Spotted Hemlock

chapter five

The Corpse Speaks in Riddles

‘Ernest remarked that the flamingo had feet formed for running like swans and for swimming like geese, and he was astonished that the two faculties were given to the same individual.’

Ibid.

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One of the many phenomena of the Atomic Age is the curious process of osmosis which has taken place in the speech-forms of the sexes. In earlier but still comparatively modern times, the remark, ‘Good Lord! It’s poor old Palliser!’ would have justified a student, given such an exclamation out of context, in stating, without hesitation, that the speaker must be male. The remark had been made, however, by an insensitive and inquisitive student named Diana Coots, as she stared incredulously at the huddled body.

‘We’d better phone the college,’ said a hesitant voice, ‘and tell them to send a doctor, or something.’

‘Miss McKay…’ began the realist who had named the corpse; but she was cried down. The nearest telephone was the one at the inn, but, for obvious reasons, the students were not anxious to make a connection there.

‘I’ll go to that house just inside the Highpepper gates,’ volunteered a student named Jones. (Later, when the numbing effect of shock had worn off, she wondered why she had felt so efficient and so calm.) ‘It belongs to one of the lecturers, so he’s sure to be on the phone.’

Unfortunately he was not in and the house was locked up, so, buoyed up by the knowledge that the occasion was one of crisis and great importance, she braved the portals of Highpepper Hall and soon found herself opposite the pigeonhole which communicated with the secretary’s office. Breathlessly she explained her need and her mission. The secretary, a curiously, but perhaps necessarily, cold-blooded young woman of twenty-eight, put a call through to the nearest police station and then to the Calladale doctor, whose telephone number Miss Jones, her brain still ice-cold from shock, happened to know and to recollect.

‘And now,’ said Miss Jones, ‘I’d better ring up the college.’

The college, in the persons of Miss McKay and Dame Beatrice, in the latter’s powerful car, beat the police by ten minutes and the doctor, because he was out on his afternoon round, by more than an hour. Dame Beatrice, therefore, was enabled to obtain a short but uninterrupted first sight of the body. This, although interesting, was of no great help because it was not her province to move it.

She closed the door of the coach upon the poor, huddled remains and withdrew Miss McKay from their vicinity.

‘There will have to be a post-mortem medical examination, of course,’ she said. ‘So far as I could see there is no external injury sufficient to cause death, but until the body can be moved we cannot be sure of that.’

‘It couldn’t be suicide, or she would never have been found in such a strange place,’ said Miss McKay. ‘I’m so thankful you could come back to us. You are a tower of strength. It looks like foul play to me. But who would wish to injure the girl? Our students are utterly harmless.’

‘Let us speak to the group over there. They have had a severe shock, and so may make available to us some information which, in cooler moments, they might prefer to keep to themselves.’

Miss McKay, uncertain as to the ethics of this opportunist theory, nevertheless saw its usefulness.

‘This is no time to withhold information,’ she agreed. ‘Will you bounce it out of them, or shall I?’

‘Perhaps, if you would begin, I could put a question or two later on, as the spirit moves.’

‘Yes, that would be best. I shall resign to you, then, as soon as you think you have a lead.’ She marched up to the huddled little group. ‘Now,’ she said briskly, ‘you must tell us all that you can. First of all, who found out where she was?’

‘I did,’ said a Miss Brander. ‘I opened the door and lifted up the rags—those on the grass—and there it was.’

‘There were several of us round the coach,’ said Miss Jones, ‘but Brander was the one who opened up.’

‘I actually recognised who it was, I think,’ said Miss Coots, ‘as soon as Brander did.’

‘Ah,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘How was that, Student?’

Miss McKay, recognising her cue, nodded.

‘Well, the college blazer. You couldn’t mistake it,’ Miss Coots explained.

‘Of course not. So, seeing the badge on the blazer pocket…’

‘I just called out that it was Miss Palliser.’

‘Ah, yes. On the strength of the badge.’

‘Well,’ said Miss Jones, ‘it would stand to reason, Dame Beatrice.’ She seemed about to go on when a surreptitious kick from Miss Coots silenced her.

