Fault in the Structure

CHAPTER 11

« ^ »

Off he goes, as nimble as a tadpole,

Only more bullet-headed.

Laura, fortified by her holiday, settled down readily and happily again at the Stone House, her days filled with interesting and pleasurable occupations; but she needed very little sleep and during the wakeful watches of the night she turned her thoughts time and again to the murder of the second Mrs Lawrence and to Lawrence’s abortive visit to Dame Beatrice.

One morning, when Dame Beatrice’s manuscript was typed and had been posted, she said at breakfast:

‘There must be some way of breaking Lawrence’s alibi.’

‘Unless he committed the murder, he does not need an alibi, dear child.’

‘I don’t like that visit he paid you when George and I were both away. I think he’s our murderer all right and if only that alibi isn’t an alibi at all, the police ought to be in a position to charge him.’

‘I believe him to be the murderer of old Sir Anthony, and I think Mrs Lawrence had some evidence of this. I believe he may have wanted to kill her, and I believe he was the prowler with the sack who buried her, but I do not believe he carried out the actual murder. I believe he was capable of poisoning Mrs Lawrence; I do not believe he was capable of cutting her throat. Now that I have met him I believe it even less than I did when I had his early history from Ferdinand, who got it from the Warden of Wayneflete.’

‘All the same, I’d like to have a go at that landlady of his, to see whether I couldn’t break her down.’

‘You are hardly likely to succeed where the police have failed.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Woman to woman might dig up some information which wouldn’t have been given to a male copper, don’t you think?’

‘I hardly know what reason you could give for calling upon and questioning her.’

‘I bet I could think of something. Anyway, I won’t attempt to go up there so soon after Lawrence’s visit to you. I think that at present the more able-bodied citizens we have in and about this house, the better prepared we shall be if he has any rough stuff in mind.’

‘He hardly gave that impression,’ said Dame Beatrice. The next news came from the Warden of Wayneflete himself. It was relayed to the Stone House by Sir Ferdinand. He telephoned his mother to ask whether he might come to dinner and stay the night, as he was defending in Winchester on the following day.

‘I shall put up at the Domus after that, while the case lasts, to be handy for the court,’ he said, ‘but it does seem a good opportunity to come and see you, if you can have me.’

The news he brought was interesting and, in Dame Beatrice’s opinion, significant. Sir Ferdinand himself regarded it as having a somewhat humorous aspect.

‘These smart-Alecs,’ he said, ‘they will do it, you know, even if their solicitors advise against it. What they expect to get out of it, I don’t know.’

‘Of what do we speak, my dear boy?’

‘This insane decision to go for jury trial instead of biting the bullet on what the magistrates dish out. This lunatic would have got off with four months at the most if he’d opted for summary conviction. As it is, the judge has given him two years.’

‘And his offence?’

‘Drunken driving.’

‘And who is this rash speculator? I gather it is somebody we know.’

‘Our friend Thaddeus E. Lawrence, none other. Even going before a judge he might have got off more lightly except that, before sentence was passed, he decided to turn cheeky and called the judge “you misbegotten bastard by Colonel Blimp out of the Band of Hope”. That cooked his goose, of course, and to clinch it he biffed his warder.’

‘I wish I’d heard him say it,’ remarked Laura. ‘I wouldn’t have believed he was such a sportsman. So he’s behind bars for two years, is he? Less, if he behaves himself, of course.’

‘I fancy there is method in his madness,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘At least in prison he will be safe from his enemies and from the hand of all that hate him.’

Laura looked at her employer with astonishment.

‘You mean he feels we’re on his track and may be getting warm?’ she asked. ‘I didn’t think that, up to the present, we’d managed to get anything on him which would stick. You must have said something which frightened him pretty badly when he called on you.’

‘Oh, it is not I and it is not the police he fears. My reading of the matter is that he is being pursued by an avenger and that he sees prison as his only chance to put off an evil day. There is a porpoise close behind him, or so I think. He must be in fear of his life to have chosen prison as his only safe hiding-place.’

‘Elucidate, mother,’ said Ferdinand.

‘Well, as I have been known to suggest, the relationship between brothers and sisters is a strange one.’

