Having given this startling information, Nellie banged the basket on the floor and hastily searched for her handkerchief.
“Surely you’re mistaken, Nellie? I think it was made some time ago,” said Beryl, startled out of discretion.
“A-course we didn’t read it. It was folded up an’ just the place lef’ for our names to go, an’ when we came in, Bob an’ me, with Tuppy, Miss Pongleton said: ‘Now I want you both to sign a dokkyment for me’, an’ Bob, ’e said arterwards, ‘That’s ’er will, you bet, on one o’ them forms that you buy’. ’E’d seen ’em before an’ ’e knew.”
Nellie sniffed assertively.
“I think he must have made a mistake; that was probably some other document,” said Beryl firmly. “Don’t worry, Nellie,” she added kindly. “Mr. Plasher’s solicitors are looking after Bob, you know.”
“Yes, your Bob will be all right,” Gerry assured the snuffling girl. He picked up the basket and cushions and bolted out to the car.
“Now, where’s Tuppy?” enquired Beryl briskly.
Mrs. Bliss moved towards the drawing-room reluctantly. Here was a hint of further mystery, but she could not see how to draw Beryl into discussion of it.
Tuppy was snatched from a peaceful doze in front of the fire and Beryl carried him out. Mrs. Bliss turned to find Nellie lingering in the hall.
“When was it exactly that you and Bob signed that paper for Miss Pongleton?” she enquired.
“Wednesday evening,” said Nellie. “We took the dog for a turn on the ’Eath, Bob an’ me, an’ we brought ’im back an’ I went into the drorin’-room with ’im. Miss Pongleton was there alone—Mr. Basil ’ad bin to tea, you remember, ma’am—an’ she ’ad the paper before ’er; she was sittin’ at the little table Mr. Blend uses. An’ she said: ‘Oh, Nellie, is Bob with you?’ An’ I said: ‘’E’s waitin’ outside for me, miss’, so she said—”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted Mrs. Bliss, who was impatient of garrulity in others. “And what happened?”
“As I was tellin’ you, she arst us to put our names to that paper, an’ so we did.”
“Did she say it was her will?”
“No, she didn’t say so, but she seemed in a fair way, an’ I thought to meself, ‘Mr. Basil’s got across the ol’ lady agin.’ ”
“You’d better be getting about your work, Nellie,” Mrs. Bliss instructed the girl. She herself made haste upstairs. She would be late for church.
“There might be another will,” she thought. “Did the police look through all the drawers?” Mrs. Bliss went through them in her mind whilst she put on her hat. “Handkerchiefs, stockings, ‘larngeree’, woollen underclothes—what will happen to all those?” she wondered. “And where else? Downstairs, Miss Watson suggested.”
At church Mrs. Bliss’s mind constantly wandered from the sermon to thoughts of underclothes and of how her own store needed replenishing, and of unlikely hiding places for wills.
Chapter XI
Mrs. Daymer Decides To Investigate
Old Mr. Blend was very busy on that Sunday morning after the murder. He sat at his little table in the drawing room with half a dozen large and dilapidated scrap-books piled up before him.
He was constantly devising new systems of classification for his cuttings, and as he never completed one before abandoning it in favour of another, the precious strips of paper were grouped in a disorderly medley of systems. Many of them were yellow with age and most of them referred to crimes. Kindly and tolerant in his relationship with his fellow men, Mr. Blend would gloat over the details of crimes with a chill, inhuman joy. The truth was that he did not regard them as part of life but merely as a form of art, just as many humane people wallow deliciously in the gruesome “murder mysteries” of fiction. Mr. Blend never read “shockers” or any other novels; he did not even read Mrs. Daymer’s hectic “psychological” stories, which her other fellow boarders were too cowardly to ignore.
Mr. Blend would describe the crimes recorded in his scrap-book as “a nice neat little murder” or “a messy affair”—the messiness which he deplored being always in the nature of clumsiness or bad planning, not necessarily a great spread of gore. Miss Pongleton’s strangulation on the stairs of the underground railway he regarded as “a very tidy business”, and he had already shocked Mrs. Bliss profoundly by referring to it in this offhand way. It was curious that a man so untidy in his personal habits as Mr. Blend should have such an admiration for tidiness in crime. As he said himself, “I’d do no good at murder—I’m far too great a muddler. Like as not I’d be whipping out the blood-stained dagger to cut the cake at tea.”
