Pageant of Murder

worry. She’s got plenty of guts. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t be where she is today.”

“Well, you know her better than I do, but if I were under suspicion, I’d hate to have somebody tip you off.”

“Sheer sentimentality! I like things to be brought into the open. Then I feel I know where I am. Let’s give Mrs Croc. the casting vote.”

Dame Beatrice, looking like a benign lizard, smiled with closed lips.

“I agree with Laura,” she said. “Mrs Trevelyan-Twigg must be told. You will find that she has had secret thoughts of her own. Her apparent woolliness of mind is deceptive. In her own way she is highly intelligent.”

“You think old Kitty has wondered whether Julian…?” said Laura, too much amazed to be able to finish the sentence.

“I do, indeed. As I say, Mrs Trevelyan-Twigg, under a natural coverage of simplicity and guilelessness, is an extremely shrewd woman. Of course she has wondered. You will find that, far from being distressed by your revelations (as our dear Robert fears will be the case), she will welcome an official enquiry. Some bad tidings can bring a sigh of relief because they lighten tension. I feel certain that the points you have listed, and which seem to tell against young Mr Perse, have already occurred to his aunt, so— cards on the table, as you rightly suggest, my dear Laura.”

“And stress that Dame B. is helping the police in their enquiries,” said Gavin, “although not in the sense in which those words are usually interpreted.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Dame Beatrice Puts In Her Oar

“Mr Carnegie then proceeded to open the door of the Building amid loud applause, after which the company passed to the Lecture Room by way of the grand teak staircase.”

« ^ »

Laura had not over-estimated Kitty’s courage, nor Dame Beatrice her secret anxieties.

“Of course I’ve wondered, Dog,” she said. “Mind you, I don’t believe for a single instant that Julian is mixed up in it, but ever since he insisted on staging that idiotic, unnecessary, stick-his-neck- out second pageant I’ve had some nasty moments. I haven’t said a word to a soul, of course—not even to Twigg— but that Edward III business cost me a lot of sleep. It was so potty of Julian to do a second pageant. I thought it was fairly potty when, in his cocky way, he put up for the Council, and I was quite staggered when he was voted in, but if he had anything to do with these murders he must be completely round the bend.”

“Wouldn’t his headmaster have noticed?”

“Well, he did carpet him when he found out that Julian had approached the girls’ school with a view to their taking part in the second pageant, and Julian was ass enough to talk back at him—something, I should have thought, judging from our own experiences at school when a row blew up, was the craziest thing in the world and simply pleading for a kick in the pants. So there you are! How will the police set to work?”

“By putting Mrs Croc, on the job, official-like.”

“So we’ll get at the truth, thank goodness! When does she begin?”

“Well, we’ve moved into the Kensington house for the winter, so I imagine she’ll begin at once.”

“One thing—Julian isn’t a liar,” said Kitty, on a reflective note, “and he’s the sort of boy who, once you’ve fastened on to him, you’ve got him in a cleft stick, if you see what I mean. He’s quite brainy at academic things, and I believe he’s quite a good teacher, but he isn’t what I call practical.”

“How well does he know Giles Faudrey?”

“Not very well. There was some funny business about a girl, so what he knows he doesn’t like.”

“How right he is! Well, be seeing you! Hold the head high. Mrs Croc., in chasing Julian, will really, I think, be putting her finger into many another pie.”

They parted, and Laura returned to her employer.

“Old Kitty is in good heart,” she reported. “It had already occurred to her that the nephew’s conduct has been a trifle remarkable. She doesn’t think he’s a murderer, of course, but she’s worried enough to want to get at the truth. Where do we start?”

They started by inviting Julian Perse to spend the weekend with them in the Kensington house. Having spent Saturday morning in refereeing a school football match, he turned up at lunch, a personable, carelessly dressed young man who ate with a good appetite, asked permission to smoke a pipe when Laura produced cigarettes, and then cast a wary although quizzical look upon his hostess.

“And now, Dame Beatrice, what about the Third Degree?” he said. At these words Laura mentally exonerated him. Dame Beatrice merely cackled. “No, I’m perfectly serious,” he said. “My excellent aunt tipped me off. “Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, for matters must not be left where they are,” says she, staggering me by managing two word-perfect quotes in a single sentence. So now, fortified by your quite marvellous lunch, not to mention a claret which my totally uneducated palate probably did not sufficiently appreciate, I am at your service and am Ready to Tell All.”

“I can see why you got yourself elected on to the Council,” said Laura.

“Watch my progress, which will be upward and onward. As soon as they put up teachers’ salaries to the level which our talents should (but do not, alas!) command, I shall be Mayor.”

“How well did you know Mr Luton?” asked Dame Beatrice.

“Quite well, really, I suppose. I used to be a member of the drama club before I got on to the Council. That cut into my evenings, so I felt I had to resign. Rather sorry, in a way. Acting boosts one’s ego.”