[Mrs Bradley 41] - Three Quick and Five Dead Read online

  ‘More often than Mrs Schumann admitted, you mean?’

  ‘I think it would be unfair to put it like that. We asked how often he spent the week-end there with his fiancée, I believe. The answer Mrs Schumann gave was no doubt perfectly truthful.’

  ‘She could have added the other bit, though, couldn’t she? – that sometimes he went when Karen wasn’t there.’

  ‘It may not have occurred to her to do so. Actually, why should it? One more tiny point emerged. You remember Mrs Schumann’s telling us of her daughter’s indignation when Edward James called her a misguided little Aryan?’

  ‘Yes. It seemed an odd sort of remark to make. We thought so at the time.’

  ‘We did know that they were having a theological discussion, but that remark was concluded in a way that Mrs Schumann did not tell us because I am sure her daughter did not see that it had any significance and therefore, being full of what she regarded as the insult of being called an Aryan, did not think worth repeating.’

  ‘What was this significant addition?’

  ‘Mrs Clancy, who was present, said that James sniggered and added, “Oh, were they the forerunners? I had no idea!”’

  ‘Forerunners of what?’ asked Laura.

  ‘The Nazis.’

  ‘Doesn’t seem a very profound remark to me.’

  ‘It turns on the word Aryan.’

  ‘You speak in riddles, as ever. Tell me more.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘You work it out for yourself. Or, rather, you can go to the public library and work it out there. James studied history as well as theology, you know.’

  ‘Is this a genuine assignment?’

  ‘There are more ways than one of spelling Aryan.’

  ‘Oh!’ exclaimed Laura, enlightened. ‘Now I get it! So what I do is to look up – Yes, I see! Of course I see! When do you want me to go?’

  ‘When you like. Of course, even when we have the confirmation which you will acquire, we shall be very little further forward in proving guilt. What I would wish, though, is that we could acquire the power to prevent the murderer from striking again.’

  ‘You think he will?’

  ‘Well, except for (I think) the first one, these murders seem to me motiveless except for the most dreadful motive of all, the lust to kill.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Sigh No More, Ladies

  ‘I says to her “Polly, and how d’ye do?”

  To me way-ay, blow the man down.

  Says she, “None the better for seeing of you!”

  Oh, gimme some time to blow the man down.’

  * * *

  (1)

  ‘We’re no further forward,’ said Phillips. He looked and sounded exhausted. ‘I thought, over the Spanish girl, the C.I.D. had jumped us, and got the man we ought to have got, but it’s all gone blue on us again. This third death has got us all haywire. There was a possible connection between the first two murders, in a way …’

  ‘What was the connection?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

  ‘Oh, only that the Schumann family formed a link. James was engaged to the German girl, and Otto Schumann got the Spanish girl into trouble and admits that they had a row. Oh, I agree it’s a slender thread,’ he added, catching Dame Beatrice’s eye, ‘but it made me think perhaps something was going to make sense somewhere. This pointless business of the third murder leaves us guessing. There isn’t a tie-up anywhere.’

  ‘Except, as a long shot, with the first death.’

  ‘How do you make that out, ma’am?’

  ‘The only suggestion I can make is that there is a tenuous link with the school.’

  ‘You mean that Miss Schumann and James were on the staff – he still is, of course – and this Italian maid was employed by the school secretary? You’re right to call it a long shot, I would say.’

  ‘I entirely agree,’ Dame Beatrice meekly admitted.

  ‘What we’re on to at present,’ Phillips went on, ‘is checking up on all the foreigners – which includes all the people with foreign names – over a radius of forty miles from Wandles Parva.’

  ‘That means that some of your foreigners live in the sea,’ said Laura.

  ‘I’m past making or taking jokes, Mrs Gavin.’

  Laura apologised, and Dame Beatrice said,

  ‘I don’t envy you your task, Superintendent.’

  ‘It’s a routine matter, ma’am, and as dull as most of the sifting-out jobs we do, but it’s the only thing we can think of. So far, I reckon we’ve done about half the area we’ve marked out, but, of course, this joker may not be a local man at all.’

