Say It With Flowers Page 10

  “I thought that the Carmichaels were always fully occupied, even if not for monetary gain.”

  “Dilettanti, both, if you ask me. I can’t stand either of them. Arty-crafty, to my mind. I always expect to see Marigold in robe and sandals. Phlox does wear sandals. He also wears plum-coloured trousers.”

  “Clothes do not necessarily make the man.”

  “No, but they do give him away. What do we do now we’re here? Gate-crash the boat and force the doors to the saloon?”

  “No, we visit the neighbours. I am anxious to obtain firsthand confirmation of the three stories told me by Mrs. Carmichael.”

  “There are neighbours on both sides.”

  “So I perceive. Let us direct our steps towards the more ambitious craft. A lifeboat conversion, if I mistake not.”

  “Yes. Made a good job of it, I’d say. Do you want me to shout?”

  “An excellent idea. Pray do so.”

  “Ahoy, there!” yelled Laura. “Ahoy! Boat ahoy!”

  The solemn and enquiring face of a three-year-old child was poked round the edge of a door and then withdrawn, and a woman appeared. She wore navy-blue slacks and her heavy bosoms cupped out a fisherman’s jersey. She was about thirty years old, had the reflective eyes of a cow and was eating a hunk of bread from which honey dripped on to her fingers.

  “Yes?” she said. “If you want the Carmichaels, they’re away.”

  “I have come for information about the Carmichaels, if you will be good enough to answer a question.”

  The child and a small white dog appeared on either side of the woman, who stuffed the remainder of the bread and honey into her mouth, wiped her sticky fingers on the dog and said, with difficulty, because her mouth was unbecomingly full:

  “You’d better come aboard. Keep to the left of the gangplank. It’s rotten in the middle, like most of them along here.”

  The boat, inside, was roomy, comfortable, and untidy. The woman took the child ashore and called the dog as soon as the visitors were seated. She returned very shortly and Laura said:

  “Aren’t you afraid to leave your daughter by herself on the bank of the river?”

  “Oh, no,” the woman replied. “She’s fallen in once, so it won’t happen again. Now, then, what do you want to know and why do you want to know it?”

  “Mrs. Carmichael thinks that she and her husband have made enemies in this part of the world and I am anxious to find out whether she is right.”

  “She and her husband!—if he is her husband, which, personally, I very much doubt—I should think they have made enemies. Are you friends of theirs?”

  “No. I am a psychiatrist. I have been consulted by them.”

  “A psychiatrist? Oh, I see. I should think they need one. They do the most outrageous things.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, once they poisoned my dog. Fortunately he was so sick, poor thing, that the attempt to murder him did not come off. I would have taken them to court for it but I didn’t think I could afford it if I lost the case. He keeps well clear of them now. He’s learnt his lesson.”

  “Had they any reason to dislike the dog?”

  “They said he kept them awake at night. He certainly does yap a bit, but what’s the use of a dog in a place like this if he doesn’t bark? We get some peculiar customers round here, as my husband pointed out to them.”

  “You are not the only person, I believe, to fault them.”

  “No, of course not. They’ve behaved disgustingly to several people.”

  She proceeded to provide chapter and verse, confirming the stories which Marigold had recounted and adding others, until it seemed to Laura that the Carmichaels must be among the most deeply-detested persons along the whole of the Thames.

  “Well!” said Dame Beatrice when they were in the car. “And what do we make of all that?”

  “She thoroughly enjoyed blackening Phlox and Marigold to us. That was obvious. Did you note her impolite implication that they are not married?”

  “Yes, but I am not sure that my interpretation of the remark is the same as your own.”

  “Cryptic, aren’t you?”

  “And possibly mistaken. Time will show. We must labour on ‘til truth make all things plain. Has the most interesting point about the skeleton occurred to you?”

  “You mean that Phlox and Marigold have an anxiety complex about it? I’m not surprised. After all, they did find it.”

  “Actually, it was the vicar who uncovered the first signs that it was there.”

  “Well, I suppose he isn’t bothered because one doesn’t connect slashing people’s heads open with the office of priest.”

