Faintley Speaking

‘I do not think she would make a schoolmaster’s wife, but you will be welcome at my house at any time you care to visit us. Good night. I am very glad that you were able to prevent her from making any unmaidenly display of physical prowess. We shall see you in the morning, no doubt.’

But at dawn Bannister put back to Lymington, moored his small boat, and went back to his lodgings by train. Laura, on deck at eight, looked for the yacht, but it was gone.

‘Ah, well!’ she remarked philosophically to a seagull perched on a bollard. ‘What’s the matter with a swim?’ She untied the dinghy and rowed off, returning with an enormous appetite for breakfast.

Chapter Fifteen

UNCLE TOM COBLEIGH AND ALL

‘Now this isn’t the end of this shocking affair…

and although they be dead, of the horrid career…’

« ^

‘We ought to have seen a lot sooner that the knife which killed Miss Faintley could be connected with Trench,’ said Laura. ‘How goes the fernery, young Alice?’

Her friend Alice Boorman, thin, wiry, an athlete and a botanist, looked up from her work of mounting the fifteen specimens of British ferns which Mrs Bradley had asked her to acquire.

‘Quite well, I think, Dog. What are they really needed for? Mrs Bradley has already used the ones she wanted. Is this for the jury at the trial? She didn’t say, and I didn’t like to ask questions she might not want to answer.’

‘So you get your information by the back door, do you?’ asked Laura, grinning. ‘Well, I’ve no clue to the answer, so it’s not a bit of good trying to pump me. She’s at Hagford, preparing to convict this gang of smugglers of getting currency out of the country. The ferns, as no doubt you are aware, formed their code.’

‘Yes, I know… I think I know.’

‘Cagey, aren’t you? But if you will kindly distinguish one from another for me… for I confess that my eye for ferns is not as acute as I could wish… I will endeavour to reconstruct for you her theory.’

‘All right. I say, it was very ingenious, you know.’

‘It was. You wait and see. Go on.’

‘Well, this is Blechnum Spicant, and this is Lastreas Nephrodium. Mrs Bradley said I was to mount them almost touching one another. That means they’ve got to be taken together, I suppose.’

‘It does, and it’s the cleverest of the whole lot, in my opinion. You see, the code-ferns were sent in two packings, a flat one made of wood and a small plaster thing in the form of a statue. The statues were made in France; the wood came from Kindleford School. The ferns packed in wood were orders, we think, indicating where the stuff was to be picked up next… for the gang didn’t risk shipping it always from the same place.’

‘Well, what about these two ferns? One, in English, is the Hard Fern, and the other the Buckler Fern, so-called from its supposed resemblance to a kidney-shaped Roman shield.’

‘There you are, you see. You’ve said it… Buckler’s Hard, on the Beaulieu River.’

‘Good gracious! That’s clever! Now let me do one.’

‘Simple when you’ve got the hang of it, isn’t it?’

‘Here’s Polypodium Phegopteris, and here’s Osmunda Regalis … that’s the Beech Fern and the Royal Fern. No, I can’t do it, after all.’

‘Mrs Croc. thinks you have to spell the beech with an A instead of double E.’

‘But where was the beach?’

‘Go to your next fern.’

‘Royal Fern. Well, the only royal place that has a beach is London, and the beach is near Tower Bridge.’

‘There you are, then. That’s the way it worked. Of course, its scope was very limited. You couldn’t say much with only fifteen ferns altogether, especially as some had to be combined, and as there had to be two kinds of packing.’

‘Yes, why two kinds? Does Mrs Bradley know?’

‘The statues were warnings, she thinks. Can you think of a cautionary fern?’

Alice pondered over the exhibits, then smiled and picked out Asplenium Ceterach.

‘Good. The Scaly Spleenwort,’ said Laura. ‘Scaly… fairly old-fashioned slang for something not much cared about. Remember? Now see if you can find the “All Clear” Fern which, we think, had to follow the Scaly Spleenwort to indicate that the lads could go ahead again.’

Alice chose Asplenium Fontanum.

‘Go to the top of the class,’ said Laura heartily. ‘Your deductions are the same exactly as those of our revered employer. The Smooth-Rock Spleenwort it is.’ She looked narrowly at her friend. ‘Seems to me you’ve been told this before.’

‘It’s all very well to pick them out when you’ve been given the clue,’ said Alice, ignoring the implied question, ‘but it would take a genius like Mrs Bradley to sort it all out in the first place. Well, now, that’s done! I had better be off. My leave of absence from school is up, and to-morrow I’m taking a party of girls to see the English Women against Scotland at Wembley. But, one thing. You say these people have been smuggling currency out of the country. What for?’