Spotted Hemlock

chapter nine

Discrepancies

‘… come and see, I have discovered the skeleton of a mammoth.’

Ibid.

« ^ »

The holiday season was, to all intents and purposes, over, and the holiday camp, of which Coles had declared he had no knowledge, was closed. As Dame Beatrice had realised that this might be so, she was neither distressed nor disheartened, but, penetrating the main gates, made her way to the office, which was attached to the permanent living-quarters of the full-time staff.

She was received by a bearded man of youthful appearance who announced that the camp was closed until the following Easter.

‘Used to be Whitsun,’ he announced, ‘so you’re luckier than you used to be. I can take a reservation.’

‘It is good of you to say so.’

‘Think nothing of it. When would you wish us to book you in?’

‘I cannot say, at the moment. I am in quest of information.’

‘Sure. I’ll get you a brochure. Next year’s isn’t ready until December, but last season’s will give you all the gen you need.’

‘Thank you. I should like all the information I can get. Would it be possible for me to be shown over the camp?’

‘I don’t see why not. You don’t look the sort to plant a bomb. I’ll take you round myself.’

‘That is extremely good of you.’

‘Think nothing of it. Service, not self, is our motto. Half a sec. while I get you the book of words.’ He retired to an inner room and returned immediately with a shining, well-produced prospectus, copiously illustrated in black and white and in colour. ‘There we are,’ he said. ‘We have accommodation, as you’ll see by that, for singles, doubles or family parties. If you’re on your own you’ll soon make friends here, and we don’t blow bugles or stampede you about in herds. That sort of thing’s old-fashioned and we’re nothing if not up to date.’

The camp was extremely extensive. The accommodation, to which reference had been made by her guide, consisted of dozens of chalets and a large, three-storey hostel on the ground floor of which was a bar. A restaurant opened out of it.

‘Bedrooms upstairs,’ said the bearded man. ‘You’ll see in the brochure they cost more than the chalets. That’s because in the hostel you’ve got running hot and cold and proper bathrooms. The chalets only get a cold tap and a bathhouse with showers, one bathhouse to every twenty chalets. Mind you, there’s the swimming-pool—we’ll see it in a few minutes —with sea-water and the latest filter-system—so there’s plenty of chance to freshen up.’

Another enormous, detached building, situated in a large garden, proved to provide a ballroom and concert hall. These had their own cocktail and snack bar. Yet a third structure proved to be a covered roller-skating rink complete with soda-fountain and coffee bar.

Dame Beatrice duly admired everything she was shown. Her alert black eyes took in every detail, but she asked no questions, content to allow the guide to act as showman without interruption.

‘Well,’ he said, when once again the office and the staff quarters came in sight, ‘that’s the lot. Anything more you’d like to know?’

‘Nothing, thank you. Do you have many foreign visitors?’

‘Plenty. Not Americans, though. A camp doesn’t seem to meet their requirements. A pity, really, because most of them are very good mixers. We did have a posse of American Service chaps apply last year, but we didn’t take them. We got the impression they were only after girls. That kind of thing, if it’s blatant, can soon give a place a bad name. Not that I don’t sympathise with the fellows. They’re a long way from home.’

‘I should not wish to come alone,’ said Dame Beatrice, reaching the true object of her visit. ‘Some friends of mine stayed here last summer or early autumn, and spoke very well of the accommodation they were given. I should require the same kind of thing for myself and friend, or for two young friends if, in the end, I am not able to take up my option. I suppose it would not be possible for me to see the visitors’ book, so that I may ascertain where they were housed?’

‘I don’t see why not. There’s nothing private about it,’ agreed the young man. ‘If you’d care to take a seat, I’ll go and dig it out.’

Dame Beatrice was highly gratified, and said so. She had not expected such complete co-operation, accustomed though she was to getting her own way; but she had made a marked impression on the young man, whose dealings with elderly ladies had acquainted him mostly with their capacity for producing pointless conversation and unreasonable demands and complaints. He left her to go and find the book, and, returning with it, asked when her friends had stayed at the camp.

‘I do not remember the exact dates,’ she said. He found the page which marked the beginning of August and put the open book on a small table.

‘Help yourself,’ he said genially. ‘Knowing their names and possibly their writing, you may find them quicker than I shall.’

Dame Beatrice had three names in mind—Coles, Palliser and Biancini, although why she was alert for the last she could scarcely have said. Two names appeared under Palliser and were on one line, which ran: Mr and Mrs N. Palliser of Calladale House, near Garchester.

