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Authors: Gladys Mitchell

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Sally Lestrange turned up at the office two days later. She had made an appointment over the telephone and was received by Elsa and passed on to me. She was a pleasantly direct and business-like young woman and came to the point at once.

‘What are the chances of publication?’ she asked. ‘I don’t want to spend a lot of time on something which is never going to see the light of day. I’ve made that clear to Bull.’

‘As I told the man himself, it depends upon the material and upon how it’s handled. You know as much about that sort of thing as I do,’ I said.

‘Yes, but the material itself. I’ve talked to Bull and I can’t believe he’s got much to offer.’

‘Then turn him down.’

‘My grandmother would be disappointed if I did. No, I must carry on, I think. I just wondered what chance the thing might have.’

‘I’ll tell you what chance it
could
have,’ I said, struck by a sudden inspiration. ‘Make it clinical.’

‘Make it what?’

‘Turn it into a case history. Let Bull tell his story in his own way. Don’t sub-edit. Take him down
verbatim
if your shorthand will stand the strain of his vowels and elisions and then get Dame Beatrice to write an introduction to the book as a study of the psychology of a hangman’s assistant. Bull will be tremendously flattered and if she will do it we shall achieve publication all right. Some of her views are refreshingly unorthodox and will provoke controversy not only among the
cognoscenti
, but in the popular press.’

‘A bestseller!’ breathed Miss Lestrange.

‘Don’t count the chickens, of course, but at any rate, if you can get Dame Beatrice to agree, there will be no doubt about publication.’

‘She
will
agree. She wants to get in on this murder which seems to have happened where Bull lives and works. He tells me that it was this murder which sparked off the idea that he should write his memoirs. One thing does lead to another, doesn’t it?’

She was right enough there. The thing which led to another in my case was the new partnership. My private correspondence, delivered at my flat a couple of days later, included a registered packet which contained the engagement ring I had put on Hera’s finger some months earlier. It was her answer to the appointment of Elsa to our board of directors, as Sandy now grandly termed it.

I was not unduly disturbed. I was sorry that Hera was taking the matter so much to heart, but I had expected a vigorous reaction. It had come, so that was a relief. Besides, I felt that she would have second thoughts when she had had time to cool off. I felt sure that, when she had had a chance to think things over, she would have sense enough to realise that, if we were going to admit anybody to partnership, Elsa was the obvious choice. She had the knowledge and the experience. Besides, not only Sandy and myself, but the rest of the staff got on well with her. She was hardworking and conscientious and, better than that, she had
flair
, a wonderful way with difficult authors and a grand sense of humour.

I wrote in brief acknowledgement of the registered package and ended the letter ‘
Love, C.’
I posted it on my way to the office and told Sandy about it when I got there. He expressed concern, but I said I was sure she would come round when she had thought matters over.

‘She was dead nuts on coming in with us, of course,’ I said. ‘Perhaps we ought to have waited a bit before we co-opted Elsa.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ said Sandy. ‘We might have lost Elsa if we’d waited much longer.’

That morning Polly brought my coffee.

‘To what are we indebted?’ I asked, as she set down my cup. Usually one of the juniors brought it.

‘That pullover-and-jeans is here again,’ she replied, ‘and Miss Moore has got an author.’ She made it sound as though Elsa was suffering from a sick headache and, knowing some of our authors, I thought it more than likely that this was so. ‘Anyway, it’s you he wants to see,’ Polly went on, ‘so I told him I’d find out. You drink that coffee and let him wait.’

‘You might possibly give him a cup, too. It will help him pass the time,’ I suggested.

‘Do you know what fresh-ground coffee costs these days?’ she asked tartly. ‘Still, all right, if you say so.’

‘It will be a treat for the poor boy,’ I said. ‘Surely your motherly heart goes out to him?’

‘I don’t like young men in horn-rims.’

‘That is mere prejudice.’

‘He dresses like a tramp that’s lost all self-respect, and yet if those horn-rims cost a penny under sixty pounds I should be surprised. It’s what they call inverted snobbery.’

‘He’s a student of geology.’

‘No wonder he looks so grubby.’ She waited while I drank my coffee, then she took away the cup and added, ‘Shall I send him in?’

‘Yes, when he’s finished the coffee you are going to give him. You might add a couple of substantial biscuits. I expect he’s hungry. Boys always are.’

