A Sprig of Sea Lavender Page 12

  ‘That’s what I needed to know. Thank you for being so quick with your preliminary report. We’ll want a full analysis, but get that done when you can. You’ve given me the really important information and it’s an immense help to have it so promptly.’

  ‘I hope you find out who’s mixing arsenic and sugar like this. It’s not a nice mixture.’

  Piet hoped so, too. It was something to have discovered how arsenic had been administered to Sandra Telford, but, he reflected gloomily, he was no nearer knowing who had given it to her.

  With daytime London traffic to be got through, he was anxious to start his journey back to Suffolk, but he had another job to do first. He called at the Yard’s criminal records department and spent half an hour looking at photographs.

  *

  He was too late to meet Sally at the bus-stop, but he got to the pub in Lavenham a few minutes after opening time. He felt an immense flood of relief to see Sally in the otherwise empty bar. He had no particular reason to fear that whoever had murdered Sandra might wish to hurt Sally, but there was so much he did not know that he was exceedingly worried about her. On the way to the pub he had noticed a small corner shop still open. Telling Sally that he would be back in a minute he slipped out to the shop and bought a packet of sugar and two small tins of cocoa. The cocoa he didn’t want, but he did want the tins. He was determined that whatever sugar Sally had should not come from the mill.

  *

  It would have been a rush to get back to Poplar’s Fen in time for the evening meal, and he didn’t want to stay in Lavenham in case any of the Moat Cottage people should come in for a drink. So he suggested to Sally that they should go back through Stowmarket, not quite on the direct route to Poplar’s Fen, but not far out of the way, and get a meal there. She was so happy to be reunited with Piet that she didn’t mind where they went, though she didn’t want him to feel that he had to spend money on her. ‘I don’t know how rich you are, but I do know that I have to be very careful about money,’ she said. ‘You and your mother have spent an awful lot on me already, so if we’re going to have dinner in Stowmarket you must let me pay my share.’

  ‘I’m not at all rich,’ Piet said, ‘but I earn enough to get by, and I think it will run to taking you out to dinner. Besides, I want to talk to you.’

  ‘I’ve been doing some work, too,’ Sally said.

  *

  He had not told her yet about the sugar. In the car he said, ‘I’m afraid I’ve come across something horrible. I know how Sandra was given arsenic.’ He explained about the tin. Sally went white. ‘And that was the tin that Clare gave to you!’ she said.

  ‘It doesn’t seem likely that she knew anything about it. You don’t give arsenic to chance strangers.’

  ‘No, but you might so easily have taken it! Oh Piet, oh Piet . . .’

  ‘I was suspicious of anything that Sandra might have eaten. What really puzzles me is why there were two tins.’

  ‘It could happen easily enough. Clare’s got a thing about those sugar tins, a mean streak, or something. People are always taking them away and losing them. Sandra liked sugar – she may have taken her tin to the boat for coffee, or sometimes she’d have breakfast on board and she’d want sugar for cornflakes.’

  ‘That might explain why Roger had her tin. Or there might be other reasons . . .’ As a dinner in the sense of a pleasant occasion spent with an attractive girlfriend the Stowmarket meal was not a success. Presumably the food was well enough cooked and adequately served, it might even have been delicious, but Piet ordered and ate mechanically. Although he did not realise it at the time, the meal was, however, an important small landmark in the case. Sally explained what she had done to try to find out about the movements of people at Moat Cottage.

  ‘As an instructor,’ she said, ‘I get a free lunch. The students who are staying at the place pay for lunch with the fee for accommodation, and the instructors can have lunch with them. Shirley doesn’t charge us – she thinks it a good thing that we should mix with the students. So I was able to talk to people quite naturally. I asked if anyone had been to that big Roman Exhibition that’s just opened at the British Museum. A couple of the students had, but I don’t think they’re likely to come into it. Bill and Vera both said that they hoped it would still be on in the autumn, because they found it hard to get to London in the summer – they gave the impression of not having been up for ages. Jeff Wilson was still away – he was away most of last week, so he could have been in London, but I don’t know about this. Shirley couldn’t have been in London, I think. She’s arranging an exhibition of work done at Moat Cottage since it opened, and with Jeff away that has kept her very busy.’

  ‘Yet she was in London yesterday,’ Piet said.