  “He is conscious of his own innocence in the matter, and the consciousness of innocence is a strong shield against the kind of anxiety from which the Carmichaels are suffering. I may tell you that I learned a good deal from my conversations with them both, and from Phlox’s word-associations.”

  “Yes—why did he consult you? It was a particularly wild thing to do if he does have guilty knowledge of them thar bones.”

  “He certainly has guilty knowledge of something, but whether it is of the murder I have not entirely made up my mind. He consulted me in order to find out how my mind was working and what my suspicions were, I think. It had not that result, and at first this added to, not detracted from, his anxieties. Marigold was worried, in her own way, too, and was extremely anxious to convince me that she and Phlox had enemies. I gave her a lead in that direction, I admit, but she took advantage of it with the utmost eagerness. By the way, you noticed the most arresting feature of our talk with the neighbour, I imagine?”

  “You mean the bit about poisoning the dog?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why do you think Marigold left it out?”

  “It indicated an innate ability to commit murder.”

  “Dog-lover though I am, I can’t swallow that.”

  “I am not a dog-lover, but I tolerate the animals and regard them as reasonably desirable fellow-creatures. I am disinclined, therefore, to countenance their destruction by poison.”

  “You think the woman was speaking the truth?”

  “I formed that impression, but I may be mistaken. Apart from that one incident, it is quite clear to me that the Carmichaels are building up two different lines of defence.”

  “One, that the skeleton was planted by their enemies; the other a defence of insanity, backed up by you, if the worst does come to the worst and they have to stand trial?”

  “It will be the result of their own foolishness if it does come to that. But now for the ferryman, to hear what he has to say.”

  “It won’t be fit for our ears, but I like to increase my vocabulary. Do we hail him? I’ll yodel, shall I?”

  “No, no. We will drive on, and cross by the bridge.”

  “I suppose the person who feels most strongly about the Carmichaels is the woman whose father was removed to the institution.”

  “One would certainly think so.”

  “Shall you contact her?”

  “I hardly think it will be necessary. We have quite sufficient evidence that the Carmichaels are disliked, and she lives in another district.”

  “I don’t see what you’re getting at,” said Laura.

  “Well, for one thing, I want to know whether the Carmichaels really did go to the Roman Wall before they came to the vicarage this time. As the ferryman is likely to take more notice of their movements across the river than anybody else, he may be able to help us. That is all.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Charon Asserts

  “These are but the conclusions and the fallible discourses of man . . .”

  Ibid (Section 23)

  * * *

  AT first the ferryman was cryptic and unhelpful.

  “All’s as may be,” he said. “I got what I got to say, and I’ve not got what I got to say, as you might say.”

  Dame Beatrice declined to interpr
et this Delphic pronouncement.

  “What are your duties?” she enquired. The ferryman looked at her in a haughty and uninhibited fashion before he spat into the long-suffering Thames.

  “My dooties be my pleasure,” he said.

  “I am delighted to hear it. Would it be in order for me to suggest that your pleasures are fleshly?”

  “So to say. So to say. I ferries bodies over the water.”

  “A classic occupation.”

  “Ah! I’ve took Oxford dons in my boat in my time.”

  “Excellent. Would you regard Mr. Phlox Carmichael as an Oxford don?”

  “Him?”

  “In person.”

  The ferryman expressed himself freely in Basic Riverside. He concluded:

  “If that gentleman come within a mile of me, I’ll do him, same as David done Goliath.”

  “With a pebble and a sling?”

  “The only sling as would do that one any good is a sling round his neck on the gallows.”

  “I wonder what makes you say that? A most inoffensive person, I should have thought.”

  “You ever seed a tarantella?”

  “A tarantella?”

  “Ah, a tarantella. One o’ them pi’sonous spiders big as yer fist.”

  “You are comparing Mr. Carmichael to a tarantula?”

  “It’s a king compared with ‘im.”

  “Dear me! This is most interesting. Kindly let me have chapter and verse.”

  “Try, maybe, Psalm Fifty-eight.”

