Miss Maud Silver, entering the room, was very warmly received. She addressed the Superintendent, to Sergeant Stebbins’s edification, as “My Dear Randal,” and enquired affectionately after his mother and his sisters. In fact compliments were exchanged. Sergeant Stebbins was sent to interview evacuees who might possibly have heard the shot, and Miss Silver took a chair.
In the days when she was a governess she had been governess to Randal March and his sisters. Her friendship with the family had been maintained. Some three years previously Randal March had had to confess that he owed his life to her skill and acumen in the rather horrible case of the poisoned caterpillars. And they had been very closely associated in the autumn of ’39 over the mysterious Jerningham affair. But in spite of these up-to-date contacts his first sight of Miss Maud Silver invariably carried him back to the days when she was the unquestioned dispenser of law and knowledge to an inky little boy with a marked distaste for acquiring information or for doing what he was told. In spite of this distaste he had learned and he had obeyed. Respect for Miss Silver had entered into his soul. He found it there still.
As she took her seat and extracted some pink knitting from a brightly flowered work-bag, he reflected that the years which had made him a superintendent of police in a country town had apparently left her quite unchanged. She must have been much younger in those old schoolroom days, but she had not seemed any younger to him then than she did now. She had always been terrifyingly intelligent, conscientious, sincere, religious, dowdy, and prim. She retained a pristine passion for knitting, and for the poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and his contemporaries. She was a perfectly kind and just human being and a remarkably good detective.
With a mind hovering between old and well-merited respect and an amusement which in no way detracted from it, he sat back in his chair and responded to enquiries about his family.
“Margaret is in Palestine with her husband. She managed to get out there at the tail end of ’39. The little girl is with my mother.”
Miss Silver nodded.
“She is very like Margaret. Mrs. March kindly sent me some snapshots.”
“And Isobel has joined the A.T.S. In fact you may say that I am the only member of the family who is not in the Army.”
Miss Silver coughed in slight reproof.
“The enforcement of law at home may, I think, be considered quite as important to our war effort as anything that Isobel or Margaret may be able to do,” she remarked. Then, changing the subject briskly, “This is a terrible affair. I am very glad to have an opportunity of talking to you.”
“And I to you. I have most of the statements now, and I should be glad to know how they strike you.”
Miss Silver knitted in silence for a minute. Then she said,
“I was sorry to miss you the other morning when I was in Ledlington. The note I left for you informed you that I was staying at the Priory. I think I must now tell you that I am here professionally.”
“What?”
In that faraway schoolroom Miss Silver would have reproved this unadorned ejaculation. She let it pass.
“This is of course in confidence. Miss Fane would not wish it to be known.”
Randal March looked concerned.
“But I’m afraid I must ask you—”
“Oh, yes—I was about to explain. Lucy Adams is an old schoolfellow of mine. I used to visit here when I was a young girl, but after I had entered the scholastic profession my time was so much occupied, and my interests so very different from Lucy’s, that the acquaintance—it was hardly a friendship—faded away. We had met no more than a dozen times, I suppose, in the last thirty years when I came down to stay with dear Lisle Jerningham and she very kindly asked Lucy to tea. Lucy appeared to be much interested in my change of profession, and later that evening I was rung up by Miss Fane. She asked me to come over and see her, which I did next day—there is quite a convenient bus. She told me that small thefts of money had been taking place in the house, and that suspicion was being cast upon the evacuee families she had taken in. She was extremely anxious that the matter should be cleared up. She asked me whether I would undertake it professionally. I did so.”
Randal March smiled.
“And solved the problem?”
Miss Silver said, “Yes,” in rather a grave tone of voice.
He looked at her shrewdly.
“Not one of the evacuees then?”
She shook her head.
“Oh dear, no.”
He was conscious of a rising interest.
“Are you going to tell me who it was?”
She laid down her knitting for a moment and looked at him.
“I think so, Randal—I think I must. But it is for your information only.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that you are not to make a police court case of it— it is not to be dealt with in that way. If there had not been a murder in the house, I should not have mentioned it, but after what has happened I do not feel justified in withholding any information however remote.”
He said, “You’re quite right. You had better tell me. I won’t use the information unless it bears upon the murder. Who is the thief?”
Miss Silver got up and went to the door. As she opened it, Miss Fane’s maid, Perry, went past, carrying a small tray. The smell of coffee floated in. Randal March saw the tall, stiff figure in grey go by.
Miss Silver closed the door and came back to her seat. In a very much lowered tone she said,
“Perry.”
“You mean that that was Perry who went by? Miss Fane’s maid, isn’t she?”
“No, I don’t mean that at all, Randal. I mean that Perry is the thief.”
“What! I thought she’d been here for donkey’s years.”
Miss Silver took up her knitting again.
“Oh, yes—forty-one years of devoted service. She worships Agnes Fane.”
“And pilfers from her!” He looked and sounded incredulous.
Miss Silver coughed.
“It is not quite so simple as that. She does not like having the evacuees here. The thefts were planned to lay them under suspicion and to bring about their removal.”
“What a mind! Are you sure?”
