Fault in the Structure

CHAPTER 9

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We come to speak for the silent,

To be heard for the unheard,

To bear witness for one condemned.

‘You know,’ said Laura, ‘I think the police have something up their sleeves. Surely the motive ascribed to the porters is inadequate? Men don’t commit murder because they’re accused of purloining a parcel, do they? It’s not even as though a charge of theft has been proved.’

‘I agree that the police may have more to go on than we have been told, but your second contention is more doubtful. The question of motive is a difficult one. That is why the courts are far more interested in means and opportunity than in motive, for it has often been shown that a motive for murder which might appear perfectly adequate to one person would never lead to such drastic repercussions in someone else. The point is beautifully made by H.R.F. Keating, you will remember, in his fascinating story A Rush on the Ultimate.’

‘Yes, but that involved the game of croquet and it’s well known that no other pastime, not even professional lawn tennis, arouses such bitter passions. There was no love lost between the English and American teenagers in Little Women, and what price the game of croquet in Alice?’

‘Yes, indeed. If I remember the passage correctly. “Alice soon came to the conclusion that it was a very difficult game indeed. The players all played at once without waiting for turns, quarrelling all the while, and fighting for the hedgehogs.” ’

‘Which were being used as croquet balls. Yes, and in a very short time the Queen was in a furious passion and went stamping about and shouting “Off with his head!” ’

‘It sounds very much like an acquaintance of mine. But, to return to our own particular sphere of interest, there is the important question of the parcel containing the watch. The most obvious point, it seems to me, is that there appears to be no real evidence that it was ever delivered to the College at all. If, however, it was despatched but did not arrive, it would be interesting to find out why that was and what has become of the watch.’

‘Another thing strikes me,’ said Laura. ‘It was such a peculiar gift to send to a woman. She couldn’t wear the watch; she couldn’t even display it to much advantage. A watch isn’t like a large, eye-taking clock, or a picture, or a piece of sculpture or furniture, is it?’

‘It may have been sent her merely as a keepsake.’

‘Perhaps Sir Anthony thought she would sell it. It may have been a way of providing her with money without actually writing a cheque. I wonder how the police came by such a detailed account of the watch?’

‘Oh, Mrs Lawrence would have been bound to describe it to them when she complained that she had not received it. Sir Anthony must have sent a covering letter which gave a complete description of the gift.’

‘I suppose so. What do we do next?’

‘We arrange to interview some of the various parties who have already been interrogated by the police. I have no doubt that the High Mistress has arranged for her porters to be represented by a reputable solicitor, but I will make sure that this has been done. If necessary, I will do it myself. I am sure that the police have not sufficient evidence to charge the men either with theft or with murder, but if they believe they can make out a case against them we must see to it that their solicitor manages to get them remanded on bail. The police, I think, would agree to this, since it would give them more time in which to make further enquiries. It would not surprise me, on the other hand, if the magistrates decided that there was no case to answer, or even if the police dropped the charge. They must know, by this time, that they are on unsafe ground.’

Dame Beatrice began her enquiries with a visit to Mrs Lawrence’s landlady, who proved co-operative and eager to help.

‘For to believe as poor Mr Oates or Tom Wagstaffe did anything so wicked as stealing and murder, I simply could not bring myself,’ she said. ‘I’ve known them both from boyhood up, and it isn’t in them to act so sinful.’

It transpired, during the course of the interview, that she had not cared overmuch for Mrs Lawrence.

‘You’d have thought she was one of the dons, the way she went on. Very high and mighty she was, and with none of their quiet, ladylike ways. Nose in air, that was her. Not that she tried it on with me. I knew her parents when they kept a little bread and bun shop on the Wisden road, and her husband not what I would call a don, neither, he being only a lecturer at a college somewhere up north. Of course I only met him the once and I can’t say he struck me as much of a gentleman, if you know what I mean.’

‘Oh, really? And when did you meet him?’

‘As I told the police when they asked me, it would have been just about this time two years ago, and I never saw him before or since.’

‘Did Mrs Lawrence live here during vacations?’

