Our Jubilee is Death (20 page)

“Pooh! Royalties and dust-jackets!”

“But to a woman of Lillianne Bomberger's kind every quarrel was one to the death.”

“What extravagant phrases you employ, Deene. But let us dispute no more. The important thing is that you should quickly, nay instantly, resume your investigations in order to solve this most infelicitous affair and reveal the truth in the shortest possible time, thus saving Mr Stump from any possibility of embarrassment.”

“Can't do that, I'm afraid, headmaster. I've finished with it. Glad to be, in fact. It's a beastly business.”

“Pardon me, Deene. But I do not think that you can have realized the full implications. I, your headmaster, to whom you owe at least a measure of loyalty and consideration, have entrusted the child of my brain, the fruit of a life-time's experience, the composium of my varied interests and speculations, to the firm of which Mr Stump is the senior partner. Early next spring Stump and Agincourt are due to publish
The Wayward Mortar-board”

“Or Thirty Years on the Slopes of Parnassus.
I know. But I can't do anything about it. I don't see it would make much difference, anyhow. Agincourt would carry on even if Stump were nicked.”

“Deene! I forbid you to employ this flippancy in a matter of such vital moment. But let us be calm. Do you know that Mrs Bomberger was murdered?”

“Yes. But I can't prove it.”

“Do you know who was guilty of that crime?”

“Yes. But again I have only circumstantial evidence.”

“And Miss Pink?”

“The same applies.”

“Was it the same person?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Then prove it, man! Prove it. It should be a challenge to you!”

“I'm sorry, headmaster; I'm leaving Blessington tomorrow. For good.”

But that Carolus was unable to do. For in the morning, before Mrs Stick had finished packing, the little town rang with the news that there had been another death at Trumbles. Babs Stayer was found in bed in the morning, having died some hours previously.

The cause of death was confidently thought to be an overdose of sleeping-pills containing morphine, a conclusion which was afterwards confirmed by autopsy. So for Carolus his escape became impossible.

C
AROLUS
remained all that day in the stuffy front room of the house he had so rashly rented, at first refusing to see anyone. But when Priggley arrived about noon, Mrs Stick obtained his unwilling permission to admit him.

“Achilles sulking in his tent,” said Priggley. “And small wonder. I don't know which looks sillier, you or the police. How many more people do you expect to be poisoned? We've only had three green bottles hanging on the wall as yet.”

“The headmaster is here,” said Carolus. “He arrived yesterday.”

“It only needed that. Look, sir, are you going to give your theory of the case now? I frankly don't see how you can do anything else.”

“I suppose so. If the police want me to.”

They were interrupted by knocking at the front door, and Rupert went to open it. Almost before he had done so Mrs Plum had passed him and was inside.

“Wait a minute. Let me get my breath,” she said. “I didn't want any of them to see me coming here, though one or another's bound to have been on the watch.” She walked into the room as she spoke and nodded to Carolus. “What did I tell you? I saw it coming from the first. The lady from next door told me just now, when I was putting my washing out. ‘I suppose you've heard what's happened now where you were working?' she said, and I told her anything could happen up there. ‘Another one gone,' she said, and told me it was Babs. I wasn't surprised, mind you, after what I've seen, but it gave me a nasty turn, all the same—I could hear my heart going bang, bang, bang
and thought my legs would crumble under me. So I nipped round to hear what you had to say about it.”

“Nothing,” said Carolus wearily.

It seemed that Mrs Plum had not heard.

“It's a nice thing, isn't it?” she reflected. “You start with one Going and you never know where it will end. I saw her yesterday morning, too. In the High Street, she was, just coming out of Cupperly's. I little thought it would be the last time I'd set eyes on her, poor thing. It's enough to make anyone feel queer, isn't it? Poisoning anyone like that. I wonder whatever people do it for. Oh well, I must get back. I thought I'd just pop round.”

After peering furtively from the door, Mrs Plum made a dash for it.

But not ten minutes later Carolus had another visitor.

