“No, but it’s safe,” said Mrs. Bradley, giving him a dig in the ribs. “And I’ll make it right with the chief constable,” she added, with a cackle.
• 3 •
The journey by rail to Lowestoft was inexpressibly tedious to Pat. She and Mrs. Bradley sat on opposite sides of a first-class compartment, Mrs. Bradley knitting, and appearing to find nothing boring or monotonous either in the scenery or her occupation, the girl restless and unable to enjoy or even, apparently, to tolerate the journey.
A taxi took them to the house they sought—an unpretentious private hotel about a quarter of a mile from the front—and while they were in the cab Pat enquired:
“Why did you want me to come? I gave you the address.”
“I want you to hear what Mrs. Platt has to say for herself. I need a witness to the conversation.”
“There’s Isabella.”
“True.”
“That is, of course, if she’s come with Mrs. Platt,” Pat added, reasonably.
“She has, child.”
“How do you know?”
“How much do you think she knows about Mrs. Platt, and especially her treatment of Miss Platt?”
“Oh, she’s a nasty, poke-nose old thing. I expect she’s found out most of it. As a matter of fact, I’ve had a fair amount of information from her.”
“But she didn’t know of Miss Platt’s existence, did she?”
“Not before she came to live with Mrs. Platt. At least, I shouldn’t think so.”
“You know, I never made any enquiries at the telephone exchange, at which you told me—do you remember?—poor Lillie Fletcher used to be employed.”
“I don’t suppose it would make much difference. I just thought it might give one more line to go on.”
“One more?” said Mrs. Bradley. “I can’t see that, in the case of Lillie Fletcher, there are any lines to go on at all, except to suspect that wretched boy Coffin, her fiancé. That has been the chief difficulty there. We are as far as ever from knowing why anyone else should have wished to kill that girl.”
“I agree that her boy friend could tell you. Unless, of course, the wrong person was killed at the Report Centre. You don’t think that somebody else should have been the victim, do you?”
“That is an interesting suggestion. But, in that case, for whom was that blow with the stone intended?”
“Um, that’s just the difficulty. I mean, you’d be bound to know who it was you were hitting, wouldn’t you?”
“One would suppose so,” said Mrs. Bradley agreeably. “The goal is won, I think. This is Lowestoft Central. I think we had better have a taxi.”
A few minutes later she had paid the cab, and they walked up to the white-painted front door and rang the bell. The parlour maid who opened it said that she would find out whether Mrs. Platt was in, and gave them seats in the lounge, where they were stared at angrily by a white-moustached gentleman with a newspaper, curiously by two ladies wearing shawls, rudely by a bright young thing in the uniform of the A.T.S., and frankly and naturally by a child of six.
The parlour maid returned with Mrs. Platt.
“…and so you are prepared positively to identify the clothes?” said Mrs. Bradley, when the object of the visit had been stated.
“If they are—were—are my sister-in-law’s, I am.” replied Mrs. Platt. “But I tell you, Mrs. Lestrange Bradley, that I have taken advice about my course of action, and I am going to say, if things actually come to the point…”
“That is, to a court of law and a trial for murder,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“…that I did not identify the body because I had not the slightest idea that it could possibly have been my poor sister-in-law who had suffered that terrible end.”
“But suppose Doctor Lecky informs the court—as I rather think he will—that he reported your sister-in-law’s disappearance to you, and, later, suggested that the body might be hers, and that you had better go down and have a look at it?”
“I shall deny what Lecky says. His reputation…”
“You are frank, Mrs. Platt.”
“I have taken advice, and I shall act on it. I am reliably informed that Doctor Lecky’s reputation is bound to go against him, and that nobody is going to be unwise enough to put him into the witness-box.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Bradley. Mrs. Platt looked maliciously triumphant.
“In fact,” she continued, “I don’t know that I am prepared to identify the clothes, and to declare that they belonged to poor Miss Platt. I don’t know that I am going anywhere near those clothes. As for you!” she added, turning on Pat, “I don’t know that you will remain much longer on the staff of the Willington Record.”