‘And Mrs Lawrence had a brother,’ said Laura. ‘Yes, but, according to the folklore of the Border ballads, brothers don’t kill their sisters’ husbands, only their boyfriends or the sisters themselves. See “Clerk Saunders” and “The Cruel Brother”.’

‘Six of the seven brothers were unwilling to murder Clerk Saunders,’ Dame Beatrice pointed out, ‘and, in the case of the cruel brother, we are given to understand that it was pique which caused him to stab his sister to death. He had not been consulted about the marriage or asked for his consent to it. We are told of the prospective bridegroom:

He has sought her from her father, the King

And sae did he her mither, the Queen.

He has sought her from her sister Anne;

But he has forgot her brother John.

With good reason, perhaps.’

‘Knowing that John would have refused his consent and that might have ditched the marriage, you mean? Do you think Mrs L’s brother objected to her marriage?’

‘At any rate, he appears to have had an affectionate regard for her. You will remember our hearing of frequent visits, walks and boating. If he thinks Lawrence had any hand in her death he well might meditate upon revenge.’

‘And that’s what you think Lawrence knows?’

‘According to what Ferdinand has just told us, it seems very likely.’

‘Yes, he’s an offensive little swine in private life,’ said Sir Ferdinand, ‘but I would say that his outburst in court was so uncharacteristic that I’m sure my mother is right and that he was determined to get himself jugged.’

‘But that could mean the brother knows something against him,’ said Laura.

‘It cannot be anything he can prove, or surely he would have gone to the police with it,’ said Sir Ferdinand. ‘Besides, if mother is right – and I’m sure she is – Lawrence fears private vengeance. Actually, I feel pretty sure that he is not the murderer, although he well may be the accessory after the fact. It looks to me as though the actual killing was done by an accomplice who then left Lawrence’s flat.’

‘How long do you expect your case at Winchester to last? Shall we see you again when it is over? ’ Dame Beatrice enquired.

‘Yes, thanks, mother. The wife of my bosom has taken her own mother to Madeira for a period of convalescence, so I’d like to drop by again, if I may. By my reading, my case should last the best part of a week or maybe longer. It’s a little matter of theft followed by death. My client stole from a warehouse and, interrupted by the night watchman, hit the latter and killed him. The prosecution will quote R. v. Jones, of course, when Jones was convicted of murdering a store-manager and had his appeal dismissed. There was a reasonable doubt, in my opinion, whether Jones intended to do more than disable the manager of the store which he had burgled, but I doubt whether, in the case I am defending, I can do any better than a verdict of manslaughter, although I shall do my best to “soften the evidence”, as that rascal Peachum would say.’

‘The murder of Mrs Lawrence could hardly boil down to a charge of manslaughter,’ said Laura. ‘It was deliberate murder, premeditated, workmanlike and callous.’

Chief Superintendent Nicholl looked dubious.

‘But if it’s a proper question, Mrs Gavin,’ he said, ‘what do you expect to get at his landlady’s?’

‘I’m hoping to break down his alibi for the week Mrs Lawrence was murdered.’

‘Well, I wish you more luck than we’ve had.’

‘Woman to woman, and all that kind of thing, you know. What sort of woman is she?’

‘A most respectable old party. Has let rooms to the College for years and never a breath against her. If you don’t mind me saying so, Mrs Gavin, ma’am, I think you’ll be wasting your time.’

‘We’ll see. You never know.’

She drove off blithely to the address he had given her, but her visit proved to be as abortive as the superintendent had prophesied. Lawrence’s lodgings were in a much larger house than Laura had envisaged. It was a solidly built, three-storey Victorian mansion, well maintained; it had a neat front garden, a polished brass knocker, doorbell and letter-flap, and in answer to her ring the front door was opened by a maid capped and aproned and with a well-scrubbed, fresh-complexioned face. This girl stood politely awaiting the caller’s opening remarks.

Laura produced Dame Beatrice’s official card with her own name added to it in Dame Beatrice’s handwriting.

‘I wonder whether I could speak to Mrs Breaston?’ she said.

‘Come inside, madam, please. I’ll go and ask. Would it be about a room? – because I don’t believe we have a vacancy.’

‘Oh? Has Mr Lawrence’s room been re-let, then?’ asked Laura, who had not foreseen such a useful opening to her visit.

‘I’ll speak to Mrs Breaston, madam, if you’ll kindly take a seat.’

