The Blind Side: An Ernest Lamb Mystery

by Patricia Wentworth

  Peter threw back his head and laughed.

  “My poor child! Did you think you’d done murder? Look here, it’s all right—quite all right. Listen. There’s a perfectly simple explanation. The idiot Mavis allowed herself to be lured into Ross’s flat last night. She said she didn’t know Lucy was going to be away—meant to spend the night there, and walked into Ross’s parlour to discuss alternatives. Ross got fresh. She hit him over the head with one of the ancestral decanters and staggered out on to the landing. The crash having waked me, I was there. She cast herself upon me, and I had to take her in after a few kind words with Ross, who came out of his door in a stoshed condition, bleeding like a pig—cut over the eye. So you see where the gore came from. No need to worry and all that. But I don’t like your wandering around in the night. You want someone to look after you, you do.”

  The blessed, the overwhelming relief brought up a thick mist before Lee’s eyes. The room seemed to tilt a little. Peter’s voice came through the mist.

  “Here, hold up. I can’t kiss you if you’re going to faint.”

  Chapter Ten

  The relief didn’t last. It ought to have lasted, but it didn’t. She was here in Peter’s arms. She was safe. And everything was quite all right. But a cold, deadly fear was seeping back into her mind. She drew away, and Peter came down to earth.

  “Look here, we’d better get rid of those footprints before anyone comes.”

  The fear was in Lee’s eyes as she looked at him.

  “I did it—I washed everything—at once.”

  “Practical child! Sure you made a good job of it?”

  She was seeing the landing in a horrid sharp picture, with herself on her knees and the wet swab in her hand. But there had only been footprints, nothing but her own footprints. There hadn’t been any pool she could have stepped in—not out there, not on the landing. She began to shake again.

  “What is it?” said Peter quickly.

  “There wasn’t any pool, Peter—there wasn’t. I washed the landing. There was only the mark of my foot. The first one was close to the door. Don’t you see what that means? I must have been inside the flat—and something’s happened there—something—”

  Peter spoke sharply.

  “Stop it! Pull yourself together! Think—was the door open—Ross’s door?”

  “No, it was shut.”

  “Sure?”

  “Quite sure—quite, quite sure.”

  “Then how could you have got in? Be reasonable.”

  She looked at him in a distressed way.

  “I don’t know. You said Ross was stoshed. Perhaps he didn’t shut the door when he went in—if he was drunk. Did you mean that he was drunk?”

  “Oh, he’d certainly been drinking, but I don’t suppose he was drunk. It takes a lot to make Ross drunk. No, he was just stoshed—silly—didn’t know what he was doing. Mavis had knocked him out. A decanter full of whiskey is quite a hearty weapon. Yes, I suppose he might have left the door open, but there’s nothing in that to worry you— No, but—by gum, there is! Because if you were inside the flat, those pretty little footprints of yours will be damn well all over the place.” He laughed. “It’s no odds, because he’ll only think it was Mavis, and he’ll want to hush the whole thing up. And his man won’t know who was there—only that there was a rough house and a lot of mess to clear up. And I don’t suppose it’s the first time by a long chalk. I expect he’s paid to hold his tongue. Now look here, what about this girl Mavis? The best thing we can do now is to cart her across to Lucy’s flat, and officially she spent the night there. In fact, you chaperon each other. By the way, I don’t know what she was up to, but she went out again after I took her in. She had the bedroom, and I was in here, and I heard the front door. Something had just waked me, and there she was, sneaking in with a little silver bag in her hand.”

  “What?”

  Peter nodded.

  “It was hers all right—matched her dress—made of the same stuff. She had it with her at the Ducks and Drakes—”

  “You were at the Ducks and Drakes—last night?”

  Peter grinned.

