Spotted Hemlock

chapter seven

Machinations of a Paternal Aunt

‘… we could not but admire the grace of form which raises this kind of ass almost to the dignity of the horse.’

Ibid.

« ^ »

So, whatever the motive of the murderer, it scarcely seems as though money could have entered into it,’ said Miss McKay to the police. ‘I refuse to believe that the mother killed that poor girl for two thousand pounds, or the stepfather, either.’

‘Stranger things have happened,’ said the local Detective-Inspector. ‘We shall keep an eye on Mrs Biancini and on him. Two thousand might come in very useful to a gentleman of his kidney. Not that he’d have got it, with a husband in the offing.’

‘And of what kidney, exactly, is he, Inspector?’ Dame Beatrice enquired.

‘All foreigners can bear watching, madam.’

But with this insular comment Dame Beatrice was not content.

‘It appears,’ she said to Miss McKay, ‘that the aunt and the niece had had quite a lot to do with one another. They may have been in sympathy. The girl may have told the aunt, her father’s sister, things which she did not tell her mother. I shall go north and see her.’

‘Not until after the inquest, I presume,’ said Miss McKay. The inquest, adjourned at the request of the police, produced nothing new and resulted in a verdict that the subject had died from an administration of coniine, but whether she had administered it herself, or had had it administered to her, the coroner’s jury refused to decide.

Dame Beatrice, driven by George, her chauffeur, to the Hour-Glass at Harrafield, decided that the receptionist was also manageress. Dame Beatrice was shown to her room and had not been there for ten minutes before there was a knock at the door. The compliments of the manageress, and would Dame Beatrice care to take a private glass of sherry in the sitting-room?

The sitting-room, obviously the sanctum of the manageress, was a comfortable little den at the back of the reception office. It was well-furnished, showed a television set, a portable radio and a surprisingly well-filled bookcase containing, Dame Beatrice noted, works on spiritualism, theosophy, poltergeists, cookery and gardening.

The dead girl’s aunt followed her gaze.

‘I don’t care for gardening myself,’ she said. ‘I bought them for Norah. Funny you should be down here from the college. I suppose you know all there is to know? I was terribly cut up when Dodo wrote. I was very fond of Norah. Too bad when Dodo, who always was very foolish, took up with that Tony Biancini. I feel bad about it, because it was here she met him. They used to go out and about together, but I thought nothing of it because of the difference in their ages, but there you are, you see. If a middle-aged woman is going to make a fool of herself, there’s nothing you can say that will stop it. Still, it brought I and Norah together. I used to feel quite sorry for the girl, and, of course, she took it real bad when they married. No wonder, with my poor brother such a good husband and father. I thought Dodo owed something more to his memory than to go gallivanting into marriage with the son of an Italian waiter and a Maltese waitress from a little chop-shop off the Strand. That’s what he is, that Tony. He told me so himself, before him and Dodo got so thick. Dee-an, he calls her. I never did, nor did my poor brother, either. Doris she was christened and Dodo she’s been ever since, until this wedding came about. One thing, she didn’t have it white—or so I was told. I got an invite, but, of course, I didn’t go. Couldn’t, I said; wouldn’t, I meant. I should have thrown my hymn-book at the pair of them!’

Dame Beatrice nodded sympathetically.

‘The college,’ she began, with some diplomacy but less ingenuousness, ‘wondered whether you could possibly throw any light on your niece’s death.’

‘So that’s why you’re here! I thought it was rather strange, you turning up and putting the address of the college on your letter. Well, I only wish I could tell you something that would help! But who would have done such a wicked thing? That’s what I ask myself, morning to night I do. Who could have done it? There doesn’t seem anybody, does there? I suppose’—she hesitated and then plunged—‘I suppose it couldn’t be a joke… what the students call a rag… that went wrong?’

‘That is a point which will have to be considered,’ said Dame Beatrice. She did not add that, in her opinion, it was nearly the most unlikely explanation that could be offered. ‘But there’s a lot of clearing-up to be done before we go as far as that. You see, these are all agriculturalists. They do know about plants and it was some preparation made from a wild plant which caused the death.’

She described the findings at the inquest.

‘I thought they’d adjourn it,’ said the aunt. ‘So far as I’ve read’—she nodded towards the bookcase—‘they always do. Do you know when the funeral is? Dodo didn’t say in her letter, but I feel I must go, though we’re that short-handed— still, we’re not full, being October, so the maids will have to manage. Cook will keep an eye open, I dare say.’

‘Were you surprised to hear of your niece’s marriage?’

‘Why, no. You see, I helped them over that. Dodo doesn’t know—not that I really care—but I let Norah get married from here. In the Easter holiday it was, the Wednesday after the Bank Holiday. I gave the reception for them, too. Being in the hotel business, it helped, you see. Everything was on the spot and I made the reception my wedding present, and, when the guests knew it was my niece, they clubbed together and gave her a cheque—not a large one, you know, but it was very nice of them, I thought—and a special cake-knife to cut the cake. Oh, we had a lovely time of it that day, and then… this!’

She blinked and swallowed, but she was a self-controlled woman and did not break down. Dame Beatrice sipped sherry and gave her time to recover. The aunt blew her nose and then smiled.