‘Here they are,’ she said, ‘but the number of their room or chalet, or whatever they had, is not filled in.’

‘Oh, now I’ve got the name, I’m bound to have a record of their accommodation,’ said the young man. ‘Shan’t be a jiffy. Let’s see the date again. August 18th they booked in? Right.’ He came back in a remarkably short time with a large plan of the camp, and spread it out for her to see. ‘We keep the accommodation charted,’ he said. ‘Look, they had chalet one nine six. Our system is quite simple. It has to be, with the number of campers we get every week of the season. Their number on the camp register’—he pointed to it—‘was seventy-eight, which means they must have clocked in very early and certainly didn’t come on the special train, and here is the seventy-eight marked on the plan against their chalet. See?’

Dame Beatrice congratulated him on the clearness of the arrangements.

‘So, if I pay a deposit,’ she said, ‘you think I could have the same chalet?’

‘Sure. How long would you want to stay?’

‘Oh, only a week, I’m afraid.’

‘Suits us. The second week’s apt to be a repetition of the first, after all. Shall we say a couple of quid? Less if you like, of course, but a deposit does seem to clinch it.’

Dame Beatrice produced two pound notes, was given a receipt, gave, in return, a date for the following June and had the felicity of seeing Laura Gavin’s name put down in a large ledger. It seemed as though there must be some truth in the story that Norah Coles had stayed at the Bracklesea camp, but why in the name of Palliser and why had Coles denied that he was with her? Dame Beatrice put through a call to her secretary, who was in Kensington, engaged in bringing the clinical records up to date.

‘Leave everything as soon as you can, Laura. I want you at the Stone House for a conference.’

‘That Calladale business? I wondered how soon you’d let me in properly on that. I’ve practically finished here, and Gavin has been called to Nottingham. I’ll come at once, and bring Junior.’

‘No, no. It is much too late to come tonight. You must leave it until the morning. Henri shall get us a special lunch. He has been worried about me since I began making these excursions to Calladale College. He thinks they starve me.’

Henri, it turned out, had been worried to the point of sleeplessness.

‘Lunch is nothing today,’ he announced. ‘A cutlet, a soufflé, a cheese. Tonight, at dinner, mesdames, you shall eat! Think of it, Madame Gavin, ma chère Miss Laura! Those meals at the college for women! One says a camp for displaced persons, no?’

As it had proved impossible to reassure Henri upon this point, Dame Beatrice did not attempt to do so this time, and neither did she inform him of the reason for her visit to the college. She knew what his conclusions would be if she told him that one of the students had been poisoned. Laura referred to this as soon as she and her employer were alone.

‘Henri will swear it was the college dinners,’ she affirmed; and Dame Beatrice saw no reason to contradict her.

‘Henri is a monomaniac,’ she observed. ‘Well, dear child, the plot thickens.’

‘Good-o. How thick has it become?’

‘Very, very thick indeed. Do you think you could impersonate a reporter?’

‘Second nature. Whom do I interview?’

‘A bereaved husband.’

‘The villain of the piece?’

‘Well, mistakes have been made, and there seem to be so many and such curious discrepancies at present that he may be.’

She gave Laura an account of all that had happened, including her visit to the holiday camp. Laura, her fine body beautifully relaxed in a deep and comfortable chair, offered an appreciative whistle.

‘He didn’t mention that they went to a holiday camp; just called it a seaside hotel,’ she said, summing up the information. ‘I saw a very short account of the inquest and I noticed it gave nothing away. But I can’t see why he should lie about going to the camp. Did you get anything important out of the inquest?’

‘There was one very interesting point which I was most anxious not to have anyone disclose,’ said Dame Beatrice grimly. ‘The dead girl was said to be in her very early twenties, but the pathologist pointed out to me privately that he would have thought that the body he dissected was that of a woman of thirty.’

‘I suppose he could have been mistaken?’

‘We were both impressed by the maturity of the body, so he made a special X-ray test of the bones. The subject was definitely not under twenty-five years old.’

‘Who identified the body?’

‘The mother.’

‘Well, she ought to know.’

‘I should point out that the body could not have been at all easy to identify.’

‘Been in the water, you mean?’

‘No; in a cellar, I rather fancy.’

‘Oh, Lord! Not rats?’

‘Undoubtedly rats.’

‘How utterly beastly! I once dived for a body which had drowned and been got at by crabs. It’s something I’d like to forget. Anyway, what do you make of the situation?’

