Faintley Speaking

Chapter Ten

MRS CROCODILE

‘… with gently-smiling jaws.’

lewis carroll – Alice in Wonderland

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Mrs Bradley had spent the day in the way which she had outlined to Laura, but she was back at the Stone House in the little Hampshire village of Wandles Parva before Laura drove home from school, and received the telephone message immediately upon her arrival.

‘First things first,’ she said, after Laura had been up to bath and change before dinner. ‘We have Madras curry and Henri’s peculiarly luscious chutney.’

‘And those pancake things that always remind me of bits of fried fur coat?’

‘And those.’

‘Oh, good! I’m famished. And how did you get on in Kindleford to-day?’

‘Unexpectedly well.’

Mrs Bradley had indeed gained rather more information in Kindleford than she had considered possible. She had gone straight to Detective-Inspector Darling for news of the statue.

‘We took it to bits and found nothing inside but a fern leaf. That seems to prove that Tomson wasn’t lying to us, but it doesn’t help us over Mandsell’s flat parcel.’

‘Interesting. Which fern leaf?’ Mrs Bradley had inquired.

‘How should I know? I know nothing at all about ferns.’

‘A great pity. May I see it?’

Carefully and painstakingly mounted by a young constable who had a gift for handling delicate fragments which enabled him, later, as a detective-superintendent, to solve the notorious mystery of the blue butterfly murders, the fern leaf had been produced for her inspection.

‘Asplenium Ceterach – the Scaly Spleenwort, Inspector.’

‘Really, ma’am? You’re an authority, then, on ferns?’

‘No, no. But I have a reasonably good visual and verbal memory. I recognize this specimen because it is exactly like one I saw in a glass case in the house at Cromlech.’

‘The house outside which Miss Faintley was found murdered? That’s remarkably interesting, ma’am. But as we already know that Miss Faintley was connected with the parcels, I don’t see quite how it helps us.’

‘It tails in with a theory I have formed, Inspector. The fact that two men thought it necessary to remove the case of mounted and labelled ferns from Cromlech Down House, coupled with the very different type of package which Mr Mandsell collected from Hagford when Miss Faintley was prevented from going to get it, causes me to think that the fern in the statue may possibly form part of a code.’

‘A code, ma’am? Yes, we had something of the same idea ourselves, but – well, I don’t know, I’m sure.’

‘Well, what else can you suggest?’

‘Nothing, until we get the whole truth out of Tomson, and that isn’t going to be easy. Though, of course, he did confess he broke a statue Miss Faintley had once collected.’

‘Asplenium Ceterach – the Scaly Spleenwort,’ repeated Mrs Bradley thoughtfully. She took out a pocket mirror, glanced at her reflexion, and chuckled. ‘Extraordinary. Do you suppose it was the same parcel as the one which the zealous station official refused to allow Miss Menzies to collect? I should like to believe that. Although he did not let her have it, for us the result is the same as though he had yielded it up, it seems to me.’

‘A substitute parcel, ma’am? No, I hadn’t thought of that!’

‘Miss Menzies has very sharp eyes. The parcel she saw was a flat one. You think that your brains have not received their due meed of appreciation from the enemy? I feel certain, you know, that they have, and it seems to me that the common-sense thing for the gang to do would be to make certain that the police were not presented with the right bit of the code. What is more, their leader has a grim sense of humour. The Scaly Spleenwort! Quite the raspberry, Inspector, in other words.’

‘Are you going to have a talk with Tomson, ma’am?’ asked Darling, after a pause during which he had appeared to cogitate.

‘It can do no harm. In fact, I must do it, although not much is likely to come of it. Tomson, I daresay, has been carefully briefed. But first I’ll go and see your Mr Mandsell.’

Mandsell was out when she called. Mrs Deaks suggested that she should wait.

