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  Death of a Delft Blue

  ( Mrs Bradley - 37 )

  Gladys Mitchell

  Death of a Delft Blue

  Gladys Mitchell

  Dame Bradley 37

  1964

  A 3S digital back-up edition 1.0

  click for scan notes and proofing history

  Contents

  preamble

  chapter one: a conference ends

  chapter two: a dinner in amsterdam

  chapter three: scottish air on a barrel-organ

  chapter four: maastricht and valkenburg

  chapter five: a dinner in north norfolk

  chapter six: aftermath of a dinner party

  chapter seven: disappearance of an heir

  chapter eight: concern about the dispossessed

  chapter nine: speculation about a troglodyte

  chapter ten: maastricht and valkenburg revisited

  chapter eleven: laura the sleuth

  chapter twelve: towards kinderscout

  chapter thirteen: eldon hole

  chapter fourteen: no stone unturned

  chapter fifteen: gavin reports

  chapter sixteen: a delft blue at bay

  chapter seventeen: dinner with bernardo

  chapter eighteen: the she-bear defends her grand-cub

  chapter nineteen: analysis of three reactions

  chapter twenty: north norfolk again

  chapter twenty-one: pursuit of a delft blue

  chapter twenty-two: death of a delft blue

  DEATH OF A DELFT BLUE

  Death of a Delft Blue revolves around three interrelated families, the Colwyn-Welch family who are English-Dutch, the van Zestiens, who are Dutch-Danish and the family called Rose. Binnen Colwyn-Welch obtains her quite considerable income from her Dutch father’s bulb-fields. She lives in Amsterdam with her two unmarried daughters, and it is to Amsterdam that Florian Colwyn-Welch goes to sit to a sculptor and to have a painting made of his right hand holding a Delft Blue hyacinth. From this sitting he does not return.

  The motive for his murder is unusual, but for the murderer it is overriding and would have been perfectly comprehensible to James Elroy Flecker. It was also comprehensible to Dame Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley: and though her secretary, Laura Gavin, reached the same solution, she did so not by logic, but by chance and a tune played on a barrel-organ.

  By the same author

  DEAD MAN’S MORRIS

  COME AWAY DEATH

  ST PETER’S FINGER

  PRINTER’S ERROR

  BRAZEN TONGUES

  HANGMAN’S CURFEW

  WHEN LAST I DIED

  LAURELS ARE POISON

  THE WORSTED VIPER

  SUNSET OVER SOHO

  MY FATHER SLEEPS

  THE RISING OF THE MOON

  HERE COMES A CHOPPER

  DEATH AND THE MAIDEN

  THE DANCING DRUIDS

  TOM BROWN’S BODY

  GROANING SPINNEY

  THE DEVIL’S ELBOW

  THE ECHOING STRANGERS

  MERLIN’S FURLONG

  FAINTLY SPEAKING

  WATSON’S CHOICE

  TWELVE HORSES AND THE

  HANGMAN’S NOOSE

  THE TWENTY-THIRD MAN

  SPOTTED HEMLOCK

  THE MAN WHO GREW TOMATOES

  SAY IT WITH FLOWERS

  THE NODDING CANARIES

  MY BONES WILL KEEP

  ADDERS ON THE HEATH

  FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 1965 BY LONDON HOUSE & MAXWELL

  A DIVISION OF THE BRITISH BOOK CENTRE, INC. 122 EAST 55TH STREET, NEW YORK 22, NEW YORK

  Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 65-17413

  © copyright 1964 by Gladys Mitchell

  Set and printed in Great Britain by Tonbridge Printers Ltd, Peach Hall Works, Tonbridge, Kent, in Times ten on eleven point, on paper made by Henry Bruce at Currie, Midlothian, and bound by James Burn at Esher, Surrey

  To

  Marjorie K. Avery, o.b.e.

  and

  Marjorie Beer,

  who were kind enough to provide me with the Netherlands setting for this book

  Preamble

  ‘A Fortnight in Holland.’

