“I don’t think, for the sake of his own skin, he’d dare. After all, if this unromantic little husband of hers said casually, ‘I’ve had enough of that kinsman of yours; I propose to do him in tonight; I want your help,’ she might quite well protest. She might even refuse. It’s on the cards that she’d try and warn Ralph. Oh no. This solves another problem that has perplexed me a little since I came here. You know what it is?”
“Well?”
“Think. How many households do you know where a widowed sister forms a permanent member? These households a trois hardly ever work out well. Look at the number of husbands who’ve been murdered by their wives’ companions. Mrs. Belloc Lowndes has made a positive corner in them. And if a man keeps his sister with him, after he’s got a wife to attend to his creature comforts, he must have some ulterior motive.”
“Some men are quite daft about their sisters,” I murmured. “I knew a Vicar once who stood on the doorstep in all weathers if his sister was late for tea.”
“I don’t precisely see Nunn doing that. Besides, was this lunatic of yours married? No? I thought as much. You can’t have a wife and a sister, not in the same house, not for long, not without trouble.”
“You’re suggesting she was the Spider’s accomplice?”
“Who could be better? You wouldn’t suspect a woman like that. You’d look for some one who moved in different circles, someone less garrulous and more polished. Just consider the facts. We haven’t been here long, but it’s been long enough to prove that she has got a most peculiar attraction for men. It isn’t looks or figure or intelligence; I suppose it’s some kind of charm. Did you see her on the night of the party? She was surrounded by men the whole evening. Incidentally, she’s an amazing dancer, even in that ponderous get-up. She could coax secrets out of them, if she wanted to, just as I daresay she could coax a hippopotamus out of its pond on an August day. And she’s very clever; she gets your life-history out of you without any appearance of asking questions. I don’t for a moment suppose she has anything directly to do with the blackmailing side of the business. And I daresay she doesn’t even think it’s very wrong. A woman like that has her own standards; I doubt if Nunn could find a more perfect contrast or coadjutor anywhere.”
I had been thinking. “Baynes must be in this,” I said. “Has he been in the plot from the beginning, do you imagine, or was he just bought over for the occasion?”
“He’s been with Ralph a good many years, and if he wasn’t born dumb, deaf, blind and imbecile, he probably picked up a lot about the business in that time. Besides, I can’t quite see Nunn going to him and saying, I’ve a quarrel with your employer, and I’m proposing to murder him at nine o’clock to-morrow night. Here’s a tenner to say he didn’t leave the house till ten. No, I think Baynes was in the original scheme. That’s probably been going on for years; you don’t build up an organisation of that nature and efficiency in six months. In fact, if it hadn’t been going on for some time, I don’t see why Mrs. Ross continued to live with her brother after his marriage. I daresay they’ve all been gleaning a nice harvest ever since the war. That was a magnificent time for picking up secrets; you got men in their most expansive moods, learnt things that in the normal way would never have been revealed to you. There must have been a rich harvest for the social vultures after the Armistice. And, of course, if Ralph was going to reform, none of them was actually safe. He might not give any of them away, but they wouldn’t feel secure. Besides, he’d have, in them, a pleasant source of income for the rest of his days, and a man of his tastes doesn’t live on the small income Hilary brings with her. And now we come to the job of providing proof. That tracks very carefully, but they’ve probably left some clue, if we could stumble on it.”
I said, “I might be able to find out from Peters if there was a letter from the Abbey for Ralph, making the appointment at the summer-house. Hilary has sworn she didn’t write, so it wouldn’t be hers. And Ralph ’phoned to her. That would be one thing, though I’m afraid we aren’t likely to lay hands on any such letter, at this time.”
“It would help a lot if we could come upon anyone who actually saw Ralph outside his house between, say, eight and nine o’clock.”
“The police have been trying to get hold of such a man, but he doesn’t seem to exist.”
“It isn’t everyone who hears what the police want; possibly a stranger, who hasn’t been in touch with the papers, is wandering about somewhere with the very evidence we want. Anyhow, you try Peters and I’ll write to Archie. Of course, Mrs. Ross was dressed ready for the party when she started. Nunn probably had blood on his hands or even on his shirt-front—I wonder if there’s a clue there. We might try.”