‘True, child. And now—since all sins’—Dame Beatrice, who had seen the warning kick administered, glanced at Miss McKay, who nodded—‘must of necessity be swallowed up by death, exactly what were you all up to that you opened the coach door at all?’

Miss McKay tactfully moved out of earshot and Miss Hopkins, as the organiser of the expedition, stepped forward. She pointed to the sacks of rhubarb crowns which were lying near the wheels of the coach.

‘We’d planned a rhubarb rag on Highpepper,’ she confessed. ‘The crowns are in those sacks. We’re certain they ragged us—with dead rats, too, as well as rhubarb!—and we thought we’d get our own back, that’s all.’

‘What was the plan of campaign? You could scarce hope to garden in mid-afternoon on the Highpepper estates.’

‘No. That was the point of the coach. We thought we’d stack the crowns inside until—until — ”

‘Until opportunity offered,’ concluded Dame Beatrice, with graceful tact. ‘All is explained, I see.’

‘I hope—I mean, it was all my idea in the first place,’ blurted out Miss Hopkins. ‘Nobody else is to blame.’

‘Here come the police,’ said Dame Beatrice.

The Superintendent excused the delay by stating that the local sergeant had referred the finding of the body to headquarters, as was only right and proper. He added that he might as well take a look, but that nothing could be done until his photographer and the police doctor came along. He glanced at the group of students.

‘I understand that one of the young ladies found the body,’ he observed. ‘I might as well be taking her statement.’ He opened the door of the coach and looked inside. ‘Very decayed,’ he said, with disapproval. ‘It won’t be a nice job, that post-mortem won’t. Rats have been at her, what’s more. Identification won’t be very easy.’

‘Unfortunately, it will be all too easy,’ said Miss McKay. ‘One of my students has been missing for the past three weeks or more, as I thought you knew. The police, I thought, had been trying to trace her.’

‘Oh, ah, of course, madam. Then that will be your college blazer she’s got on?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Well, perhaps if I could get a statement from the young lady who found her…’

‘More or less, they all found her, Superintendent. I may add that I fancy they did so because of a misguided attempt at ragging, but, of course, I don’t know.’

‘Well, the young gentlemen here at Highpepper borrowed the coach on one occasion,’ said the Superintendent, ‘so why not your young ladies? The equality of the sexes—isn’t that what they’re brought up to believe in nowadays? But this is a bad business—a very bad business.’ He shook his head lugubriously. ‘Perhaps you’d better get the ladies back to college. I’ll take their statements there.’

The body bore no signs of violence and the autopsy revealed no disease in any of the vital organs.

‘Poison,’ said Dame Beatrice, whose formidable medical degrees and whose official connection with the Home Office had obtained readily for her a permission to be present at the whole of the post-mortem examination, ‘and by one of the alkaloids, I should say.’

‘My opinion exactly,’ said a man named Clotford, in charge of the college laboratory. ‘Coniine, my bet.’ He also had obtained permission to be present. Both were now back in college.

‘Coniine?’ Dame Beatrice nodded.

‘More than likely. Anyhow, the organs will have to be Stas-Otto-ed if they’re to isolate the alkaloid. But coniine is a pretty good bet. Easy to get hold of, round here.’

‘The spotted hemlock, no doubt.’

‘Yes. Got it mixed up with some vegetable or other. Or, rather, somebody got it mixed up for her. On the face of it, I’d be inclined to say this was murder. Why else should she have been put into the coach?’

‘She could have been taken ill along the road and crawled into it to sit or lie down. She could have died in some innocent person’s car and been dumped when this person panicked. She could have taken the stuff, knowing it to be poison, and crept into the coach to die. Of these hypotheses, two are, of course, untenable, and another is highly unlikely.’

‘Oh?’

‘You did not see the inside of the coach after the body had been removed, but I did. There were no signs of vomiting and—there were no rats. I searched carefully, and so did the police, although I don’t know that we were looking for the same things.’

