“Might only mean she’d been quarrelling with Mr. Renshaw about Miss Fenton.”
Without speaking, Detective Abbott registered a polite rejection of this theory.
The Inspector said somewhat testily,
“Number three is Miss Lucy Craddock. Very suspicious behaviour indeed. She disapproves of Mr. Craddock’s attentions to her niece, quarrels with him, and is told she will have to turn out of her flat. Instead of leaving Victoria at seven-thirty-three as she had planned, on a trip to the Continent, she puts her luggage in the cloakroom and goes off to find Miss Mavis Grey. She calls at Mr. Ernest Grey’s house in Holland Park at a quarter to nine, and is told that Miss Grey is out. Between then and a quarter past three in the morning, when she arrives at Miss Challoner’s flat in Portland Place, we haven’t been able to trace her movements. She was probably trying to find Miss Grey. She may have come back here to find her, or she may not. All we know for sure is that she was looking for her, and that when she turned up at Miss Challoner’s she was in an unhinged and distracted condition. Her doctor says she won’t be fit to make a statement for a day or two. Fingerprints which correspond to what are probably hers, taken from objects in her own flat, have been found on the back of one of the chairs in here. But as Miss Bingham saw her leave this flat in the afternoon that doesn’t prove anything.”
“She may have wandered in and found him dead. That would account for the shock.”
“Then why didn’t she raise the house? What would you expect a timid old lady to do? Yell her head off and rouse the house. Why didn’t she do it? And I say the answer to that is, either she shot him herself, or she saw the person who shot him and she didn’t want to give him away.”
“Him—or her—” said Detective Abbott in a meditative voice.
Inspector Lamb looked at him sharply. After a moment he said,
“Number four—Miss Lee Fenton. Nothing against her except these.” He tapped a sheet covered with fingerprints. “The room was fairly plastered with them—both sides of the hall door, both sides of this door, backs of three chairs, and the mark of her whole hand on the corner of this writing-table. Now she couldn’t have been in in the afternoon, because she didn’t get here till eight o’clock, and then, she says, she had a bath and went straight to bed. Then there are those footprints. Peterson swears that they were the marks of a naked foot and quite distinct when he found the body. By the time he came back with Rush they were nothing but bloodstained smears. Now they weren’t Miss Grey’s footprints, because she was wearing silver shoes when Miss Bingham saw her—and, by the way, those shoes have never been found, so it’s likely they were badly stained. All she’ll say is that they were old, and that she threw them away.”
“She might have dropped them in the river,” said Detective Abbott.
The Inspector nodded.
“She probably did. It’s handy, and even if they’re fished up now, the stains will be out of them, and we don’t get any farther than what she says—that she threw them away. Well, we’ve rather got off Miss Fenton, but there isn’t anything to get back to except those prints—and the way she looks. Talk about shock—that young woman’s had one if I’m not very much mistaken.”
“She may have been fond of Craddock,” Detective Abbott put forward the suggestion blandly.
“Then she was the only one of the lot that was.”
“You never can tell, sir.”
The Inspector turned over the papers in front of him with a frown.
“The other prints found in here, besides Mr. Craddock’s own, are Peterson’s, Rush’s—he says he was in here speaking to him in the early afternoon—and a set of prints at present not identified—four fingers and a thumb of a man’s left hand on the door of this room at a height of four foot seven. That means a man of about six foot. Also the same left-hand print from two places on the banisters—one just at the first turn as you go down, and the other near the bottom. These prints are very important indeed, as they point to the presence of another person, as yet unidentified, who may have been the murderer. Well, there we are. Go along down and see if that charwoman’s come back—what’s her name—Mrs. Green. Lintott checked up on her, and the people in the house where she lodges say she came home about half past nine on the evening of the murder so much the worse for liquor that they had to help her to bed. She lay all day yesterday, and she’s supposed to be coming back today. Go and see if she’s come. There’s a point or two I’d like to ask her about.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Mrs. Green came in in her old Burberry with her battered black felt hat mournfully askew. The port-wine mark on her cheek showed up against the puffy pallor of the rest of her face. Her grey hair fuzzed out wildly in all directions. About her neck she wore, in lieu of the crochet shawl reserved for “turns,” the aged black feather boa which marked a return to the normal. A sallow handkerchief was clasped in one hand. On being invited to sit down she gulped and applied it to her eyes.