“Too right, Mrs. Platt,” replied the young reporter, with a demure glance at Mrs. Bradley. “I am going to work on a London paper instead.”
Without waiting for Mrs. Bradley, she made an exit line of this trenchant speech, and then bolted for the street door. Mrs. Bradley cackled gently, and Mrs. Platt turned on her, round-eyed.
“Is that a fact?” she demanded.
“So I understand. Why should it not be a fact? Poor girl! She has worked very hard. The reward is her due,” Mrs. Bradley answered. There was a note of reminiscence in her voice which caused Mrs. Platt to enquire, with some surprise:
“Did you know her, then, before you came to Willington?”
“Oh, yes, in another incarnation,” Mrs. Bradley negligently replied. Mrs. Platt snorted, and then invited her to have some tea.
“Is your secretary-companion with you?” Mrs. Bradley asked, accepting the cup which was passed to her.
“Isabella? Oh, yes. But the poor silly creature had an accident our first day here, and hasn’t been able to walk. A broken ankle it is, caused by her tripping—I can’t think how!—over one of those iron rings down by the fish harbour. Such a nuisance! And, of course, painful for her.”
“Mrs. Platt,” said Mrs. Bradley, “I know you won’t think me impertinent if I ask you one more question about affairs at Willington. What caused you to engage Lillie Fletcher to be your personal maid?”
“Lillie Fletcher? But I didn’t do anything of the kind.”
“Our young and ambitious reporter told me that you did, and that you dismissed Lillie because you suspected her of stealing your property.”
“Oh, that!” said Mrs. Platt, as though she were at a loss, and did not wish to continue the subject. “It was all most awkward.”
Mrs. Bradley thought that it still seemed so, but she made no comment, and waited for Mrs. Platt to extricate herself from what appeared to be a position of some difficulty.
“You see, it was like this,” said Mrs. Platt, at last. “I knew it wasn’t Lillie. It was my nephew. But how could I admit that? My own sister’s son! So, of course, Lillie Fletcher had to go.”
“Of course,” said Mrs. Bradley, with such a grimace that Mrs. Platt gazed at her in alarm. “And what did you do to make it up to Lillie?”
“Well, all that I could. I had called the police in, you see—not knowing, at the time, the truth about the thefts. He pawned my rings, Mrs. Bradley! Think of that! But I told the police I shouldn’t take the case any further. They were rather disgruntled, I must say, but I couldn’t take Lillie to court.”
“Especially as the magistrate might have discovered the truth!”
“Yes. Well, never mind that for the moment.”
“Why mind it at all? Pray go on.”
“I did not press the charge, as I say, and I sent my nephew home and cut him out of my will, so he had sufficient punishment. Then I took over the management of the ‘Beauty’ Society, and Lillie became the secretary, and I had her to my house sometimes, and I think she was sensible enough to overcome her feelings to see where her interests lay. Then the classes fell off, and Lillie took a position at the telephone exchange. I did what I could about that.”
“Mrs. Platt, why should Lillie have been murdered?”
“Really, Mrs
. Lestrange Bradley, I have not the slightest idea.”
“It’s very trying. Nobody has the slightest idea,” said Mrs. Bradley, rising from the table. “Now I must go and find Pat. Our train is at half-past five.”
Pat was outside the hotel.
“I’ve been waiting half an hour,” she said. “We shall never catch our train. Thank goodness it’s a bit quicker than the one we came by. I thought I should have died on the journey down.”
“I had something of the same impression myself,” said Mrs. Bradley. Pat glanced at her sharply, but her benign and serpentine smile defeated the girl as it had baffled older and cleverer people, and they set out in silence to walk to the railway station.
“It’ll be funny travelling back in the black-out,” said Pat, at last, as the silence, to her, became oppressive.