  ‘Then he’s done his homework pretty well,’ said Laura. ‘I mean, look at the facts. Karen Schumann’s body was found almost at the centre of your circle, and Maria Machrado’s had been put ten miles or more inside your boundaries. In both cases the murderer must have known that other vehicles, lorries in the one case and tanks in the other, were almost certain to confuse, if not actually obliterate, any tell-tale tracks his car may have left. This Italian woman wasn’t taken away by car, but left in the bungalow where she was killed, and that’s not so far away, either.’

  ‘I know, Mrs Gavin, and that ought to tell us more than it seems to. Granted it’s the same fellow all the time, it looks as though he had to move the first two bodies. Why was it safe for him to leave the third one?’

  ‘If we knew that, we should know who he is, I suppose,’ said Laura. ‘In other words, there was some obvious connection between him and the place or places where the first two murders were committed, but nothing to connect him with the Clancy bungalow.’

  ‘There you are, then! Then there’s another fact which ought to be a help to us, but isn’t.’

  ‘You mean that each of these deaths has been brought about while some sort of school holiday was in progress, don’t you?’

  ‘That’s it, Mrs Gavin, but there, again, although two of the murders seem to tie up, they are not the same two. Very few people outside the school would have been able to plan that Karen Schumann was to be killed on an odd day’s holiday – one, I mean, that the general public wouldn’t know anything about – and Maria Machrado was murdered at a time when most people would be back at work after their Christmas break. All right, that ought to narrow it. The snag is that anybody – just anybody at all – could have planned the murder of Lucia What-Name for Easter Saturday. Even if the doctors hadn’t given us the dope about time of death, we could have deduced it easily enough. She went to church on Good Friday – we know that for a fact. Then she must have cooked herself supper because she left a fishy frying-pan in the sink. She hadn’t finished putting back the furniture in the bedroom she’d been spring-cleaning when her murderer knocked at the door. We’re sure he didn’t come on Easter Sunday, (apart from the medical evidence, I mean), because she’d promised the priest she’d go to Mass again on that day and didn’t turn up, and also she’d left herself half a bottle of the wine which the Clancys (they said) had given her and, in addition, there was a choice little joint of uncooked chicken they’d left for her in the fridge. There was no sense whatever in that poor creature’s death. It just seems as though we’re looking for somebody who hates foreigners, and that’s why we’re checking over this forty-mile radius I mentioned.’

  ‘And warning people?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

  ‘Well, it’s not our policy to spread alarm, as you’re well aware, Dame Beatrice, but, for their own sakes, we’ve suggested to them that they always have another person with them if they can manage it. It isn’t even as if it’s Jews or Negroes. We could soon track down the chap and his gang if it was that. It’s this promiscuous killing of any foreigner, apparently, that’s got us up a gum tree.’

  An added complication (in Laura’s view) and a welcome item of light relief (in the opinion of Dame Beatrice) was supplied by the arrival of Hamish from school three weeks after Easter. He was accompanied by a boy named Cooper and by Cooper’s Angora rabbit and his own tiny Yorkshi
re terrier bitch.

  ‘This is Lindy Lou,’ he explained, exhibiting the scrap of a dog. ‘Mrs Conelly-Cardew was sorry for me when I had to leave Fergus at home because Mr Conelly-Cardew said he was too big to have at school, so she gave me Lindy for an Easter egg. She gave all of us something for a present, as we weren’t to go home, but mine was far the best.’

  ‘Why on earth should she give you a valuable dog like this?’ demanded Laura, taking Lindy Lou in her arms and receiving an ecstatic lick from the tiny thoroughbred.

  ‘Oh, she thinks a good deal of me,’ replied her son, with his usual modesty. ‘So she ought to, actually. You see, I saved her life – well, I probably did.’

  ‘Some people have all the fun! What happened? Was she drowning in a butt of Malmsey?’

  ‘No. A tramp stopped her, and I happened to be out on Pegasus, so I rode up, and the tramp seemed rather nasty, so I sloshed him with my riding-crop and he staggered back and sat down and Pegasus kicked him on the head, so that was all right, and I dismounted and escorted Mrs Conelly-Cardew back to school and gave myself up.’

