Murder Underground

by Mavis Doriel Hay

  “Perhaps too many on a public staircase,” Basil suggested.

  He peered out of the window of the taxi, which was carrying them up Haverstock Hill. In doing so he put his hand on the window-ledge and then glanced at the smudges made by his own fingers, and others before them, on the polished wood.

  Basil managed to get away soon after dinner. He walked down the hill, still feeling a repugnance towards the underground. Although he had been restless all through dinner, with anxiety to get back to his own rooms, now he was reluctant to return to the vigilance of “Duck’s-feet”—or his purple-suited colleague. Alternately he dawdled and hurried, but in Chalk Farm Road he seemed to decide that haste was more important than the postponement of his return, and he sprinted to catch a 24 bus which came round the corner.

  In Tavistock Square he saw no one, but without waiting to investigate its darkness very carefully he let himself quietly into the house, and after a hasty look round, satisfied that no one was about, he made for the telephone which stood on a table at the far end of the narrow hall.

  “That the Frampton? That you, Nellie? Can I speak to Miss Watson? Quick! Right.”

  He had thought it would be safer to use the telephone here rather than the extension in his own room, for if he did the latter he could not tell whether Mrs. Waddilove might be listening in. But as he sat on the table, holding the ’phone to his ear, a door opposite to him opened and disclosed Mrs. Waddilove waist-deep, as it were, in the basement. She banged an enamelled tin jug, a book, and a basket of silver down on the floor, hoisted herself up the last few stairs, shut the door and locked it. Still burdened with a hot-water bottle, she stooped down slowly, with grunts, and picked up the other baggage. Basil inwardly cursed himself for that “Quick!” and hoped it would take a long time to fetch Betty, yet he imagined that through the telephone he could hear a series of thuds which marked her precipitous descent of the stairs. Why hadn’t he gone to a public telephone-box? Just his insane reluctance to part with cash—even tuppence—when he might get something on credit.

  Mrs. Waddilove waddled to the foot of the stairs and began a dragging and groaning ascent. Another door opened and Miss Stark, the downstairs lodger, emerged.

  “Oh, Mrs. Waddilove, about lunch to-morrow—I just wanted to remind you—about my friend…”

  Miss Stark was well launched into a description of her friend’s idiosyncrasies of diet and of the precise way in which the coffee should be made, when Betty’s voice sounded through the telephone in Basil’s ear.

  “I say, Betty—no, of course not; I didn’t think you’d have had a chance yet. ’S a matter of fact I’m glad you haven’t. I’ve got an idea …” He took a cautious glance towards the stairs. They would be there for hours yet. “I say—er—what about gloves? Yes, gloves. No, no! I thought a pair of gloves for you—Yes, got the idea? Bright girl! Best of luck!”

  He put down the telephone. “Hope she really has got the idea,” he thought as he began to climb the stairs, squeezing past Mrs. Waddilove, who turned to say “good night” to him as he passed and to shake a playful finger at him, having dumped down her load again and thus freed her hand.

  “Ah, Mr. Pongleton, a birthday present, I’ll be bound. I always say there’s nothing so nice as a good pair of gloves for a young lady.”

  “Yes, they come in useful, don’t they?” Basil agreed fatuously as he climbed to his room.

  Chapter X

  Tuppy Performs His Trick

  “I’m sure I don’t know what to do with that poor little animal to-night,” Mrs. Bliss complained to Betty, meeting her on her way through the hall on Saturday evening from the cubby-hole where the telephone was installed. “Would you believe it, he seemed so quiet and peaceful on the rug in the drawing-room yesterday evening, and yet he got up and roamed and prowled in the night—poor little fellow—looking for his mistress, I’ll be bound!—and he simply gnawed some papers to shreds. Quite tart about it Mr. Blend was this morning; seems they were just the ones he wanted to cut up. Dear, dear! Just one trial added to another!”

  “Tell you what, Mrs. Bliss: I’ll have him in my room if you like. I believe he’d settle down there. I took him for a walk this evening, you know; galloped him all over the Heath, so I hope he’s tired out.”

