Spotted Hemlock

‘I thought I’d got over giving way,’ she said. “Yes, they were married from here, and I’m glad to remember that. They were ever so much in love. You could see that from a mile off. They hadn’t really known one another long, and I don’t really know why they couldn’t have waited until Norah had finished with college. Still, you can’t dictate to Cupid can you, now?’

As Dame Beatrice was unable to imagine herself dictating, or attempting to dictate, to the son of Venus, she treated this as the rhetorical question that it was and did not reply.

‘Your niece, then, had no idea of living at home for a time when her college course was concluded?‘ she enquired.

‘Between you and I,’ replied the aunt, ‘it wouldn’t have done. Dodo doesn’t seem to have known anything about it, but, from what Norah told me once, that Tony is a wolf. Anything is grist that comes to his mill. She didn’t like to be in the same house with him more than she could help. Why, she spent hardly any of her college holidays at home, you know. She came here before she was married, and this summer she went off with young Coles to one of those holiday camps—not that it would appeal to me, but I suppose they’re all right for young people.’

‘Which was the one at which they stayed?’

‘Why, that big one at Bracklesea, the one that only opened a couple of years ago.’

‘Wasn’t that rather expensive?—I mean, for a young man without employment and a girl still at college?’

‘I believe Tony Biancini subbed up. Norah did tell me once that she hated taking his money, but that it cost such a lot to pay for her husband’s holidays as well as her own. I told her I thought it was foolish. “He’ll get to thinking he’s bought you, body and soul,” I said, “and that’s a situation you don’t want to develop,” I said. “These Italians may have their greasy ways,” I said, “but they know the value of money better than anybody, without it might be the French, where I did hear tell, when I was a girl, they put a big pebble in the pot with the vegetables when they haven’t got any meat to give a flavour.’

‘I understood from Mrs Biancini that her first husband left some money for Mrs Coles to be spent on her education, the residue to go to her when she left college.’

‘That’s right. My brother was quite a warm man for our station of life. He was in the building trade, you know, and done well, I believe, out of war damage.’

‘And Mr Biancini? You mentioned just now that he was in the habit of giving money to Mrs Coles. Do you know anything of his financial position?’

‘Not a lot. Him and I don’t have much to do with one another. I don’t trust him. I believe he’s been the saving kind, though. He’s been connected with hotels and restaurants all his life and I expect he’s saved up his tips, if not some of his wages. Of course, with accommodation and all food found, and drinks at cost price, there’s nothing to buy in our business except your clothes, you see, unless you want to spend money. Dodo did hint, once, as he’d won a State lottery in some foreign country, so that would account for it, too.’

‘You have never wondered whether your niece’s death was self-inflicted, I suppose?’

Miss Palliser frowned in concentration for a moment and then shook her head.

‘I’ve thought and I’ve thought,’ she said, ‘but I can’t honestly see it. There wasn’t a baby on the way, was there?’

‘No, no baby.’

‘That would be the only likely reason, although, even then, she’d only got to show her marriage lines at home and at the college to clear herself, hadn’t she? I don’t see that as an obstacle. Anyway, as you say, it wasn’t so. No, we can wash out any idea of she did it herself. Besides, with her knowledge, she’d have chose an easier way out, that’s what I think.’

‘Her knowledge?’

‘She’d have chose the gas oven,’ said Miss Palliser, ‘and not one of those nasty poisons. She’d know it would bring on pains and make her sick, and she always did hate to be sick. “I’d rather die than be sick,” she’s said to me more than once when she was a child. Her little stomach wasn’t all that strong and she often was sick, poor mite. “I’d rather die than be sick,” she used to say. So she’d hardly have chose a nasty poison as the way out. Besides, she wasn’t the right temperament. She’d married the man she wanted, and she was doing well at college, and she had no money troubles. No, we needn’t think about suicide, thank goodness. Been different, perhaps, if it had been her older sister. Always in trouble, that girl. Of course, my brother got Dodo into trouble, so I always think that might account for it, although my father made him marry her later.

‘How did Mrs Coles come to meet her husband? Do you know that?’

‘Oh, dear me, yes. It was quite simple and all quite above board. They met at an agricultural camp, before she went to college. They picked peas and lifted new potatoes—the June-July before she started in the September, it was. She spent the last fortnight of August here with me, before going back home to get ready for college, and I knew then that there was something in the wind, although, naturally, I wouldn’t force her confidence. I guessed it was a boy-friend, but she’d had ’em before and I never dreamt, not with her going off on this two-year course at college, that it was serious this time.’

‘You don’t know, of course, Miss Palliser, whether your niece left a will?’

‘I’m sure she didn’t. Girls of her age have no call to be thinking about such things.’

‘Sometimes, I believe, their husbands are apt to think about such things.’

‘He wouldn’t,’ said Miss Palliser decidedly. ‘He may be an artist, and, to that extent, careless about his morals, but he was that fond of poor Norah! It was a pleasure to see them together.’

‘I am very glad to hear it.’ Dame Beatrice wrote her off as a meddling and romantically-minded spinster, took leave of her and decided to revisit the bereaved husband. Coles had been present at the inquest but, as no evidence had been called except evidence of identification and of the cause of death, he had not appeared in the witness box, and was now, as she knew from the police, back in his obscure London lodgings.

She wrote to him asking permission to call, and received an almost illegible postcard in reply to say that he would be at home on the following Sunday morning between eleven o’clock and noon. There seemed nothing that could be done during the ensuing days, and she had little hope that the interview would prove fruitful.