  “Ah, yes. ‘Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear.’ Is that the quotation to which you refer?”

  “And to come. Try Proverbs Twenty-three.”

  “I comprehend. ‘At the last, it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder.’ Yes?”

  “Indeed, yes. I can see you been brought up the right way.”

  “Have you anything more to tell me?”

  “What need? Beware of ‘im, that’s all I say.”

  “And very good it is of you to say it. Come, Laura. Let us away.”

  “ ‘Arf a mo,” said the ferryman, earnestly. “Chapter and verse, you says, and well I takes your meanin’. There were the neighbour’s dog as ‘e pi’soned.”

  “I heard about that.”

  “There were poor old Tom Trabbett, as ‘e plunged into the mad’ouse.”

  “An institution for elderly men, I was given to understand.”

  “There were me and my ferryboat, the dirty, enterferin’ rascal!”

  “Too bad. Were the Carmichaels often from home?”

  “More away than ‘ere, thank God. Allus orf on some jaunt or other. More money nor sense. And the junk they brought ‘ome from foreign parts! Loaded me boat to the water-line, ferryin’ it over!”

  “When did they last go away?—before this particular time, I mean.”

  “Ah, now, let me think. Ho, yus. They ‘ired Bill Norris’s car. Bill ‘ud tell ee. Fust garridge past the bridge. You can’t miss it. ‘E’ll ‘ave the dates of goin’ and comin’, will Bill. Very methodical, is Bill Norris, due to the Income Tax and that. You’d be surprised ‘ow inquisitive they is, them Income Tax, and that onbelievin’—it don’t pay you to be honest! They queries every penny of ‘is expenses and ‘e can’t allus show a receipted bill, can ‘e, now?”

  “Probably not. Well, thank you very much, Mr . . . .”

  “Cargery, Oliver John Vincent Cargery, is my moniker, lady. Oliver for Oliver Cromwell, John for the Bible, Vincent for St. Vincent of Paul.”

  “Remarkable!”

  “Well, my dad, ‘e were a sort of reasonable old bloke and very interested in ‘eaven.”

  “Heaven?”

  “Ah, ‘eaven. But ‘e never could make up ‘is mind which of the religions ‘ad the right to it. ‘Me lad,’ ‘e says to me, ‘I don’t know who’s in the right of it,’ ‘e says, ‘but you ought to get into ‘eaven on one o’ your names,’ ‘e says. ‘I done the best by you as I could,’ ‘e says, ‘likewise for your sister.’ ”

  “Indeed?” said Dame Beatrice, in a tone of great interest.

  “Oh, yus. My sister, she was called Elizabeth Fry—that done for the Bible and for the Quakers (bein’ Nonconformists, you see)—Elizabeth Fry Catherine of Siena Cargery. Very proud of us, ‘e were.”

  “A good father, indeed!” Dame Beatrice nodded with great affability, rewarded the old man and returned with Laura to the car. They drove off, with Laura at the wheel, and soon found Bill Norris’s garage. The proprietor and a white-coated assistant were gazing abstractedly at a jacked-up car. Laura pulled up and got out.

  “Mr. Norris?” she asked.

  “That’s me.”

  “Can you spare a moment to talk to Dame Beatrice?”

  “Sure. What seems to be the trouble?”

  “She’ll tell you.”

  Dame Beatrice had followed Laura out of the car. Norris nodded to her.

  “Want an overhaul, madam, or do you know what’s wrong?” he asked, in the off-hand manner of the self-employed.

  “I neither want an overhaul nor do I know what is wrong. I have come to beg the favour of a few minutes’ conversation on the subject of a Mr. Carmichael, who hired your car a few weeks ago to go to the Scottish border.”

  “No complaints, and paid me on the nail.”

  “So I am given to understand—that there were no complaints, I mean, of course. Would you be prepared to look up your records and tell me the route which you followed and the approximate time you took?”

  “If you’re making a boney-fied enquiry. You thinking of going that way?”

