Say It With Flowers Page 13

  “He didn’t feel he needed her moral support?”

  “Most obviously not. When she had gone, he confided to me that he was haunted by the ghost of Calpurnia.”

  “Julius Caesar’s Calpurnia?”

  “The same. A woman, if you remember, haunted equally by irreproachable virtue and bad dreams. ‘Help, ho! They murder Caesar,’ in fact. Then he told me that he had attended a Polish psychiatrist (whose case-notes he did not understand), because his nerves were adversely affected by the war. He saw angels with swastikas on their wings.”

  “Good heavens above!”

  “Black hells below, I should think!” said Laura. “You said he wasn’t mentally deranged. How do you make that out?”

  “By the fact that there was nothing insane about the responses to the actual word-test. I took down the answers and have considered them closely. My belief is that he had decided to challenge me. He was determined to find out whether, or to what extent, I was dangerous. There is no doubt he knew of my double life, so to speak . . .”

  “Psychiatrist and detective, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “He must have been a fool to think he could challenge you and win.”

  “He is a mass of conceit, but I am not so sure that he is a fool. I suspect him of being a double murderer, but there is nothing yet to prove it. I began with a gambit-word.”

  “The sort of word to which any number of responses are possible?”

  “Exactly so. The interest, to the enquirer, is to see which one will be selected. After that, I proceeded on the sound-track principle, switching suddenly to a word which had nothing to do with the meaning of the previous one, but which had a certain sound-association with it.”

  “What was the gambit-word?”

  “ ‘Trainer,’ to which he responded with ‘cub.’ Someone, in his youth, I surmise, had called him an ‘unlicked cub,’ an expression which he has forgotten because it in no way reflects his picture of himself and yet the sting remains in his subconscious mind.”

  “So, that time, he did not give you his second thought, but his first one.”

  “As I believe he did throughout the test, but for the one significant pause I mentioned to you. I think—and this is where he showed himself to be intelligent—I think he realised he dared not pause to select the second word instead of the first that came into his head, for fear of giving something away which he did not want to disclose.”

  “So the pause is all the more important?”

  “Because it was entirely involuntary and therefore argues a sense of guilt, yes, very important indeed.”

  “What happened after ‘cub’?”

  “I said ‘cubist’ to which he responded with ‘mathematics’ and I pounced on this with ‘Attica.’ This, to him suggested, not ‘cellar’ as one might have supposed, but ‘salon.’ I played this off with ‘Macedon’ and obtained from him ‘Russian salad.’ ”

  “What a party game this would make! What was your come-back to that one?”

  “ ‘Saladin,’ of course. There he returned ‘doctor.’ ”

  “Must have read The Talisman.”

  “Yes, it was an innocent enough answer. I then took my sighting shot and fired at him ‘Tory Alexander’ to which there was an obvious response and he made it. He said, ‘Hymn.’ That was what I wanted. I gave ‘her’ and that was where he boggled, to come out, in the end, with the word ‘charwoman.’ That ended the test, so far as I was concerned, but it would have aroused his deepest suspicions had I stopped short at that point, so I gave him a couple more meaningless leads and charged him five guineas for the session.”

  “So he’s got guilty feelings about some woman—in other words, about Miss Beads.”

  “Not about Miss Beads, I fancy.”

  “Oh, you mean about the skeleton which was found on Dickon’s small-holding.”

  “I do mean that. I also have a theory about the reason for Miss Beads’ disappearance.”

  “Both points on which we’re working,” said Gavin. “So far, there isn’t a clue. Is it possible for you to tell me what it is that you and Laura and the Pierces know, and that Miss Beads also knew?”

  “Certainly, although whether you will make the same deduction from it as I have done remains to be seen. The Carmichaels always insist on occupying separate bedrooms.”

  “Well, they’re not unique in that, surely? Lots of couples occupy separate rooms.”

  “Yes, but, taken in conjunction with the finding of the skeleton and with the disappearance of Hilary Beads, it seems to me that I am justified in my conclusion that they insist upon separate rooms because they are not married.”

