“That doesn’t explain the finger-marks.”
“Then why weren’t Gregory’s on the glass?”
“The glass had been wiped clean, Victoria, after you and Gregory left the room.”
“Well, there,” cried Toria, triumphantly. “Doesn’t that just show—why should I have wiped it clean and then put my own marks on it? It doesn’t make sense.”
“My dear, I’ve argued all this out before,” said Charlesworth, patiently. “There isn’t any answer to that, but it doesn’t make a bit of difference. Victoria, tell me, I implore you, why did you go into that room? Don’t pretend to me: can’t you trust me? You ought to know that I’m your friend.”
“How can I know that?” said Victoria, sadly, lifting her lovely eyes to his. “You’ve always been very nice, Mr. Charlesworth, and awfully kind and sweet—but, after all, you are a detective and you may be saying all this to get something out of me that I don’t want to tell you.…”
“You don’t believe that?” he said, staring at her.
“How am I to know?” said Toria again. “I never thought of it till this moment, but, after all, how am I to know?”
“Because I happen to be in love with you,” said Charlesworth, crossly. He leant against the mantelpiece, looking down at her as she sat perched on the arm of a chair. “I have no right to say this, Victoria, and I wouldn’t have, if you hadn’t driven me to it: but I must make you believe that you can trust me and the plain and simple answer is that I’ve been in love with you ever since I first met you. I don’t say that if I thought you were guilty, I would let it make any difference; as you say, I’m a police officer and I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do. But you aren’t guilty and I know it; and I’m not going to see you suffer, not if it costs me my job.”
There was a little silence, and he looked at her anxiously; but she came and stood beside him and smiled up into his eyes. “Well, Mr. Charlesworth, it’s very sweet of you—and thank you.…” She hesitated, and then said, reluctantly: “After that, I can’t possibly go on telling you lies. I’m not very good at it, anyway, am I? I did go into Irene’s room, of course, and I did pick up the glass, and I suppose I put the key on the table, if that’s where it was found; I was in such a panic that I didn’t know what I was doing, and I’m not much used to crime! But I didn’t—didn’t even speak to Irene, I didn’t touch her, and I didn’t give her anything, and God knows, I didn’t forge a confession and put it under her pillow. Anyway, I can’t see why you think it was a forgery. Perhaps it isn’t.”
“That would mean that Irene was the murderer of Doon,” said Charlesworth, “but, if so, why did somebody try to murder her?”
“I can’t see why you’re so sure that somebody did, unless you still think that I did.”
“I never thought that you did, Toria, and I don’t think so now. But you’ve got a lot more to explain—why did you go into Irene’s flat in the first place, and what did you do while you were there?”
“I simply can’t answer that, Mr. Charlesworth. Perhaps I just thought I would like to see how she was getting on—wouldn’t that do?”
“Well, hardly, as you don’t even pretend that it’s the real answer.”
“It’s all the answer I can give. I suddenly thought that I would like to see if she had gone off to sleep all right; I went in and looked at her, and—and went out again.”
“And was she all right?”
“She was asleep,” said Victoria, abruptly.
“Are you sure, Toria?”
“Yes, I am. She was asleep. I stood beside the bed and I—I idly picked up the glass and—and put it down again. Then I went away.”
“Didn’t you see by the empty papers on the table that she’d taken a very big overdose?”
“There weren’t any,” said Victoria, quickly.
“There weren’t any bits of paper? My dear, are you sure of that?”
“Of course I’m sure. There was nothing on the table except the glass and the little box. I didn’t touch the box. Have they looked at that for finger-prints? They’ll see that I didn’t touch the box.”
“You had it in your hand when you were upstairs in the other flat.”
“Yes, but Gregory had it afterwards, and either she or Irene carried it downstairs. Their marks would be over mine, as Mr. Smithers is so keen on his superimposing and stuff.”
“They may be, but it doesn’t help us much. You could just as easily have put the stuff into the glass of milk she had upstairs. Victoria, you didn’t, did you? I mean, you don’t think you could possibly have made a mistake about the dose? You didn’t go into Irene’s room to make sure that you hadn’t made a mistake?”
