Bismarck Herrings (Timothy Herring) Page 14

  “How do you know people came to see her?”

  “I never said I did know. There ain’t no windows at the back of them little bunny-’utches, so how’s anybody to see anything?”

  “You were in the infirmary, I believe, when your chimney fell down. Did you see or hear anything?”

  “No, I never. Nor didn’t nobody else, because I asked ’em. I was too busy on the trot, being troubled with me inside.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Baines. That will be all. Call Miss Armitage. Miss Armitage, you are matron of the infirmary at Lady Matilda’s Rest?”

  “I was the matron until the occupants were dispersed. I am now on the staff of a private nursing home at Bramble-sands-on-Sea.”

  “Will you tell the court what you saw on the afternoon of Saturday, August 22?”

  “I saw two men on the roof of the almshouses.”

  “What did they appear to be doing?”

  “I could not say. They seemed to be looking at one of the chimneys. I did not pay any particular attention. I assumed that the council had sent them.”

  “Where were you when you saw them?”

  “In the large ward. We had two wards. The larger was for all general purposes, but we had a small isolation ward for infectious or contagious cases.”

  “So you saw the men from the windows in the larger ward?”

  “Yes. At the superintendent’s request I took the police into the ward so that they could obtain the same view of the cottages as I had. You see, as soon as I heard about the fallen chimney-pot, I thought I had better report what I had seen to Miss Coningsby-Layton, because I wondered whether the men had been careless and had dropped the pot and knew they had injured Mrs. Dasti and had panicked and made off.”

  “Would not that have been a surprising thing to do, if they were council workmen?”

  “I have really no idea. People are so very irresponsible nowadays that I wouldn’t know what to be surprised at.”

  “How long do you think the men were there?”

  The police asked me that. I saw them first at three o’clock on the Saturday afternoon, but how long they had been there and how long they stayed I could not possibly tell you. I do not spend my time looking out of windows. I have something better to do.”

  “So you cannot say exactly what the men were doing except that it was something to do with a chimney?”

  “When I saw them they only seemed to be looking at it.”

  “Thank you, Miss Armitage. Call Conway West.”

  Conway West was a small, neatly-dressed man with a determined expression.

  “No council workmen were sent to Lady Matilda’s Rest on the Saturday afternoon of August 22, or any other Saturday afternoon,” he said. “Saturday afternoons mean overtime pay and we have the rates to consider. It would have to be an emergency of an unprecedented kind to cause us to send out on a Saturday afternoon and, to the best of my knowledge, we have never done so. Whatever men they were, they were not our men.”

  “Well,” said the coroner, “unless the police wish to call any more witnesses . . .”

  “Here,” said a cracked and ancient voice from the body of the courtroom, “ain’t I going to ’ave my say?”

  “Who is that person?” asked the coroner of the coroner’s officer who had been engaged in swearing in the witnesses.

  “Unknown to me, sir. I think she may be one of the old ladies from the institution.”

  “Then her evidence might be useful.” He raised his voice. “Will you come forward please?”

  Timothy, who had recognised an old acquaintance, muttered to Coningsby, who was sitting next to him, that this was the old lady who had hoped that the almshouses would be condemned. “Wonder what she’s got to say?” he added. The old woman was sworn, gave her name and address, and, when these were repeated to her in the form of questions, replied acidly,

  “I just told you, didn’t I?”

  “Merely a formality, madam,” said the coroner benignly “Are you a former inhabitant of Lady Matilda’s Rest?”

  “That’s me, Caroline Plumb, and thankful to see the last of the buggerin’ place, I can tell you.”

  “Well, Mrs. Plumb, what else have you to tell us? Just take your time and let us have it in your own words.”

  “You ain’t a lawyer, be you?”

  “I am the coroner.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “I am here to enquire into the circumstances of the death of Mrs. Matilda Dasti. If you have any knowledge which will help me, you must tell me what it is.”

  “Dusty she called herself, and dusty she was, I make no doubt. Dirty ’ud be more like it. Had ’er secrets, if you take my meaning. But they wasn’t so secret as what she fancied, the mean skinflint old bitch.”