  ‘Yesterday? She couldn’t have been. She was framing and hanging pictures all day – she showed me what she had done. Why do you think she was in London?’

  ‘She called on Wilbur Constantine, the art dealer, and gave him her card. At least, he showed me her card, but of course – I didn’t see the woman who gave it to him.’

  ‘Well, I suppose it’s possible, but it doesn’t seem likely. Nobody spoke of her being away, and I think they would have. I suppose she could have done a lot of work on Sunday and pretended that she’d done it yesterday. But there were people around all the time, and when she was telling me about it nobody said, “But Shirley, you weren’t here yesterday.” ’

  Piet didn’t pursue the matter. ‘What about the others?’ he asked.

  ‘Today was a busy day for teas. Anita and Vi were both on, and Vi said, “I think it’s even busier than we were on Friday.” Anita said, “At least we didn’t have that awful couple who complained of everything.” Then they laughed. Obviously they were both there on Friday, and as far as I know they were there all the week.’

  ‘That seems sound detective work. Well done, Sally. It leaves the cleaning woman and the gardener.’

  ‘Old Arthur may have been to London in his lifetime, but I doubt if he’s been much away from Lavenham in the past fifty years. Mrs Marshall comes in every day, even on Sundays. There’s nothing to suggest that she’s been away recently. When Shirley was showing me how she was getting on with hanging things for the exhibition Mrs Marshall came in about something, and when she’d gone Shirley said, “I don’t know what I’d do without her. She’s getting on, and I have nightmares about her being ill, or something. But these Suffolk people are tough. She came originally from somewhere near the coast, and she says it was the sea air as a girl that keeps her well now. She’s wonderfully reliable.” That doesn’t look as if she’s been away at all.’

  ‘So apart from Jeff Wilson, who may or may not have been in London, the rest of the Moat Cottage lot seem to have been at work at Lavenham.’

  ‘It certainly looks like that, yes.’

  *

  It was after eleven when they got back to Poplar’s Fen, and the mill and the botter were in darkness. After he’d turned out the lights of the car and his eyes had got accustomed to the night Piet could see that the motor-cruiser had not yet returned. They went on board the botter as quietly as they could and got to their cabin without disturbing anybody.

  *

  Piet had to be in London for his appointment with Wilbur Constantine at four thirty, but that didn’t need an early start, so there was time for a leisurely breakfast. They were up before Roger and Trudi and went across to the mill. On the way Piet said, ‘Let’s have a look at the sea before breakfast. I want to talk to you, and I don’t want to talk on Roger’s boat, or in the mill.’ He was worried about Sally. She had no class at Lavenham that day and normally she would have stayed at Poplar’s Fen, getting on with one of her flower pictures. But he didn’t want her to be alone at the Fen, and with his late appointment in London he didn’t want to have to come back that night. He didn’t know what might have to be done after the meeting in Constantine’s office, and he’d have to keep himself free. He explained this to Sally on the way do
wn to the beach.

  ‘I don’t see any real reason why I shouldn’t be here on my own,’ she said. ‘It’s a bit cowardly, but I agree with you. I don’t much like the idea of staying on alone.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s at all cowardly. Your friend was murdered here, or if not here the actions that led to her murder seem to have taken place here. We don’t yet know how or why, but we know enough to suggest that there’s something very nasty going on. I’ve got to be in London this evening, and . . . and . . . well, I don’t think I can concentrate on my job if I’m worrying about you all the time.’

  Sally laughed. ‘Poor Piet, what a nuisance I am!’

  ‘You could say that you are an important witness, and it’s perfectly proper for the police to be concerned with the protection of witnesses. Could you come to London with me and spend tonight with my mother?’

  ‘I could do that, yes. But what about tomorrow? I’ve got a class at Lavenham tomorrow.’

  ‘Can we leave tomorrow to look after itself? If I’m free I can leave early and get you to Lavenham for whatever time you want. If not – you could telephone and say that you’re ill. Please, Sally, I really do want you to be away from here.’

  ‘All right – I did volunteer for the job of detective’s mate, after all. I suppose I’ve just got to obey orders, though to be honest they’re orders that I rather want to obey.’