“Oh, Mr. Charlesworth, no! I swear there was nothing like that about it—I’d tell you if there were. I only wish it were as simple. Don’t ask me any more, Mr. Charlesworth—I can’t tell you any more than I have; and whoever else asks me, and whoever asks you, I shall stick to my story and you must too, that I put the key through the door.”
He begged and badgered and bullied, but all in vain. Not another word would she say, and to all his protestations she simply replied that they couldn’t pin it on her in the end; they couldn’t find the slightest motive for her to kill Irene, whom she loved; and they would have to let her go in the end.
“You little idiot,” he cried, distracted at the thought of the danger into which she was plunging herself. “Don’t you see that it isn’t going to stop here? Smithers is trying to fasten the murder of Doon on to you. For God’s sake, open your eyes and look facts in the face.”
“Oh, but, Mr. Charlesworth, they can’t do that. It’s just nonsense. Mr. Smithers said something about it, but it—it’s just fantastic. I—I didn’t even know the plate of lunch was for Doon; I thought she was going out. I couldn’t have poisoned her—I couldn’t have poisoned Doon!”
“Perhaps,” said Charlesworth, as Smithers had said to him before, “perhaps it wasn’t intended to murder Doon.” Not even Smithers had brought such terror to Victoria’s blue eyes.
2
Charlesworth went back to the Yard. “Well, Smithers, you were right. Mrs. David sticks to her story that she didn’t go into the flat, but put the key through the letterbox and went her way. All the same, you’re barking up the wrong tree, my dear chap. There’s more in this than meets the eye, and if you don’t walk very warily you’re going to make a ghastly mistake. I warn you, I’m not going to work with you along these lines; I don’t believe Mrs. David is guilty of murder or of attempted murder, and if you think it’s on account of her bonny blue eyes, then you’re wrong. You carry on, if you like, but I’m out to disprove you. There are a dozen other byways we haven’t yet cleared up: that note to Doon from Rachel Gay; what was the matter with Aileen. Wheeler at the funeral, and why she lied to me in the first place about never having spoken to Doon outside her work; Bevan—he had motive and, to some extent, opportunity, and we’ve never properly checked up on him; Mrs. Harris could have done it and you’ve proved yourself that so could Macaroni. Here’s this chemist swears that he isn’t mistaken about the photograph and that it was Irene who bought the poison on the day of Doon’s death. Have you considered that Irene Best may have committed the murder after all? How can you be so sure that it wasn’t a genuine suicide?”
“Because I’m so sure that it isn’t a genuine confession. Mrs. Best was horrified to hear of it, and swore she didn’t write it. That was perfectly honest.”
“How can you be sure when a woman’s being honest?” said Charlesworth, whose own faith had been sorely tried in the last half-hour. “She may perfectly well be acting. And you haven’t found any finger-prints on the confession.”
“No, and who ever heard of a suicide taking care to keep her farewell note free of finger-prints? Anyway, why should she have printed it in the first place? Why not just write it? The thing is a forgery, ol’ man, and you’d better make up your mind to it.”
“Look here, Smithers, here’s a theory
. Why couldn’t Gregory have done what you say Victoria David did? Why couldn’t she have gone in after Mrs. David had left her; given Mrs. Best a further dose of the draught, forged the note and left her to it? What about that?”
“What about it? What about Mrs. David’s denial that she ever went into the room? What about her finger-prints on the glass? Why doesn’t Mrs. Best say that Miss Gregory came in and gave her a second dose of sleeping draught? Why should Miss Gregory have done it, anyway? Don’t be damn silly, Charlesworth; your enthusiasm as counsel for the defence is running away with you.”
“Mrs. David may very well have gone in after Miss Gregory. The message was tucked under the pillow—you didn’t see it yourself till you moved the girl; Victoria may have seen Mrs. Best sleeping peacefully and gone away again.”
“Then why doesn’t she say so?”
“I don’t know,” confessed Charlesworth, with a sigh. “I’m sorry, Smithers. I’m being a fool, as you very justly remark; only you’re making a mistake and I know it and I can’t see any way out. Just tell me one thing before I go: Mrs. Best doesn’t say anything about seeing Mrs. David in her room?”
