Spotted Hemlock

chapter ten

Phantom Holiday

‘Ernest discovered on the borders of a little marsh, a quantity of bamboos, half buried in the sand. We pulled them out…’

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Laura had given considerable thought to an age-old problem. What, she wondered, would be the best things to wear for the interview with the bereaved husband. That it might turn out to be a meeting of extreme importance to the enquiry she was well aware, and she knew that both men and women, particularly young men and young women, were influenced, even if unconsciously, by the clothes worn by interlocutors.

Tweeds and brogues?—Reassuring? Maybe not. Mutton dressed as lamb?—Apt to arouse suspicion. Careless-artistic? —Always of doubtful value with either sex. Trousers?— Depended on the man. Some could put up with them on a large and handsome Amazon; some could not. Laura settled for a well-cut suit with matching accessories.

‘You look very nice,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘One visualises the card-case and detects the slight, unmistakable odour of Debrett.’

‘Oh, Lord! All I aimed at was to appear neat but not gaudy.’ Laura ostentatiously consulted a small and extremely elegant gold wristwatch, her husband’s birthday gift. ‘Well, see you soon, and with lots of gen, or so I anticipate. By the way, if I’m to impersonate a reporter, what’s my pseudonym?’

‘I leave that to you, child. Your imagination, resourcefulness, choice of language, personality, courage, and sense of responsibility, coupled with your total inability to write shorthand, far surpass my own. Be you who you will. Perhaps, for the proper recording of your feats of derring-do, I had better be told, though.’

‘You know,’ said Laura suddenly. ‘I don’t believe I think much of this reporter business, after all. He may shy away if he thinks I represent a newspaper, especially if he’s got a guilty conscience. Couldn’t I be an old friend of the deceased? Ah, I’ll tell you what! Couldn’t I have been her Sunday-school teacher? How old is she supposed to have been?’

‘Mrs Coles was twenty-two, I believe, although the body was so strangely mature that it is difficult to see how it could be hers, although medical science is not infallible.’

‘So I could easily have been her Sunday-school teacher! You can become one at about fourteen, I believe.’

‘You don’t look like a Sunday-school teacher.’

‘Oh, they come in all sizes,’ said Laura, easily. ‘The hunt is up! Suspect, here I come!’

‘Which of you is the suspect?’ asked Carey, who was visiting his aunt. Laura looked through him. ‘I mean, if you go attempting to pass yourself off as a doer of good works, looking like that, you’ve a nasty surprise coming to you, my girl.’

Laura glanced down at her suit.

‘Nonsense,’ she said firmly. ‘You don’t have to look like Frau Frump to teach in a Sunday School. Besides, I shan’t pretend I still do.’

‘How are you supposed to know that she was married? Don’t forget it was a deep, dark secret.’

‘Oh,’ said Laura airily, ‘she will have told her old Sunday-school teacher, if nobody else. What are old Sunday-school teachers for?’

‘I’ve never enquired. Oh, well, go ahead and do it your way, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

‘You go and feed the pigs,’ retorted Laura. ‘You’re neglecting your duties.’

‘My duty is to escort you to wherever it is you’re bound for, and make sure you don’t run into trouble.’

‘Who says so?’ demanded Laura, looking haughty.

‘Aunt Adela, so don’t fuss. This fellow may be the murderer, for all we know. You can’t go and visit him alone. Gavin would have our blood, and quite right, too.’

‘How do I explain you?’

‘I’ve very kindly given you a lift up to Town. You thought you would do some shopping, then you remembered that poor dear what-was-her-name had told you her husband was at this art school in London, so you felt you must look him up. Then I shall suggest giving you lunch and include him in. All right?’

‘All right, then, but I don’t suppose I’ll get much out of him with you hanging around.’

‘Yes, you will, girl. Besides, didn’t you notice I’ve shaved? What did you think that was for? I’m not going to waste it on the pigs?’

They drove in Carey’s car to his home in Stanton St John as soon as his work was over for the day. Laura stayed the night there, and they set off early next morning for southeast London. The art school was separated from the road by a short gravel drive at the end of which it was possible to park the car. Carey remained seated at the wheel while Laura went exploring. She soon located the secretary’s office, tapped on the glass panel and asked at what time it would be possible for her to speak to Mr Coles.