‘Easter and Christmas she did, and went into College most days. Sometimes it was to get on with some work and sometimes it was to develop her photographs. She had permission to photograph the university buildings and all that, you see, both inside and out. She was doing it for the Warden of Wayneflete College, she told me, because he was writing a book. That’s how she got permissions which would not have been given to an outsider.’

‘Apart from that one visit from her husband, did she have other callers?’

‘Not gentlemen callers, although I would have had no objection, seeing she was a married woman. There was her brother, of course, but I don’t count him, and she used to have three ladies come in one evening a week for a quiet game of bridge, that’s all.’

‘Apart from her College duties and the darkroom connected with her photography, did she go out very much?’

‘Once a week to the cinema and sometimes she’d go to one of her ladyfriends to watch television. I don’t allow it here, you see.’

‘Oh, really? Why is that?’

‘I had to ban it because some of my lodgers used to have it on so loud, and that made others complain. Those that felt they must have it had to go, but I never have empty rooms for long. I’ve got a reputation for cleanliness and good cooking and a fair rent and no extras, you see. Most of my lodgers are Third Year women students and they’ve got their work to do of an evening. I don’t take the rackety sort.’

‘This is all very interesting. What did Mrs Lawrence do during the Long Vacation?’

‘She paid me a retaining fee while she was away. That was usually for four weeks. She told me she spent the four weeks with her husband. Of course he may have come here to fetch her. I wouldn’t know about that, because I generally go on my own holiday then. I’m a widow with a son living in Skegness, so I go up there to mind the two children while he and his wife go off on their own holiday.’

‘So, although you met Mrs Lawrence’s husband only once, he may have come here at other times when you were away from home? You mentioned Mrs Lawrence’s brother. Did he call here often?’

‘Not to say often, and generally on a Sunday, when, of course, she didn’t have to go over to College. He used to come about every six weeks. Come on a motor-bike, he did, and they went to the university church, St Mary’s that is, in the morning and then she paid me extra for his Sunday lunch and if it was fine they’d walk by the river or in the university parks, or maybe take a punt down the backwater. Very fond of each other they seemed.’

‘I suppose you’re sure it was her brother?’ said Laura. The woman looked affronted.

‘Of course I’m sure,’ she said. ‘Mrs Lawrence had photos of him at all ages. There was him as a schoolboy in his tasselled cap, him as a boxer in his shorts and singlet, him in a dinner-jacket with a carnation in his buttonhole and him at her wedding – not as best man, of course, but in the wedding photos standing modest on the outskirts. She told me he gave her away, as their father was dead.’

‘I wonder whether the photographs are still in her room?’ said Laura.

‘Oh, no. The police have got everything like that, and all her letters and things, and of course I’ve let her rooms, so I couldn’t show you over.’

‘Have you any idea where the brother lives?’

‘No, not really, but it couldn’t be all that far away if he could have his breakfast and get here in time for church, could it? I believe she once mentioned Lyndhurst, but I couldn’t be sure.’

‘How did the police get in touch with him? I understand that he was called upon to identify the body,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘I can’t tell you anything about that. I suppose they found letters from him among her things. I was on my holiday at the time it all happened, so I really don’t know much about it. When I came back, what a shock I got! Her murdered and buried in a nasty sack and the police everywhere, which another of my lodgers had let in and told them which were her rooms. They were locked up, of course, but the police have their ways of opening doors.’

‘I suppose she never indicated that she had an enemy?’

‘Somebody who would do her a mischief, like murdering her, you mean? Gracious me, no! This is a most respectable house! It was a stranger did it. That College is open to visitors all the Long Vacation. I reckon some nasty man not right in the head followed her into that cellar and that’s how it happened. You hear about such goings-on all the time.’

‘Well, you may hear about such goings-on all the time,’ said Laura, as she and Dame Beatrice walked back to the car-park, ‘but that brings us back to the question of why any “nasty man” should have buried the body. Lawrence or that brother of hers were the only people who would have wanted to hide it, simply because, once it was found, they would be suspected. It’s just the porters’ rotten luck about that parcel. Well, what happens now?’

‘Another interview with the Chief Constable. The Superintendent may have sent in another report by this time and I should like to know what it is.’

