(4)
‘A psychopath, you say?’ said Phillips. ‘Oh, dear! That makes you think a bit, doesn’t it? I’d say nothing was more likely than that he’d murdered this Spanish girl – a proper little tart she was, by all accounts – except that nothing will shake my opinion that the two crimes were committed by the same person, and that person definitely could not have been Schumann. I’ve taken too many corroborative statements to the effect that he was at sea when his sister was killed to believe that he could have had anything to do with her death. But – a psychopath! Sort of lad who might do anything, including imitating a murder he’d read about. Would you go along with that, Dame Beatrice?’
‘Not altogether, and for what seems to me a sufficient reason. The second murder seems to have been as carefully planned as the first, yet Otto Schumann knew nothing about his sister’s death until his ship docked and that was some time after it had occurred. How much is actually known, by the way, (apart from what may have been surmised), about this second death?’
‘Damn-all, if you’ll excuse the expression, Dame Beatrice. We know where the body was found, and we know that Mrs Schumann wrote to the girl’s other digs telling her she need not come back to the cottage. We found the letter among Miss Machrado’s things. That’s about the lot. She came from Bilbao, and we’ve been in touch with her family, but they can tell us nothing that helps us in any way.’
‘Otto Schumann claimed that she was a South American. What does her College landlady have to say about her now?’
‘Oh, that she was every kind of a little trollop and that she had kicked her out of the digs.’
‘She discovered, then, that the girl and Otto Schumann were not married?’
‘She turned her out on the strength of the row they had. Apparently Miss Machrado pursued Schumann to the front door and part-way down the street, screaming abuse at him in Spanish. After she was turned away from the digs we haven’t been able to trace her movements.’
‘Nor those of Edward James?’
‘Well, there, of course, we’ve had to be rather careful because, so far, there’s no actual evidence that he had any more than the most casual and passing acquaintance with the girl. He spent Christmas with friends in Kent – his parents are dead – but he left there the day after Boxing Day. He went to see Mrs Schumann – that’s how we know as much as we do – and then, so far as she can tell us, he spent the rest of the school vacation in London so that he could use the British Museum and the London libraries for his studies.’
‘But Mrs Schumann doesn’t know his London address?’
‘She says he talked about finding a cheap hotel, but she doesn’t know where he was going to look for one. She doesn’t know London at all well, it seems. Anyway, of one thing, so she told us, she is certain. He did not meet Miss Machrado on his last visit to the cottage, although Mrs Schumann admits she told him about the girl’s goings on and of how they parted brass-rags because of the girl’s association with Otto and the lies she’d told about the College end-of-term arrangements. She also admits that James had met the girl once or twice at her place before all the scandal blew up. There’s not much help to be got out of that, though, Dame Beatrice, and, if he was working hard in London, James wouldn’t have had the time to plan this second murder, let alone carry it out.’
‘If he killed Miss Schumann, he had “learned the ropes”, so to speak, though, hadn’t he?’ said Laura.
‘But if he had only the slightest acquaintance with the girl Machrado – and it’s difficult to see that it could have been more than that, Mrs Gavin – why on earth should he murder her? He’s not a maniac.’
‘But young Otto is a psychopath!’ said Laura.
‘Makes you think a bit, that does,’ agreed the Superintendent. ‘Different from the way I found him at first. I’ll need to take a closer look at him.’
‘And when you do, you might also ponder on Mr Rucastle,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘Sherlock Holmes’ methods? I doubt whether I’d find them very useful, ma’am,’ said Phillips.
(5)
‘Well,’ said Laura, ‘now that Scotland Yard has been called in, the whole business is out of our hands, I suppose, and has ceased to be a purely local matter.’
‘Yes. It might be interesting, however, from a purely academic point of view, to note the differences, as well as the similarities, between the two cases.’
‘The differences? Well, let’s see now. First of all, we know that one body was found within easy walking distance of this house, the other a good many miles away on Bere Heath. The first was found by me – or by Fergus, if you like – the second by members of the Tank Corps. Karen Schumann was a virgin, Maria Machrado was pregnant. Edward James was engaged to Karen, but, so far as we’ve been told, he knew very little about Maria, and that mostly by hearsay, and the police can’t prove anything different. Karen was killed towards the end of November, when her school had a free day, Maria early in the New Year, during her College vacation.’
‘Which was during the school holidays, too.’
‘Yes, I hadn’t forgotten that, but we still can’t find any connection between James and this second murder, can we? My last point of difference is that Karen was of German descent, Maria was a Spaniard.’
‘I thought we had decided to treat that as a similarity, since neither was of English ancestry. Incidentally, you left one of the points of difference at the half-way mark. Edward James was engaged to Karen and knew of Maria chiefly by hearsay, but it seems
