Watson's Choice (23 page)

‘Did she bring any references?’ he asked. Mr Tregidder shook his head.

‘She told us she’d trained for school-teaching but couldn’t get a job that suited her, so she was filling in time,’ he replied. ‘We gave her a month’s trial, and she seemed satisfactory and said she was perfectly happy, and as we only wanted her until the polio scare was over–’

His face worked suddenly.

‘Yes, I see,’ said Gavin sympathetically. ‘By the way, Mr Tregidder, just for the record, do you mind telling me what your profession is – and your wife’s, of course, if she has one.’

‘Profession? Oh, I’m not a professional man in the ordinary sense of those words, Chief Inspector.’

‘No? You give the impression, if I may say so, of – er – ’

‘I know. Bank manager, civil servant, business executive – something of that sort, you mean.’

‘Well, yes.’

‘Nothing like that, I assure you. No.’ He hesitated.

‘Well, then?’ said Gavin encouragingly, wondering whether the man was going to produce the information asked for. ‘Something on the shady side?’ he wondered. He glanced at Tregidder and added, a trifle sharply, ‘Come on, Mr Tregidder, out with it. It’s nothing you need be ashamed of, I suppose?’

‘I don’t think I need be
ashamed
of it, exactly,’ said Tregidder. ‘I mean, I’m not the sort of chap who appears in the
Police Gazette!
’ He laughed uncertainly. Gavin waited. The information, when at last it came, was not at all what he might have expected. ‘My wife brought a bit of money with her when we married,’ said Tregidder, at length, ‘and we’ve been careful with it. My own living comes what one might call spasmodically, in a sense. I’ve travelled the world. I’ve made good money and poor money. I’ve enjoyed my life, I must say. I wouldn’t wish to change my job, which is bound up with an ancient mystery, but – ’

‘Well, what
is
your job?’

‘By profession, I am a sword-swallower, Chief Inspector.’

Gavin returned to Superintendent Collins and told him what he had learned. Collins did not think very much of it.

‘It’s a motive, though, you know,’ said Gavin, reporting to Mrs Bradley at her Kensington house. ‘Their only kid, and they blame Miss Campbell for what happened. Added to that, he was very slow to tell me what his job was. It’s my opinion he’d have got out of telling me if he could. Doesn’t that look like guilty knowledge to you?’

‘Not necessarily. A man who looks like a bank manager may not like to confess that he is a sword-swallower. Where does he swallow swords? – and how frequently? Do the neighbours know? Does his wife object?’

‘To those questions I have to reply that I haven’t the faintest idea.’ Mrs Bradley clicked her tongue and looked at him reproachfully. He grinned. ‘I can’t see that it’s at all important, but I suppose I can find out, although I wasn’t exactly
persona grata
there, I’m afraid.’

‘I will find out for myself. If Mr Tregidder is to be one of our suspects, it is due to him that we learn a little more about his private affairs.’

‘Of course, Linda being the little baggage she was, he may have been tempted into something for which she could blackmail him. It’s not an unknown thing for a married man to kill the viper that sucks the golden eggs.’

‘Lor!’ said his fiancée, who was present at the interview. ‘How long did it take you to think that one up? Incidentally, not far from the ghost station there’s a gipsy encampment – well, they’re sort of fair-ground people really. I shouldn’t wonder if some of
them
wouldn’t be pretty handy with a skiandhu.’

‘Gipsies did not kill anybody on that abandoned railway station,’ said Mrs Bradley.

‘What do you make of Grimston?’ demanded Laura of Gavin.

‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘There’s no evidence that he even knew of the deserted station. He hadn’t lived in the neighbourhood very long.’

‘But neither had Linda Campbell,’ protested Laura, ‘and yet
she
knew of it, or how could she have been killed there?’

‘She must have had an assignment with the murderer,’ said Gavin.

‘It is the most likely thing,’ agreed Laura. ‘But that looks as though they couldn’t meet in Sir Bohun’s house, and
that
doesn’t sound like Grimston.’

‘Well, I don’t know so much,’ said Gavin. ‘Don’t you think it would have been very risky to meet a lover under that roof, as she was already formally engaged to Sir Bohun? Surely that would account for a clandestine meeting, wouldn’t it?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Laura, looking thoughtful, ‘but it would apply to other men besides Grimston, wouldn’t it?’