‘Going to pull your rank?’

‘That is a most unseemly question.’

‘So you will, if he turns sticky, but he won’t. That’s the value of having met people socially. Makes it very difficult for them to go all haughty and stand-offish when you ask them for a load of the dirt.’

‘Your intelligence is matched only by the elegance of your conversation,’ said Dame Beatrice, cackling.

‘What about the wild originality of my countenance?’ retorted Laura. ‘Let’s see; we turn left out of this car-park, don’t we? Devil take these one-way streets!’

They stopped at a call-box and Dame Beatrice rang up. The Chief Constable was at home and would be glad to see them. When they arrived they found that he had a police inspector with him.

‘The Super has been taken off the rather weak case involving the College porters,’ he said, ‘to deal with a bank break-in.’

‘A bank robbery is a much more important matter than a mere murder, of course,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I believe the two men have been remanded on bail. The case against them is hardly strong enough for them to be in custody.’

‘There’s the matter of them having a key to the cellar and the fact that the parcel containing a valuable watch has not turned up,’ said the inspector, a young man with a red face and a pugnacious jaw. ‘We need to keep the tabs on them.’

‘Ah, yes, these keys to the cellar,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Has Mrs Lawrence’s own key been found?’

‘Yes, ma’am, it was on the body. Proves it was one of the porters, seems to me. All our enquiries show that they were the only people, except Mrs Lawrence herself, who had access. Not even the High Mistress had a key. They only had Mrs Lawrence’s key cut so’s she could use part of the cellar as a dark-room. The fellow who did it must have used his own key, else why was her own key still on the body?’

‘But surely the murderer could have returned the key to the body before he buried her, could he not?’

‘Well, I suppose he could, ma’am, but why should he? We don’t believe her own key had anything to do with it. I mean, how could any stranger have been able to follow her into the cellar without being spotted? That’s why I plump for one of the porters. How could anybody else have got in?’

‘Quite easily, I imagine. I don’t suppose she locked the door of her darkroom while she was inside it.’

‘That gate is in the porter’s line of vision all the time, though ma’am.’

‘All the time except when his vision is directed elsewhere. A porter’s lodge is a place of comings and goings, Inspector. The porter’s attention must often be claimed and therefore distracted. Moreover, the murder, it seems, must have taken place at the beginning of the Long Vacation. Well, during the Long Vacation, visitors are freely admitted to the College grounds. There would be no embargo on a quietly behaved, apparently respectable person gaining entrance to Bessie’s Quad when he or she knew that Mrs Lawrence was in her cellar darkroom. By watching for an opportunity and then descending into the depths while the porter’s attention was elsewhere…’

‘She’d have heard the murderer and screamed out, ma’am, and if the porter on duty was innocent of the crime, he’d have heard her and come down the cellar steps to investigate.’

‘Have you stationed a woman constable in the cellar and instructed her to scream, so that you could find out whether that scream could be heard in the porter’s lodge?’

‘No, ma’am,’ replied the inspector, assuming a wooden expression. ‘We didn’t think it necessary.’

‘You preferred to suspect the porters and leave it at that?’

‘Look, we’re certain one of ’em did it, ma’am. Our job is to find out which one, that’s all.’

‘It may be “all” from the police point of view. It certainly is not “all ” from mine. However, I doubt whether any scream emanated from the victim. The attack would have been sudden and the killing mercifully swift. It is not the easiest thing in the world, in any case, to scream loudly enough to attract attention when one’s head is pulled violently backward and the assailant’s knee, most probably, is in the small of one’s back. Besides, absorbed in her task, the victim may not even have heard her assailant come down the cellar steps.’

‘Very well, ma’am. You don’t need to labour the point. Perhaps we haven’t looked quite far enough. When we found her husband had an unbreakable alibi, you see, there was nobody left but the porters and we knew she’d had some bitter words with them because of the missing parcel.’

‘I will ask you another question, Inspector, if I may.’

He looked resigned; then, to his credit, he grinned.

‘Don’t mind me, ma’am,’ he said.

‘Well, have the police asked themselves why the murderer removed the body from the cellar and interred it in the cloister garth?’

