And Death Came Too

by Hull, Richard

  “And I mean it.”

  “So do I. I’ve told you. I’ve said my last word.”

  The man took half a step and raised his arm behind him.

  “You have,” he said.

  20

  Marie Lefevre

  The so-called Mary Smith got up early, as was her normal custom, and enjoyed the luxury of not having to make her own coffee, even if she would have made it more to her own taste. She would be glad to go back home. Her stay in England had not been unpleasant, but it had been dull, and she felt out of place in this hotel in which her mistress’s unusual generosity had placed her. At an unnecessarily early hour she had done what little repacking was required, and was ready to start. It being, however, some hours too soon, she decided to take a look at London in order to pass the time away.

  But to her annoyance, when she put her head out of her door, there was a man in the passage, and instinctively she distrusted all men. She shut the door again and waited impatiently for a quarter of an hour. This time no one was in sight, but no sooner had she shut the door behind her than the same man appeared from round the corner, blocking her only exit. Moreover, he appeared to want to speak to her.

  “Miss Smith?” he said.

  “Yes. Go away. I have the money to pay for my room, and I am not trying to go without.”

  “I’ve no doubt you will do what is right. Miss Westbury let you have the money, didn’t she?”

  “Yes.” Every minute she disliked the conversation more, and she mentally cursed Madame for having used her maiden name in England. What did it matter if she was still using her old English passport? It had been lazy of her not to get it altered when she married; but, then, Madame always was lazy, had always put things off until it was too late to do the simple thing, and so gave herself more trouble in the long run.

  Apparently it was about Madame that the man wanted to speak. In a way, that was a relief, and allayed her fears as to what he wanted. Still, she would rather be left quite alone, and she tried to put him off by saying that both she and Miss Westbury were going back to France that day. Everything they owed in England, she added, had been paid, and their passports were in order.

  “No doubt,” was the quite courteous reply. “You were in Miss Westbury’s employment?”

  “Yes. And, then, one may have a French maid, may one not? Especially if one lives in France.”

  “Why, certainly. But I am afraid that Miss Westbury has had an accident. She wants you to go to her.”

  “Oh, no. Madame’s instructions were of the most precise. Whatever happened, I was to return.”

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible.” The man seemed a little disconcerted, and she looked at him more closely. He seemed an ordinary, middle-aged man, and not the kind of whom she had any reason to be frightened. A little firmness would probably win her point.

  “Impossible,” she repeated, wishing that she had feigned complete ignorance of the English language instead of using the very creditable accent and phraseology which Madame had taught her.

  “No, not impossible,” the man repeated. “In fact, the impossibility is for you to go. You’ve got to give us quite a lot of explanations.”

  “You? And who are you?”

  “A detective from Scotland Yard. Here’s my card. I want you to come round and have a quiet talk there, if you would. On the way, if you want to, you can confirm that I am a policeman from any uniformed man you see.”

  “‘If I would come round?’ I thought there was some talk of it being only possible that I did what you tell me? And I know nothing of your card.”

  “It’s quite in order—really it is. And I tell you you can confirm it. If you’ll take my advice, you’ll do best to come round. Nobody’s going to do you any harm.”

  “But what do they want?”

  “I don’t rightly know, miss, but I was to get you to come round.” The detective shrewdly judged that it would be best if possible to avoid telling her that she was wanted as a material witness as to the murder of Yeldham. Instead, he tried another line. “Besides, there’s Miss Westbury. Don’t you want to do something for her? You’ve been with her for some time, haven’t you?”

  The latter was a shot in the dark, but it proved to be fairly correct. “For a while, yes. And she is of a sufficient amiableness, provided one does what she says. If not, then mon Dieu! Quel tapage.

  “There is a big storm in the teacup. I go back to France.”

  “You’ve got to come to the Yard, and then to Trevenant.”

  “Comment?”

  “Trevenant.”

  “I have not heard of that.”

  “It’s not the first time she’s been there. There was the time when she went out for most of the night and told you to tell the policeman who came round that she had been at home all day.” The detective had very little idea of what that meant, but he had been told that it was a line he might use if necessary, but with caution.

  Apparently it had some effect. “As for that, I know not where she go.” The woman’s agitation betrayed itself by her idiom.

  “But you knew she went. I think you’d better come round. You did say you didn’t know, didn’t you? Really, I should advise you to come.”

  For a moment she hesitated further. Then finally: “I come,” she said.

  To her relief, she was not made to walk through the streets with this unknown man. She was taken in a taxi. Moreover, during the short journey, the man said nothing, and very soon she was being interviewed kindly but very thoroughly by another and apparently superior official. She gave her own name as Marie Lefevre, and the name of her employer as Maud Westbury. “But that,” she went on, “is not perhaps really her name. It is Madame Yeldham.”

  Even she could see that the name itself caused a slight start of surprise. “Yeldham? Did you know Mr Yeldham?”

