Spotted Hemlock

chapter six

Case History

‘These are, I think, guinea-pigs, but of a particular kind.’

Ibid.

« ^ »

The dead girl’s stepfather wore a black armband and a black tie. He was a swarthy Italianate man, short and of stoutish build, with clear, amber, cat-like eyes, a broad nose and a slightly paunched belly. The mother bore no possible resemblance to the dead girl and did not appear to be old enough for the relationship between them. Her first words were in explanation of this.

‘Of course, I was only twenty-three when Norah was born,’ she stated, ‘and I had Carrie at sixteen, although he did marry me later. I don’t deserve this trouble should come upon me.’

‘No, of course not,’ said Miss McKay, in a sympathetic voice. ‘Nobody deserves this sort of trouble. Is there any light you can possibly throw on the matter?’

‘You’re only thinking of the college,’ said the woman, beginning to sniff. ‘But it’s worse for us than it is for you. People are beginning to say my daughter must have been a bad girl.’

‘Was she?’ Dame Beatrice gently enquired. The question was put in such a beautifully-modulated voice that the mother could scarcely take offence at its essential baldness.

‘I don’t know. That’s the trouble. I just don’t know. We’ve talked it over…’ she glanced at her husband… ‘Mr Biancini and I…’

‘So he is an Italian,’ thought Dame Beatrice. ‘I wonder what light that might shed?’

‘Yes?’ said Miss McKay.

‘But we can’t come to any conclusion. We were relying on you to give us… well, a lead.’

‘If I had had any reason to suppose that your daughter was an undesirable member of this place, she would have been sent down long ago.’ Miss McKay’s voice was extremely firm.

Mrs Biancini burst into tears. Her husband rose from the hard-seated chair he was occupying, went over to her, seated himself on the broad and comfortable arm of hers, and put an arm around her shoulders.

‘O.K. Take it easy, Dee-an,’ he said. ‘So Norah was à la whatever it takes, with you?’ he enquired of the Principal. Miss McKay replied curtly:

‘I have already said so.’

‘You called in the police at once?’

‘Yes. We called the doctor, too, of course, in case there was anything to be done. Unfortunately, there was not.’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Biancini, mollified, ‘I’m sure you did everything you could. Shall I—I suppose I’ll be allowed to see her before they nail her down?’

‘Of course. In fact, I’m afraid that you will be called upon at the inquest for proof of identity. Haven’t the police told you that? You must be prepared. It is not a pleasant task, and I’m sorry you have to be called upon to face it.’

‘I’ve been so upset I haven’t taken much notice of the police. They’ve come bothering round, of course, but there was nothing we could tell them about Norah that they didn’t know already.’

‘Did you tell them she was married?’ The question was put by Dame Beatrice in the deceptively dulcet tones she had used before.

‘Married?’ Mr Biancini almost fell off the arm of his wife’s chair. ‘You’re not serious?’

‘Perfectly serious. You did not know, then?’

‘Certainly not! Since when?’

‘Since the beginning, or near to it, of the summer,’ said Miss McKay. ‘More probably during her first Easter holiday from college, or at the end of the Easter term.’

‘Did you know, Dee-an?’ Mr Biancini still appeared to be dumbfounded.

‘Of course not.’ Mrs Biancini was entirely mistress of herself again. ‘How could I? She never used to tell me a thing. Neither of them tells me a thing.’

‘In other words, she did not care for the idea of your second marriage,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Children are odd, in that respect. They never seem to think that their mothers have a point of view, too. My own son, Ferdinand Lestrange, although a broadminded man and one of some vision, never quite accustomed himself to my second marriage and its aftermath of a half-brother. Children, especially sons, are curiously self-centred, one finds.’

This speech had the effect that Dame Beatrice had anticipated.

‘Sons!’ snorted Mrs Biancini. ‘I don’t know about sons! Daughters are quite enough for me! Norah’s father died when she was ten. I brought her up, working my fingers to the bone, until she was seventeen. Then I met Tony.’

Mr Biancini smirked.

‘It was at a dance,’ he explained. ‘I was bored, frustrated —no, I’ll be honest—just plain bored. Then Dee-an turned up, an older, more sophisticated woman. I fell for her and married her.’

He and his wife exchanged glances of mingled congratulation and caution. Then Mrs Biancini smiled.

‘Just like that,’ she said. ‘Norah, of course, didn’t like it. She adored her mum.’

‘But not sufficiently so to prefer your happiness and sense of security to her own,’ suggested Dame Beatrice.

‘Oh, well, that’s all over now, poor girl,’ said the stepfather. ‘Let’s hope none of it was her own fault.’

‘It couldn’t be suicide,’ said Mrs Biancini quickly. ‘I’ve told you I don’t know whether Norah was a good girl, but she wouldn’t do a thing like that to us.’

‘Do you wish the murderer to be found?’ asked Dame Beatrice. ‘I agree with you that it was not suicide.’

‘Yes, that I do—and punished!’

