Chapter 16 #2
“Good for you. Inspector, it’s all yours.” As Mallow, Vernon and Miss Bellamy moved away, Alec said, “Oh, just a minute, Vernon.”
“Yes?” He turned back.
In a low voice, Alec asked, “What is it you found that you couldn’t mention in front of Miss Bellamy?”
With a grimace, Vernon reached into his carrying case and took out one of the stoppered phials, saying, “Rather disgusting, sir. I handled this with forceps, I can tell you. A French letter, used, recently. He was up there with a woman, all right!”
“So it would seem.”
“What else could it mean, sir, with this and the earring?”
“For a start, we’ll have to have Mrs. Enderby confirm that the jacket was her husband’s.”
“Oh yes, but then—”
“Then we can be pretty certain Enderby was up there with a woman.”
“And if she didn’t push him over herself, she must have seen who did.”
“It seems likely,” Alec agreed. “The only trouble is, we haven’t the least idea who she is.”
Waving goodbye to Belinda and Deva as they set off back down the stream, Daisy took out the map Baskin had lent her.
On it, she found the lane she wanted, parallel to the cliff-tops and a few hundred yards inland.
Her shortest route thither was mostly by right-of-way footpaths.
She set off briskly, hoping she would not meet any of the cross-country obstacles Baskin had described.
The way tended steadily upward through farmland, mostly pasture with the odd arable field.
The worst barrier she came across was a broken-down stile leading into a field infested with thistles, dock, nettles and brambles.
The overgrown path seemed more a matter of disgraceful neglect than deliberate obstruction.
She battled through, scratching her leg, and came out at last on the lane she was making for.
The lane continued gently uphill to her left, while on the opposite side rose a steep slope of bracken, gorse and heather interspersed with bare rock and short, wiry grass.
A faint path wound upward. Daisy rather doubted anyone could actually ride a bicycle up it, especially where it appeared to plunge into a gorse thicket. It wasn’t on the map.
But between her present position and Westcombe, the map showed a couple more paths and a track leading off from the lane towards the sea. Anstruther could have taken any of them.
Realizing she couldn’t possibly explore them all—not, at least, without missing lunch, Daisy turned homeward.
She had nearly reached the crest and was hoping the rest of the way would be downhill when she heard a motor ascending the hill behind her with a horrid grinding of gears.
Stepping aside, for the lane was scarcely one car wide, she glanced back to see a Humber touring car of pre-War vintage.
The chauffeur, who wore the usual peaked cap along with a grubby brown jacket and no collar, looked disgruntled.
Behind him sat a woman Daisy recognized.
As the clash of gears ceased, Mrs. Hammett poked her driver in the back and said loudly, “Stop, I say!”
The car shot forward for a few feet then jerked to a halt and stalled beside Daisy. “I’m a gardener,” the chauffeur said sullenly.
“Get out and get it started, Tom Stebbins, or you won’t be my gardener much longer. Mrs. Fletcher, I’ll give you a lift down to the village.”
Much as she would have liked to refuse what sounded more like an order than an invitation, it meant she wouldn’t have to seek out the Gorgon on the off-chance that she had useful information and was willing to part with it.
“Thank you,” she said, climbing in beside Mrs. Hammett, who was dressed today in a grey cardigan over a paler grey frock polka-dotted with black. The car held a faintly fishy odour—or perhaps it was just that Daisy knew Mr. Hammett dealt in fish.
While the morose gardener cranked away, Mrs. Hammett fired her opening salvo: “So, Mr. Fletcher is a London detective. It’s disgraceful the local police can’t manage without help, seeing what we pay in rates!”
“I dare say they could, but since my husband was already involved as a witness …”
“It seems mighty odd to me, a Scotland Yard man just chancing to be in Westcombe. ’Twouldn’t surprise me if he were investigating George Enderby.”
“We’re supposed to be on holiday, Mrs. Hammett. Believe me, if we’d known a local citizen was going to be bumped off, we’d have gone somewhere else.”
“There was something very fishy about that man, coming down here with his fancy woman and marrying Nancy Pinner. What became of that woman, his so-called sister? If anybody saw her leave, it’s more than I’ve heard.