‘He’s in Life,’ said the secretary. A little taken aback, Laura remarked that she hoped so.

‘Life-drawing,’ the secretary explained. *You can go in, if you don’t mind the nude. Oh, it’s a male model this week, so he won’t be. Room 24. There’s a rude drawing on the door. You can’t miss it. Up there.’

With a presentiment, unusual with her, that she was going to muff the coming interview, Laura traversed the corridor indicated by the secretary and discovered Room 24 without difficulty. She knocked, but there was no answer, so, after waiting a moment, she went in. There were eight or nine students in the room, also the professor of life-drawing and the model. The latter, astoundingly reminiscent of the Olmec Wrestler statue from Mexico, was in position on a small dais. The students did not look up as she entered, but the professor, who had been standing behind the shoulder of one of the girls, came forward.

‘I wanted to find Mr Coles,’ said Laura.

‘Mr Coles?’ The professor looked vaguely round the room. ‘Not here. Oh, Mr Coles! No, he has not attended for—I don’t know how many sessions. He left in—let me see…’

‘He just went out of the room for a moment,’ said one of the men. ‘You’re thinking of his father, I believe, sir.’

‘Then he’ll be along’—the professor waved his hand—‘at any time now. Speak to him in the corridor, if you please. The model has just had his rest, and we are anxious to press on.’ He returned to his work. As she opened the door to go out, Laura heard him say, ‘Deltoid, Mr Soper. No good unless.’

The corridor was draughty, but Coles did not keep her waiting long. She did not know him by sight, but as he put his hand out to open the door of Room 24, she said:

‘Mr Coles, I believe. Could you spare me a few minutes?’

‘Not if you’re a reporter.

‘No, I’m nothing of the sort.’

‘And not if you’re one of those damned snoopers who claim to have known my wife before I did.’

That put paid to the Sunday-school teacher, thought Laura. She said:

‘A friend, a man, drove me down, and I don’t want to waste his time. How soon can you join us for lunch?’

‘What is all this?’

‘You and your wife spent a week at a holiday camp this summer, did you not?’

Coles stared at her.

‘What is all this?’ he repeated. ‘Are you touting for a holiday camp? If so, it’s no good coming to me. I’ve never stayed at one in my life, and don’t intend to, and now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to my work.’

Laura knew when she was beaten. She said urgently:

‘Do you declare that you have never stayed at a holiday camp?’

‘Yes, I do. It’s not my idea of a holiday. It’s not cheap, either, nowadays. Anyway, what is all this about holiday camps? Other people have bothered me about them!’

‘But you used to stay at hotels?’

‘Oh, I see! You’re from the police! I stayed at hotels only because my wife paid. And now you can go back to whatever God-forsaken police barracks you’re attached to, you narking female busy, and let me get on with my job.’

He opened the door violently and let himself in, crashing it shut behind him. A sympathetic Carey gave Laura lunch and drove her straight back to the Stone House at Wandles Parva, where Dame Beatrice, having again forsaken the college high-table for the weekend flesh-pots provided by her French cook, had arranged to meet them.

Laura told the inconclusive tale, and added that she would never make either a policewoman or a reporter. Dame Beatrice cackled.

‘But you have made Mr Coles emphasise the very thing we regard as being of primary importance in the case,’ she said. ‘I had no hopes of the interview at all, therefore you have had great success.’

‘You mean it matters whether he went to that holiday camp?’

‘Of course it does, child. If his wife went there, she went with somebody else. If she did not go there either, it means that somebody had some reason to impersonate her, or else that it was her sister, Miss Carrie Palliser, with a lover.’

‘And as it doesn’t seem absolutely certain that the murdered woman was Mrs Coles… the apparent age of the body…’

‘Exactly. Here we have a very pretty kettle of fish. I am now going to interview Mr Coles myself, but not, this time, at the art school. Neutral territory is indicated, but some territories are less neutral than others. Suppose we send for him to visit us here?’

‘He won’t come.’

‘Do you care to risk a small sum in support of that theory?’

‘It isn’t a theory; it’s a broad-based fact. As it is, I’ve scared him stiff. I told you how he answered me. He must have a guilt-complex. You had better let him mature in cask for a bit.’

