Fault in the Structure

‘Did Mr Lawrence have any women visitors while he was with you?’

‘He gave extra coaching to one or two of the female students, but one could hardly call them women visitors and, of course, I saw to it that they left at a reasonable hour. Supper here is at nine. They were always out of this house before that. What is more, if only one young woman at a time was involved, I sat in the room while the tutoring was going on. I thought it only right.’

‘I see. Had you any idea that Mr Lawrence was not going to renew his tenancy after the end of the summer term?’

‘Mr Lawrence was under notice to go.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘I discovered that he was having improper relations with one of my maids.’

‘Oh, dear!’

‘Of course that sealed his fate – and hers.’

‘I suppose so – yes. You can be certain that he was here…’

‘As I have already told the police, Mr Lawrence left this house on May twenty-fourth, having no more lectures to deliver, although it was not, strictly speaking, the end of the term, and he returned here, by my permission, in order to collect the rest of his possessions and work out his notice. I have not seen him since and have no wish to set eyes on him again.’

‘Well, I don’t suppose you will, Mrs Breaston. He has been given a two-year prison sentence. Now, those last nights after his return, he was in this house all the time, I suppose?’

‘He was.’

‘May I ask how you can be so sure?’

‘I kept my eye on him every day and my ears open.’

‘Can you be certain he did not slip out at night?’

‘Yes,’ said the landlady grimly, ‘that I can. I trusted him so little that I had all his possessions moved into the room next to mine. Since you appear to have official standing, I will show you how I can be certain he did not leave my house. Not that I should have been concerned about that. It was his morals inside my house which concerned me.’

She led the way majestically from the room and up the well-carpeted stairs. She unlocked a door on the landing.

‘This is your bedroom, I take it,’ said Laura, looking around.

‘That is so.’ The landlady traversed the room and opened a door which communicated with it. ‘And this is where I put Mr Lawrence with the door between us securely bolted on my side of it. You will notice that there is no other method of egress from this room. I always dressed early, tidied my room and then unbolted the communicating door.’

Laura walked over to what had been Lawrence’s bedroom window during his last short stay in the house, a stay which, according to the medical evidence, must have covered the period during which the murder of Mrs Lawrence had taken place. There was a sheer drop of more than thirty feet on to a stone courtyard. ‘He could have buried the body but not committed the murder,’ thought Laura.

‘I am sorry, but not surprised, that you had your journey for nothing,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘Well, it wasn’t quite for nothing, because I’ve satisfied myself that Lawrence must be in the clear so far as the actual murder of Mrs Lawrence is concerned. We know he went to Wayneflete College, where Sir Ferdinand spoke to him about the money that was embezzled, and Mrs Lawrence certainly wasn’t killed while he was there.’

‘No. The session at her university was not over, so she certainly would have been missed if she hadn’t turned up at Abbesses College during the last few days of term.’

‘Then we know that Lawrence spent a week with Sir Anthony in Norfolk. His alibi is clear for that time, too, and also for the five days which followed, for these included all the arrangements for Sir Anthony’s funeral and also the funeral itself. Still, according to Miss Runmede’s evidence, Lawrence may be covered for his wife’s murder, but he isn’t cleared of that business of the sack and the cloister garth. That means he had guilty knowledge of the murder, even if he didn’t commit it. For long enough we have been agreed upon that.’

‘Coralie St Malo?’ said Chief Superintendent Nicholl who, having cleared up his bank robbery, was now pursuing what he thought was a dead end. ‘Oh, I don’t know about that, Mrs Gavin. We’ve nothing on her at all. There’s no motive and we haven’t found the murder weapon. It’s buried deep in the river mud, we reckon. Except that it was probably a cut-throat razor, or so Forensic tell us, we know nothing about it, although, of course, we’re still making enquiries. If it was a cut-throat razor it must have been somebody’s family heirloom. Nobody buys such things nowadays, so there’s no point in trying the shops, although, of course, we’ve had a go.’

‘Coralie could have had opportunity, though,’ urged Laura. ‘She could have been in the neighbourhood at about the time of the murder.’

‘She met Lawrence in that pub before the murder was committed, and that’s all we know, Mrs Gavin. But we’ll keep the tabs on her, of course. All the same, this wasn’t a woman’s crime.’

‘Clytemnestra did in Agamemnon with an axe; Lizzie Borden finished off her parents, ditto; Constance Kent was accused of cutting her little brother’s throat, Procne killed and cooked her son…’

‘All very mythical, Mrs Gavin. Nobody knows whether it was Lizzie Borden or not. As for Constance Kent, there’s never been any doubt in my mind that it was the father who cut the child’s throat. After all, he’d slept with the nursemaid in the same room as the little boy. It only needed for the kid to wake up and start asking awkward questions. Constance was at the self-sacrificing age and so decided to carry the can. That’s my reading of it.’ He looked at Dame Beatrice for confirmation of this view. ‘You know all about psychology, ma’am. What’s your view about Constance Kent?’

‘She may have wished her half-brother dead,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘and that, in a