• THIRTY •
“RIGHT, THEN,” INSPECTOR HEWITT was saying. “Let’s have it.”
I couldn’t help thinking how much progress he had made since we had first met nine months ago, upon which occasion he had sent me to fetch the tea.
There was hope for the man yet.
“I expect you’ve had this figured out right from the starting gate,” he said, with a pleasant enough smile.
His wife, Antigone, touched her hair, and I recognized that a secret signal had flown between them.
“That is, I hope you won’t mind filling in a few of the blanks for us.”
“Of course not,” I said in a sort of humble, jolly-girl-well-met kind of voice. “I should be more than happy to assist. Where shall I begin?”
But don’t push your luck, his eyes were saying.
“Let’s begin with suspicion,” he said, taking out his notebook and opening it flat on his knee.
I saw him write down “Flavia de Luce,” and underline it.
He had once, in an earlier investigation, added the letter “P” after my name and had refused to explain its meaning. There was no “P” this time.
“When did you first begin to suspect that something peculiar was going on at St. Tancred’s?”
“When the sexton—that’s Mr. Haskins—mentioned the mysterious lights in the churchyard during the war. Why would he tell me a thing like that unless he wanted to scare me away?”
“So you think Haskins was in on it?”
“Yes. I can’t prove it, but a gang of men could hardly tunnel in his churchyard without his knowing about it, could they?”
“I suppose not,” Inspector Hewitt said.
First point to Flavia.
“As Mr. Sowerby has told you,” I said, “they were after the Heart of Lucifer. They’ve been at it for ages—years perhaps. Magistrate Ridley-Smith was paying them off—”
This was the point where he had stopped me before, and I paused to see if he would let me go on.
Feely and Daffy were gaping like a pair of guppies and Antigone smiled upon me like a madonna who had just had a foot massage.
It gave me the boldness I needed. There are times when honesty is not just the best policy, but the only one.
“I have to admit I had just a quick look round Mr. Collicutt’s room at Mrs. Battle’s boardinghouse.”
“Yes, I thought you might,” the Inspector said. “Good job we’d been there before you.”
“I found six hundred pounds hidden under Mr. Collicutt’s bed. It was in a Players tin.”
I knew in a flash that I was in official hot water.
Exasperation was written all over the Inspector’s face, but to his credit, he did not explode. The presence of his wife might have had something to do with it.
“Six hundred pounds,” he said, and the words hissed out of his mouth like hot steam.
I smiled brightly, as if I thought I deserved a pat on the head. “It was in an envelope which had once had Magistrate Ridley-Smith’s initials embossed on the flap: QRS—Quentin Ridley-Smith. Hardly likely to have been anyone else’s. Not many people have three intials which are consecutive letters of the alphabet.”
I have to say that Inspector Hewitt was doing a remarkable job of keeping his temper in check. Only the color of his ears betrayed him.
I decided it was time to provide a diversion.
“I expect you noticed that someone had written ‘Deceased’ after Mr. Collicutt’s name on his manuscript?”
“And if we did?”
The man was giving nothing away.
“It was in a woman’s handwriting. There were no women in the Battle house except Mrs. Battle and her niece Florence. Mr. Collicutt was said to—”
“Hold on,” the Inspector said. “Are you telling me that one of them—”
“Not at all,” I said. “I’m simply pointing out a fact. George Battle’s handwriting was all over his account books in his work shed. Large and messy. It wasn’t him.”
From a distant part of the house came the sound of the doorbell, and before we could get back to our duel of wits, Dogger was at the door.
“Detective Sergeants Woolmer and Graves,” he announced. “May I show them in?”
It was Feely’s place, as eldest member of the family present, to give her assent, but before she could open her mouth, I beat her to it.
“Thank you, Dogger,” I said. “Please do.”
Woolmer and Graves came into the drawing room and promptly melted into the Victorian wallpaper.
“Six hundred pounds in a Players tin at the Battle residence,” Inspector Hewitt said to Sergeant Graves. “Did we note that? I don’t remember seeing it.”
Sergeant Graves’s blush made words unnecessary but he spoke anyway.
“No, sir.”
Inspector Hewitt turned to a new page and made a note that did not promise a happy future for poor Graves.
“Carry on, then,” he said after an agonizingly long time.
“Well,” I went on, “six hundred pounds seemed like a lot of money for a poor country organist. The fact that it was hidden under his bed, rather than being put safely into the bank, suggested something fishy. It was only when I met Jocelyn Ridley-Smith that I put two and two together.”
Inspector Hewitt couldn’t conceal his puzzlement. “The magistrate’s son?”
“Yes. I believe Magistrate Ridley-Smith was doing research in the Public Record Office in London when he came across the marginal note by Ralph, the cellarer at Glastonbury Abbey.
“Adamas, it said. ‘Diamond,’ in Latin. Ralph had seen it with his own eyes. He also said quite clearly that it was buried with Saint Tancred at Lacey. Which is here.”
“Go on,” the Inspector said.
“He believed that the stone would cure Jocelyn of his affliction.”
Antigone gasped, and I loved her for it.
“Mr. Sowerby says diamonds were once believed to be ‘a help to lunaticks and such as are posessed with the Devil.’ What else would an elderly magistrate want with a diamond?
“Jocelyn is not a lunatic!” I blurted. “He is lonely, he’s a captive, and he’s suffering from lead poisoning, which he inherited from his mother.