Twelve Horses and the Hangman's Noose (Mrs. Bradley) Read online

  “Very good, sir. I’ll get hold of a key. Is there anything else?”

  “No. I’ll see the canteen people myself.”

  Mr. Gadd took himself off to send his form down to Assembly, and, immediately it was over, and before the piano-tuner and the plants and flowers arrived, he set two active lads to explore the cavern underneath the stage. He did not choose Sixth-Form boys, deeming it unlikely that these demi-gods of sport and scholarship would enjoy the experience of crawling on hands and knees in search of debris left by conscienceless workmen. He sent two of the Upper-Fourth named Wilbraham and Jones to carry out the headmaster’s orders, adjuring them to be sure to switch off the electric lights when they came out again and to put on their football shorts and jerseys in case the floor should be dirty; he was almost certain that it was.

  The boys, good boys so far as that adjective can be employed to describe any boy still at school, contrived to make their search last throughout the periods scheduled for devotion to Latin and poetry, and caused it to end uncannily at a time when a shower and a change of clothing would bring them to the beginning of Chemistry, a popular subject at Seahampton because the master was thought to be slightly insane. They reported at midday to Mr. Gadd. Except for the property boxes belonging to the Dramatic Society, there was nothing whatever underneath the stage. They did not add that for good measure, and to spin out the time, they had unpacked all the properties and tried on some of the costumes, and Mr. Gadd, who was organiser of the Rambling Club and cared nothing for the Muse of drama, would not have cared anyway.

  The choir were to be sent home at three, and so were the boys who were going to help the masters as stewards. The rest of the school was to be dismissed at a quarter to four, and Mr. Bond was to take tea with the staff, most of whom lived too far from the school to be able to get home and back again in time for the ceremony.

  Wilbraham and Jones having completed their inspection, bathed, and gone to their Chemistry class, the Council’s men arrived with two lorries from which were unloaded a multiplicity of flowering shrubs, potted palms, and serrated ferns. When these were in position at the sides of the stage and on the floor immediately below it, the offerings of the boys (or, rather, of a little boy named Dobson whose father kept the local flower shop) and the blooms, also provided by Dobson senior, which had been paid for out of School Funds, were arranged in vases by the school secretary, the Art master, and Dobson senior’s shop-girl. The vases were placed on window-ledges, on the table on the platform, in the entrance vestibule, on the headmaster’s desk, and on tables in the canteen. School dinners were “off” for the day; boys had been instructed to bring sandwiches and to eat them in the classroom. Except for the four masters on duty, the staff had booked tables in the restaurant of the biggest local pub through the agency of Mr. Spencer, a frequent ornament of its saloon bar.

  At last the afternoon came to an end. The games master went off in his car. The head assistant, after a final scrutiny, walked to the bus stop; Mr. Spencer and Mr. Turnbull went down to the woodwork room to play cards; some of the younger masters departed on motor cycles and motor-scooters and the senior music master, who was a law unto himself, sailed down the school drive on the vintage tricycle which had become a school legend. The headmaster and the rest of the staff took tea together as had been arranged.

  By seven o’clock masters and boys had reassembled for the Official Opening, the choir in a horrid and sweating state of excitement and din, the stewards in black blazers and beautifully-creased grey flannels, the masters austere in gowns and many-coloured hoods.

  Within the hall, a compact body of parents and friends, on chairs placed too close together for comfort, kept up a steady stream of comment and gossip.

  Dame Beatrice, who had followed (for once) the advice of her French maid, arrived at a quarter-past seven impeccably costumed and with her black hair beautifully dressed, and Laura, who had accompanied her, sat in the car and consumed the discreet and appetizing meal with which she proposed to keep the wolf at bay whilst she waited for the ceremony to terminate. She had refused an invitation to be present at the proceedings by advancing a ridiculous but readily-accepted plea that she was forbidden to be in the audience when Dame Beatrice made a speech. The headmaster was grateful to anybody who refused his invitation to occupy a seat in the overcrowded hall. At twenty to eight he collected his platform of distinguished guests, ushered them in, and the ceremony began with a hymn and prayers.