“Yes, indeed it will,” Mrs. Bradley agreed, gazing earnestly at the back of a tall young man who was turning down Crown Score out of the High Street. By the time he was down the steps Mrs. Bradley had caught up with him, but, instead of stopping him, as the petrified Pat had expected she would do, Mrs. Bradley ran on. She tore along Whapload Road, which ran parallel with the sea, turned up Spurgeon’s Score, took St. Peter’s Street at a gallop, and did not relax until she was half-way along Clapham Road.
A train to Yarmouth was in the station. She took it, and spent the night at the Angel Hotel, in the Market Place. In the morning she went home. She had remembered to give Pat a return ticket on the outward journey, so that she had no need to worry about whether the girl had been able to get back to Willington.
Pat was reproachful when they met in Willington next day.
“I know,” said Mrs. Bradley. “But you did understand, child, didn’t you?”
“I thought you were chasing that young man, until you shot right past him. I waited some time at the steps, but gave it up, then, and walked to the station, and got the train we had decided on. I called up Lady Selina on the ’phone, but she said she hadn’t any news of you.”
“It was good thing I left you when I did, though,” said Mrs. Bradley calmly. “We were both in very great danger.”
“Did separating put it right, then?”
“Temporarily, I feel.”
“I don’t see much point in that. What were you afraid of?”
“What were Lillie Fletcher and Councillor Smith and poor Miss Platt afraid of?”
“I don’t know,” said Pat, backing away. “Do you feel all right? I mean, you look a bit like the…the Ancient Mariner, or something. Can I get you anything?”
“If you do, I shall scream for help,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“But why on earth?”
“Somebody got coffee for Lillie Fletcher. Somebody got stout for Councillor Smith. Somebody got—we don’t know what—for Miss Platt. It seems a most risky proceeding in this town to allow anybody to get one anything.”
“Yet, in spite of all that, you had tea with Mrs. Platt,” Pat observed. Mrs. Bradley grinned but made no reply, except to remark:
“You ought to be a detective, Pat, you know.”
• 4 •
“But when did you tumble to it?” asked Stallard. “Of course, it’s as clear as mud to me now, but I’d never have seen it for myself.”
“Not even if I had been murdered in Lowestoft, child?”
“I think I’d have chased more red herrings, even then! In fact, I should have arrested Mrs. Platt.”
“Dear, dear! And how is Sally?”
“Oh, we arrived full of beans, and she stuck on hefty shoes and a tweed skirt, and went out surrounded by dogs.”
“Strange that she never wanted you for her fiancé,” said Mrs. Bradley calmly. Stallard grinned.
“Now what?”
“That was what Pat told me when I first came into the case. I think at that instant I suspected her.”
“Then you did have a theory about the crimes?”
“It was not a theory; it was a certainty. The psychological element was there in all its beauty. You see, none of the murders were motiveless, and yet the people who had the motives do not appear to be implicated. What made you, by the way, suspect that the deaths were connected?”
“Just a hunch, I think. No, honestly—you won’t believe me—I did suspect Pat from the beginning.”
“Surely not of killing Lillie Fletcher?”
“Well, I didn’t think much about that,” said the young man, not abashed. “Tell me why you suspected her, then. I mean, apart from the lie about me and Sally. By the way, spare my vanity, and so forth, if you can—how did you know it was a lie?”
“I did not say it was a lie. But you must allow me to believe I know Sally,” replied Sally’s favourite aunt. “You are not—how do the young put it?—not her type.”
“Oh, I see. So you rumbled that Pat was playing some game or other. How right you seem to have been.”
“Then,” Mrs. Bradley proceeded, “there was, throughout the whole affair, the significant point that the knowledge shown in so many ways was knowledge which Pat, alone of all the people I had met, might reasonably be expected to possess because of her work. Then, too, the murderer of Councillor Smith, it was very soon evident, was somebody who had what I may call a right of being present upon various occasions when other people, without the cloak of a professional assignment, would have been noticed and would have occasioned comment.