“Oh, yes. But I have not told Miss Fane. I should have done so today, because, having accepted the engagement, I should have felt it to be my duty. But I had no expectation that she would believe me. She has an extremely rigid type of mind.”
Randal frowned.
“I haven’t seen her yet, or Miss Adams. I suppose you have. How are they taking it? They were devoted to the poor girl, weren’t they?”
The term struck Miss Silver as incongruous. With time at her disposal she could have moralized upon the theme—Tanis Lyle with the ball at her foot come down to that pitying “poor girl.”
She gave a faint dry cough. “I have not seen Lucy—I believe that she is quite prostrated—but I have just come from Agnes Fane. Shall I tell you how I found her?”
He said, “Yes,” in a voice which showed a trace of astonishment.
She paused briefly to take up a stitch, and then continued.
“She was writing a letter to her solicitor.”
“To her solicitor?”
Miss Silver nodded.
“He is a Mr. Metcalfe, an old friend of the family. But she was not writing to him as a friend. Her letter pressed him to push forward without delay the negotiations which he is carrying on with Miss Laura Fane for the purchase of this property.”
Randal March was really startled. He said, “My dear Miss Silver!” and there for the moment words forsook him. She nodded, and went on knitting.
After a short pause he said, “Well, you’ve answered my question. Devoted!” He gave a short laugh. “It hardly seems to be the right word—does it? I suppose it’s about three hours since she heard of her niece’s death!”
Miss Silver raised her eyes to his face.
“You must not misund
erstand me, Randal. It would be perfectly true to say that Agnes and Lucy were devoted to Tanis Lyle. They built their hopes on her. She meant everything to them that they had missed themselves. Especially to Agnes. To her, I think, she also represented a weapon.”
“What do you mean?”
Miss Silver paused for a moment. Then she said,
“How much do you know about Agnes Fane?”
“I suppose what everyone in the county knows—that she was jilted by her cousin—that she rode her horse over Blackneck quarry and has been a cripple ever since. It’s too dramatic a story to be forgotten, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It has never been forgotten. Agnes has never forgotten it.”
“It must have been a long time ago.”
“Twenty-two years. I was staying in the neighbourhood at the time. I knew Mr. Oliver Fane and the girl he eloped with—a Miss Ferrers. She was a cousin also. They were very charming people. It made a terrible split in the family. From that time I believe that Agnes has had but one idea—to acquire the property which would have been hers if she had married Oliver Fane, and to divert it from his daughter to Tanis Lyle.”
“The daughter being Laura Fane, the girl who is staying here now?”
“Yes. She is just of age, and she has not seemed very much inclined to sell. Agnes asked her down here in the belief that she would be able to influence her. She is a woman of strong will and inflexible purpose.”
Randal March made a sudden movement.
“Now, just why are you telling me all this?”
“My dear Randal!”
Miss Silver’s tone expressed reproof, but he shook his head.
“You have an ulterior motive. What is it?”
Her needles clicked.
“It is a very simple one. A violent crime has been committed. As I am familiar with the background against which the motives and actions of everyone in this house must be viewed, I thought it my duty to give you some impression of it.”
He said, “I see—” And then, “Miss Fane is still set on purchasing the property? Why?”
“To divert it from Laura Fane. You know that Tanis Lyle had been married? There is a child, a little boy of six. If she could buy the Priory, Agnes would adopt him and bring him up to succeed her.”
Randal March looked at her meditatively.
“Surprising thing human nature—isn’t it? Yes, I knew of the marriage. The husband is, of course, this Hazelton fellow who figures in the shooting affair of the previous night. I’ve got five statements about that—Desborough, two Maxwells, Laura Fane, and the butler, Dean. Now what have you got to say about it?”
CHAPTER 23
MISS SILVER GAVE HIM her account of Jeffrey Hazelton’s brief meteoric irruption into their midst. It was lucid and remarkably to the point. Randal March, with the sheaf of statements in his hand, glanced sometimes at them and sometimes at her. When she had finished he said,
“H’m—yes. No difference of opinion as to the facts. What did you make of the fellow? Was he really dangerous? Or showing off? Or just too drunk to know what he was doing?”
Miss Silver considered. Then she said,
“All three, I should say.”
“Would you like to amplify that?”
She took a moment. “He is still very fond of her, and he has a grievance. I gather that he had been seeing a certain amount of her lately. He spoke to her the other night at the Luxe. I believe he asked her to dance, and that she refused. It would have made her rather conspicuous, though I do not know that she would have cared about that. He evidently followed her down here. The Maxwell brothers saw him drinking at the Angel some time before dinner. Then a good deal later he came up here. He was drunk, and obsessed with his feelings and his grievance. He was out of his own control and on the edge of a collapse.”
“You think that he might have shot her then?”
“Undoubtedly. He had the pistol actually pushed against her chest and his finger shaking on the trigger. If she had shrunk away from him, or cried out, or done anything to stimulate his nervous excitement, he would, I am quite sure, have shot her then. She behaved with great coolness and presence of mind.”
“And you don’t admire her for doing so. Will you tell me why?”