  Dame Beatrice had the seat of honour in the middle of the platform. She was supported by the headmaster on one side and the Chairman of the Governors on the other. She sat motionless and was apparently absorbed in the proceedings. Actually she was wondering whether Laura had done well or ill to give up teaching in order to become her secretary. She thought that, on the whole, Laura had done quite well.

  The time came for her to speak. The headmaster introduced her, there was polite applause, and the school captain, a courteous, dignified, rather handsome boy, presented her with a bouquet. Dame Beatrice accepted the tribute gracefully but with a low and sinister cackle which had disconcerted more experienced people than the boy.

  Her speech was short, witty, and without anecdotes, and, partly if not entirely owing to its brevity, it was gratefully received by the audience. After votes of thanks (the headmaster had ruthlessly cut these to three), there was music, a Latin oration by the top boy in the Classical Sixth, and then the gathering broke up.

  “Do come along, Dame Beatrice,” said the headmaster, “and have something to eat. Our canteen looks after us quite well on these occasions.”

  After an interval during which such notables as had not met Dame Beatrice before the ceremony were rounded up by the headmaster and introduced, the half-dozen most important guests were adroitly shepherded to the headmaster’s room and given black coffee and cognac, and at just after ten, as there was still no sign of Dame Beatrice (although the boys and what might be termed the rank-and-file of the visitors had begun to trickle home), Laura said to the chauffeur:

  “I’m just going to pop in and have a look round, George. You might come and fish me out if Dame Beatrice turns up while I’m gone.”

  “Very good, miss.” So Laura strolled in at the main entrance and made for the hall. The decorations were superb. She stood in the doorway for a few minutes to admire the general effect, worked her way to the back of the hall, and then went up the centre aisle for a closer view. The closer view disclosed something for which she was utterly unprepared. As she leaned over to admire a particularly fine display of early daffodils she found herself staring at a body they screened. It was the body of a man, but his head was a mass of grape-hyacinths, so that his face could not be seen.

  “Good Lord!” said Laura aloud, her voice ringing out oddly in the vast and empty hall. Gingerly she removed the grape-hyacinths and found herself staring into the pallid face of Jenkinson, the late John Mapsted’s groom.

  Laura dashed round in search of her employer, but, as Dame Beatrice was at the headmaster’s private party, naturally enough she did not find her. She returned to the car, therefore, acquainted the discreet chauffeur with the news, and then honked s.o.s. three times in Morse code on the horn. This had the effect of bringing Dame Beatrice on the scene. Laura explained briefly why she had called her.

  “Jenkinson?” said Dame Beatrice. “Very interesting.”

  Leaving Laura to separate the headmaster from his more important guests, she went into the hall, moved those plants which surrounded and screened Jenkinson’s body, and knelt beside it to make a preliminary examination. The headmaster and Laura joined her. They were accompanied by a grey-haired man who had been introduced previously as Doctor Castleton.

  “This is dreadful,” said Mr. Bond. “Can anything be done for the poor fellow?”

  Dame Beatrice had risen to make way for the other doctor. He, too, made a brief examination.

  “Case for the police, I suppose,” he said, rising and brushing at the kne
es of his dress trousers. “Natural death on the face of it, but who on earth can have put him here?”

  “It is a bizarre situation,” said Dame Beatrice. “He might as well already be at his funeral, surrounded, like this, with flowers! Well, I had better put all these plants back as they were before we call in official assistance.”

  “The police will bring their own doctor, I suppose, although there’s no reason to suspect foul play. What do you say, Dame Beatrice?” asked Doctor Castleton.

  “Well, he certainly has not been hit on the head by a blunt instrument,” said Dame Beatrice tranquilly, “and he shows no symptoms of death by poison, neither is there any sign of a wound or trace of bleeding. The post-mortem may tell us something more.”