There was a small table in the hall with a chair at either end of it. Laura sat down and was not kept waiting. Mrs Breaston reminded Laura of nobody so much as of the enigmatic housekeeper at Manderley. She was a tall ramrod of a woman dressed all in black. She glided like a fictional nun and carried her hands clasped just below her waist. She was decorated with a large cameo brooch and a long gold chain at the end of which Laura could see a gold cross. Her hair was strained into a small bun at the back of her neck and she wafted before her a faint odour of aniseed.

‘I have no vacancies,’ she said, ‘but your card hardly suggests that you need one. The Home Office? Are you connected with the police force? If so, I am going to complain to my Member of Parliament. I really must protest about being badgered in this way.’

‘I am not a member of the police force, neither have I any intention of badgering you, Mrs Breaston. Did you know that Mr Lawrence has been sent to prison for dangerous driving?’

‘I have no wish to hear Mr Lawrence’s name spoken.’

‘I suppose he did leave you rather suddenly. Was he up-to-date with his rent?’

‘I have no complaints about that. Perhaps we had better go into my sitting-room. The servants are all ears.’ She led the way along the hall and opened a door. The room was papered in a gloomy shade of red which (thought Laura) would have been handy for covering up bloodstains. The curtains were red and so was the carpet, and such light as penetrated to the room came in through the slats of a Venetian blind. ‘Please be seated,’ the landlady continued. ‘Now what is your business here?’

‘If Mr Lawrence’s name is not to be mentioned, I can hardly answer that question.’

‘You say Mr Lawrence is in prison?’

‘Yes, for drunken driving and for insulting the judge.’

‘That astonishes me. I would not have thought he had the courage for either misdemeanour.’

‘Did you ever hear him mention a woman named Coralie St Malo?’

‘She sounds like an adventuress,’ commented Mrs Breaston remaining within the period which she and her sitting-room so ably represented.

‘She’s on the concert-party stage. At present she is playing in Blackpool.’

‘I know of no such person.’

‘Did Mr Lawrence have any women visitors while he was with you?’

‘He gave extra coaching to one or two of the female students, but one could hardly call them women visitors and, of course, I saw to it that they left at a reasonable hour. Supper here is at nine. They were always out of this house before that. What is more, if only one young woman at a time was involved, I sat in the room while the tutoring was going on. I thought it only right.’

‘I see. Had you any idea that Mr Lawrence was not going to renew his tenancy after the end of the summer term?’

‘Mr Lawrence was under notice to go.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘I discovered that he was having improper relations with one of my maids.’

‘Oh, dear!’

‘Of course that sealed his fate – and hers.’

‘I suppose so – yes. You can be certain that he was here…’

‘As I have already told the police, Mr Lawrence left this house on May twenty-fourth, having no more lectures to deliver, although it was not, strictly speaking, the end of the term, and he returned here, by my permission, in order to collect the rest of his possessions and work out his notice. I have not seen him since and have no wish to set eyes on him again.’

‘Well, I don’t suppose you will, Mrs Breaston. He has been given a two-year prison sentence. Now, those last nights after his return, he was in this house all the time, I suppose?’

‘He was.’

‘May I ask how you can be so sure?’

‘I kept my eye on him every day and my ears open.’

‘Can you be certain he did not slip out at night?’

‘Yes,’ said the landlady grimly, ‘that I can. I trusted him so little that I had all his possessions moved into the room next to mine. Since you appear to have official standing, I will show you how I can be certain he did not leave my house. Not that I should have been concerned about that. It was his morals inside my house which concerned me.’

She led the way majestically from the room and up the well-carpeted stairs. She unlocked a door on the landing.

‘This is your bedroom, I take it,’ said Laura, looking around.

‘That is so.’ The landlady traversed the room and opened a door which communicated with it. ‘And this is where I put Mr Lawrence with the door between us securely bolted on my side of it. You will notice that there is no other method of egress from this room. I always dressed early, tidied my room and then unbolted the communicating door.’

Laura walked over to what had been Lawrence’s bedroom window during his last short stay in the house, a stay which, according to the medical evidence, must have covered the period during which the murder of Mrs Lawrence had taken place. There was a sheer drop of more than thirty feet on to a stone courtyard. ‘He could have buried the body but not committed the murder,’ thought Laura.