Miss Silver dropped her knitting in her lap and looked at him.
“I never saw anyone show less feeling,” she said. “Even a stranger would have experienced some pity for Mr. Hazelton—he broke down so completely, sobbing, and saying her name over and over. And she had not a thought for him. She was excited, pleased—almost openly triumphant. I considered it a very painful exhibition.”
Randal March laid down the papers he was holding.
“Your sympathy seems to be entirely with the criminal,” he said drily. “Rather unusual for you, isn’t it?”
Miss Silver picked up the pink infant’s vest she was knitting, measured it carefully against her hand and wrist, and began to cast off. She said then in a quiet, serious voice,
“I should be very much surprised to learn that Mr. Hazelton was the criminal.”
Superintendent March did not exactly start, but he came very near to doing so.
“I should have thought it was sufficiently obvious.”
Miss Silver coughed and said,
“My dear Randal!”
He laughed, but he changed colour.
“Well, you know that nine times out of ten the obvious person really is the criminal.”
She repeated the cough.
“I would not put it as high as that myself. But even with one chance in ten I consider it inadvisable to close the mind to other possibilities by assuming one obvious person’s guilt.”
Incontinently his mind went back some twenty-six years. In the dock—in this case his father’s study—Randal March aged nine and a month or so, accused of stealing plums from old Gregory’s orchard and very much the obvious criminal. Miss Silver, then as now, declining to accept the obvious, sticking it out, proving her point, bringing Isobel, the real culprit, to repentance, getting him off—all in the primmest, driest manner imaginable, without fear or favouritism.
He turned an affectionate and respectful look upon her now.
“You’ll admit, I suppose, that Hazelton is a suspect. I’ll be interested to know why you won’t consider him as the murderer.”
She cast off a couple of stitches.
“I think he might very easily have shot her on Wednesday evening. But he was seen off to London next day by Mr. Desborough and Mr. Robin Maxwell. I do not find myself readily able to believe that he returned that same evening, induced Miss Lyle to admit him to the Priory, and then shot her in the back—she was shot in the back, was she not?”
“Oh, yes. Why do you think he wouldn’t do it?”
The pink stitches were dropping evenly and methodically from the needles. Miss Silver said,
“He was very fond of her, very much in love with her. It would have required some strong stimulus to make him shoot her. She would have had to be facing him—quarrelling, or arguing, or resisting him. I feel quite sure that he would not have shot her in the back.”
As she spoke, the door opened. The maid Perry stood there. Seeing her full face for the first time, March found her one of the least attractive of the female sex. Such a flat, ironed-out figure. Such a fleshless, bloodless face. And those pale eyes.
She kept a hand on the door, long, thin and bony, and said with a certain acid restraint, addressing the Superintendent,
“Miss Fane will see you now.”
If he expected a “sir”, he didn’t get one. He never would from Perry. The police were the police. They had their work to do, and it was better not to get on the wrong side of them, but they were, and remained, the dirt beneath the feet of Miss Agnes Fane. He said in a pleasant authoritative voice,
“Thank you. I will come up in a moment. Miss Silver will show me the way. You need not wait.”
When she had gone and the door was shut, he said,
“I haven’t been able to find anyone yet who heard the shot. I must have everyone asked whether they heard it. When we go up I want you to go in to Miss Adams and just ask her that one question. Will you do that?”
Miss Silver broke off her wool, passed the end through the last stitch, and drew it tight. She put the needles and the completed vest into her knitting-bag and rose to her feet.
“Certainly, my dear Randal.”
They came up the stairs and turned into the corridor.
“In the rooms on the right,” said Miss Silver, “are, first, Laura Fane, then Miss North, with a bathroom between. Then Miss Lyle, another bathroom, and the octagon room, which as you see, juts out into the corridor. On the left there is first a bathroom. Then Lucy Adams, another bathroom, a small room occupied by Perry, and Agnes Fane’s room, which is much larger than any of the others. Of all the people in the house she is the most likely to have heard the shot, since her room has two windows looking that way. It is, in fact, barely possible that she did not hear it, whereas Lucy is very unlikely to have done so. There are three rooms between hers and the side of the house where the murder was committed, and I happen to know that she would not dream of having a window open at night at this time of the year. But if you wish me to ask her whether she heard anything, I will do so.”
“If you don’t mind.”
Miss Silver tapped at the door and, receiving no articulate reply, opened it and went in, leaving it ajar behind her. She found herself in a confusing pink dusk, the curtains being completely drawn across both windows. As she advanced towards where she knew the bed to be, a voice came to her choked with sobs.
“Who is it? I can’t see anyone—I can’t!”
Her eyes adjusting themselves to the semi-darkness, Miss Silver made out the bed and, prostrate upon it, Miss Adams, her face half buried in the pillows. She said in a kind, firm voice,
“I am not come to disturb you, my dear Lucy. I am sure you know how much I feel for you in your grief. The Superintendent has deputed me to ask you a question. He has no wish to intrude upon you, but it is his duty to find out whether there is anybody in the house who heard the shot. Perhaps you will just tell me whether you did hear anything.”
The Chinese Shawl Page 11