Spotted Hemlock

chapter twenty

Painter’s Colic

‘ “What, do you think it is a fox?” “Yes,” replied Ernest, “I think it is a golden fox.”’

Ibid.

‘ “ …you must know that, according to naturalists, the jackal partakes the nature of a wolf, a fox, and a dog.”’

Ibid.

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We find ourselves confronted by a tortuous mind,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Nevertheless, I think we have enough to convince ourselves of the truth. Whether, on the evidence we can offer, Coles will be arrested and charged, I cannot say, but I believe the inspector is prepared to take the risk. The strength of Coles’ position is that he took nobody into his confidence except, to some extent, the dead woman.’

‘What! How do you know?’

‘By inference, added to a remark made to me by Mrs Biancini when I visited her at her home. She said that nobody on earth would want to hurt Norah, a statement which gave me food for thought.’

‘Well, we both ought to have seen that it was in the college cellar the rats had got at Miss Palliser. An old house like that was bound to have cellars.’

‘The ghostly rider was such a very suspicious character, too,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘And then there did seem to be a smell of rats everywhere, both literally and metaphorically, did there not?’

‘I’m not going to rack my brains any longer. Has Piggy Basil another job yet?’

‘Miss McKay has another lecturer coming next term, so Carey has promised Mr Basil a position at Stanton St John. He regards him as a steady character now. Even if he is not, he seems to be a first-class pigman. Later, I imagine he will emigrate. He says he wants no more to do with Norah Coles, but at present he is not quite himself, so we shall see.’

‘Well, let’s have the order of events, with your interspersed comments, can we? I think I’ve grasped the general drift, but I prefer my explanations to be made in words of one syllable.’

‘Very well. Norah Palliser, as she was at the time, met and was attracted by Coles. He was handsome, poor, boorish and gifted—in all, just the sort of young man to appeal to a girl who had had to endure the approaches of stepfather Biancini, that crude, gross, amorous foreigner.’

‘Don’t forget that one of the students diagnosed her as a fast worker. She may have encouraged Biancini,’ said Laura.

‘Very likely she did at first, until she found that she could not control him. She tucked herself away at the agricultural college, having already planned (I deduce) to marry Coles. I think she must have told him that she was in possession of a useful sum, her inheritance under her father’s will. Coles did not want to marry Norah, but he did want to inherit her money. He could see no way of obtaining the latter without doing the former, but Fate played into his hands when Norah fell in love (violently, this time) with her instructor, Mr Basil. She confided this infatuation to her sister and begged her to take her place on the college rota so that she could stay with Basil in Northern Ireland. I imagine that she thought and expected that Coles would divorce her when she could let him know what she had done. Her sister, Carrie Palliser, in trouble all round, impecunious and out of work, and, in any case, thoroughly irresponsible (as her criminal record shows) was only too glad to agree, particularly as she probably saw a chance to blackmail her sister afterwards by threatening to disclose the plot to Miss McKay.’

‘Let sisterly love continue! But that wouldn’t work, would it? I thought Norah was so besotted by Piggy that she wouldn’t give a hoot what anybody thought or did about it. Of course, there was Piggy’s job to consider, I suppose.’

‘There is no way, at present, of showing that Carrie did think of blackmail. What we do know is that, true to her nature, she stole from the other students. You remember the thefts of money and valuables mentioned by Miss McKay?’

‘Carrie seems to have been a charming soul! Perhaps the rest of us are none the worse for her demise. You still haven’t covered the actual murder, though.’

‘Here we are on more speculative ground. It is a pity that the letter sent by Coles to his wife, but received and read by her deputy at the college, has been destroyed.’

‘What letter?’

‘A letter which must have been written and received if anything else is to make sense, child. The letter was mentioned, anyway, by Miss Elspeth Bellman when we first knew of Miss Palliser’s disappearance from college.’

‘Oh, yes, of course. Well?’

‘I believe the letter was sent with some photographic negatives. It would have run something after this fashion: I took these pictures in Paris and cannot let anybody in a chemist’s develop and print them. You will realise why not when you see them. Be a good sport and do them for me in your college cellar. Didn’t you say you were allowed to use it as a dark room? You’ll get lots of laughs. Don’t show them to anybody with no sense of humour, though. You know what I mean. To help you pass the time, there’s something for you to drink if you care to collect it from the station. Home-made but potent. Don’t worry about the taste. Just wait for the effects. In with it is the hypo. Both bottles plainly marked, so don’t go mixing them up.’

‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed Laura. Dame Beatrice leered triumphantly. ‘You’ve even hit on the right sort of style and everything! But how did the body get put into the other cellar with the rats? Where are the negatives? How did Piggy Basil and Norah know about Carrie’s death? Why did they decide to hush it up by moving the body to the coach?’

‘Interesting questions. As I say, I can tell you only what 1 surmise. The body was put into the cellar with the rats because Coles caused it to be put there.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I base the theory on the fact that there was nothing whatever in either the outer or inner cellar to show that the poison had been taken there.’

‘But need it have been?’

‘Anybody feeling as ill as the victim would have done, having swallowed as much of the coniine as she did, would hardly have chosen to make her way into a rat-infested cellar, or have taken off her overcoat in there. The police found the remnants of that coat.’

‘So Coles came along and cleared up? I suppose he removed the films and bottles and things. A risky thing to do, wasn’t it?’

‘So risky that he did not do it himself.’