  Title of a book by Leslie Bransby

  ^ »

  According to the guide books, Scheveningen, on the Netherlands side of the North Sea, has developed over the centuries from a mere fishing-village to a popular resort. It boasts excellent hotels, fine beaches, possesses every facility for boating and bathing and can offer all the other forms of amusement which a holiday-maker is likely to require.

  Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley and her secretary, Laura Gavin, preferred to stay in it rather than in the neighbouring, more dignified but less frivolous city of The Hague, so each morning Dame Beatrice, who was in Holland to attend what her secretary described as ‘a gathering of the vultures’ — in other words, a general conference on higher education — armed herself with her notebooks, her lecture notes, some typed pages of what Laura termed ‘irrelevant answers to improbable questions’ and betook herself to Noordeinde and the historic house in which the conference was to be held. This left Laura in Scheveningen to amuse herself as she pleased for most of the day.

  Laura lounged and swam, visited the Municipal Museum and strolled several times along the two-mile esplanade called the Boulevard and also along its higher promenade, the Zeekant. Every afternoon, upon the return of Dame Beatrice, she and her employer took a short walk before returning to their hotel for dinner, and, at table, exchanged the news of the day, Dame Beatrice giving witty, although not unkindly, reports of her fellow-delegates and Laura responding with an account of her own activities.

  One morning, after having seen Dame Beatrice off, Laura decided to explore the old part of the town which lay behind the harbour. There were picturesque houses in narrow streets and the harbour itself was a fine and interesting sight, with dozens of vessels, mostly fishing-boats, all moored in neat lines with clear channels between them. It was early in the day, but there were crowds of people on the waterfront, including the usual bevy of Dutch cyclists, and Laura was standing gazing at the scene and enjoying the noise and bustle on the quay, when a girl of about nineteen or twenty approached her.

  ‘I say, do excuse me for asking, but are you English?’ the girl enquired.

  ‘Well, actually, I’m a Scot,’ Laura replied. ‘Why? Anything I can do?’

  ‘It’s about the money, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Laura, whose bump of caution was not highly developed but who had an instinctive objection to being accosted by perfect strangers if financial transactions were to be involved.

  ‘It’s about the Dutch coinage,’ the girl explained. ‘You see, I rather want to take a few presents back with me, but I haven’t unlimited cash, so I want to lay it out to the best advantage, and I just don’t really understand what the Dutch notes and coins are worth.’

  ‘Oh, well, it’s simple enough if you take the Dutch guilder as being worth about two shillings in our money.’

  ‘Yes, I know about the guilder, but they seem to have frightful coins called rijksdaalder and kwartje and dubbletje and stuiver. Grandma won’t help me and Bernardo only laughs. He’s half-Jewish, you see, and understands about the exchange, and all that sort of thing.’

  ‘Well, the rijksdaalder is worth about five shillings. The kwartje is about sixpence, the dubbletje is roughly twopence-halfpenny and the stuiver is equal to a little over a penny. Its value is five cents, and there are a hundred cents to the guilder. Think in terms of cents and guilders, and you can’t go wrong,’ said Laura briskly.

  ‘Oh, thank you so much. I’ve only b
een over here for a few days, you see, and I was getting into awful muddles, always paying in bank notes, of which there seem to be dozens of different ones, and never knowing whether the change was right.’

  ‘I don’t think one need worry about the right change in Holland. I’ve never been done down since I’ve been here. The bank notes are for a thousand guilders downwards, and are perfectly easy to understand.’ With this, Laura nodded and was about to walk on, when the girl said eagerly,

  ‘And about the presents. Will the English customs be very grabbing?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. Show them what you’ve got is my advice. I don’t believe in trying to dodge them. I should think it must be so wearing to the nerves. Apart from that, my husband is a policeman and I have to guard his reputation.’

  This time Laura really did walk on, and went back to the hotel for a second breakfast.

