‘To begin with,’ said Laura, ‘I’m not my own idea of a young girl. But, be that as it may, I’m glad you’ve mentioned Miss Faintley and the parcels, because I had an idea that Miss Golightly was a bit diffident about my going and getting them. Actually it was rather nice, because of getting the time off from school. But what do you mean about taking risks? It was nothing to do with the school stock that Miss Faintley got killed.’
‘Not to do with the school stock, no. But that wasn’t the only thing she used to collect from Hagford Junction, you know. Turn left here. We’ll go to the Crown. It’s quite the best pub for lunch. I do hope you don’t mind my inviting you out? I know you usually go with some of the women, which would naturally be more fun for you than this, but I didn’t see any chance of talking to you at school. Well, here we are. It’s all right to park outside.’
He took her into the saloon bar, and asked what she would drink.
‘Mustn’t be long,’ said Laura, accepting sherry and glancing at her watch.
‘It’s all right. I booked a table on the off-chance that you would come, and Williams knows me. He’ll see we get served nice and quickly. Now, look, this woman Faintley. I happen to know that she used the school parcels to cover another activity. I found it out by accident one day last term. A boy, fooling about while I was out of the room, got a jab with the point of a compass. It was so near the eye that Miss Golightly thought I’d better take him over to the hospital. On the way back by myself I saw Miss Faintley get out of her car and go with a parcel into a small shop. She didn’t see me because I was behind her. I glanced into the shop as I passed it, and there was rather an unsavoury specimen behind the counter who was shelling her out some pound notes. Just as I glanced in he leaned across and gave her a ringing slap in the face. I didn’t like that much, so I charged in and bellowed at him. But Faintley wasn’t grateful. She said, “Don’t interfere in family disagreements,” but I said I didn’t like to see women knocked about, even by their fathers. The chap turned suddenly very civil and said he did not often lose his temper with his niece, and he asked me whether I was a master at the school, and Miss Faintley told him I was, and invited me to go back with her in her car. As we were driving back she begged me not to mention that she had called to see her uncle, as she was out on school business and had had no business to have gone into the shop at all. I promised, of course, but I wasn’t satisfied. I couldn’t believe that he was her uncle, so, on the quiet, I made a few inquiries. The police superintendent is by way of being a pal of mine. He said the police suspected this shopkeeper… Tomson his name is… of being a burglars’ fence. It didn’t square at all with what I knew about Faintley, and then, of course, she got murdered. As soon as I heard about that, I went to the police station and told them about this parcel and pound note business, but it was too late to do any good, of course. Still, when I found that you’d been sent to the station for the goods, I thought it was very unfair if you got let in, unknowingly, for anything fishy, so I thought I’d like to tip you off, so to speak. Any more sherry? Then perhaps we’d better go in.’
Laura enjoyed the lunch. It became more and more apparent that Mr Bannister, far from being a woman-hater, was simply and solely terrified of the whole sex. He was obviously chivalrous and kindhearted, and she began to like him and to hope that her suspicions about him were unfounded.
‘I suppose,’ he said hesitantly, when they were on their way back to school, ‘you wouldn’t care to come out with me on Saturday? We could walk over the hills, if you liked, and have tea somewhere, and perhaps have a bit of dinner afterwards and do a film. There’s quite a decent one this week over at Dashford Mills, and the kids don’t get out as far as that on a Saturday night, so there wouldn’t be any comment.’
‘I know a scheme worth two of that,’ said Laura, suddenly inspired. ‘You come and stay with us for the weekend. You’ll like my boss, I know.’
‘Your boss?’
‘Yes. Miss Faintley was not all she seemed, and I’m not, either. Will you come to Wandles Parva and make the acquaintance of Mrs Lestrange Bradley?’
Before she drove back that evening she telephoned her employer: ‘Bringing home suspect number one. Kill the fatted calf. He stood me a very good lunch to-day in Hagford. There’s something up his sleeve which I expect you’ll find some way of shaking down. He told me a most unlikely yarn about himself and Faintley. I’m dying to know the truth about him. It’s Bannister.’
‘Mr Bannister?’ Mrs Bradley replied. ‘You have indeed done well. Do you remember that I took Mark to visit Lascaux?’
‘Where the ferns grow?’
‘No, not ferns, but many more horses than the four horsemen of the Apocalypse ever dreamed of. Mr Bannister is well known at Lascaux. How lucky for me that I took Mark along with me that day!’
‘Kind hearts are more than coronets,’ said Laura ironically. She still did not believe that Mrs Bradley had had no ulterior motive in taking Mark to France.
Chapter Ten
MRS CROCODILE
‘… with gently-smiling jaws.’
lewis carroll – Alice in Wonderland
« ^ »
Mrs Bradley had spent the day in the way which she had outlined to Laura, but she was back at the Stone House in the little Hampshire village of Wandles Parva before Laura drove home from school, and received the telephone message immediately upon her arrival.
‘First things first,’ she said, after Laura had been up to bath and change before dinner. ‘We have Madras curry and Henri’s peculiarly luscious chutney.’
‘And those pancake things that always remind me of bits of fried fur coat?’
‘And those.’
‘Oh, good! I’m famished. And how did you get on in Kindleford to-day?’
‘Unexpectedly well.’
Mrs Bradley had indeed gained rather more information in Kindleford than she had considered possible. She had gone straight to Detective-Inspector Darling for news of the statue.
‘We took it to bits and found nothing inside but a fern leaf. That seems to prove that Tomson wasn’t lying to us, but it doesn’t help us over Mandsell’s flat parcel.’
‘Interesting. Which fern leaf?’ Mrs Bradley had inquired.
‘How should I know? I know nothing at all about ferns.’
‘A great pity. May I see it?’
Carefully and painstakingly mounted by a young constable who had a gift for handling delicate fragments which enabled him, later, as a detective-superintendent, to solve the notorious mystery of the blue butterfly murders, the fern leaf had been produced for her inspection.
‘Asplenium Ceterach – the Scaly Spleenwort, Inspector.’
‘Really, ma’am? You’re an authority, then, on ferns?’
‘No, no. But I have a reasonably good visual and verbal memory. I recognize this specimen because it is exactly like one I saw in a glass case in the house at Cromlech.’
‘The house outside which Miss Faintley was found murdered? That’s remarkably interesting, ma’am. But as we already know that Miss Faintley was connected with the parcels, I don’t see quite how it helps us.’
‘It tails in with a theory I have formed, Inspector. The fact that two men thought it necessary to remove the case of mounted and labelled ferns from Cromlech Down House, coupled with the very different type of package which Mr Mandsell collected from Hagford when Miss Faintley was prevented from going to get it, causes me to think that the fern in the statue may possibly form part of a code.’