Although he had lived at the Frampton for some ten years—ever since he sold the “tobacconist and news agency” business in which, with the help of his careful wife, he seemed to have amassed a comfortable little fortune—yet Mrs. Bliss could not remember ever seeing him in new clothes. His dark grey tweed suits had trousers baggy at the knees and coats bulgy at the elbows. His late wife—“my old Sarah”, as the Frampton knew her—must have spent all her leisure in knitting ties for Mr. Blend, for he seemed to have an inexhaustible store of them, somewhat frayed and loopy, and their ends dangled untidily outside his coat below his fuzzy, rounded beard. He was not the sort of boarder who adorns the drawing-room and gives the establishment what Mrs. Bliss called a “high-class tone”, but she put up with him for the sake of her old friendship with his wife and because he always paid promptly, when he was reminded, and helped to keep the maids satisfied by tipping them generously.
“It’s the little details that count and that round off a good crime nicely,” he would say. “Choice of place and choice of instrument, those are important, and no untidy fingerprints left to mess up the place.” The Pongleton affair had been excellently managed, he considered, and there his interest ended. He was not concerned about the tracking of the murderer, and he exasperated the other boarders at the Frampton by his indifference to their theories and his lack of curiosity as to what the police might be doing.
His scrap-books contained, in addition to the cuttings relative to crimes, many records of the sententious remarks of magistrates and coroners. He would repeat these truisms and conventional moralizings to the boarders with fatuous glee. Mrs. Bliss was the only one who appreciated them. Betty sometimes suspected that Mr. Blend had a sarcastic grin up his sleeve when he quoted, with every sign of approval, some such remark as that “when young women cut short their hair and their skirts, it seems, unfortunately, that they cut short their morals too.”
Mrs. Daymer was accustomed to tell him, in reply to these quotations, that “the psychology is all wrong”, and would dismiss him and his scrap-books with a dry sniff up her thin nose and a jerk of her head. It was surprising, therefore, that he should confide in her about his discovery on that Sunday morning. It may have been because he and she were the only occupants of the drawing-room. She was sitting by the fire, opposite to Miss Pongleton’s more comfortable armchair which had been so basely annexed by Mr. Slocomb. The convention that that chair belonged by a sort of divine right to one particular person was firmly established in the Frampton, so that even Mrs. Daymer hesitated to sit there, though Mr. Slocomb had gone out for a walk. She was drafting plans for her next novel on a writing-pad.
Mr. Blend suddenly brought his fist down with a resounding thump on the open page of a scrap-book.
“There you are!” he exclaimed in triumph. “That’s when I was classifying them under victims—unsound method, very unsound. So I’ve found it, and it’s a pretty neat bit of work too!”
He ran his fingers into his grizzled red hair as he read the cutting again. He often talked to himself over his books, and Mrs. Daymer took no notice of him except to make a little clittering noise by rattling her long string of hand-painted wooden beads impatiently. But Mr. Blend had to talk to someone about this. He surveyed Mrs. Daymer for a few moments and then called out to her:
“Hi! Mrs. Daymer, this ought to interest you. You don’t set much store by my old scrap-books, I know, but here we see the past repeating itself—repeating itself with added elegance, we might say!”
Mrs. Daymer looked at him with some annoyance. “What is it, Mr. Blend?” she enquired coldly, as if he were a tiresome child.
“Merely a little piece of the past that has acquired a topical interest.” Mr. Blend’s own provincial style of speech sometimes borrowed pompousness from his records of the utterances of the Bench.
“Topical—do you mean something connected with Miss Pongleton’s murder?” asked Mrs. Daymer with quickened interest.
“In a manner of saying, it may be connected,” Mr. Blend told her cautiously.
“Well, what is it? I can’t get up.” Mrs. Daymer indicated her homespun peacock-blue lap, papered with lists of characters and notes on their psychology.
