Chapter 12 Chapter Eleven Talks

When Inspector Kelsey returned to the station, the sergeant on duty said to him: "We've brought Adam Goodman, and we're waiting for you, Inspector." "Adam Goodman? Oh, yes, the gardener." A young man stood up respectfully from his seat.He was tall, dark, and handsome, wearing a pair of stained corduroy trousers, an old leather belt loosely tied around the waist, and a dazzling blue open-necked shirt. "I heard you wanted to talk to me." He spoke in a rough voice, just like young people nowadays, with a bit of provocative and aggressive flavor. Kelsey simply said:

"Yes, go to my office." "I don't know anything about the murder," said Adam Goodman angrily. "It has nothing to do with me. I slept at home last night." Kelsey just nodded without expressing her opinion. He sat down on the seat behind his desk and gestured for the young man to sit on the chair opposite.A young policeman in plain clothes followed them in quietly and sat down modestly a little distance from them. "Hi," Kelsey said, "you're Goodman—" He looked at a note on the desk, "Adam Goodman." "Yes, Inspector. But I want to show you this first."

Adam's attitude had changed.He looked neither aggressive nor angry now, quiet and polite.He took something out of his pocket and passed it across the table.Kelsey raised his eyebrows slightly as Kelsey took it for a closer look, then looked up. "I don't need you here, Bob," he said. The cautious young policeman got up and went out without showing any surprise, which he was. "Ah." Kelsey looked at Adam sitting opposite, thinking with interest, "So you are this person? Then I would like to know, you go to a..." "What the hell are you doing here at the girls' school?" the young man finished for him.Although his tone of voice is still polite, he can't help but chuckle:

"It's really the first thing I do on a job like this. Do I look like a gardener to you?" "Not like gardeners around here. They're usually old people. Do you know how to garden?" "Knows a lot. My mother is an old gardener. Gardening is an English specialty. She has been worrying about having me as her right-hand man." "What happened to Fangcaodi—you must be on stage?" "We don't actually know what happened to the Greenfields. My job is of a surveillance nature. Or so it was until last night. Murder of a physical education teacher is a bit outside the scope of the school curriculum." .”

"It can happen in schools, too," sighed Inspector Kelsey. "Anything can happen—anywhere. I've been taught that. But I must admit that this case is a little out of the ordinary." .What the hell is in here?" Adam told him the inside story, and he listened with gusto. "So I wronged the girl just now," said he, "but you must admit it sounds too far-fetched to be true. Jewels worth half a million to a million pounds? You say that Who does the jewelry belong to?" "It's a delicate question. To answer it, you'd have a large group of international lawyers dealing with it, and they might disagree. You can make all sorts of arguments about the case. Three months ago, the jewels belonged to Ramat His Royal Highness Prince Ali Yusuf. But now? If the jewels appear in Ramat, the jewels will become the property of the current local government, and they will have to investigate. Ali Yusuf may make a will and bequeath the jewels to someone man, then a lot depends on where the will is enforced and provable. The jewels may belong to his family. But the point is that if you or I pick up the jewels in the street, Put them in your own pocket and it's effectively yours and mine. That said, I don't believe there's any legal authority that can tell us to hand over jewels we've got. Of course, they might want to, but international law It's so intricate, it's just unbelievable..."

"You're effectively saying that whoever finds it belongs to him, don't you?" Inspector Kelsey shook his head disapprovingly. "That's not quite right!" he said solemnly. "Yes," said Adam gravely, "that doesn't quite fit. There's more than one theory about the whereabouts of the jewels. None of them can be justified. You know, it's all over the place. It might be a rumour, it might be true. But it is said that the jewelry was taken out of Ramat on the eve of the revolution. As for how it was taken out, there are many opinions."

"But what does this have to do with Fangcaodi? Is it because of that little princess who pretends to be serious?" "Princess Shesta, Ali. Yusuf's cousin, is right. Someone may try to get something to her, or message her. A few characters who seem suspicious to us are always Hanging around here. For example, there's a Mrs. Kolinsky who lives at the Grand Hotel. She's a prominent member of what one might call an 'international mobster'. She doesn't offend you. Prohibition, always law-abiding, very respectable, but a collector of vital intelligence. There is also a woman who used to perform and dance in a bar in Ramat. It is said that she has been working for some foreign government .We don't know where she is now, we don't even know what she looks like, but it is said that she may be in this area. It seems that everything is concentrated around the meadow, don't you think? And last night Li Springer Miss was murdered."