  “I do believe he might settle better in someone’s room. The truth is, he’s not used to sleeping alone. Nervous he may be; they say dogs have nerves just the same as humans. Well, Miss Watson, if you wouldn’t mind, it’d be kind of you and a weight off my shoulders. I’ll tell Nellie to take his basket and cushions up to your room. Luckily I thought of them when the police came to-day and I got them out of the poor dear lady’s bedroom. Not too keen on letting them go, the police weren’t; seems as if they were still searching for something. You know what a one Miss Pongleton was for hiding her belongings all over the place. Why, they found that will underneath the paper at the bottom of the third drawer in the mahogany chest of drawers—under her combinations, too! She was always one to have plenty of warm underclothes; wool next the skin—well, there’s nothing like it.”

  “They have locked her room again, I suppose?” Betty enquired.

  “Locked it and taken the key, and they put seals on the bureau and drawers too. They’ll be here again on Monday I understand, and Mr. Pongleton and Mrs. Sanders are to come too and look through her things.”

  “I suppose they had a good hunt—looking for things that might be hidden?” Betty suggested.

  “That they did, Miss Watson. Behind the pictures, under the carpet—I told them about that, having found things there myself once, when the poor lady was away and it was taken up to be cleaned. And I shall never forget how Miss Pongleton turned on me for having taken it up without asking her. Seemed to think I was prying into her affairs! Well, I said to her, a carpet’s a carpet and not a safe deposit, and I should have thought that with a bureau and all there’d be no need to put things there in all the dust! That was before I knew her ways.”

  “It must have been very awkward for you,” said Betty in a soothing tone.

  “Awkward’s the word for it. And there’s another thing, Miss Watson. There’s the poor lady’s room under lock and key and no more use to me than if it was occupied—let alone the difficulty of finding another tenant after all this upset! But I don’t know what’s to happen about the rent. It’s all a great worry to me, on top of the blow of the poor lady’s death like that; but it’s hard if I’m to be the loser.”

  “I shouldn’t worry about that, Mrs. Bliss. Mr. Pongleton or Mrs. Sanders is sure to settle it satisfactorily. I was wondering, did Miss Pongleton hide things outside her room—in the drawing-room, for instance?”

  “Not that I know of—but who can tell? The police haven’t looked elsewhere yet, but they may be all over the house before they’ve done. Dear, dear. Who’d’ve thought I should live to see such doings!”

  Some hours later Betty sat in a wicker chair before the gas-fire in her bedroom, wrapped in a decorative blue silk dressing-gown. She had a brush in her hand with which she occasionally gave one or two vigorous strokes at her sleek brown hair. It was in the awkward stage known as “growing”, but although it only hung to her shoulders, she was able, with her usual neat efficiency, to secure it in a demure little twist at the nape of her neck. She was puzzled but not disheartened. Her brown eyes stared into space and her pretty mouth was even more firmly set than usual. She put down the brush and lighted a cigarette.

  There was a little rummaging noise behind her and Tuppy stepped deliberately from his basket, carrying in his mouth the small cushion which Miss Pongleton had sewn with her own hands in order that Tuppy’s asthmatic head might rest more comfortably. He deposited it at Betty’s feet and then sat down fatly in the glow of the fire.

  Betty stared down at him without enthusiasm. He had performed his one trick, which his late mistress had so often exhibited with pride to th
e bored inmates of the boarding-house. But her uninterested gaze at the little blue cushion was turning into a wide-eyed stare.

  “Tuppy!” she exclaimed, but with no trace of reproof—rather in the tone of one who shares a great discovery.

  She snatched up a pair of nail-scissors and ripped open a few inches of one side of the cushion. It was filled with kapok, luckily. Miss Pongleton would have been quite capable of providing down for Tuppy—or perhaps not, in view of its price; anyhow, down would have been dangerous, fluffing all over the room.

  Tuppy watched the procedure uneasily, pawing at Betty’s bare leg. Betty dumped the cushion and its cover under the eiderdown on her bed for safety, though she knew Cissie had gone to bed and no one else was likely to disturb her, whilst she extracted from her handbag the envelope which Basil had given her on the Heath.