  ‘Thank you, Sally. Let’s have breakfast and chat to whoever happens to be around, and leave about mid-morning. We can have lunch on the way to London. What shall we say about having to be away?’

  ‘We don’t need to say anything, it’s a pretty casual community. But it would do no harm to have a reason. I know, I can say that I’m hoping to have an exhibition of flower pictures and that I’ve got to go to London to see people about it. You can say that you’ve got to see your calendar printers and it’s reasonable enough to combine the two jobs.’

  The mill group differed a good deal in their getting-up habits, and only Clare and one of the men were having breakfast when Piet and Sally got there. Breakfast was not a cooked meal. There were packets of various brands of cereal on the table, some bottles of milk, a sliced loaf, some butter, and a big pot of tea. ‘You can make some toast if you like – I think the range fire is still in,’ Clare said. ‘But I don’t recommend it – you’ll get smoked bread rather than proper toast. There’s some jam on the shelf. People do their own washing up after breakfast.’

  Piet had the tins of sugar he’d prepared for himself and Sally in the pocket of his smock. He went to the shelf to get the sugar, but was careful to come back with his own tins. He noticed that both Clare and the man with her had heaped sugar on their cereals. ‘This is where the sugar goes,’ Clare said. ‘You can understand why we have the rule about separate tins. Sandra is awful about it – I think she sometimes has more sugar than cereal.’

  While Piet had been doing his careful subterfuge with the sugar tins Sally had poured out two mugs of tea. ‘Where did you two get yesterday?’ Clare asked.

  ‘Sally had a class at Lavenham, and I’m doing a Lavenham picture for my Suffolk calendar,’ Piet answered. ‘I made two starts, but they just didn’t come right. Then I did get it right, and I went on as long as the light lasted. Sally came and found me, and I’m afraid she got rather bored. So we went to a pub, and then it was really too late to get back here for supper. We got some food in another pub. Everyone was asleep when we got back – at least, the mill and Roger’s boat were all in darkness.’

  ‘We’re going to be away again today,’ Sally said. ‘You know I told you there was a chance of an exhibition of my flower pictures in the autumn – well, it seems that there really is a chance. I telephoned the man who thinks he may be able to arrange it from Moat Cottage yesterday, and he wants to see me about it. Piet’s got to see his calendar printers, so we’re both going up to London today. We’ll stay the night in London, I think.’

  ‘Nice to have someone wanting you,’ Clare said. ‘I’ve got a couple of pictures in the exhibition Shirley Vincent’s putting on at Lavenham. I hope to goodness someone buys them.’

  Roger and Trudi came in. ‘Morning everybody,’ Trudi said. ‘I heard you come back last night, Sally, but I must say you were very quiet.’

  ‘I’m sorry we disturbed you at all,’ Piet said.

  ‘You didn’t, because I wasn’t asleep.’

  ‘Well, we won’t be bothering you tonight,’ Sally said. She explained about their trip to London. Piet watched Roger shaking sugar over his plate of cereal. He was using his left hand, and Piet noticed something that he hadn’t seen before. The top joint of the little finger of his left hand was missing.

  ‘You said you’d show me some of your work,’ Piet said to Trudi. ‘We don’t need to start all that early. If you’ve got time after breakfast I’d love to see your pictures.’

  ‘Sure. I’m pretty well through now. I’ll take you up to the studio.’

  Roger stayed at the table, eating and chatting to Sally. ‘Don’t swig all the tea,’ Trudi said. ‘I’d like another cup when we come down.’

  Piet followed her up the unrailed stairs. ‘Not good for anyone who’s had a bit too much,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, you soon get used to them. There’s never been an accident, as far as I know. Stick by the wall if you feel worried. I remember I did at first.’

  The stairs led through an open hatch into a huge room. What it had been used for Piet found hard to interpret. Since the mill had been a pumping station and not for grinding anything, it would scarcely have needed a granary. Maybe, though, the place had once served for storage as well as housing the pumping engine on the ground floor. It might conceivably have been a sail loft in the days when fishing boats worked under sail. A length of decayed belting that had once carried the drive from the windmill down to the pumping engine still hung from a hole in the wooden ceiling. Now the great room was a dormitory. There were two or three camp beds and several mattresses, with sleeping bags on them. Two were still occupied. ‘Some people just can’t get up in the morning,’ Trudi observed. No one took any notice. She prodded one of the unoccupied mattresses with her foot. ‘Bet you can’t guess what that’s stuffed with,’ she said. ‘It’s dried grass from the marsh. Makes a wonderful bed. I’d sooner have that than a camp bed any day.’

