I Could Murder Her

by E. C. R. Lorac

  The Colonel took a deep breath and made obvious efforts to keep his own resolutions about not being overcome by excitement, but his hand was shaking as he stubbed his cigarette out, At last he said, “And has Tony showed you this alleged journal?”

  “No, sir. He said I should find it in Mrs. Farrington’s bedroom. I have not done so.”

  “For the very good reason that it never existed,” said the Colonel. “If it had existed, I should have known of it. There is only one explanation. Tony’s own mind has become temporarily unhinged by the shock of his mother’s death. But I find it hard to forgive him. A monstrous lie, monstrous.”

  2

  Macdonald led the old man away from the topic of Madge, getting him back to the subject of Monday evening. It was then that the Colonel produced a rather unexpected suggestion.

  About this story of Anne’s, Chief Inspector. Of course you’ll be seeing the young people who came to Paula’s little party, I know that; but it just occurred to me that one of your point-duty men might have passed this way at the time. If so, he’d have noticed the young people on the steps and might be able to help us. I know it’s only an outside chance, but it might be worth asking. Paula’s a very noticeable child, and the street lamp outside the house does light up our steps quite clearly.”

  “Yes. I’ll see to that,” said Macdonald, “also, as you say, the visitors themselves may be able to give some evidence. I’ll also inquire if any taxis passed this way. It’s surprising how often things are noticed in the streets in the small hours, and, as you say, a party of youngsters sitting on the steps putting their shoes on would be likely to attract notice.”

  “Then this matter of Muriel’s diamonds,” went on the Colonel. “The fact that they’re missing from the safe doesn’t of necessity mean they’re stolen, does it? My wife sent her jewellery to be cleaned and to have the settings examined at intervals. She was very careful about such things. The jewellers may have them. Joyce may know. She often did odd jobs for her mother, like going to the jewellers and the bank and so forth. You see, all this came on us so suddenly, and Muriel was such a tower of strength in the house that we’re all at sixes and sevens without her.”

  “I shall doubtless be seeing Mrs. Duncan and her husband shortly,” said Macdonald.

  “Of course, of course. Joyce will be in to luncheon. Now about this astounding rubbish which Tony has been talking, Chief Inspector. I’m ready to be guided by you, but it goes all against the grain to keep silent in the face of such abominable insinuations. After all, I’m responsible in this house until the disposition of the property is settled. The house was my wife’s, and she’s left it to Tony in her will, I know that, but for the moment I’m responsible, and I think I must say a word to him. It’s only fair to Madge.”

  “You have the right to decide that matter for yourself, sir,” said Macdonald: “but my advice to you is to leave it alone for the time being. I shall ask for a report from the clinic where your daughter was treated, and, if necessary, call in a psychiatrist. But to quote your own words, getting excited is not going to help anybody, and there has been quite enough agitation already this morning.”

  “Agitation,” echoed the Colonel sadly. “We seem to have been behaving in a manner most calculated to persuade you that we are all mentally afflicted. I’m not surprised about Peter and Paula, even though I am deeply shocked. I have feared for some time that Peter was heading for trouble, and Paula has lost her head trying to protect him. Anne was foolish in exaggerating what she imagined she observed, but I consider Tony's behaviour is inexcusable, absolutely inexcusable.”

  3

  Colonel Farrington left Macdonald alone in the drawing room at last, and the Chief Inspector began to glance through the papers in Mrs. Farrington’s orderly little bureau. It was while he was thus employed that the drawing-room door opened and a tall young woman stood on the threshold staring at him with eyes in which astonishment gave place to something like horror. She was sufficiently like Paula for Macdonald to have no hesitation in assuming that they were sisters. He stood up just as she said, “May I ask who you are, and what you are doing at my mother’s desk?”

  “My name is Macdonald. I am the Detective Inspector in charge of the inquiry into Mrs. Farrington’s death. I take it that you are Mrs. Duncan?”

  She stared at him with whitening face and darkening eyes and then gasped out one word: “Madge . . .”