  “I was, my child, but not with her. She was with our dear cousin Ross. She had the little silver bag. And I was with the Nelsons and a party.” He groaned. “All enthusiastic, up from the country, and the temperature rising ninety! There is no call for jealousy. But to return to Mavis. She said she’d dropped her bag on the landing after the fracas, but I’m prepared to swear she hadn’t got it when she came tottering out of Ross’s flat, so it looks to me as if she had gone back for it.”

  “Would she, if he had frightened her as much as that?”

  “That depends on what was in the bag, and how badly she wanted it. She might have reckoned on his being asleep.”

  “But she couldn’t have reckoned on finding the door open.”

  “She might have gone out on the landing to see if she had dropped it there, and then found that the door wasn’t shut.”

  There was a pause. Lee said in a careful voice,

  “It couldn’t have been shut. If it had been shut, I couldn’t have got in. But if I was walking in my sleep—” She broke off. “I wonder which of us shut the door, because it was shut this morning, and one of us must have shut it—either Mavis or I.”

  Without waiting for him to speak she turned away. “We’d better see how she’s getting on,” she said, and went quickly to the communicating door. But no sooner was it open than she turned a frightened face on him.

  “Peter—she’s gone!”

  Peter said, “Nonsense!” and, when they had looked in the bathroom and kitchen, “Good riddance.” But he was left with a feeling of profound discomfort. Mavis had fainted when she saw Lee, and it was a real honest-to-goodness faint and no sham. And now she had run away without a word to either of them, and though it was a good riddance, it was also a disquieting circumstance.

  He went out on the landing and listened. Rush was down in the hall. He could hear him stumping about, swishing with a broom. He had probably seen Mavis, but it couldn’t be helped. He returned to his own hall.

  “I must go back,” said Lee, “before anyone comes. They’ll all be coming up and down now—Rush, and Mrs. Green—no, I don’t suppose she will, because she had one of her turns yesterday—but there’ll be Ross’s man—”

  He felt her stiffen against his arm.

  “He comes about seven,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Lee in a whisper.

  Chapter Eleven

  Ross Craddock’s man came in at the front door and gave the porter a civil “Good morning, Mr. Rush.” He was a quiet, melancholy-looking man in his forties, dark-eyed, dark-haired, and sallow-skinned. “Puts me in mind of an undertaker,” Rush used to tell his wife. “And soft on his feet like a cat. Suit Mr. Pyne a treat, he would. Now I say, and I’ll hold to it, that a man that is a man, well, he walks like a man—that’s what I say. He don’t go slipping and sliding as if he didn’t want no one to know what he was up to like that there Peterson does, or a prying old maid like Miss Bingham.”

  Mr. Peterson walked softly up two flights of stairs and crossed the landing without making a sound. He had his latchkey ready, and inserted it with the ease of long practice. The hall was dark. The bathroom and kitchen doors faced him, and they were shut. The sitting-room door, which was on his right, was open, but no light came from it, the velvet curtains being drawn and the room in darkness. The bedroom door on the left was shut. The place reeked of spirits.

  Peterson put on the hall light, and was immediately startled out of his accustomed routine. Instead of entering the kitchen he remained where he was, his hand just dropped from the switch and his eyes fixed upon the floor. Mr. Craddock had a soul above linoleum. The floor was of a light parquet, with a yellow and blue Chinese rug laid across it. And across the parquet and the yellow and blue of the rug were the marks of a naked foot printed in blood.

  You can’t mistake a bloodstain, try how you will. Pe
terson would have been very glad of anything that would have explained those marks away. If you were own man to a gentleman like Mr. Craddock, there were things you had to put up with, and things that were best not talked about, but you didn’t reckon on bloodstained footprints, no, that you didn’t.

  He went quickly over to the bedroom door, tapped lightly, and looked in. The curtains here were of chintz, and the light came through them, a tempered yellowish light, but enough to show that the bed had not been slept in, that it was in fact as he had left it, neatly turned down, with Mr. Craddock’s rather loud pyjamas laid out across the foot. Mr. Craddock’s taste in pyjamas was one of the subjects upon which Peterson exercised a wise discretion.