“Eyt was almost empossible to faind your hading-place, Mr Deene, though Ey hed the eddress. Ey have a little enformation for you.”

“Oh. Do sit down. I'd really given up the case.”

“Ey know. Et must be fratefully complicated. End so many daying. Ey'm sure you must be quate worn out. Ey thought jest in case mey little piece of enformation mate be helpful Ey would neep een end tell you.”

“Thanks.”

“Oh, not et ell. Et's just that the lady who has now dayed, Miss Bebs Stayer, Ey mean, keem into the hotel yesterday. For a dreenk, Ey fency. She went to the Bavarian Weinstube; thet es one of our bars.”

Carolus nodded.

“Et must have been about twelve meed-dey. Soon she was joined bey anether lady and gentleman whom Ey know by sate. A farmer neemed Cribb and hes wafe. Very nace people, also connected with Mrs Bomberger, Ey believe.”

“Yes. He is.”

“Thet es ell, reelly. Ey jest thought you should know.”

“Thank you.”

“Thenk
you.
Ey can faynd mey way out, thenk you. Goodbey.”

The door closed quietly behind her, and her pinnacle heels could be heard on the pavement.

“Ey'd lake to strengle her,” said Priggley. “Though I suppose she was trying to be useful. I should think that the news would just about have come to the ears of the headmaster and we shall have
him
trundling round. Ah well, never a dull moment.”

It was not, however, until after lunch that Mr Gorringer arrived, and when he did so it was with Miss Ethel Pink. Between them they filled the small room.

“Miss Pink chanced to be staying at the same hotel,” said Mr Gorringer, “and I was lucky enough to gather her identity from a reference by the hall porter. A natural affinity of anxieties in this most deplorable business, Deene, brought us into conversation.”

“Good. I thought you would get on,” said Carolus cheerfully.

“But this is no time to be talking of anything but the new and appalling development. What have you to say of that?”

“Nothing. I told you yesterday I had left the case.”

“Come, Deene, you can scarcely expect to throw off your responsibilities now that things have taken this ugly turn. You owe it to Miss Pink to give her the fullest details in the matter of her sister's death. You owe it to everyone to explain the truth about Mrs Bomberger. And you have a double, a triple obligation in the matter of this latest tragedy.”

“If the police want the results of my work on the case they can have them. But I'm not anxious to give them to anyone else.”

“Come, Deene, this is not like you. You have always presented to an audience of those concerned a spirited account of your investigations. You have never failed to keep those who heard you in suspense until in the fullness of time you revealed the murderer's identity. Why not again?”

“It's not that kind of case. It's a sickener this time.”

“All the same, I feel it is the appropriate gesture. By it you rid yourself of all responsibilities and can leave Blessington-on-Sea without regret. I suggest my hotel as the
venue
and six o'clock this evening as the time. I will make myself responsible for the presence of all concerned.”

“If the police want it,” said Carolus. “Only if the police will agree to be there.”

“I will make it my business to see them at once. I will also see whether I can persuade Mr George Stump to lend his presence. Who knows but that on hearing your exposition he might express some interest in a written account of the whole crime? That indeed would be a feather in your cap, Deene.” He seemed to remember suddenly that he had Ethel Pink with him. “But your first obligation is to relieve, so far as you are able, the doubts and difficulties of the bereaved.”

“You really want to know what happened to your sister?” Carolus asked.

Ethel Pink stiffened.

“Of course! What else?”

“It won't make pleasant hearing.”

“It won't scare me, if that's what you think. Nine years at St Mervyn's would cure anyone of being frightened too easily by words.”

“I wasn't thinking of your being scared.”

“Or shocked either. If you had had to deal with assistant masters like ours you'd be unshockable. So you can tell me whatever you think about poor Alice.”

“It seems to me that Miss Pink speaks for all,” put in Mr Gorringer. “In view of this latest outrage I do not think that even members of the stricken family will wish you to practise reserve. Let us have the truth, the whole truth … I need not complete the quotation.”

