It was whilst Jennifer had gone to make some more that Emily put down her cup and said in a fluttering voice,
‘You have seen the papers? This is terrible news, isn’t it?’
The Jovian frown rested upon her.
‘I do not consider it a suitable topic for the breakfast table, but since you have referred to it, I can only say that I am very much shocked. I was in the bank only yesterday and had a few words with the manager. It is a terrible occurrence, but not, I think, adapted for family discussion. Is it really not possible to obtain better coffee than this, Emily? May I ask how many spoons you put in?’
Mrs Craddock looked guilty.
‘I—I—Mrs Masters—’
‘You let Mrs Masters make the coffee! After all that I have said! I do not expect that my wishes should carry any undue weight, but I thought I had made a very particular request that you should see to the coffee yourself. Mrs Masters can see no difference between water that has been freshly boiled and water that either has not boiled at all or has been kept stewing on the stove for hours. This coffee has been made with only half the proper amount, and it has been stewed. My special herbal flavouring, designed not only to improve the taste but to counteract the disastrous effects of caffeine, has been omitted. Is Jennifer merely making toast, or has she to bake the bread as well?’
‘There—there—is plenty of bread.’
‘If it is burned, I will not eat it,’ said Peveril Craddock with a rasp in his voice.
The toast was, fortunately, not burned. When she had placed it before him Jennifer poured herself yet another cup of health tea and drank it in sips, holding the cup between her hands as if she needed the warmth.
The police arrived at just after ten o’clock.
TWENTY-THREE
AS THEY TURNED into the drive, Frank Abbott said to Inspector Jackson,
‘Look here, I want Miss Silver to be there when we question these people, and the only way it can be done is to have them all in together. She knows them, and we don’t, and I want her opinion as to how they react. But I don’t want to give anything away. I don’t know how long she means to stay anyhow, but her position here would be quite untenable if they thought she had anything to do with the police. So if it’s all right with you, I suggest we round up all these Colony people and see them together at Deepe House, and if there seems to be any reason for it, we can go through them one at a time afterwards. If I drop you off about here you can do Remington, and Miranda, and the Miss Tremletts, whilst I collect the elusive Robinson. And you had better bring Miss Elliot along too. She’s staying with the Miss Tremletts. I don’t suppose any of them will be out.’
Inspector Jackson agreeing, Frank Abbott stopped the car and set him down.
He stopped again at the east wing, where he wasted ten minutes trying to make Mr John Robinson hear. All the windows looking on to the courtyard had been boarded up, and an accumulation of dead leaves and dusty spiders’ webs suggested that the front door was no longer in use. The bell was certainly out of order. Having made as much noise as he could with the knocker without producing any result except to awake the courtyard echoes, he walked along the impenetrable hedge which joined the front wall of the house and called, ‘Hullo!’ At the sixth or seventh repetition there was an answering call, and a man’s voice said, ‘Want anything?’
‘I want Mr John Robinson.’
‘Well?’
‘Are you Robinson?’
‘I am. What do you want with me?’
‘Answers to a few questions. I am Inspector Abbott of Scotland Yard, and I have come over with Inspector Jackson of the Ledshire County Police to make some enquiries. We shall be obliged if you will join the other members of the Colony over at Mr Craddock’s side of the house.’
A not unmelodious whistle came from behind the hedge. Mr Robinson said,
‘What’s up?’
‘A routine enquiry.’
‘Well, even routine enquiries have to be about something. All right. I’ll know more about it when I join the party, won’t I? You’ll have to put up with my working clothes.’ His voice receded.
Frank had begun to wonder whether it had gone away for good, when there was a sound of footsteps away on his left and John Robinson hove into view. The working clothes to which he had alluded were of the disintegrating kind—flannel trousers with a good many rents in them and a liberal plastering of mud, a couple of sweaters so carelessly disposed that the under one, which showed traces of having once been blue, stuck out at the neck and sleeves and from gaping holes in the elbows. Above all this, a short beard, a very untidy head of hair, dark eyes under bushy eyebrows.