‘He won’t be long, madam. Just gone to look up the library, so he said. The trouble with him is that he goes to look up one thing and finishes up with half a dozen things quite different – or so he says. Still, he ain’t a mite of trouble, even if he don’t pay up, but I think his intentions is honourable, and I wouldn’t turn him into the street no more, whatever my husband may say. If you’d seen the way that poor boy came in sopping wet the time we give him his notice – well, you wouldn’t treat a dog like it, let alone a young fellow what is on his beam ends and acts to you like a gentleman, not for Deaks nor for nobody do I do it, not never no more.’

‘You’re a kind woman, Mrs Deaks. It is not everybody who would feel like that. He is greatly in your debt.’

‘Well, not so much as you might think,’ replied the literal-minded landlady. ‘He give me four pound the next day, although goodness’ knows where he got it, and then he’ve got twenty pounds since then for some story or other he wrote, so I’m very pleased to think we should keep him on, for anybody less trouble as a lodger you couldn’t find, and that I’ll maintain to my dying day.’

‘In other words, you like Mr Mandsell. Does he have friends here to visit him?’

‘No, he don’t. Not one extra meal have I ever been asked to provide, and that’s something in these days. Mrs Froud, down the street, she’s got two young ladies in her top front, shorthand typists – one at Mr Fuller’s, the lawyers’, and the other at the shoe factory office – and they’re always having people in to tea. She charges, of course, but that don’t make up for the trouble, and dirty shoes in and out, and the getting ready and the washing-up and that, not to speak of all hours and a lot of stale tobacco smoke and the wear and tear on the carpet and furniture, and face powder over the dressing-table and cigarette ash on the floor. I tell her to tell ’em to go, but it ain’t all that easy to get double money with two young ladies sharing, and they will sometimes do a hand’s turn for theirselves, which is more than my young gentleman does. Still, I’d rather have a man. It don’t seem natural in a woman of my years to wait on bits of girls.’

‘I suppose a young man can be a trial in other ways, though. Late hours, perhaps one drink too many, staying away the night without letting you know —’

‘Not Mr Mandsell,’ said Mrs Deaks decisively. ‘He don’t understand what housework is, and he will climb in through the window instead of coming in at the door – but that’s usually because, being a writer, he’s an absent-minded young gentleman and often forgets his key. But, apart from that, and the money not always being there when it oughter – though I will say it always turns up later, and sometimes, p’raps, a bunch of flowers or some sweets with it as well if he’s kept me waiting more than a couple of weeks – well, I haven’t no complaints. Of course, he do make a proper old mess in the bathroom and no idea of cleaning the bath down after hisself, but I suppose that comes of being a gentleman born.’

Mrs Bradley could obtain no more precise information and knew better than to fish with too many leading questions. She had gathered what she wanted, however. It seemed unreasonable to suppose that Mandsell had had any previous connexion with Miss Faintley or her murderers.

He was chronically hard up, kept reasonable hours, and made no uncharted voyages into the world at large. Mentally Mrs Bradley dismissed him from the case.

Left to herself, she settled down in the stuffy little parlour to wait for him, and then, finding the atmosphere oppressive, she ventured to open the window. Shortly afterwards Mandsell, who once again had forgotten his key, climbed through it to meet her black-eyed, gimlet gaze.

‘Oh, hullo,’ he said. ‘Awfully sorry. Didn’t know anyone was here. I usually get in through the kitchen. This one isn’t very often open.’

He began to retreat towards the door but Mrs Bradley stopped him.

‘I represent the Home Office,’ she said. ‘I take it that you are Geoffrey Mandsell. I should very much like a short talk with you, Mr Mandsell.’

‘Oh, I say, though! I’ve had the police already! You don’t mean you’re connected with Miss Faintley?’

‘In a sense, yes, and I may add that the police know I’m here. There are one or two points, Mr Mandsell, which I think we can resolve right away, if you will co-operate with me.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so, you know. The police have cleaned me right out. If you’ve heard what I’ve told them, you’ve heard all.’

‘So you suppose. Sit down and answer my questions.’ Mandsell hesitated. ‘You have nothing to fear,’ she added, ‘have you?’

‘No, of course, I haven’t – only – well, I did take five pounds off that rat of a little shopkeeper. I was completely broke, and I knew I had money coming to me, so —’

‘Where did the money come from? Where had he kept it?’