2
It wasn’t so easy as I had supposed to get hold of Peters, and in any case I should have to drop my question casually, as otherwise I should merely rake up fresh local scandal. It occurred to me, in the interim, that Hook might be able to help. He would probably remember if a letter went to Ralph on the eve of the party, for, like everyone else, he was aware of all the moves in the game. He had been attached to the family for a great number of years, and was clearly devoted to them since he had abandoned a better job to return to Eleanor when she married again. Talking to him one evening, I said thoughtfully, “There’s an ugly rumour going round, Hook, that you may have heard. It affects Miss Hilary.”
The man looked deeply troubled. “The place is full of them, sir, if I may say so. You remember my telling you just before the party that people was coupling her name with Sir Ralph’s in all sorts of loose ways. I don’t know what this new one can be.”
I said, “They’re saying that she wrote to him, making the appointment that resulted in his death. I’m convinced that isn’t true, but I’d like to crush it openly. You’d remember, wouldn’t you, if there was a letter in her writing to Sir Ralph on the 14th?”
“I should, sir. To tell you the truth, being in the family so long and remembering Miss Hilary when she was no more than an infant in arms, I’ve been properly anxious about the affair myself. We all know the kind of reputation Sir Ralph had, and though one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, it did Miss Hilary nothing but harm to be mentioned in the same breath with him. And when she did write to him, and I’ve seen the letters lying as bold as brass on the table in the hall, I was sometimes minded to burn them. But, of course, it isn’t my place to say these things, only, as you will understand, sir…” he hesitated. “Well,” he began again, “I’m not a family man myself, as you know, and it’s almost as if it was some girl of my own…” His voice was unwontedly deep and moved. I nodded.
“I know, Hook. Of course, there’s the possibility it wasn’t put on the table…” And indeed, if Hilary hadn’t written it, the odds were it wouldn’t be.
Hook debated. “That chap of Sir Ralph’s might tell, if he liked,” he suggested.
“I hardly think I can ask him,” I protested.
“No, sir. Of course not. I wasn’t suggesting such a thing, and it would put ideas into his head, if you did. I was only thinking that perhaps, if I chanced to run across him we might very likely stop and pass the time of day, and it might be possible to drop some hint without making it noticeable. Of course, you’d have to be precious careful with a fellow like that. But, if you like, sir, I’ll see what I can do.”
“I can trust your discretion, Hook, I’m sure,” I told him. And then the post came in, and among the envelopes one addressed to Jeremy in Archie Fraser’s writing.
Archie gave a comprehensive history of Nunn from the beginning of the war. It made very interesting reading.
It appeared that he had volunteered in 1914, when he was thirty-two. He went to France with the British Expeditionary Force at the end of that year and was wounded in the head the following spring. It was not a serious wound, and he convalesced at a Base Hospital, returning to the Front without leaving France. Just after this he got h
is commission as Second Loot, and was wounded for the second time. It was a body wound this time, a fragment of shell in the abdomen and he nearly collapsed. They sent him home in a pretty bad state, and he was nursed at the Officers’ Hospital in Carlton House Terrace. This was June 1915; when he was discharged from the hospital his Medical Board decided he wasn’t fit for overseas service, and gave him clerical work at the Ministry of Food in South Kensington, where, for six months, said Archie, he checked up the quantity of blood used in the construction of cattle-cake, and wrote letters about the distribution of strawberries and other soft fruit. It was obvious, however, that his gifts of organisation and intelligence were wasted in this subordinate job, and he seems to have pulled strings, for he was suddenly transferred from the Ministry of Food to a much more significant post at the Ministry of Munitions. Here he had a good deal of responsibility, and as time went on this increased, until he had a large department working under his orders. There had been one crisis when he had shown up a man in enemy pay who was sending out faked shells, and some very ugly letters had reached him. He hadn’t turned a hair, apparently, and in consequence he was marked down for some recognition, and he’d had the O.B.E. in the next Honours List. Nothing, said Archie, bar influence could have effected that transfer; he ought to know, for he was himself invalided out in 1916, and spent the rest of the war in Government service, where he learnt to his cost that promotion is a slow job to the obscure young man.
