Spotted Hemlock

‘This is no time to withhold information,’ she agreed. ‘Will you bounce it out of them, or shall I?’

‘Perhaps, if you would begin, I could put a question or two later on, as the spirit moves.’

‘Yes, that would be best. I shall resign to you, then, as soon as you think you have a lead.’ She marched up to the huddled little group. ‘Now,’ she said briskly, ‘you must tell us all that you can. First of all, who found out where she was?’

‘I did,’ said a Miss Brander. ‘I opened the door and lifted up the rags—those on the grass—and there it was.’

‘There were several of us round the coach,’ said Miss Jones, ‘but Brander was the one who opened up.’

‘I actually recognised who it was, I think,’ said Miss Coots, ‘as soon as Brander did.’

‘Ah,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘How was that, Student?’

Miss McKay, recognising her cue, nodded.

‘Well, the college blazer. You couldn’t mistake it,’ Miss Coots explained.

‘Of course not. So, seeing the badge on the blazer pocket…’

‘I just called out that it was Miss Palliser.’

‘Ah, yes. On the strength of the badge.’

‘Well,’ said Miss Jones, ‘it would stand to reason, Dame Beatrice.’ She seemed about to go on when a surreptitious kick from Miss Coots silenced her.

‘True, child. And now—since all sins’—Dame Beatrice, who had seen the warning kick administered, glanced at Miss McKay, who nodded—‘must of necessity be swallowed up by death, exactly what were you all up to that you opened the coach door at all?’

Miss McKay tactfully moved out of earshot and Miss Hopkins, as the organiser of the expedition, stepped forward. She pointed to the sacks of rhubarb crowns which were lying near the wheels of the coach.

‘We’d planned a rhubarb rag on Highpepper,’ she confessed. ‘The crowns are in those sacks. We’re certain they ragged us—with dead rats, too, as well as rhubarb!—and we thought we’d get our own back, that’s all.’

‘What was the plan of campaign? You could scarce hope to garden in mid-afternoon on the Highpepper estates.’

‘No. That was the point of the coach. We thought we’d stack the crowns inside until—until — ”

‘Until opportunity offered,’ concluded Dame Beatrice, with graceful tact. ‘All is explained, I see.’

‘I hope—I mean, it was all my idea in the first place,’ blurted out Miss Hopkins. ‘Nobody else is to blame.’

‘Here come the police,’ said Dame Beatrice.

The Superintendent excused the delay by stating that the local sergeant had referred the finding of the body to headquarters, as was only right and proper. He added that he might as well take a look, but that nothing could be done until his photographer and the police doctor came along. He glanced at the group of students.

‘I understand that one of the young ladies found the body,’ he observed. ‘I might as well be taking her statement.’ He opened the door of the coach and looked inside. ‘Very decayed,’ he said, with disapproval. ‘It won’t be a nice job, that post-mortem won’t. Rats have been at her, what’s more. Identification won’t be very easy.’

‘Unfortunately, it will be all too easy,’ said Miss McKay. ‘One of my students has been missing for the past three weeks or more, as I thought you knew. The police, I thought, had been trying to trace her.’

‘Oh, ah, of course, madam. Then that will be your college blazer she’s got on?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Well, perhaps if I could get a statement from the young lady who found her…’

‘More or less, they all found her, Superintendent. I may add that I fancy they did so because of a misguided attempt at ragging, but, of course, I don’t know.’

‘Well, the young gentlemen here at Highpepper borrowed the coach on one occasion,’ said the Superintendent, ‘so why not your young ladies? The equality of the sexes—isn’t that what they’re brought up to believe in nowadays? But this is a bad business—a very bad business.’ He shook his head lugubriously. ‘Perhaps you’d better get the ladies back to college. I’ll take their statements there.’

The body bore no signs of violence and the autopsy revealed no disease in any of the vital organs.

‘Poison,’ said Dame Beatrice, whose formidable medical degrees and whose official connection with the Home Office had obtained readily for her a permission to be present at the whole of the post-mortem examination, ‘and by one of the alkaloids, I should say.’

‘My opinion exactly,’ said a man named Clotford, in charge of the college laboratory. ‘Coniine, my bet.’ He also had obtained permission to be present. Both were now back in college.

‘Coniine?’ Dame Beatrice nodded.

‘More than likely. Anyhow, the organs will have to be Stas-Otto-ed if they’re to isolate the alkaloid. But coniine is a pretty good bet. Easy to get hold of, round here.’

‘The spotted hemlock, no doubt.’

‘Yes. Got it mixed up with some vegetable or other. Or, rather, somebody got it mixed up for her. On the face of it, I’d be inclined to say this was murder. Why else should she have been put into the coach?’