  “What kind of secrets do you mean? You mustn’t waste the time of the court by indulging in vulgar gossip, you know.”

  “Vulgar is it? I’d have you know, young man, as I’m a respectable widow woman livin’ with my niece what is living in lawful wedlock (as not everyone can claim) with a good husband what’s got a nice place in Ipswich and has give me a home, which I could not expect more from my own son . . .”

  “Yes, yes, Mrs. Plumb, but please let us get back to Mrs. Dasti. You said she had secrets. Are you trying to tell us that you know something which bears upon the mystery of her death?”

  “I’m not tryin’ to tell you. I’m tellin’ you, only you won’t let me get a word in edgeways. Do you want to hear what I have got to say, or don’t you?”

  “By all means. By all means. Please go on.”

  “Right. Well, all I got to tell you is as Mattie Dasti ’ad something to sell.”

  “Was there anything wrong in that?”

  “How should I know? All I asks is: what did she do with the money? Used to go to ’Orsbridge covered market, she did, regular.”

  “Well, thank you, Mrs. Plumb,” said the coroner. “It was kind of you to come along, but I think that is all we need to hear.”

  “I follered ’er, you see, and that’s ’ow I got to know. ’Er and ’er buggerin’ old Saturdays! Above board one Saturday and under the counter the next. That was the way of it, and so I tells you.”

  “Yes, yes. Well, I think that will be all. Tittle-tattle of that kind will do nothing to help this inquiry. We have already heard that you ladies had a back way out from your cottages.”

  “Suit yourself. There’s none so deaf as them what won’t ’ear.” She glared resentfully at him, gave her black tam o’shanter a rakish push, and returned to her seat in the court, muttering slanderous criticisms of the coroner.

  The verdict was murder by person or persons unknown.

  “What the coroner didn’t ask, you know,” said Timothy to Coningsby, as they left the court, “is whether Mrs. Dasti was at supper that Saturday night.” He put the question to Miss Coningsby-Layton when they had joined her in the street.

  “Oh, dear! I’m sure I couldn’t say,” she replied. “Supper was an unsupervised meal and was quite optional. They simply helped themselves, and if anybody didn’t turn up to it on a Saturday no notice would be taken. It would be assumed that she had bought food with her pocket-money and was having a brew-up and a secret feast in her own cottage, that is all.”

  “I thought the coroner was a bit hasty in dismissing Mrs. Plumb. It might have been interesting to know what Mrs. Dasti went to market to sell.”

  “Poor old thing! Possibly some little possessions of her own, to raise a few extra pence. I always was making representations to the council that their five shillings pocket-money was quite inadequate, considering the price of everything nowadays.”

  “I received the impression, you know, that her visits to the market were regular,” said Timothy, “but she could hardly have had something of her own to sell every Saturday, could she?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Desultory Conversation

  “Small griefs find tongues: Full Casques are ever found />
  To give, (if any, yet) but little sound.

  Deep waters noyse-lesse are; And this we know,

  That chiding streams betray small depth below.

  To His Mistress Objecting to Him Neither Toying or Talking

  “But it all hangs together! Can’t you see that it does?” said Timothy, when they had dropped Coningsby and his aunt and were on their way westwards.

  “Well, I can see what you mean,” said Parsons dubiously, “but these garrulous old women will say anything.”

  “It wasn’t only the old women. See how it all adds up.”

  “Yes . . . I suppose you’re making allowance for feminine spite?”

  “I don’t think women are any more spiteful than men. I grant they don’t take to community life so well. Anyway, listen to this, and check me if I go wrong.”

  “I think you’ve allowed Warlock Hall to get on your nerves, you know.”

  “I note that you do see what I mean. Here’s this poor old soul, English as they come, but the widow of an Indian. Here are these palliasses and camp beds discovered at the Hall, together with three sinister characters who, until my inopportune arrival, had a foolproof base from which to operate. Here, to go back to Mrs. Dasti, is a sympathetic go-between with access to the river and the means of leaving her habitation by means of the back door and in perfect secrecy whenever she liked. Do you mean to tell me that there isn’t a link, and a strong one, somewhere or other, in all this?”