  CHAPTER ONE

  A Conference Ends

  The country which we call “Holland” is, in reality, The Netherlands, and the people we call “Dutch” are, in reality, Netherlanders.‘

  Bernard Pingaud, trans. Harold Myers

  « ^ »

  At the end of a fortnight, the Scheveningen Conference was over. The experts in higher education laughed, clattered and nattered — the last in a dozen different languages. They gathered up papers and pens, surged around their Dutch hosts and, (but for the melancholy fact that there was nothing to drink except the water in an austere carafe on the chairman’s table), they managed to produce the kind of cacophony usually associated with cocktail parties.

  The chairman disentangled himself from an enthusiastic group and went over to where the distinguished alienist, Dame Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, was the centre of a no less enthusiastic but a very much quieter circle. She was regaling them (by request) with details of some of the more bizarre and interesting deaths by murder and suicide which had fallen within her wide experience.

  ‘Extraordinary,’ thought the Dutchman, ‘how that mouth, so like the beak of a little bird, can produce those exquisite sounds.’ He paused on the outer fringe of the group to listen to these sounds before he muscled in and cut Dame Beatrice off from her circle of admirers.

  ‘Ah, Dame Beatrice,’ he said, ‘I am now giving a small luncheon party in the English manner. May I hope that you will join us? There will be just twenty people or so — the amusing ones, of course. I would like you to meet Professor van Zestien and his brother. They were so interested in your paper on Traumatic Regicides With Special Reference to the Death of Charles I. Professor Derde van Zestien has made a special study of the period, your English Puritans having points of interest for all Netherlanders, of course.’

  ‘Ah, yes. The Pilgrim Fathers came originally from this country.’

  ‘From Rotterdam. You should visit that city. There is much that is of interest. And do persuade Professor Sweyn van Zestien to describe to you Amsterdam. If you go there, be sure to look for the street organs, the barrel-organs, you know. They are a particular feature. He is sure to mention them. He admires them very much and is an authority upon their manufacture.’

  Still chatting, he led her away, and it was not until some three hours later that she rejoined her secretary in the lounge of their hotel.

  ‘Did you talk Higher Thought all the time?’ asked Laura.

  ‘Talking shop was outlawed, politely but firmly, by Professor Derde van Zestien,’ Dame Beatrice replied. ‘I was seated between him and his brother at table and he told me of some of the places of interest which we ought to visit before we return to England.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Well, as your dear Robert seems to be fully occupied with that tiresome Curlew murder, and your son Hamish is away at school, I had hoped that you would see your way to remaining here with me while I go on this promised tour. After all, sightseeing counts for nothing unless one is in a position to point out the obvious to one’s long-suffering travelling companion.’

  ‘There’s bound to be a lot of stuff that needs attention at your London clinic, you know. Oughtn’t I… ?’

  ‘Nonsense! Dr Anderson will cope. I will tell him to employ a temporary secretary.’

  ‘Oh, well, naturally, I’d love to stay here, especially if there’s nothing to stop us from gallivanting. We do propose to gallivant, I take it? — not all museums and art-galleries?’

  ‘We will Venice in Amsterdam, even if we also rijsttafel at the Bali restaurant there. We will cheese at Alkmaar. We will flower-market at Aalsmeer, seaside at Zandvoort and national costume at Bunschoten-Spakenburg or Staphorst. We will sheep and bird-watch on Texel, and you may swim there. We will yacht at Sneek, spice-bread at Deventer, labyrinth at Maastricht and walk, grotto, miniature-golf (and anything else you like) at Valkenburg.’

  ‘I didn’t say I didn’t want any museums and art-galleries.’

  ‘Very well. There are sixteen Rembrandts in the Mauritshuis at The Hague, and Delft and Leiden are museums in themselves, so we will visit all.’

  ‘You seem to know an awful lot about Holland.’

  ‘No, no, very little, in point of fact, and most of what I do know I gained at lunch-time from Professor Sweyn van Zestien, Professor Derde’s younger brother.’

  ‘Sweyn isn’t a Dutch name, is it?’

