Spotted Hemlock

tradesman who chose an inopportune moment to call, and so terminated what might have proved to be a fruitful conversation.

Armed, unobtrusively (since it had been slipped into the brief-case she carried) with this adjunct to the enquiry, Dame Beatrice took her leave. There seemed no point in staying until her hostess missed the portrait, and, apart from that, she doubted whether she could work the talk back to any point which might seem to be profitable.

A police report, inspired by Gavin, came in reasonably soon. Biancini had taken out naturalisation papers in 1937 and nothing was known against him. He had been employed as a waiter, rising to head waiter in a respectable West End restaurant, had gravitated from there to being demonstrator for a firm of processed-food manufacturers —this on a commission basis—and had saved money. At the time of the enquiry he was stated to be a man of independent means who added to these from time to time as a stand-in for the waiters at important hotels and restaurants.

‘A blameless life, in fact,’ commented the deeply-disappointed Laura, when she came back from Scotland accompanied by a contented husband and a lively son and heir. ‘And now what? We spent last night at Carey’s. That’s why we’re so beautifully early.’

‘There’s plenty to come in yet,’ said Gavin soothingly, in a tone which never failed to annoy his wife. Laura snorted belligerently.

‘It will all prove useless,’ she declared. ‘I picked this Biancini as the villain of the piece as soon as Dame B. described him.’

‘I thought you’d plumped for Coles,’ said Gavin mildly.

‘Biancini’s summer holiday activities can bear a little further investigation,’ said Dame Beatrice. She produced the purloined photograph. ‘Not, I imagine, the portrait of a blinking idiot,’ she added, ‘but possibly that of a rather daring philanderer.’

‘You think he’s the holiday camp Lothario?’

‘His wife would not admit it. She says that they were together in Italy.’

‘I don’t see how you’re going to prove or disprove that. To find out whether one particular man, giving a false name, visited that Bracklesea place last August is a sheer impossibility, anyway. Who’s going to remember him out of all the thousands who attend?’

‘I am optimistic. I think someone on the staff of the holiday camp will remember him if, indeed, he went there and not to his relatives. Italians are sociable and lively. He would not have hidden his light under a bushel. Then, too, he looks what he is—a man from a foreign clime. Oh, yes, I have great hopes of finding someone who remembers him if he did go to the camp. There is one problem, however, to be solved.’

‘It need not be a problem,’ said Gavin. ‘Put a private enquiry agent on the job. Give him the photograph and let him snoop around.’

‘Why can’t I go?’ asked Laura.

‘Not if you’re going to represent yourself as Biancini’s indignantly suspicious wife,’ said Gavin, grinning.

‘Nothing of the sort. I shall be—now, then, what shall I be? I wasn’t very convincing in my last role. I must think of something really fool-proof, this time.’

‘Do as I say, and leave the job to an expert.’

‘No Percy Pilbeams for me, thank you. I’ll hit on something. Don’t you worry.’

‘But the thought of you “hitting on something” does worry me. Don’t forget that you’re the mother of my child.’

‘Well, Dame B. can’t very well go there again, now that she’s established her bona fides as a member of next year’s intake. They’d be certain to think she was a tile loose, if nothing worse.’

‘I see that. That is the problem. No, Laura. For once I’m going to put my foot down. You are not going to get yourself mixed up in Biancini’s private stew-pond. In spite of the apparent cleanness of his copy-book, I suspect some well-disguised but very present blots. Back me up, Dame B.’

‘With pleasure. Do you know of a man we might employ?’

‘Yes, there’s an ex-C.I.D. chap I can put you on to. He’s a reliable type and retired from the police only last year. He’ll turn the whole camp inside out for ten guineas. Here’s his address.’

Their bloodhound sent his report to the Stone House in the following week. He employed the professional jargon of the “private eye,” but his account made interesting reading.

Dame Beatrice had sent to Calladale for a copy of any college group in which Mrs Coles had appeared. The three which were sent by Miss McKay showed the girl variously costumed—in a suit, in sweater, breeches and gaiters, and in a dance frock. The ‘private eye’ took these as well as the portrait of Biancini. It transpired that Mrs Coles had certainly spent a week at the holiday camp that August. She was picked out in all three groups by independent witnesses. (The reason for asking for group photographs rather than for a portrait was to secure this sort of independent judgment.) The portrait of Biancini—a very good likeness—drew a blank.

‘Well, if she didn’t go there with Biancini—and she’d hardly have gone by herself—who on earth did she go with?’ asked Laura.

‘A fairly simple bit of deduction should supply the answer to that,’ said Gavin, smiling in a superior and irritating fashion. Laura kicked him. ‘No, really,’ he said. ‘Don’t you see?’ He moved out of range. ‘If she didn’t go with Biancini and didn’t go by herself, she went with a pretty obvious somebody else. No, and I’m not being funny,’ he added hastily, catching a dangerous glint in Laura’s eye. ‘There’s definitely a nigger in the wood-pile and it shouldn’t be so very difficult to spot him. Look again at the set-up. Here we have a situation in which a girl still at college gets married, without her parents’ knowledge and consent, to a young fellow who, himself, is still training and can’t possibly support her, perhaps for years to come. She has the sympathy of a friendly but probably misguided aunt who enters into a conspiracy (she thinks) to let the young people spend a holiday together when the girl’s mother believed her daughter to be staying blamelessly with the said aunt, and — ”

‘Yes?’ said Laura, drawling it out as far as the broad vowel would let her.