  He turned back, still not greatly alarmed, because he had before now found Mr. Craddock on the sofa, or even—though this had only happened once—upon the floor. He switched on the sitting-room light, and for a moment his only thought was that Mr. Craddock had done it again. And done it properly this time. The little table on which he had set out the drinks had been pushed over, and a chair was overturned. Broken glass too—well, that would account for the blood. There’d been a girl here, and she’d cut her foot. Nasty stuff, broken glass. Lord—what a blind it must have been! And Mr. Craddock dead to the world, sprawling there on the floor with the bits of a smashed decanter all about him.

  With a slight reproving click of the tongue, Peterson stepped forward. And then he saw the revolver—Mr. Craddock’s own revolver, the one he kept in the second drawer of his writing-table. And it lay on the hearth-rug a couple of yards away from Mr. Craddock’s outstretched left hand. And Mr. Craddock lay in a pool of blood. Mr. Craddock was dead.

  The quiet Mr. Peterson let off a yell and went out of the flat and helter-skelter down the stairs calling for Rush. There was an interval of perhaps two minutes before they returned together, the porter having left the hall and gone down into the basement. By the time they reached the landing the door of Mr. Peter Renshaw’s flat was open and he was coming out of it, pulling on a dressing-gown as he came, while Miss Bingham, without her front, was hanging over the banisters half way down from the floor above and demanding in a high, persistent voice,

  “What’s the matter? Oh dear—what’s the matter?”

  Behind the door of No. 7 Miss Lee Fenton was wondering how soon she could open that door. Had there been enough noise to wake her, or hadn’t there? But if it was a question of waking, she oughtn’t to be dressed like this. She heard the sound of hurrying feet, and she heard Miss Bingham scream. She couldn’t stand the suspense another moment. She opened the door and came out upon the landing.

  The door of Ross Craddock’s flat stood wide open. It had been most terrifyingly shut. Now it was most terrifyingly open. It drew her, and she went towards it, and over the threshold and into the hall.

  Miss Bingham was in the hall, and for once she had nothing to say. She was leaning against the wall with her hand to her side and a sick, shocked look on her face. Lee went past her to the sitting-room door, where she came face to face with Peter. He said, “Don’t come in,” but she looked over his shoulder and saw that Rush and Peterson were there. Peterson was over by the writing-table with the telephone receiver in his hand. The ceiling light was on and all the curtains drawn.

  Peter said, “Come away, Lee.” But how could she come away until she knew what Rush was looking at? He was standing right in the middle of the room, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, staring down at the floor—at someone lying on the floor—at Ross. And Ross was dead.

  Of course she had known that all along.

  Before Peter could stop her she said in that very clear voice of hers,

  “I told you something dreadful had happened.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Mr. Craddock’s sitting-room had been restored to decency and order. The official photographer had come and gone. Everything that could possibly retain a finger-print had been duly examined and a record taken. The whole official routine had been gone through. Mr. Craddock’s body had been removed to the mortuary.

  Inspector Lamb sat now at Mr. Craddock’s writing-table and fingered a gimcrack scarlet pen.

  “How anyone could write with a thing like that!” he said in a tone of disgust. “Well, it’ll be you, not me, Abbott. And we’d better get on with those statements. It’s murder sure enough, and an inside job by the look of it. We’ll have the manservant first—what’s his name—Peterson?”

  Inspector Lamb heaved himself out of his chair as he spoke. Hot—well, he would say it was going to be hot. Thunder presently as like as not. He was a stout man with a small, shrewd grey eye and a heavy jowl. Hair growing thin on the top, but with no grey in it. Very strong black hair.

  Young Abbott was a different type. Flaxen hair sleeked back; tall, light figure; high bony nose, and colourless lashes. Public school by the look of him. He went out and came back with Peterson. The man was composed enough, but his sallow skin shone damp with sweat.