‘Why, that’s an easy one, ma’am. He couldn’t just leave it in the cellar. I reckon it had begun to niff a bit by the time he moved it.’

‘Yes, that is true, but, you know, Inspector, the only time the porters needed to go into that cellar seems to have been when the deck-chairs had to be brought out for the High Mistress’s annual garden-party. If one of the porters was the murderer, would he not have removed the body long before that? – or are you assuming that both porters are guilty?’

‘We still don’t know what happened to that parcel, ma’am.’

‘And if both are guilty, why move the body at all? Nobody used the cellar except themselves and Mrs Lawrence. What is important, as I have said before – but it will bear repetition – is that the parcel which disappeared was never proved to have been delivered at the porters’ lodge at all. Besides, it would be interesting to know why it was not sent to the victim’s lodgings. One would have thought that a gift such as a valuable watch would have been sent straight there rather than to the College.’

‘Yes, indeed, ma’am, but the donor, the old gentleman who sent the watch, is gone where he can’t be questioned.’

‘Unfortunately that is so. You have questioned his servants, of course?’

‘Yes, ma’am, but they recollect little of the matter, except that, if such a parcel was sent, none of them was told to get it registered.’

‘What about Mr Lawrence, the husband, Sir Anthony’s heir?’

‘He reckons to know nothing about the watch and, as you will have been told, we’ve checked his alibi for the time the doctors think the murder took place and it stands up, there’s no doubt about that. He’d come back from Norfolk and was with the old gentleman when he died and then went back to his digs up north, where his landlady swears he stayed put until well after the murder.’

‘Alibis are like promises and pie-crust,’ said Laura, when they had parted from the inspector. ‘We ought to get on to that rascally College scout and turn him inside out about that meeting between Lawrence and Coralie St Malo.’

‘If it was Coralie St Malo whom he met in that public house,’ said Dame Beatrice suddenly. ‘Have you ever visited Blackpool?’

‘No. My education has been faulty, I’m afraid.’

‘A matter which can readily be adjusted. Let us set out tomorrow for the famous resort.’

‘Then we had better set out this afternoon for the Stone House to collect a few necessities and I’d better ring up and engage a couple of rooms in Blackpool. Have you a favourite hotel?’

‘No, I have never been to Blackpool. My education has been as deficient as your own.’

‘The hotels may be full in a place like that at this time of year.’

‘That we can soon find out when we get home. We have a guide to hotels and the telephone is at our disposal.’

‘And we’d better stay the night at a half-way house; not that I can’t manage the distance in one day, but…’

‘Yes, a two-day journey will be more enjoyable in every way.’

Laura, however was fated not to make the journey to Blackpool. A telephone message to the Stone House informed her that measles had broken out at her daughter’s boarding school and that all pupils who were not affected were being sent home and should be met at Waterloo railway station.

Before they left the inspector, Dame Beatrice had obtained from him the name of the concert party which enjoyed Coralie St Malo’s services and Dame Beatrice’s official card sent in at the morning rehearsal brought a beaming Coralie round to the hotel for lunch.

She was somewhat of a surprise. She was a big woman, quietly dressed, and her make-up was discreet; also, although she spoke in a rather strident, self-assertive voice, her manners would have passed muster anywhere. She appeared to be about thirty years old and she gave an impression of toughness and natural self-confidence. She refused a cocktail and drank very little wine with her meal. They took this at twelve-thirty so that she could get back in good time for the afternoon performance.

‘That heel?’ she said, when Dame Beatrice introduced Lawrence’s name. ‘Yes, I met him and we had a drink together. He wanted to re-marry me, but I thought, “Once bitten, twice shy”. He said he was coming into a lot of money and couldn’t we try to make a go of it again.’

‘Re-marry?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

‘Yes, of all the impudence.’

‘You mean that you had been divorced?’

‘I’ll say! I divorced him at the end of the time allowed for desertion. The suit was undefended. That’s why you won’t have heard of it, I expect.’

‘You know, of course, that he had married a Miss Caret?’

‘Told me his divorce from her was pending. Instead, he cut her throat.’

‘There is surely no evidence of that?’