“Thank you kindly, sir. I’m sure it’s all so ’orrible, I don’t hardly know where I am. And on top of one of my turns too, and this one so bad, and if it hadn’t been for the mite of brandy I come by just in time there’s no saying whether I’d be here now.”
The Inspector relaxed.
“Ah—it takes a good bit of brandy to pull you round out of one of those turns, doesn’t it, Mrs. Green?”
Mrs. Green wiped her eyes.
“If it’s Mrs. Smith where I lodge that’s been telling your young man that I drink, then she’s no lady,” she said with dignity. “I don’t wish her nor no one else to go through the h’agony that I go through when I gets one of my turns, and what they told me in the ’orspital was to take a mite of brandy and lay down quiet, and so I done. And if I’m to get the sack for it, well, it’s a cruel shame, and maybe they won’t find it so easy to get a respectable woman to come into an ’ouse like this, what with murders and goings on. And if it comes to getting the sack, there’s more than me was for it, if it wasn’t for Mr. Craddock being done in.”
“And what do you mean by that, Mrs. Green?” said the Inspector.
Mrs. Green eyed him sideways.
“There’s those that gives themselves airs and talks haughty now that’d be singing on the other side of their mouth if it wasn’t for pore Mr. Craddock lying a mortual corpse at this moment instead of standing up on his two feet and telling them to be off out of here because they wasn’t wanted any longer.”
“I really think you had better tell me what you mean, Mrs. Green.”
The sideways look became a downcast one. The pale mouth primmed and said with mincing gentility,
“I’m sure I was never one to put myself forward, sir.”
The Inspector became hearty.
“Pity there aren’t more like you in that way, Mrs. Green. But it’s everyone’s duty to help the police, you know, so I’m sure you’re going to tell me what this is all about. If you know of someone who was going to be dismissed by Mr. Craddock, I think you ought to tell me who it is.”
“And him taking it on himself to say as how he’d see to it I got my notice!” said Mrs. Green with an angry toss of the head.
“Were you alluding to Rush?”
The head was tossed again.
“If it was the last word I was h’ever to speak, I was, sir.”
Detective Abbott began to write.
“Rush was under threat of dismissal by Mr. Craddock?”
“I heard him with my own ears, sir, as I was coming across the landing. The door of the flat was open, and the door of this room we’re in was on the jar, and Mr. Craddock, he was in a proper shouting rage, and you’ll excuse me repeating his language, which wasn’t fit for a lady to hear let alone to repeat. He says as loud as a bull, ‘You’ve been mucking up my papers!’ he says. And Rush, he answers him back as bold as brass. ‘And what would I want with your papers, Mr. Ross?’ he says. And Mr. Craddock says, ‘How do I know what you want? Blackmail, I shouldn’t wonder!�
�� And Rush ups and says, ‘You did ought to be ashamed of yourself, Mr. Ross, talking to me like that!’ And Mr. Craddock says, ‘Get to hell out of here!’ And Rush come out, and when he see me, if ever there was a man that looked like murder, it was him, and he went down the stairs swearing to himself all the way.”
The Inspector said, “H’m! Mr. Craddock had missed some of his papers. Is that what you made of it?”
Mrs. Green sniffed.
“I couldn’t say, sir. That’s what I heard. I can’t say more and I can’t say less. What I hears I remembers. And there’s more things than that I could tell you if I thought it my duty like you said.”
“It is undoubtedly your duty,” said the Inspector in a most encouraging voice.
Mrs. Green sniffed again.
