Faintley Speaking

‘Black Market pound notes on the Riviera and so forth, duck. Unpatriotic lads and lasses who find the spending money inadequate can contact these blighters over there and get what currency they like. It’s been done before, but never on a scale like this. The willing spenders on holiday have to pay through the nose, of course, and they lay themselves open to blackmail and all sorts of unpleasant consequences, it appears, and serve them right! Stinkers one and all, if you canvass my opinion.’

‘What did you mean about Trench and the knife?’ asked Alice.

‘She meant,’ said Mrs Bradley, coming into the room, ‘that it was obvious that one could connect secret metal-work as well as secret woodwork with Mr Trench’s school centre. His fingerprints,’ she added, addressing Laura, ‘were on the knife with which Miss Faintley was killed. So much has already been established.’

‘So that settles that! Did anything else come out?’

‘He pleads Not Guilty, and reserves his defence.’

‘He’ll never get away with it, will he?’

‘I hardly think so. He says that he made the knife for himself as an exercise in metalwork. He does not know, of course, that Tomson’s precisely similar knife, thanks to Mr Bannister and yourself, has been impounded by the police. He will find a duplicate knife very difficult to explain, and when it comes to a plethora of similar knives… for every gangster had one —’

‘Why was that?’

‘The knives also served the purpose of a password.’

‘Oh… like Masonic greetings. One more thing puzzles me. Why a dredger? Clumsy sort of idea, I should have thought!’

‘The very last type of ship likely to attract suspicion, child. Nobody in their senses would think of searching a dredger for thousands of English pound notes. The exchange to the rusty cruiser was made very secretly, and the money run into France, probably at some small Riviera port and possibly even with the connivance of some member of the port authority. Owing to a fortunate remark made by Mr Bannister, the French police have found thousands of the pound notes stored in a cave near Lascaux. By the way, you remember refuting my suggestion that I should take a hand in the game and send a fern to Hagford Junction?’

‘Don’t tell me that you went against my considered judgement and sent a fern after all? Which one did you decide on?’

‘Botrychium Lunaria, child.’

Alice laughed.

‘The Moonwort,’ she said. She spoke proudly. ‘Mrs Bradley asked my advice, and that was my idea.’

‘Loony,’ said Laura, regarding her friend with sorrowful interest.

‘Fortunately, the leader of the gang made the same almost literal translation,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘It was then that Athyrium Filix-Foemina came into the picture.’

‘You didn’t send that, too!’

‘The Lady Fern, yes, I did… at least, I handed it to Trench, poor man. No wonder he tried to kill me with his chisel. He knew it was the writing on the wall, although I don’t know that he recognized the fern. Any fern would have done, but I preferred to hand him our signatures.’

‘Well, I’m dashed!’ said Laura. She spoke respectfully. ‘Did you get any more out of Miss Franks about that four hundred pounds?’

‘No, but I tackled Miss Faintley’s aunt, and pushed her hard. I never believed she was as innocent as she pretended to be. She must have known that her niece had another source of income besides the one she earned at school. I challenged her very strongly and gave her a hint as to the extent of my knowledge. As I hoped and expected, she broke down and confessed that as soon as she discovered (or, rather, guessed, I fancy), that Lily Faintley was “up to something”, as she expressed it, she was quite determined to obtain some of the pickings for herself.’

‘What? She blackmailed her own niece, do you mean?’ asked Laura, incredulously. Mrs Bradley cackled.

‘It would not be the first time such a thing had been known in families,’ she replied. ‘And there was no love lost between them, you remember. That fact came out at once, the first time we encountered the older Miss Faintley. She was peevish that her niece had been killed, but neither grief-stricken nor horrified.’

‘Yes, that stuck out a mile, as you say. In other words, someone had killed the goose that laid the golden eggs! And did she really try to get four hundred pounds out of niece Lily?’

‘Five hundred, to be precise. Lily gave her a hundred, but tried to raise the rest elsewhere. When she did not succeed, she, according to the aunt, “turned nasty” and threatened to put Tomson on the aunt’s track, indicating that he was an ally of hers, a prize villain into the bargain, and one who would stick at nothing for the sake of very much less money than the aunt was trying to extort.’

‘What a lovely pair!’

‘Yes, indeed. The relationship of aunt to niece is often a strange one, however. Miss Faintley, finding that the threat of Tomson had taken effect, then agreed to give her aunt a small proportion of the takings in return for silence and discretion.’

‘But you don’t think the aunt knew what it was all about?’

‘I am pretty sure she did not. I don’t think our Miss Faintley knew, either, the extent of the gang’s activities.’

‘I wonder how she got into the game? I mean, it isn’t the sort of thing you connect with teachers.’

‘The truth about that is simple, I imagine. You remember Mark telling us that Miss Faintley wore the badge of a ski-ing club? I think that she ran into the gang abroad when her currency had run out, got herself involved with them and was blackmailed into taking on the job of collecting the parcels. She must have been an ideal choice from