Mr. Blend picked up the loose-limbed scrap-book gingerly and bore it across to her. He sat on the edge of the sofa and balanced the book on one knee, extending the important page towards her and pointing with a stubby tobacco-stained finger at a yellowish cutting printed in smeared type.
“Here you are; one of the earliest cuttings I ever took, that must be. From the Coventry Globe you see, some thirty years ago. That would be when I was in business there.”
Mrs. Daymer read the account. “I don’t quite see…?”
“It’s the little details that count,” Mr. Blend pointed out. “Put that poor dog out of your mind, or picture it as a human being. It’s the method that’s interesting. A dog-leash, you note—the animal’s own leash—whipped round its neck and pulled tight from behind. Quick and neat! Not a sound! The dog must have been without a collar, or it may have been removed by this young fellow before he got to work.”
Mrs. Daymer shuddered. “Revolting! And it’s certainly curious; they say that is how it was done in the case of Miss Pongleton, and with a dog-leash, too. Do you suppose, Mr. Blend, that the murderer read or heard of this case and got his idea from that? But it’s so long ago, and it’s not likely to have been reported except in the local papers. Merely a claim for the value of the dog, and the cruelty charge seems to have fallen through. I should say it can only be an odd coincidence.”
“The annals of murder are riddled with coincidence,” remarked Mr. Blend in his most magisterial manner. “This little piece interests me because I am now classifying my crimes under ‘method’, and I am glad to have it to place beside Miss Pongleton. It was a chance remark by Mrs. Bliss that set me on the track. When I first read about how the old lady was strangled it struck me I’d heard of something of the same sort before, but I couldn’t quite place it somehow. It bothered me. I connected it with a dog-leash, but not with a dog. Now you see what the magistrate said: ‘True humanity shows itself first in kindness to dumb animals’; because they urged in this young chap’s defence, you see, that he was a well-conducted, humane fellow, and wouldn’t have done this save in self-defence. It was for that little saying that I kept the cutting in the first place. I used to quote that little bit at one time and Mrs. Bliss bore it in mind, and she came out with it on the evening of the very day the old lady was found throttled. That gave me the ‘animal’ clue, and I’ve been hunting for the thing ever since. I’m right glad I’ve turned it up.”
Mrs. Daymer was not paying much attention to his me-anderings. Her eyes travelled vaguely over the bad print and suddenly became riveted on one line.
“Did you notice the name?” she asked in a strained voice.
“Name of the young fellow? Oh yes, rum name, isn’t it? But these reporters on local papers aren’t any too accurate. Why, do you know, Mrs. Daymer, I could show you an account of a case in which the prisoner’s name is spelt three different ways in half a column, and not one of them the right one, I’ll wager. Now, let me see, where was it…?”
He began to gather up the scrap-book, but Mrs. Daymer laid a detaining hand on the page.
“No, don’t take it away, Mr. Blend. It’s a queer name and doesn’t ring true. And extraordinarily like…Do you know, I begin to think that this is something more than a curious coincidence. What are you going to do about it?”
“Do about it? Why, I’m going to have that old cutting out and put it in my new book alongside of Miss Pongleton; a pretty pair they’ll make!” Mr. Blend chuckled ghoulishly.
Mrs. Daymer was very disturbed. “I really don’t know. It seems impossible, utterly impossible. Not the type, I should have thought. And yet—I must confess I have not been able to work out any convincing theory to account for the crime. Mr. Blend,” she finished very firmly, “I really think that someone ought to follow this up.”
“Follow it up! You can’t follow up a dog that was dead thirty years ago!”
“One might follow up the career of that nauseating young man.”
“Follow up—I don’t quite follow you. Oh, you mean to say that it might be the same chap? The name—like—mm! —someone we all know? Hm! Even if it is, what of it, Mrs. Daymer?”
“The man who did that might have done—this!” said Mrs. Daymer sepulchrally.
“We-e-ll, I wouldn’t go as far as that. And to be sure, if there’s anything in what you say, that’s the policeman’s job, Mrs. Daymer. The police can look this up, if they’ve a mind to.”
“But it wasn’t a crime, merely a civil action for damages. And the name—it’s different, you see. He may have given a different name, or he may have been only too glad when they made a mistake about it, and refrained from correcting them. Anyway, I don’t suppose the police have given two thoughts to the career of—that gentleman.”