When Trickett came in, he was obviously the bearer of tidings. His thin face was flushed and his spectacles glittered. He reminded me of Gussie Fink-Nottle contemplating a particularly fine collection of newts.

‘I say, you know,’ he said, ‘we’ve had a Visitation, you know.’

‘Come, come!’ I said. ‘The time of the final apocalypse is not yet. I suppose you mean Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley has shown up at the hall of residence.’

This deflated him. He took a chair and said in disappointed tones, ‘Oh, you knew. Yes, she turned up with the woman who is going to write up Bull’s life story. The warden has given full permission to them both and is all over the old lady. He’s already arranged for her to give a talk to the students when term starts. It seems she is very well known in her own circles, but she’s not going to talk on her own subject. She’s going to talk about murder.’

‘Well, that
is
her subject — a subsidiary one, perhaps, but, nevertheless, her own. She is a noted criminologist and murderers are her speciality.’

‘I say, that’s fine! Everybody loves a good murder. The rest of the poly lot will be as envious as Cassius when they know we’ve actually been mixed up in one.’

‘They probably know already. The story has been in all the papers.’

‘Still, the walkers and the orchestra were the only ones of our lot who were actually there when it happened. Dame Beatrice is fearfully interested. She wants to find out how we all reacted and will add what we tell her to round out her talk. We’re going to have another party before she gives her talk, but she’s giving it herself. She wants me to give out most of the invitations, though. It’s to be held at a restaurant where they will give us a private room — La Carpe Heureuse. Do you know it?’

‘Yes. I’ve taken Hera there several times. Marvellous food.’

‘Ah, Miss Camden, yes. Do you think she will come? Todd is invited, too, of course. He took Patsy Carlow to a nightclub the other evening, as term hasn’t started yet, and Miss Camden and Freddie Brown were invited as well. I suppose their job was to keep the party clean. Patsy is only too apt to step high, wide and plentiful if anybody treats her to champagne. She told Coral she had bedded down with Todd, but Coral says that was only wishful thinking. Will you pass the invitation on to Miss Camden? Six thirty on Wednesday for seven. Black ties or a dark suit. The warden and his wife are coming.’

‘Is Detective-Inspector Bingley to be one of the company?’ I asked facetiously.

‘I shouldn’t think so. He would rather cramp our style, don’t you think?’ said Trickett seriously.

‘What about Bull, who is on the threshold of becoming a bestselling author?’

‘Poor old Bull! No, he won’t be there, but Dame Beatrice is bringing Miss Lestrange and Mrs Gavin.’

‘Mrs Gavin? — oh, of course, Laura!’

‘They wondered whether your partner would like to come — Mr Alexander, isn’t it?’

‘Storey, actually. We combine our first names for business purposes. Yes, I think he would very much like to come. Are the members of the orchestra invited?’

‘Dame Beatrice has left it to me, so I think not. Ostensibly the thing is my party, so I’ve decided that the only poly people will be those who went on the walk. Dame Beatrice particularly wants Perth to come and has sent him a return ticket and will book him in for Wednesday night at an hotel. Well, with our people, including you and Todd and Miss Camden, the warden and his wife, Miss Lestrange, Mrs Gavin and Dame Beatrice herself, we shall be quite a large enough gathering, I think. I say, who is the stunning young woman who looks like the Queen of Sheba and makes me feel as though I’m six years old and have jam on my face?’

‘Our junior partner, Miss Elsa Moore.’

‘Is she Jewish?’

‘Irish, I would have thought.’

‘I bet she had a Jewish mother, then. You can’t mistake the arrogance of that type of Jewish girl, you know, when they’re as good-looking as that and so damned brainy with it.’

‘Good gracious, Elsa isn’t arrogant! Far from it. She’s the quietest, most amenable person.’

‘All the same,’ he said, ‘I bet she ties your authors up in knots if they come here looking for an argument. I say! You wouldn’t like to bring her to the party, would you? I can invite anybody I like, you know, and I do admire Miss Moore most awfully.’

‘I can’t bring Elsa if Hera is going to be there.’

‘Ah,’ he said, taking off the horn-rims which Polly had criticised and gesturing with them at me.’Like that, is it?’

‘Just like that, but not for the reason you seem to think,’ I said. He smiled pityingly and shook his head.