  “No. I never saw him. Madame said that he died soon after they were married and shortly before she took me into her employ. But I think not. I think there was, as you would say, something funny, and that she disembarrassed herself of those who had known Mr Yeldham. He was a bad dream she wished to forget, especially now when she would marry again a merchant so rich, though not of the most young.”

  “I see. I am told that just now you said you had never heard of Trevenant?”

  “That is so.”

  “Or Treve?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know that there was living at a house called Y Bryn in Trevenant a Mr Arthur Yeldham?”

  “No. But Madame did one day say that there was a man who had looked after her affairs when she was young—how do you call it, a guardian?—who had the same names. She said he was more a friend of her father’s than a relation. A very distant cousin, perhaps. Madame is an orphan.”

  “You have read about his death in the papers, perhaps?”

  “I never read the English papers.” She looked so unconcerned as she said this that it could only be taken as being true. Instead, her interlocutor tried another tack. “Did she tell you if she came over to see this Mr Yeldham, her guardian?”

  “She did not tell me whom she came to see.”

  “Did she give you any idea of why she came?”

  “She came on some legal business.”

  “Of what kind?”

  There was a silence, and then Marie answered hesitatingly, “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do. Perhaps I should tell you that Mr Yeldham was murdered and that Miss Westbury—Mrs Yeldham, that is—withheld important evidence. She made herself liable to criminal prosecution in connection with that murder by so doing. You had better be careful not to do the same. No harm will happen to you if you tell me all you know, but if you keep anything back it might. Now, then—”

  “I know very little. How should I know much? And I do not think you do right to treat me so.” Marie dabbed her eyes with a rather dirty handkerchief and proceeded without more fuss to tell such of the story as she knew. “I think Monsieur Yeldham—y
oung Monsieur Yeldham, that is, for he is not the old gentleman who was the guardian. I think young Monsieur Yeldham is not dead. Madame wished to marry again. That is why she came over here as Miss Westbury, which also was what her passport said. Perhaps she had not changed it for that reason. I have also wondered whether something has not happened that ought not about a passport when she was married. I do not know. But perhaps also she is not married, because at one time she made inquiries. There was something about her being too young. Something, too, about money, and she say, ‘I must find out, but I find out quietly. I go to England and I ask most quietly.’ When she went away that night I think it was to find out, and so when the fat policeman in the country ask me and I see she wish me not to know, I say nothing. That was wrong?”

  “It was. But we may be able to overlook it. Go on.”

  “Very well. But she do not find out. Why, I do not know. But you say this old Monsieur Yeldham was dead—killed, you say? Then she come up here to London to find out, and she come back glad. She say she have found out: that the money is hers and that she darn well mean to get it. For that she went off, I think, last night.”

  “Did you know where to?”

  “No. She say she may be back only just in time to catch the train, and that I am to go whether she is there or not. For myself, I think she is frightened, because, like me, she did not tell the fat policeman everything, and I think she wanted to keep away from all of you until the train go. Then she would join it at the last moment and would find me. There would have been much to pay on the luggage. Two luggage, one ticket.” She shrugged her shoulders expressively. “That was for her to decide. She gave me enough money to pay. But now you say she have an accident and will not be on the train. Perhaps, then, I ought not to go; but I cannot stay here long, or I shall not have enough money. What she gave will not last long. And my ticket, will that be wasted?”

  “That can be transferred or arranged somehow. And so can the money. But I think you will want to stay.”

  “Madame will let me have this money. She is not unfair, even if she is not generous, but she has not so much, I think, that she can throw the silver about. Perhaps she will be richer if she got this money last night.”

  “Perhaps. Anyhow, I shall see that that is all right; but you will have to remain here for a bit. You may have to go down to this place Trevenant, of which you have not heard. But first of all I want to get down in writing what you have said.”

  By the time that was completed, the question of whether she should use her ticket that day or not had been quite settled. Her train had gone already without her noticing how the time was passing, nor had she observed that, in writing it out, she had amplified her story here and there in detail, particularly as to place names and dates. But on the question of her doubts about the passport she had said no more.

  21

  Trevenant Hill

  Marie Lefevre was not the only one who now had to admit that he or she had suppressed something in their knowledge. There were several others, and last and least of which was the bulky Sergeant Evans.

  His troubles had really begun when he resumed his casual acquaintance with ex-Private Davies and taken to poking about near the deserted farm at the top of Trevenant Hill. It was obvious that the place was crawling with rabbits—and perhaps with something better—and that it would be a positive kindness to the neighbours to keep them down. In fact, it began to surprise Evans that half the town was not wandering about there every night poaching happily. He even wondered why he had not thought of keeping an eye on the place some months before.

  The chance discovery of a cock pheasant’s tail feather left about incredibly carelessly by Davies’s son gave him his opportunity. Despite the emphatic statement of the father that a fox must have got the bird, he gradually half-frightened, half-cajoled Davies into telling him everything, quite improperly promising him to respect his confidence. The place, it emerged, was trapped pretty regularly; but a very effective ring had been formed by the band who did so. They strongly disliked intruders, and they had succeeded in scaring them away. Amongst themselves, too, it was agreed that the nights of the week should be divided, in order to avoid alarming mutual encounters by night. The whole thing was working very well.