‘No, no. We’ll get him while he’s still in a state of ferment. Your question about the holiday camp, coming on top of mine, will have given him furiously to think, and, if we assist his thinking, I have an idea that he may be prepared to give us some information.’

‘I suppose it occurs to you,’ said Laura, after a pause, ‘that he may not really give a hoot about the whole businesss? He may be glad to wash his hands of the girl. And, anyway, he doesn’t know that we think the dead woman may not be his wife.’

‘True, and he must not be allowed to know it yet. Tomorrow is Saturday, and I ascertained from the time-table, which I saw in the principal’s room when I was at the art school, that they are in session on Saturdays from ten in the morning until midday. We have only to telephone, informing Mr Coles that we expect him to dinner, and that a car will be placed at his disposal, to receive an enthusiastic acceptance of our invitation. He was accustomed to sponge on his wife. He shall sponge on me.’

‘Bless your heart!’ observed Laura, sardonically. ‘I know he won’t come. I’ve got him terrified, I tell you.’ But her scorn was wasted. Dame Beatrice did the telephoning herself and returned to announce to her secretary that Coles was coming to dinner on the Saturday evening.

‘And how!’ said Laura, sceptical to the last. Dame Beatrice reassured her.

‘I can repeat the telephone conversation verbatim,’ she declared. ‘I rang the art school and obtained speech with the secretary, a most intelligent, willing and helpful girl. She located Mr Coles with the greatest of ease and he was soon brought to the telephone. I reminded him that he had met me, and gave him the invitation to dinner. The conversation then ran as follows. I quote.’

Laura grinned. She had spent several years in Dame Beatrice’s employment but was still prepared for surprises.

‘Uh-huh?’ she said, non-committally.

‘The conversation,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘ran thus:

‘Is that Mr Coles?’

‘Speaking.’

‘Splendid. Dame Beatrice Bradley here. I visited you a short time ago, if you remember.’

‘Oh, yes. Well, well! And how do we find ourselves?’

‘Short of one weekend guest, Mr Coles.’

‘Too bad. Anything I can do?’

‘Of course. That is why I am speaking to you at this present moment. Are you able to join us?—The Stone House, Wandles Parva, Hampshire. Nearest station Brockenhurst, but, if you prefer it, I can send my car to pick you up and transport you hither. Don’t bother about a black tie, or anything of that sort. We shall be a very small family party. By the way, do not be alarmed if you meet my secretary who called at the art school yesterday.’

‘Not Lady Vere de Vere?’

(‘You see?’ said Laura, smugly.)

‘The same.’

‘I knew she couldn’t be a copper’s moll, although I called her one.’

‘That says a great deal for your sense of character.’

‘Did you say you could pick me up in a car? I’m not sold on paying my fare. Haven’t got it, to be precise’

‘Very well, then, Mr Coles. My chauffeur will be at your door at two o’clock this afternoon. You will be ready by then?’

‘Washed, shaved, shriven, and with a rose in my coat. Good-bye.’

‘So he’s coming,’ said Laura. ‘It’s a sobering thought. What a forty-guinea suit and my womanly charm could not accomplish, the promise of rich food and a chauffeur-driven car have pulled off with the greatest of ease. You called him a sponger, I believe. How right you so often are!’

Mr Coles had smartened himself up. He was also on the defensive, particularly with Laura.

‘I realise,’ he said, finding her in the dining-room before his hostess had come down, ‘that there’s method in this madness of inviting me here for the weekend, and you may as well know, first as last, that I’m not committing myself. I know the police think I’m responsible for what happened to Norah, but they’re wrong. And if you think the same, you’re wrong, too, Mrs Private-Detective Gavin.’

‘There, there. Have a cocktail,’ said Laura. ‘I mixed them myself, so I know they’re good. Now I’ll tell you the people you’re going to meet, and we’ll get the worst over first, and that’s my husband, Detective Chief-Inspector Robert Gavin of the C.I.D. However, take heart. He is not here in his official capacity.’

‘If I spill anything to my own disadvantage, he will be,’ said Coles, with a cocky grin. ‘Mud in your eye!’

