“Which two continents?”

  “I took him to mean Europe and America.”

  “Did you gather what line he proposed to take in order to achieve this ambition?”

  “Not really. Vaguely I took him to mean that he had made, or was going to make, some wonderful archaeological discovery, but I’d nothing really to go on. It was simply surmise, because I couldn’t see any other line he could take. Being a junior master in a County Secondary School doesn’t usually lead to world fame, does it?”

  “But is it likely that a wonderful archaeological discovery could be made in Pigmy’s Ladder?”

  Diana Carfrae gave her an odd look.

  “You didn’t know Oliver,” she said. “He was always gagging. It used to infuriate people. I think he copied Mr. Streatley, you see. Besides, he was quite mad.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Nodding Ladies

  “I beseech you a word: what is she in the white?

  A woman sometimes, an you saw her in the light.”

  Shakespeare

  Philip Carfrae had one important piece of information to offer. Breydon-Waters had closed his account at the bank.

  “Drew out the lot, Dame Beatrice. He gave no reason, and, of course, he was completely entitled to do what he liked with his own. However, I was sufficiently interested to institute some private enquiries, but, so far as I can tell you, he did not open an account anywhere else in the city. All the big banks are represented in Nodding and I am personally acquainted with the managers, so I should have heard, I am sure, if he had gone to one or other of them.”

  “Did he draw out any considerable sum?”

  “Oh, no. He was a school-master, as you probably know, and lived pretty well hand to mouth. His mother has a little money of her own and she banks with me, but Breydon-Waters paid the household bills such as the rates, lighting and heating, repairs and decorations, and he took, for a man in his position, comparatively expensive holidays. He had also bought half-shares in a cabin cruiser. He was overdrawn at that point, but, as he was in steady employment, I did not object to that, although it took him some time to get out of the red.”

  “Do you think he intended to leave the country?”

  “You mean because he closed his account? That is quite a new idea to me. I had not formed any opinion except the one which turns out to have been wrong.”

  “That he had intended to apply to another bank?”

  “Exactly. After that, I thought no more of the matter. If he did intend to go abroad, he was not going to be overburdened with capital. His assets amounted to…” He opened the door and called to a cashier… “Look up Mr. Breydon-Waters’s file, please, Mr. Brooks.”

  The file was brought. It showed that Breydon-Waters’s assets had amounted to two hundred and five pounds sixteen shillings and eightpence.

  “And it would not have been nearly as much as that, but for the fact that, as I happen to know, he had been lucky in his betting,” remarked Mr. Carfrae. “I should not,” he added, “discuss the affairs of a customer who was still alive, of course, but, if these disclosures are of assistance in bringing a murderer to book, I feel I have no option.”

  “Thank you,” said Dame Beatrice. “You have no inkling as to the identity of the criminal, I take it?”

  “None at all. Waters was a bumptious, overbearing sort of young man and I had a particular reason for disliking him, but I certainly did not kill him and I have no idea who did.”

  Dame Beatrice left the bank and went back to her hotel for lunch. At two she drove to Alice’s school. She was soon closeted with the headmistress.

  “I appreciate that you wish to interview Miss Clarke and Mrs. Rambeau separately, and that this would be difficult out of school hours as they share a caravan,” said Miss Knowles, “but…well, you quite understand that school time is school time, Dame Beatrice, I am sure.”

  “I am working with the police, you know,” said Dame Beatrice meekly.

  “Oh, I see! In that case, let us consult the big time-table. Ah, yes, Miss Clarke is taking an English lesson with 3B. I will go and relieve her and send her to you down here. Mrs. Rambeau is free next period, so, if you have finished with Miss Clarke by a quarter to three, you could see Mrs. Rambeau from then until break at a quarter past.”

  Priscilla Clarke was a good-looking, strident-voiced young woman on the right side of thirty by a small margin, Dame Beatrice deduced. She was on the defensive from the beginning of the interview until the end of it.