14: Not an Official Enquiry

A
s though nothing had happened to separate us, I rang up Hera, told her about the invitation and asked whether she was prepared to accept it. She replied in the same liberal spirit and said that she would look forward to the gathering.

‘Pick me up half an hour before you had intended to,’ she said, ‘and I’ll give you a drink. What is the party in aid of, anyway?’

‘I think Dame Beatrice wants to size us all up.’

‘Good gracious! What an uncomfortable thought! Never mind. When do I expect you on Wednesday?’

‘Would a quarter to six be all right?’

When we met, it was like old times. She was wearing a dinner dress of midnight blue and looked more beautiful than ever. I told her so. Neither of us referred to the return of the engagement ring. I had it with me, but, unless the right moment offered itself, there was no point in attempting to return it.

At six fifteen I called a taxi and we arrived at the restaurant to find more than half the company already assembled and chattering over cocktails in an anteroom to that in which we were to dine. Cheerfulness was the keynote and, needless to say, Carbridge was never mentioned. The students (Patsy in a surprisingly simple and restrained dark green dress which she informed me she had borrowed for the occasion because the warden was going to be present) all had best-behaviour faces and sleekly groomed hair. Dame Beatrice was in dark red and the warden’s wife in black and gold, but to my mind the lovely Hera stole the picture; there was no doubt that Todd thought so too, and, as a fair-minded man, I could not blame him for wanting to dance attendance on her.

I had calculated that, if everybody whom Trickett had intended to invite had accepted, we should be seventeen at table, but there was an extra guest in the person of the warden’s son, Dominic Terrance, an engaging youth who was going up to Cambridge as soon as the term started.

The dinner was
table d’hôte
, there was a choice of red or white wine and there were place cards, so that everybody knew where to sit. The seating had been worked out carefully, I thought. Dame Beatrice took the head of the table, Laura the foot, so that both of them had the rest of us in their eye. My dinner partner was Jane Minch and on my other side was Rhoda Green.

The warden and Mrs Terrance were on either side of Dame Beatrice and young Dominic partnered Tansy Parks. Sandy had refused the invitation without having given me any specific reason except to say that he was not acquainted with any of the company.

‘You know Hera, me, Trickett, Sally Lestrange and Dame Beatrice,’ I pointed out. He replied that he knew Dame Beatrice only by repute and that when Trickett had come to the office it was only to speak to me and not to him. He added that dinner parties which numbered more than four people were not much in his line unless all the guests were of the male sex, and that he could see Hera and myself any time he wished and in much less boring circumstances.

Conversation at table was lively and of a general nature, even Rhoda and Tansy joining in. Most of the subject matter was centred on the West Highland Way and, needless to say, again nobody mentioned Carbridge. When we rose from table, Todd said to me, ‘I’ve been told that some of you are to go back with the warden, so I’ll see Hera home. There’ll be no hanky-panky. I know her too well for that.’

I found this remark disquieting, but there was no opportunity to question it. The students, delighted with their evening, were leaving and taxis were being summoned for the rest of us. Hera and Todd went off in the first one and I found myself in the vestibule of the restaurant with Dame Beatrice, Laura, Sally, Perth, young Dominic, the warden and his wife.

The Minches had gone off together on foot, so had Rhoda and Tansy, and the four students also appeared to be hunting in couples, for I saw Trickett and Coral go off in one direction and Freddie and Patsy in another.

I shared a taxi with Sally and Laura, while Dame Beatrice was accompanied by the warden and his wife and son, but, before the taxis came, Laura contrived to segregate me from the others.

‘I expect you wonder what all this is about,’ she said.

‘Not at all. I think you and Dame Beatrice wanted to see all of our walking party together, so that you could sum up one against the other, so to speak. I don’t know, though, why Perth and I have been invited to finish the evening at the hall of residence as guests of Mr and Mrs Terrance.’

‘You may not know, but there is no harm in hazarding a guess.’

‘In that case,’ I said, ‘perhaps Dame Beatrice is going to question Perth about the various relationships between members of the tour party and wants to have me present as a check on what he tells her.’

‘That’s about the size of it.’