‘But the theory that she might have died in someone’s car and been dumped would still hold water. Why is it so unlikely?’ asked Miss McKay, later on when she and Dame Beatrice were discussing the tragedy and Mr Clotford had returned to duty.

‘Because, if she was dumped in the coach, she was dumped somewhere else first. There’s not much doubt but that the rats got at the body before it was put into the coach. Somebody has guilty knowledge of how that girl died.’

Carey, brought into consultation later, pointed out that the root of the spotted hemlock could be mistaken for parsnip, its growth of leaves for parsley.

‘You must remember that she was a student at an agricultural college,’ said his aunt. ‘She wouldn’t be likely to confuse things of that sort, would she?’

‘True enough. What, then, do you suspect?’

‘Foul play, of course. What else?’

‘Are you sure it couldn’t be suicide?’ Carey persisted.

‘There are easier ways of killing oneself. Death by most forms of poisoning is not a painless one, and death by spotted hemlock, though not to be compared with the agonies of taking the roots of the water hemlock, is very, very unpleasant. The symptoms of taking water hemlock are burning in mouth and throat, abdominal pains, nausea, palpitations, vertigo and brief fainting fits, followed by the most terrible convulsions at intervals of about fifteen minutes. Unless counter-measures are taken before the second of these convulsions, during which the patient screams, vomits and grinds his teeth, death follows as a matter of course. Poisoning by spotted hemlock is a paralytic illness, and quite often asphyxiation is caused by respiratory paralysis, although circulation remains comparatively normal. Of course, most of the cases one gets are those of children who have experimentally chewed the stuff, which looks and tastes rather like parsley, as you say.’

‘Children will chew anything,’ remarked Miss McKay, ‘in spite of all they are told in schools. We have water hemlock in one of the college ponds, and the spotted hemlock is of fairly wide distribution round here, but it has done flowering by now. It flowers in June and July. One relates it to Ancient Greece. Did not Socrates die from drinking an infusion of spotted hemlock?’

‘Yes, so we are told. Unfortunately for this poor girl, spotted hemlock is at its most deadly at this time of year, and we may suppose that her murderer knew it. But are you not rather rash to allow the water hemlock to grow on land where cattle are kept? The common name for water hemlock is the cowbane.’

‘To tell you the truth, I noticed it only the other day, when I was taking a short cut back to college. I think I will have it uprooted and burnt. Not that cattle are ever put into that particular field. You don’t mean that, after all, poor Miss Palliser took water hemlock and not spotted hemlock, do you?’

‘No, no. But have you an expert on poisonous plants, either a member of staff or a student? If so, I should be glad to make use of her specialised knowledge.’

‘Nobody, so far as I know. Ah, wait a moment! I believe the dead student herself had made some experiments. I must ask Mr Clotford. He will know. Well, now, Dame Beatrice, you’ve told us the symptoms and course of death by taking the water hemlock. How about the symptoms of poisoning by spotted hemlock? You did say it was a paralytic illness…’

‘Before I answer that, I think I ought to inform you, Miss McKay, that Miss Palliser was no longer Miss Palliser; she was a Mrs Coles. Moreover, I should have taken the body to be that of a woman of at least thirty. It is very odd.’

‘Oh, I guessed she had married,’ said the Principal, calmly. ‘Our students do, from time to time, before they have finished their course. When she disappeared, it occurred to me very soon that she might have gone to her husband. Do the police suspect him of the murder?’

‘They know of his existence. I wrote to him, and, in his acknowledgment of my letter he said that he had put himself immediately in touch with them, informing them that he was married to the girl.’

‘At least that doesn’t sound like a guilty conscience,’ said Carey. Dame Beatrice caught Miss McKay’s sardonic eye.

‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ said the Principal. ‘Two decades of working with students have taught me that a tender conscience is now the most striking anachronism in the world.’

Young Coles presented himself at the college that same evening. Miss McKay received him sympathetically.

‘I’ve been called to attend the inquest,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Is there anything you’d like me to say—or, perhaps, not to say—about Norah?’