‘Then there are Dame Beatrice’s nephew, Mr Carey Lestrange, his wife, his son and his daughter, and that’s the lot. Not so bad, eh?’

Coles stared into his glass, then swallowed the rest of his drink. He shook his head, but before he could speak there was the sound of voices outside, his hostess and her relatives came in with Gavin, introductions were made and acknowledged and shortly afterwards dinner was announced and the company sat down, in informal fashion, to dine.

Coles found himself between Carey’s wife and Laura Gavin and, once he had conquered a tendency to give nervous half-glances at Laura’s husband, that disarmingly quiet and handsome officer of the law who happened to be seated opposite him, he told the company various anecdotes and appeared to enjoy the meal.

When it was over, and coffee had been served, Carey drove his wife and children home. The other four, at Dame Beatrice’s suggestion, went into the smaller drawing-room to take chairs round the fire. When they were comfortably settled, Dame Beatrice opened the proceedings with a warning.

‘We are going to ask questions, Mr Coles. Remember that you are under no compulsion whatever to answer them. Detective Chief-Inspector Gavin is here quite unofficially and only so that we may all benefit from his experience.’

‘Yes, quite,’ said Coles. He cleared his throat. ‘You won’t mind my saying that I feel about as happy as a rat in a trap, will you?’

‘Can’t expect you to believe it, but there’s no trap,’ said Gavin. ‘I expect you’ve been badgered quite a bit, though, haven’t you?’

‘My instinct when I spot a police uniform is to run away, screaming. I dream of policemen. Do they really believe I made away with Norah and hid the body in that old coach? Because I didn’t, you know.’

‘Well, they’ve no line to go on at present. I expect you’ll find they’ve been equally embarrassing to her stepfather and her mother. They’ve got to ferret, you know, until they can start something moving. It’s all routine for them. Try thinking of it that way.’

‘It comes hard on innocent parties, all this probing.’

‘I know it does. The only thing is, the innocent parties have nothing whatever to fear.’

‘Never?’

‘Well, hardly ever,’ Gavin was impelled to reply. ‘Look here, listen to the questions, and answer them, but only if it suits you, as Dame Beatrice suggests. All right?’

‘Not by a long chalk. Very well. Carry on. I suppose it may help, in the long run.’

‘That’s the spirit. Fire away, Dame B.’

‘I visited a holiday camp the other day,’ Dame Beatrice began. ‘It was the big one at Bracklesea, the one I believed I mentioned to you when we met at your lodgings.’

‘Oh?’ Coles glanced at Laura. ‘And you made some enquiries and decided that Norah and I had stayed there together last summer. Well, as I told you and Mrs Gavin, I have never stayed at one of those places in my life.’

‘I know you said so. Do you agree that your wife’s maiden name was Palliser?’

‘I do. But she isn’t the only Palliser in the phone book, and she’s got a sister, don’t forget.’

‘If I told you the dates concerned, would you be prepared to tell me where you were and what you were doing that week?’

‘I won’t commit myself to that, but you may as well tell me the dates.’

‘Saturday, August eighteenth to Saturday, August twenty-fifth.’

Coles’ face cleared.

‘I was in Paris. The art school has a scheme. You go cheap. Horrible pensions and lousy grub, but at least it’s Paris. I can get you twenty witnesses.’

‘Where was your wife?’

‘Staying with that aunt in Harrafield, the aunt who keeps that glorified pub—she calls it an hotel—the Hour-Glass.’

‘That corresponds with our information.’

‘What does that mean? Have you contacted the aunt?’

‘Yes, we have. Her information, as far as it goes, is interesting. Look here, Mr Coles, you will have to face the fact that it is to the last degree unlikely that your wife spent that particular week with her aunt.’

Coles looked bewildered, but as an actor might do.

‘Not?’

‘I am afraid not. The aunt seems to have thought that you and your wife went to this holiday camp. The aunt believed she was covering up for you by pretending to Mrs Biancini that Mrs Coles was still staying at the Hour-Glass. According to you, you did not go to any such place as the camp, but were in Paris. My investigation indicates that it is more than likely that your wife went for a week to this place at Bracklesea while you were in Paris. What do you say to all that?’

Coles looked troubled but not angry.