When we reached the hall of residence, we were taken up to the warden’s quarters. Having seen us settled and indicated a small side table which held bottles and glasses, he and his wife and son took themselves off, having told us that they would be in the small sitting-room next door. They took Sally with them. I poured whisky for myself, Perth and Laura, but Dame Beatrice refused a drink and, eyeing us benevolently, began her interrogation.

It was directed, as I had anticipated, at Perth, and I guessed from his demeanour that he had expected to be the leading light and was quite happy to be in that position. In his quiet way, and like most Scotsmen, he had a pretty good conceit of himself. Laura had produced writing materials from somewhere and was poised to record in shorthand what he had to say.

‘You, my dear Mr Melrose,’ Dame Beatrice said to me, ‘will amend, confirm or contradict Mr Perth’s statements if and when you see occasion to do so.’

‘Aye,’ said Perth approvingly, ‘ye should always monitor your experiments. What is your wish that I should tell ye, mistress?’

‘What different connotations the same word can have!’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘ “Mistress” is a case in point. In England it means either a female employer of domestic servants or an alternative to a wife. In Scotland it is a form of address to a married woman of reputedly acceptable behaviour. I believe that the Scots’ use of the word is in accordance with its original meaning, and is preferable, in my opinion, to the Frenchified and somewhat stilted “madam”.’

‘Mistress is used by Shakespeare in a pleasant way in
The Merry Wives of Windsor
,’ said Laura. ‘ “Mistress Ford and Mistress Page are the liveliest of women.” ’

‘Ladies of unblemished virtue and of great wit and charm,’ I said, and I was about to recount my grandfather’s reminiscences of his falling in love with Edith Evans in 1925 on seeing her as Mistress Page, when I realised that, as P.G.W. causes one of his characters to say, we are not put into this world for pleasure alone, so I left the little story untold and waited upon Dame Beatrice’s next words.

‘What did you make of Mr Carbridge?’ she asked Perth. ‘What was your first impression of him? Did you find reason to alter it in any way as the tour progressed?’

‘I’ll answer ye categorically. I thought the man was a fule when first I met him and I still think the man was a fule.’

‘Interesting. Why did you think that, I wonder?’

‘Ye have an English saying that onlookers see most of the game. I kept yon man Carbridge in my sights from the beginning.’

‘Why?’

‘There are types I dinna trust. Hot gospellers, practical jokers, do-gooders and “friends of a’ the world” such as Carbridge. Leddy, I’m telling ye, that man was more sociable than a plague o’ gnats.’

‘Then why do you think he was killed? Gregariousness is not usually an incitement to murder.’

‘Gin it willna weary the company or, maybe, gie great offence to Mr Melrose here, I could furnish ye wi’ chapter and vairse.’

‘Don’t mind me,’ I said. ‘I suppose Hera comes into it somewhere, but I know you to be a gentleman, so anything you say will not come amiss so far as I am concerned. As a matter of fact, she has broken our engagement.’

‘Och, the pity of it! Weel, mistress, I’ll gie ye a potted vairsion o’ the tour as I saw it, and ye may draw your ain conclusions.’

He proceeded to furnish us with details. In a sense, little that he said was new to me so far as the occasions on which Hera and I had been with the rest of the party were concerned, but, of course, for most of the time we had been on our own. He began by describing the meeting at the Glasgow youth hostel. Looking at me, he said that in his opinion Hera and Todd were old acquaintances, and apologetically he asked whether this piece of information came as a complete surprise to me.

‘It certainly does,’ I said. ‘So far as I am aware, their previous meetings were the most casual and accidental encounters. They met in the corridor of the train to Glasgow and again in the cocktail bar at the airport hotel. I’m certain they had never met before.’

‘Ah, weel,’ he said, ‘ye’re entitled to your opinion. So ye believe Todd was leeing when he told Carbridge he had slept wi’ her the night at the airport hotel?’

‘Certainly I do! Besides, a man who would claim that, and, I suppose, boast about it, to a fellow like Carbridge is a skunk. There’s not a word of truth in it, and I don’t see Todd as that kind of a louse, anyway.’

‘Oo, aye? Then wat about Rowardennan?’

I tried to think back. Rowardennan, on Loch Lomond, was where Hera and I had taken the trip across the water to Inverbeg. I remembered that Todd, with others of the youth hostellers not of our party, had crossed with us. He had given us a wave and a word, but, once ashore at Inverbeg, we had seen no more of him. Hera and I, I remembered, had missed the return boat and had spent the night at the hotel, crossing back again in the morning. We had, as we had arranged, occupied separate rooms at the hotel. There had been no sign of Todd on the return trip and he was certainly with the others when they set off next morning.

