Death of a Delft Blue

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Death of a Delft Blue

‘And she’s minded her on a little pen-knife

That hang’d below her gare,

And she has gi’en Young Hunting

A deep wound and a sair.

‘The deepest pot in Clyde Water

They got Young Hunting in,

With a green turf tied across his breast

To keep that good lord down.’

Old Ballad

« ^

At Gavin’s request, Dame Beatrice had caused Laura (who, from long practice, was almost the only person who could decipher her calligraphy) to transcribe the notes she had made from time to time on Florian and his affairs and let Gavin have a copy. He wrote to Dame Beatrice from Derbyshire:

‘The landlady refuses to confirm that F. gave the chocolate-cream to the barmaid. Says she herself was suffering from a heavy cold at the time, had understood that the sweet had come from Florian, but had not been in the bar when the stuff was handed over. Put it to her that the barmaid might have received it via Gertie Summers and she agreed that this was most likely. As you can see, this is not conclusive. Some people will fall in with any prompting if the suggested idea seems at all possible. Still, for what it’s worth, I’m certainly going to have a word with Gertie Summers. I don’t know why we didn’t think of her before.’

Gertie herself opened the door to him. She was an insipid-looking, hazel-eyed girl who became extremely alarmed when the visitor presented his credentials.

‘It wasn’t my fault! I’d no idea!’ she declared. ‘I just don’t like chocolate-cream.’

‘Perhaps I might come in?’ suggested Gavin. ‘You wouldn’t prefer to come to the police station, would you?’

‘I’ve never been to a police station in my life. Yes, come in, then. But I do declare to you…’

‘There’s no need. I believe you,’ said Gavin soothingly. He followed her into a small sitting-room which smelt of mothballs. A voice from the kitchen called out:

‘Who is it, Gert?’

‘A policeman, ma!’

‘Half a mo, then, while I change me apron.’

‘I don’t want you, ma. He believes what I says.’

‘So would anybody with any sense, but you hang on before you tells him anything. I’ll be with you in a couple of ticks.’

She was as good as her word, and joined them — a small, resolute woman with hair going grey and a mole on the left cheek. She had the air of one going into battle.

‘I have only one question to put to your daughter, madam,’ said Gavin, getting his shot in first.

‘And that is?’

‘From whom did she receive the chocolate-cream which she tendered as a gift to Miss Effie Harlow?’

‘From him, of course, the dirty little (expurgated) hound!’ replied Gertie’s mother, with the venom that these words suggested. ‘Got our Gert here into trouble, which, lucky enough, her new boy’s willing to marry her quick and the vicar not to be told because I’ve set my heart on a white wedding, and such early days yet as the little ’un can be passed off as premature…’

‘Thank you, madam. That’s all I wanted to know. You need fear no more visits from the police. We now have all the evidence we need.’

‘What for, then?’

‘To charge Mr Colwyn-Welch with the attempted murder of your daughter and with the deaths of Miss…’

‘Oh, yes, Effie and that there other gal, poor souls. But when I think it was meant for my Gert — and all because he didn’t have no honourable intentions

Gavin extricated himself and went back to the Superintendent.

‘My only fear,’ he said, ‘is that Gertie may tip him off and he’ll slip through our fingers.’

He telegraphed Dame Beatrice:

‘Enough on Florian may bolt.’

‘So now for North Norfolk!’ said Laura.

‘No, no. We go to Amsterdam,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Our dear Robert can take care of affairs in England. If Florian has been warned by the girl he seduced — how extremely odd girls are, by the way! — he will make for Holland and throw himself on the mercy of his relatives there.’

‘His sisters and his cousins and his aunts!’ said Laura, irreverently. ‘When do we go? I can’t wait to trip up the little twister.’

‘We shall be spared that “awarded free kick”,’ said Dame Beatrice, whom television, late in her life, had contrived to educate. ‘Aunt Opal, I fancy, will clinch the matter in her own way.’

