CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Maria was not in the least interested in the college routine the following morning. After breakfast she hurried through the chapel prayers in record time. Then she went straight to her study and sat down with the air of a judge facing an empty court.

She had an hour to wait, and she spent it thinking deeply—then at a minute to eleven Superintendent Vaxley arrived. He greeted her cordially enough, but it was clear from his expression that he had his doubts even yet as to what was afoot.

“You are a most extraordinary woman, Miss Black,” he said, “but I hope that all this business is not just to try out some theory or other. Time is very valuable to me.”

“And to me,” Maria said composedly, sitting back in her chair “Everything that will happen this morning will be absolutely vital—to you, to me, and to the interests of the law in general. You brought your two constables?”

“And put them in the porter’s lodge, yes. Naturally, I don’t understand the reason for the request.”

“You will,” Maria smiled. “Any moment now I am expecting Mr. and Mrs. Dawson here. I shall take the liberty of introducing you as Mr. Shaw, if you don’t mind. I wish to avoid all hint of the fact, at first, that you are connected with the law.”

Vaxley looked his astonishment. “Well, all right— Look here, are you trying to prove that they are mixed up in this business?”

“First things first, Superintendent. As an officer of the law you should know the danger of words without proof. Ah! There are Mr. and Mrs. Dawson coming in at the gates now.”

Maria half rose and looked through the window. Then she sat back and waited, her lips tight.

Before long there was a knock at the door and Mr. and Mrs. Dawson were admitted, neither of them looking particularly cordial.

“So good of you to come,” Maria greeted them, getting to her feet and shaking hands. “May I introduce Mr. Shaw, a great friend of mine.”

They shook hands all round, and then settled themselves in the chairs Maria had already provided. Herbert Dawson glanced doubtfully at Vaxley. Maria made a brief excuse and pressed her house phone switch.

“Have Joan Dawson released from the punishment room and sent in to me, will you, please?”

“Yes, Miss Black.”

Mrs. Dawson gave Maria a rather acid look. “I don’t wish to seem discourteous, Miss Black,” she said briefly, “but if our conversation is to be concerned with Joan, I feel sure that Mr. Shaw here will be—er—well, redundant.”

Maria’s smile quickly faded. “The law is never redundant, Mrs. Dawson,” she replied. “I made a slight error in introducing Mr. Shaw here. I should have said Superintendent Vaxley of Scotland Yard. As you will undoubtedly be aware from the newspapers, he has been engaged on the case of Frances Hasleigh.… Forgive my little deception, but I did not wish to alarm you too soon. Better that you be comfortable first.”

“What are you talking about, Miss Black?” Dawson himself asked bluntly. “Has Joan got herself into trouble with the law after all? Good Lord, it hasn’t something to with that murder?”

“I’m afraid,” Maria replied coldly. “it has quite a lot to do with it.” Then, at a knock at the door she got to her feet and admitted Joan, pale-faced and troubled. She went over to her father, kissed him gently, then sat down without a word.…

Maria surreptitiously locked the door, put the key in her pocket, and looked round with that air of drama she could never resist in moments of triumph. Slowly she moved back to her desk, every pair of eyes fixed on her.

“Superintendent,” she said simply, “I have solved the murder of Frances Hasleigh! I have followed out my own angles to inescapable conclusions, and while I know you have done a fine job of work by following the obvious facts, I dare to think that I have done a better by finding the real killer.”

The Dawson family were all gazing at Maria as though petrified,

“Confound it all, Miss Black, what do you mean?” Dawson burst out abruptly. “How dare you stand there and waste our time with such statements? What have we to do with it?”

“Everything!” Maria retorted, and the sting in her voice silenced the industrialist for a moment. With his wife and daughter he watched as Maria lifted her bulky typed dossier from her desk.

“For you, Super—in detail,” she said gravely, handing it over. “This is the black-and-white record for you to read and check in any way you wish. You will find it watertight and dovetailed. For my own part I shall limit myself to a brief résumé of my research.”