  Macdonald judged the explanation to be calculated and histrionic. He said quietly: “Will you sit down, please. I have asked for a statement from everybody in the house concerning Monday night—”

  “I don’t know anything about it. I was upstairs in my own flat with my husband all Monday evening and night. I didn’t see my mother again after lunch on Monday.”

  “Why did you just exclaim ‘Madge’?”

  “I don’t know . . . I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean to say it.”

  “I rather think you did,” replied Macdonald. “Were you implying that Miss Farrington was responsible for your mother’s death?”

  “No. Of course not. I don’t even know what killed her. I thought it was heart failure.”

  “She was killed by insulin.”

  “Oh!” After that small gasp she sat down suddenly. “You mean it was Dr. Baring’s fault? He made a mistake?”

  “Dr. Baring could not have been responsible for the injection which caused death. Do you know anything whatever which might throw light on your mother’s death?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “Had she any enemies, or do you know of anybody who might have wished for her death?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Would you be prepared to state on oath that there were no personal enmities or resentments in this household?”

  Joyce’s large grey-blue eyes opened wide and she stared back at Macdonald in apparent amazement. “Personal enmities?” she echoed. “No. There aren’t any enmities. Occasional irritations perhaps, but no more.”

  “Was it irritation which caused you to say ‘Madge’ when you learnt that there was a detective in the house?”

  “I don't know what it was. I was startled to see you here, in this room, and horrified when you said that you were a detective. A detective means crime, and such a thought hadn’t occurred to me.”

  “But the name Madge occurred to you very quickly. Let me frame the question differently. Have you any reason at all to suppose that Miss Farrington was responsible for bringing about your mother’s death?”

  “No. Except that Madge is a bit queer.”

  “What do you mean by queer, Mrs. Duncan?”

  “She tends to avoid us all and is generally a bit morose and eccentric. I think I’ve always been a bit afraid of her. If anything odd happened in the house, I should think of Madge at once, because she seems unlike the rest of us, but I didn’t mean to imply anything . . . horrible. It’s just that I was startled and the name jumped out before I realised what I was saying.”

  “Then I suggest that you should show more responsibility in future when there is a police inquiry,” said Macdonald dryly. “Now about Monday night.”

  He took her over the same ground as he had covered with the others, but Joyce refused to commit herself to any statement save that she had not left her own rooms except when she urged Peter to go upstairs quietly when he and his guests came in about eight o’clock. She had seen nothing and heard nothing. At last Macdonald said: “Do you knowf when your husband will be in?”

  “Probably not until this evening. He has been writing a play, and I think he is seeing a possible producer.”

  “He is a dramatist by profession?”

  “An embryo one,” she replied, with a half-smile and a flicker of her long lashes. “1 think he’s going to be rather good, when he gets started. But he doesn’t know anything more about what happened on Monday night than I do. He never went downstairs at all.”

  Finally Macdonald said: “Did your mother ask you to take any
of her rings or other jewels to be repaired or cleaned recently?”

  She looked startled at that. “Good gracious, no. She never trusted anybody with things like that. She always had a taxi and went to the jewellers herself. She was an awfully careful person, and I’m afraid I’m not.”

  “Do you know the name of her jewellers?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t. I haven’t a very good memory. And I haven’t any jewellery of my own, so it just wouldn’t interest me.”

  ELEVEN

  WHILE MACDONALD HAD BEEN TALKING to Colonel Farrington and Joyce Duncan, Reeves had been busy testing for fingerprints in Mrs. Farrington’s bedroom. Having photographed all those surfaces where his insufflator had shown up the prints, he began to sort out their most probable originators. As was to be expected, Mrs. Farrington’s own prints were the most frequent, and Reeves was able to identify these from the photograph already taken after the autopsy. The frequent prints of a man’s fingers Reeves assumed to be those of Colonel Farrington, and an occasional print of very plump fingers he guessed to have been made by Mrs. Pinks. In addition to these he found a few more occasional prints, particularly on the door and window frames, which he was unable to identify and which caused him to ponder considerably. At length he left the bedroom, locking the door behind him, and went upstairs again to the attics. The house was very quiet, but on the second floor he met Madge Farrington, coming downstairs from the top floor as silently as a ghost. She wore her neat white coat, and her face was pale above it with the ugly pallor of a piece of newspaper lying on fresh snow. She met Reeves’ eyes deliberately and said:

  “If you are going upstairs again, will you be as quiet as you can, please? We’ve had enough hysterics for one day, and I’ve just got my sister Paula quiet. Your woman’s up there, so you needn’t worry.” Her low voice was hard and terse, her eyes dark and weary.

