Cat Among the Pigeons

  This negative spate of information was interrupted by Miss Bulstrode. “One of the girls would like to speak to you, Inspector Kelsey,” she said.

  Kelsey looked up sharply. “Indeed? She knows something?”

  “As to that I’m rather doubtful,” said Miss Bulstrode, “but you had better talk to her yourself. She is one of our foreign girls. Princess Shaista—niece of the Emir Ibrahim. She is inclined to think, perhaps, that she is of rather more importance than she is. You understand?”

  Kelsey nodded comprehendingly. Then Miss Bulstrode went out and a slight dark girl of middle height came in.

  She looked at them, almond-eyed and demure.

  “You are the police?”

  “Yes,” said Kelsey smiling, “we are the police. Will you sit down and tell me what you know about Miss Springer?”

  “Yes, I will tell you.”

  She sat down, leaned forward, and lowered her voice dramatically.

  “There have been people watching this place. Oh, they do not show themselves clearly, but they are there!”

  She nodded her head significantly.

  Inspector Kelsey thought that he understood what Miss Bulstrode had meant. This girl was dramatizing herself—and enjoying it.

  “And why should they be watching the school?”

  “Because of me! They want to kidnap me.”

  Whatever Kelsey had expected, it was not this. His eyebrows rose.

  “Why should they want to kidnap you?”

  “To hold me to ransom, of course. Then they would make my relations pay much money.”

  “Er—well—perhaps,” said Kelsey dubiously. “But—er—supposing this is so, what has it got to do with the death of Miss Springer?”

  “She must have found out about them,” said Shaista. “Perhaps she told them she had found out something. Perhaps she threatened them. Then perhaps they promised to pay her money if she would say nothing. And she believed them. So she goes out to the Sports Pavilion where they say they will pay her the money, and then they shoot her.”

  “But surely Miss Springer would never have accepted blackmail money?”

  “Do you think it is such fun to be a schoolteacher—to be a teacher of gymnastics?” Shaista was scornful. “Do you not think it would be nice instead to have money, to travel, to do what you want? Especially someone like Miss Springer who is not beautiful, at whom men do not even look! Do you not think that money would attract her more than it would attract other people?”

  “Well—er—” said Inspector Kelsey, “I don’t know quite what to say.” He had not had this point of view presented to him before.

  “This is just—er—your own idea?” he said. “Miss Springer never said anything to you?”

  “Miss Springer never said anything except ‘Stretch and bend,’ and ‘Faster,’ and ‘Don’t slack,’” said Shaista with resentment.

  “Yes—quite so. Well, don’t you think you may have imagined all this about kidnapping?”

  Shaista was immediately much annoyed.

  “You do not understand at all! My cousin was Prince Ali Yusuf of Ramat. He was killed in a revolution, or at least in fleeing from a revolution. It was understood that when I grew up I should marry him. So you see I am an important person. It may be perhaps the Communists who come here. Perhaps it is not to kidnap. Perhaps they intend to assassinate me.”

  Inspector Kelsey looked still more incredulous.

  “That’s rather far-fetched, isn’t it?”

  “You think such things could not happen? I say they can. They are very very wicked, the Communists! Everybody knows that.”

  As he still looked dubious, she went on:

  “Perhaps they think I know where the jewels are!”

  “What jewels?”

  “My cousin had jewels. So had his father. My family always has a hoard of jewels. For emergencies, you comprehend.”

  She made it sound very matter of fact.

  Kelsey stared at her.

  “But what has all this got to do with you—or with Miss Springer?”

  “But I already tell you! They think, perhaps, I know where the jewels are. So they will take me prisoner and force me to speak.”

  “Do you know where the jewels are?”

  “No, of course I do not know. They disappeared in the Revolution. Perhaps the wicked Communists take them. But again, perhaps not.”

  “Who do they belong to?”

  “Now my cousin is dead, they belong to me. No men in his family anymore. His aunt, my mother, is dead. He would want them to belong to me. If he were not dead, I marry him.”

  “That was the arrangement?”