Silence. Joan had gone so pale she looked about to faint, while in the eyes of Mrs. Dawson there was a cold, deadly glint. Quietly Maria resumed her chair.

“This mystery began for me on the day when the supposed Major Hasleigh brought his alleged daughter to this college,” she said. “I knew he was a fake by his ill-conceived sunburn, but let it pass then because I believed he had his own reasons for doing it. The real trouble began when the girl we called Frances Hasleigh was found hung in Bollin’s Wood. From that scratch start I had to determine the why and wherefore. When I examined the clearing, I was particularly impressed by the two grooves on the tree branch—the one caused by Frances’s weight hanging on the death rope; and the other, of thinner variety, at the extreme end of the branch. It was clear that Frances did not hang herself by perhaps releasing the rope that held the branch down, because by doing that she would have dislocated her neck, and this had not happened. So, what then?

“Whoever had hung her had not been strong enough to raise her bodily, so had pulled the tree branch down instead and then let it rise gradually by paying out at the rope which was holding the branch end. Once it had fully straightened, Frances would be about four to six inches from the ground. To this, however, there was a more sinister implication. The groove was a deep one, which to me showed that the rope had been embedded in the branch under severe strain for quite some time. Why? Frances had been allowed to rise very gradually, inch by inch perhaps, and that to me meant that she had been tortured to death! With every fraction that the branch straightened out the tighter would become the noose round her neck.… Yes, she was slowly hung, and no doubt it was done to try and force a secret out of her. She refused to comply with the wishes of her attacker and so finally died. Since she was gagged and no sounds were heard by the three girls in the lane, we can assume that a nod of the head was the signal that could have saved her life.”

“And just what has this got to do with us?” Mrs. Dawson snapped.

“I will make matters a good deal clearer in a moment, Mrs. Dawson. To resume: it was perfectly evident when I went over the clearing that not a single footprint had been caused in the death of Frances. The murderer did not fly or have wings, obviously. There were two girls in the clearing all the time. The stout, unimaginative Beryl Mather I dismissed from my theory, but you, Joan, remained—and for many reasons!”

The girl looked up sharply. “I? But why?”

“I’ll tell you. Like Beryl you were in your stockinged feet, and it was therefore unlikely that you would leave any marks in dead leaves and soft ground if you trod lightly. Another thing, when I untied you I found your wrists by no means tightly fastened—just as though you had tied the rope and then slid your wrists into it. You could have wriggled out of them with little effort. And also it seemed odd to me that you had been hit in the jaw and rendered unconscious whereas Beryl had been hit over the head and had a large bruise to show for it. You did not have your jaw examined, I noticed, and while it was possible that no mark had revealed itself, as very often it doesn’t, I could not reconcile your story of your being hit in the jaw by somebody coming up from behind you. That would be a physical impossibility, and nobody anxious to stun you would use such a complicated method when the same system that had knocked out Beryl would have done equally well.… Further, I noticed that although you only took two or three steps in your stockinged feet you lacerated yourself so badly with thorns, as you said, that you limped for several days afterwards—whereas Beryl, who covered the same distance as you, and was far heavier, was hardly hurt at all. It was not luck on Beryl’s part that she happened on better ground, but the fact that you had taken far more than a few strides in your stockinged feet!”

“I didn’t!” Joan declared hoarsely. “I was lying unconscious, I tell you! I didn’t—”

“I’ll tell you what I believe you did!” Maria interrupted curtly. “You wriggled out of your ropes, hit Beryl over the head with the nearest thing handy—a piece of old branch perhaps which you threw away afterwards—and then you reduced Frances to a brief spell of unconsciousness by pressing on the arteries in the back of her neck with fingers and thumbs, a trick in self-defence you learned in a forestry club before you left it three years ago—oh, yes, my dear, I know all about that,” Maria added, as the girl’s eyes widened. “In fact, you no doubt learned how to get out of ropes by the same training.… You were bent on torture, and I’ll tell you just why later.

