Pontyprydd after that rugger match. Remember?’
‘Vaguely.’
‘Oh, come on now! Don’t you realise that I sacrificed my immortal soul on your behalf on that auspicious occasion?’
‘Oh, well, thanks,’ he said, and we were both cheerful when Celia herself opened the door to us.
‘So Aunt Eglantine didn’t treat you to a dissertation on the
Marigold was sitting in an armchair by the fire and looked lost in that huge drawing-room. I was relieved to note that there was no trace of her tumble down the butterslide steps. Her face was quite unmarked and she was as beautiful as ever. Evidently, there had been no need for plastic surgery. All the same, there was something very wrong somewhere, for I could see that she had been crying. I took her hand, not to shake it but because I wanted, suddenly and urgently, to have some physical contact with her. Her fingers gripped mine and I knew that she understood the sympathy I did not express in words. She said, ‘The police have arrested my husband, Corin. What am I going to do?’
‘What? Why on earth arrest Cranford?’ demanded Anthony, as Marigold released my hand and huddled into the armchair with her fists pressed against her eyes.
It was Celia who answered. ‘Rouse or somebody else at the police station has had a letter,’ she explained. ‘It was anonymous and in the ordinary way they might not have taken it so seriously as they have done, although, of course, they do get anonymous tip-offs which have to be investigated. Unfortunately what was in the letter only confirmed Rouse’s own suspicions. The police think they have found the murder weapon, and it points straight at Cranford. That, and Marigold’s accident, have convinced them.’
‘So what was in the letter?’ I asked.
‘The writer claimed to have seen a young woman with red and black hair kneeling on the schoolhouse steps. The inference that she was responsible for Marigold’s accident was too obvious to be ignored.’
‘So what was that about the murder weapon?’ asked Anthony.
‘That’s the devastating part of it. When the police sifted through all the ashes and rubble of the burnt-out old house they found the remains of a long dagger. Of course, at the time they could not connect it with anybody and the fact that they had found it they kept a closely guarded secret until they could trace the owner. When they received this anonymous letter they showed the dagger to Cranford and Marigold.’
‘And Cranford recognised it and said so,’ said Marigold, looking up and speaking with intensity and with no hint of further tears. ‘He told them that he had impounded it from one of the boys and had put it with other bits and pieces that the boys had collected. The various things were in a wooden crate in the old house. He would never have admitted that he recognised the dagger if he had used it to kill that girl, would he? I should have thought that would establish his innocence, if anything could.’
‘Did they know he had the key to the old house?’ I asked.
‘Yes, they did,’ said Anthony, ‘but that couldn’t really have told against him because there was the broken window at the back.’
‘So all they have to go on is his own admission that he recognised the dagger.’
‘Well, not quite,’ said Marigold. I waited, but she added nothing further. Celia renewed an offer which she had made before our return from the hospital, but Marigold refused to stay for dinner and left. Anthony saw her home. When he came back he said that here was a pretty kettle offish.
‘It will absolutely ruin the school,’ he went on. ‘Even if Cranford is acquitted, nobody is going to leave a boy at a school where the headmaster has been had up on a charge of murder and arson.’
‘What do you suppose Mrs Coberley meant when she said that the dagger was not quite the only thing the police had to go on?’ I asked.
‘I think I know what she meant,’ said Anthony. ‘Do you remember my telling you what a tiger Coberley can be when anything happens to upset him in connection with Marigold? Well, this won’t be the first time he has seen the inside of a gaol. When she herself was acquitted of murder, an acquaintance of his wrote an insulting and vitriolic letter, and Coberley went round and half killed the chap. Coberley had a good lawyer and received a light sentence on a plea of diminished responsibility owing to unreasonable provocation and insupportable emotional stress. The letter was produced in court, but the journalists were told that it was not to appear in their reports of the trial because of the damage it would do to Marigold, who, after all, had been acquitted of the murder she had been charged with.’
‘I wonder how he managed to start a school with a charge of grievous bodily harm against him,’ I said.
‘Oh, he changed his name, of course.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Oh, it’s wonderful what you hear when an ordinarily abstemious man gets enough of the right stuff sloshing about inside him. One thing — I’m sure he has no idea that he told me the tale.’
‘Do you think he killed Gloria Mundy?’
‘I don’t know. I wonder who it was who tipped him off that it was she who buttered the steps and then called out to Marigold?’
‘One of the servants at the school, I guess.’
I stayed the night. The next day I went to my Dorset hotel to begin work on the last of the brochures. Exactly a week later I sent the rest of my notes and alterations to Hara-kiri and went to see Aunt Eglantine again. At Anthony’s house I had told him and Celia, over dinner, of the old lady’s boast that she was a wealthy woman and of her statement that I was to benefit under her will.
‘Of course she isn’t wealthy,’ Celia had said, ‘but it would be quite likely that she had taken a fancy to you and decided to put you in her will.’
‘Great expectations!’ I said, laughing. So it was with no avaricious intentions that I went to see Aunt Eglantine again.