Kelsey nodded thoughtfully. "Coincidences all come together." He restrained his emotions a bit, "You can see this kind of thing on TV...it's too far-fetched-it's just your idea...impossible It's true. It's not the normal course of things." "Spying, robbery, violence, murder, fraud," agrees Adam, "it's all abnormal—but there's such a side of life." "But it doesn't exist in Fangcao!" Kelsey couldn't hold his breath and blurted out this sentence. "I understand what you mean," Adam said, "."

There was a silence, then Inspector Kelsey asked: "You see what happened last night?" Adam was not in a hurry to answer, and after a while he said slowly: "Springer's in the gym - late at night. Why? We've got to start here. Why is she there, in the gym at that time of night, without making a decision about it first, and always asking herself who killed her, totally It's a waste of time. We can assume that although she leads the life of an unquestionable gym teacher, she doesn't sleep well at night, so she gets up and looks out the window and sees a light in the gymnasium - does her window face that way? "

Kelsey nodded. "We don't know. But this is someone who is in a desperate situation rather than killing her." Kelsey nodded again: "That's how we see it. But that last point of yours has always troubled me. You're not going to shoot a man—n't going to do it unless—" "What's the purpose? What the hell is there in and around the stadium? It's hard for people to imagine that it's a hiding place." "There's nothing hidden there, I can tell you that. We've scoured it like a grate joint—the student's wardrobe, and Springer's. Sports equipment of all kinds, nothing unusual or suspicious. And besides, it's a brand new building! There's no jewelry or anything like that."

"Whatever it was, of course it could have been taken. Taken by a murderer," Adam said. "Another possibility is that Miss Springer or someone else is simply using the gymnasium as a tryst place. This place It's convenient. It's some distance from the school building, but not too far. And if you see anyone running up there, whoever you think they are, they'll simply reply that they saw the lights, blah, blah. We'll Suppose Miss Springer went there to meet someone—there was an argument and she was shot. Or, to put it another way, Miss Springer saw a man coming out of the school building and followed him , broke the secret that no one intended her to hear or see." "I never saw her when she was alive," Kelsey said, "but the impression I get from people talking about her is that she's a nosy woman." "I think that's really the most likely version of the truth," agrees Adam. "Whoever gets involved gets hurt. Yeah, I think that's what happened at the gym." "But if it's a tryst, then—" Kelsey broke off. Adam nodded vigorously. "Yes, it seems that in this school, there seems to be someone who deserves our close attention. In fact, it is a cat that has mixed into the pigeons." Kelsey's heart skipped a beat. "Cat among pigeons," Kelsey said. "One of the schoolmistresses here, Miss Rich, said something like that today." He thought for a while. "There are three newcomers to the staff this semester," he said, "Secretary Shaplan, French teacher Blanche, and of course Miss Springer herself. She is dead and does not count. If the pigeons If there is a cat, it seems to be sure that it must be one of the other two people." He looked at Adam and said, "As for the relationship between these two people, what do you think?" Adam thought for a moment and said, "This woman is cool-headed and smart."If I were you, I would look up her history.What the hell are you funny about? " Kelsey was still grinning. "She's still suspicious of you," Kelsey said. "She caught you coming out of the gym—she thinks you look weird!" "Well, bad luck to me!" said Adam angrily, "how dare she be so rude!" Kelsey resumed her air of authority. "The thing is," he said, "we take the Meadows very seriously in the area. It's a good school. Miss Bulstrode is a class. The faster the case is solved the better it is for the school." Good. We want to thoroughly investigate the matter and prove that Fangcaodi is completely innocent." He paused, looked at Adam, thinking about something in his heart. "I think," he said, "she'll keep her mouth shut, and you don't have to worry about it." Adam thought about it, then nodded. "Well," said he, "in the circumstances I shall have to tell her sooner or later."

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