“Now, you looked about the clearing and saw a figure in a boat on the river. Mr. Lever! How opportune! Back went your mind to the Sixth Form room. You remembered having seen his pen there—and it was probably still there, too. Anyway, worth the risk, and it might pin things on him.… You had to work fast. Frances was too heavy for you to lift, so you dragged her along the ground to the death tree, maybe covering up the grooves left by her heels, but you forgot her torn stockings would provide the evidence. In doing this you cut your own feet pretty badly, but took little heed of the fact in the urgency of the moment.

“From round your waist, under your frock, you took out a silk rope which you had been keeping there for just such an opportunity as this. You knew what you were about all right. You knew that even if Lever failed to provide a suspect, you had three girls who could equally take the blame. You would be the last one to fall under suspicion. Four suspects and you safe! It was just what you had been waiting for. I’ll tell you why you had that rope ready so opportunely later on. Let us get back to the moment.…

“With the rope from your own wrists you pulled down the branch of the death tree and secured it, then when Frances showed signs of returning consciousness you retied her hands securely with triple knots just to be sure, slipped the silk cord about her neck, and tied it in triple knots to the centre of the tree branch. In your excitement you used the knot you knew to be the most secure and the most simple—to you. She would not nod her head to the questions you asked, so you let the branch slowly straighten out by paying out the securing rope. Frances finally died by strangulation, and without a sound owing to the gag.”

Maria got to her feet, her face so merciless it might have been carven in ivory. She pointed a steady, accusing finger across the desk at the motionless girl.

“Joan, you murdered that girl, and did not learn a thing! Then you realised that Vera and her friends might be back any moment. You saw that Beryl had not recovered yet. You retied the rope round your wrists after removing it from the tree, made tight loops and wriggled your hands into them, then you lay in apparent unconsciousness until you were rescued. Finally, pale through the emotional strain you had undergone—but which everybody thought was because of your unconsciousness—you were finally ‘revived.’ You denied everything, then on walking found out how badly your feet hurt. When you got back to the college afterwards, you used the first chance to look for that pen of Robert Lever’s, and presumably found it. You threw it in the clearing from a distance to avoid any sign of footprints and, when you returned to the school, I saw you entering, though it took me some time to decide who it was.”

Herbert Dawson sprang to his feet, his face flaming with rage. His eyes darted to Vaxley as he sat folded in his chair, lost in thought.

“Superintendent Vaxley, why don’t you arrest this woman?” he shouted. “Do you realise the preposterous tissue of lies and insults she is hurling at my daughter? I demand that you stop her!”

“Of course,” Maria said gravely, “you want proof?”

“You’d better provide it or face a lawsuit for defamation!”

“There is plenty of proof, Mr. Dawson. The silk rope that killed Frances had shreds of varicoloured silk in it, which had come off the frock Joan was wearing that day. Now, electrically, silk attracts silk, but there is a certain scientific angle to that. I suggested that the rope had dragged across her supine body and carried fragments from the surface of her dress with it. Later I realised that would have been impossible. Silk, to become magnetic to other silk, has to be charged. And there is no better medium for the purpose than the human body. That pointed infallibly to the fact that Joan had worn the rope close to her. It had no doubt been wrapped round her waist, invisible because of its slenderness, had become so charged that the rubbing of the underside on her dress upon it had drawn off fragments.… You, Superintendent, can verify that?”

“I can verify the silk shreds,” he nodded, “but I confess the scientific angle had rather escaped me. I had assumed—as you did at first—that the rope had dragged across the girl. That is a most brilliant deduction, Miss Black.”

She smiled transiently at the compliment, then again became the implacable unraveller of mystery.

“I had two things to go on—Joan had injured feet which three strides could not have caused, and she had worn a silk rope. Now what? Just how long had she had this silk rope? Then I recalled an event mentioned by Vera that might fit it. She said Joan had recently received a parcel of silk stockings from home, but unlike her usual custom, had not displayed her prize to any other girl. Had it been silk rope and not silk stockings? I was prepared to believe that this was so—and significant in view of the fact that she got the so-called stockings after the arrival of Frances Hasleigh at this school.”

Joan gave a little start and glanced for a moment at her stepmother’s Sphinx-like face. Maria noticed it, but simply went on talking.

