t want Binnie mixing herself up with him. I can’t stand the fellow! I think he’s a cad and a rotter, and if I can do anything to spike his guns I’m going to do it.’

‘Dear me! You certainly do dislike him. The more serious charge, of course, which you have brought against him is that he poisoned the chocolate-cream.’

‘I wish I could have him arrested! Those poor girls!’

‘Yes, those poor girls,’ Dame Beatrice sadly agreed.

‘The police ought to arrest him!’ said Florian, on a note almost of hysteria. ‘I should have thought they’d got enough to go on.’

‘Not nearly enough, I’m afraid. The police have to be very careful in these cases of suspected attempts to murder. You, for instance, may possibly think yourself fortunate, (as the chocolate-cream seems to have been your gift to Effie), not to be charged yourself, you know.’

‘Me? Charged with murder? Oh, but I couldn’t be! I had nothing whatever against the girl!’ He looked extremely alarmed, Dame Beatrice noted.

‘Motive does not need to be proved,’ she said coolly. ‘You could be shown to have had both the means and the opportunity, and those are the deciding factors when it comes to a trial for murder.’

‘Yes, but I’d nothing against the girl!’ Florian repeated. ‘That would weigh with a jury, wouldn’t it?’

‘Oh, I expect it would,’ Dame Beatrice off-handedly replied. But she had frightened him badly. That was evident. On the other hand, she had warned him, too. That also had been her intention.

‘Oh, well, fair’s fair,’ commented Laura, when Dame Beatrice described the interview. ‘So you think that darling Florian wasn’t just “trying it on the dog”, so to speak. You think he really intended to kill that girl. That means three things, as I see it. He knew the stuff was poisonous; he knew perfectly well where it came from; he did his best to incriminate Bernardo. Where do we go from here?’

‘We go to Derbyshire, preferably with Robert’s permission and in his company, and institute further enquiries.’

‘It would have been a big help if the barmaid had been found to be pregnant, wouldn’t it?’

‘Barmaids are, in one respect, like Caesar’s wife, child. No, we must look elsewhere for a motive, for motives, although not necessary from a legal point of view, are most acceptable as a guide to the enquiring minds of the police and other interested parties.’

‘In other words — ourselves. I’ll get Gavin on the telephone, shall I?’

She did this, and gave him a guarded account of Dame Beatrice’s suspicions and surmises.

‘We’ve been thinking along the same lines ourselves,’ said her husband, ‘but it’s going to be very difficult to prove it. Meet you tomorrow in Buxton. Dinner at the Spa Flora at seven.’

‘Well, now,’ he said to Dame Beatrice, when he had met them in the hotel cocktail bar and had ordered, ‘where do we get the evidence we want? I think we’ve explored all Laura’s famous avenues and I’m afraid we’ve got nowhere. We know the chocolate-cream came from young Colwyn-Welch, and, although we presume he either knew or guessed that it was poisoned, we can’t be certain about that.’

‘What we want is evidence that he wanted to do in the barmaid,’ said Laura. Her husband smiled at her.

‘You find it, lovey.’ he said.

‘All right, I will,’ said Laura recklessly. ‘And I bet you ten pounds,’ she added, in response to her husband’s intolerable grin, ‘that I do find it, too.’

In bed at the hotel that night, Gavin asked her whether she wanted to cancel the bet.

‘Because you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, you know,’ he added. ‘And, if you do cancel it, not a cheep or a jibe or a sly allusion out of me, I promise you, Laura. You see, we’ve had our suspicions all along that Florian ain’t the innocent lad he makes out to be, and, honestly, we’ve combed out every nook and corner. I don’t see what else remains to be done, I don’t, really.’

‘I won’t cancel the bet,’ said Laura sleepily. ‘Like darling Yvonne Arnaud, in Tons of Money, I’ve got an idea.’

‘Are you old enough to have seen Tons of Money? I shouldn’t have thought so.’

‘Mrs Croc. is. Move over a bit. I’m hanging half out of bed.’

‘Well,’ said Gavin at breakfast on the following morning, ‘what was the big idea you had last night?’

‘Big idea?’ said Laura, squinting down her nose. ‘What big idea?’

‘So you are up to mischief!’

‘Not that I know of. Oh, that! Well, I wondered whether it might not be as well to trot over to Amsterdam and bounce the truth out of Aunt Opal.’

‘Good heavens, wench! We can’t do that kind of thing! It might create an international situation!’ said Gavin, greatly amused. Laura buttered a piece of toast.

‘Marmalade, please,’ she said. ‘I can see that you couldn’t do it, but Mrs Croc. and I could. Anyway, I vote we try it.’

‘If you think you can bounce the truth out of Aunt Opal, you can say that again,’ said Gavin. ‘I don’t know her, but a maiden lady of Anglo-Dutch parentage is going to be a pretty hard nut to crack. No, my lassie, you leave that one alone. It wouldn’t work and might be dangerous.’

‘As how?’