  ‘Gave yourself up?’

  ‘Oh, yes. You see, I was out of bounds when I rescued Mrs Conelly-Cardew. Rather a long way out of bounds, actually.’

  ‘I hope the headmaster beat you.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course he did, but Grandjean looked at my bum through his magnifying glass afterwards, and couldn’t see any marks, so that shows Mr Conelly-Cardew’s gratitude, doesn’t it? I hardly felt the whacking, but, of course, he had to make a gesture. I believe in maintaining discipline, do not you, mamma?’

  ‘I should hardly think that was maintaining it,’ said Laura. ‘You’d better introduce Lindy Lou to Fergus, so that he doesn’t think she’s something to eat.’

  ‘Is it true Fergus found a dead body? Gosh, I wish I’d been there! Some of the men at school read about it in the paper and were frightfully sick to think that my dog had done a wizard thing like that!’

  The fourth murder took place on Whit Tuesday, a few days after Hamish, fortunately for Laura’s peace of mind, had returned to school.

  (2)

  Marie-Jeanne Vermier was a French student who had opted to teach English in French schools, and as part of her course had been able to take advantage of a scheme which enabled her to spend the whole of the summer term in England to attend lectures and classes in an extra-mural capacity, and to reciprocate (since she was in receipt of a grant) by giving part of her time to conducting classes in French conversation at an English school while she was over in this country.

  The headmaster of the comprehensive school at which James was the history and religious knowledge specialist and Agnes Clancy the school secretary, was not particularly in favour of the scheme. It took children out of their ordinary French lessons once or twice a week, and this was a nuisance because it split classes, since the maximum number of children who could be allotted to the student at any one time was not more than fifteen. Added to this was the vexation of having to alter the time-table in order to incorporate, for one term only, these lessons in French conversation, so that all who were to sit the General Certificate of Education examination might take advantage of what was going on. These alterations were a necessary chore, since Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools were entitled to insist on them, and although H.M.I.’s are no longer regarded as the autocrats and dictators they once were, but rather as the teachers’ friends and advisers, (and sometimes, even, their admirers), their word in some matters is still law.

  Marie-Jeanne, therefore, appeared (outwardly self-possessed, inwardly shy and nervous) in the staff Common Room in company with the mistress who had taken Karen Schumann’s place the previous term. She was introduced all round, bowed, made her polite and carefully enunciated ‘Good morning, how do you do?’ and was taken back to the headmaster’s room for a further friendly chat and some kindly advice.

  He was filled with misgivings, for his G.C.E. boys were not very much younger than Marie-Jeanne, and he asked her whether she would prefer that he did not send them to her classes. Some schools, he knew, relegated their French-conversation students to the first and second year children, but he felt that his G.C.E. groups ought not to be denied something which was calculated to help them in their French Oral examination. Marie-Jeanne said that she would prefer to leave it to him, and it was arranged that she would take mixed groups on a month’s trial, ‘and then’, said the headmaster, ‘we can review the situation and see how we stand’.

  Fortunately for her, the girls immediately decided to fall for Marie-Jeanne’s porcelain prettiness, and therefore protected her whenever they thought she needed protection, which was seldom. To do the boys justice, she was soon regarded by them as beneath their notice and, in any case, the majority of them were far too dignified to stoop to the middle-school practice of ‘playing her up’.

  Lodgings had been found for her near the school, so she came within the net which the police were casting. Dame Beatrice and Laura were back at the Stone House and had the news of her appointment from Phillips who, because of his local knowledge, was still working on the cases in conjunction with the men from Scotland Yard.

  ‘I’d be happier, ma’am, if a young girl like that, a stranger here, was in the same digs as some of the other women teachers instead of lodging with this Mrs Downton on her own,’ he said. ‘It’s too much of a tie-up, considering what happened to Miss Schumann, to have a good-looking young foreign girl working at the school with nobody really responsible for her safety.’

  ‘You’re getting fanciful, Phillips, old soul,’ said Laura. ‘Who’s going to murder a girl who’s just come over from France?’

