Pageant of Murder

CHAPTER TWENTY

On the Trail of a Youthful Councillor

“…one fears that the evidences supporting this assumption are much too involved, and the available materials for settling the point much too obscure and meagre to carry complete conviction.”

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Alibis, like promises and pie-crusts, are made to be broken,” said Gavin, “so that’s where we’ll make a fresh start. We’ll line up the suspects, and then roll up our sleeves and have a go.”

“Don’t talk in that beastly way,” said Laura. “No wonder Hamish is turning into a thug.”

“With such an Amazonian parent as yourself, he could hardly escape his fate. No—pax! Hit one your own size! It looks bad if a policeman has to go about looking as though he’d picked a fight with a heavyweight champion. Now, Dame B., what have we got? The floor is all yours.”

“And about time, too,” said Laura.

“What we have,” said Dame Beatrice, “are what I may call without, I think, fear of contradiction, three plain, straightforward murders.”

“You mean we ought to ignore the way in which the bodies were treated after death?” asked Gavin. “I should have thought that might give us a clue to the identity of the murderer.”

“That is so, of course! Well, we shall do as you have suggested, and begin by making a closer study of those alibis which, so far, we have merely touched upon.”

“You don’t mean you’re going to have another go at Julian Perse?” exclaimed Laura. “I thought he was definitely in the clear.”

“Oh, I hope he is. I see no reason at present to doubt it, but perhaps we can use his alibi as a form of touchstone. You see, it was strange and a little unkind and unfeeling of him not to have attended the evening entertainment in the Town Hall. After all, his aunt was largely responsible for organising it.”

“Yes, I agree about that, and, as he was responsible for wishing the pageant on old Kitty, he might at least have had the grace to act willing and show up,” said Laura.

“Therefore, why did he not do so?”

“Well, we know why. The supercilious young hound knew it would be a dud show and he’d be bored to death, so he just simply opted out and went off on a toot with some girl he picked up on a bus. He can’t identify the girl and he doesn’t think the barmaid at the pub would remember him. If you ask me, he simply hasn’t got an alibi for the time when Falstaff was murdered.”

“Barmaids have been known, before now, to have very long memories, of course, but, unless young Mr Perse is arrested and charged (which, I am glad to say, is not likely to be the case) we shall be justified, where he is concerned, in ignoring his behaviour on the night of Luton’s death, and we will concentrate, instead, on that Friday evening when we believe that Mr Spey was killed.”

“Oh, yes, the evening when Julian claimed he stayed late at school and then went to a committee meeting at the Town Hall. That means we’ll have to question the school cleaners, but I thought we’d agreed that they wouldn’t remember that particular Friday more than any other.”

“Well, we shall see. We are also still agreed, I take it, that whoever murdered Luton murdered Spey.”

“Fair enough, I think. So if we can put paid to the idea that Julian killed Spey, we shall be justified in taking it for granted that he didn’t kill Luton, either. Well, I suppose we’ll have to go the school. How do we set about that? The headmaster isn’t going to be highly delighted when we break the news to him that we’re trying to prove one of his bright young men is not a triple murderer, and are having a job to put him in the clear.”

“I have a theory that it will not be necessary to approach the headmaster, child. To contact the school caretaker will be more to the point, I fancy. He selects, governs and even pays the school cleaners, and so long as we let him know that we are on the school premises, we shall dispose of any unwelcome feeling that we are trespassers.”

“Suppose Julian himself is there, and we run into him?”

“That is a risk we must take.”

“You’ve got something up your sleeve! You’re pretty certain we won’t run into him, aren’t you?”

“Well, I thought at the time that his pious assertion that the marking of exercise books must be kept up to date was out of character. I do not intend to suggest that he does not keep his marking up to date, but I do suggest that a schoolmaster who remains in the Staff-room on a Friday evening for that purpose is merely filling in time.”

“I can see what you’re getting at, of course. You mean that if he doesn’t usually stay in the Staff-room on a Friday evening, the cleaners will remember that he did so on this occasion. The snag is that I don’t suppose for a minute they’ll be able to pinpoint the date.”

“I have an idea about that,” said Dame Beatrice briskly. “There is an independent witness whom we can contact.”

“Oh? Who’s that?”

“The school cricket captain. He is certain to have retained last year’s fixture list. All we have to do is to check the date of the match against Goodman’s School. Even if the captain has left school, the list will still be in existence. It will have been kept as a guide to next summer’s fixtures—at least, I hope so. The boy’s name is Belton, if you remember. Mr Perse mentioned it to us at the time.”

“So I look up Belton in the telephone book and obtain speech with him, do I?”

“If Robert has no objections, I think that a conversation about cricket will carry more conviction and give rise to less surmise if it is conducted by a man,” said Dame Beatrice.