  “Oh, but, there again—I mean, that isn’t particularly unusual these lax days, is it?”

  “Be your age,” said Laura. “It’s a long sight more extraordinary for an unmarried couple to want separate rooms than it is for a married one, I should say. After all, if you’re not married and get to the stage of not being able to stand the sight of one another, there are no formalities to be observed. You just say ‘Toodle-oo’ and separate. You don’t even have to pay anything.”

  “The Carmichaels, far from not being able to stand the sight of one another, are a very devoted couple,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “Perhaps one of them’s got suspected T.B. or something,” suggested Laura.

  “That would cover the facts as outlined, of course. But, if it does, why has Hilary Beads disappeared?”

  “Obviously, they’ve shut her mouth,” said Gavin. “But, if Laura’s right, what harm could it have done if she had told people? Of course, I suppose it could have been a less respectable disease than T.B. Is that what you think?”

  “I have not subjected either of them to a medical examination, of course, but I would be prepared to stake my reputation as a doctor that the Carmichaels are both perfectly healthy people. I simply believe them to be brother and sister and I believe, further, that their mutual affection is perfectly innocent and is the love which members of families often, most fortunately, have for one another, a comfortable, friendly, satisfying emotion, undemanding and comradely, but, all the same, remarkably deep and strong.”

  “But Phlox does boss Marigold about,” objected Laura.

  “So do most older brothers treat their sisters. It is but an assertion of the masculine ego and springs largely from a desire to protect the sister. Brothers are notably more protective than husbands.”

  “So the skeleton is that of Phlox Carmichael’s wife,” said Gavin. “It would explain a lot if that’s the truth—and I can see you think it is. He murdered her and then looked to his sister to make a home for him. It’s odd, though, that so black a character should have sufficient thought for his sister to take this frightful risk about the separate rooms. People talk so much about that kind of thing that you’d think he’d realise that someday someone would stumble on the truth.”

  “The risk was not as great as you might suppose. The Pierces would not discuss their paying guests in any way which could give offence nor to anybody who might make mischief, and the hotels at which the couple stay would be very unlikely to comment or to encourage gossip. On their house-boat the Carmichaels can live as they please without people being the wiser.”

  “But if they have killed Hilary Beads, why shouldn’t they kill the Pierces?” asked Laura. “Or you and me, if they realised we knew about the rooms?”

  “I can answer that one, provided that Dame Beatrice is right,” said Gavin. “I think a little police work in Chelsea might be occupying me for a day or two. It would be interesting to know whether the Carmichaels ever lived there.”

  “You’re both being most annoying,” said Laura. “What’s all this about Chel . . . Oh, yes, of course. Hilary Beads lived there, so if you can show that the Carmichaels also lived there, and that she could have met them and known them as brother and sister, whereas to the Pierces they were passing themselves off as a married couple . . .”

  “C
lever work,” said Gavin.

  “What do we do while you’re in Chelsea?” asked his wife. Gavin looked at Dame Beatrice.

  “I wish we could find out how long the Carmichaels have had that house-boat,” he said. “Then, when I get back, we can check dates and times and maybe get something to carry us on a bit farther. But be careful how you go, won’t you? If we’re on the right tack, it will be dangerous work to go snooping round in that neighbourhood. On the other hand, I’d rather not arouse suspicion by sending a policeman.”

  “I shall manage,” said Dame Beatrice. “There is no need for anyone to return to the neighbourhood of the house-boat unless it so happens that Mrs. Pierce cannot help us.”

  “You mean she’ll have letters from the Carmichaels asking for accommodation at the vicarage? Would she keep them all that length of time?”

  “I have no idea. Most probably not. However, we shall see. When do you propose to visit Chelsea?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Then I will ring up the vicarage right away and ask the Pierces to dinner. We can easily steer the conversation round to the Carmichaels.”

  “Good.”

  “You’ll stay to dinner and spend the night here, too, of course?”

