Spotted Hemlock

chapter fifteen

Piggy Comes Cleanish

‘…for if there are hours when it is good to reflect and be prudent, there are others when we ought to know how to take a sudden resolution, and execute it with energy.’

Ibid.

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My secretary informs me that you are interested in pigs,’ said Dame Beatrice, seating herself opposite Basil at a small table in the lounge. It was a quarter to ten. Laura had breakfasted early and had gone for a walk. This was partly personal choice and partly to leave Dame Beatrice a clear field. ‘I am so glad to hear it. More people—many, many more—ought to take to pig-breeding. My nephew now—you may have heard of him—Carey Lestrange of Oxfordshire—has bred pigs almost from boyhood, and look what a fine man he is!’

Basil, who had lowered his newspaper as soon as she had begun to speak, crushed out his half-finished cigarette and looked ready to take flight, but Dame Beatrice, emulating the Ancient Mariner, held him grounded as though by some magic spell.

‘I’m afraid I’ve never heard of him,’ he said. ‘I only go in for pigs in a small way…’

‘But that’s just what I’m urging. People should go in for pigs in a small way. Just think.’ She gave him no opportunity to do this, but treated him to a lecture on small-scale pig-breeding until the unfortunate man was too much deflated to follow his first instinct and escape. It seemed easier, he decided, to humour the pestiferous old creature.

‘Yes,’ he said cautiously, ‘I agree with you almost entirely. But don’t you think that your scheme would bring down the price of pork until the game was hardly worth the candle?’

‘That may be so. I do not contest it. But think, Mr…’

‘Basil—er—Simnel.’

‘Mr Basil, of the effect on the human soul if everybody talked, bred and ate pig!’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Basil in a soothing tone. (She must be humoured, he supposed.)

‘Right,’ said Dame Beatrice, with sudden and startling briskness. ‘Now, Mr Basil, to the matter in hand. Exactly how did we persuade Mrs Coles to accompany us on our holiday? I refer particularly to the time spent at the camp at Bracklesea.’

‘Oh, that!’ He did not appear to be put out of countenance. ‘Well, yes, we did go there, of course.’

‘That is not what you caused my secretary to believe.’

‘Well, of course not. After all, how was I to know what she was up to? She might have… Oh, we’ll skip that!’

‘So there was something shady about the visit to Bracklesea?’

‘Shady? I don’t know what you mean by that. Your ideas and mine probably wouldn’t tally. However, for what it’s worth, I’ll tell you the truth. I’m an instructor at an agricultural college for women. I suggested to Miss Palliser—that is, Mrs Coles—that she might care to come with me to Bracklesea—strictly on the q.t., of course—for the fun of it. She agreed, and we went. At the end of a week we separated, she to go home, presumably, I to go to Scotland. It seemed providential, old Simnel breaking his leg. It gave me the chance I wanted of coming over here for a few weeks instead of going back to work. So there it is.’

Dame Beatrice shook her head and pursed her beaky little mouth.

‘I fear not,’ she said gently. ‘For one thing, Miss Palliser had been Mrs Coles for some months before you took her to the camp. For another, although she returned to college at the beginning of term, she left it under circumstances which remain unknown. She has completely disappeared. It is possible that she was abducted.’

‘I read—there was a report of an inquest — ’ said Basil. ‘I understood that the poor girl was dead. You can’t call that a disappearance, exactly.’

‘Neither do I call it a disappearance, exactly or otherwise. As you may find yourself in a very awkward situation shortly, perhaps I had better remind you—for I am certain you know —that the dead girl was identified as Mrs Coles by her mother. However, the body was not readily recognisable, and it seems certain now that it was not the body of Mrs Coles but that of an older, unmarried sister. The police have been unable to trace Mrs Coles, and one is forced to wonder whether she, also, may be dead.’

‘If she was abducted from college, I can’t possibly be suspected of having anything to do with it. I was over here long before the beginning of term.’