“You shall hear the results of my enquiries.”

“Miss Pink should be a lesson to us all in the fortitude with which she bears her burden. It need be no secret from
you, Deene, that last night I offered to Miss Pink the vacancy on our staff occasioned by the departure from our ranks of Mrs Critchley and she has accepted. The headmaster of St Mervyn's, whom she has so loyally served, implied a certain criticism of her in a letter she recently received, actually suggesting that she is the cause of his losing so many assistant masters. As I pointed out, what are assistant masters when it is a question of a proficient matron? Miss Pink resented this criticism and has agreed to join us at the beginning of the new term.”

“Splendid,” said Carolus sincerely, thinking how appropriate the arrangement was.

“Now we must be gone. There are arrangements to be made for your little—
seance,
shall we say?”

When the echoes of their footsteps had died, Priggley said, “Thank God I'm not a boarder. You really are going through with it? Audience and all?”

“Why not? If the police agree.”

“I suppose it's all right. Seems a bit gruesome, with last night's corpse scarcely cold, as Mrs Plum would say.”

“Murder is gruesome. Now I want you to round up the squint-eyed character Poxton. Also Bomberger. I don't know where you'll find Poxton, but Bomberger's at Peep O'Day.”

“Right.”

“Make sure they're there this evening. And Primmley. But not Graveston. I want no one from Trumbles. Mrs Plum. George Stump. Cupperly. My cousin Fay.”

“I'll do my best. It's not a big lot this time, is it? Not like some of your parties.”

“No. It's not.”

“You sound pretty sour about it all.”

“I am.”

When he was left alone, idly shuffling his notes of the case without re-reading them, Carolus felt none of the gusto with which he usually approached his exposition of a
crime. This had been from the first an unsatisfactory affair, into which he had been drawn against his instincts by the coincidence that his cousin had discovered the body.

It was impossible to feel anything but sympathy for those who had lived with Lillianne Bomberger, and though by no process of muddled thinking could this sympathy be turned to a palliative for any murderous intentions they might have formed, yet it was impossible to feel quite the same anger over the murder of Lillianne Bomberger as over that of someone kind and selfless.

Then had gone up the blank wall of lies against which he could make so little progress culminating in the death of Alice Pink on the night before she was to have told him everything.

He had been tempted then to leave the case. It had none of the particular subtleties he most enjoyed unravelling. He saw it for what it was, a clever and unscrupulous piece of work for which, it seemed to him, the one responsible might easily escape the consequences. But he had gone on until too late, and the third death had followed so closely on his resignation that he could not now retire from the scene without giving his own conclusions.

However, as he admitted, he had asked for it. He had deliberately come to this unpleasant little town, and he could not deny that it was because he loved criminal investigation for its own sake. Now he must take the consequences.

When Mrs Stick brought in his tea he knew that she, too, had reached that point of exasperation at which she might easily and once and for all give notice.

“We really can get away tomorrow, Mrs Stick. Unless you and Stick like to stay down here for a while and have a real holiday while I go abroad?”

“Stay down here, sir? There isn't neither of us would think of it for a moment. Stick says he scarcely dare push his shrimping-net in the sea for fear of bringing up another corpse, and I don't want to stay in the place a minute
longer than I can help, I'm sure. It's got so as no one knows who's going to be next.”

“I quite understand. You would like to return to Newminster?”

“As fast as ever the train can carry us. The party next door where we've put the furniture was only saying this morning when we heard the news, ‘Well, your gentleman,' she said, ‘doesn't seem to have done much good, does he? Another one Passed On, and it wouldn't surprise me if there was more on the way.' It's not very nice for me to hear such things about where I work.”

“No. I'm sure it isn't.”

“Still, it's to be hoped you've had enough not to want to get mixed up in anything more for a bit, and that's a blessing, anyway. We've got everything packed and ready to go tomorrow.”

“Good.”

Carolus decided to lie down for an hour's rest before facing the ordeal that lay ahead of him, but at a quarter to six he was ready and drove round to Seaview.