  When Maud Westbury had put her car the first time on the by-lane to the farm, it had been noticed, but with no great concern. None of the gang ever used the road, preferring unobtrusive gaps in the hedges. Young Davies, however, had had a thorough hiding from his father for bringing the police into it by talking of the number of the car, but as apparently no further search was being made, it was considered that the temporary holiday that the rabbits had been granted—the one pheasant having, in fact, been the result of yielding to an irresistible but local temptation—should cease. Activities were to be resumed that night. As for young Davies, he was too used to getting a hiding to worry much about an extra one, and so everybody was happy.

  Davies looked rather anxiously at the sergeant as he finished his story. It was true that he had been given a promise, but you could never trust these policemen, in his belief, even friendly ones like this one. Suddenly a really bright idea occurred to him. Evans might be a policeman, and he might be very fat, but he was born in a county every one of whose inhabitants really regarded poaching not as against the law, but as a perfectly proper form of sport.

  “It’s good fun going out of a night-time,” he began gently.

  “It is,” Evans agreed incautiously.

  “Did you use to do it when you were a lad?”

  A nod being the answer, Davies was encouraged to go on tactfully. Before Evans departed he found that he had agreed to accompany Davies that night. Despite his bulk and his conscience, he thoroughly enjoyed the night’s work, but he, as well as Davies, thought that he had been led into a trap when, returning with the spoils of the chase, he heard whispers coming from the lane. In alarm they both fled, Davies keeping well clear of the town and Evans getting into it as quickly as he could. In a short while the sergeant was walking along the main road up the hill again in the hopes that, had he been seen, he might be able to pretend that he was doing something quite different, and praying that his gasping for breath might not give him away.

  Though quite what he was to say he had been doing there at all he never made up his mind, and when Major Flaxman asked him afterwards why, he was rather nonplussed. “I wasn’t sleeping properly, sir,” he suggested. “Worrying over this case and the way it wasn’t going on, I expect. Anyhow, I thought I’d take a walk and see what was happening. It must have been instinct, sir. Lucky thing, sir.”

  Flaxman rubbed the end of his nose. He profoundly mistrusted instinct, and he did not like the dig which had been made by innuendo at Scoresby.

  “In plain clothes?” he asked sharply.

  Evans had looked demurely virtuous.

  “You get more chance that way,” he replied.

  It was again not an answer that particularly pleased the chief constable, but perhaps it was not the best moment to remind Evans that the case was no business of his, and so he contented himself with telling him to describe the scene again for Scoresby’s benefit.

  “As I got some way up the hill,” Evans began, carefully omitting the fact that he had got on to the road through the hedge not very far from the top, “I saw something black on the skyline. There’s a bit of a false crest to the hill there, and it was a fairly dark night, so that I didn’t see it till it was nearly on me, then I jumped aside quick. It was a car running down the hill without any lights on and without being in gear.”

  “Engine running?” Scoresby asked.

  “No, sir. Not judging by how quiet it was going. Not having any lights, naturally I looked for the number, and I managed to make out that it was this ZGQG10 of which I’d heard talk. I tried to yell, but somehow I didn’t seem able to. I think it was the shock of nearly being run over by that half-invisible thing. Besides, I thought there couldn’t be anybody in it—that somehow it
had been left carelessly with the brake off and had run away by itself, because it wasn’t being steered at all. It was bumping about. The hill’s pretty straight, but once or twice I heard it hit against the kerbstone, and I suppose that helped to keep it on the road. That and just luck.”

  “Any marks on the kerb?” Flaxman turned to Scoresby, to Evans’s unconcealed disgust. He did not at all approve of having his story checked up in that way, and directly Scoresby said that there were marks he went on quickly to show that in his opinion the question had been unnecessary.

  “I don’t know that anyone ought rightly to have counted on that car going all the way down, but as long as it went a bit of the way it was all the same, because it was going pretty fast when it passed me, and if it had gone into a hedge or even more if it had hit a wall—and there’s a garden wall or two and at least three houses flush with the road—it would have made a tidy crash. Of course as it was—”

  As it was it had been a very tremendous crash, for the career of the car had only been stopped when it swerved violently just short of the bridge leading across the Nant. Then, bursting its way through the fence, it had gone hurtling into the stony river twenty feet below, turning completely over as it went.

  “You saw it go into the fence by the bridge?” Flaxman asked.

  “No, sir. It was too dark. I ran down the hill after it, but, of course, I couldn’t keep up. I heard it, though, and then I heard a thud with a bit of a splash as it went into the brook. That was a bit muffled like, though, owing to the ground sloping away pretty steep.”

  “I see. Now, did you hear any other sound—a shriek or anything of that sort?”

  “No, sir.”

  Flaxman turned to Scoresby.

  “What do you make of that?”

  “She might have been too frightened to shout, or she might have fainted when she took the brake off: but it’s much more consistent with her being dead beforehand.”