“I was faced with a problem. It was hard for me to credit that a mere schoolgirl could have done such a terrible act without a very real and desperate motive.… Well, as I was trying to sort this out, a new angle presented itself in the removal of Frances’s corpse. Somebody else was involved in this, clearly. The suggestion of strength about the whole thing ruled out Joan and made me wonder if I was on the wrong track after all.… You, Super, know of Clive Whittaker’s activities in that direction. When the body had gone, I reasoned that it could not be Joan who had done it, for several reasons. She had, to my mind, given up all hope of getting anything out of Frances when she died. It was a case of out of sight, out of mind. But, since somebody else had taken the trouble to remove the corpse, it was possible that there was something even on the dead body that might be of value. If so, if Joan herself were to find the body, she might discover what the something was and take up her activities again, thereby giving me a chance to go on tracing her actions.

“My reasoning was more or less justified. With Beryl Mather she found the body—and she must have guessed that what she had wanted had been on that forearm. What now? Obviously she must make every effort to find who had moved the body since that person must now have whatever it was she wanted.… Further, I do not believe that you just found that body, Joan. I believe you saw it being taken to the mausoleum the night before, when you returned from putting that fountain pen in the clearing. You followed Whittaker to the mausoleum, but you had not the courage to go too far. You waited for a while—during which time Whittaker was busy below—and then you decided to risk seeing what he was up to. You made a noise and were afraid. So you ran for it—and it was as you entered the college again that I saw you. I was then on my way to take a look at the corpse in the visitors’ wing. Whittaker, too, took fright at the sounds you made and left his job half finished—or at any rate not tidied up.”

Silence. Maria got to her feet and began to pace up and down slowly.

“You knew beyond doubt, Joan, that Whittaker was the body-snatcher, and it was about this time that I found the thing you sought was a formula for a high explosive. At that time my job was to find out what Whittaker was doing and his connection with the dead girl, and in the process thereof I found the half of the formula that had been on Frances’s forearm. Now I knew why she had been tortured to death. You, Joan, had tried to force from her the whereabouts of the secret, and had failed—unaware that it was invisibly tattooed on the girl’s arm.…

“No doubt you were aware, Joan, that I was looking into the business: you could hardly fail to do so if you were on the watch for Whittaker. Anyway, you saw through the laboratory window one evening that I had the formula—but not complete, as you no doubt thought—in my watch locket. From then on you must have kept an eye on me. From your bed in the dormitory, and in the bright moonlight you could easily see the School House exit, and when that night you saw me going out, you resolved to follow and get that formula. Aware that some foodstuffs reposed in the pavilion—from your watching Whittaker’s movements in the interval—you made this your excuse to get out and used Frances Hasleigh’s shoes, using a bent wire to open her locker. To make yourself further safe—but which really overdid the conviction—you dared the boastful, bullying Vera Randal into saying that she had been out. Most of this story fell to bits in the classroom when you and Vera fought out the issue of my stolen watch. To me it was perfectly clear then that you had known beforehand of the food in the pavilion, which also showed me you knew where Whittaker’s rendezvous was. I realised more than ever that you were the one to watch. Possibly fear of me tempted you into inventing such an unconvincing story to explain the return of my watch. You knew I was looking into things and were getting nervous in consequence.… Yet still at the back of my mind I could not imagine why a schoolgirl was doing all this. There must be something behind it.”

Nobody spoke as Maria reflected for a moment. She noted silently that not a word of denial had so far reached her.

“For the moment, Joan, I will stick to you and fill in the blanks after,” she resumed. “Next thing, I found you as good as hung in your own locker—but just prior to this I had heard somebody running from the passage outside my study towards the stairs. This somebody, I realised later, had been listening to my conversation with Mr. Martin, during which I had mentioned that I was going to the dormitory to search the lockers. I believe, Joan, that you raced to your study en route to the stairs, knowing Beryl Mather was busy with a common room meeting, and pulled the rope off her travelling case. You used it to convey the impression you had been hung. According to your story you had been lifted by somebody you had not been allowed to see. This I regarded as manifestly impossible—and again I recalled that in the clearing somebody had obviously not been strong enough to lift Frances, so there was something wrong somewhere. The three-knot ropes were also suggestive to me and served, if anything, to blacken your own case.