‘I may know better what I make of it when you have interviewed the husband, but that will not be just yet.’

‘Dash it, I’m just rarin’ to go.’

‘I know, but we must give him time to get over my visit, and the police another chance to get to work on him first.’

‘Does he gain anything by her death?’

‘He says he knows of no will. I put the question to him point-blank. I cannot tell whether he is lying. I am inclined to think, however, that he’s telling the truth. If there is no will, I take it that he will inherit the money. That is, if the dead girl is indeed Mrs Coles. But if the dead girl is not Mrs Coles, I think we need to find Mrs Coles.’

‘Mrs Coles the murderess?’

‘Most probably not, but she might be able to tell us who the dead woman is and, if she could, that in itself might lead to a solution of our problem. It might, on the other hand, lead us into deeper problems.’

‘If we can find her—Mrs Coles, I mean.’

Yes. It may be quite difficult to do so.’

‘How do we set about it? Are the police in on this?’

‘The police believe that the dead woman is verily and indeed the missing student.’

‘In spite of the report about her age?’

‘In spite of everything, dear child. One can hardly blame them. The body has been identified by Mrs Coles’ mother. No one is going to question her evidence. Technically, the girl has always lived at home. Nobody is going to challenge her mother under such circumstances.’

‘Except us. Well, supposing that we are right, I still don’t see where we go from here. How soon can I put on the mask of Fleet Street and go to interview the husband?’

‘The inquest is to be resumed in three weeks’ time, if the police are ready by then. I think you might go to see him a fortnight from now. Unless something turns up to change my line of thought, your task will be to extort from him where he went for his summer holiday, and with whom.’

‘Sounds to me more like a B.B.C. job. Can’t I stop him with my roving microphone?’

‘Tackle it in any way you choose. I have little faith in your discretion but much in your imagination.’

‘Fair enough. Meanwhile?’

‘Meanwhile we go to Calladale and interview a Miss Good.’

‘The one who saw the white horseman?’

‘Precisely.’

‘But what can she tell us? From what you say, I gather she was gibbering with fright.’

‘A more tranquil state of mind will have intervened. Subconsciously she may have noticed something that will prove of value.’

‘Such as?’

‘Whether the horseman was tall, short, thin or stout.’

‘Good heavens! You mean it might have been Mrs Coles, and not a man at all!’

‘I mean it may have been Mrs Coles and a man.’

‘Talk about my imagination! But, if it was Mrs Coles and a man, why the elaborate get-up? Why the whiteness? Why go out of the way to make yourselves conspicuous on a dark night? And, another thing, it would prove it couldn’t have been an abduction.’

‘Nobody has mentioned such a word, child, and my own opinion is, and always has been, that the girl went willingly; but, even if that were not so, the lack of a struggle would not necessarily mean that the abducted party was a willing participator in the affair. “I was stiff with terror… I could not utter a word to save my life… I thought I might fall off if I struggled… I was so taken by surprise that I didn’t know what was happening”… all psychologists and all police courts have heard such remarks, and, the point is, in many cases they are true, so far as the plaintiff knows.’

‘Oh, yes; the old bromide about the subconscious mind. Her conscious mind may have been horrified, but her mad, bad, cave-woman subconscious was really making whoopee all the time. You’ll never get me to believe it, you know.’

‘The Scots are an inhibited race.’

‘And a jolly good thing, too! At least we’re respectable, hard-working, thrifty, courageous, patriotic, reliable, canny, proud, dour, invincible, kind-hearted, poetic, strong-minded, tough, well-educated, religious, zealous, generous—I could go on for hours. Anyway, nobody can call the kilt an inhibited garment. You forget the kilt. And what about the bagpipes?’

‘The kilt, or philabeg, came into being because the Scots would not trouble to learn to sew. The bagpipes came to Scotland from Ireland, as did poetry, whisky and religion.’

‘You can’t prove a word you say!’

Dame Beatrice cackled.

‘Touchée,’ she said pacifically. ‘Please ring up Miss McKay and find out when it will be convenient for us to talk to Miss Good.’

Miss McKay would have liked to name the Thursday free afternoon as the most appropriate time for the visit, but she was a just and fair-minded woman, and she knew how resentful Miss Good would be if her weekly date with the lecture-cutting Mr Cleeve were cancelled. She suggested the following Tuesday morning, and invited Dame Beatrice and Laura to lunch.

