Fault in the Structure

‘She paid me a retaining fee while she was away. That was usually for four weeks. She told me she spent the four weeks with her husband. Of course he may have come here to fetch her. I wouldn’t know about that, because I generally go on my own holiday then. I’m a widow with a son living in Skegness, so I go up there to mind the two children while he and his wife go off on their own holiday.’

‘So, although you met Mrs Lawrence’s husband only once, he may have come here at other times when you were away from home? You mentioned Mrs Lawrence’s brother. Did he call here often?’

‘Not to say often, and generally on a Sunday, when, of course, she didn’t have to go over to College. He used to come about every six weeks. Come on a motor-bike, he did, and they went to the university church, St Mary’s that is, in the morning and then she paid me extra for his Sunday lunch and if it was fine they’d walk by the river or in the university parks, or maybe take a punt down the backwater. Very fond of each other they seemed.’

‘I suppose you’re sure it was her brother?’ said Laura. The woman looked affronted.

‘Of course I’m sure,’ she said. ‘Mrs Lawrence had photos of him at all ages. There was him as a schoolboy in his tasselled cap, him as a boxer in his shorts and singlet, him in a dinner-jacket with a carnation in his buttonhole and him at her wedding – not as best man, of course, but in the wedding photos standing modest on the outskirts. She told me he gave her away, as their father was dead.’

‘I wonder whether the photographs are still in her room?’ said Laura.

‘Oh, no. The police have got everything like that, and all her letters and things, and of course I’ve let her rooms, so I couldn’t show you over.’

‘Have you any idea where the brother lives?’

‘No, not really, but it couldn’t be all that far away if he could have his breakfast and get here in time for church, could it? I believe she once mentioned Lyndhurst, but I couldn’t be sure.’

‘How did the police get in touch with him? I understand that he was called upon to identify the body,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘I can’t tell you anything about that. I suppose they found letters from him among her things. I was on my holiday at the time it all happened, so I really don’t know much about it. When I came back, what a shock I got! Her murdered and buried in a nasty sack and the police everywhere, which another of my lodgers had let in and told them which were her rooms. They were locked up, of course, but the police have their ways of opening doors.’

‘I suppose she never indicated that she had an enemy?’

‘Somebody who would do her a mischief, like murdering her, you mean? Gracious me, no! This is a most respectable house! It was a stranger did it. That College is open to visitors all the Long Vacation. I reckon some nasty man not right in the head followed her into that cellar and that’s how it happened. You hear about such goings-on all the time.’

‘Well, you may hear about such goings-on all the time,’ said Laura, as she and Dame Beatrice walked back to the car-park, ‘but that brings us back to the question of why any “nasty man” should have buried the body. Lawrence or that brother of hers were the only people who would have wanted to hide it, simply because, once it was found, they would be suspected. It’s just the porters’ rotten luck about that parcel. Well, what happens now?’

‘Another interview with the Chief Constable. The Superintendent may have sent in another report by this time and I should like to know what it is.’

‘Going to pull your rank?’

‘That is a most unseemly question.’

‘So you will, if he turns sticky, but he won’t. That’s the value of having met people socially. Makes it very difficult for them to go all haughty and stand-offish when you ask them for a load of the dirt.’

‘Your intelligence is matched only by the elegance of your conversation,’ said Dame Beatrice, cackling.

‘What about the wild originality of my countenance?’ retorted Laura. ‘Let’s see; we turn left out of this car-park, don’t we? Devil take these one-way streets!’

They stopped at a call-box and Dame Beatrice rang up. The Chief Constable was at home and would be glad to see them. When they arrived they found that he had a police inspector with him.

‘The Super has been taken off the rather weak case involving the College porters,’ he said, ‘to deal with a bank break-in.’

‘A bank robbery is a much more important matter than a mere murder, of course,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I believe the two men have been remanded on bail. The case against them is hardly strong enough for them to be in custody.’

‘There’s the matter of them having a key to the cellar and the fact that the parcel containing a valuable watch has not turned up,’ said the inspector, a young man with a red face and a pugnacious jaw. ‘We need to keep the tabs on them.’

‘Ah, yes, these keys to the cellar,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Has Mrs Lawrence’s own key been found?’

‘Yes, ma’am, it was on the body. Proves it was one of the porters, seems to me. All our enquiries show that they were the only people, except Mrs Lawrence herself, who had access. Not even the High Mistress had a key. They only had Mrs Lawrence’s key cut so’s she could use part of the cellar as a dark-room. The fellow who did it must have used his own key, else why was her own key still on the body?’

‘But surely the murderer could have returned the key to the body before he buried her, could he not?’

‘Well, I suppose he could, ma’am, but why should he? We don’t believe her own key had anything to do with it. I mean, how could any stranger have been able to follow her into the cellar without being spotted? That’s why I plump for one of the porters. How could anybody else have got in?’

‘Quite easily, I imagine. I don’t suppose she locked the door of her darkroom while she was inside it.’

‘That gate is in the porter’s line of vision all the time, though ma’am.’