  “If there is, I don’t notice it. How could she help to smuggle in illegal immigrants, however sympathetic to them she might be?—and that still has to be proved. She may have hated her deceased husband’s guts and repudiated all his kin, for all you know.”

  “I don’t think she did help to smuggle in illegal immigrants. I grant you that such would be beyond her scope. But don’t you think perhaps those three beauties are bringing in more than illegal immigrants? What about a profitable side-line in cannabis or something?”

  “Even so, I can’t see what use Mrs. Dasti could have been to them, except as . . .”

  “Exactly. Except as a pusher. Look, Tom, it’s so obvious. They bring the stuff over when they bring in the immigrants. They land the Indians at my decrepit landing-stage and park them up at the Hall until they can safely let them loose with forged documents. Then they bring the dope up as far as the mill in the motor-cruiser I’m pretty sure they possess, unship it, keep a small boat—a rowing-boat of some sort, or a punt, because it wouldn’t do to have an outboard engine sputtering away at the dead of night outside those almshouses with a dozen inquisitive old ladies being woken up by the noise on the further side of the mill, and there is their contact and pusher, old Mrs. Dasti, with a back entrance to her cottage which can’t even be overlooked by the other denizens because there are no back windows to the almshouses. They simply pass the stuff to her and all she has to do is to store it in her cupboard or somewhere until she makes her Saturday jaunt to the town with the cast-iron excuse of spending her week’s pocket-money. Who’s going to suspect her? It sticks out a mile that that is what’s been going on.”

  “Oh, but, really, my dear chap! An old woman in an almshouse? Apart from anything else, where would she have got the know-how?”

  “I should say she got it from her husband. He would have shown her the ropes, because she’d have had to be told what he and his friends were up to, so that she wouldn’t innocently give the game away by indulging in that ‘loose talk’ we used to hear about from our parents who remember the last war, and then, when he died, she was so deeply involved that she had no alternative but to carry on with his nefarious enterprises.”

  “I had no idea you were such an addict of fairy tales.”

  “These are no fairy tales. Open any newspaper on any day you like. It will be full of accounts of dope-pushing, gun-running, smuggling of all kinds. You name it, somebody does it. Besides, we must still remember the poor but far from blameless Mrs. Dasti. You know the verdict at the inquest, and there isn’t a doubt but it was the right one. It only fell short in one particular. Murder, yes. But murder by person or persons unknown is begging the question. To my way of thinking, the persons are known, and the names of two of them are Jabez Gee and Kilbride Colquhoun Macbeth, although the Colquhoun, of course, is a pseudonym.

  “Are you going to the police with your suspicions?”

  “No. That Detective Chief-Superintendent (to give him full regimental honours) is quite hep to the situation, I’m certain. Apart from that, so far I have so little proof of what I’ve been setting out to you that I don’t think he’d greet me with open arms if I did go to him. I haven’t even the evidence—slight, in any case—of the palliasses in the undercroft any more, because they’ve all been sent elsewhere and another base found by Jabez and Company.”

  “So your interest is merely academic? Well, so long as that’s your lot.”

  “Oh, yes. I think matters can safely be left to the police. They’re as capable of smelling a rat as I am and, with their far wider resources, much more capable of nailing it to the mast.”

  “Well, I think you’re wise not to mix yourself up any more in it.”

  “All the same, I yearn for a heart-to-heart with Mother Plumb, if only to hear what she thought of the coroner.”

  “Leave well alone is my guiding principle.”

  “Oh, well, to employ an expression which never fails to arouse the devil in Alison, we’ll see.”

  “Are you getting into mischief?” asked Alison, when Timothy called for her on the following Friday.

  “Certainly not. What put such a thought into your head?”

  “Well,” she said, almost wistfully, “you always used to get into mischief before you married me, I expect, and I thought you might like to step high, wide, and plentiful now you haven’t got me around your neck all the time.”

  “How are things going?”

  “All right, I think. The Sixth don’t seem to need me, except occasionally as an advice bureau.”

  “They consult you about their love-lives?”