He nodded affably as he came up, and remarked,
‘Go where glory waits thee, but when fame elates thee, oh then remember me—as Tommy Moore says. And if you have any idea of haling me to quod on account of something I haven’t done, I will merely mention that I have a family of hens, a blackbird with a broken leg, and a tame rat called Samuel Whiskers. He is the only one of the party able to shift for himself, so I commend the others to your humanity—if a policeman has any. It is, of course, rather a lot to expect.’ He had a soft, agreeable voice and a country accent, more noticeable than it had been from the other side of the hedge.
They arrived at the door of the other wing, and were admitted by Mrs Masters, who put them in the study and went to tell Mrs Craddock that there was a policeman there with ‘that Mr Robinson,’ her manner declaring that she always had said there was something wrong about him.
Peveril Craddock came into the study, very much the master of the house and of the situation. He might have been the headmaster receiving a deputation of which he could not be expected to approve. There was a kind of courteous gloom, a magnanimous condescension. His voice took on its richest tones.
The police—he really failed to see—but of course every facility they desired. … The other members of the Colony? … Indeed? … Of course if they wished it. … Oh, yes—certainly, certainly. …
He was wearing corduroy trousers of a subdued blue and a belted blouse of the same colour with the merest hint of red and green embroidery at the neck and wrists. Hair and beard were in beautiful order and disengaged a faint odour of what was doubtless a herbal brilliantine. His gaze rested upon Mr John Robinson’s deplorable get-up for no more than a moment, and then withdrew.
Mr Robinson sustained both the look and its withdrawal with cheerful calm. He went on looking at Peveril, and appeared to be seeking for some quotation which would describe him in suitable terms. He was, as a matter of fact, hesitating between one which might be considered offensive and a milder one which he felt to be inadequate, when the door opened and the two Miss Tremletts, Thomasina Elliot, Augustus Remington, and Miranda trooped in, shepherded by Inspector Jackson. There were greetings. There were a great many questions. The Miss Tremletts were agitated. Miranda, her red head topping the others, frowning and silent. Augustus Remington voluble in protest.
‘My morning’s work will be ruined! I had an idea—very slight, very tenuous, quite terribly elusive.’
He addressed himself to Gwyneth Tremlett.
‘Inspired by the exquisite shade of silk I purchased yesterday—treasure trove, my dear, pure treasure trove, but fragile as the bloom on a butterfly’s wing. But you will understand me—at this stage a touch, a breath, a current of cold unsympathetic thought, and the nascent idea is bruised, is blighted, is carried away. I hope it will not prove so in this case, but I am quite terribly afraid.’
He continued his lamentation whilst Mrs Craddock and Miss Silver were summoned. With his straw-coloured hair distractedly ruffled and in workaday garments consisting of brown velvet trousers and a grass-green smock, Thomasina thought he looked a good deal like a grasshopper—if you could imagine a grasshopper with straw-coloured hair. She was, however, a good deal too much taken up with her own affairs to do more than spare him a momentary attention. He was mad of course, but then most of the people here, if
not absolutely mad, were so odd that there wasn’t much in it. She went back to thinking about Peter Brandon and how absolutely enraging it was that he should have dared to come down here—getting Mrs Masters to take him in and positively pushing himself on to Miss Gwyneth! If the police wanted to arrest anyone they had better arrest Peter. It would just about serve him right.
These romantic thoughts were broken in upon by the entrance of Miss Silver and Mrs Craddock, the latter as pale and nervous as if she were being ushered into a cage of lions instead of into a room full of people whom she met every day. She took the first chair she came to and sat on the edge of it looking frightened. Since there was no vacant chair beside her, Miss Silver had perforce to leave her there and cross the room. The seat she found gave her a very good view of everyone. She had the Miss Tremletts and Thomasina beside her, and beyond them Mr Craddock, with Mr John Robinson on the other side, hunched up on the window-seat with his back to the light. From across the room Augustus Remington and Miranda faced her, Miranda sprawled in one of the larger chairs, Augustus on a low stool in what she considered a ridiculously affected attitude. The two Inspectors had drawn chairs up to the writing-table.