‘I don’t say anything. It may be so. By that I mean she may have gone away with somebody else. She might even have mentioned it, for all I know. She’d be certain I wouldn’t mind. I don’t believe in being a dog in a manger. I wonder whether she did tell me? I couldn’t possibly say, after all these weeks.’

‘The two people who booked at the camp in the name of Palliser were a man and a woman,’ said Dame Beatrice. Coles nodded.

‘That’s what I meant when I said I wouldn’t have minded. We’d agreed to live and let live and not get jealous or anything idiotic like that. I mean, one must be civilised.’

‘It’s so terribly civilised to murder somebody,’ said Laura. Coles jumped to his feet, but Gavin laughed. Dame Beatrice put another question:

‘Are we really to understand that your marriage was one of convenience rather than of love?’

Coles sat down, deflated and perplexed.

‘It’s what I told you. She talked, or, rather, nagged me into it, but I didn’t murder her,’ he said. As a ripost to Laura’s inexcusable observation it was more than inadequate. Dame Beatrice glanced at him sharply, caught Gavin’s eye and grimaced.

‘All right, Mr Coles,’ said Gavin. ‘We’re quite prepared to accept that— at this stage. How far do you trust the aunt’s word?’

‘Which aunt? Oh, you mean Norah’s aunt! Well, she was jolly good to us. Rather a romantic sort of woman, one might say.’

‘Romantic?’ It was Dame Beatrice who repeated the word. Coles, who had been crossing one knee over the other, now straightened his legs and stretched both feet towards the fire.

‘She—well, all her geese were swans, I expect,’ he said. ‘She really thought we were in love, I suppose. We weren’t, of course. I had no idea of marrying Norah when I did. It just became one of those things.’

‘So you don’t exactly grieve for her?’ asked Gavin.

‘No.’ The embryo artist frowned. ‘If I had to tell the truth,’ he said, ‘I’d say I was jolly well out of it. Her death, you know. I’m free again. It’s all I want now. In most ways the whole thing was a ghastly mistake. In some ways your news that she went off with somebody else for a week doesn’t really surprise me. She’d done it before.’

There was a long silence, then Gavin said:

‘So that’s that.’

‘And that’s the fellow who murdered her, I’ll bet.’

Laura caught her husband’s eye, nodded, rose to her feet and said her goodnights. Coles looked agonised.

‘Don’t go,’ he said. ‘Don’t leave me! I don’t know what I might be talked into saying!’

‘You won’t be talked into anything,’ said Gavin. ‘What’s the name of this fellow?’

But Coles shook his head.

‘I never asked and I haven’t a clue,’ he declared.

‘You will say no more,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Personally, I think we might all go to bed.’

But her guest, it seemed, was not prepared for this.

‘I do wish you’d listen,’ he said. ‘I didn’t love Norah. You might as well know it first as last. I have no money. I thought she’d come in for something substantial from her father, and, heaven knows, I can do with every penny I can get. You see, I’ve got talent. Not a lot, of course, but, with a bit of money behind me—have you any conception of what it costs to hire even a small art gallery for a one-man show?—I could make good. I saw my chance, as I thought. But then I weakened. Norah wasn’t really what I wanted. Then I thought it all over again and decided that it might work. I was prepared to be perfectly fair as long as all she wanted was an uncritical husband. But, naturally, she wanted a good deal more than that. She wanted complete devotion, and that shot wasn’t on the board. You can’t mortgage your soul.’

‘So Doctor Faustus discovered,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘And then?’

‘Nothing. We got married. But when I got the chance of this cheap trip to Paris, she went to stay with her aunt. Only —she didn’t, according to you. She went to this holiday camp at Bracklesea. Well, we know what’s happened to her since then!’

‘How much did her father leave her?’ Gavin enquired. Coles shook his head.

‘Her mother kept a tight fist on it while Norah stayed at college. I don’t think Norah herself knew how much it was.’

‘I really think she did.’

‘Then,’ said Coles, ‘there’s only one thing for you to do if you want to find the killer. You’d better lay off me and find out what that swine Biancini was doing between August eighteenth and August twenty-fifth this summer. There’s your murderer for you, and you can tell him I said so! Mrs Biancini dotes on him, and anything Norah had to leave will come to him in the end. You see if it doesn’t!’