‘Then tell me all you know.’

The woman glanced at her husband.

‘Perhaps, Mr Biancini…?’ suggested Miss McKay, beginning to rise. Mr Biancini got up.

‘O.K.! O.K.!’ he said, and followed her out. Dame Beatrice and the mother were left alone.

‘Was it that artist boy?’ asked Mrs Biancini. ‘She was always bringing him to the house for free meals. I got quite sick of it.’

‘A Mr Coles?’

‘That’s the one. What’s he got to say for himself?’

‘But little; he is armed and well prepared.’

‘Oh? Prepared for what?’

‘I was quoting from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. You are familiar with the passage?’

‘I dare say we did it at school. Just let me get at that young beauty! He’ll need a suit of armour to protect himself, I can tell you! Leading my girl astray! How dare he think of marrying her? I never heard of such a thing!’

‘There are worse things than a legal union, surely?’

The woman’s face darkened.

‘I know I made a mistake myself,’ she said, ‘but that’s as may be. I looked forward to a bit of Norah’s company and… I won’t deny it… a bit of her money when she’d finished her college course. I mean, when you’ve kept a girl until she’s in her twenties, you can’t be blamed for wanting some return.’

Dame Beatrice wagged her head. ‘And when she was at home, what kind of person was she? Did she seem discontented, for example?’ she enquired.

‘Not as long as she got her own way. It was me marrying again that unsettled her. You’re right about that. I did wait until after she’d sat for her General Certificate, too, before I told her what I was going to do. Of course, she wasn’t with me very much, in a sense, between sixteen and seventeen. She had her school-friends and Saturday morning games—she was in all the school teams—a proper open-air type—and then, of course, I saw nothing of her, evenings, because I’d have the radio on in the dining-room and she’d be doing her homework on the kitchen table.’

‘What about holidays?’

‘I couldn’t afford them,’ said Mrs Biancini. ‘She had her bike, and that was all I could manage. She only had that because it saved the fares going to school.’

‘But you wouldn’t call her an unhappy girl?’

‘She seemed happy enough to me, but what I say is that children confide in anybody rather than their mothers, once they’re turned fourteen.’

‘Was she a quiet girl?’

‘Very quiet. I used to wonder, sometimes, if still waters ran deep. And now I know they must have done. Whatever could have made her rush into marrying that boy? He hasn’t got a penny to his name! What did she want to do it for? He didn’t get her into trouble, I hope?’

‘He says not.’

‘Humph! I’m not at all sure I’d take his word for it! I don’t trust those artistic types. It wouldn’t surprise me if… oh, well, I’d better not say it, I suppose.’

‘I understand you, but I agree that it should not be said. Was she a girl who formed many friendships with young men?’

‘Oh, she was normal, as to boys. I didn’t pass any objection so long as I knew who she was out with, and she was willing to bring them home and introduce them properly. But, there! You never know what girls get up to, out of your sight! This marriage of hers—I’m not sure it hasn’t upset me as much as the—as much as her passing away.’

She took out her handkerchief again. Dame Beatrice waited until she had recovered, and then asked gently:

‘When did you last see your daughter?’

‘During the summer holiday. She was at home for a few days and then said she had made plans to go away with this young art student. She’d been away with him before. I made no objection. Lots of young people go away together and have a good time and nothing wrong in it. And as for Tony, he was ever so good to her. Gave her the money, and quite a bit over, to spend there, and carried her bag to the station and saw she got a seat on the train, and everything. Not her own father could have done more to give her a send-off—I’m sure of that. Quite put himself out, he did, his own train going an hour later.’

‘Was her husband with her?’

‘No. He was to meet her down there the following day. He’d got something to do—a holiday job, I think—and couldn’t get away until the Sunday, or so she said. It seemed a pity for both of them to miss the Saturday, as they had to pay all the same.’

‘I see.’ Dame Beatrice made a note on Miss McKay’s blotter. A notebook, she thought, might frighten the witness into silence.

‘Then she came home at the end of the fortnight and was with us a couple of days before she went off to stay with her aunt at Harrafield. She was there about ten days and then she came home for a week before going back to the college. And to think that, all the time, she was married!’

‘I suppose she really did go to her aunt?’

‘Oh, she went, all right, because I got a postcard stamped at Harrafield, to say she’d arrived safely. Besides, her aunt would have let me know at once if she hadn’t arrived.’

‘Is the aunt your sister?’

‘No, my late husband’s.’

‘The police may want her address.’

‘They’re welcome. It’s the Hour-Glass Hotel, near the centre of the town. She’s the manageress there. Norah and I used to visit there together until I married Tony. But Sarah took exception to that, and told me I needn’t bring him there again. Nice, wasn’t it? You’d have thought we weren’t respectable! I told her if that’s how she felt, we wouldn’t trouble her any more for the rest of our lives. I was wild with her rudeness, I can tell you. Still, I wouldn’t stop Norah going. She was very fond of her aunt. Well, you’ve been very understanding, I’m sure. See you at the inquest, I expect? And now I’d better have a natter with Miss McKay before I go.’

