Watson's Choice (15 page)

It was not the first time that Laura had seen unnatural death. She and the farmer turned their backs, as by tacit agreement, on the dead girl, and gazed out of a dirty window on to the railway line below. Neither spoke.

After a short interval Alice reappeared.

‘I’ve telephoned Mrs Bradley as well,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know whether I ought to tell Sir Bohun Chantrey, but I thought it better not. It would be the business of the police to tell him, no doubt. Besides, from what you’ve said from time to time, Dog, it seems
possible
that someone at the house is responsible for – this.’

Unlike the others, she had been gazing at the body, but with compassion, not with curiosity. Death had given Linda Campbell a softer, more youthful appearance than had been hers in life, although Alice, who had never encountered her then, did not realize this, but only wondered that Laura, who was tolerant, should have disliked the dead girl so much.

Laura, staring out through the grime and the cobwebs, was thinking her own thoughts. There was not much doubt as to the cause of death. As soon as she had knelt down beside the body, she had seen the tear in the transparent mackintosh and the tear immediately below in the cloth of the light-grey suit. She had marked, too, how the blood had stained both garments. Stabbed to the heart – a phrase with an olde-tyme flavour which, in less dreadful circumstances, would have made Laura smile – was the obvious description of the manner in which Linda Campbell had come by her death.

But if the means by which the death had been accomplished were obvious, the identity of the murderer was not obvious at all. (That Linda had been murdered Laura had no doubt whatever. The absence of the weapon indicated murder quite clearly, for accident seemed out of the question.) There was only one crumb of satisfaction to be got from the whole shocking business – at any rate the dog was not to blame! At least – Laura swung round and stood gazing intently at the body – it did not
look
as though the dog was to blame. The nylon stockings – Laura gingerly raised first one of the legs and then the other – were very slightly mud-splashed but there were no rents or tears. The same, so far as Laura could see without turning the body over, was true of the clothing. Except for one thing, the bloodstained slits in the waterproof and the suit were the only evidence of violence.

What the one thing was Laura did not discover until Mrs Bradley arrived at the farm. The police took statements from the three who had discovered the body, and heard the tale of the dog on the station. They appeared to attach no importance to it.

‘That wasn’t done by a dog, Miss,’ said the inspector who took Laura’s statement. ‘Not even the broken breast-bone.’

‘What did he mean by that?’ asked Laura, when Mrs Bradley came to the farm later on in the morning.

‘Whoever stabbed Linda Campbell must have had to press on
the
breast-bone to detach the weapon, I imagine,’ Mrs Bradley replied. ‘I am surprised that the police made mention of it to you.’

‘I bask in the reflected light of Gavin’s glory. That’s why they unleash their tongues. Seriously, I think the man was probing for information. I don’t mean that they suspect me, but they can’t see why I ever went to the ghost station at all.’ She paused and looked troubled. ‘I suppose I’d better stop calling it a ghost station now. I take it she was killed where I saw the blood on the platform?’

‘There does not seem any doubt of that. The police would not suspect you of guilty knowledge. The broken breast-bone is a matter of interest. The weapon, which would have had a very sharp point, must have passed completely through the body. It must have taken tremendous force to run the girl through like that. No wonder the murderer broke the breast-bone to get the blade out again.’

‘You mean he had to put his foot on her as she lay there?’ asked Alice, horrified by this picture.

‘Undoubtedly so.’

Laura spent the remainder of the day racking her brains as to the significance of this observation. Mrs Bradley, after the midday meal, went off to see how Sir Bohun Chantrey had received the news of the death. She found the baronet in a state of great agitation, but not on Linda Campbell’s account.

‘Now what do you think, Beatrice?’ he exclaimed. ‘I had that young Grimston in to tell him I was dispensing with his services and here was fifty pounds in lieu of notice, don’t you know –?’

‘In lieu of notice? Why, what had he done that you wanted to get rid of him like that?’

‘Nothing, except to keep on bleating about poor Linda and repeating his stupid dream. The police have been here, and he’s been fool enough to tell it to them as well. They’ll run him in if he persists. I’m sure they’ll run him in, and I’m positively sure he didn’t do it. He’s a silly fellow, it’s true, but he’s not as silly as that!’

