Detective Inspector Bland sat behind a table in the study. Sir George had met him on arrival, had taken him down to the boathouse and had now returned with him to the house. Down at the boathouse a photographic unit was now busy and the fingerprint men and the medical officer had just arrived.
'This do for you here all right?' asked Sir George.
'Very nicely, thank you, sir.'
'What am I to do about this show that's going on, tell 'em about it, stop it, or what?'
Inspector Bland considered for a moment or two.
'What have you done so far, Sir George?' he asked.
'Haven't said anything. There's a sort of idea floating round that there's been an accident. Nothing more than that. I don't think anyone's suspected yet that it's – er – well, murder.'
'Then leave things as they are just for the moment,' decided Bland. 'The news will get round fast enough, I dare say,' he added cynically. He thought again for a moment or two before asking, 'How many people do you think there are at this affair?'
'Couple of hundred I should say,' answered Sir George, 'and more pouring in every moment. People seem to have come from a good long way round. In fact the whole thing's being a roaring success. Damned unfortunate.'
Inspector Bland inferred correctly that it was the murder an not the success of the fete to which Sir George was referring.
'A couple of hundred,' he mused, 'and any one of them I suppose could have done it.'
He sighed.
'Tricky, said Sir George sympathetically. 'But I don't see what reason any one of them could have had. The whole thing seems quite fantastic – don't see who would want to go murdering a girl like that.'
'How much can you tell me about the girl? She was a local girl, I understand?'
'Yes. Her people live in one of the cottages down near the quay. Her father works at one of the local farms – Paterson's, I think.' He added, 'The mother is here at the fete this afternoon. Miss Brewis – that's my secretary, and se can tell you about everything much better than I can – Miss Brewis winkled the woman out and has got her somewhere, giving her cups of tea.'
'Quite so,' said the inspector, approvingly. 'I'm not quite clear yet, Sir George, as to the circumstances of all this. What was the girl doing down there in the boathouse? I understand there's some kind of a murder hunt – or treasure hunt, going on.'
Sir George nodded.
'Yes. We all thought it rather a bright idea. Doesn't seem quite so bright now. I think Miss Brewis can probably explain it all to you better than I can. I'll send her to you, shall I? Unless there's anything else you want to know about first.'
'Not at the moment, Sir George. I may have more questions to ask you later. There are people I shall want to see. You, and Lady Stubbs, and the people who discovered the body. One of them, I gather, is the woman novelist who designed this murder hunt as you call it.'
'That's right. Mrs Oliver. Mrs Ariadne Oliver.'
The inspector's eyebrows went up slightly.
'Oh – her!' he said. 'Quite a best-seller. I've read a lot of her books myself.'
'She's a bit upset at present,' said Sir George, 'naturally, I suppose. I'll tell her you'll be wanting her, shall I? I don't know where my wife is. She seems to have disappeared completely from view. Somewhere among the two or three hundred, I suppose – not that she'll be able to tell you much. I mean about the girl or anything like that. Who would you like to see first?'
'I think perhaps your secretary, Miss Brewis, and after that the girl's mother.'
Sir George nodded and left the room.
The local police constable Robert Hoskins, opened the door for him and shut it after he went out. He then volunteered a statement obviously intended as a commentary on some of Sir George's remarks.
'Lady Stubbs is a bit wanting,' he said, 'up here.'
He tapped his forehead. 'That's why he said she wouldn't be much help. Scatty, that's what she is.'
'Did he marry a local girl?'
'No. Foreigner of some sort. Coloured, some say, but I don't think that's so myself.'
Bland nodded. He was silent for a moment, doodling with a pencil on a sheet of paper in front of him. Then he asked a question which was clearly off the record.
'Who did it, Hoskins?' he said.
If anyone did have any ideas as to what had been going on, Bland thought, it would be P.C. Hoskins. Hoskins was a man of inquisitive mind with a great interest in everybody and everything. He had a gossiping wife and that, taken with his position as local constable, provided him with vast stores of information of a personal nature.
'Foreigner, if you ask me. 'Twouldn't be anyone local. The Tuckers is all right. Nice, respectable family. Nine of 'em all told. Two of the older girls is married, one boy in the Navy, the other one's doing his National Service, another girl's over to a hairdresser's at Torquay. There's three younger ones at home, two boys and a girl.' He paused, considering. 'None of 'em's what you'd call bright, but Mrs Tucker keeps her home nice, clean as a pin – youngest of eleven, she was. She's got her old father living with her.'
Bland received this information in silence. Given in Hoskins's particular idiom, it was an outline of the Tuckers' social position and standing.
'That's why I say it was a foreigner' continued Hoskins. 'One of those that stop up to the Hostel at Hoodown, likely as not. There's some queer ones among them – and a lot of goings-on. Be surprised, you would, at what I've seen 'em doing in the bushes and the woods! Every bit as bad as what goes on in parked cars along the Common.'
P.C. Hoskins was by this time an absolute specialist on the subject of sexual 'goings-on.' They formed a large portion of his conversation when off duty and having his pint in the Bull and Bear. Bland said:
'I don't think there was anything – well, of that kind. The doctor will tell us, of course, as soon as he's finished his examination.'
'Yes, sir, that'll be up to him, that will. But what I say is, you never know with foreigners. Turn nasty, they can, all in a moment.'
Inspector Bland sighed as he thought to himself that it was not quite as easy as that. It was all very well for Constable Hoskins to put the blame conveniently on 'foreigners.' The door opened and the doctor walked in.
'Done my bit,' he marked. 'Shall they take her away now? The other outfits have packed up.'
'Sergeant Cottrill will attend to that,' said Bland. 'Well, Doc, what's the finding?'
'Simple and straightforward as it can be,' said the doctor. 'No complications. Garrotted with a piece of clothes line. Nothing could be simpler or easier to do. No struggle of any kind beforehand. I'd say the kid didn't know what was happening to her until it had happened.'
'Any signs of assault?'
'None. No assault, signs of rape, or interference of any kind.'
'Not presumably a sexual crime, then?'
'I wouldn't say so, no.' The doctor added, 'I shouldn't say she'd been a particularly attractive girl.'
'Was she fond of the boys?'
Bland addressed this question to Constable Hoskins.
'I wouldn't say they'd much use for her,' said Constable Hoskins, 'though maybe she'd have liked it if they had.'
'Maybe,' agreed Bland. His mind went back to the pile of comic papers in the boathouse and the idle scrawls on the margin. 'Johnny goes with Kate,' 'Georgie Porgie kisses hikers in the wood.' He thought there had been a little wishful thinking there. On the whole, though, it seemed unlikely that there was a sex angle to Marlene Tucker's death. Although, of course, one never knew… There were always those queer criminal individuals, men with a secret lust to kill, who specialised in immature female victims. One of these might be present in this part of the world during this holiday season. He almost believed that it must be so – for otherwise he could really see no reason for so pointless a crime. However, he thought, we're only at the beginning. I'd better see what all these people have to tell me.