‘But you said…’

‘I said that he caused it to be done. Do you remember my telling you that I asked the secretary whether any letters had come to college for Mr Basil while he was supposed to be in hospital?’

‘Yes. You mean Coles told Basil he’d killed Norah?’

‘Oh, no. The letter would have been anonymous. It came to college, was re-addressed by the secretary to the hospital we visited and was received, no doubt, by Mr Simnel. Mr Simnel must have had other letters addressed to Basil, but a store of fairly large envelopes, each bearing Basil’s Ulster address (under the name of Simnel), would soon have disposed of that difficulty. So, in a roundabout way, but ultimately, Basil received a curt intimation that the body of Norah Coles lay in the college cellar.’

‘I don’t see why Piggy Basil took any notice.’

‘No, but Norah Coles had to take notice. He was compelled to let her know that her sister was dead. Once the body was discovered, there was no knowing what complications might have arisen, so far as she was concerned. Besides, there were the other students to be considered—those who had held the fort for her, so to speak, by agreeing to pass off her sister as herself. Those students knew that Palliser was not Coles, and Coles could see no end to the business unless the fact of the death could be hidden. Mr Basil is weak. He is also, in his own way, a gentleman. He agreed to accompany her to the college. They put the body in the inside cellar, threw the coat in, and got rid of the bottles, no doubt. Then they retired to Basil’s cottage. But Norah Coles was still in a state of terror and begged him to help her move the body away from the college together.’

‘So we get our ghost?’

‘So we get our ghost, and, satisfied that all was for the best, the lovers returned to Ireland until Norah’s nerve gave way and caused her to haunt this neighbourhood for news.’

‘Can’t quite see why Piggy let himself in for such a business,’ said Laura. Dame Beatrice said:

‘Yes, you can. Why do you think he consented to help at all?’

‘Oh, of course! Norah was in such a state that he thought she must have sent the poison and the films herself. I suppose he jumped to the conclusion that the sister was blackmailing Norah. But, if he did, how does he account for the anonymous letter?’

‘I don’t suppose he tried to do so. He is not very intelligent.’

‘What do you make of all that damage done in the Calladale grounds soon after Carey took on Piggy’s job?’

‘I am convinced it was the work of a gang of hooligans, just as was thought at the time. There seems no other rational explanation. It had some small value, however—it began the discovery of the rats and the rhubarb. But for the rhubarb, remember, the body might still rest undiscovered.’

‘Yes, I see. So everything falls into place. The two of them, Basil and Norah, came back to the college and hid the body in the inner cellar. Then she got restless about it and made him move it. They must have had a terrible job. It was no joke for me to transport that student on that great carthorse, and I’d never have been able to get on its back in the dark without the help of that policeman. Could there have been a third party present to assist Piggy, do you think?’

‘I hardly think so. They would not have dared trust another person. Desperation is a wonderful fillip and, strong as you are, I feel sure Mr Basil is very considerably stronger.’

‘But the planning—the sheets and all that!’

‘The sheets came from Basil’s cottage, presumably, and the ghost-costume would not have taken long to make. Now that we have decided what happened, police enquiries could readily establish whether the two came here by train or by car, and when.’

‘I thought you’d taken Piggy under your protection!’

‘I did not say the police were to be asked to establish these facts.’

‘Oh, I see. Well, after all that, where is Norah, and what will happen when she’s found?’

This question was answered by the discovery of Coles’ body in the pottery room at the art school. The autopsy established that death had been caused by lead poisoning, resulting in a cerebral haemorrhage. The possibility of suicide was taken into account, but the coroner’s jury found that, as the deceased had been a potter and an amateur interior decorator, it was likely that an unsuspected allergy to lead, a poison associated closely with his work, had, in eighteenth-century parlance, carried him off.

The result of his death, so far as the enquiry into the murder of Carrie Palliser was concerned, was the dramatic reappearance of Norah Coles. Dame Beatrice, at home again in the Stone House, Wandles Parva, received a telephone call from Calladale College.

‘The Coles girl has turned up. Says she dared not come out of hiding while her husband was alive,’ stated Miss McKay. ‘Can you come and talk to her? She looks half-starved and is in a fine state of nerves, as you’d expect.’

The Coles girl was housed in the sanatorium when Dame Beatrice arrived. She was sallow and looked thoroughly ill, and was inclined to weep every time she tried to speak. She had been in hiding in Garchester since she had left Ireland. But for the fact that they believed she was dead, the police must have found her, although she had done as little shopping as she could, and that, she explained, at shops where she was not known.

As point after point was disclosed, Dame Beatrice’s theorising took the shape of fact. At last the girl said:

‘What’s going to happen to me now?’

‘Nothing,’ said Miss McKay, ‘if we can help it.’ She met Dame Beatrice’s eye with a challenging stare, to find that no challenge was necessary. ‘You’ll get to your work and make up the time you’ve lost. You’ve the makings of a respectable farmer if you put your mind to it. Respectable farmers are an asset to the community. People in prison for concealing deaths are not. Mr Basil is going abroad. Dame Beatrice has furnished him with funds. Not a bad sort of man, on the whole, but, of course, he can’t come back here.’

Dame Beatrice nodded slowly.

‘You’re much too good,’ said the girl; she began a noisy sobbing.

‘Of course we are!’ said Miss McKay, snappishly. ‘What did you suppose we should be?’

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[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]

[A 3S Release— v1, html]

[October 10, 2006]