As soon as everyone had been accommodated Inspector Jackson said in his slow, deep country voice,
‘I am taking it for granted that you will all want to be of assistance to the police. Inspector Abbott has come down here from London about some notes that they are anxious to trace. A couple of them have turned up here. One of them was paid into the County Bank in Ledlington by Miss Weekes who has a fancy-work shop at Dedham. She says it was part of last Tuesday’s takings, and she has mentioned the names of several people who might have paid it over. Three of them are here now, and I would like to ask them whether they can remember anything that would help us—as, for instance, the amount of the bill—how they paid it—and if in notes, whether they thought there was anything at all out of the way about those notes.’
‘I have never entered a fancy-work shop in my life,’ said Peveril Craddock in a calm resonant voice.
Augustus threw out his hands.
‘But, my dear Peveril—what a loss to yourself! The rows and rows of woolly bundles like fat contented sheep of some beautiful rainbow variety unknown to the plodding agriculturist—the sheen of silk, shifting and shoaling from one delicious hue to another—the bright plastic needles like spears of light—’
It was not easy to astonish Inspector Jackson. He said in a very definite tone,
‘Did you buy anything from Miss Weekes on Tuesday, Mr Remington?’
Augustus looked vague.
‘I might have done. I was searching for a certain shade of silk—a fruitless quest. But when it comes to which day of the week, I fear I cannot help you. I am of those who believe that time is an illusion. Sometimes we drift with it—sometimes it passes us by. I am quite unable to say whether it was on Tuesday that my quest took me to Dedham.’
Miss Gwyneth leaned forward. She was wearing a chain of large brown wooden beads, and they made a rattling sound.
‘Oh, but it was,’ she said. ‘Because when I went in in the afternoon they said you had been there. I mean, Miss Weekes did—I didn’t speak to Miss Hill. Miss Weekes said she was so sorry she hadn’t the colour you wanted.’
‘One of those fluent shades—’ Augustus murmured.
Jackson said firmly,
‘Well, Mr Remington, it was Tuesday. Now can you remember the amount of your bill?’
‘Oh, dear, no. Money is merely a distasteful symbol—I really do not regard it.’
He spoke in a lisping way which gave Jackson a strong feeling that he ought to have been smacked for it when he was young. He had two little boys of his own, and they would have been over his knee and getting six of the best if they started any such finicky nonsense. He said shortly,
‘Miss Weekes says that the amount was thirty-two and sixpence.’
‘She is probably right.’
‘And that you paid her with a pound note, a ten shilling note, and half a crown.’
‘How distressingly observant.’
‘You agree with her statement?’
The hands were waved as if in supplication.
‘My dear man, don’t ask me! I am sure she must be right.’
‘Then I have to ask you whether you noticed anything at all unusual about the pound note.’
It was at this point that Mr John Robinson was heard to remark that hope sprang eternal in the human breast. Augustus sighed.
‘I do not notice pound notes. I have just been telling you so. They exist, but I do not admit them any farther into my consciousness than that.’
Inspector Jackson persevered.
‘Can you tell me how this pound note came into your possession?’
Augustus shook his head.
‘I suppose from my bank. I have a modest account at Dedham. My means are small, but I occasionally cash a cheque.’
‘Well, we can get the date of your last cheque from them—unless you can remember it yourself.’
‘Oh, no.’
Jackson turned to Miss Gwyneth, who proved voluble and informative. She had bought a yard of canvas in a neutral shade, three bundles of blue raffia, and one bundle each of green, red, and yellow. And she had paid with a pound note, which did not quite cover the amount of the bill, but there was a small credit, as she had brought back two bundles of raffia which she had bought in a bad light the week before.