‘The proceedings most likely will be adjourned after evidence of the cause of death and evidence of identification have been given,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘Oh, yes, I see.’ He turned, tongue-tied, and fidgeted with the strap of his wristwatch.

‘And now,’ said Miss McKay, with practical kindness, ‘I am going to turn you on to Dame Beatrice. You may tell her everything you wish, including, I suppose, your reasons for marrying Miss Palliser before her college course was completed.’

‘Yes, there is that. It couldn’t have anything to do with what’s happened, though.’

‘Of course not. But it may help to ease your mind and something useful to the police enquiry may come of it.’

‘I can’t think—it doesn’t make sense!’ the boy blurted out. ‘Nobody could have—nobody could — ” He turned aside again and stared moodily out of the window. Dame Beatrice gave one glance at the Principal and nodded briskly. Miss McKay went out. Young Coles, master of himself once more, pulled forward an armchair.

‘No. You have that. I’m going to look out of the window while I talk,’ said the elderly lady. She turned her back on him and heard the slight creaking of the chair as he sat down. ‘How did you manage to persuade Miss Palliser to marry you before the end of her college course?’

‘Does it matter? Her death couldn’t have—I mean, there couldn’t be any connection.’

‘No jealous suitor? No possessive stepfather?’

‘Oh, you know about that old swine!’ Trained in assessing such matters, she detected relief in his tone.

‘Is he old?’

‘Actually, no, only in sin. He’s a good deal younger than the mother, as a matter of fact.’

‘What cause have you to dislike him?’

‘He gets under my skin.’

‘Nothing definite?’

‘He kicked me out of the house once—literally. That’s why’tye got married—just to show him.’

‘No, you don’t mean that. You mean you persuaded Miss Palliser to marry you to assuage your wounded feelings.’

‘Perhaps so.’ His voice had gone flat again. ‘Will you tell me a bit more about things? I’m pretty well in the dark. I don’t even know when and where she died.’

‘I can tell you approximately when, but where remains a mystery. She died between three and four weeks ago— probably even before she was reported missing. I am not in a position to be more explicit at the moment.’

‘Will you tell me where she was found?’

‘Yes, but you must try not to jump to any unwarrantable conclusions.’

‘That means you suspect those young devils at Highpepper!’

‘That is the unwarrantable conclusion which you must try to avoid. Your wife was found on the floor of a coach which acts as an original sort of inn-sign at a house called the Cloak and Dagger, not a hundred yards from the back gates of Highpepper Hall. I cannot avoid the thought that a student from that college would have gone further afield to dispose of a body.’

‘Probably couldn’t.’

‘There is that, of course. The inquest may make certain things clear which, at present, are extremely obscure. Now for one or two questions. Please answer me as accurately as you can. When did you last see your wife?’

‘The week before the beginning of term. She had a lot of preparation to do—holiday work for the lecturers—which she’d put off doing so that we could have as much time to ourselves as possible, so we came back from the seaside on the Saturday and term began on the following Tuesday week.’

‘How often have you communicated with her since you parted?’

‘Oh, a couple of times. We’ve never, either of us, been terribly good correspondents.’

‘Did anything happen during the holiday to cause you any uneasiness?’ She turned swiftly as she put this question. The young man flushed and looked down at his watch.

‘I—no, I don’t remember anything special.’

‘Please think hard.’ There was a long silence before Coles shook his head.

‘Everything was perfectly normal, as far as my recollection goes. We had a mild row on the first day, but that’s the usual thing when two people who are rather desperately keen on one another get together after a longish absence.’

Dame Beatrice nodded agreement.

‘Quite,’ she said. ‘And it was fun to make up the quarrel afterwards. Apart from the incident to which you have already referred, what reason had you to dislike your wife’s stepfather?’

‘He just simply gets under my skin. I can’t explain. Some people are like that.’

‘How long ago did you marry?’

‘Last March.’

‘Mrs Coles had then barely completed two terms of her college course?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I am not clear why you were in such a hurry.’

A slight smile changed the boy’s anxious expression.

‘There wasn’t the usual reason, if that’s what you mean,’ he assured her. Dame Beatrice nodded.