  “I am sorry to reintroduce the subject to your notice,” Dame Beatrice began, “but…”

  “If it’s about Oliver, there’s nothing I can tell you…or anybody else,” burst out Priscilla.

  “I am afraid it is about Mr. Breydon-Waters, and it is a question which probably nobody but you can answer.”

  “I have no idea what he’d done to get himself killed.”

  “Nobody I have spoken to so far seems to have any idea of what he’d done. That is not what I want to ask you.”

  “It won’t be any good. The police have been on to me several times already. I’m sick and tired of being badgered. If I knew anything I should have told it long ago. The whole thing is a complete mystery to me. I knew almost nothing of Oliver’s background except that he was an only child and lived with his mother and helped to support her…at least, he said he did. He gave it as the reason why he would not…why we could not get married for a year or two. She had an insurance coming along, he said, and then she would be independent and we could marry.”

  “Yes, I see. My question is this: why did Mr. Breydon-Waters not go to Palestine, when all the arrangements, including air travel, had been fixed up?”

  “Not go to Palestine? You must be mistaken! He had made all the arrangements to go to Palestine, leave of absence and all.”

  “I have it on very good authority that although he had applied for, and obtained, a fortnight’s leave of absence from school to visit a site near Mount Gerezin, he did not leave England.”

  Priscilla Clarke stared at her.

  “He would have told me,” she said, her voice having become husky. “Surely he would have told me?” The statement, as Dame Beatrice was quick to notice, had been changed into a rather pathetic question.

  “When did you last see him?” she enquired gently.

  “Alive?” The girl pursed her lips and shook her head. “I don’t remember.”

  “You knew that he had been absent from school, though, did you not, for three days before the Whitsun holiday?”

  “No, I didn’t. We have nothing whatever to do with the boys’ department, although we share the same building.”

  “But out of school, surely…?”

  Priscilla looked away. A slow flush took away her modest pretence to good looks, and she completed the havoc by scowling darkly in an attempt to fight back tears.

  “We…hadn’t been seeing much of one another for a week or two,” she managed to get out. “Oliver hinted that he was very busy on some scheme he had for making a large sum of money, but I couldn’t help wondering whether he was getting tired of me. You see, he had been…there had been an understanding between him and somebody else, and he broke it up and…and took me on. He wouldn’t give me a ring, and have the engagement made public, because he said it would embarrass both of us if we had to wait for at least two years before getting married. He said people gossip so, and, of course, they do.”

  “I think,” said Dame Beatrice, “that I can guess who the other young woman was.”

  “Has she told you?”

  “No, no, but her father told me that he had a particular reason for disliking Mr. Breydon-Waters, and, putting two and two together, it seems to me that Miss Carfrae may be the person I mean.”

  “Well, yes, she is, and it was terribly awkward, all three of us being members of the same Society, because, although I don’t think she knew I had taken her place with Oliver, he knew, and, of course, I knew, and I felt really terrible when I had to be friendly towards her and attend meetings and things where we sat together, and all the time I knew I was being a snake in the grass to her.”

  “Very difficult.”

  “And now, you see, I feel that I was in the same boat as Oliver had left her in, only, now that Oliver’s dead, I suppose that doesn’t matter any more.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that Mr. Breydon-Waters’s appearance of neglect of you and lack of interest might have stemmed from some secret he was anxious to keep?—some plan which he wanted to carry out alone?”

  “No, it certainly didn’t. As I say, he’d already dropped Diana, so all I thought was that probably I’d had it, too. Do you really think he was up to something he didn’t want me to know about?”

  “It is one of the theories on which I am working, and, I must confess, I had hoped that you would be able to give it substance.”

  “I’m sorry, but it just never would have occurred to me. What sort of—what sort of thing did you have in mind?”

  “Something connected with archaeology. I do not propose to be more definite than that at the moment. Do you subscribe to an opinion expressed to me by another member of the Society, that Mr. Breydon-Waters had an almost morbid preoccupation with sites which had already been excavated?”