  “Thank you, Dame B. I should like to. I’ll ring up my opposite number in Culminster as soon as you’ve done with the telephone and tell him to expect me in a day or two, when I’ve been to Chelsea.”

  Dame Beatrice rang up the vicarage and then went into details of the dinner-party with her cook and his wife. It proved a simple matter, over the meal, to steer the conversation in the desired direction and Gavin learned, without discontinuing his own conversation across the table with the vicar, that the Carmichaels had occupied their floating home for the past two years or a month or two more, and had previously lived somewhere in London. The actual locality had never been specified, except that it was ‘somewhere on the river.’ They had a small motor cruiser, too, but had sold it when they bought the house-boat higher up the river.

  “I think I’ll suggest I go with Gavin. You wouldn’t mind looking after Hamish for a day or two, would you? And I’m panting for a bit of real detective work,” said Laura, later, to Dame Beatrice.

  Gavin made no objection to his wife’s accompanying him to Chelsea, and George drove the two of them into Southampton next morning immediately after breakfast. Two and a half hours later they were lunching in Soho and then a taxi took them to Cheyne Walk.

  “Trouble is,” said Laura gloomily, as she stared at the river, “that Phlox may have changed his surname and, in this part of the world, oddities are two a penny, I suppose. You’d have to go about naked to get yourself even so much as noticed. Or do you think we’re barking up the wrong tree and there’s no connection between the Carmichaels and Hilary Beads at all?”

  “What I do think is that there’s a pretty big floating population here,” said Gavin, “and we may not be lucky enough to strike any of the old stagers who might remember the Carmichaels. You see, if Dame B’s hunch is right, and Phlox Carmichael did do his wife in and is passing his sister off as his wife, we can’t get much further until we get a description of the wife. It’s got to be obvious that she isn’t—or, I suppose I may mean, wasn’t—Marigold Carmichael. If only we could get reliable evidence of that, we could ask Carmichael for an explanation, but I can’t haul him in on the strength of Dame B’s psychological deductions. There’d be the devil to pay.”

  “What about the fact that they never seem to have given Mrs. Pierce their London address? Isn’t that rather fishy?”

  “It could be, but, there again, you couldn’t prove anything from it. According to what Dame B. has told me, it was entirely accidental that the Carmichaels stayed at the vicarage the first time. They simply called there to ask whether anyone in the village could put them up.”

  “Yes, and Mrs. Pierce said they could stay with her. I suppose they were neat and clean about the house, didn’t pinch the spoons, paid up promptly and well, so she had them to stay more than once.”

  “Quite. And, you see, lots of people are casual about writing for digs in places they’ve stayed in before. They just telephone or maybe they drop a postcard and don’t bother to put their full address at the top.”

  “What about postmarks?”

  “Not at all satisfactory as evidence. For one thing, they’re not always clear. Then, I’ve often had letters and postcards from friends living in the country and yet the postmarks are London ones simply because the husband happens to work in Town or the wife’s posted the thing when she’s been in London for a shopping binge.”

  “What about trying the boat-owners? People at moorings always know one another.”

  “Yes, I’d thought of that. Trouble is, more than half these people are never on their boats when they’re wanted. Still, we can try. All the same, I’m going to make some more enquiries at Hilary Beads’ flat. We’ve had it gone over in a routine way, of course, and found nothing helpful, but now we’ve got this idea that she and the Carmichaels may be connected, I can ask a different set of questions from the last lot. You’d better stay out of this. I can be a policeman here. You’ll get your chance when we do the boats.”

  Laura loitered for twenty minutes or so, strolling about a quarter of a mile along the Chelsea Embankment, stopping frequently to gaze at the river, and then retracing her steps. Gavin rejoined her and gave a brief smile and a shake of the head.