What if him and Nancy did away wi’ her? I reckon they guessed Mr. Fletcher was on to them and Nancy pushed him over, so’s he couldn’t blame her for it. ”
“You think his wife killed him?”
“Well, no, I wouldn’t say that. Most think ‘twas Peter Anstruther, from what I’ve heard, acos o’ the rumpus in the Schooner. But I’ve got my own ideas.” Her mouth set in a firm line.
Daisy would have pursued the subject, but Stebbins came round from the front of the car, crank in hand, and said grim-faced, “’Twon’t start, missus.”
“What do you mean, it won’t start?”
“I’m a gardener, not a shover.”
“Did you pull out the choke, like the master said?”
“No,” Stebbins said sulkily. “He said that’s what to do when her’s cold, but her bain’t cold after coming up the hill from Coleman’s.”
“Try it!” commanded Mrs. Hammett.
A couple of cranks later, the motor started. In a clash of gears, the Humber lumbered onward.
“You were visiting the Colemans?” Daisy asked. She recalled that Sid the beachcomber was the younger brother of a farmer called Coleman, described by Anstruther as a brute.
“Edna Coleman’s my cousin, and a more feckless creatur I have yet to meet. Didn’t I warn her that girl of hers is a sly-boots and bound to come to no good end? And what do I find out Friday but Olive has been meeting George Enderby, and we all know what that means! And her just turned sixteen.”
“Oh dear.”
“So off I goes Sat’day morning to warn Edna, blood being thicker’ n water, as they say.
Keep her close, says I. Not a word to Alfred—that’s her husband—or he’ll half kill her.
Free wi’ his fists, is Alfred, not but what nobody could blame him for taking a strap to Olive, nor he wouldn’t need to if Edna had brought her up proper.
So what happens this morning first thing?
I get a message from Edna by Ned Baxter that picks up the milk cans for the dairy when he’s not lobstering, that Olive didn’t come home last night and is she wi’ me? ”
“I take it she wasn’t,” said Daisy, unable to imagine a less likely refuge.
“That she wasn’t. ‘James,’ says I to Mr. Hammett, ‘there’s trouble.
I must go to my cousin Edna’s this morning.
You’ll take the ferry to the office and let me have the motor.
’ Which he does, and never a complaint, I’ll say that for him, though well I know he don’t like that good-for-nothing driving his precious car.
” She jerked a fierce thumb at Stebbins’s resentful back.
“Aye, and Mr. Fletcher ought to take a good look at him, too. His wife’s a giddy creatur as has been seen wi’ you know who. ”
The car was now creeping downhill in low gear. Daisy wondered whether the “chauffeur” was nervous about hills or had wrecked the gear-box and couldn’t change up. At any rate, the result was quite enough noise to shield their conversation from Stebbins.
“Is your cousin’s daughter still missing?” she asked.
“Not a sign o’ her. And for why? Acos Edna went and did just what I said not to.
The silly goose told Alfred about Olive and George Enderby!
After Sunday dinner, she said, when he were full o’ beef and taties and plum pie.
You’d think she’d know by now Alfred isn’t one to be mellowed by a good meal.
He took after Olive and she ran out wi’ him after her. And he come back and she didn’t.”
“Gosh, you don’t think he did her a mischief?”
“Her or Enderby or both.”
“You must tell the police!”
“I promised Edna I wouldn’t go to the police till tomorrow. Alfred’ ll take it out on her if they come nosing round, see, and maybe Olive’ll come home today.” Mrs. Hammett gave Daisy a look heavy with significance.
“I see,” said Daisy.
Daisy needed time to consider how much of the woman’s farrago to pass on to Alec. That rubbish about Nancy Enderby doing away with Georgie Porgie’s “sister,” for instance, would not be appreciated. Mrs. Hammett had not even seemed to believe it herself.
Of course, Alec must certainly be told about Olive Coleman’s disappearance,
but half an hour’s delay couldn’t make much difference. Daisy felt badly in need of inner fortification before she faced him with the information that yet another near stranger had confided in her instead of the police.