  “Oh, dear, yes! And he would never let anybody go with him. The times I’ve heard Diana, when they were together, laugh in a fed-up sort of way and say it was another Saturday or Sunday she was being left out to grass. And it was just the same with me. Once I insisted upon meeting him on a Saturday afternoon, and all he did was to take me to a cricket match, and he wouldn’t say a word, either, throughout the entire game.”

  “How did you know that he liked to return to these excavated sites?”

  “Diana told me. She had it from her father and he had it from Ronald Downing, our president. That was when Oliver and Diana were still…well, close friends.”

  “It would seem that he was a most ardent archaeologist.”

  “Mostly for what he could get out of it. I saw his collection once, when I called at his home when he was out. He had been arranging it on the dining-room table. I’d met his mother in the town and she’d given me her key so that I could go in and wait for him.”

  “His collection? But I thought the finds were sent to museums or left in situ.”

  “We were allowed to keep bits of pottery, and so on, if they were redundant. All the same, it struck me that Oliver had…had…”

  “Interpreted the rules of the Society rather freely? That is a most valuable piece of evidence. Did Mr. Breydon-Waters know that you had seen his collection?”

  “No fear! Knowing Oliver, I realised that he would be furious. After all, I reasoned that, if he’d wanted me to see it, he would have shown it to me himself, and, of course, when I spotted some of the things he’d got, I could see why he hadn’t shown it to me.”

  “This is very, very interesting and it immensely strengthens my theory. I must thank you very much for your information, Miss Clarke.”

  “Well, I’d better be getting back to relieve Miss Knowles of my class. Good-bye, Dame Beatrice. Glad I’m able to help a bit.”

  She went out, leaving the door ajar, and Dame Beatrice was joined shortly by Miss Knowles. A bell rang, there was a general re-shufle of classes and the sound of children’s voices, and after a short interval there was a tap at the head-teacher’s door.

  “You sent for me, Miss Knowles?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Rambeau. Dame Beatrice would like a word with you. This is Mrs. Rambeau, our French teacher…or, rather, I suppose I should say our teacher of French. Mrs. Rambeau, this is Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley, who is assisting the police in an enquiry into the death of Mr. Breydon-Waters, who was on the Staff of the boys’ school here.”

  “Oh, yes?” said Mrs. Rambeau. She was a small, dark, plump woman wearing heavy lipstick and some eyeshadow. She was fashionably dressed. “My husband was French, Dame Beatrice, wherefore the name,” she began chattily.

  “Sit down, Mrs. Rambeau,” said Miss Knowles, interrupting what promised to be a ready flow of speech, “and Dame Beatrice will tell you what she wants from you.” She picked up some papers. “I shall be in the secretary’s office if anyone wants me.”

  “Very good, Miss Knowles,” said Mrs. Rambeau. She sighed, in a martyred fashion, as the door closed behind her headmistress.

  “Too, too deflating,” she murmured. “I’ve often thought of asking for a transfer.”

  “I believe that you share a caravan with Miss Priscilla Clarke,” said Dame Beatrice, ostentatiously consulting her notes.

  “Only as a temporary measure; an arrangement which happens to suit both of us at present.”

  “You knew that Miss Clarke had an understanding with Mr. Breydon-Waters, of course?”

  “I had no use for Oliver. He was not a serious type where women were concerned. Of course he let Priscilla down with a thud. I could have told her, but you know what girls are like where men are concerned.”

  “In what way did he disappoint Miss Clarke?” asked Dame Beatrice, who was anxious to know whether Mrs. Rambeau’s explanation would coincide with what she had already heard from Priscilla.

  “After the first few weeks, he didn’t really want her any more.”

  “I understood that he shared a cabin cruiser with another member of the archaeological society, a Mr. Vindella. Perhaps that took up a good deal of his time.”