Mrs Bradley admired the choice of adjective very much.

‘Silly?’ she repeated thoughtfully. ‘Is he a silly fellow, then?’

‘Damn’ silly, I should say. But, apart from that, who’d want to kill Linda, anyway? She wasn’t worth it.’

‘But she was worth marrying?’

‘Hardly the same thing, Beatrice. Anyway, if they do run him in he’ll go to bits. Probably confess to it as soon as not, just to shut them up and keep them quiet. The devil of it is that I don’t know how to help him. I wish you’d have a word with the chap. He’s nearly off his head. Keeps saying that Manoel must have done it! What would Manoel do a thing like that for, I should like to know?’

Mrs Bradley, remembering her conversations with that brier on Sir Bohun’s rose-bush, could have told him very easily, but she held her peace, except to say:

‘So the police suspect murder, do they? Did they tell you that, as well as the fact of the death?’

‘They haven’t much option, Beatrice. Apart from the fact that the poor girl has been spiked right through the heart and out the other side, the breast-bone is crushed. It’s a most terrible business. My own view is that one of those gangster thugs attacked her. Her handbag and her watch (cost me a hundred and twenty pounds, that watch – engagement present – so I knew it was worth stealing) have both disappeared. The police are only on to Grimston because he
will
keep babbling about that ridiculous dream. They’ve decided he isn’t right in the head. Mind you, I could have told them that myself. Never
has
been right in the head, so far as I’m aware, and took it hard when Linda turned him down.’

Mrs Bradley clicked her tongue sympathetically.

‘I should be interested to talk with him,’ she said. Then she added with unusual abruptness, ‘I have never been able to see why you kept him here once Philip had gone away.’

‘Oh, that? Well, the terms of his engagement weren’t up, and one likes to be fair.’

‘There was no need to keep Mr Grimston under the same roof as Miss Campbell, though, was there, when once the engagement was announced? It seemed rather unkind.’

‘I never thought of that. Grimston knew what had happened and didn’t give his notice, and I’ve had Mrs Dance here all the time to keep things head to wind.’

‘Your niece, Miss Godley, too, I understand. Laura Menzies met her here the day she called.’

‘Celia? Yes. I don’t pretend to understand young women. She was supposed to be off to Switzerland for the winter sports, but, instead, she decided to stay on here. I’d be flattered if I weren’t
perfectly
certain there was an ulterior motive. You don’t think she’s fallen for Grimston or Bell, I suppose?’

‘Nothing but a love affair – preferably a clandestine one – should keep a girl of her age from toboggans and skis, I feel.’

‘My idea, exactly. It’s wonderful how great minds think alike.’

Mrs Bradley, who did not claim a great mind for herself, and who was quite certain that Sir Bohun did not possess one, assented gravely.

‘I have often noticed it,’ she said. ‘When can I see Mr Grimston?’

Grimston, when interviewed, was gloomy.

‘I haven’t a dog’s chance,’ he said. ‘They’ve got chapter and verse, all right. Somebody’s told them the tale, and I’ll wager it wasn’t Sir Bohun. He’s an old fool, take him for better or worse, but he isn’t a two-timer.’

‘Your slang is out of date, Sir Bohun is not old, and your choice of words from the marriage service is enlightening, Mr Grimston. What makes you think the police suspect you of murder?’

‘Well, about myself and Linda … my feelings for her were well-known in this house.’

‘But in that case you would have killed Sir Bohun, not Miss Campbell, wouldn’t you?’

‘Difficult to say.’ He frowned, trying to work it out. ‘And, of course, I
did
find the body, didn’t I?’

This statement impressed Mrs Bradley.

‘I shouldn’t worry,’ she said, and in such dulcet accents that Grimston looked at her gratefully.

‘I know that’s just bromide,’ he said, ‘and yet I believe you really mean it.’

‘Did you,’ asked Mrs Bradley earnestly, ‘recently go to see a man about a dog?’

‘I?’ He looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing, if you do not know what I mean, child. Now tell me all about the body.’

‘Finding it?’

‘And all the rest. Once you have told it to a sympathetic listener, you can forget it. Come, now! All the details, including the way in which they struck you at the time.’

‘The details?’ He appeared to lapse into deep thought.