  Abbott was now at the writing-table. On the other side of it, the side towards the room, two chairs were placed. The Inspector filled one handsomely. Peterson, when invited to occupy the other, sat down upon its forward edge and betrayed some nervousness. He gave his name as Matthew Peterson, and his age as thirty-eight. He had been with Mr. Craddock six years. He lived out, and came in daily from seven in the morning until—well, it just depended—he’d get away most days by seven in the evening. Mr. Craddock didn’t want him about after that. He preferred being private, as you might say.

  Questions about Mr. Craddock’s habits. “Would you call them irregular?” Peterson didn’t think it was for him to say. Did Mr. Craddock drink? Well, he put away a bit, but it wouldn’t be very often that you’d see him drunk.

  “Was he drunk last night?”

  “Not when I left him, sir.”

  “And that was?”

  “A quarter past seven. I laid out his things and set the drinks ready on the small table in here, and he said that would be all, and I went home.”

  “That was your usual practice?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What did you set out in the way of drinks?”

  “Decanter of whisky, siphon of soda, bottle of champagne, and two glasses.”

  Detective Abbott looked up for a moment, then plied, not the scarlet pen, but one of his own.

  “Two glasses—eh?” said the Inspector sharply.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And was that the usual thing?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You always left two glasses?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And were they always used?”

  “Not both of them—only once in a way, sir.”

  “And were you in the habit of leaving champagne?”

  For the first time Peterson hesitated. Then he said,

  “No, sir—only when Mr. Craddock said so.”

  “And he told you to leave it last night?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, what did you make of that?”

  Peterson hesitated again, and was prompted.

  “Did you take it to mean that he was expecting a lady?”

  “I suppose I did, sir.”

  “H’m! How much whisky was there in the decanter?”

  “It was full, sir.”

  “Any idea how it got broken?”

  “No, sir.”

  The Inspector shifted in his chair.

  “Well now, I want to talk about those footprints you said you saw in the hall.”

  “I did see them, sir.”

  “When you first came in?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Regular footprints?”

  “Oh, yes, sir.”

  “Wet, or dry?”

  “Dry, sir.”

  “You’re sure about that? How can you be sure?”

  Peter cleared his throat.

  “The light’s right overhead, sir, and as soon as I put it on, well, there were the footprints a
s plain as plain.”

  “And they were a woman’s footprints?”

  “That’s what I took them to be.”

  “Well, what’s happened to them?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I came on in here, and when I saw that Mr. Craddock was dead I ran down the stairs for Mr. Rush, and we came back together. And when I come to look for the footprints to show him, well, sir, they weren’t there, no more than what you saw for yourself, sir—a couple of smeared places just short of the rug on this side of the hall, and another over by the door, and the stains on the rug the same as I’d seen them the first time.”

  The Inspector said “H’m!” Then, sharply, “Would you swear you saw those footprints the first time you came up?”

  “Yes, sir, I would. It’s the truth, sir.”

  “Would you swear you didn’t touch them?”

  “Not the way you mean, sir. I don’t say I mightn’t have stepped on one of them accidental when I ran down for Mr. Rush. It was—well, it was an awful shock, sir. But stepping on a dry stain wouldn’t smear it like those footprints was smeared.”

  “No,” said the Inspector. “And now—just how long were you away?”

  Peterson looked anxious.

  “It’s very hard to say when you’ve had that kind of a shock. I couldn’t get down quick enough. But Mr. Rush he wasn’t in the hall. He was downstairs making his wife a cup of tea. I had to go down after him.”

  “Ah!” said the Inspector. “Mrs. Rush is bedridden, so I’m told.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Ever known her to be out of her bed?”

  “Not the six years I’ve been coming here.”

  “Well, you went down and told Rush Mr. Craddock was dead, and the pair of you came up together. It wouldn’t be less than two minutes you were away, I take it, and it might be as much as three. And the flat door standing open all the time?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, someone got in and smudged those footprints—that’s clear enough. And when you got upstairs you saw Mr. Renshaw coming out of number nine, and Miss Bingham half way down the stairs?”