  “He hadn’t been going on the river with Terry Vindella for weeks,” stated Mrs. Rambeau flatly. “I know that for a fact. What he did get up to I’ve no idea. Not that I care, of course. He meant nothing to me, except that his callous behaviour to Priscilla meant that I saw much more of her in the evenings that I had done while their understanding was on.”

  It did not seem to Dame Beatrice that the conversation was likely to bear much fruit, and she decided to terminate it with what had become a stock question.

  “Have you any idea, Mrs. Rambeau, who killed Mr. Breydon-Waters?”

  Mrs. Rambeau studied the toe-caps of her smart, unpractical shoes.

  “I think so,” she said at last, looking up, “but wild horses wouldn’t drag the name out of me. Oliver is no loss, but the person I’m thinking of would be.”

  “Even so, he has committed a very serious crime.”

  “If you call it a crime. I call it a sin, myself, and as such it’s none of my business.”

  “I wonder whether your guess is the same as my own?”

  Constance Rambeau smiled guilefully.

  “You won’t trap me like that,” she said. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a free period and a set of books to mark. I’ll let Miss Knowles know you’re through with me.”

  Miss Knowles, upon returning to her sanctum, raised her eyebrows. Dame Beatrice leered reassuringly.

  “I am a little further forward,” she said. “Do you think the headmaster would grant me a brief interview?”

  “I’ll ring through and ask him,” said Miss Knowles obligingly. “His name’s Howardson.”

  The headmaster responded warmly to the suggestion that he should receive Dame Beatrice and so Miss Knowles press-ganged a passing child into conducting her to his study. She found herself in the presence of a mild-looking man in his fifties who offered her a chair, which she took, and a cigarette, which she refused.

  “So you are assisting the police, Dame Beatrice,” he observed, “and not, I believe, for the first time.”

  “I have worked with the police on several occasions; this time to interview friends and colleagues of Mr. Breydon-Waters.”

  “A terrible affair, and bad for my school, of course. A most unhealthy interest has been taken by the boys.”

  “No doubt. One could expect nothing else. Has Mr. Breydon-Waters been replaced?”

  “Not yet. I have had to allocate his classes to others. It has made a sad mess of the time-table but fortunately the top of the school is at its smallest numbers in the summer term because of the Christmas and Easter leavers.”

  “Mr. Breydon-Waters taught the junior forms, though, did he not?”

  “Yes, yes, he did. But I have been able to combine the two Fifths for some things and so free a master to take on Breydon-Waters’s work. Your information comes, no doubt, from Vindella, who has very properly kept me in touch with police proceedings in so far as they affect him. A valuable teacher who should go far, but without the alertness and the ability to maintain discipline in the form-room which were such features of Breydon-Waters’s work.”

  “He is a sad loss to the school, then?”

  “The most promising of my younger men.”

  “You have formed no theories about the reason for his death?”

  “I am at a loss; entirely at a loss. Of one thing I am certain: nobody here had anything to gain from it.”

  “Was he popular?”

  “I would not say so. I do not care to have popular masters. It is a way of saying that they curry favour with the boys.”

  “I thought boys despised such an attitude.”

  “It depends.”

  “In any case, I meant that I wondered whether he was popular in the Staff-room.”

  “No. He was barely tolerated, I believe, except by Vindella, who liked him sufficiently to go shares in a cabin cruiser with him.”

  “My researches have unearthed the suspicion that they had had little to do with one another for some weeks before Mr. Breydon-Waters’s death.”

  “Really? I do not concern myself with Staff friendships.”

  “What was your reaction to Mr. Breydon-Waters’s successful attempt to obtain leave of absence to visit an archaeological site in Palestine?”

  “I was not at all willing to release him in the middle of term and with examinations pending, but he found influential support, so there it was.”

  “I take it that you know he did not go?”

  “Did not go? Whoever can have told you that?”

  “A Mr. Green, who was in charge of the travel arrangements, told Mr. Downing over the telephone at the Castle Museum. I was there at the time.”

 

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