Faintley Speaking

Chapter Fifteen

UNCLE TOM COBLEIGH AND ALL

‘Now this isn’t the end of this shocking affair…

and although they be dead, of the horrid career…’

« ^

‘We ought to have seen a lot sooner that the knife which killed Miss Faintley could be connected with Trench,’ said Laura. ‘How goes the fernery, young Alice?’

Her friend Alice Boorman, thin, wiry, an athlete and a botanist, looked up from her work of mounting the fifteen specimens of British ferns which Mrs Bradley had asked her to acquire.

‘Quite well, I think, Dog. What are they really needed for? Mrs Bradley has already used the ones she wanted. Is this for the jury at the trial? She didn’t say, and I didn’t like to ask questions she might not want to answer.’

‘So you get your information by the back door, do you?’ asked Laura, grinning. ‘Well, I’ve no clue to the answer, so it’s not a bit of good trying to pump me. She’s at Hagford, preparing to convict this gang of smugglers of getting currency out of the country. The ferns, as no doubt you are aware, formed their code.’

‘Yes, I know… I think I know.’

‘Cagey, aren’t you? But if you will kindly distinguish one from another for me… for I confess that my eye for ferns is not as acute as I could wish… I will endeavour to reconstruct for you her theory.’

‘All right. I say, it was very ingenious, you know.’

‘It was. You wait and see. Go on.’

‘Well, this is Blechnum Spicant, and this is Lastreas Nephrodium. Mrs Bradley said I was to mount them almost touching one another. That means they’ve got to be taken together, I suppose.’

‘It does, and it’s the cleverest of the whole lot, in my opinion. You see, the code-ferns were sent in two packings, a flat one made of wood and a small plaster thing in the form of a statue. The statues were made in France; the wood came from Kindleford School. The ferns packed in wood were orders, we think, indicating where the stuff was to be picked up next… for the gang didn’t risk shipping it always from the same place.’

‘Well, what about these two ferns? One, in English, is the Hard Fern, and the other the Buckler Fern, so-called from its supposed resemblance to a kidney-shaped Roman shield.’

‘There you are, you see. You’ve said it… Buckler’s Hard, on the Beaulieu River.’

‘Good gracious! That’s clever! Now let me do one.’

‘Simple when you’ve got the hang of it, isn’t it?’

‘Here’s Polypodium Phegopteris, and here’s Osmunda Regalis … that’s the Beech Fern and the Royal Fern. No, I can’t do it, after all.’

‘Mrs Croc. thinks you have to spell the beech with an A instead of double E.’

‘But where was the beach?’

‘Go to your next fern.’

‘Royal Fern. Well, the only royal place that has a beach is London, and the beach is near Tower Bridge.’

‘There you are, then. That’s the way it worked. Of course, its scope was very limited. You couldn’t say much with only fifteen ferns altogether, especially as some had to be combined, and as there had to be two kinds of packing.’

‘Yes, why two kinds? Does Mrs Bradley know?’

‘The statues were warnings, she thinks. Can you think of a cautionary fern?’

Alice pondered over the exhibits, then smiled and picked out Asplenium Ceterach.

‘Good. The Scaly Spleenwort,’ said Laura. ‘Scaly… fairly old-fashioned slang for something not much cared about. Remember? Now see if you can find the “All Clear” Fern which, we think, had to follow the Scaly Spleenwort to indicate that the lads could go ahead again.’

Alice chose Asplenium Fontanum.

‘Go to the top of the class,’ said Laura heartily. ‘Your deductions are the same exactly as those of our revered employer. The Smooth-Rock Spleenwort it is.’ She looked narrowly at her friend. ‘Seems to me you’ve been told this before.’

‘It’s all very well to pick them out when you’ve been given the clue,’ said Alice, ignoring the implied question, ‘but it would take a genius like Mrs Bradley to sort it all out in the first place. Well, now, that’s done! I had better be off. My leave of absence from school is up, and to-morrow I’m taking a party of girls to see the English Women against Scotland at Wembley. But, one thing. You say these people have been smuggling currency out of the country. What for?’

‘Black Market pound notes on the Riviera and so forth, duck. Unpatriotic lads and lasses who find the spending money inadequate can contact these blighters over there and get what currency they like. It’s been done before, but never on a scale like this. The willing spenders on holiday have to pay through the nose, of course, and they lay themselves open to blackmail and all sorts of unpleasant consequences, it appears, and serve them right! Stinkers one and all, if you canvass my opinion.’

‘What did you mean about Trench and the knife?’ asked Alice.

‘She meant,’ said Mrs Bradley, coming into the room, ‘that it was obvious that one could connect secret metal-work as well as secret woodwork with Mr Trench’s school centre. His fingerprints,’ she added, addressing Laura, ‘were on the knife with which Miss Faintley was killed. So much has already been established.’

‘So that settles that! Did anything else come out?’