‘Not at all the right shade, Inspector, and Miss Weekes is always most obliging. And I paid with a pound note, as I said, but I’m afraid I can’t tell you where it came from, because there was a five-pound note that I had put away for some time, and I changed it at the railway station at Dedham the last time I went to London about a month ago, and the note might have been part of the change, or I might have had it by me for some time—I really can’t say. But I certainly did not notice anything peculiar.’
Too much information can be as disconcerting as too little. Miss Gwyneth went on to recall that she had received a registered envelope containing three pound notes at Christmas, the gift of an aged aunt who had an incurable objection to writing cheques. She also remembered having obliged Mrs Craddock with a pound’s worth of silver for a pound note one day when she had no change for the bus. About a fortnight ago, she thought, but she wasn’t quite sure.
Appealed to for confirmation, Mrs Craddock thought so too. The money was housekeeping money. Mr Craddock drew a cheque about once a month when he gave her the housekeeping money. Some of it would be in notes, and some in silver. She had run out of silver, and Miss Gwyneth had very kindly changed one of the notes. Oh, no, it never occurred to her that there was anything wrong with it.
She sat drooping in her chair and never raised her eyes. Her words were barely audible. Jackson was reminded of a rabbit in a trap, too frightened to move. And what in the world was she frightened of? That was what he would like to know. He knew fear when he saw it, and here it was, plain enough, and he wanted to know why.
Frank Abbott was making notes. He too was aware of Emily Craddock’s fear. Nervous, delicate woman. Might be just nerves—might be she knew something. He listened while Peveril Craddock spoke of having an account at the County Bank in Ledlington, and of the cheque drawn every month for household expenses. They weren’t getting anywhere. They had got to go through with it, but there really wasn’t the remotest chance of identifying the pound note poor Wayne had spotted with any one of those which seemed to have been drifting in and out of the Colony. It was like looking for a pin in a box of pins. The only chance was that they might get a line on one of these people through some involuntary reaction. He looked up, and got one reaction at any rate. Mr John Robinson was regarding him with a gleam of critical humour. Sitting as he was, on the window-seat with his back to the light, his features in shadow and a good deal obscured by beard and eyebrow, it was extraordinary how that transient gleam came across. As clearly as he had ever got anything in his
life, Inspector Abbott received the impression that the police were making fools of themselves, and that they had Mr Robinson’s sympathy.
Well, at any rate Jackson had finished with the pound note and was now very politely inviting the company to explain individually just what each of them was doing between the hours of two and seven on the previous afternoon. No one making any demur, he proceeded to go round the circle clockwise.
‘Miss—er—Miranda?’
She shook back her mass of dark red hair.
‘Miranda,’ she said deeply. ‘Neither Miss nor Mrs—just Miranda.’
Inspector Jackson thought this was as odd a lot of people as he had ever come across. He avoided the issue.
‘Just so. Perhaps you would not mind telling me what you were doing yesterday afternoon.’
‘I don’t mind in the least—why should I? I went for a walk up over the common. I can’t say exactly when I started, or when I got back, but I had to turn on the lights when I came in, so I suppose it was about four o’clock.’
‘Mr Remington?’
Augustus heaved a sigh of utter boredom.
‘My dear man, how repetitive! Haven’t we had all this before? … No? Well, I suppose I must take your word for it. These sordid journeys—a bus always seems to me to be one of the lower mechanical organisms! I do hope you don’t expect me to remember every time I go to Dedham or to Ledlington. … Oh, just yesterday afternoon? Well, I will do what I can.’ He turned to Miranda. ‘I suppose I did go into Ledlington yesterday afternoon?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Augustus! You know perfectly well you did. I saw you start, and you came back on the five o’clock bus with Gwyneth.’
Death at the Deep End Page 14