‘Where? Oh, I see. He got it out of the till.’

‘Which day of the week was it?’

‘Friday.’

‘And the Thursday had been early closing day?’

‘Yes. Yes, it had.’

‘With only half a day’s takings and… at what time did you get to him on the Friday?’

‘At about four, I suppose. Before he closed, anyhow.’

‘With only half a day on Thursday and between six and seven hours of shopping time on Friday, then, would you really have expected, in a shop of that kind, the man to have been able to take five pounds out of the till?’

‘Now you come to put it like that, well, I suppose I wouldn’t have expected it.’

‘And now that you realize it was an unusual thing to have happened, are you still certain that there is nothing else you can tell me?’

‘I can tell you one thing,’ said Mandsell vigorously. ‘I wish I’d never touched that beastly parcel!’

‘It may be very helpful to the police that you did. Tell me, Mr Mandsell, what really induced you to call for that parcel at all?’

‘I don’t know. The Inspector wanted me to tell him that. It was just a sudden idea.’

‘But why, Mr Mandsell? You must have known it was none of your business.’

Mandsell looked unhappy.. He racked his brains. This extraordinary old lady obviously was determined to have an answer, and the answer, her black eyes and beaky little mouth suggested, had better be a satisfactory one. She cackled with a suddenness and a harshness that made him start.

‘I – I beg your pardon?’ he stammered. She did not answer. In a terrifying way she waited. He was mesmerized into replying to her question. ‘I went because, I suppose, it was something to do. I was a bit at a loose end, that was all.’

‘You went, in response to an unexpected summons from an unknown woman, knowing quite well that she had mistaken you for someone else, to a railway station five miles distant from your lodgings, to pick up and deliver a parcel (of whose nature and contents you were unaware) to a seedy little man in a back-street shop in this town? I still ask why you did it, Mr Mandsell.’

Mandsell felt still more unhappy, and looked so.

‘I’ve really no idea,’ he replied. ‘I mean that. I don’t know why I went. It was just one of those things.’

‘And as a result of “one of those things” a woman has been murdered.’

‘Oh, but I couldn’t possibly have thought that that was going to happen!’

‘You didn’t think at all. Come, now, Mr Mandsell, tell me why you did it.’

This persistence had its effect.

‘I was on my beam ends. I was pretty desperate. I’d been turned out of my digs and… well, to tell you the truth… I thought there might be something in it for me, even if it was only a bob to buy some grub.’

‘You were as badly off as that?’

‘At that moment, yes, I was. Of course, I shall be all right when my book comes out, but meanwhile it’s fairly sticky going. Still, I’ve sold a short story. That’s something.’

‘Yes, yes, so it is. Mr Mandsell, you will have gathered that the police and I are extremely interested in these five one-pound notes which shopkeeper Tomson gave you.’

‘Oh, Lord! You don’t think they’re dud ones? I’ve paid four of them over to my landlady!’

‘Have you any idea what she did with them?’

‘Yes, of course. They’re in the teapot.’

‘Still?’

‘Oh, yes. She won’t put money in the Savings Bank because of the Income Tax, and she won’t buy National Savings Certificates because she thinks they’re a nuisance to cash, and she’s saving up to visit her daughter in Canada.’

‘Banking account?’

‘Not she. Says the young gents behind the counter look down on the likes of her. I told her that was nonsense. The trouble is, she’s almost illiterate, I think, and it gives her a rather vast sense of inferiority.’

‘I should like to see those notes.’

Mandsell looked dubious.

‘You know what those sort of people are like about money.’

‘She must either show them to me or take them to the police station. They may be very important evidence against Tomson if he’s been up to anything shady.’

‘Well, honestly, I daren’t ask her to produce them! My standing in this house isn’t all that hot, you know, and if Deaks begins thinking that I’ve paid my bill with dud notes…’

But Mrs Deaks, under the influence of Mrs Bradley’s beautiful voice and tactful handling, was not at all averse to displaying the notes.