The implication which she saw in this discoloured record of an unimportant case of thirty years ago was so horrible and so fantastic that she could not bring herself to name the man whom it seemed to point to.
Mr. Blend nodded at her wisely: “You can follow it up for all I care, but I’m not doing any following up myself.”
“Will you allow me to copy this report? I can do it on my typewriter upstairs in a minute.”
“You’re welcome to copy as much as you like, so long as you take care of my old book—a bit weak in the joints that scrap-book is, just like me.”
Mrs. Daymer swept the notes for her novel unceremoniously into a flat case of soft leather embossed with a coloured pattern of plump apples. “My manuscript holder”, it was grandly called, and the apples were referred to, when she was in humorous vein, as the fruit of the tree of knowledge. She bore the scrap-book reverently upstairs.
Before long she was down again and returned the book to the old man.
“Mr. Blend,” she warned him, “I think it would be best if you said nothing of this to anyone here, for the present. You had better not leave this scrap-book lying about. And if you hear that I am paying a visit to the Midlands for the purpose of collecting local colour for my next book, please don’t appear to attach any special significance to my expedition. And perhaps you had better not mention Coventry. Fortunately the name and address of the young man’s landlady, the owner of that poor animal, is given in that cutting and may provide a starting point for my investigations. I suppose you wouldn’t care to come with me?”
Mr. Blend was quite staggered by the graciousness of this offer, which was based, not so much on any desire of Mrs. Daymer’s for the old man’s companionship as on her feeling that it might be more conducive to the success of her plan to get him away from the Frampton.
“Well, really, ma’am,” he said, relapsing, in his surprise, into his old manner of addressing his customers—“I feel that’s a job for younger legs. I’m a bit wobbly on my pins and can’t get about as I used to. But don’t you fix your hopes on finding that landlady at that address. Thirty years is a goodish bit of time, and landladies aren’t as a rule chickens.” He chuckled to himself.
“I don’t qu
ite know whom to take,” Mrs. Daymer mused. “There may be danger; I think it would be better to have a companion—and as a witness too.” She sank into her armchair and ran through her friends. It was not easy to find anyone who would be willing to accompany her to Coventry at a moment’s notice on mysterious business and who could, moreover, be relied on to remain satisfied with a subordinate part.
“Mr. Plasher!” she exclaimed at last. “I always thought him a very pleasant young man and one with a good deal of sense.”
Mrs. Daymer meditated on how best to approach Mr. Plasher; she was experienced in the establishment of friendly relations with people, particularly men, whom she wished to study as “types”. She planned her campaign and sallied forth, in a shaggy handwoven coat with cap to match, to the nearest telephone kiosk.
She learnt that Mr. Plasher was out but he would be back for lunch. Mrs. Daymer took a stroll by the ponds and returned to the station.
“Mr. Plasher—Mrs. Daymer speaking. You remember me, of course, at the Frampton? Now I want your help in a delicate matter in connection with this murder. I must have a confidential talk with you. It affects Miss Sanders, of course, and therefore I felt that you were the person to approach… . Out to tea? Then before tea perhaps? But the Frampton is impossible! Oh, that would be very kind, but I think you had better not call at the Frampton. I will walk down Rosslyn Hill and you might stop in passing. Yes, on the opposite side of the road to the underground station. Thank you so much, Mr. Plasher; I knew I could rely on you.”
Mrs. Daymer strode up the hill enjoying a sparkling sensation of pleasure and excitement.
After lunch she again donned the shaggy outdoor garments, with the addition of an immense woolly scarf, and strolled down the hill. Before long the grey two-seater came shooting up and drew in to the pavement near her.
“Mrs. Daymer!” exclaimed Gerry, with well-simulated surprise. “How about a little run over the Heath?”
“That is just what I was hoping for,” Mrs. Daymer declared as she wedged herself awkwardly into the seat beside him. They snorted up the hill, and when they were sailing gently along the Spaniards Road Mrs. Daymer told Gerry of Mr. Blend’s discovery and its possible significance.
Murder Underground Page 12