Chapter Eighteen
EIGHTEEN
Belinda was getting just a bit tired of being a detective. She walked along, rustling her feet through the dead leaves, wondering if Daddy really liked being a detective all the time. Not that he spent much time searching the woods for rags and bones, as far as she could see.
So far on their second hunt, she and Derek and Nana hadn’t found anything except two empty beer bottles.
Nana kept finding sticks she thought were interesting and bringing them to Bel or Derek to throw.
Here she came now, dragging a bit of branch so big she couldn’t pick it up and had to pull backwards.
Derek started a tug of war with her. Belinda thought he was getting rather bored with being a detective, too, though he wouldn’t admit it.
She watched them. That was when she saw, where Nana’s feet scuffed up the leaves, something gleaming.
“Stop! Look!” she cried, running forward to pick it up. When she turned it back and forth in her hand, it sparkled, even though the sun had gone in. It looked like a shoe buckle, all covered with glittering stones.
“Crikey,” breathed Derek, awed, “diamonds! It must be pirate treasure.”
“They had smugglers here, not pirates,” Bel objected.
“I bet they had pirates, too. I bet they were friends with the smugglers. Anyway, I bet the smugglers got rich enough to put diamonds on their shoes, just to show off.”
“Do you think they’re really diamonds? If someone lost that many diamonds they’d search and search till they found it.”
Derek took it from her and twisted it back and forth. “They must be diamonds. Look how they shine, and they’re not coloured like rubies and emeralds.”
“They could be imitations, you know, like the diamonds we saw in the Natural History Museum. My gran has a hat brooch that’s all sparkly like this, but she says it’s diamanté, not real diamonds.”
“Oh well,” Derek sighed, “maybe. But it could be real, and anyway I bet it’s an important clue.
We’d better keep it safe. Here, you can keep it in your pocket,” he said generously.
“But if Uncle Alec doesn’t need it for evidence, we can use it for pirate treasure.
Let’s play pirates after we’ve finished looking for clues.
I’ll tell you what, I’d like to make Jemima walk the plank. ”
From behind a nearby tree came a screech. Jemima jumped out, shouting, “I heard what you said! That’s murder! I bet you murdered Mr. Calloway, too! I’m going to tell.” She ran away towards the garden gate.
“Crikey!” said Derek, looking a bit scared. “I didn’t really mean it.”
“Never mind, Daddy won’t believe her. Come on, let’s find some more … Look, Nana’s got something. Nana, come!”
Nana wouldn’t come. When Belinda tried her newly learnt whistle no sound came out of her lips, however hard she blew, but anyway, the puppy took no notice of Derek’s ear-splitting whistle.
She bounded off with something long and dirty white dangling from her mouth.
The children ran after her. When she got far enough ahead to feel safe, she lay down for a good chew.
Derek crept up on her and pounced. She gave up the object without a struggle, rolling over on her back for a tummy rub.
Derek held up her find; white artificial silk with lace trimmings. “What is it?” he asked blankly.
Belinda giggled. “Cami-knickers! How ever did they get here?” Then she had a sudden awful, terrible thought. “Oh, Derek, you don’t think the murderer killed a lady too and buried her in the woods?”
“’Course not. No ladies are missing, are they?
” He glanced behind him, but not as if he thought a murderer was creeping up behind him; more as if he wanted to make sure no one was listening.
“There are bad women,” he whispered, “who go into the woods with a man and get naked. I heard them talking about it at school.”
“Why?” Belinda asked sceptically.
“I ’spect they dance. Men like to watch ladies dancing with not much clothes on,” Derek said, in a very superior voice. “Gosh, Bel, you don’t think this is Aunt Felicity’s?”
The idea sent them both into whoops.
Meanwhile Nana, deprived of the cami-knickers, had wandered off sniffing. Now she came bouncing back and deposited yet another treasure at their feet. Bel picked it up.
“It’s the other glove of that pair.”
“What pair?”
“The pair we found the other one of before, ’member?”
“Oh, the mitten.” Derek frowned. “Yes, but it wasn’t in the stuff we showed your father. We didn’t stick it in the dust-bin, did we?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t think we would’ve. Nana prob’ly ran off with it and buried it.”
“Stupid dog. Let’s see.” He took the dampish mitten and examined it. It was striped blue and grey, with a brown stain along the side of the hand. “Blood!” he said ghoulishly.
“It’s not red.”
“No, but it wouldn’t be. Remember when you get a cut or a graze and they put a sticking-plaster on you, and when they take it off it’s bloody inside and it’s brown.”