‘Thing is, dear,’ she said confidentially, ‘as I didn’t want to upset my ’usband nor Mr Mandsell, but it seemed sort of funny to me, if you take my meaning, him being on his beam-ends one minute and flashin’out four pounds the next, so I kep’ ’em separate. Here they is, look, with a rubber band around’em.’

Mrs Bradley was not an expert in detecting forgeries, but an enthusiastic Scotland Yard officer had once spent an entire morning in pointing out to her the slight errors by which even the cleverest forgers are tripped up. The most minute scrutiny of the four notes through her small but powerful magnifying glass failed to reveal any of the discrepancies she had been instructed to look for, however. She compared minutely each of the four notes with one from her own purse, but was compelled to conclude either that the forger had been a master of his trade, or else that the four notes were genuine. There was only one interesting feature. On three out of the four notes were traces of some blotchy outlines, and these were particularly clear on one, where they happened to come on the half-crown-sized white circle on the back.

She took from a small leather case some minute surgical forceps and very gingerly scratched at the marks. Memory, aided by the powerful magnifying glass, began to stir. She saw the darkish walls of the Lateral Passage at Lascaux, its sandy floor and the dust at the foot of its walls. She remembered that here alone, in this spine-chilling underground temple of primitive man with its terrifying suggestion of art come alive through the ‘monstrous power of witchcraft’, could be detected the slight atmosphere of damp sufficient for the growth of a form of prehistoric mould, ‘an archaic fungus,’ says Alan Houghton Brodrick in his Lascaux.

It was not often that Mrs Bradley felt the tingling excitement in which half Laura Menzies’ young, lusty life was lived, but she felt it now.

Monsieur Banneestaire! And Monsieur Bannister had been to Lascaux! Was there… could there be… any connexion?

‘This is valuable evidence,’ she said impressively. ‘Will you exchange these four notes for four I will give you, or will you take them straight to the police station?’

‘I don’t want nothing to do with the police,’ said Mrs Deaks slowly. ‘If so be as you’ll agree to mark the notes you gives me with Deaks’ undelyable pencil, and if so be as you agrees to ’ave Mr Mandsell in as a witness to me giving you up his notes in exchange for yours, well, I don’t mind changing ’em. If yours is duds and those is duds, well, I shan’t be no worse off,’ she concluded with her class’s deep philosophy.

Mandsell was called into the kitchen, and the notes were marked and exchanged.

‘Now for the villainous Tomson,’ said Mrs Bradley.

‘Yes,’ said Mandsell, brightening. ‘Yes! I wouldn’t at all mind confronting that bloke. I’ll give him my I.O.U. That ought to settle his hash, one way or the other. I mean, he’ll either have to come clean about the parcel or lose his money.’

‘No, no. You must leave the negotiations to me.’

Upon this understanding they sought out Tomson. He did not seem pleased to see them, and asked them, in surly and unwilling fashion, what he could have the honour of showing them.

‘Faintley-coloured materials,’ Mrs Bradley replied.

‘Pastel shades, madam? Those on the shelves are all I have in stock. Would anything of that kind suit you?’

‘No, no. I require curtains the colour of blood.’

‘Blood, madam? I don’t know that I —’

‘No? A great pity. Have you never heard of blood-coloured curtains? Faintley-coloured and blood-coloured are quite the rage nowadays, you know. Oh, and my second cousin here believes that he owes you five pounds. Can you remember the transaction, I wonder?’

‘What’s your game?’ demanded Tomson, suddenly abandoning any pretence of being the anxious shopkeeper and becoming, with one short question, the anxious petty criminal. ‘You never come here to buy curtains!’

‘I wonder how you know that? Can you possibly have a guilty conscience, my poor man? Never mind. We have come to return the five pounds which you so kindly lent to my ward here. May we have a receipt?’

‘You can go to hell!’ said Tomson, snarling. ‘Get out of my shop, the pair of you! I don’t know nothing about any five pounds, but I knows the confidence trick when I sees it!’

Mrs Bradley slowly shook her head and Tomson was suddenly reminded of a cobra he had seen in his youth on a trip to the London Zoo.