  “Of course not. I meant about their work.”

  “Oh, I see. I wondered whether you’d become the local Marjorie Proops. Do you see anything of the young gentlemen, so-called?”

  “So-called be sugared! We have thirty of them, all told, and they’re perfectly charming. I take them twice a week for drama and we’re putting on Sweeney Todd for Christmas. Their carpentry master is doing the trap-door and the whole thing is immensely popular. Boys, of course, are far better actors than girls.”

  “And Sweeney Todd is right up their street, of course, the unwashed little thugs.”

  “They’re not unwashed and they’re not thugs.”

  “I bet Sweeney Todd wasn’t your own idea.”

  “No. I’d thought of Brother Sun, but we can do that for Easter.”

  “Hey! One term is the agreed length of your sentence, so no nonsense about Easter!”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t be on the staff, of course. It would only mean a few rehearsals. Tell me about the inquest.”

  “Whose idea was Sweeney Todd, then?—the carpentry bloke’s, so that he could catch the boss’s eye and show Sabrina how clever he is at making trap-doors for the stage?”

  “No. P.-B. thought of it. She thought it would be an outlet for the boys and, of course, it is. I’ve managed to get all of them in it, even if they only ‘walk on,’ and Sweeney Todd himself is a genius. I could do Shakespeare with this lot if I were staying on. I’ve spotted a perfect Malvolio and a Sir Andrew Aguecheek who would only need a bit of coaching.”

  “What about Viola, Olivia, and Maria?”

  “Oh, girls’ parts are pie to these boys. After all, they were written for boys, and these children, before they get to the spotty stage, have the most heavenly complexions and are as graceful as sea-serpents.”

  “Hm! What price Coleridge?”

  “Meaning what?”

  “ ‘Yea, slimy things did crawl
with legs

  Upon the slimy sea.’ ”

  “Don’t be so utterly revolting. Anyway, if you must Ancient Mariner me, don’t forget his description of the watersnakes, which is what I was thinking of, as well you know.

  ‘. . . Blue, glossy green, and velvet black

  They coil’d and swam: and every track

  Was a flash of golden fire.’

  “One thing I do is to take the boys swimming, if you want to know.”

  Timothy smiled at her.

  “All right, all right,” he said. He rolled his eyes at her, and added, “What about Sir Toby Belch? You could never get a young boy to portray that magnificent windbag.”

  “Yes, he might be a problem. A boy would probably want to play him merely as a clottish drunkard with a cushion stuffed up his doublet. I should have to take them to see the play well acted and well produced. Boys are wonderful mimics.”

  “Sedulous apes, in fact. Well, you fill me with the most serious misgivings. You seem far too keen on this teaching lark to minister and subscribe to my peace of mind. How can you be so crool?”

  “Because you still haven’t told me what happened at the inquest. It’s you who’s cruel, because I’m dying to hear all about it, and you keep fobbing me off with Coleridge and things. I know what the verdict was. That was in the paper; but I don’t have any of the details.”

  Timothy was not averse to giving her an account of the proceedings at the inquest. He made it as objective as he could and then asked her what she thought of it. Alison refused to commit herself. All that she said was:

  “I don’t understand why anybody went to the trouble of collecting a chimney-pot from a cottage three doors away and strewing the bits about as though the pot was the cause of death. Surely they didn’t think the police would be fooled by something which couldn’t possibly have happened? Apart from that, I can understand why the infirmary matron didn’t take any notice when she saw what she thought were workmen on the roof, but what was Miss Coningsby-Layton thinking about? She must have known they had no business there.”

  “It was Saturday afternoon, remember. I expect you would find that, with so many of her old ladies out spending their weekly dole, she also went off for the afternoon. There is no reason why she shouldn’t, and I don’t suppose for an instant that she knew anything about the workmen on the roof until the police ferreted it out from the matron that she’d spotted them and got her to give evidence at the inquest. The matron would naturally think that Miss Coningsby-Layton knew all about it. That’s the worst of being the man up top. Nobody tells you anything. They think you know, and no underling wants the reputation of being a busybody or a tattler.”