‘I am sorry, but not surprised, that you had your journey for nothing,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘Well, it wasn’t quite for nothing, because I’ve satisfied myself that Lawrence must be in the clear so far as the actual murder of Mrs Lawrence is concerned. We know he went to Wayneflete College, where Sir Ferdinand spoke to him about the money that was embezzled, and Mrs Lawrence certainly wasn’t killed while he was there.’

‘No. The session at her university was not over, so she certainly would have been missed if she hadn’t turned up at Abbesses College during the last few days of term.’

‘Then we know that Lawrence spent a week with Sir Anthony in Norfolk. His alibi is clear for that time, too, and also for the five days which followed, for these included all the arrangements for Sir Anthony’s funeral and also the funeral itself. Still, according to Miss Runmede’s evidence, Lawrence may be covered for his wife’s murder, but he isn’t cleared of that business of the sack and the cloister garth. That means he had guilty knowledge of the murder, even if he didn’t commit it. For long enough we have been agreed upon that.’

‘Coralie St Malo?’ said Chief Superintendent Nicholl who, having cleared up his bank robbery, was now pursuing what he thought was a dead end. ‘Oh, I don’t know about that, Mrs Gavin. We’ve nothing on her at all. There’s no motive and we haven’t found the murder weapon. It’s buried deep in the river mud, we reckon. Except that it was probably a cut-throat razor, or so Forensic tell us, we know nothing about it, although, of course, we’re still making enquiries. If it was a cut-throat razor it must have been somebody’s family heirloom. Nobody buys such things nowadays, so there’s no point in trying the shops, although, of course, we’ve had a go.’

‘Coralie could have had opportunity, though,’ urged Laura. ‘She could have been in the neighbourhood at about the time of the murder.’

‘She met Lawrence in that pub before the murder was committed, and that’s all we know, Mrs Gavin. But we’ll keep the tabs on her, of course. All the same, this wasn’t a woman’s crime.’

‘Clytemnestra did in Agamemnon with an axe; Lizzie Borden finished off her parents, ditto; Constance Kent was accused of cutting her little brother’s throat, Procne killed and cooked her son…’

‘All very mythical, Mrs Gavin. Nobody knows whether it was Lizzie Borden or not. As for Constance Kent, there’s never been any doubt in my mind that it was the father who cut the child’s throat. After all, he’d slept with the nursemaid in the same room as the little boy. It only needed for the kid to wake up and start asking awkward questions. Constance was at the self-sacrificing age and so decided to carry the can. That’s my reading of it.’ He looked at Dame Beatrice for confirmation of this view. ‘You know all about psychology, ma’am. What’s your view about Constance Kent?’

‘She may have wished her half-brother dead,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘and that, in a neurotic adolescent, may have induced a feeling of guilt for which she felt expiation was appropriate.’

‘Well, what about Coralie St Malo?’ persisted Laura. ‘According to the description Dame Beatrice gave me, she was big enough and strong enough to have done the deed, yes, and tough enough, too, and probably insanely jealous, into the bargain.’

‘We shall be pursuing our enquiries, Mrs Gavin,’ said Nicholl, soothingly.

‘What do you think?’ asked Laura, when she and Dame Beatrice were alone again.

‘I think Lawrence and Miss St Malo might be well advised to re-marry,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘unless Miss St Malo joins a concert party ready and willing to go to South America and stay there.’

‘In other words, those of the scoundrel Peachum to the scoundrel Lockit, Lawrence and Coralie are in the position, you think, of having to admit; unless they marry again, “You know we have it in our power to hang each other.” And that’s about the size of it, so far as culpability is concerned. Coralie did the dirty work and Lawrence buried the body. I suppose it was a case of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.’

‘It was Macbeth who wielded the dagger, if you remember. The play is not an analogy for the murder of Mrs Lawrence.’

‘So what?’

‘So, between them, Lawrence and Miss St Malo were responsible for Mrs Lawrence’s death and burial, but I do not think that will ever be proved.’

As though to confirm this prophecy, the spy who had trailed Coralie and Lawrence to the Bicester road public house was found dead in a ditch “with twenty trenched gashes on his head”, the result, the police concluded, of a brawl. His assailants were never brought to book.