‘I thought I’d got over giving way,’ she said. “Yes, they were married from here, and I’m glad to remember that. They were ever so much in love. You could see that from a mile off. They hadn’t really known one another long, and I don’t really know why they couldn’t have waited until Norah had finished with college. Still, you can’t dictate to Cupid can you, now?’

As Dame Beatrice was unable to imagine herself dictating, or attempting to dictate, to the son of Venus, she treated this as the rhetorical question that it was and did not reply.

‘Your niece, then, had no idea of living at home for a time when her college course was concluded?‘ she enquired.

‘Between you and I,’ replied the aunt, ‘it wouldn’t have done. Dodo doesn’t seem to have known anything about it, but, from what Norah told me once, that Tony is a wolf. Anything is grist that comes to his mill. She didn’t like to be in the same house with him more than she could help. Why, she spent hardly any of her college holidays at home, you know. She came here before she was married, and this summer she went off with young Coles to one of those holiday camps—not that it would appeal to me, but I suppose they’re all right for young people.’

‘Which was the one at which they stayed?’

‘Why, that big one at Bracklesea, the one that only opened a couple of years ago.’

‘Wasn’t that rather expensive?—I mean, for a young man without employment and a girl still at college?’

‘I believe Tony Biancini subbed up. Norah did tell me once that she hated taking his money, but that it cost such a lot to pay for her husband’s holidays as well as her own. I told her I thought it was foolish. “He’ll get to thinking he’s bought you, body and soul,” I said, “and that’s a situation you don’t want to develop,” I said. “These Italians may have their greasy ways,” I said, “but they know the value of money better than anybody, without it might be the French, where I did hear tell, when I was a girl, they put a big pebble in the pot with the vegetables when they haven’t got any meat to give a flavour.’

‘I understood from Mrs Biancini that her first husband left some money for Mrs Coles to be spent on her education, the residue to go to her when she left college.’

‘That’s right. My brother was quite a warm man for our station of life. He was in the building trade, you know, and done well, I believe, out of war damage.’

‘And Mr Biancini? You mentioned just now that he was in the habit of giving money to Mrs Coles. Do you know anything of his financial position?’

‘Not a lot. Him and I don’t have much to do with one another. I don’t trust him. I believe he’s been the saving kind, though. He’s been connected with hotels and restaurants all his life and I expect he’s saved up his tips, if not some of his wages. Of course, with accommodation and all food found, and drinks at cost price, there’s nothing to buy in our business except your clothes, you see, unless you want to spend money. Dodo did hint, once, as he’d won a State lottery in some foreign country, so that would account for it, too.’

‘You have never wondered whether your niece’s death was self-inflicted, I suppose?’

Miss Palliser frowned in concentration for a moment and then shook her head.

‘I’ve thought and I’ve thought,’ she said, ‘but I can’t honestly see it. There wasn’t a baby on the way, was there?’

‘No, no baby.’

‘That would be the only likely reason, although, even then, she’d only got to show her marriage lines at home and at the college to clear herself, hadn’t she? I don’t see that as an obstacle. Anyway, as you say, it wasn’t so. No, we can wash out any idea of she did it herself. Besides, with her knowledge, she’d have chose an easier way out, that’s what I think.’

‘Her knowledge?’

‘She’d have chose the gas oven,’ said Miss Palliser, ‘and not one of those nasty poisons. She’d know it would bring on pains and make her sick, and she always did hate to be sick. “I’d rather die than be sick,” she’s said to me more than once when she was a child. Her little stomach wasn’t all that strong and she often was sick, poor mite. “I’d rather die than be sick,” she used to say. So she’d hardly have chose a nasty poison as the way out. Besides, she wasn’t the right temperament. She’d married the man she wanted, and she was doing well at college, and she had no money troubles. No, we needn’t think about suicide, thank goodness. Been different, perhaps, if it had been her older sister. Always in trouble, that girl. Of course, my brother got Dodo into trouble, so I always think that might account for it, although my father made him marry her later.

‘How did Mrs Coles come to meet her husband? Do you know that?’

‘Oh, dear me, yes. It was quite simple and all quite above board. They met at an agricultural camp, before she went to college. They picked peas and lifted new potatoes—the June-July before she started in the September, it was. She spent the last fortnight of August here with me, before going back home to get ready for college, and I knew then that there was something in the wind, although, naturally, I wouldn’t force her confidence. I guessed it was a boy-friend, but she’d had ’em before and I never dreamt, not with her going off on this two-year course at college, that it was serious this time.’

‘You don’t know, of course, Miss Palliser, whether your niece left a will?’

‘I’m sure she didn’t. Girls of her age have no call to be thinking about such things.’

‘Sometimes, I believe, their husbands are apt to think about such things.’

‘He wouldn’t,’ said Miss Palliser decidedly. ‘He may be an artist, and, to that extent, careless about his morals, but he was that fond of poor Norah! It was a pleasure to see them together.’

‘I am very glad to hear it.’ Dame Beatrice wrote her off as a meddling and romantically-minded spinster, took leave of her and decided to revisit the bereaved husband. Coles had been present at the inquest but, as no evidence had been called except evidence of identification and of the cause of death, he had not appeared in the witness box, and was now, as she knew from the police, back in his obscure London lodgings.

She wrote to him asking permission to call, and received an almost illegible postcard in reply to say that he would be at home on the following Sunday morning between eleven o’clock and noon. There seemed nothing that could be done during the ensuing days, and she had little hope that the interview would prove fruitful.