  “I’d better get rid of everybody,” said Mr. Bond. “One comfort: a good many have already gone, and the rest, except for Colonel Winstanworth, who is staying the night at my house, are on the point of departure.”

  He returned to his study, and his guests, in ones and twos, departed thence and were ushered into cars by the caretaker. From the school canteen and the dining-hall seeped the lesser lights. When all had been courteously dismissed, the headmaster rang up the police, and within ten minutes the local superintendent had arrived and had taken charge.

  The fact that Dame Beatrice and Laura could identify the body was helpful in its way; the fact that they could give the dead man’s home address saved the time and labour of the police; but the fact that Seahampton Grammar School, with which the dead man could have had no possible connexion, had been chosen for Jenkinson’s resting-place was puzzling in the extreme.

  “Looks as though somebody meant to give a hint that the death wasn’t as innocent as it looked,” commented Laura when she and Dame Beatrice were on their way back to the Stone House with the broad and reassuring bulk of George the chauffeur in front of them. “When did Jenkinson die?”

  “After midday today, at any rate, child.”

  “Then—no, it’s fantastic!”

  “What is?”

  “That anybody should have put him where he was found. There was a touch of the funereal about it.”

  “The floral tributes were rather impressive, I thought. When the police have had their say, and the school is clear of them, I propose to interview the persons who had charge of the decorations.”

  “I say…”

  “Say on, child.”

  “Well, was Jenkinson’s a natural death?”

  “It certainly had that appearance.”

  “That means you don’t believe it was. I don’t, either. Can there be some subtle poison which neither you nor Doctor Castleton could spot at first go?”

  “Time will show, I hope. There is one thing which is certain. The body could not have been placed in position before the plants and flowers were first arranged, but it must have been kept close at hand, I should imagine. I asked Mr. Bond at what time the decorations were completed, and it turns out that they were finished at half-past eleven this morning.”

  “Dinner-hour,” said Laura.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Easiest time to have put the body among the plants would have been during the dinner-hour, don’t you think? Or, of course, after school. That’s it! Oh, but between the time school finished and the people came to the Opening, the hall would be locked up so that the cleaners and people weren’t able to get in and raise dust. Oh, dear! That’s a nasty snag! If it was locked up—”

  “The body and its transporters were locked up, too. There is no snag there, child. But where could both have remained hidden?”

  “Oh, underneath the stage. There’s a storage space there. You can see the key-holes in the middle of the front, where a section lifts out. You can keep stage properties there, and extra electrical equipment, and so on. If the person, or people, got in there…oh, but they’d have to leave the front off. You couldn’t pull it back from inside. At least, I shouldn’t think you could.”

  “Well, there seems plenty of material with which to begin an investigation,” said Dame Beatrice. “It would be interesting to know who was the last person to close the front opening and for what purpose the space under the stage was last used.”

  Some information was forthcoming next morning, for Dame Beatrice rang up the headmaster to ask the question and some others which had occurred to her. The headmaster invited her to go over to the school. He had definite answers to give. At midday two boys deputed to carry out the task had come to him to report that they had searched the storage space underneath the stage and that it was clear except for property baskets and suit-cases containing costumes for the school play. These boys had begun their search at twenty minutes to ten and had finished at eleven.

  The hall had been locked up during afternoon school and had not been reopened until half-past six, an hour before the ceremony had been due to begin. Between half-past six and half-past seven, therefore, all members of the staff, and anybody else who happened to be on the school premises, could have gone into the hall. It was out-of-bounds for all boys except the older boys who had been helping as stewards, but these, with members of the staff, had been on duty from half-past six onwards.

  Dame Beatrice then asked whether the police were at the school. It appeared that they were not; that they had called earlier and then had announced that they would seek “other avenues” before troubling the headmaster further. Mr. Bond indicated that he translated this as an attempt on their part to obtain information from Jenkinson’s acquaintances before committing themselves to the doubtful policy of accusing somebody at the school of perpetrating a morbid practical joke.