“I’m not one to listen, nor yet to poke my nose into other people’s business, but I’ve got my work to do, and if a lady leaves her door open and talks into her telephone that’s just inside, well, it’s not my business to put cotton wool in my ears. And no later than the very evening before poor Mr. Craddock was murdered what did I hear but Miss Lucy Craddock say—”
“Wait a minute, Mrs. Green. When you say the evening before Mr. Craddock was murdered, do you mean the Tuesday evening? He was murdered some time after midnight of that night.”
“Yes, sir—the Tuesday evening. It would be about a quarter to half past six, and a shocking long day I’d had on account of cleaning up after Mr. and Mrs. Connell.”
“You were on the landing, and Miss Craddock’s door was open?”
“Half open, sir. She was all ready to start—going abroad she was—and Rush had just been up for the luggage, when the telephone bell went, and there she was, talking, and never give a thought to the door.”
“Well now, what did she say?”
“You could have knocked me down with a feather,” said Mrs. Green. “Dusting the banisters I was, and I heard her say quite plain, ‘Oh, my dear, you know Ross is turning me out.’ And then something about there being nothing in the will to stop him, and he wouldn’t turn Miss Mary out on account of her being an invalid—that’s the one that died—but as for Miss Lucy, he said she’d got to go. Getting on thirty years she’s been there, and I don’t wonder she was put about. She said as how he’d written her a horrible cruel letter, and it was all about Miss Mavis Grey that he didn’t mean no good to. Ever so worked up she sounded. And, ‘I’ve got quite a desperate feeling,’ she says. It was Miss Fenton she was talking to, and there was a lot about her wanting to come here while Miss Lucy was away. I’d my dusting to do and I didn’t trouble to listen, but I heard Miss Craddock say as how she was feeling desperate, and desperate she sounded—I’ll swear to that. And now they’re saying she never went off to the Continent at all. Looks as meek as a mouse she does, but there—it’s often the quiet ones that’s the worst when they’re roused.”
The Inspector let her go after that.
“Every blessed one of ’em might have done it as far as I can see,” he said in a disgusted tone as Detective Abbott came back after making sure that both doors were shut. “Talented lot of eavesdroppers they’ve got in this house too!”
“Yes, sir.”
The Inspector took a decision, a very minor decision, but one that was to have an unforeseen result. Getting out of his chair, he said,
“I’ll go down and have a word with Rush. Perhaps he’ll be easier to handle in his own quarters. And I’d rather like to see that wife of his. I suppose she is bedridden.”
“Haven’t you got enough suspects without her, sir?” said Detective Abbott.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Rushes’ basement room had a fair sized window through the top of which Mrs. Rush could see the railings which guarded the area and the legs and feet of the passers-by. She didn’t complain, but she sometimes felt that it would be pleasant to see a whole person for a change. For one thing, she never knew what sort of hats were being worn, and she took a particular interest in hats. It was no good asking Rush, because the vain adornment of their heads by young females was one of the subjects upon which it was better not to set him off.
Everything in the room was as bright and neat and clean as a new pin. Mrs. Rush wore a white flannelette nightgown, and her bed had a brightly printed coverlet. She had finished her baby socks and was starting a little vest for Ellen’s baby. On the newly distempered wall opposite her bed hung photographic enlargements of her five children, all taken at about the same age, so that a stranger might have been misled into thinking her the mother of quintuplets. There was Stanley who had been killed on the Somme; Ethel, dead thirty years ago come Michaelmas; Ernie that was in Australia and only wrote at Christmas; Daisy—well Daisy didn’t bear thinking about; and Ellen, her youngest and her darling. There they hung, the little boys in sailor suits and the little girls in starched white muslin dresses, and Mrs. Rush looked at them all day long. She had fought the one terrible battle of her married life when Rush wanted to take Daisy’s picture down, and she had fought it to a finish and won. “She hadn’t done nothing wrong when that was took. That’s how I see her, and that’s how I’m a-going to see her, and you can’t get me from it.”
