Death of a Delft Blue

chemists’ shops over the widest possible area failed to produce any evidence of a purchase of hydrocyanic acid, and all the poisons books were guiltless of any record of a sale which could not be checked.

Gavin, not for the first time, tackled the landlady who had employed Effie, the first girl, and then the landlord of the public house at which the second barmaid had worked. He met with the same blank wall in both cases. He thought that the landlady might be unreliable, but he was convinced that the landlord was clear-sighted, puzzled and worried.

‘She was such a sensible lass,’ he insisted upon repeating. ‘She wouldn’t have fallen for any funny stuff, sir, I know she wouldn’t. A sensible, level-headed lass, if ever there was one. In the bar here since she was one-and- twenty, as I won’t have them younger than that, being a married man with growing-up daughters of my own. Oh, a pleasant-spoken, up-to-the-minute girl, of course she was. You don’t want a deaf-mute behind a bar counter, now do you, sir? But a good girl — church-goer and all that, when she could attend out of licensing hours — yes, I’ll swear to that. A good girl she was.’

Nothing was to be gained, Gavin thought, from this kind of asseveration. He made further enquiries, but always came to the same dead end. There was no reason whatsoever, it seemed, why anybody should have wished either barmaid any harm.

He turned his attention particularly to the case of the second girl, because she did not live in, as Effie did, but here, again, there seemed nothing to learn which could shed any light upon the reason or reasons for her apparently untimely end. The two girls, as he had already been told, had been friendly, a relationship which dated back to their schooldays and which had persisted probably because they lived in the same part of the county. The second girl was named Mabel and her boy-friend, the builder’s labourer, was called Mervyn. His help was enlisted, but proved abortive, Mabel had no enemies, she was ‘not the quarrelsome sort’, had no troubles, so far as he knew, was ‘about the last to want to do for herself’, and had had an understanding, ‘but nothing definite, sir,’ with himself for the past two years.

He did not seem unduly cast down by her death, Gavin thought. Possibly he was relieved (illogical though it was) at being rid of an acquaintance who ‘got herself done in with prussic acid’. Gavin visited his home and questioned his parents and his sister. These were adamant on the question of Mervyn’s being ‘a good boy’, and one quite free from any suggestion of having brought about ‘funny business’ in connection with Mabel, an euphemism, obviously, for what, in other parts of the country, was referred to as ‘trouble’.

His mind, his mother stated, was on his work. He was saving hard, with the idea of starting out on his own as a free-lance plumber, builder and decorator. He had ‘learned the plastering’, had a good head for heights, could ‘do chimneys and that’ and, in other words, (said Gavin, discussing the case over a pint of beer in the Superintendent’s home, where he had been invited to stay while enquiries were in progress), was a man with an eye to a future which might, or might not, have included Mabel.

Gavin tried the boy’s employers. They managed and ran a smallish, prosperous, up-to-date business with showrooms in Glossop and a respectable turn-over. There was a girl to take orders and make promises of possible dates for work to commence in customers’ houses, for, although they referred to themselves as builders, their contracts, they told Gavin, were almost exclusively concerned with repairs, renovations and. improvements to existing property, and there was a full-time plumber, the hall-mark of a prosperous small business.

They knew nothing of Mabel. Their employees’ private affairs were nothing to do with them, provided that punctuality, sobriety and dependability were not sabotaged in any way. Yes, Mervyn was a reliable chap. They had employed him for the past eight years. No, he had not served an apprenticeship. He was not a brick-layer or in a union. He had applied to them for a job upon leaving school, had seemed a willing youngster and they had always been satisfied with him. He had picked up the work as he went along, and had developed into a useful, all-round man.

‘Nothing more to be had from them,’ said Gavin, to the Superintendent. ‘There’s only one conclusion to come to, and that is that these young women were poisoned by accident.’

‘Prussic acid isn’t exactly an accident,’ protested the Superintendent, ‘but I take your point. Somehow or other, they swallowed stuff that was intended for somebody else. But how would that have been possible?’

‘Sweets,’ said Gavin. ‘Somebody quite innocently fed them poisoned sweets. That’s the only conclusion I can come to.’

‘Quite innocently, you think?’

‘Yes, I do. What’s more, I think I may know who it was. The trouble will be to make him come clean.’ (He had had the thought of poisoned sweets from Dame Beatrice.)

‘Well, it can’t be a nice thought to know you’ve poisoned two girls, however much of an accident it may have been. Whom have you got in mind, Mr Gavin?’

‘A young man named Colwyn-Welch, who was staying down here for a while to study limestone caverns and so forth, and worked in a garage. Mind you, I’ve no evidence that he did anything more than buy some girl an occasional half-pint. Of course, he may sometimes have treated the barmaid to a beer—’

‘And she’d have pulled that for herself.’

‘Yes. As I say, if he poisoned the girls I can’t help feeling that it was unintentional, and it’s quite likely he didn’t, at that. But if the poison wasn’t acquired locally, it must have come from outside the district. You and I have both made the most exhaustive enquiries about strangers coming into the neighbourhood, and, except for this youth, have drawn a blank.’

‘Some of these commercial travellers are not all they claim to be, Mr Gavin.’

‘I know. But, there again, we’ve combed out Glossop and got damn-all. I’m going to have another word with the landlady of that pub — the other chap, the landlord, obviously knows nothing — and then I’ll have another go at Effie’s postman friend, and, if that brings nothing new, I’m off to Norfolk.’

The landlady could do no more than confirm that the barmaid had had a sweet tooth. She had kept chocolate peppermint-creams under the counter most days and would sometimes offer one to a favourite customer. Yes, the landlady herself had often accepted one. When she had had her last bad cold she could taste the peppermint when she could not rightly taste anything else, without it might be a hot whisky and lemon. She knew of no strangers, commercials or otherwise, coming to the bar, except the young gentleman with a double-barrelled name who had quarrelled with his folks, the landlady thought, and was waiting for things to blow over. In fact, he had said as much to Effie and was keeping himself by working in the local garage, which it did seem a pity to get those nice hands — ‘more like a young girl’s they were’ — all messed up with oil and stinking of petrol and that. However, he had gone home now. All must have been forgiven and forgotten. Yes, he had been gone quite a day or two before Effie took poison and died. She had wondered whether Effie had gone and fallen for him in any way. It would not have been surprising, so good-looking and beautifully-spoken he was.