Death of a Delft Blue

‘Oh, it’s not a charge. I couldn’t care less about what he gets up to on those trips of his. But I don’t want Binnie mixing herself up with him. I can’t stand the fellow! I think he’s a cad and a rotter, and if I can do anything to spike his guns I’m going to do it.’

‘Dear me! You certainly do dislike him. The more serious charge, of course, which you have brought against him is that he poisoned the chocolate-cream.’

‘I wish I could have him arrested! Those poor girls!’

‘Yes, those poor girls,’ Dame Beatrice sadly agreed.

‘The police ought to arrest him!’ said Florian, on a note almost of hysteria. ‘I should have thought they’d got enough to go on.’

‘Not nearly enough, I’m afraid. The police have to be very careful in these cases of suspected attempts to murder. You, for instance, may possibly think yourself fortunate, (as the chocolate-cream seems to have been your gift to Effie), not to be charged yourself, you know.’

‘Me? Charged with murder? Oh, but I couldn’t be! I had nothing whatever against the girl!’ He looked extremely alarmed, Dame Beatrice noted.

‘Motive does not need to be proved,’ she said coolly. ‘You could be shown to have had both the means and the opportunity, and those are the deciding factors when it comes to a trial for murder.’

‘Yes, but I’d nothing against the girl!’ Florian repeated. ‘That would weigh with a jury, wouldn’t it?’

‘Oh, I expect it would,’ Dame Beatrice off-handedly replied. But she had frightened him badly. That was evident. On the other hand, she had warned him, too. That also had been her intention.

‘Oh, well, fair’s fair,’ commented Laura, when Dame Beatrice described the interview. ‘So you think that darling Florian wasn’t just “trying it on the dog”, so to speak. You think he really intended to kill that girl. That means three things, as I see it. He knew the stuff was poisonous; he knew perfectly well where it came from; he did his best to incriminate Bernardo. Where do we go from here?’

‘We go to Derbyshire, preferably with Robert’s permission and in his company, and institute further enquiries.’

‘It would have been a big help if the barmaid had been found to be pregnant, wouldn’t it?’

‘Barmaids are, in one respect, like Caesar’s wife, child. No, we must look elsewhere for a motive, for motives, although not necessary from a legal point of view, are most acceptable as a guide to the enquiring minds of the police and other interested parties.’

‘In other words — ourselves. I’ll get Gavin on the telephone, shall I?’

She did this, and gave him a guarded account of Dame Beatrice’s suspicions and surmises.

‘We’ve been thinking along the same lines ourselves,’ said her husband, ‘but it’s going to be very difficult to prove it. Meet you tomorrow in Buxton. Dinner at the Spa Flora at seven.’

‘Well, now,’ he said to Dame Beatrice, when he had met them in the hotel cocktail bar and had ordered, ‘where do we get the evidence we want? I think we’ve explored all Laura’s famous avenues and I’m afraid we’ve got nowhere. We know the chocolate-cream came from young Colwyn-Welch, and, although we presume he either knew or guessed that it was poisoned, we can’t be certain about that.’

‘What we want is evidence that he wanted to do in the barmaid,’ said Laura. Her husband smiled at her.

‘You find it, lovey.’ he said.

‘All right, I will,’ said Laura recklessly. ‘And I bet you ten pounds,’ she added, in response to her husband’s intolerable grin, ‘that I do find it, too.’

In bed at the hotel that night, Gavin asked her whether she wanted to cancel the bet.

‘Because you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, you know,’ he added. ‘And, if you do cancel it, not a cheep or a jibe or a sly allusion out of me, I promise you, Laura. You see, we’ve had our suspicions all along that Florian ain’t the innocent lad he makes out to be, and, honestly, we’ve combed out every nook and corner. I don’t see what else remains to be done, I don’t, really.’

‘I won’t cancel the bet,’ said Laura sleepily. ‘Like darling Yvonne Arnaud, in Tons of Money, I’ve got an idea.’

‘Are you old enough to have seen Tons of Money? I shouldn’t have thought so.’

‘Mrs Croc. is. Move over a bit. I’m hanging half out of bed.’

‘Well,’ said Gavin at breakfast on the following morning, ‘what was the big idea you had last night?’

‘Big idea?’ said Laura, squinting down her nose. ‘What big idea?’

‘So you are up to mischief!’

‘Not that I know of. Oh, that! Well, I wondered whether it might not be as well to trot over to Amsterdam and bounce the truth out of Aunt Opal.’

‘Good heavens, wench! We can’t do that kind of thing! It might create an international situation!’ said Gavin, greatly amused. Laura buttered a piece of toast.

‘Marmalade, please,’ she said. ‘I can see that you couldn’t do it, but Mrs Croc. and I could. Anyway, I vote we try it.’

‘If you think you can bounce the truth out of Aunt Opal, you can say that again,’ said Gavin. ‘I don’t know her, but a maiden lady of Anglo-Dutch parentage is going to be a pretty hard nut to crack. No, my lassie, you leave that one alone. It wouldn’t work and might be dangerous.’

‘As how?’

‘Well, we conclude that the prussic acid came from there. They may have some more of it hidden up the