“I don’t look,” said Belinda.
“Well it is,” Derek insisted. “And look, the rest isn’t dirty at all, so it hasn’t been here very long.
We’d better take this to Uncle Alec right away.
And the cami-whatsit just in case no one’s noticed she’s missing yet.
You can carry that. And the shoe buckle in case it’s hers and she was murdered by a robber. Come on!”
“So you think Captain Norville is our man, Tom?” Alec asked.
“Aye, Chief, and I’m sorry for it. He seems like a nice enough chap, good to his ma and all.
Given time enough to think, I dare say he’d have remembered there was nothing to stop him trying to change Calloway’s mind.
After all, he didn’t gain anything by killing him.
I’d say he must’ve regretted it at once. ”
“Too late. One way or another, I’m afraid the accessibility of that knife was probably a deciding factor. What do you think, Daisy?”
“Uh?”
“Haven’t you been listening?” Alec was rather peeved. Daisy insisted on involving herself. Admittedly she was occasionally helpful, but surely the least she could do was listen!
“No, sorry, darling, I was thinking.”
“About Captain Norville?”
“The captain?” she asked, astonished. “Good heavens, no.”
“Tom has just presented a very convincing case against him.”
“Oh no. Sorry, Tom, but it wasn’t him. That is, I’ve been thinking, and I’m fairly certain…”
“Daddy!” Belinda burst in, excitedly interrupting with no trace of her usual well-behaved diffidence. (Was Daisy having a bad influence on her, as Alec’s mother kept insinuating?) She was waving a soiled white object—Great Scott, an intimate garment! Piper blushed.
Derek followed Bel, no less precipitately. “We’ve found a Real Clue!” he announced. “Look!” He dropped a woollen mitten on the table in front of Alec.
“It’s another one like the other one we found. Derek thinks it’s got blood on it.”
“And it’s quite clean otherwise so someone dropped it not very long ago. We had the other one, too, Uncle Alec, but we’re awfully afraid Nana must have buried it, or chewed it up, or something. Is it blood, d’you think?”
Alec examined the rusty brown patch. “It could be,” he admitted cautiously and passed the glove to Tom.
Tom took out his magnifying glass, at once aweing and delighting Derek, who held his breath, waiting for the verdict.
“I’d say so, Chief. It’d have to go to the lab boys to make sure, of course.”
“Where did you find it?”
“We were near the path, Daddy, the one that goes to the chapel.”
“Not far from the chapel, but actually we didn’t find it ourselves. Nana brought it to us, but I don’t think she’d gone very far, so it was quite near where we were. We could show you where we were, couldn’t we, Bel? Bel said we must notice the trees and remember exactly.”
“Well done, Belinda.”
His daughter’s freckles vanished in a tide of red. “Is it a real clue, Daddy?”
“It very well may be.”
“It is,” Daisy said positively. “Darling, I rather think it would be a good idea if the children took Mr. Piper to see whereabouts Nana found it.”
Alec assumed she wanted the children out of the way while she expounded her theory.
It wouldn’t hurt to have Ernie go and make a note of the spot, just in case the mitten turned out to be significant.
The possible bloodstain was along the little-finger edge of the hand, away from the thumb, in exactly the right place, assuming the murderer had held the knife in his fist to strike downward.
“Detective Constable Piper, proceed to the woods near the scene of the crime with our two witnesses to mark and make a note of the area they point out to you as the vicinity where the evidence was discovered.”
“Yessir!”
“Gosh!” breathed Derek blissfully.
“May Nana come too, Daddy? We left her in the scullery ’cause we didn’t know where you were.”
“No, pet, better leave her behind this time. This is official police business.”
“Gosh!” said Derek again, and he and Belinda went off with Ernie Piper.
“I suppose they are witnesses,” Daisy said, frowning. “Will they have to give evidence in court?”
“Not if I have any say in the matter,” Alec assured her. “A sworn deposition should do. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. What makes you think this dog-bedrooled object is important?”
Daisy answered him with another question. “Do you recall seeing its mate among the debris Bel and Derek showed you before?”
“No. Did they invent it?”
“Tom, you looked before they threw the least promising rubbish away. Did you see the other mitten?”
“No, Mrs. Fletcher,” Tom said positively.
“Well, I did. Nana was carrying it, and she laid it at my feet as she did this one with the children.”
“And then she took it away and buried it,” Alec presumed.
“I don’t believe so. She ran off with some other rag which appealed to her more. And I think—I’m pretty sure—the mitten disappeared while Bel and Derek were chasing her.”
“Pouf, into thin air!”