  “I have to marry him. He is my cousin, you see.”

  “And you would have got the jewels when you married him?”

  “No, I would have had new jewels. From Cartier in Paris. These others would still be kept for emergencies.”

  Inspector Kelsey blinked, letting this Oriental insurance scheme for emergencies sink into his consciousness.

  Shaista was racing on with great animation.

  “I think that is what happens. Somebody gets the jewels out of Ramat. Perhaps good person, perhaps bad. Good person would bring them to me, would say: ‘These are yours,’ and I should reward him.”

  She nodded her head regally, playing the part.

  Quite a little actress, thought the Inspector.

  “But if it was a bad person, he would keep the jewels and sell them. Or he would come to me and say: ‘What will you give me as a reward if I bring them to you?’ And if it worthwhile, he brings—but if not, then not!”

  “But in actual fact, nobody has said anything at all to you?”

  “No,” admitted Shaista.

  Inspector Kelsey made up his mind.

  “I think, you know,” he said pleasantly, “that you’re really talking a lot of nonsense.”

  Shaista flashed a furious glance at him.

  “I tell you what I know, that is all,” she said sulkily.

  “Yes—well, it’s very kind of you, and I’ll bear it in mind.”

  He got up and opened the door for her to go out.

  “The Arabian Nights aren’t in it,” he said, as he returned to the table. “Kidnapping and fabulous jewels! What next?”

  Eleven

  CONFERENCE

  When Inspector Kelsey returned to the station, the sergeant on duty said:

  “We’ve got Adam Goodman here, waiting, sir.”

  “Adam Goodman? Oh yes. The gardener.”

  A young man had risen respectfully to his feet. He was tall, dark and good-looking. He wore stained corduroy trousers loosely held up by an aged belt, and an open-necked shirt of very bright blue.

  “You wanted to see me, I hear.”

  His voice was rough, and as that of so many young men of today, slightly truculent.

  Kelsey said merely:

  “Yes, come into my room.”

  “I don’t know anything about the murder,” said Adam Goodman sulkily. “It’s nothing to do with me. I was at home and in bed last night.”

  Kelsey merely nodded noncommittally.

  He sat down at his desk, and motioned to the young man to take the chair opposite. A young policeman in plainclothes had followed the two men in unobtrusively and sat down a little distance away.

  “Now then,” said Kelsey. “You’re Goodman—” he looked at a note on his desk—“Adam Goodman.”

  “That’s right, sir. But first, I’d like to show you this.”

  Adam’s manner had changed. There was no truculence or sulkiness in it now. It was quiet and deferential. He took something from his pocket and passed it across the desk. Inspector Kelsey’s eyebrows rose very slightly as he studied it. Then he raised his head.

  “I shan’t need you, Barbar,” he said.

  The discreet young policeman got up and went out. He managed not to look surprised, but he was.

  “Ah,” said Kelsey. He looked across at Adam with speculative
interest. “So that’s who you are? And what the hell, I’d like to know, are you—”

  “Doing in a girls’ school?” the young man finished for him. His voice was still deferential, but he grinned in spite of himself. “It’s certainly the first time I’ve had an assignment of that kind. Don’t I look like a gardener?”

  “Not around these parts. Gardeners are usually rather ancient. Do you know anything about gardening?”

  “Quite a lot. I’ve got one of these gardening mothers. England’s speciality. She’s seen to it that I’m a worthy assistant to her.”

  “And what exactly is going on at Meadowbank—to bring you on the scene?”

  “We don’t know, actually, that there’s anything going on at Meadowbank. My assignment is in the nature of a watching brief. Or was—until last night. Murder of a Games Mistress. Not quite in the school’s curriculum.”

  “It could happen,” said Inspector Kelsey. He sighed. “Anything could happen—anywhere. I’ve learnt that. But I’ll admit that it’s a little off the beaten track. What’s behind all this?”

  Adam told him. Kelsey listened with interest.

  “I did that girl an injustice,” he remarked—“But you’ll admit it sounds too fantastic to be true. Jewels worth between half a million and a million pounds? Who do you say they belong to?”