  ‘That’s what we don’t know, Mrs Gavin. Who’d have thought anybody would murder this last Italian woman? What with the Schumann family and James, I don’t feel like taking chances with anybody foreign connected with that school.’

  ‘Well,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘bring the child here. I am entirely of your opinion in the matter of not taking chances, and if the girl is in my charge I can guarantee that she will not be molested. George or Laura can drive her to school each day and pick her up each afternoon, and in this house she will be safe.’

  ‘The idea would be grand if she were teaching full time at the school, Dame Beatrice, but one day a week she attends classes at Southampton University and she puts in one morning and one evening a week at a college of languages in Bournemouth, so I’m told by the headmaster. It will be more than can be expected of you and Mrs Gavin to keep the tabs on her all the time, I’m afraid, although I’m obliged to you for the kind suggestion.’

  ‘Nonsense, Superintendent. I will go to the school and obtain a full statement of her commitments from the headmaster, and then we shall see that she is guarded satisfactorily.’

  ‘While it was Karen Schumann and Maria Machrado who were killed, it seemed to make some kind of sense,’ said Laura, when Phillips had gone, ‘and I would have said that this French kid had no more to fear from the murderer than I have myself, but the unaccountable murder of the Italian maid puts the thing in a different light. It looks – as Phillips himself obviously thinks – that any foreign woman is in possible danger.’

  So Marie-Jeanne, a little bewildered and slightly put out by her sudden transition to the realms of glory, came to reside at the Stone House. She was given no explanation at first for the change in her lot, but Phillips had his own story for her bereft landlady to the effect that some of the girl’s relatives had domiciled themselves near Brockenhurst and had invited Marie-Jeanne to stay with them, and she took up her new quarters immediately.

  The arrangement worked extremely well. The girl was always under escort on her journeys to her various assignments, talked English with Dame Beatrice and Laura and French with Henri and Celestine, and was a docile, pleasant addition to the household. Dame Beatrice, however, thought it well, after she had settled down and was obviously happy in her new circumstances, to let her know why she was there, and
gave the information in terms which were as little frightening as possible, although it was not possible to make them sound completely reassuring. She felt compelled to enlighten the girl because of an innocent admission which Marie-Jeanne made one evening in the course of conversation. This was almost at the beginning of her stay. Dame Beatrice had asked her how she liked the school.

  ‘Oh,’ said Marie-Jeanne, ‘but very much! The teachers are so kind, especially Mr James. He speaks French very well, quite as well as the French mistress, who also, of course, is English and takes holidays in France each year and was there in the time of Occupation, so she tells me. But Mr James is more interesting because he has much knowledge of the world and I think is very intelligent. I like the French mistress, for she is intelligent, too, but a woman is not as well-informed as a man, do you think?’

  ‘Oh, golly!’ said Laura, later, to her employer. ‘So James is on the ball already!’

  ‘He may simply be showing a normal kindly reaction towards the stranger who is within his gates, and little Marie-Jeanne, moreover, is fresh and unspoiled, and really quite charming.’

  ‘But he has the reputation of being withdrawn and unsociable. Why should he suddenly take up with fresh, unspoiled young girls?’

  ‘Perhaps because they are fresh and unspoiled, as I say.’

  ‘All the same, you’ve seen fit to warn her.’

  ‘Not specifically against Edward James. I could hardly do that, at the present stage.’

  ‘She seems to be settling down well enough with us, and her time is pretty fully occupied, what with school and her lectures and her private study and essays, but what’s going to happen at Whitsun?’

  ‘According to the time-table with which I was supplied, the school has Whit Monday and the following day as the Whitsun break, the School of Languages has Whit Monday, and her University lectures are not affected, since she attends them on Fridays only. I suggest we take her to London for the weekend and bring her back on the evening of Whit Tuesday. She can miss one session at the School of Languages – she tells me that most of the students intend to stay away from classes on that Tuesday – and she will enjoy a short stay in Town. She will be under our eye the whole of the week-end and will also be out of the danger zone. What is your reaction to my suggestion?’