“No, what you really did was to prepare everything to look as if you had been hung—complete with three-knot ropes round wrists and feet, and one round the neck attached to the top centre hook of the locker. A gag was provided for good measure. But, Joan, you were in the locker until you heard me enter the dormitory, or so I believe, standing on the shoe rack, which would have raised you a good six inches from the floor. You deliberately risked strangulation to make for reality, knowing you’d be immediately rescued. You could not have hung more than ten seconds before I released you, and you went down with no great jerk. Your shoe marks were all over the ledge, there was a long scratch on the paint where you had let your feet slide; you had knocked one or two pairs of shoes over on to the floor. So, you were so determined to throw me off the scent, you had risked even this…!

“The next thing I knew you were trying to escape from the school and were overtaken by Whittaker. Since you were trying to escape, you must presumably have got all you wanted from Whittaker—and he knew it, too, hence his effort to stop you. So until I knew what the real situation was I locked you in the punishment room, not for safety, but to make sure you could not escape. It also seemed to me that your denial of the fact that it was Whittaker was because you knew that if you accused him, it would start an inquiry, which you wanted to avoid at all costs in case you got too involved.…

“Well, so far, I have outlined what I believe you did, Joan. Perhaps not accurate in every respect, but close enough, I fancy. Now there are other points. From my knowledge of girls I did not judge you as a criminal, murdering type. There still had to be a reason behind all this. I remembered the rope that had possibly been disguised as silk stockings. That had come from home. What was there at home, then, to explain things? I got my first hint when I noticed the colour of your eyes, Mr. and Mrs. Dawson!”

“It can’t be any more crazy than what you’ve said so far,” the woman said briefly. “Explain yourself!”

“In his theory of the Recessive Unit, Mendel, the famous biologist, has said that it is a physical impossibility for two blue-eyed people to have a brown-eyed child,” Maria stated calmly. “On this fact I rested a lot of my faith. I had never been told but what Joan was your own daughter. I did not know that you, Mr. Dawson, had married for the second time.… From then on things began to tie up. You, Mr. Dawson, only rose to such commercial eminence, I found, after your second marriage, and since her maiden name was Einhart, a distinctly Continental, not to say Germanic patronymic, I began to trace a possible connection. Whittaker had said that he and his sister were on the Continent for many years, and had been in danger many times because of the valuable secret they possessed. When war arrived, one particularly determined agent made them leave France in a hurry. The connection between you, Mrs. Dawson, and the Continental agent seemed too obvious to be missed. There was a link somewhere, but I still did not know what it was. Certainly it did not yet explain the murderous behaviour of Joan. Then I thought of a possible hereditary complex to account for it. I sent my assistant up to London to look into things, and he found that your first wife, Mr. Dawson, died in the Kilbury Hospital for the Criminally Insane five years ago! Am I right?”

Vaxley looked at Maria in wonder, then to Dawson. He nodded, tight-lipped, and there was real grief on his strong face.

“Yes, Miss Black, it’s right. That is why I never mention my former marriage.”

“I am going to be very blunt now,” Maria said. “You, Joan, I had discovered, are a strange girl with a highly developed neurosis. Love of wet days, erratic behaviour, periods of dead calm, sudden fits of so-called nerves, inferiority complex at intervals when all the world is against you—in other words, young woman, the first signs of the terrible mental disease which ruled and at last destroyed your own mother! You knew she was insane, but you were reverent enough to her memory to never mention the fact.”

“Yes,” Joan whispered. “I knew— But I’m not crazy!” she shouted suddenly. “I’m as sane as any of you.”