‘Well, I’d better have a look at this house where Linda was staying before she went to the Tregidders’,’ Gavin concluded. He returned that same evening, resigned but sad.

‘A blank wall,’ he said. ‘Linda was brought up in one of those Scattered Homes, or whatever they’re called. She got on pretty well at school, won a place at the local grammar school, tried shorthand and typing for a bit, got fed up with it, and went to one of those Emergency Training Colleges which they ran after the war for intending teachers. She doesn’t seem to have shown any kind of cloven hoof, either at school or college. At her first job – they give them a probationary year, apparently – she didn’t get on too well, though, and before the year was up she threw in the
towel
and got a job as governess with some people called Polson. I went there – a biggish house in the St John’s Wood district – but didn’t get any further. The people were cagey at first, but I soon found out that they were refugees, with a strong anti-police phobia, who had changed their name. Once they decided that I wasn’t going to run them in, they came across with what they knew about Linda, and, for what it’s worth, here it is, and I can’t see how it helps.’

‘How old are the Polsons?’ Mrs Bradley enquired.

‘He’s about fifty-five and she’s about forty. There’s a son of eighteen, and two children, both girls, of twelve and ten.’

‘These children were Miss Campbell’s charges?’

‘Yes. She blotted her copy-book by smacking one of them. The Polsons agreed that the child deserved what she got, but said they did not approve of that sort of punishment and could not overlook it. They gave Linda a respectable testimonial and booted her out.’

‘No sex?’ asked Laura, disappointed with this lame and only too probable story.

‘No sex. Nothing else reared its ugly head at all. The Polsons both said that they were sorry to get rid of Linda, and had talked matters over carefully before coming to any decision respecting her going or staying.’

‘That all seems to have petered out, then. We have to rely on our sword-swallower Tregidder now. I suppose,’ Laura added bluntly, ‘she didn’t make a pass at the son of eighteen? I can’t imagine Linda being particularly scrupulous where ignorance and innocence are concerned.’

‘A Continental boy of eighteen – or between sixteen and seventeen, as I suppose he would have been when Miss Campbell was there – might be innocent, but he would scarcely be ignorant,’ Mrs Bradley put in. She looked enquiringly at Gavin.

‘I think they would have told me if Linda had been up to that kind of thing,’ said Gavin, ‘but, as it happens, the point does not arise. The boy was at boarding-school while Linda was there. She was only in the job a couple of months, and she and the son never met.

‘How did you find out that she had been brought up in a Home?’ asked Laura.

‘Quite easily. The Polsons, being (after their chequered experiences) deeply suspicious of everybody’s
bona fides
, had insisted upon a complete
dossier
and had checked it. From the information
they
were able to give me, I checked it, too. It didn’t take long. I went to the local authority in whose area the Emergency Training College was situated, and they turned up the dope for me at once.’

‘I suppose she didn’t fall foul of one of the parents while she was teaching in the school?’ suggested Laura.

‘It doesn’t seem so. Anyway, it would take an unusually irate parent to track her down and stab her to death after all this time. No, she seems to have left the school in a fit of pique because the Inspector in charge of probationary teachers made some fairly telling criticisms of her work. I got the headmistress on the telephone while I was at the Education Office and she agreed that the criticisms were justified, and that she herself had come to the conclusion that Miss Campbell would never make a teacher.’

‘Well, it’s all very unsatisfactory,’ pronounced Laura. ‘What will your next move be?’

‘I’m afraid I’ve got to contact Brenda Dance’s light of love.’

‘Too bad,’ commented Laura. But it was not too bad at all. Gavin, next day, went to the flat indicated by Toby Dance as that of de Philippe and found that philanderer at home and very charming.

‘Of course I’ll alibi the poor b.,’ he said cheerfully. ‘As a matter of fact, I’ll be glad to. After all, what’s a sock on the snout? I could have eaten him, if I’d wanted to. I could dashed well see his point of view, so I let him get away with it.’

Armed with the evidence of Toby Dance’s alibi, Gavin went back to Mrs Bradley after telephoning to Collins, and received a straight tip.

‘I have heard from Sir Bohun Chantrey,’ she announced. ‘He is aggrieved because Superintendent Collins refuses to take up time in finding out who sent Sir Bohun five orange pips one day and a goose’s crop the next, and various other reminders of Sherlock Holmes’ cases.’