  “It shows some attempt at reasoning on the superintendent’s part,” commented Mr. Bond. “Boys are capable of extraordinary actions, but this one would not, I think, be psychologically possible to any boys here at present. It seems to me to be the sort of thing which an inebriated band of delinquent youths might have thought of as a humorous gesture.”

  “It is interesting that you should say that. We have information that the dead man was a pronounced alcoholic,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “You think, then, that he might have had a bad fall?”

  “No, I haven’t allowed for that. There is no evidence of external injury.”

  “Then…?”

  “Tetraethyl-thiuram-disulphide, dear headmaster.”

  “Fatal?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “But…”

  “I know. But, occasionally, surely, the remedy is worse than the complaint?”

  “No opinion forthcoming,” said Mr. Bond, thinking the deep thoughts of a conscientious headmaster, “except that excess of zeal is always a mistake.”

  “I was not thinking of excess of zeal; only of excess of tetraethyl-thiuram-disulphide.”

  “You’re not suggesting that this unfortunate man was murdered?”

  “Then I don’t know what I am suggesting,” said Dame Beatrice calmly; and she gave Mr. Bond a succinct but sufficient account of the mysterious death of John Mapsted.

  “And this man Jenkinson may have had guilty knowledge, you think?” asked the headmaster at the end of the recital. Dame Beatrice shrugged her thin shoulders.

  “We have yet to find out why John Mapsted was killed, and whether by human or by equine agency,” she said.

  CHAPTER 8

  IN RETROSPECT

  Let us sum up now the meagre yet certain fruits of our long analysis.

  EDGAR ALLAN POE

  “So where do we go from here?” demanded Laura when Dame Beatrice got back to the Stone House and reported the conversation.

  “I think we employ you as detective,” said Dame Beatrice, knowing that this suggestion would please her secretary and might even keep her out of mischief.

  “Ah!” Laura was gratified and beamed widely upon her employer.

  “You had better find out a little more from that child who overheard the quarrel between John Mapsted and the so-far nameless individual who appears to
have threatened him. To what extent is the little girl reliable as a witness?”

  “Not to any extent at all. All those grandchildren of the colonel’s are juvenile delinquents in the making. Horrors and beasts, each and all.”

  “Dear me! Are you, perhaps, a little prejudiced?”

  “No, I’m not. They are, without exception, the cagiest collection of brats I’ve ever encountered. The Prince of Liars could learn a lot from young Ursula, and as for the boy, Machiavelli was a child compared with him.”

  “Yet you formed the opinion, at the time, I think, that little Ursula was telling the truth.”

  “Well, yes, I did. That’s sure enough. All right, then. I’ll go over and sort her. I may be able to get a clear description of the man, although, if it’s nobody we know, it won’t help much.”

  She found the colonel’s grandchildren at lessons with Miss Temme. Miss Temme, who, beneath a veneer of neighbourly heartiness, disliked Laura intensely, said:

  “Ursula’s doing her goes-into’s. I can’t disturb her for a bit.”

  “No, I’m not. I can’t do the beastly things and I’m sick of trying. Who cares how many sevens in two hundred and one, anyway?” demanded Ursula reasonably, but in a truculent tone.

  “There’s only one way of teaching stupid kids to get sums right,” said Laura off-handedly. “You should use a darts board.”

  “I’m not stupid!” yelled Ursula, flinging down her pencil. “I can do sums perfectly well if I want to.”

  “So can the cat,” retorted Laura. Ursula glared at her and then began to giggle. “Come on, now,” Laura went on. “How many sevens in twenty? If you say three, you’ve had it!”

  “It’s two!” shouted Dick.

  “Get on with your map, Dick,” said Miss Temme.

  “It’s two and six over!” yelled Dick. “And seven into sixty-one goes…Heck! Why couldn’t you have made it sixty-three?” he demanded of Miss Temme. “It’s so wasteful having five over when just another two would make it come right out!”