A ray of deliciously warm sunlight shone in through the tall casement windows, illuminating from within a beaker of red liquid that was just coming to a boil. I decanted half of the stuff into a china cup and handed it to the Inspector. He stared at it dubiously.
'It's tea,' I said. 'Assam from Fortnum and Mason. I hope you don't mind it being warmed-over.'
'Warmed-over is all we drink at the station,' he said. 'I settle for no other.'
As he sipped, he wandered slowly round the room, examining the chemical apparatus with professional interest. He took down a jar or two from the shelves and held each one up to the light, then bent down to peer through the eyepiece of my Leitz. I could see that he was having some difficulty in getting to the point.
'Beautiful bit of bone china,' he said at last, raising the cup above his head to read the maker's name on the bottom.
'Quite early Spode,' I said. 'Albert Einstein and George Bernard Shaw drank tea from that very cup when they visited Great-Uncle Tarquin—not both at the same time, of course.'
'One wonders what they might have made of one another?' Inspector Hewitt said, glancing at me.
'One wonders,' I said, glancing back.
The Inspector took another sip of his tea. Somehow, he seemed restless, as if there was something he would like to say, but couldn't find a way to begin.
'It's been a difficult case,' he said. 'Bizarre, really. The man whose body you found in the garden was a total stranger—or seemed to be. All we knew was that he came from Norway.'
'The snipe,' I said.
'I beg your pardon?'
'The dead jack snipe on our kitchen doorstep. Jack snipe are never found in England until autumn. It had to have been brought from Norway—in a pie. That's how you knew, isn't it?'
The Inspector looked puzzled.
'No,' he said. 'Bonepenny was wearing a new pair of shoes stamped with the name of a shoemaker in Stavanger.”
'Oh,' I said.
'From that, we were able to follow his trail quite easily.' As he spoke, Inspector Hewitt's hands drew a map in the air. 'Our inquiries here and abroad told us that he'd taken the boat from Stavanger to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and traveled from there by rail to York, then on to Doddingsley. From Doddingsley he took a taxi to Bishop's Lacey.'
Aha! Precisely as I had surmised.
'Exactly,' I said. 'And Pemberton—or should I say, Bob Stanley?—followed him, but stopped short at Doddingsley. He stayed at the Jolly Coachman.'
One of Inspector Hewitt's eyebrows rose up like a cobra. “Oh?” he said, too casually. “How do you know that?”
'I rang up the Jolly Coachman and spoke with Mr. Cleaver.'
'Is that all?'
'They were in it together, just as they were in the murder of Mr. Twining.'
'Stanley denies that,' he said. 'Claims he had nothing to do with it. Pure as the driven snow, and all that.'
'But he told me in the Pit Shed that he had killed Bonepenny! Besides that, he more or less admitted that my theory was correct: The suicide of Mr. Twining was a staged illusion.'
'Well, that remains to be seen. We're looking into it, but it's going to take some time, although I must say your father has been most helpful. He's now told us the whole story of what led up to poor Twining's death. I only wish he had decided earlier to be so accommodating. We might have saved…
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I was speculating.'
'My abduction,' I said.
I had to admire how quickly the Inspector changed the subject.
'Getting back to the present,' he said. 'Let me see if I've got this right: You think Bonepenny and Stanley were confederates?'
'They were always confederates,' I said. 'Bonepenny stole stamps and Stanley sold them abroad to unscrupulous collectors. But somehow they had never managed to dispose of the two Ulster Avengers; those were simply too well known. And with one of them having been stolen from the King, it would have been far too risky for any collector to be caught with them in his collection.'
'Interesting,' the Inspector said. 'And?'
'They were planning to blackmail Father, but somewhere along the line, they must have had a falling-out. Bonepenny was coming over from Stavanger to do the deed, and at some point Stanley realized that he could follow him, kill him at Buckshaw, take the stamps, and leave the country. As simple as that. And it would all be blamed on Father. And so it was,' I added, with a reproachful look.
There was an awkward silence.
'Look, Flavia,' he said at last. 'I didn't really have much choice, you know. There were no other viable suspects.'
'What about me,' I said. 'I was at the scene of the crime.' I waved my hand at the bottles of chemicals that lined the walls. “After all, I know a lot about poisons. I might be considered a very dangerous person.”