‘The same practical joker as brought the
Hound of the Baskervilles
to the Sherlock Holmes party, I imagine.’

‘Oh, that was Mrs Dance, aided and abetted by Mr Mildren in consideration of a lump sum, payable beforehand.’

‘Eh?’ said Gavin. ‘How on earth do you work that out?’

‘It was simple. Mr Mildren was the only person who should have been present, but was not, when the dog was admitted to the revels.’

‘But the man was completely stinko. I should know. I helped to put him to bed.’

‘Mr Mildren is a very fine actor. It would not be the first time that the police have been deceived over a case of drunkenness.’

‘Then the girl you saw leaving the house that you thought might be Linda Campbell, must have been that little devil of a Brenda Dance!’

‘I was mistaken,’ Mrs Bradley blandly confessed.

‘You never really committed yourself about the girl,’ interpolated Laura quickly.

‘I realized very soon afterwards that it could not have been Miss Campbell,’ Mrs Bradley continued. ‘Linda would never have risked going out of the house in the dark while that dog might be roaming the garden.’

‘How do you
know
it was Mildren who put it outside the french windows that night?’ asked Gavin.

‘I wrote to him. Here is his answer.’ She produced a letter from the pocket of her skirt. ‘And he has an unshakable alibi. He was playing in a matinée in Leeds at the time of the murder,’ she added.

‘Really? Then –?’

‘Yes. I think that the
Hound of the Baskervilles
put an idea into the murderer’s head. You tackle Mrs Dance, anyhow, when you get back, and I think you will find I am right. Laura and I have both heard how the dog was hired, first, for the night of the Sherlock Holmes party, and, secondly, for about a fortnight prior to the murder. It is incontestable that the person who hired it the second time bore no resemblance whatever to the person who went for it the first time.’

‘Right. I’ll tackle Brenda Dance. I’d better be getting back. I’m glad about Toby. There’s not an awful lot to him, but he seems a decent sort of chap, and this de Philippe I thoroughly liked, too. He’s twice the size of Toby, so if Toby did give him a poke in the nose he’s got pluck. I don’t blame Brenda, but I have a hunch that if the divorce did go through, and she married him, de Philippe could keep her in order. She’s an attractive little headache, though – ’

Laura gave him a hearty jab in the ribs.

‘Less of it,’ she said sternly, ‘or you’ll get the ring back by registered post. We engaged girls have our pride.’

‘That were enough to hang us – every mother’s son.’

SHAKESPEARE
–
A Midsummer Night’s Dream

‘
AND NOW,’ SAID
Mrs Bradley, ‘for another source of evidence.’

She and Laura were alone. Gavin had gone, and the time was after dinner. Henri had made, Celestine had brought in, and Mrs Bradley and Laura had drunk, some very good coffee, and the mistress of the house, Laura noted, was ripe for mischief.

‘Another source of evidence? How do you mean?’ she asked.

‘The written evidence of these competition papers, child.’

‘Oh, from the Sherlock Holmes do? But what do you expect to get from those?’

‘Who knows? Let us see. They are in the third drawer of my writing-desk.’

Laura went out, found the bundle of papers in a large envelope marked ‘Sherlock Holmes Party Competition’ and returned to the drawing-room. Mrs Bradley took out the papers and began to read them. As she read she cackled.

‘Share the laugh?’ Laura suggested.

‘Willingly, child. Take your own paper, which, if you remember, won the prize, and check the rest of the papers from it.’

‘You’re pulling my leg,’ said Laura. ‘However, here goes.’ She took the rest of the competition papers one by one from Mrs Bradley’s talons and solemnly checked each one by her own winning list. ‘But this is fantastic,’ she said. ‘People seem to have put down all sorts of objects that don’t come into the
Adventures
and the
Memoirs
at all.’

‘That is what is so interesting,’ said Mrs Bradley serenely. ‘Go on.’

‘I don’t see what’s interesting about it. It just shows their ignorance, I should say.’

‘Possibly some of them did not devote the same care and preparation to the task as you yourself did. Sir Bohun and his
secretary,
young Mr Bell, are cunning creatures. A few red herrings were scattered about the house. They must have been.’

‘Dirty trick!’

‘Not at all. It was perfectly legitimate to include some objects which belong to the
Return, His Last Bow
, and the
Case-Book
, I think. It was done to confuse, and, apparently, it succeeded in its object. But let us have details.’