Spotted Hemlock

‘I neither believe nor disbelieve. I suspend judgment until I know more. What he did not tell me is his real reason for getting Mr Simnel to impersonate him in Scotland while he came here to Ireland.’

‘Perhaps he really does want to study the Irish pig-market.’

‘He could have asked for leave of absence from the college, could he not? Why all this elaborate trickery?’

‘Probably because a Piggy with a broken leg gets paid his salary while he remains incapacitated, whereas a leave-of-absence Piggy has to forfeit the cash payments until he gets back on the job.’

‘Oh, I see. I confess I had not thought about the financial side of it. All the same, I cannot bring myself to believe that Mr Basil came here solely to study pig-marketing. There was some other reason, and, matters standing as they do, we need to find out what it was.’

‘Any basic ideas?’

‘Yes, but until I find out more than I can prove already, I am not prepared to disclose them.’

‘A pity. Hullo, here come the detectives. Shall we confer with them?’

‘No. If they have anything to tell us, they will do it without any prompting.’

The policemen came up.

‘Do you mind if we ask a few questions, Dame Beatrice?’

‘I shall be happy for you to do so.’

‘Do you want me to go?’ asked Laura. The older officer smiled.

‘Certainly not, Mrs Gavin. You may have some information for us, too. We understand, Dame Beatrice, that you found out that Basil wasn’t in Scotland when he was supposed to be in hospital with a broken leg, but was here. What was his object in deceiving people about where he was?’

‘He told us he wished to study the Irish pig-marketing schemes.’

‘Yes, that’s what he told me. Is that all you know?’

‘Yes, although it is not all that I can guess.’

‘He confesses to abducting Mrs Coles, the missing girl, from the college, but swears that before it was daylight she sneaked out of his cottage and he hasn’t seen her since.’

‘It may be true, of course.’

‘Yes?’

‘You see, from the girl’s point of view, it was surely a very risky thing to do, this breaking out of college to spend the night in a man’s cottage. I cannot help feeling that Mrs Coles had some stronger motive for taking such a risk, if, indeed, she did take it. She would most certainly have been sent down from college if she had been found out.’

‘You couldn’t suggest a reason, I suppose, madam? All we can think of, in view of the fact that she has disappeared, is that she wanted to meet somebody in secret, and that the person she wanted to meet could not be interviewed by daylight and in the normal course of events. If so, I suppose you couldn’t put a name to this person?’

‘Either her sister or her stepfather, I should think, if you are right.’

‘The sister who was murdered?’

‘And who was murdered at about that time, or some days before.’

The policeman stared at her.

‘You’re not suggesting that this young woman murdered her sister?’

Dame Beatrice shrugged.

‘I am neither suggesting it nor the reverse. I am putting it forward as a possibility. Young women have murdered their sisters before now. You see, the difficulty facing us in the case of that particular death has been twofold. Miss Palliser may have been the intended victim, or, as I thought at first (and I have not discarded the thought), she may have been killed in mistake for Mrs Coles. In neither case is there any apparent motive for the murder, and, of course, we cannot rule out the possibility that this was accidental poisoning and that somebody panicked and got rid of the body. If we could only discover the cellar where it lay before it was put into that coach we should be a very long step forward.’

‘You mentioned the stepfather, madam. What made you think of Biancini? It seems hardly likely that she’d need to meet him secretly.’

‘There is the same objection in the case of the sister, is there not?’

‘Well, yes, except that they don’t seem to have had much to do with one another and may have had some reason for not wanting people to know that they had met. It’s all very unsatisfactory, from our point of view. Usually, in murder cases, there’s something to get your teeth into so that you can make a start, but in this case there doesn’t seem to be a thing. We don’t want to call in the Yard, but we may not be able to help ourselves. I’m going to have another talk with Mr Basil. The reason he gives for coming here, instead of going back to his job, is a lot too thin to hold water. He’s mixed up in this business somehow. I’m certain of that.’

Dame Beatrice nodded several times, but in thought as well as in agreement. The police officers returned to the writing-room and, as they opened the door, they almost knocked into Basil, who was in the passage and in the act of closing the writing-room door behind him.

‘Just half a moment, if you please, sir,’ she heard the first policeman say. His voice was sharp. It was obvious that he had requested Basil to remain where he had left him and that Basil had not seen fit to obey.

‘Looks bad, don’t you think?’ murmured Laura.