“He had a sister to keep house for him,” Archie’s letter continued, “an amazing woman. They were always seen together. She was a widow, I don’t know what had happened to her husband, probably he was killed in the war; anyway, no one ever spoke of him, and she and Nunn were practically inseparable. I met them both and you can take it from me that woman was magnetic. It wasn’t that she tried to make you make love to her or stand treat to shows or dinners, but she was irresistible. I remember a woman saying to me that she was born to be a widow. She wasn’t pretty and she couldn’t dress, but you’d turn out on a wet afternoon to have tea with her—and you know what those end-of-the-war teas were like—where you wouldn’t bother to go to dinner with half a dozen handsomer and more soignee women of your acquaintance. I fancy she was his chief asset with quite a lot of people, though you never heard rumours of her engagement, as you generally did with women who met a lot of men.”
“It was a brilliant piece of statesmanship on Nunn’s part,” Jeremy observed, laying the letter down. “And luck as well. It isn’t every brother who has a Meriel Ross in the family. And Archie’s right when he talks about charm. She fairly drips with it.”
He took up the letter again, but there wasn’t much more of any importance. Archie said that Nunn seemed to know everyone and go everywhere; he had a marvellous head and no one ever saw him the worse for liquor. He had money, plenty of it, and though he didn’t throw it away, no one ever described him as tight-fisted. People were always glad to have him as a week-end guest, and he seemed on excellent terms with people with whom he wouldn’t have seemed to have much in common.
“And that’s that,” Jeremy observed, destroying the letter.
“Do you suppose Dennis has suspected any of this?” I wondered aloud.
Jeremy said coolly, “Well, if he hasn’t, he can stay in the dark a little longer. We weren’t sent down here to wet-nurse him. Dash it all, he’s got my girl. He can’t expect me to hand him anything else. Now, Tony, it’s up to you. Carry on.”
3
Everything, of course, from our point of view depended on our being able to prove some association between Ralph and Nunn, and this was particularly hard to do. Nunn had taken a stringent step when he refused to have his landlord over the threshold of the Abbey, and that seemed to indicate a deadlock between them. But what terms they’d been on before that, or if, indeed, they’d been on any terms at all, was almost impossible to learn. I sounded Eleanor on the subject. She said at once, “James didn’t know Ralph. He met him once or twice, but I don’t think he liked him, and he objected to his squiring Hilary, who was then only sixteen. That was the basis of the trouble between them. Of course, Ralph was away a great deal, but when he was at the Cottage he used to assume that he could come over whenever he liked. And the trouble was that when he did come over, he went out of his way to be insulting to James, talked about the country houses in the hands of corset manufacturers and jam merchants and so forth. And at last there was a final scene—I’ve never been sure what it was about, but I think it was Hilary—and James told him not to come again.”
“And after that?”
“After that we had nothing more to do with him till the night Hilary was lost, that is to say, James had nothing more to do with him. I was seeing him and writing to him surreptitiously, about Cleghorne’s letters.”
“Nunn knew nothing about those letters until you told him? He hadn’t been threatened by Ralph?”
“Oh, no. I never meant him to hear, but I think this time it wasn’t a question of money, it was Hilary herself, and I must say it looked as if he might get her.”
“That’s all right,” said Jeremy, when I told him, “but if she’d seen Nunn do it, she’d tell the same yarn. All her thought in this affair is for her precious husband, and has been from the beginning. I don’t think you can count her an unprejudiced witness.”
