Fault in the Structure

CHAPTER 6

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Owl-call hollow round the silent house

Lunch was in the High Mistress’s lodging and, in addition to Dame Beatrice and Laura, the guests were the Chief Constable of the county and a cousin to the High Mistress, a redhaired man of forty named Fairlie.

‘I want to thank you, Gerald,’ said the High Mistress, at a pause in the conversation, ‘for the very unobtrusive and courteous way in which your policemen carried out their duties in Bessie’s Quad yesterday and for the comfort it is to know that we are protected at night.’

‘Not really my policemen,’ the Chief Constable pointed out. ‘Chief Superintendent Nicholl is the chap, and a very good chap he is. Actually he’s on a murder case at present. At least, we think it’s murder, although it may just be that the young woman has staged a disappearance.’

‘Not a Miss Coralie St Malo, by any chance?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

‘How on earth did you guess that, Beatrice?’ asked the Chief Constable, with whom she had been acquainted for many years, having known his mother since their university days when the latter had been an undergraduate and Dame Beatrice a lecturer in medical jurisprudence.

‘It was not so much a guess as a deduction, my dear Gerald. When one hears certain facts, one is apt to draw certain conclusions.’

The Chief Constable looked uneasily at Laura and then said to his hostess.

‘Certain matters have come to our knowledge which reflect no credit on the nephew of a certain distinguished member of this University, so we should wish our activities in the matter to remain as unremarked as possible at present. We may be barking up quite the wrong tree. If we are, well, the more we keep ourselves in the background, the better.’

‘I shall be as dumb as the Eldest Oyster,’ said the High Mistress, ‘so do tell us what it’s all about.’

‘Mrs Gavin is entirely in my confidence,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘and knows all that I know. But if I may put a question to you before the subject, as might be desirable, can be changed, how do the police come to know anything of the matter?’

‘Nicholl received what is known as a tip-off from one of the Wayneflete College servants. I don’t know why these worn-out theories are still extant.’

‘What theories? Are they documented?’ asked the High Mistress, smiling.

‘The theories that the College servants have neither eyes nor ears, let alone feelings.’

‘I don’t think that applies to the scouts in the women’s colleges.’

‘Probably not, but some of the male dons appear to think we’re back in the early nineteenth century. They make no allowance at all for the fact that in these days Jack not only thinks he’s as good as his master, but, in many cases, actually earns more money.’

‘I should not think that would apply to the scouts here, either. I don’t think we pay them nearly enough for what they do.’

‘I was speaking in general terms. However, to return to the special subject under discussion, it appears that this particular scout had taken umbrage over some triviality or other – the disappearance of some bottles of wine, I believe.’

‘Scarcely a trivial matter with wine the price it is since the last budget,’ said Laura.

‘Well, at any rate, the Warden’s nephew, a man named Lawrence, appears to have accused the scout in front of the College Bursar. The case was disproved, but the man seems to have been determined upon some form of revenge. Apparently he had overheard part of a conversation involving a woman he knew, a woman who used her stage name of Coralie St Malo, although he knew her as a Miss Piggen. Anyhow, the fellow seems to have come to the conclusion that it was a clandestine assignment, since he could think of no good reason for a meeting between Lawrence who, after all, is the Warden of Wayneflete’s nephew, and a girl from Headman’s Lane. He decided that it might be interesting to follow up the matter, so he sneaked along and was a witness of the meeting at a public house between Lawrence and this woman. It was the second time he had seen them together, the first having been in the market, where he overheard their conversation.’

‘So the Wayneflete College scout had known the young woman,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘She had lived in the next street from his. It’s rather a poor quarter of the town and Headman’s Lane is not the most salubrious part of it, even at that. The residents in his own street regard themselves as a cut above the Laneites. That is why he thought there was something very fishy about Lawrence’s getting together with the girl in a public house so far out of the town. But what do you know about Coralie St Malo, Beatrice?’

‘Oh, I heard her name mentioned some week or so ago,’ said Dame Beatrice evasively. ‘Did the College servant gain anything from his eavesdropping?’

‘He claims that he was a witness of the public house meeting. It began cordially, but degenerated into a quarrel. He was in the public bar, but the two met in the saloon bar. However, the counters are at right angles to one another so that, at slack times, one barman or barmaid can attend to both. He was in a strategic position, therefore, for a little spying and eavesdropping. He seems, from what he overheard, to have come to the conclusion that the woman was demanding some kind of compensation. He assumed that it was for breach of promise of marriage, for she said that if she did not obtain satisfaction she (in her own words, according to this fellow) would know what to do about it.’