‘Who needs evidence? You’ve only got to know him. My belief is he did in that poor old gentleman, Sir Anthony, too, who was always so good to him.’

‘Oh, you knew Sir Anthony, did you?’

‘Of course not. Thaddy – he didn’t like me shortening his name, but how can you be expected to call anybody Thaddeus? – it wasn’t his real name, anyway. Well, Thaddy wouldn’t ever let me meet Sir Anthony. Kept me dark because I was common, you see. Thought perhaps he wouldn’t get Sir Anthony’s money if the old gentleman found out he’d married somebody on the concert-party stage and, like a fool, I played along with it and let him go off up north where he said he’d send for me when he’d saved enough to put down on a little house. Well, of course, that never came off, so when the time was up I divorced him for desertion and irretrievable breakdown, as they call it, but I didn’t know that in the meantime he’d taken up with this Caret girl. I found that out later.’

‘So his marriage to Miss Caret might have been bigamous if it took place before you divorced him?’

‘I suppose so. I wished her joy of him when I found out, which wasn’t until after my divorce, and much joy she’s had, poor girl, with her throat cut and buried in a nasty, dirty sack!’

‘I am interested in your opinion that Lawrence is a murderer. May I ask what may seem to be an impertinent and very personal question, Miss St Malo?’ said Dame Beatrice. Coralie looked anxious and, for the first time during the interview, her self-confidence seemed to falter.

‘I don’t take offence where there’s no call for it,’ she said, twisting her hands together.

‘Thank you. We – the police and I – were told that after the meeting at the public house near Bicester you invited Mr Lawrence to your lodgings, where he stayed for about an hour.’

‘He drove me home from the Bicester pub, same as he drove me out there, but I never asked him in and he never came in. Who told you he did?’ Her tone was sharper than before.

‘One of the scouts at Wayneflete College. At least, he is no longer in service there. He resigned because of an accusation made against him by Mr Lawrence.’

‘Oh, Alf Bird! He’s a snout and a liar. Everybody knows that. Never happy unless he’s got hold of some tit-bit of muck about somebody. He’s the original Little-Bird-Told-Me. Thaddy took me up to my front door, took my key like the gentleman he always pretended to be, let me in and then handed back the key and drove off. Bird was just spreading dirt, as usual.’

‘Could be true, I suppose,’ said Laura, when Dame Beatrice, brought back to Stone House by her chauffeur George, had given an account of the interview. ‘Shall you see this man Bird?’

‘At this stage it would be useless. He will repeat his story, whether it is true or not. Miss St Malo herself may be lying. Some of the time, in fact, I am sure she was. The next thing, as I see it, is to find that watch. Even if one of the porters did steal it – a matter difficult of credence in the case of men who held a position of such trust – it cannot still be in the possession of either Oates or Wagstaffe.’

‘No. I imagine their hut and their homes have had a pretty fair going-over by the police, and if either of them had sold or popped the watch locally, that would have come out long before this. Are you proposing to go and look for the watch yourself?’

‘No,’ replied Dame Beatrice, pretending to take the question seriously. ‘That would be beyond my scope, I fear. I shall suggest to the Chief Constable that he put it to the inspector that another attempt be made to extract information from old Sir Anthony’s servants. It would not surprise me to learn that the watch was never posted at all, but was stolen from Sir Anthony’s own house.’

‘By Lawrence?’

‘According to Ferdinand’s report of his conversations with the Warden of Wayneflete College, it would be quite in keeping with Lawrence’s reputation. But, to turn to a pleasanter subject, what have you done with my rusticated god-daughter? I expected and hoped to find her here.’

‘Sorry, but I wasn’t sure how much we’d be here ourselves while this business was still going on, so as it is so near her school summer holiday I’ve shipped her up to my brother and his wife in Scotland. She was due to go there in a few days’ time, anyway.’

‘I am sorry to have missed her, but perhaps she is safer out of the way.’

‘Safer?’

‘I do not like this particular murder.’

‘I see. You mean we don’t need to offer hostages to fortune and all that. It hadn’t occurred to me that the murderer might know that we are interesting ourselves in his affairs.’