  She walked through the dormitory to another set of stairs at the far end. Like the stairs from the ground floor these had no handrail, and they led up to another hatch. Piet thought they must be getting near the working top of the mill. He was right, for most of the open space above the hatch was taken up by a hand-worked windlass, a train of rusty gear-wheels disappearing into the rafters. ‘Above here the whole top of the mill can be turned,’ Trudi explained. ‘They used to turn it for the sails of the windmill to catch the wind. I don’t suppose it would work now – I doubt if anyone’s even tried to turn it for a century.’

  The windlass room, however, was not the only space on this second floor of the old mill. The curious construction providing for the huge room underneath was continued here, and instead of tapering to the turning-head of the windmill tower the floor-space here was also large. Unlike the dormitory it was not a single room. There were doors at each end of the windlass compartment, fitted, Piet noticed, with modern locks. Trudi unlocked one door and Piet followed her inside. This room was a well-equipped studio, with a fine north window, not noticeable on coming to the mill either from the road or from the botter, for the road was south, and the botter’s mooring about south east. There were three easels, two empty and one with an unfinished painting on it, and a number of finished pictures stacked against the walls.

  ‘This is mine,’ Trudi said, going to the unfinished painting. ‘And here are some finished ones.’ She took a framed picture from a group and stood it on one of the unoccupied easels. It was a seascape, the waves, Piet thought, improbably blue, and a sailing boat dead centre in the picture an irritation rather than of any value to the scene. The co
mposition he considered appalling, but the drawing and the brushwork were competent enough. Tactfully, he did not disclose his private thoughts. ‘What a splendid mass of colour,’ he said dishonestly.

  ‘Yes, that’s what I try for,’ Trudi said. ‘You’ve got a good eye to go for the colour first.’ She was obviously pleased. ‘Let me show you some more.’

  Piet looked first at the unfinished work on the easel, another seascape, but with an angrier sea, and with a flight of dreadfully white birds wind-driven over the waves. She produced two more finished paintings, both much the same in style. Piet thought nothing of any of them, but politely said all the right things. ‘Do you have this studio to yourself?’ he asked.

  ‘Not exactly,’ she said. ‘Sandra used to work up here and I suppose she’ll use it again when she comes back, but I never found it easy to work with her around. I let Clare come up, and one or two of the men sometimes, if they’ve got something that particularly needs a studio, but they have to ask me first. I’ll let you come whenever you like. I’m sure I could work with you here,’ she added generously.

  ‘That’s very nice of you,’ Piet said. ‘But it won’t be today because as you know I’ve got to take Sally to London, and try to get some money out of my calendar printers. It’s something I’ll look forward to.’

  She gave him a friendly smile. ‘That’s settled then. Let’s get down before those greedy people have finished all the tea.’

  The door locked automatically behind them. She did not open the other door before they went downstairs.

  VIII

  Mrs Vincent’s Call

  MR CONSTANTINE’S OFFICE was a finely-proportioned room in one of those lovely eighteenth century town houses still to be found in Mayfair, although most of them are now dress shops of the most expensive sort, or belong to embassies. From the outside, apart from a discreet brass plate with the name of the firm, the headquarters of Gavell and Gainsworth still looked like a private house, and Mr Constantine’s room on the first floor might still have been the drawing room. A panelled door in one corner opened into an annexe now occupied by his secretary. Piet arrived a little before four thirty and found Mr Constantine standing in the middle of a superb Persian carpet studying a glass-fronted cabinet holding a collection of figurines in Meissen china. ‘I think this will do,’ he said. ‘The back is in three panels, and they are easily removable. If we take out one and stand the cabinet just to one side of my secretary’s door, you should be able to see through the glass front. The cabinet will disguise the fact that the door is slightly ajar, and we can arrange the figurines so that nobody looking from the front will notice an observer at the back. You will have to crouch, and it may be rather uncomfortable, but it’s the best we can manage. Let us move it now. The cabinet itself is not heavy, but first we must remove the Meissen figures.’