‘Well,’ said the High Mistress, ‘Mr Lawrence could hardly give her one sort of satisfaction, seeing that he is already married to the Dean’s secretary.’

‘He told my son that it was to one of your dons,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘He must be a man of shallow character if snobbishness of that sort is part of his make-up.’

‘Under present conditions, Miss St Malo might be unwise to invoke the law over a question of compensation,’ said the redhaired Fairlie, pursuing his own train of thought, ‘especially if there were no witnesses to an offer of marriage. I don’t know much about that side of the law, but I do know that breach of promise cases don’t by any means always succeed, especially nowadays.’

‘In this instance,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘it was not a question of breach of promise in the sense that you mean.’

The others looked at her, but she added nothing to this statement. The Chief Constable went on with his story.

‘Apparently, by the time they left the public house, the quarrel had been resolved, for Lawrence drove the woman in his own car to her lodging-house. The scout, who had gone to their rendezvous on his motorcycle, followed them. Lawrence and the girl went to the house in Headman’s Lane and the man says he waited outside for an hour, but Lawrence did not emerge, so he went to his own home, intending to call upon Miss St Malo on the following morning to find out what he could and, presumably, to cut himself in on any deal which might have been made between the two parties. I suppose he intended to offer to support Miss St Malo’s claim if his deductions as to a possible breach of promise action proved to be correct.’

‘You said that this man lived in her neighbourhood, but how well did he know Miss St Malo?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

‘That is one of the things we have to find out. However, to go on with the man’s story, it appears that he did call on the following morning, only to find nobody at home.’

‘Why wasn’t he about his College duties?’

‘Oh, didn’t I mention that? The fellow had taken so much umbrage over the accusation of having stolen the wine that he had handed in his notice, so for the time under consideration he was unemployed.’

‘With leisure to make as much mischief as he could,’ said Laura.

‘That’s it. He says he called several times on Miss St Malo after that, but she was not in residence. He questioned the other residents, but nobody had seen her leave, so he states that he thought it his duty to contact the police because of the quarrel in the pub and the threats he had heard the woman utter. We made enquiries and we turned up a very significant fact. Lawrence and Miss St Malo were married twelve years ago at a registrar’s office in Portsmouth and we can find no evidence that they were ever divorced.’

‘But that is impossible!’ exclaimed the High Mistress. ‘As I said, he is married to the Dean’s secretary.’

‘Well, he may be married to her now,’ said the Chief Constable drily, ‘but he wasn’t a few weeks ago, not legally anyway, because then this St Malo woman was still alive and we can prove it.’

‘You have nothing, then, except this servant’s somewhat tainted evidence, to indicate that she is not alive at this moment,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘The fact remains that she has disappeared from her lodging, and that the last time she was seen was in company with Lawrence. Then there was the demand for money and a quarrel.’

‘Are there any other witnesses, apart from this disgruntled manservant?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

‘The barmaid at the public house remembers the quarrel. It was too early in the evening for the bar to be much patronised, so she noticed the couple particularly, and states that they seemed ill-assorted. In her own words, ‘him being quite the gentleman and her as common as muck’. However, she also states that the man talked the woman round, bought her a second drink and that they left the bar apparently on friendly terms. Later, two women who have rooms in the same lodginghouse as Miss St Malo saw her come back that same evening with a man, but this was so common an occurrence that they were not even interested and cannot describe the man. Miss St Malo seems to have done a moonlight flit, however.’

Lunch over, Dame Beatrice and Laura took the path between the High Mistress’s and the Fellows’ gardens and reached Bessie’s Quad. Here they found the student awaiting them. Laura went over to where she had parked the car on the previous afternoon and Dame Beatrice greeted Miss Runmede.

‘I do hope you have not been waiting long,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but I am more than ever interested in your ghostly prowler. I wonder whether you will be kind enough to show me exactly where he was on the occasions on which you saw him?’

‘Yes, of course I will.’

‘And, after that, if you have no objection, I should like to be taken to the window from which you observed him.’

‘Well,’ said Miss Runmede, when the two ghost-walks were completed, ‘that’s as near as I can remember, but it seems very different by daylight and of course it’s different from down here. I was high up in the building when I saw him each time.’

‘Yes, of course. I am very greatly obliged to you. Have no further fear. I am convinced that nobody will ever see the prowler again. In any case, as I told you, you are not the only person to have seen him, therefore steps have been taken.’