‘He pleads Not Guilty, and reserves his defence.’

‘He’ll never get away with it, will he?’

‘I hardly think so. He says that he made the knife for himself as an exercise in metalwork. He does not know, of course, that Tomson’s precisely similar knife, thanks to Mr Bannister and yourself, has been impounded by the police. He will find a duplicate knife very difficult to explain, and when it comes to a plethora of similar knives… for every gangster had one —’

‘Why was that?’

‘The knives also served the purpose of a password.’

‘Oh… like Masonic greetings. One more thing puzzles me. Why a dredger? Clumsy sort of idea, I should have thought!’

‘The very last type of ship likely to attract suspicion, child. Nobody in their senses would think of searching a dredger for thousands of English pound notes. The exchange to the rusty cruiser was made very secretly, and the money run into France, probably at some small Riviera port and possibly even with the connivance of some member of the port authority. Owing to a fortunate remark made by Mr Bannister, the French police have found thousands of the pound notes stored in a cave near Lascaux. By the way, you remember refuting my suggestion that I should take a hand in the game and send a fern to Hagford Junction?’

‘Don’t tell me that you went against my considered judgement and sent a fern after all? Which one did you decide on?’

‘Botrychium Lunaria, child.’

Alice laughed.

‘The Moonwort,’ she said. She spoke proudly. ‘Mrs Bradley asked my advice, and that was my idea.’

‘Loony,’ said Laura, regarding her friend with sorrowful interest.

‘Fortunately, the leader of the gang made the same almost literal translation,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘It was then that Athyrium Filix-Foemina came into the picture.’

‘You didn’t send that, too!’

‘The Lady Fern, yes, I did… at least, I handed it to Trench, poor man. No wonder he tried to kill me with his chisel. He knew it was the writing on the wall, although I don’t know that he recognized the fern. Any fern would have done, but I preferred to hand him our signatures.’

‘Well, I’m dashed!’ said Laura. She spoke respectfully. ‘Did you get any more out of Miss Franks about that four hundred pounds?’

‘No, but I tackled Miss Faintley’s aunt, and pushed her hard. I never believed she was as innocent as she pretended to be. She must have known that her niece had another source of income besides the one she earned at school. I challenged her very strongly and gave her a hint as to the extent of my knowledge. As I hoped and expected, she broke down and confessed that as soon as she discovered (or, rather, guessed, I fancy), that Lily Faintley was “up to something”, as she expressed it, she was quite determined to obtain some of the pickings for herself.’

‘What? She blackmailed her own niece, do you mean?’ asked Laura, incredulously. Mrs Bradley cackled.

‘It would not be the first time such a thing had been known in families,’ she replied. ‘And there was no love lost between them, you remember. That fact came out at once, the first time we encountered the older Miss Faintley. She was peevish that her niece had been killed, but neither grief-stricken nor horrified.’

‘Yes, that stuck out a mile, as you say. In other words, someone had killed the goose that laid the golden eggs! And did she really try to get four hundred pounds out of niece Lily?’

‘Five hundred, to be precise. Lily gave her a hundred, but tried to raise the rest elsewhere. When she did not succeed, she, according to the aunt, “turned nasty” and threatened to put Tomson on the aunt’s track, indicating that he was an ally of hers, a prize villain into the bargain, and one who would stick at nothing for the sake of very much less money than the aunt was trying to extort.’

‘What a lovely pair!’

‘Yes, indeed. The relationship of aunt to niece is often a strange one, however. Miss Faintley, finding that the threat of Tomson had taken effect, then agreed to give her aunt a small proportion of the takings in return for silence and discretion.’

‘But you don’t think the aunt knew what it was all about?’

‘I am pretty sure she did not. I don’t think our Miss Faintley knew, either, the extent of the gang’s activities.’

‘I wonder how she got into the game? I mean, it isn’t the sort of thing you connect with teachers.’

‘The truth about that is simple, I imagine. You remember Mark telling us that Miss Faintley wore the badge of a ski-ing club? I think that she ran into the gang abroad when her currency had run out, got herself involved with them and was blackmailed into taking on the job of collecting the parcels. She must have been an ideal choice from their point of view – a teacher at a thoroughly respectable school, and resident so near to Hagford Junction. Trench, of course, with his woodwork and metalwork centre and his continual need of money, was equally valuable to them. More than this I doubt whether we shall ever know, unless some of the gang turn Queen’s Evidence, and very likely they will.’

‘Polypodium Vulgare,’ said Laura.

‘Ophioglossum Vulgatum,’ said Mrs Bradley.

—«»—«»—«»—

Note 1. Buck

Note 2. roe

Note 3. Lascaux: A Commentary — Alan Houghton Brodrick

Note 4. The author is indebted to C. T. Druery’s book British Ferns and their Varieties, kindly lent by Miss Ella Vinall, for this information.

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[September 10, 2006]