‘Yes. That would clear you, of course. You know, in your place, I would go to the police and tell them about that week you spent at the camp with Mrs Coles. If you have this complete alibi, it could do you no harm to contact them.’

‘No. But what good would it do if it had no bearing on what happened? And how do you come to be mixed up in it, anyway?’

‘To answer that first, I come to be mixed up in it because my nephew has taken over your work at the college, pro tem., and when Mrs Coles disappeared I was asked to look into the matter.’

‘I’m a bit dense, so may I ask why? I mean, it doesn’t seem to me that being a pigman’s aunt is necessarily a qualification for tracing missing girls.’

‘I have traced people before, most of them candidates for life imprisonment or, in less enlightened times, the noose.’

‘You’re not—yes, of course, you must be! Oh, Lord!’ Dame Beatrice studied him. A porcine individual in a ferment was not that individual seen at his best. Piggy was perspiring. Leaving him to his thoughts and his too-obvious fears, she went to her room, put on a fur coat and a witch-like hat of black, white and scarlet, and went downstairs to get the hall-porter to summon a hired car to take her for a drive until lunch-time. She lunched alone, as Laura had not returned.

Basil came to her table as she was about to leave it, and asked whether she could spare him a few moments in the hotel writing-room when she had had her coffee. It would be private in the writing-room, he added, and what he had to say was for her ears alone.

He proved to be correct about the writing-room being private, for they had it entirely to themselves. He switched on the electric fire, drew forward an armchair for Dame Beatrice and another for himself and took out cigarettes. Dame Beatrice declined his offer of one, and prepared herself to receive confidences.

‘It’s like this,’ he said, taking the cigarette out of his mouth and gazing not at Dame Beatrice but at the toes of his shoes, ‘I’m in a bit of a spot. You see, I haven’t been over here quite all the time I said I had.’

‘No?’

‘You couldn’t be definite, I suppose, about the date Mrs Coles disappeared?’

‘Why do you not say at once that you were the ghostly horseman who abducted her?’

‘What ghostly horseman? What on earth do you mean?’

‘A student named Good was out on a late leave pass that night, and saw you.’

‘But—not to know me?’ He did meet Dame Beatrice’s eye this time.

‘She certainly did not recognise you or Mrs Coles. But what was the idea of the abduction?’

‘It was nothing of the sort. I was a bit bored with pigs and what not, and, as we’d had a pretty good time together at the camp place, I thought she might be willing to team up with me again.’

‘But what did you suppose the college would do when they discovered that she was missing?’

‘Oh, but she wasn’t going to be missing. That wasn’t on the agenda at all. I’ve got a cottage where I spend weekends sometimes. It’s quite near the college. I thought of going there with her and bringing her back in plenty of time for college breakfast.’

‘Then how was it she did not return to college at all?’

‘How should I know? I’d given her plenty of notice that I was going to see her again. The horse and the sheets were her idea. It was essential, of course, that neither of us should be recognised. She broke out of her hostel, as we had planned, we togged up in the kitchen garden, which isn’t overlooked in any way, and got to my cottage by about a quarter to twelve. We had a couple of drinks and a cigarette and went to bed, and when I went to rouse her in the morning she was gone. Naturally I concluded that she had woken up early and decided to get back to college while it was still dark. Equally naturally, I couldn’t follow her there. The arrangement had been for her to show up at the same time on the following night, but she didn’t come, and I thought she’d got cold feet at the thought of the risk she was running by breaking out at night, and that was that.’

‘Are you a sound sleeper, Mr Basil?’

‘No. I wake very easily. You do when you’re accustomed to looking after animals.’

‘So Mrs Coles must have stolen very gently from your side, not to wake you.’

‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed Piggy, opening his eyes very wide. ‘You don’t think I slept with the girl? One of my own students! Really, the suggestion is most indelicate!’