‘It won’t do at all,’ she said gently. ‘What species of fern did you find in the statue you broke?’

This question really frightened Tomson.

‘I didn’t find nothing in the statue,’ he asserted. ‘And I never broke it! It was broke when it landed up ’ere!’

‘I think you found Ophioglossum Vulgatum – in other words, the adder’s-tongue fern,’ she said. ‘And the police think you broke the statue deliberately and have confessed as much.’

‘Adder’s-tongue?’ He licked his lips, his apprehension obviously increasing. ‘What do you mean… adder’s-tongue? There wasn’t nothing in it, I tell you! And I ’ave not said I broke the statue, because I never!’

‘You have been warned,’ pronounced Mrs Bradley, solemnly. ‘Come, dear fellow,’ she added to Mandsell. ‘This man is determined that nothing I can do shall save him.’

‘I say, you scared him all right,’ said Mandsell, when they were out of the shop. ‘What exactly was all that in aid of?’

‘Time will show, child. I wonder, however, that Tomson was left in peace when once he had allowed his curiosity to overcome him and had broken that statue. In fact, the only explanation… Yes, I think I see.’

‘The thing I got from Hagford wasn’t a statue, you know.’

‘I do know, and thereby hangs a useful bit of evidence.’

‘As how?’

‘As nothing. Children should be seen and not heard, and most of their questions studiously although not unkindly ignored,’ replied Mrs Bradley serenely. ‘However, you leave the court without a stain on your character.’

‘But nobody ever does who’s been brought to court, you know.’

‘I do know. But never mind. Better a live donkey than a dead lion.’

‘I don’t agree at all. I’d willingly die if I could die a lion instead of a donkey.’

‘Some are born great, others achieve greatness —’

‘I say, I wonder if some day you’d read a bit of my stuff? I mean, I don’t think it’s all that bad.’

‘I shall be honoured.’

‘You’re pulling my leg.’

‘Which is not my wont. I am unalterably serious-minded. I wonder whether there was a fern in your parcel, too?’

‘What makes you think there might have been?’

‘The answer to that is only for the police, and I don’t know enough yet to confide in them.’

They parted at Mrs Deaks’ house and the smooth car pulled up to take Mrs Bradley home. She leered kindly at Mandsell out of the near-side window, and reached Wandles Parva somewhat ahead of Laura, who brought with her the shy Mr Bannister.

‘Ah!’ said Mrs Bradley, peering at him as though he were some dubious piece of meat which she suspected of being horse-flesh. ‘What have we here?’

‘This is Mr Bannister,’ said Laura. ‘Maths and all that, and took me out to lunch, you know. I phoned you.’

Mrs Bradley gazed snake-like upon Bannister, a proceeding which did not appear to disconcert him. In fact, her extraordinary appearance, clad as she was in cherry-red and faint purple, gave him confidence. He stretched out a flexible hand.

‘This is great,’ he said sincerely. ‘I’ve always wanted to meet you.’

‘Clever boy!’ said Laura, returning Mrs Bradley’s basilisk gaze with an impudent smile. ‘When do we eat, O Egypt?’

The meal was a great success. Bannister proved to be an authority upon French cooking and was personally introduced to Henri, who rated him, forthwith, as the enviable possessor of an intelligence unusual and profound, with a knowledge of the French tongue unsurpassed even by Frenchmen.

‘He is still English,’ said Henri’s wife Celestine, with a scowl (this in the privacy of the kitchen quarters), ‘and it is well understood that all the English are barbarians.’

‘But Madame is English, too!’

‘Madame is not of this world,’ said Gelestine austerely. ‘She is of another state of being. One cannot doubt it.’

‘Nevertheless, this gentleman understands that I am a cook in a thousand, and has said so in beautiful French. A cook in a thousand! Remember that!’

‘Fish-fry in heaven! And who is to pay?’

‘The English Government,’ said Henri, gurgling with laughter. Celestine tossed her head and picked up the tray of coffee. She affected to despise her spouse, but would have died for him. ‘They are here a nation of the Welfare State,’ Henri added. ‘The poor have inherited the earth.’