  “Certainly. Of course, I could ask the R.A.C. or the A.A., I suppose, but the Carmichaels recommended you highly, so I thought that perhaps you might oblige me. I must add, in all fairness, that I am not thinking of hiring your car.”

  “Oh, that’s all right. Let’s see now. Started off from their boat—cor, did I bless that river-bank mud!—at six in the morning. Breakfasted at eight in Leighton Buzzard. Stopped for lunch in Grantham at half-past twelve, tea in Harrogate at four, and got to the Grand in Newcastle at seven. Paid me off as soon as I’d helped the porter in with the luggage, so I drove back to Durham, where I got a brother working, and stayed the night. Got back here soon after four the next day, and that’s the lot.”

  “Thank you for your information.”

  “You’re welcome. Don’t want nothing done to your car?”

  “Test for oil, please, and check the tyres.”

  Dame Beatrice tipped him so heavily for these services that Norris, gazing after the car as it drove off, remarked to his assistant that it was a pity there were not more about like her, a tribute so rare, in her case, that it is well worth recording.

  “Well,” said Laura, after they had turned on to the road which would take them through Basingstoke and so home, “how soon do we start for Newcastle?”

  “That Norris seems a most obliging, good-natured man,” said Dame Beatrice, avoiding the question since she did not, at that time, know the answer. “I wonder whether he was equally obliging and good-natured to the Carmichaels?”

  “You could ask them,” said Laura, perfectly well aware that this was the last thing Dame Beatrice proposed to do. Dame Beatrice cackled.

  “There are better ways out of the wood than climbing spiked railings,” she said. “And, by the way, if, in the general give and take of conversation, our jaunt of today forms a topic, we visited my nephew Carey’s pig-farm at Stanton St. John. I see no moral lapse in telling lies when people ask questions about what is not their business.”

  “Basically,” said Laura, “I am a congenital liar. Some Highlanders are. To my ancestors, the truth was so sacred as to be unusable.”

  “It is good to know that there are religious reasons for lying. My study of the Old Testament has long since convinced me that this must be so. Are you hungry?”

  “Starving. I’ll let the car out on the W
inchester by-pass. I don’t want to stop before we get home because I am not only hungry but thirsty, and I couldn’t bear to stand by and watch you mopping up sherry while I had to stay my stomach with a still lemonade.”

  They reached the Stone House to find Henri, Dame Beatrice’s cook, in a state of ferment and his wife Célestine in near-hysterics because no time had been set for a cooked meal, so that nothing was ready.

  “Sandwiches,” said Dame Beatrice, waving a yellow claw. “Whisky, sherry, and sandwiches.”

  Henri called upon God and Célestine upon the name of a dog—blasphemy in reverse, as it were—but the food and drink arrived in the dining-room inside a quarter of an hour.

  “And for dinner tonight?” asked Henri, plonking down bowls of cold consommé, smoked salmon, red caviare, thin brown bread and butter, Melba toast, chicken breasts in aspic, a Russian salad, and a beautifully fresh lettuce. “What does madame wish for dinner?”

  “Duck and green peas,” said Laura.

  Newcastle, Pons Aelii of the Romans and, later, the city of Robert Curthose of Normandy, Duns Scotus of the Franciscans, Charles I (surrendered here by the Scots), Mark Akenside, Lord Eldon and Admiral Collingwood, offered to Laura its usual charm. To her it was the gateway to her native Scotland.

  On this occasion, having spent the night in Hull, she and Dame Beatrice reached Newcastle in time for an early lunch which they took at the Grand. Here Dame Beatrice’s enquiries followed the pattern of those she had made at Norris’s garage. The porter remembered the Carmichaels. They had asked his advice about hiring a car to visit the Roman Wall, and he had telephoned for them and had made all the arrangements.

  “They don’t seem to have been up to N.B.G.,” remarked Laura, when Dame Beatrice advised her of what had been said. “They’ve left a pretty open trail. Or are they just simply mad?”

  “The trouble about madness is that it is apt to be methodical,” said Dame Beatrice. “At any rate, we can follow the trail. I have left instructions with the porter to ring up the same garage and try to get us the same driver.”