‘You wanted me to show you where I think he disappeared. Why?’

‘Because, from what you have shown me, I think your prowler, wearing a white anorak or some other kind of white jacket over dark trousers, entered the Abbess’s Walk from the main quadrangle and that is why he seemed to disappear. He then, I think, went into the cloisters and left by the way you took me to visit them first of all. I want to go to your window to determine whether, if that is what he did, you would or would not have been able to witness his departure.’

They mounted uncarpeted stone steps until they reached the top-floor landing. Here a long, bare corridor, interspersed with white-painted doors bearing names slotted into metal holders, indicated those who slept in each of the rooms.

‘Not so different from what the convent itself was like, I suppose,’ said Miss Runmede, producing a key and unlocking the door which bore her name.

‘Not so different from a present-day convent, perhaps,’ said Dame Beatrice, surveying the somewhat Spartan simplicity of the room which, except for a bookcase, a good copy of Jan Molenaer’s Two Boys and a Girl Making Music and a few family photographs, was bare to the point of austerity, ‘but very different, I think, from the long, cold dorters or dormitories of the Middle Ages. The passage lacks, too, the stair into the church for night prayers.’

She established herself at the window. ‘Would Miss Peterson’s room be directly below this one?’ she asked.

‘Not quite, but near enough. She shares a scout with Miss Hastings and Miss Hastings’s rooms back on to Miss Peterson’s. In fact, her sitting-room is exactly below this room, but looks out the other way.’

‘So Miss Hastings would not have seen your ghost?’

‘Not unless she was in Miss Peterson’s room talking to her and looking out of her window, but I don’t think even the dons sit up as late as two o’clock in the morning.’

When she and Laura were on their way home that afternoon, Dame Beatrice said: ‘Tell me, did you ever know of workmen enthusiastic enough to do too much digging and then have to fill in part of the excavation they had laboured so hard to make?’

‘Oh, you mean that mess they’ve left in the middle of the cloister garth at Abbesses College. What has turned your mind in that particular direction?’ Laura asked.

‘Miss Runmede’s reference to the sack which appears to have aroused your interest. That earth in the cloister garth has been disturbed quite recently.’

‘And you don’t think that was done by honest British workmen? You malign the hardworking fellows.’

‘That may or may not be so. All the same, I have suggested to the Chief Constable that an investigation of the cloister garth at Abbesses College might yield spectacular although macabre results. What with the report of a quarrel, with or without a reconciliation, Miss Runmede’s ghost, Miss Peterson’s prowler, and the apparent disappearance of Miss St Malo, I am wondering whether the surname of the apparition is Lawrence.’

‘I wonder whether Miss Peterson spotted the sack?’

‘I think that if Miss Peterson had noticed the sack she would have reported it.’

‘The idea would be that she saw the prowler the first night he came, but not the second.’

‘What makes you say that? It could be the other way round, could it not?’

‘Well, assuming – as I take it we are assuming – that the sack contained a body, I should imagine that the murderer came the first time to spy out the lie of the land and the second time to dispose of the contents of the sack.’

‘We are assuming, then, that it was the same man both times. That, I think, is likely, although not, of course, certain. As for your theory concerning the two visits, is it not just as likely that it was on the first one that he got rid of the body and that the second visit was to make sure that all was well? However, the matter can soon be settled. Get Abbesses College on the telephone and ask the porter to put you through to the New Buildings, so that you can speak to Miss Runmede. She should still be in College.’

‘She may be out for the evening,’ said Laura, going to the telephone. Miss Runmede, however, was working in her room and was soon answering the call. She was certain that the man had had the sack with him on the first occasion only.

‘It sounds now as though he was a burglar,’ she said, ‘but, if so, why should he appear from Bessie’s Quad? You can’t get in that way once the gatehouse portal is locked. Have they arrested him?’

‘Not yet. You mentioned two o’clock in the morning and that it was at the same hour, approximately, that you saw him each time.’

‘More or less. I remember hearing a clock strike and I hate hearing a clock strike at night. It sounds so sinister – “for whom the bell tolls” and all that.’

‘And it was moonlight both times, you stated.’

‘Moonlight and a clear sky, but even if they catch him, I couldn’t possibly identify him for the reasons I gave you.’

‘So what now?’ asked Laura, later.

‘Nothing. I have drawn the Chief Constable’s attention to the excavation in the cloister garth, and have told him that the man was dragging a sack. We can do no more.’