Rush looked surprised and not at all pleased when he saw the Inspector. Mrs. Rush on the other hand was pleasurably excited. It was pain and grief to her to be out of things, and here after all was Inspector Lamb and a pleasanter spoken man you couldn’t hope to find. Asking how long she’d been ill, when most people had forgotten that there had ever been a time when she was up and about. Quite a little colour came into her cheeks as she talked to him. And he noticed the children’s pictures too, and said he was a family man himself. And no manner of good for Rush to stand there grumbling to himself. Right down bad manners, and he needn’t think he wouldn’t hear about it when the Inspector was gone.
“Well now, Mrs. Rush, I just want a word with your husband here, and I hope I’m not disturbing you coming in like this, but to tell you the truth I’m right down sick of that room upstairs, and I thought I’d like to make your acquaintance.”
He crossed to the foot of the bed and turned to Rush.
“There’s a matter that came up just now, and I’d like to know what you’ve got to say about it. I’ve been told that you and Mr. Craddock had words on Tuesday afternoon—something about his papers having been disturbed.”
“Who said so?” said Rush with a growl.
“Someone who heard what passed. Come, sergeant, tell me about it yourself if you don’t want me to take someone else’s story.”
“Albert—” said Mrs. Rush in a pleading voice.
“There’s nothing to tell!” said Rush angrily. “Mr. Ross, he forgot himself. Thirty years I been in this job, and the first time anyone ever said or thought but what I did my duty! Mr. Ross, he forgot himself, and now that he’s dead I’ve no wish to bring it up.”
There was a rough dignity about his squared shoulders and the set of his head. “If he isn’t an innocent man, he’s a very good actor,” thought the Inspector. He said,
“That does you credit. But I’ve got my duty too, you know, and I’ll have to ask you what took place between you.”
Mrs. Rush looked up from her knitting.
“Now don’t you be so disobliging, Father.”
Rush scowled at her. A completely meaningless mannerism as far as she was concerned, it having quite ceased to intimidate her after the first month of their marriage.
“A lot of busybodying going on over this business, it seems to me.” The Inspector was getting the scowl now. “First and last of it was, Mr. Ross called me into his room and said someone had been mucking about with his papers. Then he forgot himself and said it was me—said there was papers missing, and something about blackmail. And I told him he’d forgot himself and I come away.”
“Why should he think it was you? You haven’t got a key to the flat, have you? Why didn’t he suspect Peterson?”
“No, I haven’t got a key—and
if I had a hundred I wouldn’t touch his papers. But Sunday Peterson had the day off and I had his key. And seems Mr. Ross forgot his bunch of keys that day—left them lying on his table. He’s uncommon careless with them. And I told him straight I saw them, and I never touched them nor I never touched his papers, and if anyone says so, alive or dead, he’s a liar!”
“Did he threaten you with dismissal?” said the Inspector.
Rush glared at him.
“No, he didn’t.”
“Sure of that?”
“What are you getting at?”
The Inspector was watching him closely.
“When a murder has taken place, anyone who has had a serious quarrel with the murdered man is bound to come under suspicion.”
A deep flush ran up to the roots of Rush’s thick grey hair. He breathed heavily. Then he said,
“You’re suspecting me?”
Mrs. Rush said, “Oh, sir!” She let her knitting fall and clasped her hands. “Oh, sir! Oh, Albert! Oh, sir—he never did! Oh, Albert—you’ve got to tell him now. It’s not right—not if they’re going to think it’s you. And if he’s innocent it won’t hurt him, and if he’s done it it’s not for us to stand in the way of the law—”
“Here,” said Rush, “you’re upsetting her—that’s what you’re doing. And I won’t have it! Come into the kitchen!”
Mrs. Rush began to tremble very much.
“Not a step!” she said. “Albert, you come right over here and let me get a hold of you!”
“All right, all right—nothing to put yourself about like that, my girl.”
The Blind Side: An Ernest Lamb Mystery Page 12