Spotted Hemlock

Dame Beatrice’s first action, after she had left the hotel, was to drive to the Garchester police station and inform the inspector in charge of the case that Mrs Coles had been seen in Garchester on the previous Wednesday.

The inspector invoked what Dame Beatrice took to be a local deity and raised his hands in frenzied appeal.

‘I’ll skin myself and the chaps I’ve put on the job!’ he said. ‘Actually seen in Garchester? Who by, madam? I mean, do you think it’s reliable information? You see, we’d given up thinking that she was alive, and have been searching woods and dragging ponds for her.’

‘As it comes from one of the lecturers at Highpepper Agricultural College, I think we must take it at its face value, although it certainly throws my calculations to the winds. I thought she was still in Ireland.’

‘Then the next job, apart from continuing to look out for her around here, is to pull in that Mr Basil who’s been leading the Calladale Principal up the garden all this time. I suppose he’s been sacked from the college?’

‘He received his notice as soon as Miss McKay was apprised of the deception that he had been practising.’

‘Serve him right, the twister! Well, I’m much obliged, Dame Beatrice. I’ve no doubt he can tell us where the girl is. Apart from that, he’s got a lot of explaining to do on his own behalf, has that clever gentleman. If he wasn’t where he said he was, at the time of the murder, he’ll have some rather awkward questions put to him. That broken leg business could have been his alibi, and very likely was intended that way, madam. Now, thanks to you, it’s fallen to pieces. He’s got to tell us just what he wanted it for. You say he told you it was to study Irish methods of selling bacon, but, to my mind, a man who earns his living by teaching about pig-rearing rather than owning his own pigs, can hardly get away with that for a story. What’s your own opinion, Dame Beatrice?’

‘It coincides with yours. I certainly do not believe that Mr Basil went to Northern Ireland to study pig-marketing. What he did go for we have yet to discover, although that aspect of the matter becomes clearer.’

‘Exactly, madam. Right. Well, it won’t be much trouble to get hold of him, now that we know where he is, and I’ll let you know how we get on.’

The extradition (if that sinister phrase may be used to describe the transference of a suspect from one part of Great Britain to another) of Piggy Basil was accomplished, as the inspector had prophesied, without difficulty or loss of time. The next interview with him took place at the Garchester police station, whose hospitality Basil had grudgingly consented to accept.

‘It seems pretty irregular to me,’ he had grumbled. “You haven’t got me here on a charge. You’ve nothing on earth against me except that I knew this missing girl.’

‘All right, sir,’ the inspector had replied. ‘You don’t have to spend the night here against your wishes, but we understood you to say that you had got through your money, lost your job and had nowhere to go.’

‘It’s blinking coercion,’ said Piggy, next morning, continuing his overnight grouse. ‘You fish a chap back from Ireland where he’s harmlessly learning a bit more about his job, get him the perishing sack, shove him in the lock- up as though he’s a damned drunk and then haul him up for your blistering third-degree stuff before he’s hardly finished his breakfast.’

The time was nine o’clock, the breakfast, served at eight in the inspector’s own quarters, had consisted of porridge, eggs and bacon, toast, marmalade and coffee. Moreover, the third-degree was not part of the inspector’s method. He pointed out this last fact, and suggested that the sooner they got down to brass-tacks the sooner Mr Basil could follow his own devices.

‘Now, sir,’ he said, ‘we have it on reliable information— from an eye-witness, I may say, who knows her well by sight —that Mrs Coles was actually here in Garchester a few days ago and that she bolted as soon as she realised that she had been recognised. What have you to say about that, sir?’

‘Nothing. I didn’t know she was in Garchester. If what you say is true, your flat- footed gangsters couldn’t have been doing their job. How come they didn’t spot her?’

‘That’s neither here nor there, sir, and no business of yours, if I may say so. And it wouldn’t be against your interests to give us a little help. Now, sir, what about it?’

‘I don’t like it. I know you busies. Well, what do you want to know?’

‘What did take you to Northern Ireland, sir?’

‘Oh, hang it all! Well, if you must know, I was on a toot.’

‘You went there with Mrs Coles, sir?’

‘Confound you, yes!’

‘Why did you stay there after she had returned to college?’

‘Because we’d fixed it up that she was to rejoin me there as soon as she could.’

‘So that accounts for her disappearance from college, does it?’

‘It does. I knew what I was doing, all right. I knew it was a mad thing to do; I knew it was wrong, if you like. But I did it, and we’ve been together in Ireland ever since. Well, not quite ever since, but up to a week or so ago. Then Mrs Coles got cold feet, I think. She said she was going back home.’

‘Not “going back to college?” She didn’t say that?’

‘Can’t see what difference it makes, but she said she was going back home.’

‘Did you understand her to mean she was going to her mother’s home, or did she intend to live with Mr Coles?’

‘Why, her mother’s home, of course. So far as I’ve gathered, Coles hasn’t a home. He lives in cheap digs in London.’

‘Did you and Mrs Coles quarrel, sir, may I ask?’