‘Blasphemy!’ said Celestine sourly. She took in the coffee and set it down gently on a table at Mrs Bradley’s right elbow. ‘Madame is served!’

‘And, in return, will give you a reliable recipe for poisoning Henri,’ said her employer. Celestine tossed her head, as usual.

‘Although a pig and a louse, he is still the husband my good parents found for me,’ she said austerely. ‘The good offices of madame are wasted on such as he!’

‘Is she really such a tartar?’ asked Bannister, who found himself at home in the household. Laura laughed.

‘You’d be surprised,’ she said. ‘Now, Mrs Croc. let’s pump him.’

Mrs Bradley regarded Bannister benevolently. She saw a tall, angular, dark-faced man, obviously shy but with honest eyes and a mouth which she thought could be grim.

‘I hope you won’t need to pump me,’ he said. ‘What about?’

‘About the late Faintley, of course,’ said Laura encouragingly. ‘You can’t tell us too much about her.’

‘As for that,’ said Bannister. He stopped, and looked to Mrs Bradley for guidance. ‘As for that,’ he repeated, ‘well, I didn’t really know much about her.’

‘Perhaps not, but you were good enough to warn my secretary, Laura here, against picking up parcels at Hagford railway junction,’ Mrs Bradley observed.

‘I know,’ said Bannister. ‘The point is that… oh, well, I expect Miss Menzies has told you.’

‘Whatever Miss Menzies has told me would be more valuable if I could have it at first hand… and that is all you can do to help us?’ Mrs Bradley added, when Bannister had repeated his story of having seen Miss Faintley enter Tomson’s shop, and of what he had witnessed there.

‘I think so,’ he replied, but he seemed uncertain.

‘Then, in that case,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘let us change the subject of conversation.’ Bannister looked surprised at the abrupt alteration in her tone. ‘Tell us about your pot-holing, and what you think of the prehistoric cave-paintings at Lascaux,’ she suggested.

‘Lascaux?… Oh, I suppose that young devil Street told you. He said he’d spent part of his holidays at Miss Menzies’ hotel, and I knew from the papers that Miss Menzies had found Miss Faintley’s body.’ He stopped short; then he added, ‘But you mean something deeper than that.’

‘I’ve been to Lascaux myself,’ Mrs Bradley assured him. ‘You are remembered in the district.’

Bannister grimaced, but made no comment. Mrs Bradley pressed the point by remaining absolutely silent and nodding her head very slowly, as though she had discovered something which gave her satisfaction. Bannister suddenly laughed.

‘I’m awfully sorry, but I’ve been tested for nerves, you know. The Gestapo technique was, if I may say so, bloodily more effective than yours. Still, I’ll give this much away: Faintley, whether innocently or not, was mixed up with something no good, but it wasn’t political, exactly. I’m pretty certain about that. I know all the symptoms, I think. And now… why did you ask me to come here?’

Mrs Bradley told him of Mandsell’s telephone call, and Laura added:

‘So far as we know, you and Mr Trench were the only men members of the staff who didn’t turn up at all at that end-of-term dance. The man who had to answer the telephone call that night walked away in front of Mandsell, he was either you or Trench. I don’t think it was you because… well, because I just don’t think it was. Have you an alibi, by the way?’

‘As a matter of fact, I suppose I have. I was fiddling about with my landlady’s television set most of the evening. You could check that if you wanted to. She and her husband were with me most of the time, and once I’d got home from school I didn’t go out any more until almost ten. I went down to the Lion then for a beer, and stayed until closing time.’

‘Before which the telephone call must have been made. That brings us to Mr Trench, then. What sort of man is he? I’ve met him in the staff-room, of course, but I haven’t gathered yet what he’s really like.’

‘And you won’t. He’s a bit of an homme incompris. Nobody knows much about him. He’s all right at his job, but his wife’s a chronic invalid and he seems to spend most of his time out of school in waiting upon the sick-bed. Trouble is, I gather, that he married above him, and hasn’t ever been able to live it down. I don’t think the wife is bitchy, but now she’s ill he feels he must try to make up to her for a disappointing sort of life. Odd bloke. Might be quite decent but for this rotten fixation.’

