Q. Another point which I find extremely puzzling is this: how could the murderer have known that Mrs Gavin was exercising her dog that evening?
A. How should I know?
Q. How well do you know Mrs Gavin?
A. You think she killed my Karen and led the dog to the spot, so she can pretend to find the dog and the body next day? Well, she is so big and so strong, of course …
Q. Yes, it’s a thought, that. I must see what Mrs Gavin has to say about it. Can you think of any reason, though, why she should wish to kill your daughter?
A. Oh, yes, that I know.
Q. Indeed? What reason?
A. Karen desires to take the dog back again.
Q. Really?
A. Ja. Mrs Gavin – Karen tells me this, but, of course, I do not repeat it until you force it from me – Mrs Gavin has her son in mind. It is for him that the dog is purchased. So she says she cannot part with the dog and disappoint the boy. I think they meet and argue. I see it all, now you say the killing was done at my cottage. Karen finds I shall not be there, so she makes this appointment to meet Mrs Gavin and talk things over, but there is argument, and Mrs Gavin, so much bigger and stronger than my Karen, throws the string of the dog-whistle round Karen’s neck and pulls it tight – in bad temper, you know, not perhaps intending to kill. But Karen falls unconscious and Mrs Gavin is so frightened she strangles her, so my Karen cannot live to tell of the attack.
Q. Well, thank you, Mrs Schumann. You have certainly given me something to think about. And you have had this in mind all along?
A. Not all along, no, but I think it is the truth.
Q. Then how do you account for the other four deaths?
A. Only the death of my Karen concern me. I am sorry for the others, but I do not care all that much, and I still think Otto, who is a very bad boy, killed Maria Machrado because he get her with child and she demands to be married.
‘And, of course, she could be right about that, you know,’ commented Laura to Dame Beatrice. ‘I wouldn’t put it past him and, of course, he is her son and she did kill her daughter. Karen went to the cottage that morning, had a bust-up with her mother about James, and that was the end of Karen. Then Mrs Schumann hid the body, probably in an empty dog-house, went off to Ringwood, came back in the afternoon and took the body to the woods. Then she must have come along here and followed me to the post-office and round the village. She knew I’d have to take Fergus for a run at some time before nightfall. All she had to do was hang about long enough. She’d have seen me leave the post-office, then she cut back to the common, went along that path, whistled up Fergus, and – Bob’s your uncle! She simply had to walk him across to the woods and leave him on guard. She knew I wouldn’t be able either to hear her whistle him up or to spot her in the mist and the darkness.’
‘She also knew that you would not rest until you had found him, and that, in finding him, you would also find the body and have to report it. Her suggestion that you are the murderer arose directly from this interview with Detective-Inspector Maisry and was made on the spur of the moment. He must have given her a fright for her to have invented so far-fetched a theory.’
(4)
‘For the record only, Mrs Gavin,’ said Maisry, when, two days later, he visited the Stone House, ‘can you cast your mind back and remember how you spent the day on which Miss Schumann was killed?
‘I’ll have to work backwards,’ said Laura, ‘from the time I took Fergus down to the post-office. I left this house at about a quarter-past four, or maybe a bit earlier, because I wanted to catch the quarter-to-five post. Before that, I had been writing the letter I was going to send. That would have taken me possibly twenty minutes.’
‘Takes us back roughly to between a quarter to four and four o’clock. Let’s say a quarter to four.’
‘We finished lunch at two. We have it most days at a quarter past one, so as to get a long morning.’
‘And that day, so far as you remember, was no exception?’
‘It was no exception,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Our habits are regular, unless there is some special reason for altering them, and on that day there would have been none, since the murders, which lately have sometimes thrown the times out of joint, had not been committed.’
‘Right. So we are back to a quarter past one.’
‘From ten o’clock until I went to wash my hands before lunch, I was dealing with Dame Beatrice’s correspondence and typing a couple of chapters of her new book,’ went on Laura. ‘You confirm that, Dame Beatrice?’
‘Certainly. I was with Laura the whole time. I spend little time on housekeeping duties, for Henri does his own ordering of food and Celestine looks after everything else, with the help of a young girl who lives in and has her own regular routine of duties.’
‘Oh, well, that disposes of Mrs Schumann’s unlikely theory that Mrs Gavin murdered her daughter. To my mind, there is no doubt about what really happened, but, unfortunately, so far I have no proof on which I should be justified in arresting and charging the good lady. My next move will be to go over all the ground again in the case of Maria Machrado. Otto Schumann’s ship docks at Poole this afternoon and I shall be there to meet it. I wonder whether you would care to accompany me, Dame Beatrice? – in your official