‘This is astounding,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Of course I’m serious. The thing is, what am I to do? If I go to the police and tell them what I’ve told you, I’m going to find myself in a very, very awkward situation. They couldn’t help but think that I know more than I do. They might even arrest me. I shall have to think things over, unless you can help me. Where can the girl have gone, and why did she go?’

Dame Beatrice shook her head.

‘I think you had better tell the police the truth,’ she said. ‘The whole truth,’ she added gently.

‘Then you don’t believe my story?’

‘It rings strangely in my ears. I also must think things over.’

‘If you go to the police, and tell them what I’ve told you, I shall probably deny it, you know. It would be your word against mine.’

‘The police are accustomed to accepting my word. I do not know how much experience you have had of confiding in them.’

She got up, but, before she reached the door, it was opened and two men walked in. Although they were in plain clothes there was no doubt about their being police officers. Basil rose and looked at them.

‘The decision appears to have been taken out of my hands,’ he said quietly. ‘I suppose I am under arrest.’

‘Not at all, sir,’ said the foremost man, ‘but I shall be obliged if you will answer a few questions.’

‘The whole truth, mind,’ said Dame Beatrice, grinning at the younger policeman as he opened the door for her.

‘Well?’ said Laura, who had come in to a late lunch after her walk and was just finishing her coffee in the lounge. ‘Any luck? Did he spill any interesting beans?’

‘He told me—or, rather, I believe I told him—that he and Mrs Coles were the ghostly horseman seen by Miss Good.’

‘But I thought he was over here at the time!’

‘It seems that he thirsted for Mrs Coles’ society, but not connubially.’

‘What! Why, the man’s known to be a satyr,’

‘I am telling you what he told me.’

‘You don’t believe him, do you?’

‘I neither believe nor disbelieve. I suspend judgment until I know more. What he did not tell me is his real reason for getting Mr Simnel to impersonate him in Scotland while he came here to Ireland.’

‘Perhaps he really does want to study the Irish pig-market.’

‘He could have asked for leave of absence from the college, could he not? Why all this elaborate trickery?’

‘Probably because a Piggy with a broken leg gets paid his salary while he remains incapacitated, whereas a leave-of-absence Piggy has to forfeit the cash payments until he gets back on the job.’

‘Oh, I see. I confess I had not thought about the financial side of it. All the same, I cannot bring myself to believe that Mr Basil came here solely to study pig-marketing. There was some other reason, and, matters standing as they do, we need to find out what it was.’

‘Any basic ideas?’

‘Yes, but until I find out more than I can prove already, I am not prepared to disclose them.’

‘A pity. Hullo, here come the detectives. Shall we confer with them?’

‘No. If they have anything to tell us, they will do it without any prompting.’

The policemen came up.

‘Do you mind if we ask a few questions, Dame Beatrice?’

‘I shall be happy for you to do so.’

‘Do you want me to go?’ asked Laura. The older officer smiled.

‘Certainly not, Mrs Gavin. You may have some information for us, too. We understand, Dame Beatrice, that you found out that Basil wasn’t in Scotland when he was supposed to be in hospital with a broken leg, but was here. What was his object in deceiving people about where he was?’

‘He told us he wished to study the Irish pig-marketing schemes.’

‘Yes, that’s what he told me. Is that all you know?’

‘Yes, although it is not all that I can guess.’

‘He confesses to abducting Mrs Coles, the missing girl, from the college, but swears that before it was daylight she sneaked out of his cottage and he hasn’t seen her since.’

‘It may be true, of course.’

‘Yes?’

‘You see, from the girl’s point of view, it was surely a very risky thing to do, this breaking out of college to spend the night in a man’s cottage. I cannot help feeling that Mrs Coles had some stronger motive for taking such a risk, if, indeed, she did take it. She would most certainly have been sent down from college if she had been found out.’