I said, ‘Well, and what about Rowardennan? Todd didn’t spend the night at the hotel in Inverbeg. I would have known.’

‘Ye
think
ye would have known, but let me tell ye, laddie, wherever he spent the night, it was not in the Rowardennan youth hostel. I would hae kenned that, better than ye would hae kenned that he had your lassie tae bed.’

‘Tell us more about the tour,’ said Laura tactfully.

‘I’ll dae juist that,’ said Perth, looking at her with gratitude.

I said, ‘I’ll take your word for it that he didn’t spend the night in the hostel with the rest of you. You
would
have known about that, because of the dormitory system, but you will not persuade me that he spent it at the hotel at Inverbeg. We would have spotted him either there or when he got off the boat coming back to Rowardennan the next morning.’

‘Gang your ain gait,’ said Perth. ‘I willna press the point.’

I nodded, but my memory told me that at Crianlarich Todd had suggested openly to Hera that he should escort her to the hotel after the rumpus I had had with Carbridge. I began to wonder, as the poison of suspicion lodged itself in my mind, whether he would have made such a suggestion had he not had some grounds for believing that she might fall in with it.

Dame Beatrice assisted in dissolving the tension somewhat by asking whether anything had happened between Rowardennan and Crianlarich, while Hera and I were on our own and not with the rest of the party.

I did not remember telling anybody in particular that just before Hera and I reached the hostel at Crianlarich we had come upon Perth and the students busy with their hammers and chisels and all the rest of their geological gear, but I suppose I must have done, or she would not have followed up her question by remarking that it was on that part of The Way that there appeared to have been some slight evidence of dissension.

According to Perth, the trouble, if that is not too strong and misleading a word, began on the stretch between Rowardennan and Inversnaid. There was a rather pointless argument between Tansy and Carbridge about the name of a spectacular mountain — Carbridge claiming that it was called the Cobbler, Tansy maintaining that it was Ben Arthur.

‘But both are right,’ Laura interposed at this point. ‘Ben Arthur
is
the Cobbler. There are three peaks and these, seen against the skyline, are supposed to represent a cobbler, his wife and his daughter, or some such rubbish. As a matter of fact, the Cobbler is only the anglicised way of pronouncing the Gaelic An Gobaileach, the
g
being spoken like a
k
or a hard
c
. The Gaelic name has nothing to do with shoe-mending. It simply means ‘forked peak’. The ‘Arthur’ I imagine is the name given it for territorial reasons by a clan or sept. The MacArthurs, in a sense, are Campbells, but they claim seniority. When Ewan Campbell resigned his lands in the fourteenth century, King Robert the Second granted them to Arthur Campbell, the son, wherefore the peak was named Arthur, I suppose as a claim to it.’

We all listened to this with the uneasy respect which is accorded to a knowledgeable purveyor of useless information. Laura sensed immediately that the audience was becoming restive. She waved a shapely hand in apology and said, ‘Sorry. I get carried away. Anyhow, what a stupid thing for those two to argue about.’

‘Yes, it hardly seems a matter of life and death,’ said Dame Beatrice, bringing us back to the real seriousness of the matter in hand. ‘What happened after that?’

It appeared that Rhoda had taken up the subject in support of her friend and then had said that the pace set by Todd and Carbridge was turning what ought to be a pleasant ramble into a marathon race. Jane Minch had joined in to complain that her feet were hurting her, but her brother had pointed out that going more slowly was not the best remedy. Better, he said, to push on and get a longer rest at the end of the day.

‘What of the students?’ asked Dame Beatrice. ‘I understand from Mr Melrose that they too preferred to linger a little on The Way.’ (That, of course, although again I did not remember telling anybody about it, had begun at Inchcailloch, the Loch Lomond island which Hera and I had not visited. It was to do with the geological survey.) However, it did not seem that there had been any more serious disputes among the party. The men, in fact, had taken it in turns to carry Jane’s rucksack as well as their own, the exception being Trickett, who said that, with the extra equipment the geologists carried, he was physically incapable of knight-errantry.

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