saying, don’t you?’
‘Well, if I’m saying it, you’ve already thought of it. But who would want to poison a schoolmaster?’
‘Some of the kids, perhaps!’
‘Of course,’ the Superintendent went on thoughtfully, ‘there’s quite a chance that he wasn’t alone when he took the stuff. He may even have been in somebody else’s house and passed out there. If these people (or the woman, if he was out on the tiles) had panicked and decided to get rid of the body, how would that do for an answer?’
‘A lot of work for us to get busy on, anyway, but we’ll see what the inquest brings out.’
The medical evidence given at the inquest was clear. Judging by the fact that there was no water in the lungs, coupled by the amount of arsenic recovered from the body, Palgrave must have been dead when he was put into the water. The verdict was murder by person or persons unknown, and the inquest was adjourned while the police got to work on the case.
They began by rounding up his landlady, who had returned from Basingstoke and suddenly found herself the centre of attraction among her friends and neighbours. Her own alibi for the earliest and also the latest times at which the arsenic could have been administered was unassailable and she had nothing to say (in spite of her excited loquacity) which helped the enquiry in any way whatever.
‘Such a nice, quiet, gentlemanly young man. Never any trouble. Always said when he would be out and whether he needed the key. I never give my tenants a key without they are going to be out too late for me or the maid to be up and about to let them in. Yes, he was my only paying guest at the time. I never like calling them lodgers. It’s demeaning to them and to me. Yes, you can question the maid if you wish, but, being as she is my niece, although willing to be referred to as the maid to oblige me and keep up the tone, if you know what I mean, I took her with me down my mother’s, so she knows no more than I do what poor Mr Palgrave done or where he went, or who he had into his rooms, for that matter.’
‘Hadn’t Mr Palgrave the right to be looked after, then, while you were in Basingstoke?’ asked the patient C.I.D. man who had been assigned to the case.
‘Gentlemen being gentlemen, however gentlemanly,’ said the landlady impressively, ‘I thought it best not to leave a girl what is still not turned twenty in the house alone with a gentleman, if only for the sake of her own good name, the lady next door being of a prying and enquiring nature and all too apt to think the worst, whether it happens or not.’
‘So the chances are that Mr Palgrave was alone in the house that weekend?’
‘Chance is a fine thing,’ said the landlady somewhat abstrusely. ‘He had friends.’
‘Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. Did they visit him here?’
‘There used to be a young lady come a lot at one time. They were an engaged couple. I know that, because I saw the ring on her hand one day when she come here, but that was — oh, a matter of two years ago or more. A young man come sometimes and they played cards or else played golf together, but I don’t know of nobody else. If he had other friends – and I reckon he did –
‘I’ll just take a look around and take away his papers, and then the rooms are all yours, madam. Is the furniture his?’
‘That it’s not! I let my apartments fully furnished and everything except the little bureau and his clackety old typewriter is mine.’
There was one piece of evidence from the lady who was of ‘a prying and enquiring nature and apt to think the worst, whether it happened or not’, for her prying nature had led her to go to her sitting-room window to witness the departure of neighbour and niece on the Friday morning. She had returned to it to see Palgrave, on his return from school, let himself in and (she virtuously stated) she had then gone along to see whether there was anything she could do for him.
‘And was there?’
‘He thanked me and said not, as he was going out to some friends for the weekend. He was dressed very careful, so I thought there was a lady in the case, but, of course, poor gentleman, he never come back at all and I never seen him again.’
The obvious line of enquiry was to find out where Palgrave had gone on that Friday evening, but his correspondence, as much of it as he seemed to have kept, dealt only with school or with business matters connected with his literary agents, or else it consisted of receipted bills. There was no private correspondence of any kind.
There were his professional certificates and a couple of testimonials from head teachers under whom he had served before he obtained an extra-mural academic degree and his post as senior English master at his last school and there was the signed contract from his publishers. There was also a typed carbon copy of a novel, but he appeared to have kept neither a diary nor an address book.
The detective removed such papers as there were. Some of these supplied the names and addresses of his publishers and his literary agents, one of whose letters regretted ‘your decision, which we hope very much that you will reconsider.’
‘Wonder what that was?’ said the Inspector. ‘He hadn’t read the letter. I had to slit it open.’
There seemed nothing useful about the papers so far as an explanation of the death was concerned. There was a cheque book with all the counterfoils carefully filled in, and there was a paying-in book hardly used at all, so both of these gave the name of his bank and the suburb in which the branch was housed, but were of no other assistance.
On inspection of the documents and of a recent bank statement which the police also found among his papers, Palgrave appeared to have had no money troubles and his bank manager endorsed this conclusion. Palgrave’s salary was paid in automatically and he merely received a monthly pay-slip recording the amount sent to the bank and listing the deductions for tax and insurance. None of it was helpful in tracing his murderer.
The bank manager, in answer to a question, said that he had no idea as to whether Palgrave had ever made a Will. He said he doubted it. Men of Palgrave’s age and financial circumstances seldom bothered unless they were married, and not always then.
‘Had he any life assurance or any other insurance policies which could mature at his death? We’ve found nothing of the kind among his papers, but people do keep such things at the bank.’
‘I suppose you are looking for a motive,’ said the bank manager. ‘I know of none. So far as I can see, money wouldn’t enter into it. Why don’t you get in touch with his Union? He’s bound to have belonged to something of the sort. They may be able to help you.’
Palgrave’s death was reported in two or three local papers, first as suicide and then, after the inquest, more excitedly and at greater length, as murder. The big dailies took up the story, one of the more sensational sheets heading it
‘Oh, a number of people might have had reason to wish Camilla dead,’ said Miranda. ‘I don’t know about Colin.’
To Detective-Inspector Pinhurst of the C.I.D., a very bright and up-coming young man, there was one aspect of the case which posed a most interesting problem. Not only had he gone through all Palgrave’s papers not once but several times; he had also read the carbon copy of Palgrave’s novel, once with a quick skim through, the second time more slowly, thus following the pattern with which he was accustomed to take his drinks when he drank at all.
Going by that instinct (for want of a more accurate word) which was to stand him in excellent stead for the furtherance of a distinguished career, he found himself certain that the key to the mystery of Palgrave’s death lay somewhere or other in the contents of the novel.
For one thing, he could not make out why the author had withdrawn the book from publication. Pinhurst was