‘I could understand it if you had been able to live together,’ she said, ‘but as you were not able to do so, and as certain felicities of married life were barred to you until your wife’s college course was over, I do not see any advantage in your having entered the holy estate of matrimony so early.’ She looked him full in the eye. Coles shrugged. ‘I suppose I wanted to make sure of her,’ he said. Dame Beatrice accepted this explanation and pigeon-holed it for future reference. It suggested that the young husband might have had a rival, either real or imaginary, and, if real, some interesting possibilities might present themselves. The crime passionel, although rare, was not unknown in Britain, she reflected. There were, however, other possibilities.

‘I am going beyond my brief with my next question,’ she said, ‘but it is one the police may put.’

•Go ahead.’

‘Do you know whether your wife had insured her life?’

He looked startled.

‘Insured her life? I’m sure she hadn’t. I don’t see how she could have afforded to pay the premiums. She had no money except what her own father had left her, and that wasn’t much.’

‘Did her stepfather help to keep her?’

‘I don’t really know about him. I know her own father left a little bit and that her college fees were paid out of it. And she had quite a fair amount of money to spend.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, she always paid for her own holidays when we went away together, and often stood treat in restaurants. I used to do the actual paying, but she often handed me the money beforehand.’

‘But she never referred to any life insurance policy?’

‘Definitely not. Look here, can you think of anything else the police might ask me? I’ve had a pretty bad knock, and I’d like to be prepared. Are they—I know it sounds a bit odd, but, naturally, one’s read about these cases—are they likely to suspect me? Had I better get my alibi quite clear?’

‘You have an alibi, then?’

‘Good Lord! I hope so!’

‘Then you had better be prepared with it. The husband or wife is usually first on the list of suspects.’

He shrugged, laughed, then bit his lip, as though recollecting what had happened to cause her to make the statement. He got up, then.

‘Well, thank you for your help,’ he said. ‘I’d better say good-bye to Miss McKay and get back to Garchester. We shall meet again at the inquest, perhaps?’

‘I shall be there.’

‘Well, what do you make of him?’ asked Miss McKay, when Coles had taken his leave and gone. Dame Beatrice waved a yellow claw.

‘I must have notice of that question,’ she said. ‘I want to look over Mrs Coles’ wardrobe.’

Miss McKay asked no questions. She touched the buzzer for her secretary, who delivered Dame Beatrice into the charge of the head student. There was little wardrobe accommodation in the study bedrooms, and, beyond a suit obviously retained for best wear, a dance frock, a stuff frock for ordinary college wear, and some sweaters, blouses and changes of stockings and underclothes, there was nothing very much in the missing student’s room and certainly nothing to excite remark. It was not what was there, but what was not there, which interested Dame Beatrice.

‘Are there any clothes in a trunk in the boxroom or the basement?’ she enquired.

‘Yes. Most people keep clothes in their trunks, and then, of course, we are allotted lockers for such things as dungarees, Wellingtons and dairy dresses,’ the head student replied.

‘Yes, I see. I should like to look into her trunk.’

She was shown this and, for form’s sake, she also inspected the dead girl’s locker in the basement. She shook her head.

‘Did the student not possess a dressing-gown?’ she asked. ‘And I have seen only one pair of pyjamas.’

‘One pair would be in the wash, but there ought to be a third,’ said the head student. ‘And a dressing-gown—I don’t know for certain. She may have used her overcoat.’

‘But that also is missing, and she was not wearing it when she was found. Will you please keep this little expedition of ours strictly secret from the rest of the college?’

‘Yes, of course, if you wish, but would you not like me to try to find out about the dressing-gown?’

‘The overcoat seems far more important. Considering the time of year, one can deduce that it does exist somewhere. No doubt your reactions to that supposition are the same as my own.’

‘I take it you mean that if it’s not in college, it must be somewhere else. The question, I suppose, is—where?’

‘Exactly.’ She beamed upon the student and returned to acquaint Miss McKay with the negative result of her researches.