  ‘No. The professors had a Danish mother. I received much information about the van Zestien family tree from both the brothers. At present there are three branches, one might say. The Colwyn-Welches were fathered by Francis of that ilk, who married into the van Zestien family represented by the professors’ Aunt Binnen. She has three children, Opal, Ruby and Frank. After her husband’s death, and after the war, during which she served with the Resistance, Binnen returned to the family home in Amsterdam, where she lives with her two unmarried daughters.’

  ‘So that’s why Professor Sweyn is so interested in Amsterdam? — they are natives there.’

  ‘It seems so. The son, Frank, married a Scotswoman, Flora Beith, and lives in Scotland, where they own three hotels.’

  ‘Up with the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee!’

  ‘They have two children, Florian and Binnie, aged twenty-three and nineteen respectively. These, however, no longer live at home, but with their granduncle, Bernard van Zestien, father of Derde and Sweyn, and brother to Binnen.’

  ‘Couldn’t they thole home life in Caledonia stem and wild?’

  ‘I gathered, but only by putting some apparently unrelated scraps of information together (and most probably, in the process, making an error of one, or even minus one, in the simple addition sum of two plus two), that their parents had an eye to their future.’

  ‘Granduncle stinks of money, I suppose.’

  ‘Not only that, but he has lost the companionship of his sons, Derde and Sweyn, who prefer to live over here and who hold professorships in the Universities, respectively, of Groningen and Amsterdam.’

  ‘Oh, the children and he don’t live in Holland, then?’

  ‘No. The granduncle is a diamond merchant, with contacts, of course, in his native city, but it seems he has a house in North Norfolk and an office in Hatton Garden. I gather that he has an extensive fortune, as you suggest.’

  ‘Which, obviously, somebody will inherit.’

  ‘Exactly. He was a lonely man when his Danish wife, Ingeborg, died and his sons and daughter left home. The daughter’s name is Maarte and she married a wealthy Jew named Sigismund Rose. They have one son, Bernardo, named after his grandfather.’

  ‘For obvious reasons, no doubt.’

  ‘Cynicism run riot, dear Laura!’

  ‘Don’t you believe it! I know the way of the world. I say, though, the family’s a bit of a mixed bag, isn’t it? Dutch, Jewish, Danish, Scottish and with even English (or, possibly, Welsh) ingredients! Which do the professors seem to favour — their Dutch or their Danish forbears?’

  ‘It is impossible to say. They are cosmopolitans. Moreover, not only do they muster seven European languages between them
, but Derde is an authority on the Aztecs of Mexico and Sweyn’s special subject is the rune-stones of Denmark.’

  ‘Rune-stones? Mostly magic! I’d like to meet him.’

  ‘Why, so you shall. We are bidden to dine with the van Zestiens in Amsterdam. It is to be a family party, I understand. Grandmother Binnen, her daughters, her grandchildren, Florian and Binnie, her great-nephew Bernardo all will be there.’

  ‘At the ancestral home?’

  ‘No. The celebration is to be held in a private room at an hotel in Nieuwe Doelenstraat.’

  ‘But do they really want me? After all,’ argued Laura, with unwonted modesty, ‘I’m only your general dogsbody and humble telephone operator.’

  ‘In return for their family history, complete with family tree, sketched (I regret to say) upon a hitherto unblemished tablecloth by Professor Sweyn, I returned their civility by recounting a short and, I trust, pithy account of my own circumstances and environment. They were charmed with my picture of you and your Amazonian exploits, and are determined to have speech with you.’

  ‘I see. Weren’t you brought up to tell the truth and not to embroider merely in order to disguise the poor quality of the material you were working on? Anyway, when do we attend this binge?’

  ‘The festivities are planned for the day after tomorrow. At my request — for the hotels are full at this time of year — Sweyn has obtained rooms for us at an hotel in which his father holds shares (for diamonds are not Mr Bernard’s only source of wealth), and therefore we shall be able to take in something of the city tomorrow and on the following morning. In the evening Professor Sweyn will collect us from our hotel and transport us to the one in which they have chosen to entertain us.’