‘How do the lorries manage, then? They must get into the enclosure somehow, and that means there must be a way round,’ said Gavin.
‘Yes, there is,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘They use the old gravel road which skirts the common and comes out about three miles away from my house. If a car of almost any size, from the largest to the smallest, took that way, it could get into the woods and almost opposite the spot where the girl was found. Of course, if there are no traces of a car having been parked there …’
‘Yes, well, we had a good look at that gravel road, ma’am, but the autumn rains have made the rut-marks so soft and deep that there’s not much hope of tracing any individual wheelmarks. Anyway, James doesn’t own a car. Of course, he may have used Mrs Schumann’s, I suppose.’
‘Not if Mrs Schumann had taken her prize dog over to Ringwood in it,’ Gavin pointed out.
‘I think Miss Schumann must also have had a car,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘It would be a most tiresome cross-country journey by rail from the school to her home, and would involve a very long walk after she had left the train.’
‘So it might have been simplicity itself for Miss Schumann to have picked James up somewhere near the school and driven him to her mother’s house,’ said the Superintendent. ‘Well, well, well! So, if we can break this school-library alibi of his, we shall really be going places!’
‘Keep on plugging away,’ said Gavin, grinning. ‘I shall watch your progress with considerable interest. Seriously, though, Phillips, I’ve a feeling you’ve pin-pointed your man all right. It’s a question of proof now. The only thing that bothers me is the apparent absence of motive. Surely the two quarrels we’ve heard about were not of sufficient importance to lead to murder? They seem to be old hat, anyway. Do you think the girl was pestering for marriage, but that James wanted to oil out? Could he have preferred murder to a breach-of-promise case?’
‘I’m not sure a woman teacher would bring a breach-of-promise case,’ protested Laura. ‘Think how some of the beastlier kids and their horrible mums would react! I mean, however much you might vengefully soak the man for his dough, you must still look a pretty average fool if you let him walk out on you. Personally, placed in such a position, I should emigrate to New Zealand.’
‘No, you wouldn’t,’ said her husband. ‘You’d throw the defaulting bloke into the nearest pond and then jump on his stomach. But, to proceed, there’s one other possibility I’ve just thought up. Don’t I remember we were told that Miss Schumann had a brother?’
‘Yes, named Otto,’ said Laura. ‘His mother doesn’t seem to have a good word to say for him.’
‘No, she hasn’t. She mentioned him to me,’ said Phillips. ‘Always dunning her and his sister for money, or so Mrs Schumann says.’
‘Have you tailed him?’ asked Gavin. ‘A known bad hat is always worth a second glance, I feel.’
‘He’s a merchant seaman, sir. Second officer on a biggish ship which picks up cargo anywhere between Spitzbergen and the Canaries. Calls regularly at Poole and Southampton. There doesn’t seem any reason to think he’s mixed up in any way with his sister’s death. He certainly couldn’t have been her murderer. He was at sea. We’ve checked that very carefully.’
(10)
‘So that is the verdict of us all,’ said Laura, when they had left the Superintendent at his office and were on their way back to the Stone House. ‘I feel it’s a bit premature, considering that we haven’t a shred of proof.’
‘I know,’ said her husband. ‘All the same, I can’t help feeling, as I told him, that Phillips has got the right pig by the ear. As I see it, it’s one of the classic cases of a lovers’ quarrel followed by a manual strangulation – a routine set-up and all according to the formbook.’
‘I agree that Edward James is an immediate and obvious suspect,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘but I should be far happier about your suspicions of him if the young woman had been pregnant.’
‘She may have told him she was,’ said Laura. ‘That trick is well known if a girl is trying to blackmail a man into marrying her when he doesn’t really want to, or if he isn’t in too much of a hurry to put up the banns. In this case, if James intended to get his doctorate before he married, the girl would have had to wait a jolly long time, and that means she might have been prepared to try pretty rough methods to hurry things up a bit. After all, he isn’t exactly young enough to have all his life before him.’
‘There’s another aspect to that, though,’ said Gavin. ‘James might have known that a story about a baby on the way could not possibly be true. As a theological student – and, I should be inclined to guess, a pretty cold fish at that! – he may be the most virtuous and abstemious of men, in which case he’d have known she was simply telling the tale.’
‘But suppose she had told him that she was pregnant by another man,’ pursued Laura. ‘That would have put the cat among the pigeons all right.’
‘My dear girl, do stop using that famous imagination of yours! These are but wild surmises. No. If I may put forward a less picturesque point of view, my guess would be that if James is guilty – and remember that we have absolutely nothing to go on in supposing this, and are probably being disgracefully unfair to the chap – but if he is guilty, then I do agree that he and the girl must have had some far more serious row than the two quarrels the mother knows about. Either that, or he simply tired of his engagement and couldn’t face breaking it off. Some fellows would sooner murder