  Reeves replied: “I needn’t go up at all at the moment, Miss Farrington, if you will answer some questions for me.”

  “I’d rather do anything than have you set Paula off again,” she replied; “but someone’s got to cook the dinner, so will you come downstairs to the kitchen?”

  “Thanks, I will,” replied Reeves. “Sorry to be a nuisance, but it’s the way things are.”

  A half-smile lightened the bleakness of her eyes as she glanced at him and preceded him down the stairs.

  “What a house,” thought Reeves as he followed her down the steep stairs into the basement and along a stone passage into the kitchen. “Give me a prefab any day, though it’s a nice kitchen.”

  As Madge entered it, Mrs. Pinks called out from the scullery: “I’ve done the spuds, Miss Madge, and popped a rice pudding in the oven. I should give ’em soup out of a tin and that there bully you’ve been saving up. And do these ’ere police want me to get on with me work, or not? There's Mister Peter’s room not touched, and Miss Paula’s ditto, and the mess in the top bathroom you’d not believe.”

  “Oh, yes, I would.” said Reeves cheerfully. “Mister Peter’s room’s not so bad now. I’ve had a good smack at tidying it.”

  Mrs. Pinks emerged from the scullery. “You ’ave, ’ave you? And who’re you, might I ask? Another of ’em?”

  “That’s it. You might have been worse off. My mother taught me to be tidy.”

  “Well, you’re cheerful, that’s one thing.” said Mrs. Pinks. “It’s bad enough, but you two blokes are much better than some cops I’ve known. Always believe in saying what I think, and what I didn’t say to that there Inspector wasn’t worth saying. Very nice he was about it, too.”

  Madge began to laugh. “Mrs. Pinks, this house is just a loony bin. Peter’s doped himself, Paula’s screamed herself asleep, Anne’s having a first-class row with her husband, and Father’s telling the Chief Inspector that his children are the salt of the earth. If you really want some work to do, go and clean all the brass in the hall. Then you won’t have to listen to me answering questions. And get me the mincer out. I’m damn well not going to give Father cold bully beef on top of everything else.”

  ‘‘That’s sense, that is,” said Reeves cheerfully. “When there’s a spot of bother, food does help. And if Mrs. Pinks cleans the brass in the hall, she can tell the Chief Inspector I’m in the kitchen if he happens to ask.”

  “Oke. I’ll tell ’im. The one bright spot, he is,” said Mrs. Pinks. “Here's the mincer. And I’ll just get me Brasso and leave you two to a nice heart-to-heart.”

  Madge seized the tin of bully and a tin opener, saying: “I’m late already, so I’m going to get on with it. What do you want to know?”

  “Who cleans Mrs. Farrington’s bedroom, please?” asked Reeves.

  “Mrs. Pinks. I never touch it. I do the drawing room and the kitchen, and we take turns over the attics,” replied Madge. “Why? Or am I not supposed to ask?”

  “I’m sorting out the fingerprints.” replied Reeves. “I thought some of them were Mrs. Pinks’.”

  “If you want our fingerprints, you’ll find hers all over that cup she’s just put down by the sink, and my own on the tumbler beside it,” replied Madge calmly.

  “Thanks very much,” said Reeves sedately. “Now, you were in Mrs. Farrington’s bedroom on Tuesday morning. weren’t you?”

  “Yes, but I don’t think I touched anything, if that’s what you want to know. I opened the door, of course, but several other people did that. I pulled back the curtains and I turned the bedclothes down a little. It was obvious that nothing could be done, so I didn’t mess about.”

  “Which was very sensible of you,” replied Reeves.

