Spotted Hemlock

‘What! How do you know?’

‘By inference, added to a remark made to me by Mrs Biancini when I visited her at her home. She said that nobody on earth would want to hurt Norah, a statement which gave me food for thought.’

‘Well, we both ought to have seen that it was in the college cellar the rats had got at Miss Palliser. An old house like that was bound to have cellars.’

‘The ghostly rider was such a very suspicious character, too,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘And then there did seem to be a smell of rats everywhere, both literally and metaphorically, did there not?’

‘I’m not going to rack my brains any longer. Has Piggy Basil another job yet?’

‘Miss McKay has another lecturer coming next term, so Carey has promised Mr Basil a position at Stanton St John. He regards him as a steady character now. Even if he is not, he seems to be a first-class pigman. Later, I imagine he will emigrate. He says he wants no more to do with Norah Coles, but at present he is not quite himself, so we shall see.’

‘Well, let’s have the order of events, with your interspersed comments, can we? I think I’ve grasped the general drift, but I prefer my explanations to be made in words of one syllable.’

‘Very well. Norah Palliser, as she was at the time, met and was attracted by Coles. He was handsome, poor, boorish and gifted—in all, just the sort of young man to appeal to a girl who had had to endure the approaches of stepfather Biancini, that crude, gross, amorous foreigner.’

‘Don’t forget that one of the students diagnosed her as a fast worker. She may have encouraged Biancini,’ said Laura.

‘Very likely she did at first, until she found that she could not control him. She tucked herself away at the agricultural college, having already planned (I deduce) to marry Coles. I think she must have told him that she was in possession of a useful sum, her inheritance under her father’s will. Coles did not want to marry Norah, but he did want to inherit her money. He could see no way of obtaining the latter without doing the former, but Fate played into his hands when Norah fell in love (violently, this time) with her instructor, Mr Basil. She confided this infatuation to her sister and begged her to take her place on the college rota so that she could stay with Basil in Northern Ireland. I imagine that she thought and expected that Coles would divorce her when she could let him know what she had done. Her sister, Carrie Palliser, in trouble all round, impecunious and out of work, and, in any case, thoroughly irresponsible (as her criminal record shows) was only too glad to agree, particularly as she probably saw a chance to blackmail her sister afterwards by threatening to disclose the plot to Miss McKay.’

‘Let sisterly love continue! But that wouldn’t work, would it? I thought Norah was so besotted by Piggy that she wouldn’t give a hoot what anybody thought or did about it. Of course, there was Piggy’s job to consider, I suppose.’

‘There is no way, at present, of showing that Carrie did think of blackmail. What we do know is that, true to her nature, she stole from the other students. You remember the thefts of money and valuables mentioned by Miss McKay?’

‘Carrie seems to have been a charming soul! Perhaps the rest of us are none the worse for her demise. You still haven’t covered the actual murder, though.’

‘Here we are on more speculative ground. It is a pity that the letter sent by Coles to his wife, but received and read by her deputy at the college, has been destroyed.’

‘What letter?’

‘A letter which must have been written and received if anything else is to make sense, child. The letter was mentioned, anyway, by Miss Elspeth Bellman when we first knew of Miss Palliser’s disappearance from college.’

‘Oh, yes, of course. Well?’

‘I believe the letter was sent with some photographic negatives. It would have run something after this fashion: I took these pictures in Paris and cannot let anybody in a chemist’s develop and print them. You will realise why not when you see them. Be a good sport and do them for me in your college cellar. Didn’t you say you were allowed to use it as a dark room? You’ll get lots of laughs. Don’t show them to anybody with no sense of humour, though. You know what I mean. To help you pass the time, there’s something for you to drink if you care to collect it from the station. Home-made but potent. Don’t worry about the taste. Just wait for the effects. In with it is the hypo. Both bottles plainly marked, so don’t go mixing them up.’

‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed Laura. Dame Beatrice leered triumphantly. ‘You’ve even hit on the right sort of style and everything! But how did the body get put into the other cellar with the rats? Where are the negatives? How did Piggy Basil and Norah know about Carrie’s death? Why did they decide to hush it up by moving the body to the coach?’

‘Interesting questions. As I say, I can tell you only what 1 surmise. The body was put into the cellar with the rats because Coles caused it to be put there.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I base the theory on the fact that there was nothing whatever in either the outer or inner cellar to show that the poison had been taken there.’

‘But need it have been?’

‘Anybody feeling as ill as the victim would have done, having swallowed as much of the coniine as she did, would hardly have chosen to make her way into a rat-infested cellar, or have taken off her overcoat in there. The police found the remnants of that coat.’

‘So Coles came along and cleared up? I suppose he removed the films and bottles and things. A risky thing to do, wasn’t it?’

‘So risky that he did not do it himself.’

‘But you said…’

‘I said that he caused it to be done. Do you remember my telling you that I asked the secretary whether any letters had come to college for Mr Basil while he was supposed to be in hospital?’