Spotted Hemlock

‘Not particularly. I have an appointment with Miss McKay.’

‘He’d be very disappointed to miss you. He tells his students an awful lot about you. I wish I took Livestock. He must be a lovely change after Piggy Basil.’

‘Piggy…?’

‘Well, we never really knew whether Basil was his first name or not. They don’t put our lecturers’ names on the college prospectus. Miss McKay’s goes on, but not the others. Look, must you go and see her at once? Mr Lestrange is lecturing on castration, and they all loathe it, anyway, and say they’d always get the vet. It’s the most dreaded thing in the syllabus, but, of course, it’s part of it all, so Mr Lestrange has to show them how it’s done.’

‘I am not at all sure that I would not prefer to be a trifle early for my appointment with Miss McKay. I should hate to interrupt my nephew at such a moment. Incidentally, I must be interrupting you, too.’

‘Oh, our lot are only supposed to be filling in the root holes of mulberries with compost. I’ve plenty of time. The others can carry on quite well without me. It’s not a bad job, so they won’t mind. The compost we’re using is only a mixture of loam, leaf-mould and soil. It even smells quite nice.’

‘Mulberries? Do you rear silkworms on the leaves?’ Dame Beatrice asked, beginning to walk up the path.

‘One or two cranks have permission. Personally, I couldn’t be bothered.’

‘Which species of mulberry do you cultivate?’

‘Oh, the Black Mulberry. It’s supposed to fruit the best. Well, here we are. I’d better not come any further.’ She glanced down at boots heavy with the rich, damp soil of autumn. ‘I’ll tell Mr Lestrange you’re here.’

‘Tell me one thing. This Mr Basil was unpopular, did you indicate?’

‘Oh, no, I wouldn’t say that. He was pretty well liked, on the whole. Of course, his jokes were rather grubby and he was always asking people to go out to dinner with him, not in Garchester, where we’re known, but in little road-houses and rather furtive sort of riverside pubs. Incidentally, he used to meet Norah Coles quite a lot. It can’t matter telling you that.’

‘X?’ said Dame Beatrice, under her breath. ‘I think I would like to see Mr Lestrange before I contact Miss McKay,’ she added aloud. ‘I can find my way to the piggeries, so please don’t let me keep you from your mulberries.’

The girl laughed, and tramped away, gallant and somehow pathetic in her heavy boots, leggings and stout, unglamorous breeches. Dame Beatrice gazed after her for a moment, and then walked round the side of the main building. There were students at work in the kitchen garden who directed her.

Operation Eunuch was over by the time she arrived, and Carey was washing his hands beside a tap on the end wall of the pig-house. Dame Beatrice was reminded irresistibly of the Jackdaw of Rheims, in which, when the Cardinal washed his hands, various nice little boys held the various toilet requisites. Except that her nephew looked not at all like a cardinal, and that the nice little boys were sturdy girls and students of farm procedure, the analogy was exact. One obsequious student held the towel, another the soap-dish, another the bowl of very hot water in which the preliminary ablutions were being performed, and another a second bowl which she brought from under the tap at which still another student stood ready to turn the water off.

‘Well, girls,’ Dame Beatrice heard her nephew say, ‘you may find yourselves raising hogs in the backwoods of one of the outposts of the Commonwealth one of these days, and if you do, this little bit of exposition will come in very useful, because you mayn’t be in touch with a vet. at all when it comes to the right time to turn Nature’s boars into civilisation’s bacon pigs, and that’s a job that’s got to be done when they’re six weeks old. Oh, hallo, Aunt Adela! Scatter, you children, and let me have all your notebooks in by tomorrow at twelve, don’t forget’

The students groaned and laughed, and left him alone with Dame Beatrice.

‘I won’t keep you,’ she said. ‘I expect you’re busy.’

‘My next lot come along in a quarter of an hour. Come and have a cup of tea.’

‘Thank you, but I am due to visit Miss McKay. There is, however, something I want to ask you. What have you been told about the man whose place you are taking?’

Carey looked surprised.

‘The chap they call the Piggy? Not a lot.’

‘Would you be surprised, from what little you have heard, that he would be capable of persuading one of these girls to go on holiday with him?’

‘I’ve heard rumours about him, but, under the particular circumstances in which I find myself, I’ve felt rather bound to scotch any information of that sort. Why?’

‘I think I’ve found X, and he appears to add up, as Laura would say, to your predecessor, Mr Basil.’

‘Good Lord! You don’t mean the murderer?’

‘I don’t know whether I mean that, but, of course, one can’t be sure. What are you going to do when you’ve drunk your tea?’

‘Explain what you do when your pigs contract scouring, swine fever and tuberculosis.’

‘Surely not at one and the same time? That, I feel, would make medical history, even among pigs.’

‘Too right it would. It’s an either/or proposition.’

They strolled towards the main college building. At the foot of the steps they stopped.

‘Well,’ said Carey, “bye-bye for now, as one of my students rather regrettably puts it.’

He sauntered off. His aunt leered affectionately at his retreating figure, and then went off in search of the student from whom she had heard that Norah Palliser was married. She found her, as she had hoped, among the mulberries.