‘Well, we conclude that the prussic acid came from there. They may have some more of it hidden up the chimney, you know.’ He helped himself to a soft roll and more butter and marmalade, and added, ‘Look, let’s see what we can do in this neighbourhood before we go on wild goose chases in Holland. You try that garage where Colwyn-Welch was employed, Laura. We got nothing there that was any good to us, but you might be luckier. Look over their used cars and re-treaded tyres, and pass the time of day in a genial and hearty manner. You might work wonders.’

Laura glowered at him, but, on the advice of Dame Beatrice, (expressed in private after breakfast), she allowed herself to be taken in Dame Beatrice’s car to the garage.

Laura had her own very definite way of going about things. No, the car did not need servicing, she said, unless they still engaged a young man named Colwyn-Welch. The proprietor responded that the young man in question had left, and was not all that much good, anyway. He understood cars, but was averse to doing much of the dirty work on them. And dirty work was eighty per cent of what was needed, the proprietor added. He eyed Laura suspiciously. He thought he had seen her before, he stated. Laura blithely agreed.

‘He’s wanted,’ she said dramatically.

‘Wanted? By the police?’

‘I’m a stool-pigeon, or whatever they call it,’ pronounced Laura. ‘In other words, my husband is a police officer of the C.I.D. and I’ve been sent here to make enquiries.’

‘In that case, madam,’ said the proprietor, ‘I have no information to offer you. You don’t seem bona fides, as they say.’

‘So there is something fishy,’ said Laura, pleasantly. ‘Oh, well, thank you for your help.’

‘Look, don’t get me wrong. What proof have I got that you’re what you say?’ the proprietor pleaded.

‘You have nothing but my word for what I say, and that isn’t proof. What’s your headache, exactly?’ asked Laura.

‘I don’t know,’ the proprietor admitted, scratching his ear. ‘What do you want me to tell you?’

Laura’s West Highland sixth sense suddenly functioned.

‘Did any letters come for him here?’

‘Letters? What, for Colwyn? — the Welch is a new one on me. Letters for Colwyn, you say?’

‘Yes. There might have been one from Holland.’

The proprietor scratched his ear again. Laura looked at it. An early-autumn chilblain, she surmised. There was certainly a draught in the garage. The ear looked very red and had a badly swollen lobe.

‘Holland? I couldn’t say. He did have one letter addressed here, so far as I remember. He didn’t take much note of it, so far as I’m aware.’

‘What’s the matter with your ear?’

‘That? Nothing. Itches a bit, that’s all.’

‘What does your doctor say about it?’

‘Haven’t got a doctor. Don’t believe in ’em.’

‘But you must be registered under the National Health Scheme.’

‘Oh, I’ve got a doctor, but I don’t trouble him.’

‘That’s a pity. He might be able to do something for that ear. I wonder whether I could put you on to somebody?’

‘Not on your life! I don’t hold with doctors. They can’t do nothing for you.’

‘I’m not so sure, but just as you like, of course.’

‘Doctors can’t do nothing for you,’ the man repeated obstinately. ‘He took a girl to look at Eldon Hole,’ he added, ‘and not up to no good, he wasn’t, if you ask me. He cleared out, and that’s all as I can tell you.’

Laura left the garage and rejoined George.

‘Off to Eldon Hole,’ she said briefly. ‘I want to have a look round.’

George, who had been in Dame Beatrice’s service for many years, responded gravely,

‘A very dangerous spot, I am informed, madam.’

‘Of course it isn’t dangerous,’ said Laura. ‘Anyway, I want to go and see it.’

George drove off, and pulled up as near the natural chasm as he could. Without a word, having locked the car, he followed Laura at a discreet distance. She went up to the fence which guarded the hole, and looked over, into the cleft. George moved a little nearer. He gave a discreet cough. Laura turned.

‘If I may say so, Mrs Gavin, madam,’ he said, ‘you would jeopardise my job if you decided to climb over.’

‘George,’ said Laura, ‘supposing, in summer, you wanted to dispose of a compromising sort of letter, wouldn’t you chuck it down there?’

‘Young fellows on holiday climb down such places for a dare, or just for the hell of it, madam. It would not be a very safe place to deposit anything really dangerous — not if you were known in the neighbourhood, that is. A far more likely thing would be to throw it on the fire.’

‘But this would have been at the end of the summer. There wouldn’t be any fires.’

‘Not in a farmhouse?’ suggested George.

‘Good heavens! They did visit a farmhouse! What’s more, I know which one. They had tea there, too. To the car, George! There may be red-hot news for Dame Beatrice when we get back.’

The farmer’s wife remembered her and asked after her husband. Gavin (as usual, thought Laura, who, secretly, was proud of this quality in him) had made an impression which did not easily vanish from people’s minds. She made a suitable and acceptable reply, and then posed the question she was longing to ask.

‘That young friend of ours,’ she said, ‘about whom we enquired last time, if you remember. He seems to have thrown away a rather important letter. I suppose it didn’t, by any chance, get dropped into your kitchen fire?’