  “That’s a very pretty question. To answer it, you’d have to have a gaggle of international lawyers on the job—and they’d probably disagree. You could argue the case a lot of ways. They belonged, three months ago, to His Highness Prince Ali Yusuf of Ramat. But now? If they’d turned up in Ramat they’d have been the property of the present Government, they’d have made sure of that. Ali Yusuf may have willed them to someone. A lot would then depend on where the will was executed and whether it could be proved. They may belong to his family. But the real essence of the matter is, that if you or I happened to pick them up in the street and put them in our pockets, they would for all practical purposes belong to us. That is, I doubt if any legal machine exists that could get them away from us. They could try, of course, but the intricacies of international law are quite incredible….”

  “You mean that, practically speaking, it’s findings are keepings?” asked Inspector Kelsey. He shook his head disapprovingly. “That’s not very nice,” he said primly.

  “No,” said Adam firmly. “It’s not very nice. There’s more than one lot after them, too. None of them scrupulous. Word’s got around, you see. It may be a rumour, it may be true, but the story is that they were got out of Ramat just before the bust up. There are a dozen different tales of how.”

  “But why Meadowbank? Because of little Princess Butter-won’t-melt-in-my-mouth?”

  “Princess Shaista, first cousin of Ali Yusuf. Yes. Someone may try and deliver the goods to her or communicate with her. There are some questionable characters from our point of view hanging about the neighbourhood. A Mrs. Kolinsky, for instance, staying at the Grand Hotel. Quite a prominent member of what one might describe as International Riff Raff Ltd. Nothing in your line, always strictly within the law, all perfectly respectable, but a grand picker-up of useful information. Then there’s a woman who was out in Ramat dancing in cabaret there. She’s reported to have been working for a certain foreign government. Where she is now we don’t know, we don’t even know what she looks like, but there’s a rumour that she might be in this part of the world. Looks, doesn’t it, as though it were all centring round Meadowbank? And last night, Miss Springer gets herself killed.”

  Kelsey nodded thoughtfully.

  “Proper mix-up,” he observed. He struggled a moment with his feelings. “You see this sort of thing on the telly … far-fetched—that’s what you think … can’t really happen. And it doesn’t—not in the normal course of events.”

  “Secret agents, robbery, violence, murder, double crossing,” agreed Adam. “All preposterous—but that side of life exists.”

  “But not at Meadowbank!”

  The words were wrung from Inspector Kelsey.

  “I perceive your point,” said Adam. “Lese-majesty.”

  There was a silence, and then Inspector Kelsey asked:

  “What do you think happened last night?”

  Adam took his time, then he said slowly:

  “Springer was in the Sports Pavilion—in the middle of the night. Why? We’ve got to start there. It’s no good asking ourselves who killed her until we’ve made up our minds why she was there, in the Sports Pavilion at that time of night. We can say that in spite of her blameless and athletic life she wasn’t sleeping well, and got up and looked out of her window and saw a light in the Sports Pavilion—her window does look out that way?”

  Kelsey nodded.

  “Being a tough and fearless young woman, she went out to investigate. She disturbed someone there who was—doing what? We don’t know. But it was someone desperate enough to shoot her dead.”

  Again Kelsey nodded.

  “That’s the way we’ve been looking at it,” he said. “But your last point had me worried all along. You don’t shoot to kill—and come prepared to do so, unless—”

  “Unless you’re after something big? Agreed! Well, that’s the case of what we might call Innocent Springer—shot down in the performance of duty. But there’s another possibility. Springer, as a result of private information, gets a job at Meadowbank or is detailed for it by her bosses—because of her qualification—She waits until a suitable night, then slips out to the Sports Pavilion (again our stumbling-block of a question—why?)—Somebody is following her—or waiting for her—someone who carries a pistol and is prepared to use it … But again—why? What for? In fact, what the devil is there about the Sports Pavilion? It’s not the sort of place that one can imagine hiding anything.”