“No,” admitted Smithers. “I haven’t asked her point-blank, of course, but she says that she went straight off to sleep after the two girls left her, and remembers nothing until she woke up in hospital, although she thinks she may have drunk some more water before dropping off.”
“Well, there you are, Smithers! Couldn’t Gregory have introduced some more powder into the glass while Mrs. Best was asleep, or half asleep, then left the glass, and wiped off her finger-prints beside the bed? Mrs. Best wakes and drinks it, and later Mrs. David comes in, picks up the glass and puts it down again, and goes innocently out of the room …”
“Then why doesn’t she say so?”
“I don’t know. But it would work, Smithers. It would work, wouldn’t it?”
“No, it wouldn’t,” said Smithers, impatiently. “Mrs. David’s story is that she put the key of the flat in at the letter-box on her way down from Miss Gregory’s flat; in other words, there wasn’t time for Miss Gregory to have been there before her. You can’t get out of it, Charlesworth. Mrs. David had it in for Gregory and when she got the opportunity of the oxalic acid, she decided to poison her food; Doon got the food and Doon died; then, for some reason it became necessary to get Mrs. Best out of the way as well; while she was doing that she might as well add a ‘confession’ and kill a couple of birds with one stone. There are a few loose ends, like the matter of the extra poison bought at the chemist’s—I can’t quite see why she should have wanted that—and then the thing’s in the bag. Work away as you like, ol’ man; I don’t mind what you do; but that’s my case and I’m sticking to it.”
3
Meanwhile the Dazzler had returned from his morning’s outing, and airily announced that he had found himself a job.
“A job!” cried Victoria, as though the idea of her husband in a position of bondage was the most incredible thing on earth, as indeed it was.
“I got hold of Mother and made her pull some more strings; she rang up her girl friend, Lady Somebody, who’s something to do with the whats-a-name of education, and I went along to see the old trout this morning. You behold before you the assistant art-teacher at St. Maud’s School for Girls, Paddington. The money isn’t much, but the duties are light, and may lead to higher things—if there is anything higher than an assistant art-teachership at St. Maud’s School for Girls, Paddington. I can go to the Central for a model in the evenings, if the light isn’t good enough when I get back here, and I may be able to pick up another part-time job—this business is only four days a week.”
“But Bobby, darling—what are you talking about? Can you see yourself teaching a whole lot of St. Maud’s girls, all covered with spots and making painstaking copies of Rebecca at the Well and Dignity and Impudence and drawings by J. C. Smart. Don’t be comic, my sweet; it’s simply nonsense. You wouldn’t last half an hour, much less four days a week. You’d start telling the fifth form a filthy story, or do a drawing of the head mistress with an enormous bozoom, and you’d be reported to the L.C.C. and probably deported. One criminal in the family’s enough, darling. Do for goodness’ sake give up this fantastic idea.”
The Dazzler, unmoved, merely reiterated his determination to start work at St. Maud’s School for Girls on the following Monday. “And what’s more,” he said, “you aren’t going back to Christophe’s—I’ve fixed all that.”
“I certainly am!”
“You certainly are not. Do you think I’m going to have you gaped at by a whole lot of Bevan’s ruddy clients, wondering whether you’re a murderess?”
“You’re not serious about this, Bobby? The whole thing’s absolute tripe. What do I care if the women stare at me? They’ve been staring at us for the last week, and they’d be thrilled to death with me if I was a murderess. I put up with it before, why not now? I’m no more guilty than I was then; anybody with any sense can see that I didn’t try to kill poor little Rene: she did it herself and I don’t believe for one moment that the letter was a forgery.”
“But that makes Irene the murderer of Doon.”
“Well, I don’t mean that; what I think is that Irene was fed up with all this hell of the anonymous letters and things, and she couldn’t stick it any longer. Life wasn’t too marvellous for her at the best of times. There was the sleeping draught, and she decided to end the whole show; and as she was doing it anyway, she thought she might as well say that she killed Doon and then it would all be done with and we at least would be safe. She didn’t really like Doon, and she didn’t approve of her goings on, and she probably thought that whoever killed her must have had a very good reason for doing so and might as well get off—something like that, anyway.…”
“Victoria,” said her husband, seriously, “have you any conception of the terrible danger you’re in? I know you didn’t kill anybody, my sweet, and anybody who knows you must realize the same thing. I think that chap Charlesworth sees it, too,” added the Dazzler, innocently, “but the police aren’t going to trust you just because you’re you, and outside people aren’t either. I won’t have you going anywhere public where you can be stared at and talked about, until this blasted thing is over and everything’s settled down again—if things ever do settle down again,” he ended, with a sigh.