‘It wouldn’t be a valuable stamp, would it? the woman asked, rather anxiously.’Because I’m afraid I give the stamp to my Ernie. He’s stuck it in his album.’

‘Well, it was the letter, more than the actual stamp,’ said Laura, ‘But if I saw the stamp, or knew where it came from, I’d know whether it was on the right envelope.’

‘It didn’t seem a business letter,’ said the woman. ‘The young gentleman pulled it out of his pocket with some money he offered me to pay for their tea and says “Drat it! My pockets seem full of rubbish,” he says. “Mustn’t shed litter,” he says, laughing — looked just like a wolf when he laughed. Something to do with his mother when she was carrying him, I suppose — hare lip and all that — but it quite spoilt his good looks. “Mustn’t shed litter,” he says, “not on this lovely countryside,” he says, “so what the hell can I do with it?”

‘ “Our Ernie wouldn’t half like the stamp on that there letter, sir,” I says. So he tosses me the envelope and his other rubbish and I says I’ll put the lot on the kitchen fire for him, so long as he don’t mind our Ernie having the stamp.

‘ “I’ll come along and see fair play,” he says. But the girl gives his arm a tug and tells him they must be off.

‘ “If I says I’ll put your litter on the fire, sir, on the fire it will go,” I says.’

‘And it did?’ Laura enquired. ‘That’s a bit of a nuisance, because it was an important letter and got burnt by mistake.’

‘Important?’ said the woman, looking surprised. ‘I read it over, of course, when they’d gone, and all it said was something about, “Well, if this is what you want, here it is, and best of luck to your efforts.”’

‘Was it signed?’ Laura enquired.

‘That’s the funny part,’ the farmer’s wife replied. ‘It wasn’t exactly signed, but — well, I’ll show you, because I kept it, it being unusual and pretty, don’t you see? Something out of a Christmas cracker, I thought, and, seeing he was such a handsome young fellow, I made sure it was a romance as had gone wrong, and that was why he wanted to get rid of the letter.’

‘Well, I don’t think that was the reason,’ said Laura, ‘but you said you would show me how it was signed, and I should be ever so pleased if I could see the stamp as well.’

The signature (which, as the farmer’s wife had stated, was not a signature in the ordinary sense of the word) consisted of a small red stone stuck on to a very small piece of plain paper which had been torn off the end of the letter. The stamp came from Holland and had been postmarked at Amsterdam.

‘Not very clever of Ruby,’ said Laura, reporting to Dame Beatrice and Gavin, ‘but I suppose it isn’t evidence.’

‘It’s evidence of one thing,’ said Gavin. ‘He’s a murderer all right. He asked Aunt Ruby for the poisoned chocolate stuff and she sent it to him.’

‘Unless Opal forged Ruby’s signature, so to speak,’ said

Laura. ‘And, of course, he need not have been a would-be murderer, but only a would-be suicide.’

‘I would be inclined to accept that hypothesis,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘had I not been a witness to his ridiculous performance in the lake at Leyden Hall. That was done to excite our pity and terror, but, owing to Binnie’s commonsense view of the situation, it failed to do either. Besides, I do not think Florian has the temperament for suicide. What we have to find out is what Miss Ruby Colwyn-Welch has to say about the letter, and what reason, if any, Florian had for desiring to accomplish the death of the barmaid.’

‘I don’t see what the motive there could have been,’ said Laura.

‘I know. And that brings me to my new theory,’ said Dame Beatrice.

Gavin gave her a quick glance.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘The girl he took to Eldon Hole. We ought to have thought of it before.’

Laura glanced from one to the other. Then she caught on.

‘Good Lord!’ she said. ‘You mean it wasn’t Florian who gave the chocolate-cream to the barmaid. It was to this other girl he gave it — the girl he was going out with? She didn’t want it, and she passed it on? But, if that’s so, why did Florian confess he’d given it to Effie?’

‘For the very simple reason,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘that, while he had no reason whatsoever for wishing poor Effie — still less the friend with whom she shared the chocolate-cream — out of the way, he had the best of reasons for wishing to get rid of the girl he escorted to Eldon Hole. The garage proprietor hinted of that to you, didn’t he?’

‘We must find that girl,’ said Gavin. ‘That had better be my job. And I must tackle the landlady at the pub again. She may not have known she was giving false evidence, but what she told me seems to have led us a long way up the garden path.’

‘Then my part will be to interview the household in Amsterdam again,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘They won’t half be pleased to see you!’ said Laura, with relish. ‘They practically threw you out the last time you were there.’

‘I wouldn’t tackle the Amsterdam end just yet,’ said Gavin. ‘I want to get the goods more firmly on Florian first. Once we can really establish his guilt, we shall have a pretty heavy weapon with which to bludgeon his aunts into telling the truth. Now — this girl. We did hear her name once. I thought of the sunshine. Yes, I’ve got it! Gertie Summers.’