Spotted Hemlock

‘That’s the spirit. Fire away, Dame B.’

‘I visited a holiday camp the other day,’ Dame Beatrice began. ‘It was the big one at Bracklesea, the one I believed I mentioned to you when we met at your lodgings.’

‘Oh?’ Coles glanced at Laura. ‘And you made some enquiries and decided that Norah and I had stayed there together last summer. Well, as I told you and Mrs Gavin, I have never stayed at one of those places in my life.’

‘I know you said so. Do you agree that your wife’s maiden name was Palliser?’

‘I do. But she isn’t the only Palliser in the phone book, and she’s got a sister, don’t forget.’

‘If I told you the dates concerned, would you be prepared to tell me where you were and what you were doing that week?’

‘I won’t commit myself to that, but you may as well tell me the dates.’

‘Saturday, August eighteenth to Saturday, August twenty-fifth.’

Coles’ face cleared.

‘I was in Paris. The art school has a scheme. You go cheap. Horrible pensions and lousy grub, but at least it’s Paris. I can get you twenty witnesses.’

‘Where was your wife?’

‘Staying with that aunt in Harrafield, the aunt who keeps that glorified pub—she calls it an hotel—the Hour-Glass.’

‘That corresponds with our information.’

‘What does that mean? Have you contacted the aunt?’

‘Yes, we have. Her information, as far as it goes, is interesting. Look here, Mr Coles, you will have to face the fact that it is to the last degree unlikely that your wife spent that particular week with her aunt.’

Coles looked bewildered, but as an actor might do.

‘Not?’

‘I am afraid not. The aunt seems to have thought that you and your wife went to this holiday camp. The aunt believed she was covering up for you by pretending to Mrs Biancini that Mrs Coles was still staying at the Hour- Glass. According to you, you did not go to any such place as the camp, but were in Paris. My investigation indicates that it is more than likely that your wife went for a week to this place at Bracklesea while you were in Paris. What do you say to all that?’

Coles looked troubled but not angry.

‘I don’t say anything. It may be so. By that I mean she may have gone away with somebody else. She might even have mentioned it, for all I know. She’d be certain I wouldn’t mind. I don’t believe in being a dog in a manger. I wonder whether she did tell me? I couldn’t possibly say, after all these weeks.’

‘The two people who booked at the camp in the name of Palliser were a man and a woman,’ said Dame Beatrice. Coles nodded.

‘That’s what I meant when I said I wouldn’t have minded. We’d agreed to live and let live and not get jealous or anything idiotic like that. I mean, one must be civilised.’

‘It’s so terribly civilised to murder somebody,’ said Laura. Coles jumped to his feet, but Gavin laughed. Dame Beatrice put another question:

‘Are we really to understand that your marriage was one of convenience rather than of love?’

Coles sat down, deflated and perplexed.

‘It’s what I told you. She talked, or, rather, nagged me into it, but I didn’t murder her,’ he said. As a ripost to Laura’s inexcusable observation it was more than inadequate. Dame Beatrice glanced at him sharply, caught Gavin’s eye and grimaced.

‘All right, Mr Coles,’ said Gavin. ‘We’re quite prepared to accept that— at this stage. How far do you trust the aunt’s word?’

‘Which aunt? Oh, you mean Norah’s aunt! Well, she was jolly good to us. Rather a romantic sort of woman, one might say.’

‘Romantic?’ It was Dame Beatrice who repeated the word. Coles, who had been crossing one knee over the other, now straightened his legs and stretched both feet towards the fire.

‘She—well, all her geese were swans, I expect,’ he said. ‘She really thought we were in love, I suppose. We weren’t, of course. I had no idea of marrying Norah when I did. It just became one of those things.’

‘So you don’t exactly grieve for her?’ asked Gavin.

‘No.’ The embryo artist frowned. ‘If I had to tell the truth,’ he said, ‘I’d say I was jolly well out of it. Her death, you know. I’m free again. It’s all I want now. In most ways the whole thing was a ghastly mistake. In some ways your news that she went off with somebody else for a week doesn’t really surprise me. She’d done it before.’

There was a long silence, then Gavin said:

‘So that’s that.’

‘And that’s the fellow who murdered her, I’ll bet.’

Laura caught her husband’s eye, nodded, rose to her feet and said her goodnights. Coles looked agonised.

‘Don’t go,’ he said. ‘Don’t leave me! I don’t know what I might be talked into saying!’