‘You couldn’t suggest a reason, I suppose, madam? All we can think of, in view of the fact that she has disappeared, is that she wanted to meet somebody in secret, and that the person she wanted to meet could not be interviewed by daylight and in the normal course of events. If so, I suppose you couldn’t put a name to this person?’

‘Either her sister or her stepfather, I should think, if you are right.’

‘The sister who was murdered?’

‘And who was murdered at about that time, or some days before.’

The policeman stared at her.

‘You’re not suggesting that this young woman murdered her sister?’

Dame Beatrice shrugged.

‘I am neither suggesting it nor the reverse. I am putting it forward as a possibility. Young women have murdered their sisters before now. You see, the difficulty facing us in the case of that particular death has been twofold. Miss Palliser may have been the intended victim, or, as I thought at first (and I have not discarded the thought), she may have been killed in mistake for Mrs Coles. In neither case is there any apparent motive for the murder, and, of course, we cannot rule out the possibility that this was accidental poisoning and that somebody panicked and got rid of the body. If we could only discover the cellar where it lay before it was put into that coach we should be a very long step forward.’

‘You mentioned the stepfather, madam. What made you think of Biancini? It seems hardly likely that she’d need to meet him secretly.’

‘There is the same objection in the case of the sister, is there not?’

‘Well, yes, except that they don’t seem to have had much to do with one another and may have had some reason for not wanting people to know that they had met. It’s all very unsatisfactory, from our point of view. Usually, in murder cases, there’s something to get your teeth into so that you can make a start, but in this case there doesn’t seem to be a thing. We don’t want to call in the Yard, but we may not be able to help ourselves. I’m going to have another talk with Mr Basil. The reason he gives for coming here, instead of going back to his job, is a lot too thin to hold water. He’s mixed up in this business somehow. I’m certain of that.’

Dame Beatrice nodded several times, but in thought as well as in agreement. The police officers returned to the writing-room and, as they opened the door, they almost knocked into Basil, who was in the passage and in the act of closing the writing-room door behind him.

‘Just half a moment, if you please, sir,’ she heard the first policeman say. His voice was sharp. It was obvious that he had requested Basil to remain where he had left him and that Basil had not seen fit to obey.

‘Looks bad, don’t you think?’ murmured Laura.

‘It does not appear to have inspired confidence in Mr Basil, so far as the police are concerned,’ Dame Beatrice admitted. ‘Was he proposing to make his escape, I wonder? Extreme measures of that kind would be most inadvisable at this stage. The proceedings must take their course.’

‘If “proceedings” means what I think it means,’ said Laura, ‘I don’t think there are any. The police more or less admitted they were baffled. Though I say it myself, they could do with the help of the Yard. I wish they’d call them in, and be quick about it, unless you’ve got something up your sleeve.’

‘Nobody would need to employ the conjuring feat you mention if the police could find Norah Coles,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘We ourselves have not the resources for such a search, and although I have given thought to the matter, no idea of where she may be has come into my mind, except that she must have gone back to England.’

‘Has the Biancini house a cellar?’

‘No, it has not. I visited it, as you know, and it has none. Neither can I think of any other cellar where the body of Miss Palliser might have been hidden, except, of course — ”

‘The college has cellars. The main building, you know,’ said Laura. Dame Beatrice gazed so fixedly at her that she added, ‘Didn’t you know?’ Without waiting for an answer, she added, ‘Then it’s “boot, saddle, to horse and away,” I suppose, leaving no avenue unexplored.’

‘Will you tell George that we shall need the car in half an hour from now?’

‘I will do that one little thing. Good gracious me! And here have we been eating, sleeping and continually thinking in terms of cellars, with one, so to speak, right under our noses.’

‘It is always the obvious which is overlooked, child, as Edgar Allan Poe pointed out.’

But Laura knew better than to suppose that Dame Beatrice had overlooked the fact that the Georgian house, with its butler’s pantry, possessed, for example, at least a wine-cellar.