  “On the whole, nurses are taught to be sensible, particularly about corpses,” replied Madge dryly. “The one thing which I am not going to do is to get emotional or het up.

  We’ve had quite enough of that sort of thing. Is there anything else you want to know?”

  “Yes. Have there been any workmen in Mrs. Farrington’s bedroom in the last week or so? Window cleaner, electrician, gas company’s man, or anybody like that?”

  “I haven't ordered anybody to come in, but I don’t know if my stepmother did. I shouldn’t think she did; if anything goes wrong, I am generally the first to be told about it because I have to get it put right. The window cleaner hasn’t been here for three weeks; he’s due again next week.”

  “Thanks very much,” said Reeves. “Now I’ll leave you in peace to get on with the mince. I like your Mrs. Pinks. She’s champion, as they say up north.”

  “Mrs. Pinks is worth all the other women in this house put together,” said Madge. She left off what she was doing and faced Reeves deliberately. “Whatever else happens, I hope we don’t bring trouble to her, because she has brought nothing but kindness to me. Apart from her, one and all of us has earned what’s coming to us. whatever it may happen to be. We’ve all been mean and spiteful and hateful in some ways. Mrs. Pinks never has.”

  “I like the way you said that,” observed Reeves. “Contents noted, as they say at the office. It’s not strictly my job to be chatty at the moment, but I could never resist playing ball. When you said, ‘what’s coming to us,’ what did you really mean?”

  “You should know,' shouldn’t you?” she retorted. “But I wasn’t thinking about hangings, if that’s what you mean. I was thinking about all the small horrors: newspapers, and reporters with their living to earn; neighbours staring and tradesmen nudging each other; one’s friends and acquaintances saying, ‘I always believed there was something queer about her.’ One of the reasons I’m grateful to Mrs. Pinks is that when she goes home and people stop her and try to pump her—as they will—she’ll tell them in her own language just where to go.”

  “She will, with knobs on,” replied Reeves. “And she’s got neighbours of her own, you know, and so has her old man.” , Madge stood very still, looking down at her cooking utensils, an arrested-motion study.

  “I’m glad she told the Chief Inspector about her husband’s diabetes,” she said. “She’s got a lot of
sense.”

  “So has he,” replied Reeves, “and you don’t seem to be lacking, either.”

  “You won’t find that’s the general opinion in this house,” she retorted tersely, and then went on, almost as though she were thinking aloud: “I suppose situations like this are as commonplace to you as curried beef is to me. You’re used to seeing people tying themselves up into knots until their nerves go like fiddlestrings. And then somebody confesses, because they can’t stand it any longer. But if Mrs. Pinks says she did it, tell her not to be a fool, because she couldn’t have.” And with that she slapped her tin down on the scrubbed table with a bang.

  2

  Reeves went up again to the hall, where Mrs. Pinks was busy polishing a great copper urn. She grinned cheerfully at Reeves. “I done this once a week for three years. A good ’arf hour it takes me. ’Ow long d’you make that altogether?”

  “Seventy-eight hours; call it two weeks solid by the end of the month, reckoning a forty-hour week.” replied Reeves promptly, “and nothing to show for it. My wife’d get a pot of lacquer—eighteen pence at the chain stores. Cheaper, y’know.”

  Mrs. Pinks chuckled delightedly. “Not ’arf. They pays me two bob an hour. Seventy-eight hours; jiminy, what’s it cost ’em?”

  “I make it over seven quid, and that’s not counting insurance,” replied Reeves.

  “Sinful waste, isn’t it?” she said. “Never ’ad any common sense, the old lady ’adn’t. Always a-telling me as ’ow she’d ’ad a cook and three good maids to run this ’ouse, and if that wasn’t enough to give a woman like me the proper pip, what was? And fuss, you’d never believe. Three kinds o’ furniture cream and two ditto for the floors. Give me elbow grease and a spot o’ beeswax and turpentine, I told ’er, and didn’t ’arf get a dirty look. Wicked old woman, she v/as, and I’ll say it even tho’ she ’as got ’ers. Nice peaceful death, when all’s said and done. Not that I ’olds wiv that sort of thing.”