‘Only owing to my having been given free access to the library there. We seem to be moving in circles.’ His first sullenness and an air of apprehension were returning, Dame Beatrice noted. She decided upon shock tactics.
‘What was Mrs Schumann’s price,’ she demanded, ‘for allowing you the full use of her husband’s valuable library?’
Caught off his guard, James blurted out the truth.
‘My promise to marry her when Karen had been dead for a year and a day,’ he said.
(2)
‘You must have knocked him for six with that question,’ said Laura, when she had received from Dame Beatrice a full account of the interview.
‘It took him by surprise, as I had expected that it would. Then, like a great many reserved, self-contained and somewhat lonely people, once he had committed himself I heard a great deal more than I could have hoped for. It appears that, although Mrs Schumann did not openly pursue him during her daughter’s engagement, she was not above innuendo.’
‘As how? Disparity in age between James and Karen?’
‘Mostly, yes, added to which she was inclined to stress the point that a mature man must expect to be cuckolded if he insisted upon marrying an immature girl.’
‘She really went so far as to warn him that Karen was not likely to remain faithful to him after they were married?’
‘She stated that her husband had several times strayed from the righteous but unenterprising path of marital fidelity, and reminded him that the son, Otto, was a young man of unstable character and vicious habits and that Karen was Otto’s sister and her father’s daughter. She seems to have contrived to render poor Edward James both insecure and unhappy.’
‘I should jolly well think so, the wicked old puss!’
‘When Karen was killed, she suggested that the inference must be that Karen had had a secret lover who had killed her because she refused to sacrifice her virtue to him. She pointed out that for three week-ends out of four Karen was free to do as she pleased and also stated that she seldom spent a Saturday night inside the cottage.’
‘Good Lord!’
‘Yes, indeed. Then, after Karen’s funeral, she made James a definite offer – two, as a matter of fact, both very tempting to an ambitious man. In return for his promise of marriage she agreed to allow him unrestricted access to her late husband’s library, and to give him, as a wedding portion, the five thousand pounds which her daughter had gained on a premium bond. She pointed out that, with its help, he could resign his teaching post for a couple of years and devote his whole time to study and research for his doctorate.’
‘He didn’t accept, of course.’
‘Oh, yes, he did, but as the months passed, and these murders accumulated, he became more unhappy about the bargain he had made.’
‘So he believes Mrs Schumann is the murderer, the same as you do!’
‘I do not think he can quite bring himself to go so far as that, but I think his suspicions have been aroused strongly enough to make him averse to the projected marriage.’
‘I wonder whether Mrs Schumann knows that?’
‘He has gone to the length of telling her that he wants the murderer found before he is willing to enter into matrimony.’
‘How did Mrs Schumann take that?’
‘He did not say. He did give us another valuable bit of information, though. It confirmed what I had always suspected.’
‘About what?’
‘About Otto Schumann’s statement that, after her landlady had shown her the door, Maria Machrado announced her intention of returning to Mrs Schumann’s cottage. According to James, she did return there. Shortly afterwards her body was found in those bushes near Badbury Rings.’
‘Of course, we know we can’t really believe a word Otto says, but this confirmation from James means that, for once, Otto told the truth.’
‘It also means that Karla Schumann is a liar. She declared that Machrado had never returned to the cottage.’
‘Also, as we’ve already noted, she told us she didn’t care much about James. Well, well, well! Where do we go from here?’
‘I think we must leave the police to decide that. I see nothing else for them to do except to begin their investigation all over again, in a sense.’
‘With Mrs Schumann as the centre of it, you mean? Yes, but, if they’re still thinking in terms of three murderers, not one, they’re not going to make her the centre-piece, are they? It’s a nuisance, though, that she thinks of us as her friends. I feel we’ve shopped her, in a way.’
‘It is some time since she thought of us as her friends, if, indeed, that thought was ever in her mind. In any case, we may be fairly certain that she will learn from Edward James of his summons to the police station, and, even if he does not recount all the details of the interview, a guilty woman will reconstruct enough of it to realise that somebody has put the police on her track, and that the likeliest person to have done so is myself. In addition to that, a mind capable of planning and carrying out five deaths without, so far, leaving sufficient evidence to warrant her arrest, is also capable of working out the unenviable nature of the position in which she is now likely to find herself as a result of James’s admissions and disclosures. In view of that fact, and at risk of sounding melodramatic, I require two promises from you.’
‘Not to go about alone and unarmed, which is, as you will allow, quite ridiculous, because I am more than a match, physically, for Mrs Schumann.’
‘Nevertheless, if I am to sleep at night and to be saved from gnawing anxiety by day …’
‘Oh, all right, if you put it like that. What do you want me to do? – wear a dog-collar like Lord Peter Wimsey’s Harriet in Gaudy Night? Anyway, what’s the other promise?’
‘I do not want Hamish here until this woman is dead, or gone,