‘We didn’t fathom her,’ said Miss McKay. ‘But, of course, a girl who will contract a secret marriage in the middle of her training may be a darker horse than I had suspected. I wonder how far on the police are in their investigation? So far, they haven’t troubled the college. I suppose that is because she was found twenty-five miles away. All the same, I shall be surprised if we are not overrun as soon as the inquest is over. What, if anything, will come out at the inquest, I wonder?’

‘Probably nothing but the cause of death.’

‘You actually named spotted hemlock as the vehicle. How was that?’

‘That was simply guess-work. I had noticed the spotted hemlock about the neighbourhood. Of course, the murderer has had bad luck. It was by the merest chance in the world that your students took up the piece of material that hid the body from view. Who could have supposed that they would want to use the stage-coach?’

‘Ah, yes. I have asked no questions in case I might hamper the police or your own enquiry, but I should be interested to know what caused them to explore the interior of the coach. I realised at the time, of course, that they were up to mischief.’

‘They were seeking a hiding-place for some sacks of sprouting rhubarb.’

‘Oh, I see. Preparatory to rendering unto Caesar the things they presumed to be Caesar’s, I take it? Ah, well, since they did not succeed in their object, there is no reason for me to appear in the matter.’

‘I made some enquiries at the inn, and it appears that the presence of an unspecified heap on the floor of the coach would have brought no investigation from the owners, as they never went near it except to paint it every fifth year in order to preserve the bodywork.’

‘Is there anything else I can do for you? Any way I can be of help?’

‘Well, I wish I could find some way of meeting the girl’s mother and stepfather. I should very much like to hear what they have to say.’

‘I can arrange that, I think. I shall have to invite them to college after the inquest to collect the poor girl’s things. Then you can meet them on neutral ground, as it were, and under non-suspicious circumstances. Will that do?’

‘Most admirably. I wonder who was the last person to see her before she encountered her death? In the case of a murder by poisoning, the actual killer need not have been on the spot.’

‘We don’t seem able to find out. In other words, I don’t think there was any one particular person. You know how it is in a hostel. The students are almost always in groups, and that is the way we like it. A gregarious student, on the whole, is a happy student. You still cling, I suppose, to the idea that Miss Palliser—I mean, Mrs Coles—was spirited away on that horse Miss Good saw?’

‘I still think that, if she was not, coincidence has an even longer arm than I have ever suspected.’

‘I still don’t know why the parents have troubled the college so little. I wonder what made the mother marry again? It does not seem to have been for financial reasons, from what one can gather. I’ll tell you one thing, though— not that it could have any bearing upon what has happened, but—I don’t like the sound of that stepfather. I wonder whether he has children of his own? I also wonder whether Mrs Coles left a will. Not that I know whether she had anything very substantial to leave.’

‘Are you arguing that the stepfather may have killed the girl to get possession of her inheritance, not knowing that she was married? It is possible.’

Miss McKay wagged her head.

‘Wills cause more trouble and more bad feeling than wars,’ she pronounced solemnly. ‘But, of course, we have yet to discover whether a will was involved. If not, we may have a crime of jealousy, although one can hardly credit that one of our students would be mixed up in that sort of thing. They always seem such pedestrian, ordinary girls.’

‘Yes, I know what you mean, but how can one tell? Of course, pedestrian, ordinary girls do get themselves murdered, I suppose.’

‘Oh, dear!’ exclaimed Miss McKay. ‘There goes the refectory bell. I don’t know about you, but at the first sign of trouble I eat like a horse. Come along.’

While the plates were being changed for the second course, the college secretary was called away. She came back with a message.

‘Miss Palliser’s parents are here, and would like to see you.’

‘Tell them I won’t keep them waiting for more than a few minutes. I shall indicate, without actually committing myself to a spoken lie, that you are a member of the staff, if you don’t mind,’ she added, in an aside, to Dame Beatrice. ‘I met the mother once, but not the stepfather. I shall be interested to know what you make of them.’ She finished her meal, drank a cup of black coffee and then, with an apology to the rest of the high table, rose and made her way, with Dame Beatrice, to the visitors’ parlour.