It was after this conversation that I managed to get hold of old Peters. I had known him many years ago, when he had a son about my age, who subsequently was killed in the war. There were other children, married or abroad, or scattered in their various jobs, and the old couple lived together in a very small, out-of-date cottage, where all the water had to be pumped up—the sort of cottage it’s difficult to realise exists in these days of modern plumbing. Old Peters and his wife seemed delighted when I knocked at the door, and gave me the best place by the fire, and a cup of very thick stewed tea, with sweetened tinned milk. They said they could get cow’s milk if they liked, but this was a treat. It was a bit of a shock to find they’d adopted town ways to this extent, and as I loathe sweet drinks it was all I could do to drink my mugful. The old couple talked and talked; they spoke of Hilary and of Eleanor and of Ralph; they spoke of all the changes that had taken place in the village during the last ten years; they produced photographs of their children and their grandchildren; they told me what a hard time Johnny was having in Canada, and how there was no dole out there; and they said that Lizzie, who was a lady’s-maid, was in Italy and would go to Scotland when she came back.
And then Mrs. Peters added, “But let Mr. Anthony tell us his news. Have they found the fellow that murdered Sir Ralph yet?”
I said that we weren’t sure it was murder, and in the talk that followed contrived to slip in my question about the letter, without arousing too much curiosity. Malicious people, I said, were asserting that Hilary had written to Ralph, luring him to his death, and it was all very unpleasant both for her and for Dennis.
Old Peters opened wide his blue eyes. “Ay, but she did, Mr. Anthony. I handed in the letter myself.”
That was what we wanted to know. “When was this?” I asked. For there are three deliveries of letters daily at Feltham and Ravensend, one at about eight, one at midday and one at five. Letters for the first delivery must have been posted overnight, the last collection being taken at half-past six. Letters for the midday delivery can be posted by the nine-thirty collection for local addresses, and letters for the afternoon post can be posted up till half-past twelve.
Old Peters said, “You’ll keep it quiet, sir, won’t you? I wouldn’t make things worse for the young lady.”
And his wife chimed in, “Poor thing. I wouldn’t be in her shoes now, that I wouldn’t. She used to come in here quite a lot at one time, but lately she’s too much occupied with other things. And though Sir James is a pleasant gentleman enough, it’s not the same as having them you’ve always known, as belongs to the place, calling on you. Even Si
r Ralph—well, you did feel he knew us, though he might be a bit wild.”
“You can be quite sure I’m at least as keen as yourselves that Miss Hilary’s name shan’t be dragged into this show any further than can possibly be helped,” I remarked, slightly nettled at their attitude. “But if you can remember what time you delivered the letter, it might make a lot of difference.”
“It was in the afternoon,” said Peters promptly. “I stopped and had a word with that chap, Baynes. Very civil to me he always was, whatever he might say about Sir Ralph and Miss Hilary in the court. We talked about the goings-on at the Abbey for that night. Sir Ralph, he’d been putting it round the village he was going to raise hell or worse, and us that have seen the family grow felt mortal fear’d what he might do. There’s nothing a man like him ’ud stop at if he was so minded, my wife said, and we both remembered that French hussy he’d done for, and though she wasn’t any better than she should ha’ been, and French, which do seem to make a difference, still, we didn’t like the idea that he might serve Miss Hilary the same. So I says to the fellow, ‘Dessay you’ll be glad, too, when this party’s done and over?’ and he says, ‘That I will. Like a bear with a sore head the Captain is. Never left me alone a minute all the blessed day. I’ll be glad to see his back this evening, and have a chance to call me soul me own.’ Then I handed in the letter, and he put up his eyebrows, and said, ‘Oh, my Lord, another of ’em. As if she wasn’t going to see him to-night, too. Where’s all this going to end?’ Well, I didn’t want to start naming Miss Hilary to him, so I said, ‘Pity you can’t keep him at home and save all the trouble,’ and then I came away, but I was mortal fear’d. I mean to say, it isn’t natural for a young lady to be engaged to one gentleman and be writing letters and meeting another, specially seeing how Sir James doesn’t like him. But I didn’t expect this end to it all, no, Mr. Anthony, that I didn’t.”
Mrs. Peters broke in in a wheedling voice, “Tell us, Mr. Anthony, you know how we feel about Miss Hilary, is there any talk of her being married to Mr. Dennis? It’s a pity he doesn’t get wed and get away from here, and they can settle down and let bygones be.”
Death in Fancy Dress Page 18