  “Nothing doing,” he said. “I think the people are quite sick of the police and, really, one can’t blame them. They’re perfectly innocent and have had to put up with considerable fussation since Beads’ disappearance. They don’t recognise in the slightest my descriptions of the Carmichaels. I’m sure there’s nothing to be gained there. We’ve been through all her things so thoroughly that I didn’t bother any more. What hasn’t been found in that flat already simply isn’t there. Oh, well, let’s see whether the boats contain any dark secrets.”

  But nobody he hailed had anything to tell him. One elderly man, rather deaf, obligingly climbed into his dinghy and rowed to the steps in order to hear what Gavin had to say. When he had denied knowing anything about a couple named Carmichael, Gavin said:

  “He might—the man—have got himself into some kind of trouble and decided to change his name. He’s—you describe him, Laura.”

  Laura obliged with a slightly highly-coloured picture of Phlox Carmichael and followed it with one of Marigold. The elderly man shook his head.

  “When you talked about the man I almost thought I might have seen him around,” he said, “but the young woman might be anybody.”

  “That’s quite true,” Laura agreed. “She doesn’t stand out in any way.”

  “Hm! Look here, I’ll row you over to old Jack Plinlimmon’s boat. He services all of us. He’ll know this Mrs. Carmichael, if anybody does.”

  Old Jack Plinlimmon, in a sailor’s jersey of oiled wool and a battered yachting cap, was fiddling with a small outboard motor and continued to tinker with it during the conversation. When he had been given the descriptions of Phlox and Marigold, he spat overside and asked:

  “Why do you want to know about them for?”

  “We want to trace them,” Gavin replied.

  “For why?”

  It seemed time to come clean, so Gavin said:

  “The police would like to put some questions to them.”

  “Oh, so you’re a nark, are you?”

  “Not so much a nark as a genuine Dixon of Dock Green. In other words, I am a police officer and I believe that Mr. Carmichael may be in possession of some evidence which will help me in the case on which I’m engaged.”

  “Well, I can’t help you, Mister George Dixon. Nor you, Sergeant Grace Millard. Supposing as my information was wrong and I got innocent people into trouble?”

  “If they are innocent, there’s no fear of that,” retorted Gavin. The old boatman laughed sardonically and spat over the side again. “Come on, now,” Gav
in urged him. “Nobody said anything about trouble and I’ll certainly respect any confidences you give me.”

  “Like hell you will!” returned Plinlimmon. “Well, you won’t get the chance, see, Mr. Copper, because I don’t know nothing to tell you.”

  “Well, if you don’t, nobody does, Jack,” said the elderly boat-owner, “so I think I’d better put this lady and gentleman ashore.”

  “And no hard feelings,” said Gavin, pushing a ten-shilling note into the brown hand which was holding the outboard motor. Plinlimmon looked up.

  “See here, mister,” he said, “I say I don’t know nothing, and I mean I don’t know nothing. Try the Fulham li’bry. Not Chelsea. Fulham.”

  “Would you say that my ten bob bought a valuable hint, or was that last crack merely the old chap ventilating his sense of humour?” asked Gavin, when they stood on land once more.

  “We’re no worse off if it was the latter,” said Laura. “Besides, when he said that, a light flashed on in my brain. Unfortunately, it flashed straight off again.”

  “Come, girl, think!”

  “All right. Don’t talk, then. Flag that taxi. I’ve no idea where the Fulham library is, have you?” The taxi received instructions and drove off in the direction of Walham Green. “Incidentally, I think we’ve proved one thing,” said Laura, after a lengthy pause.

  “Not if the old chap was only leading us up the garden, you know,” argued Gavin.

  “Ah, but I don’t think he was. He may be sending us on a wild-goose chase now, but he recognised the description of Phlox all right. If you ask me, he’s been bribed to keep his mouth shut.”

  “Maybe and maybe not. However, we seem to have arrived at the public library. Have you seen the light again?”

  “Books, books, books!” said Laura, as she stood on the pavement while Gavin paid the taxi fare. “Of course! Eureka!” she exclaimed, to the surprise of an American Air Force officer who happened to be passing. Gavin joined her.