‘Before you go, Mrs Biancini, there are just one or two points I should like cleared up. First of all, are you staying in the neighbourhood?’

‘Yes, and have been ever since we heard the news. We’re putting up with a Mrs Spear who lets lodgings down in the village. It’s where we put up last year for the College Open Day and that. She’s very nice, although I must say I’d like to show her how to make a batter pudding. Tony’s so fond of them.’

‘Yes. You do realise, don’t you, Mrs Biancini, that, whatever Norah’s reason for leaving college may have been, she went voluntarily?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Can you suggest anybody, apart from her husband (whom, I may say, I have interviewed), who had sufficient interest in her, or influence over her, to wish to smuggle her away? You see, from the night she left college to the time the students found her body, she was, so to speak, lost without trace. Cannot you throw any light whatever upon her disappearance?’

‘If I could, I would, and quick enough, too. Don’t you think I’ve had enough of all this sort of thing from the police?’

‘I’m sure you have. What made you let her come to college in the first place?’

‘Well, the idea had been for her to get a nice job in a bank. Several of the girls from her school had gone into banks, and it seemed refined sort of work, and not above what she could do. But she and Mr Biancini didn’t seem to hit it off, as I’ve tried to explain, and nothing would satisfy her but to get away from home.’

‘Quite natural, under the circumstances, I should have thought.’

‘As I said before, I didn’t see it at all fair on me,’ said Mrs Biancini. ‘Still, if that’s how she felt, there it was. She took her G.C.E. and passed in five subjects and then stayed on until she was eighteen so as to start here. They won’t take them before eighteen if they can help it. I mean, they do take them at seventeen, going on eighteen, if it’s exceptional or means family hardship, but she didn’t come under either of that. There was the bit of money her father left her, you see. She came in for that at eighteen. Too young, I thought, so I used it to send her here and give her all the pocket-money she wanted.’

‘Does that mean that she could have been in control of the whole sum, once she went to college?’

‘Oh, yes, according to the law, I suppose, and I gave her just what she asked for. It was her own money, after all, just in the bank for her use and no strings tied to it except my late husband’s wishes, which, of course, I should always respect.’

‘Quite so. Now please forgive me for asking such a question, but—what wishes had your husband expressed about the destination of the money supposing that your daughter died before you did?’

‘No wishes at all. Norah was always a hale and healthy child, and she was only ten years old, as I’ve said, when her father died, so it wouldn’t have occurred to him, I suppose, to think I might outlive her.’

‘So the money has remained in your account, and would have done so until your daughter left college. How old…?’

‘Just turned twenty-two.’

‘But I thought you said she entered college when she was eighteen?’

‘Well, no. She was to have done, but I was a bit doubtful about spending the money, so she went and helped her aunt for her keep and her pocket-money for a bit. Then she turned restless and said she didn’t have a future and must be trained. She picked an agricultural college, and I gave in. Anything, so long as she was contented.’

‘May I ask—or perhaps the police have already asked it— how large a sum is involved?’

Mrs Biancini shook her head.

‘The police have asked,’ she said. ‘I told them and I can’t see any harm in telling you. It isn’t enough for anybody to be tempted into killing Norah for it.’

‘One can never be sure of that sort of thing, Mrs Biancini.’

‘All right, then. It amounted to round about three thousand pounds, that’s all. I’ve paid her college fees outright for the two years, and put a matter of five hundred into my current account for her clothes and pocket-money and that, and there’s something over two thousand left of it in my deposit account.’

‘I am sure you have been most thoughtful.’

‘I hope so, I’m sure. You can’t always do for the best.’

‘Would you have any objection to my going to visit her aunt as soon as the inquest is over?’

‘Certainly not. Why should I? Not that she knows any more than we do, for I’ve asked her, thinking she might have been more in Norah’s confidence, as she’d worked for her.’

‘As your daughter stayed with her for some time before she went to college, I hope to be able to find out something which will help us to trace the murderer.’

‘I doubt whether her aunt can cast any light on what’s happened. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! And to think how nicely everything was going on! All of us reconciled at last, and such a lovely summer holiday, and now this has to come on us out of the blue, as it were! It makes you think we weren’t born to be happy, don’t it?’

‘There is just one more point, Mrs Biancini. Did your daughter seem in any way—physically, in particular—old for her age, would you say?’

‘I don’t think so. I wasn’t all that old when she was born, and neither was her father. Of course, she always had her head screwed on the right way, if that’s what you mean.’

It was not at all what Dame Beatrice meant, but she did not press the point. She said:

‘When you spoke of reconciliation just now, you were not, I take it, speaking of Norah?’

‘No, I was speaking of my other girl, Carrie. Such a trouble she’s always been, but she’s promised us faithful to go straight. That’s who we got reconciled with this summer, only it didn’t work out.’