  “There wasn’t anything hidden there, I can tell you that. We went through it with a tooth comb—the girls’ lockers, Miss Springer’s ditto. Sports equipment of various kinds, all normal and accounted for. And a brand new building! There wasn’t anything there in the nature of jewellery.”

  “Whatever it was it could have been removed, of course. By the murderer,” said Adam. “The other possibility is that the Sports Pavilion was simply used as a rendezvous—by Miss Springer or by someone else. It’s quite a handy place for that. A reasonable distance from the house. Not too far. And if anyone was noticed going out there, a simple answer would be that whoever it was thought they had seen a light, etc., etc. Let’s say that Miss Springer went out to meet someone—there was a disagreement and she got shot. Or, a variation, Miss Springer noticed someone leaving the house, followed that someone, intruded upon something she wasn’t meant to see or hear.”

  “I never met her alive,” said Kelsey, “but from the way everyone speaks of her, I get the impression that she might have been a nosey woman.”

  “I think that’s really the most probable explanation,” agreed Adam. “Curiosity killed the cat. Yes, I think that’s the way the Sports Pavilion comes into it.”

  “But if it was a rendezvous, then—” Kelsey paused.

  Adam nodded vigorously.

  “Yes. It looks as though there is someone in the school who merits our very close attention. Cat among the pigeons, in fact.”

  “Cat among the pigeons,” said Kelsey, struck by the phrase. “Miss Rich, one of the mistresses, said something like that today.”

  He reflected a moment or two.

  “There were three newcomers to the staff this term,” he said. “Shapland, the secretary. Blanche, the French Mistress, and, of course, Miss Springer herself. She’s dead and out of it. If there is a cat among the pigeons, it would seem that one of the other two would be the most likely bet.” He looked towards Adam. “Any ideas, as between the two of them?”

  Adam considered.

  “I caught Mademoiselle Blanche coming out of the Sports Pavilion one day. She had a guilty look. As though she’d been doing something she ought not to have done. All the same, on the whole—I
think I’d plump for the other. For Shapland. She’s a cool customer and she’s got brains. I’d go into her antecedents rather carefully if I were you. What the devil are you laughing for?”

  Kelsey was grinning.

  “She was suspicious of you,” he said. “Caught you coming out of the Sports Pavilion—and thought there was something odd about your manner!”

  “Well, I’m damned!” Adam was indignant. “The cheek of her!”

  Inspector Kelsey resumed his authoritative manner.

  “The point is,” he said, “that we think a lot of Meadowbank round these parts. It’s a fine school. And Miss Bulstrode’s a fine woman. The sooner we can get to the bottom of all this, the better for the school. We want to clear things up and give Meadowbank a clean bill of health.”

  He paused, looking thoughtfully at Adam.

  “I think,” he said, “we’ll have to tell Miss Bulstrode who you are. She’ll keep her mouth shut—don’t fear for that.”

  Adam considered for a moment. Then he nodded his head.

  “Yes,” he said. “Under the circumstances, I think it’s more or less inevitable.”

  Twelve

  NEW LAMPS FOR OLD

  I

  Miss Bulstrode had another faculty which demonstrated her superiority over most other women. She could listen.

  She listened in silence to both Inspector Kelsey and Adam. She did not so much as raise an eyebrow. Then she uttered one word.

  “Remarkable.”

  It’s you who are remarkable, thought Adam, but he did not say so aloud.

  “Well,” said Miss Bulstrode, coming as was habitual to her straight to the point. “What do you want me to do?”

  Inspector Kelsey cleared his throat.

  “It’s like this,” he said. “We felt that you ought to be fully informed—for the sake of the school.”

  Miss Bulstrode nodded.

  “Naturally,” she said, “the school is my first concern. It has to be. I am responsible for the care and safety of my pupils—and in a lesser degree for that of my staff. And I would like to add now that if there can be as little publicity as possible about Miss Springer’s death—the better it will be for me. This is a purely selfish point of view—though I think my school is important in itself—not only to me. And I quite realize that if full publicity is necessary for you, then you will have to go ahead. But is it?”