‘A man, in fact, who would be glad of a little extra dough?’

‘I should say so. Chickens and invalid diet and fairly exotic fruit and flowers, and a hefty library subscription, and taxi fares if she ventures out, can run into money, of course, and nothing’s too good for the lady – or so we gather. None of us has been permitted to meet her, by the way. Her blue blood, apart from her illness, has to be respected, and I imagine that our staff don’t measure up.’

‘Oh, I see!’ said Laura, enlightened. ‘Do you think he’s really an impartial witness?’ she asked Mrs Bradley next morning before Bannister had appeared downstairs for breakfast.

‘I think he’s sufficiently impartial for our purposes,’ Mrs Bradley replied, ‘but there is one point on which he is misinformed, I think.’

‘About Trench?’

‘About Mrs Trench… but we shall see! And, of course, he made a splendid Freudian slip of the tongue, did he not?’

As soon as breakfast was over Mrs Bradley sent Bannister and Laura out for a long walk and caused George to drive into Kindleford, where she herself picked up Mandsell, and, luring him from his new novel with the promise of luxurious food and the car to return him to the Deaks’ house immediately dinner was over, took him back with her to the Stone House at Wandles Parva.

‘There is only one thing I am going to ask you to do,’ she told him before they arrived. ‘I am entertaining a guest who might or might not be the individual you saw walking away from the telephone-box in Park Road.’

‘And you want to find out whether there’s any chance I can say yea or nay, I suppose? Well, there’s not much chance, I ought to tell you. You see, it was pretty gloomy, what with the evening and the rain and all that, and I only saw his back view, and not very close to, either. Still, I’ll do my best, of course. But if I’m not absolutely sure (and I don’t see how I can be) I’m not going to let the bloke in for trouble with the police.’

‘Fair enough, child, and I shall give you no prompting. I think myself that it is very unlikely that you will be able to commit yourself to any definite statement on the matter, but I feel compelled to try the experiment. Incidentally, this man is not suspected of having been Miss Faintley’s murderer. You need have no scruples about meeting him.’

‘I’m disappointed to hear that! I’ve never met a murderer except in wax, at Madame Tussaud’s, and I’d rather like to!’

They got back to the Stone House in plenty of time for lunch, and by the time the poverty-stricken young author had finished his meal and remembered that, on the same luxurious lines, there was dinner still to come, there was almost nothing he would not have done for his hostess. He eyed Bannister with cautious curiosity, and, as soon as opportunity offered (which was when Laura took Bannister off to look at Mrs Bradley’s pigs… her Oxfordshire nephew having insisted upon presenting her that year with a litter of Large Whites so that she need not eat ewe mutton unless she wanted to) he shook his head and said:

‘It’s all right. I’m absolutely positive. He’s far too tall. The fellow I saw was about my own height… certainly not more. Besides, this man’s got an entirely different walk. Even with his blazer collar turned up, as he’s got it now, and slouching along with his head forward and his hands in his pockets, he doesn’t look in the least like my bloke, who was walking with his coat collar up, too, because of the rain.’

‘You are positive?’

‘Positive. You see, my job makes me sort of register things, especially sensory impressions. Oh, no, this isn’t the telephone chap. It couldn’t possibly be. I’m certain enough to take my oath on it.’

‘Pass, Mr Bannister, and all’s well… so far,’ said Mrs Bradley to Laura, while the two men were having their after-dinner port before Mandsell was taken back to Kindleford.

‘So far?’ echoed Laura.

‘Yes. I am inclined to share his view that the activities of the Faintley gang are not political, and it certainly seems, from Mr Mandsell’s evidence, that it was not Mr Bannister who had agreed to take that call. All the same…’ she paused and meditated.

‘What was that crack of yours about a Freudian error?’ Laura inquired, at the end of a dutiful period of silence.