‘He is wondering what to leave out,’ said Mrs Bradley to herself.
‘I
hope I shall not be given exactly the same story as the one he has given to the police.’

Grimston soon made up his mind.

‘I had better begin with my dream. You remember my dream?’ he said.

‘Very clearly. Astonishing that it should in some measure have anticipated the facts.’

‘Not only astonishing, but awkward,’ Grimston retorted. ‘The police don’t like it a bit. I knew something would happen to Linda,’ he went on in a different tone. ‘She was playing the fool all round.’

‘So your so-called dream was nothing of the sort, but was intended as a warning to her. I think that must be what you mean.’

‘That’s about the size of it. She’d told me I’d got no chance with her, and I knew she was angling for Sir Bohun. At the same time she was trying to run Lupez, who’s dangerous – I’ve tried to drop a word to young Celia Godley, but she won’t listen – Bell, who didn’t want her; she embarrassed him; and Dance, who’s ready for anything because he’s rather in despair, poor chap; doesn’t want his divorce to go through; still in love with that box in which sweets compacted lie, that fascinating little devil Brenda. Why, Linda even tried to fasten on to that C.I.D. chap who came to the Sherlock Holmes thing. Didn’t you notice? She got the brush-off there all right! I suppose handsome, manly policemen have to learn to protect themselves from designing women, don’t they?’

‘Undoubtedly. But tell me about the body.’

‘The body!’ He laughed. ‘That’s about all Linda ever was, I suppose – a body!… It was this way: I’ve been at a loose end, as you can understand, since young Philip has been at the farm. Sir Bohun has continued my usual salary, and has given me the library to catalogue, but I can’t spend all day doing that. I’ve got into the habit of taking a morning walk, whatever the weather. I intend to do some pot-holing in the summer, so I thought I’d toughen myself up.

‘Well, around here, of course, the heath is the obvious place for rough walking, so that’s where I began to do most of my training, with some road-work thrown in for good measure. Sir Bohun left me to my own devices, so I’d leave the house at half-past seven or even earlier – before it was really daylight, you know – and do my trot around for perhaps a couple of hours.

‘Most mornings it’s been misty. I’ve always been fascinated by mist and fog. This side of the heath it’s swampy, and the miasma over that, these winter mornings, has been like something out of a ghost story or the more horrifying sort of fairy tale. It’s generally pretty misty over the gravel pits, too – I suppose because of all that water – so I usually made for that big pit on the path to the village of – ’

‘Common Row?’

‘That’s it – Common Row. I don’t know what’s come over my memory for names since this rotten business blew up.’

Mrs Bradley could have given him two explanations. She wondered which was the correct one in his case. Either he had some sufficient reason for subconsciously deleting the name of the village from his mind, or else he was trying to substitute Common Row for a name with guilty associations, the very fact that these
were
guilty being sufficient reason for his not being able to produce the substituted name as quickly as he might have wished.

She made no comment upon his last remark, and waited for him to continue.

‘Well, I was jog-trotting along on the grass at the side of the track – the path itself was slippery – and I remember thinking, as I’ve often thought before, how much like the superstructure of a battleship some of that excavating machinery is. I was following the track where it turned off towards the workings. At that time in the morning – it was only just beginning to be really light – the chaps who worked there hadn’t come on the job, so it was all very nice and private. Well, the first shock I had was seeing on the ground a very nice silk scarf, a yard square at least. I picked it up. It was damp from having been out all night, and while I was wondering where I’d seen it before, I found Linda. I literally fell over her, and went sprawling. I couldn’t believe she was dead, but there was no doubt about it. I left the body where it was. Of course, the silk scarf was hers. I must have seen her with it dozens of times. I don’t think there’s any more to tell. I rang up the police, of course, and told Sir Bohun, and – well, that’s about all, except that Sir Bohun has dismissed me.’

‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Bradley. She gave him a keen glance. ‘She couldn’t have been the victim of a suicide pact, by any chance?’

‘Suicide? Oh – oh, surely not! Do you mean Bell funked it, and made off? What makes you think that?’

‘I do not know that I
do
think it. It was just a passing idea. I don’t think she
wanted
to marry Sir Bohun, you know. The money and position attracted her. I think that was all.’