“Keep quiet a moment!” Maria ordered, and the girl sank back into silence again. Then Maria went on, “It made your action of murder logical at last! But it was still queer for a girl to do such a thing without direction. So I came to the real truth.… You, Mrs. Dawson, were connected with many European endeavours before the war—and no doubt still are if the police interest themselves, as they will. My assistant tells me you still have connections with Germanic Paris even yet.… I’ll tell you what you did. You knew that your stepdaughter had the same inclinations as her mother had had, and so you resolved to use her as a pawn for your own purposes. You have an iron hold over her: she told me so herself. You were informed, or otherwise found out through the underground methods you are capable of using, that the bogus Frances Hasleigh, whom you had tried to attack in France along with her brother, was coming to this school. You sent Joan here a little way ahead of time and ordered her—Joan—to inform you the moment a new girl answering to Frances’s description appeared. This I believe Joan did.

“You then sent Joan a silk rope, told her to say it was a pair of stockings, and instructed her to learn from Frances where her formula for high explosive was—and to learn, too, the whereabouts of her brother. Joan had got to do it, even to the extent of torture if need be, the silk rope to be used for the purpose. I do not say you prescribed death as the end, but it happened anyway. But no doubt you did tell Joan to watch her chance, wear the rope always about her to keep it out of sight, and to strike as fast as possible. The rope being a product of South France, it seemed naturally to point to you. Knowing the girl to be a true replica of her mother, you guessed her turbulent mind, given to spells of sadism, would bring you results!”

“In all my life,” Clara Dawson said slowly, “I never heard such a preposterous story. This is going to cost you very dear, Miss Black! You dare to sit there and accuse me of—”

“It’s true!” Joan cried abruptly, leaping to her feet. “I tell you, it’s true! I don’t know how Miss Black knows all about it, but I love her, even if she is my Headmistress, even if she has found out all this about me! She’s been my one true friend.… You know it’s true, mother—you know it!”

“Keep quiet, you excitable little fool!” her stepmother blazed.

“I won’t keep quiet! I can’t hold this back any longer!”

“All right, Joan, speak,” her father said gravely. “Believe me, Miss Black, I knew nothing of all this. I’m as interested as you to know the facts.”

“You’re not going to start talking about me!” Clara Dawson cried: “What kind of a fool do you think I am?”

“I’d advise you to be quiet, madam,” Vaxley said stonily. “Go on, Joan.”

“Well, it’s more or less as Miss Black has said,” the girl said urgently, her words tumbling over one another. “I was at school near my home, a day-school, then all of a sudden mother made up her mind to send me here because, so she said, I was not doing well in my studies. She told me that before long a new girl might arrive here—with grey eyes and fair hair, and would probably have a heavy figure for her age. I was to cultivate her all I could and find out all about her, writing the facts back home. So—I did.”

“Why?” Maria asked. “Didn’t you wonder at such a request?”

“Yes, but I didn’t dare do anything to cross mother; so I did as she told me. By return she sent me a length of silk rope and told me to tell anybody who inquired that it was a pair of stockings. I was to wear this round my waist. She then said that if I was a true English girl prepared to help my country, I would devise the best way possible to trap this new girl and find out from her the truth about a formula for high explosive that she and her brother had got. The way my mother put it, the formula could lose this country the war if I didn’t get it somehow. It was in my power to do it. If I didn’t do it, I’d answer to her!”

“The girl’s unhinged!”” her stepmother said bitterly. “It’s all damned nonsense!”

“It isn’t nonsense!” Joan nearly shrieked. “I can prove it! I’ve got your letter—”

Her stepmother started. “What! Why, you infernal little fool! I told you to destroy it—!”

She stopped abruptly, darted a glance round the merciless eyes fixed on her.

“So you admit you did write such a letter,” Vaxley murmured. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Dawson. Go on, Joan.”

“I—I didn’t really mean to kill Frances!” Joan panted. “I sort of got one of my attacks of nerves when we were tied up in that clearing. But I realised, too, that I had a chance that might never come again. I got free of my ropes, knocked out Beryl, then used that self-defence trick I’d learned at forestry class to make Frances unconscious while I bound her up. I was planning to frighten her into telling me something, but I hung her instead! Then I thought I heard Vera and her pals coming back. I lost my head and let the rope go on the end of the branch. Frances swung there, wriggling and choking. It was ghastly! I lost my head, I didn’t know whether to release her or what, and by the time I had calmed a bit, she had stopped struggling. So I tied myself up again and pretended to be unconscious.