‘He called Mr Trench an homme incompris. But that is what he himself had to be during the war. He was known to the guardians at Lascaux, and the Germans undoubtedly knew of him. So much I think he made clear. When all this is over, we must ask him for the story of his adventures. They were probably fantastic.’

‘And a man like that settles down to teach elementary mathematics to kids,’ said Laura. ‘Not bad at it, either, let me tell you.’

‘And how good a teacher is Mr Trench?’

‘You’d better ask him,’ said Laura. ‘I don’t know the first thing about the woodwork and metal work centre,’

‘Mr Bannister must be our informant, then. I want to know as much about Mr Trench as he will tell you.’

‘Bannister?’

‘Mr Bannister in person. You had better warn him that anything he says may be taken down and used in evidence.’

‘You don’t want me, then. You want Vardon, I should say.’

‘Mr Bannister would not like to confide in Detective-Inspector Vardon. I suggest that he would like to confide in one of us, and, of the two of us, you would be the more likely to gain the truth from him.’

‘So that I can spill it to you?’

‘Mr Bannister will be more than agreeable to that course of procedure, dear child. He is anxious to confide in someone.’

‘All right, but I shall ask him first, you know, whether that’s really what he wants.’

‘To use your own fearsome idiom, I couldn’t agree more.’

‘Oh, you couldn’t?’ said Laura, uneasily. She was still inexperienced enough to share young Mark Street’s schoolboy instinct that when the grown-ups agreed with you you had better watch out. Laura had not quite outgrown her terror of the goblins. Demoniacal possession, she sensed (wrongly) to be the prerogative of the adult world. Mrs Bradley realized this, and cackled. Laura looked reproachful.

‘Look here,’ she said to Bannister, when they were together in the garden after Mandsell had gone home that night, ‘Mrs Croc. has her optics on you. What was all that about you and the caves at Lascaux? And the Gestapo, and so forth?’

‘Yes,’ replied Bannister absently. ‘I know what she meant. I was in the Resistance, of course. One of the lucky ones, on the whole. Parachuted in, and my mother was French, so I had the gab and knew the country. We used to hide blokes… our own and others. Not in Lascaux itself… it was too well known… but there are lots of caves in that part of France. We winkled chaps out of occupied France and sometimes out of Italy, and smuggled them away through… well, I’d better not tell you. It might be needed again, and the higher the fewer, so to speak.’

‘Well, what about Trench? I’ve been told to pump you about him. What can you tell us?’

‘Nothing at all. He wasn’t mixed up with my push, if that’s what you mean. I met him for the first time on the school staff. Why? What has he got to do with it?… No, I won’t ask you that. I see the issue quite plainly. Your boss thinks that either Trench or I did in Faintley because one of us was scheduled to take that telephone call, and we were the only men not at school that night. I don’t see Trench as a murderer. I’m sure he is more or less all right in himself. Trouble is, he’s Red, and, not only that, but like lots of chaps who happen to be under the weather, he’s become fanatical – you know, agin the Government, and all that – but that doesn’t mean he’d do any harm. Of course, it’s obvious that, saddled with that wife of his who’s always being ill, he must be pretty badly stuck for money, and it’s true he never seems to be all that short. Beyond that, I can tell you nothing.’

‘But you don’t think he’d commit murder?’

‘It depends upon what you call murder, you know. After all, we murder people when we hang them.’

Laura had heard this view expressed by her employer.

‘That’s what Mrs Croc. says,’ she answered. ‘Well, we’d better go in. It’s getting a bit chilly out here.’

‘Ah, Mr Bannister,’ said Mrs Bradley, when they re-entered the Stone House. ‘I’ve been thinking about the caves at Lascaux while you two have been out in the garden. Why it is that I seemed to sense a difference between the atmosphere of the Lateral Passage and that of, say, the Hall or the Nave?’

‘Oh, that’s easy,’ replied Bannister, frankly and immediately. ‘I expect you mean that the Lateral Passage is slightly damp in places. There’s a peculiar kind of ancient mould or fungus growing on parts of the walls.’

Early on the following morning Mrs Bradley telephoned to Detective-Inspector Darling that she proposed to interview Mr and Mrs Trench.