They arrived in Amsterdam to find that tragedy (‘so-called,’ commented Laura) had preceded them. The betrayed Gertie had found some means of communicating with Florian, and he had indeed fled to his relatives. Binnen received Dame Beatrice with hauteur and entirely ignored Laura. She agreed that Florian had come to them, having flown from London. She added that he was not in the apartment at the moment, having taken his aunts out for the day.

‘Why do you seek him?’ Binnen asked.

‘In connection with a certain Miss Gertrude Summers,’ Dame Beatrice answered. Binnen shrugged.

‘These girls!’ she said contemptuously.

‘He tried to murder this particular girl,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘A police matter?’

‘I am afraid so.’

‘They were to go to Valkenburg. It was Opal’s wish. She did not want Ruby to go with them, so she will manage to give Ruby the slip.’

‘I suppose it was Ruby who sent the poisoned chocolate-cream.’

‘Yes, it was Ruby, I am sure. I think he told her that he had gone wrong with a girl in England and wished for suicide.’

‘Why did she send him the means for it?’

‘She hates him. She tried to kill him by the polish on the stairs in England. She is a fool. Her father, all over again. Weak and silly. So when he wishes for suicide, she is pleased, and, like the idiot she is, believes him.’

‘You let her have the poison, then?’

‘She knew where it was.’

‘Why does she hate him?’

‘Because Opal loves him.’

To Dame Beatrice’s mind this made sense. She said briskly:

‘Well, we’ve been deputed to find him, so we’ll go to Valkenburg.’

‘Tot ziens!’ said Binnen, brightening up, this greatly to Laura’s surprise.

‘Doesn’t she like Florian, then?’ she asked, when they were in a hired car en route for the grotto.

‘Who could, except in the name of Lady Charity?’ responded Dame Beatrice. But they were too late at Valkenburg, (according to Laura), and just late enough, (in Dame Beatrice’s opinion), for Florian was dead. His body had been found lying face downwards in the underground lake in the depths of the Valkenburg grotto. He had been stabbed very cleanly through the heart. The knife was lying in the water near the body.

The Dutch police prudently elected to present it as a case of suicide. Opal, who had reported, at the exit to the grotto, that her nephew was missing, affected to be (and probably was) heartbroken, and, Dame Beatrice learned later from Binnie, who came to London to see her, was spending all day and every day in gazing upon the gold-painted plaster bust.

‘I’m very sorry about your brother,’ said Laura, to whom Binnie bade a tearful farewell.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Binnie, with a giggle which contrasted oddly with her tears. ‘Now I can get married to Bernie in peace. There never would have been any peace while Florian was alive, you know.’

‘So Opal is completely mad,’ said Laura, when Binnie had gone.

‘Or a dedicated artist,’ said Dame Beatrice. The last word lay with Grandmother Rebekah Rose. ’

‘So is this beautiful Florian songs of songs, which is Solomon,’ she pronounced.

‘Only one Song, darling,’ protested Bernardo.

‘I am thinking,’ said Rebekah, with dignity, ‘of English version, Authorised.’

‘ “Solomon had a vineyard at Baalhamon,” ’ quoted Bernardo solemnly. ‘ “He let out the vineyard unto keepers.” More than you’d do, sweetheart, isn’t it? You wouldn’t trust the keepers not to sell the grapes on their own account.’

‘I,’ said his grandmother, ‘am not having vineyards. All those foreign workers with dirty feet!’

‘Done by machinery nowadays.’

‘You are not forgetting my little brooch of a ram with diamonds?’

‘You are not forgetting the wedding present you promised me?’

‘No promises! I am not promising nothing!’

‘Splendid! I like these double negatives.’

‘Double negatives makes a phooey photograph,’ said Rebekah. ‘So is this Florian. No smile, he is an angel. Smile, he is a devil.’

‘Smile and smile, and be a villain,’ said Bernardo. ‘Well, what are you going to give me?’

‘To be married in C. of E.?’

‘No, in the Dutch Reformed Church, Grandmamma, as I told you.’

‘I buy you a very nice buttonhole,’ said Rebekah.

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[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]

[A 3S Release— v1, html]

[October 03, 2006]