  “Now for the gloves!” she said to herself. “Poor old Basil! I suppose Miss Stark was hovering around, waiting to get at the telephone.”

  With her gloved hands she opened the envelope and drew out the pearl necklace. She could not resist pausing to look at the creamy gloss of the pearls, even holding them against her neck and admiring the effect in the mirror. Then she retrieved the cushion, carefully hollowed out a nest in the middle of the kapok, and stuffed the pearls inside. For a moment she was horrified at the impossibility of matching the cotton with which the seam had been sewn, but reflected that, after all, Miss Pongleton must be supposed to have unpicked the cushion in order to stow the pearls away and might not have had any of the original cotton left. She studied Miss Pongleton’s stitches and re-sewed the cushion with their exact counter-parts. Then she stuffed Tuppy back into his basket, placed the cushion tenderly under his head, switched off the light, turned out the gas-fire, and slipped into bed, murmuring to Tuppy: “Guard the heirloom well, my lad!”

  In the morning Betty’s first thought was how to let Basil know. Obviously she could not telephone from the Frampton. Anyone might pass through the hall whilst she did so, and probably he would want to know exactly where she had hidden the pearls. Betty decided that she must go out immediately after breakfast to a telephone-box, and somehow she must elude Cissie, who was sure to offer to accompany her. It was lucky that Cissie had been upstairs when she slipped out yesterday evening after Basil, but she could hardly hope for the same luck again.

  Cissie was down punctually. Bad luck! She sometimes overslept on Sunday.

  “Glorious day!” she exclaimed to Betty. “Let’s have a walk on the Heath.”

  Betty was unenthusiastic. “I’ve got letters to write. You might get someone else to go with you.”

  “That’s likely, in this place!” declared Cissie with scorn. “You can’t frowst in the house all day, and the letters can be written this afternoon. You know there’s no post till the evening on Sunday.”

  Betty’s thoughts wandered wildly among telegrams—how and whence did you dispatch them on Sunday? But anyone might open and read a telegram if its rightful receiver were out. No, telegrams were definitely dangerous. Would it be possible, if she went out with Cissie, to be struck with a sudden desire to telephone, from the underground station perhaps? But Cissie was so inquisitive; she would lounge against the door of the box and might overhear something. Betty had another scheme.

  “All right, I’ll come. But I want to write a letter first, to Basil, and then go down the hill and leave it at the Sanders’ house. He’s lunching there.”

  “Why not ring him up?”

  “He’ll be out—he was to go up to the Sanders’ first thing. His people are there.”

  “D’you mean to say Basil will be up and out at this hour?” demanded Cissie incredulously.

  “Yes; he’s to breakfast with the Sanders,” explained Betty wildly. “Naturally his father and mother want to see as much of him as they can while they’re here.”

  “Ring him up at the Sanders’,” suggested Cissie exasperatingly.

  “For goodness’ sake let me manage my own affairs! It won’t take me a moment to write a note.”

  “Oh, all right,” conceded Cissie. “But for anyone with a reputation for being sensible you do have the silliest ideas. Have some more bacon?”

  After breakfast Betty retired to her room and composed a note to Basil which, she hoped, would not give the secret away even if it should fall into other hands. But it ought to be quite safe.

  Dear Basil [she wrote], I was not able to telephone to you this morning, so send this note instead. If you want to ring me up I shall be at home this evening. I can be free for lunch on Tuesday, if that’s suitable.

  (“Just to make an excuse for writing,” she said to herself; “in case anyone should read it or should ask him what it’s about. Parents are so enquiring. This may sound forward, but it’s not suspicious.”)

  We’re still rather distraught here and Tuppy wanders about like a lost lamb. I had him to sleep in my room last night, as he was restless alone in the drawing-room, and with the little blue pillow which Miss Pongleton sewed for him herself (luckily Mrs. Bliss had rescued his basket and pillows out of Miss P.’s room) under his head, he slept peacefully. I had to stitch up a rent in the little pillow before he would settle down. He is very devoted to it and guards it as if the family jewels were inside it!

  Yours,

  Betty.