‘I am truly sorry to come bothering round again,’ said Dame Beatrice, when they arrived, ‘but I have a fine new theory about Miss Palliser, as I suppose she will continue to be referred to by the college, and, although I do not expect my interview with Miss Good to do much, if anything, to support it, I must try to clear her out of the way first.’

‘You’ll be a change from the police, at any rate,’ said Miss McKay. ‘We’ve had them morning, noon and night. Did you know that they have decided to keep an open mind as to whether the dead girl really was Mrs Coles? It seems there’s a doubt.’

‘No, but I thought they might do so. Shall we see Miss Good before lunch?’

‘Yes, I think that would be best. She is on practical work this morning, but has an essay this afternoon. Let me see, now… yes, she will be down at the piggeries with Mr Lestrange. I am sure he’ll be pleased to see you.’

Miss Good was also pleased to see them. Carey had just concluded an exposition, with demonstration, of the way to introduce a newcomer into a pen which already held a settled group. He had caught and anointed three pigs, the newcomer and two others, with pig-oil powerfully scented with aniseed, and Miss Good and three other students were each to take a pig of the remaining four and copy his method.

‘And, of course, the pigs are all right—quite sweet, actually—but the smell of aniseed makes me retch,’ said Miss Good. ‘But if it’s about that ghost I saw… and there’s nothing else you’d want to see me about… well, I did realise afterwards that it might be Highpepper being silly, but, as I didn’t think of that at the time, I didn’t take any notice except to scram.’

‘As who would not?’ said Laura, who had been briefed by Dame Beatrice on the way down. ‘But I do wish you’d tell me a bit more. I’m interested in ghosts, and this may have been a real one, after all.’

‘Mrs Gavin was born in the west of Scotland,’ explained Dame Beatrice, ‘where there is a long history of extra-sensory phenomena.’

‘Oh, yes? I wouldn’t know. But, if Mrs Gavin is interested in ghosts, as such, she’s come to the wrong shop, I’m afraid. You see, what I saw couldn’t have been a ghost. I know that perfectly well now. The proof is that the ghost’s horse trampled Miss Considine’s brussels sprouts. Looking back, it was obviously Highpepper. I can’t see the point, all the same. I should think something came unstuck and the boy had to make a getaway. I mean, no rag was carried out, so far as we know.’

‘Just a moment,’ said Laura. She was carrying a brief-case and from it she produced a stiff-covered, shiny notebook of rather impressive size and very impressive thickness. It was nearly half-full of notes and weird drawings which she had manufactured on the preceding day in preparation for the visit. She skimmed through the notebook—they were in the Principal’s sitting-room—as fine and private a place as the grave once the telephone had been disconnected and the door locked—and found a lurid picture of a headless rider and a headless dog in the middle of what looked like the destruction of the Cities of the Plain. ‘You see, the horse may have been a real one.’

‘The horse?’

‘Well,’ said Laura, temporising, ‘we all know about the Gytrash, don’t we?’

‘I—I don’t see the connection.’

Neither did Laura, but she continued, sternly:

‘So you may as well describe the ghost to me. It was tall, you say?’

‘I don’t know. Anyone on horseback looks tall.’

Broad?’

‘Well, I couldn’t really say.’

‘Did it look like a man or a woman?’

‘I was so scared, I just turned and ran.’

‘It followed you, didn’t it?’

‘I don’t think it followed me. I mean, I don’t think it saw me at all.’

‘Look here, said Laura, upon inspiration, ‘where are those brussels sprouts? I mean, you spotted the horse and rider at the head of the drive, I gather. Where had they been before that?’

A look of intelligent interest replaced the former expression of slightly puzzled distaste on the student’s face.

‘You know, I never thought of it that way before,’ she said. ‘Miss Gonsidine told me about the sprouts being trampled just to prove to me I hadn’t seen a ghost. The sprouts are in the kitchen garden, and that’s about the most unlikely place you can think of for anybody to go riding. It’s right round by the butler’s pantry that was, and all that sort of thing.’

‘Ah, that’s if the person knew the layout here. Try to imagine a person having an assignment with somebody here, but having no knowledge of the geography, so to speak.’

‘I don’t see what you’re getting at.’

But Laura, inspired with a truly magnificent notion, was not prepared to explain. She said:

‘I wish you could remember the size of the rider. Haven’t you any idea?’

Thus prompted, Miss Good replied reluctantly:

‘Well, you know Anne Boleyn?’

‘The apparent headlessness of the apparition, you mean?’