“It’s terribly sweet of you, darling, but …”
“Don’t argue any more, my dear. I don’t mind the school business a bit—it will be rather humorous, actually, and I shall be terribly careful about not telling the fifth form filthy stories and drawing the head mistress with an enormous bozoom. As a matter of fact, by the purest coincidence, she has got an enormous one, so it wouldn’t be libel at all, but a very magnificent portrait, and would probably be bought by the L.C.C. for a large sum of money, and hung up in the seniors’ room.”
Victoria sighed and laughed and sighed again. “All right, my darling, just till it’s over. You’ll have to teach the St. Maud’s girls to draw terribly pathetic pictures of me in my cell and put under them, “Stone walls do not a prison make. While suffering for another’s sake,” and you can all come in a crocodile and push them to me through the bars.…”
She put her head on her husband’s houlder and suddenly burst into tears.
Thirteen
1
IN the meantime there was pandemonium at the shop. Doon was dead and Irene was ill and Victoria was mysteriously absent; customers poured in more eager than ever after the Press accounts of Mrs. Best’s overdose of sleeping draught, and Rachel, most nobly assisted by Gregory, was left to cope with the rush. Cecil was invisible, closeted in the workroom with the cutters and fitters, feverishly bringing out new designs and altering and adapting old ones to cope with the new demand; Bevan struggled with the books and at intervals rang up the employment agencies for extra help. Aileen was anxious and nervy these days, and Judy avoided Rachel’s eyes and went about her work like a gh
ost; Macaroni wept vaguely, little realizing how near she was to having something to weep about, and her work was a nightmare of inaccuracy. Mrs. ’Arris, co-opted into the general rush, ran messages and fetched and carried and even answered telephone calls, to the immeasurable surprise of the callers. “’Ang on, duck,” she would say, cheerfully, shouting into the receiver with all her might. “We’re in a bit of a muck ’ere, but I’ll see if I can’t get someone to ’ave a word with you. What was the name, agen, dear? Lady ’Oo, did you say?”
Mrs. ’Arris was sorely puzzled at this time. If it were true that there was somethink rummy about this trouble of Miss Irene and if dear Miss Victoria was to be blamed, wasn’t it ’igh time that she, Mrs. ’Arris, should speak up and tell what she ’eard in the keb that day? Not that she wanted to get Miss Rachel into any trouble; Miss Rachel was as nice a gel as ever stepped, and that Miss Doon was no loss to anybody, ’er and ’er bit o’ fish, and ’iding ’er brooch in ’er cape and laying the blame on a pore old body what never did no worse than take ’ome a few cold potatoes; if Miss Rachel had killed Doon, well and good; she wouldn’t ’ave done it without a very good reason, and it wasn’t for Mrs. ’Arris to interfere, especially as Miss Judy seemed to be of the same mind. Not but wot Mrs. ’Arris would ever feel quite the same to Miss Rachel agen, you couldn’t expect it; but now, ’ere was Miss Victoria getting the blame…. Mrs. ’Arris decided to pay a visit to Scotland Yard. That Mr. Charlesworth, ’e was a nice, good-’earted lad…. “…’Allo? Mrs. ’Oo? Well, ’ang on a minute, duck, and I’ll see if I can’t get someone to ’ave a word with you. We’re in a bit of a muck ’ere.…”
Midday brought news of Irene. She was sleeping peacefully and would be at work again in a day or two. “Couldn’t one of us take a bit of time off and go and see her?” said Rachel, poised for flight with a couple of evening dresses over her arm and an order book in her hand. “None of us will get lunch-hours, of course, but I think someone might snatch a few minutes—it wouldn’t take long. What do you think, Judy?”
Death in High Heels Page 18