  “Now, will Basil think I’ve gone clean off my nut or will he have the wits to understand? Certainly if anyone else reads it they’ll think I’m a blithering idiot. It ought to be all right, though.”

  She sealed it carefully and put on her hat and coat.

  “I’m ready, Cissie!” she called, as she leapt down the stairs.

  Whilst Betty and Cissie were out, Mr. Plasher arrived at the Frampton with Beryl, in the Alvis. Beryl asked to see Mrs. Bliss, who flowed into the hall, black and shiny in her Sunday clothes, before Nellie could show the visitor into the drawing-room.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Bliss; I’m so glad I’ve caught you before you went to church,” said Beryl, smiling especially graciously because she felt that her mission was a little difficult.

  “Will you come into my sanctum?” Mrs. Bliss invited her importantly, and swayed through the hall towards the little room at the back.

  “It’s about Tuppy,” Beryl explained, when she was seated on a hard, slippery sofa in the sanctum.

  “The poor little fellow!” exclaimed Mrs. Bliss unctuously. “Miss Watson has been very kind—had him up in her room to sleep last night. I’d have taken him myself but I always was such a light sleeper, the least thing disturbs me and then I’m good for nothing in the morning. Tuppy’s breathing isn’t what it should be, Miss Sanders. But there! He was a faithful friend to poor Miss Pongleton for many years, and who’d have thought that she’d have gone before him! I always say it’s the unexpected that happens.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Bliss,” Beryl nodded sympathetically. “Mr. and Mrs. Pongleton are staying with us, as I expect you know, and we have all been talking over the question of Tuppy—what it would be best to do with him. My Uncle James has decided to take him back with them to Yorkshire. My mother can’t very well do with him, so that seems the best plan. Don’t you think so, Mrs. Bliss?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know, Miss Sanders; and of course it’s not for me to say. I’ll miss the poor little fellow, and I’m sure I’ve done what I could for him, but it’s not easy for me to give him proper attention. What I always say is, my clients must come first. Everything that can be done for their comfort shall be done. Of course, poor Tuppy is one of them, in a manner of speaking—”

  “I know, Mrs. Bliss, that you’ve been very kind to Tuppy. We are all very grateful to you in every way. But Mr. Plasher is waiting outside in his car. So will that be all right if we take Tuppy and his basket of course—at once?”

  “It’s lucky that the poor little fellow is here, for Miss Watson and Miss Fain h
ave gone for a walk and Miss Watson was all for taking him, but Miss Fain said they couldn’t be bothered and they might come back on the bus and that always makes him sick, so he is here right enough. I’ll tell Nellie to fetch his basket; it’s in Miss Watson’s room, for she said it had better stay there for the present.”

  When Nellie came staggering downstairs with the basket, Beryl and Gerry were in the hall.

  “I suppose the police have searched it?” suggested Gerry with a grin. “I hear they had a great exploration in Miss Pongleton’s room—what!”

  “Indeed they did,” Mrs. Bliss agreed. “They prodded and poked those cushions before they’d let them go! And you’ll be sure to take care of the little blue cushion, Mr. Plasher, for poor Miss Pongleton made it herself and Tuppy’s never easy without it.”

  “I’ll guard it,” Gerry assured her. “You must have had a lot of worry, Mrs. Bliss?”

  “That I have, with the police up and down all day. Carpets and pictures and everything, they searched. You’ve heard about her will, of course? Finding it under—”

  “Oh yes,” interposed Beryl hastily. “My mother has seen my aunt’s solicitors.”

  “And her money goes to Mr. Basil, I understand?” ventured Mrs. Bliss.

  “Oh yes,” said Beryl again, unwilling to discuss these details in the hall, but not knowing how to silence Mrs. Bliss.

  “They do say,” continued the persistent lady, “that she used to make a new will from time to time and that she’d disinherit Mr. Basil when she felt so inclined.”

  “I don’t suppose she really did,” Beryl began, but they were all startled by Nellie, who had been quietly waiting with the basket and now blurted out: “Why, that will was only made las’ Wednesday night, an’ to think that Bob an’ me put our names to it!”