‘Yes, so why should I suddenly think of Henry the Eighth?’

‘Her husband, and responsible for the headlessness aforesaid?—No, by thunder!’ Laura got up, smote the astonished and slightly resentful student a congratulatory blow between the shoulder-blades, and said urgently, ‘The kitchen garden, my girl, and quick about it, before my brain has time to cool. As the barrow-boy remarked when he looked at an alligator’s teeth, you said a mouthful, cocky.’

Dame Beatrice, with an alligator’s smile, watched them go. She had been visited by a wild idea, too. She waited. The kitchen garden, as Laura had anticipated, was unusually vast. A strip of lawn separated it from the back of the house, and then it stretched far and wide, beautiful and austere. At that time of year it was given almost wholly over to brussels sprouts and cabbages, and these spread, downhill slightly, to a couple of ponds, a disused cottage and, finally, a gate which opened on to a lane.

Laura, nosing about like a hound which has picked up the scent, made rapidly for this gate and opened it.

‘Nobody except the dustmen ever come in that way,’ volunteered Miss Good, obviously on the defensive.

‘And are the dustcarts horse-drawn?’

‘No, not nowadays.’

‘But a horse has been here. Look at the hoof-prints.’

‘It must have been somebody from Highpepper, as I said.’

‘And it might be your ghost of Henry VIII. Well, I must away and write up my report. Many thanks for your invaluable assistance. Sorry to have taken up your time. Of course,’ she added, as they walked back to the front door together, ‘there is nothing to show that the ghost didn’t come from Highpepper. That needs to be borne in mind. I do agree with you there, and that something caused him to sheer off before there was any ragging.’

‘Well?’ said Dame Beatrice, when they returned to Miss Considine’s room. ‘Did the brussels sprouts enlighten you, I wonder?’

‘Yes and no,’ Laura replied. ‘You know you had an idea that the ghost may have been two people? Well, that’s exactly what it was. It reminded Miss Good of Henry VIIL’

‘You couldn’t call that proof,’ said Miss Good. But Laura wagged her head solemnly.

‘I call it proof,’ she said. ‘Of course, if we could have seen the hoof-prints the morning after you saw this apparition, we might have been able to show that the horse was more heavily laden when it left by the front gate than when it appeared at the back, but that’s past praying for now.’

They took their leave of Miss McKay, and, when they were in the car, Dame Beatrice, with a leer, congratulated Laura on her detective work.

‘I think we may take two things for granted,’ she said. ‘The horse was carrying two persons, neither of whom had to be recognised, and the collaborator with, or abductor of, Mrs Coles did not come from Highpepper.’

‘Did not?’

‘Nobody who knew anything about the environs of Calladale would have trampled Miss Considine’s brussels sprouts, and any Highpepper student who had planned to abduct Mrs Coles would certainly have taken pains to familiarise himself with the topography, if he did not know it already.’

‘Yes, but, if secrecy was the main object, surely the ghostly get-up was a bit noticeable?’

‘Yes and no. You must realise that the effect on most of the students would have been the same as the effect on Miss Good. There is a legend here of a haunting.’

‘Sudden and unreasoning panic? Oh, I see. No hanging about to investigate the phenomenon, but the hasty sauve qui peut? Something in that, no doubt. So what do we get? Somebody carried off Mrs Coles…’

‘And, most probably, with her own consent, although not, I venture to think, upon horseback.’

‘With her own consent? I don’t altogether see the point. If it wasn’t with her own consent she would have kicked up devil’s delight, unless the horseman had some mental or moral hold over her, and so could force the issue? You indicated the possibility, didn’t you?’

‘Did I really? Pray continue your exposition.’

‘Somebody didn’t intend (we think) to betray his presence, but he did so by trampling all over the kitchen garden, not knowing the geography of the college. That rules out the Highpepper youths, who must know it remarkably well. I say, though, there’s something else we ought to consider. In fact, we ought to do more than actually consider it.’

‘Ah! I wondered whether that might occur to you. You refer, no doubt, to the difficulty of actually identifying the pillion rider, if, by any chance, it was not Mrs Coles. After all, she had disappeared some five to six days earlier, don’t forget.’

‘Not Mrs Coles after all? What a sell if it wasn’t! Anyway, this is where I make a noise like Fleet Street and go and see this young husband. Incidentally’—Laura looked suspicious — ‘you seem very pleased about something.’

‘I was very pleased to note Miss Good’s remark about the position of the butler’s pantry, child, that’s all.’