“As I became calmer I realised many things. I’d seen Mr. Lever out on the river and I remembered having seen his pen in the form room. I’d previously killed Frances and was scared to death. I might save myself by switching the blame, so I put his pen in the clearing later that night. You were right about the thorns, Miss Black. They cut my feet dreadfully.”

“Yet, knowing you had committed murder, you stayed on here at the college?” Vaxley asked. “Was that sheer brazen nerve, or what?”

“No, it wasn’t that. I hadn’t got what my stepmother had asked for and I had to stay until I had. You remember that when dad and mother came here it was mother who insisted I stay on? I knew that it was Mr. Whittaker who’d taken the dead body of Frances, because I saw him do it when I came back from the clearing—so you guessed right, ma’m. And I knew it was him I wanted—”

“Then?” Maria prompted.

“Well, I didn’t know you were up to anything, Miss Black, until you went into the laboratory one evening. I was hidden outside to see if Whittaker came in, because that might give me a chance to get the formula. Instead I saw you take a note out of your locket and then take down several chemical bottles. I realised that I had got to get at the formula somehow. You know how I did that. I saw you leave in the moonlight when actually I was watching for Mr. Whittaker. I used the food pretext and Frances’s shoes—”

“And had Vera take the blame?” Maria snapped.

“I dared her into it to safeguard myself. I only returned your watch after attacking you in the mine because I realised things might be much worse for me if I didn’t. The trouble was I dare not leave, because I’d only got half the formula even now.… I watched my chance and tried to find out what you were going to do, Miss Black. I heard yon say you were going to examine the dormitory lockers, so I went ahead of you and arranged that little trick. I felt that you did not believe me, though, and it seemed that I had got to act fast. My only way seemed to be to concentrate on Whittaker and get out the moment I could.

“Luck favoured me because later that evening, from my study window—Beryl was out in the common room—I saw Whittaker go over to the lab. I dashed to his study and found it unlocked, went through the place from top to bottom—and found the formula, or at least a copy of it, behind a picture. I’d just got it when Whittaker came back. I made an excuse about a question, and got out quick. My one aim then was to get the formula to my mother personally as fast as possible. But you know what happened.”

“And where is this copy formula now?” Vaxley asked.

Joan shot a defiant glance at her stepmother’s steely eyes.

“In the lining of my travelling case in the punishment room. You can get it any time you want.”

Maria rose, unlocked the door, and left the study. In a few minutes she returned with the case in her hand. Putting it on the desk she let Joan do the rest. Vaxley took the copy formula from her and pocketed it. Then he looked at Mrs. Dawson.

“Well?” he asked curtly.

She remained silent, her thin face sardonic.

Vaxley shrugged. “With the letter you sent to your daughter and your own admission before witnesses here, any confession of yours would be superfluous. We can trace your connections easily enough.”

“If she won’t speak, I will!” Herbert Dawson declared. “I have long had my suspicions that she was somehow involved with certain European factions who would naturally regard the acquisition of a deadly explosive as most desirable, but there was nothing I could prove. Besides, since her influence with certain of these contacts boosted my own business, I did not feel justified in questioning anything. I suspected the murder of Frances Hasleigh quite a lot, because I know my wife had many letters with the postmark of this district upon them, presumably from whomever she had tracing the movements of that girl and her brother, by which she knew they were planning to come to Roseway here. Believe me, Miss Black—and you, too, Superintendent—this is a terrible shock to me that my daughter should be used as a pawn for murder.”

He fell silent, obviously too distraught to go any further.

“I shall have to ask all three of you to come down to the station with me,” Vaxley said quietly. “And before we go I’ll come with you and get that letter, Joan. You, Miss Black, we shall need for evidence at the trial.”

She nodded and handed over the dossier.

“For you, Super, with my compliments,” she said gravely.