“What now?” said Miss Let’s-be-Lovely.
“That gentleman’s here again. He’s sitting in the waiting-room with a huge bunch of country looking flowers, I mean not from a shop at all, and the funny part is,” said the junior typist, blushing a little in her earnestness, “that he doesn’t look silly a bit. Would that be the gentleman that saved her life?”
“No,” said Miss Let’s-be-Lovely. “That would be the poor sap that stood waving a gun about and letting a woman do all the work, as usual.”
“Still, he did arrive just in the nick of time,” said Pat, who thought that Mr. Chucky was ever so lovely and his hopeless attachment ever so romantic, good enough for Girls Together itself.
“He was always arriving in the nick of time, as far as I can make out,” said Miss Let’s-be-Lovely, “and never doing anything about it when he got there. Whenever she was in more than ordinary peril, he made a point of setting out for some place called Neath, thinking better of it halfway, and tramping across fifty miles of wet mountains to be in at the—literally, in at the death. On this occasion he seems to have said that he didn’t know Katinka was going back to the house until Mrs. Love happened to mention it in the car.”
“But anyway, poor little Miss Evans got there first?”
“That’s what I say—a woman was left to do the dirty work. Of course she wasn’t there at all when Carlyon pretended to see her at the Tarren rocks; that was only a ruse to get Katinka to the precipice. Then he waited to see the boat get across the river; but as it happened, by then Miss Evans had missed her seal, and she went back up the path to look for it. The deaf woman wouldn’t wait for her—she calmly pinched the boat and rowed herself across the river. Her arms were strong although her legs might be crippled. But Miss Evans, going up the path, must have looked up and seen Tinka and Carlyon on the ledge: Tinka thinks she was probably worried in case they had found the seal, and she crept up through the corridor to listen and see if they were talking about it. God knows how much she heard of what Carlyon was saying, but anyway, there she was when she was needed. And now she’s dead—and Carlyon too.”
“Fancy—a mass murderer!”
“Three wives is too many,” said Miss Let’s-be-Lovely, “but I don’t know that you can call it mass. Of course there may have been more that the police haven’t yet found out about.”
“You don’t really think so?” said the junior typist, deliriously thrilled.
“No, I don’t,” said Liz, hastily. “There were only three lots of clothes and stuff in the attic.”
“He must have been mad to keep all those incriminating things!”
“Oh, yes, of course he was mad,” said Liz. “And it was the sort of madness that murders for pure gain. After all, he’d done fairly well out of the earlier wives; he was able to prove to solicitors and people that he was pretty well off. He was just mad for possessions, and I suppose he couldn’t bear to part with anything so he hoarded it all away in boxes in that attic. He must have known it would be fatal if anyone found it, but he was too mad to be able to bear to chuck it all away. Up to then the police had only suspected, but the minute Chucky wangled himself into the house and discovered that attic—it was just a matter of time. At least, so he says.”
“Did he know for certain, then?”
“He says he knew for certain when he saw the slippers on Katinka.”
“The slippers?” said Pat, increasingly thrilled. None of the others had been able to get anything out of anybody about this Miss Friendly-wise business, and the Editor had just made them all a sort of terribly brief speech and said to behave as if nothing had happened. “The slippers?”
“He inveigled Miss Friendly-wise into trying some on. She has small feet, but then so had poor Angel Soone. And the slippers were miles too big. That’s why he took her up there.”
“Well, fancy!” said the junior typist, confounded by this masterpiece of detective ingenuity.
“What I can’t forgive him,” said Miss Let’s-be-Lovely, “is involving Tinka in it at all; and him supposed to be so keen on her all along.”
“I don’t see why he kept telling her that he had three children at home?”
“Mr. Chucky has a somewhat peculiar sense of humour,” said Miss Let’s-be-Lovely, coldly. “He lives with his sister and she has got three children, so in a sense it was true. He says it never occurred to him that she would believe him—I can’t think why.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered, anyway,” said Pat, “because she simply hates him. Whenever he comes, she just says, ‘Tell him to go to hell,’ and goes on dictating her letters. And the letters!” She held out the notebook dumbly to Miss Let’s-be-Lovely.
“Read it out,” said Miss Let’s-be-Lovely crossly. “I can’t be expected to understand all these squiggles.” She folded her hands across the bust bodice and leaned back to listen, as she had listened so often to Amista’s letters so many months ago. Pat read out the latest effusion of Miss Friendly-wise on the subject of Love at First Sight.
“‘My dear, ‘You ask me if there is such a thing as love at first sight. Yes, of course there is, but it is something to beware of because it brings with it nothing but disillusionment and pain and regret and despair. Love at first sight is like a rainbow—it is too perfect too soon, and when it vanishes, it vanishes for ever. It is founded on charm, and charm is a terrible weapon, never more cruel and dangerous than when it seems most sincere…’ It’s ever so cynical,” said the junior typist, “and I don’t know what the Editor would say if he ever saw these letters that Miss Friendly-wise sends out.”
“She ought to be out of this job,” said Miss Let’s-be-Lovely. “It’s doing her no good.”
“That’s just what the gentleman says,” said Pat, surprised. “He says, ‘Tell her that this job is no good to her any more and she ought to come home to the mountains.’ And then a lot of stuff about the mountains bringing it all back into proportion again.”
“Does he?” said Miss Let’s-be-Lovely. She thought for a little while and then with an air of decision leapt to her feet. “Well, all right, Pat, leave it to me. I’ll take care of this.” She marched off down the corridor, the protesting junior behind her, and threw open the pink-painted door of the pink-painted waiting-room. “Oh,” she said, abruptly closing it again. “I needn’t have bothered—it seems to be taking care of itself.”
Which was as well, perhaps; for in her agitation she had forgotten to take off the brassière.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1950 by Christianna Brand
cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
ISBN 978-1-4804-0574-5
This 2013 edition distributed by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
www.mysteriouspress.com
www.openroadmedia.com
EBOOKS BY
CHRISTIANNA BRAND
FROM MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
Available wherever ebooks are sold
Otto Penzler, owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan, founded the Mysterious Press in 1975. Penzler quickly became known for his outstanding selection of mystery, crime, and suspense books, both from his imp
rint and in his store. The imprint was devoted to printing the best books in these genres, using fine paper and top dust-jacket artists, as well as offering many limited, signed editions.
Now the Mysterious Press has gone digital, publishing ebooks through MysteriousPress.com.
MysteriousPress.com offers readers essential noir and suspense fiction, hard-boiled crime novels, and the latest thrillers from both debut authors and mystery masters. Discover classics and new voices, all from one legendary source.
FIND OUT MORE AT
WWW.MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
FOLLOW US:
@emysteries and Facebook.com/MysteriousPressCom
MysteriousPress.com is one of a select group of publishing partners of Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
Open Road Integrated Media is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road creates connections between authors and their audiences by marketing its ebooks through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media.
Videos, Archival Documents, and New Releases
Sign up for the Open Road Media newsletter and get news delivered straight to your inbox.
Sign up now at
www.openroadmedia.com/newsletters
FIND OUT MORE AT
WWW.OPENROADMEDIA.COM
FOLLOW US:
@openroadmedia and
Facebook.com/OpenRoadMedia
Cat and Mouse Page 22