“Pat’s presence occasioned so little comment that it did not occur to any of the women who attended Councillor Smith’s little party to mention that she was there to report upon the meeting. The only hint I received at all of her presence at the ‘Rat and Cow-catcher’ that evening was from Councillor Woods, the landlord, who remarked that the Ladies’ Committee had hoped for a report of the meeting in the local paper. Incidentally—and this I thought significant—that report was never published. It almost seems as though Pat did not wish to advertise the fact that she had been present there that evening.”
“But wouldn’t her editor…?”
“I doubt whether he had given her that assignment. It was a private gathering, really, you see. I think she used her professional status as a cloak for getting to the meeting and poisoning Councillor Smith.”
“But the motive?”
“Primarily, the news value of the scandal, of course.”
“Secondly,” suggested Stallard, “she had been very friendly with Elvira Blackburn, and thought that, as she was going to murder a prominent townsman, it might as well benefit somebody else if possible.”
“On the other hand, the secondary motive may not exist,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Other people, as I’ve said, drank stout at that little gathering, and I did say ‘poisoning,’ not ‘killing.’”
• CHAPTER 22 •
The Rake’s Progress.
Title of a series of paintings by William Hogarth.
“That’s all very well,” said Stallard, “and I think the same as you do, but we’ve had no evidence yet, to my mind, to connect Pat with that gathering.”
“Yet Pat’s presence, it seems to me, was clearly indicated. I imagine—but you can check this with Mrs. Councillor Zacharias, who was present from first to last—that Pat stayed for a very short time. I think—but you can check this up with Mrs. Commy-Platt—that she had taken all the notes she required before Councillor Smith’s stout was poisoned. I also think that she had left the place before Mrs. Platt put in an appearance. Mrs. Platt, you will remember, arrived very late at the party.”
“Of course, we are used to seeing Pat about, here, there, and everywhere, and taking no notice,” Stallard agreed. “Do you think, then, that we could have found Miss Platt’s clothes at Pat’s lodgings? All that I wonder is why people keep such certain evidence of a crime.”
“I suppose,” said Mrs. Bradley, “that most people have no idea that the police can make a kind of house-to-house search for such evidence, and I expect there was some intention of blackmailing Mrs. Commy-Platt. Ah! That was another thing
, too, which led me towards the truth. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but it deserves to be emphasised. I realised, on my first visit to her, that Mrs. Commy-Platt had something to hide. For a woman of her temperament she was far too civil to anybody who behaved as badly as I did upon that occasion. I tried her to the utmost, and, instead of resenting it, she continued to attempt to placate me.”
“And what she had to hide, of course, was what she had done to poor Miss Platt, and the fact that, although she knew from Doctor Lecky that Miss Platt had left the Home, and that a body was awaiting identification at the town mortuary, she had refused to admit responsibility.”
“Yes, and there again, in connection with Miss Platt, Pat’s knowledge might have come in. She had visited the Home once or twice, in search of news, and had heard—you can check this up with Doctor Lecky, who, thinking that he is again to be brought to trial, is probably burning to tell you anything he can which will put somebody else in his position and let him out—something of Miss Platt’s circumstances, and even—so indiscreet do I suspect Doctor Lecky to have been—her relationship to Mrs. Platt. On this foundation it would not take much for a smart youngster like Pat to have gone into the circumstances thoroughly, wormed out the whole story, and even helped in the escape.”
“Yes, I see that that is possible. But what motive could Pat have had for killing the unfortunate woman?”
“To create news—if she had a motive, of course.”
“Which it did, and didn’t do.”
“Exactly. The news of an unknown woman’s suicide (as it was thought to be, you remember) roused comparatively little interest. Pat, who knew the identity of the dead woman, dared not come forward openly and announce it, but she was prepared for the news to fall flat.”
“How do you deduce that? Oh, yes, of course! By the fact that the other murders took place within twenty-four hours. She did not leave herself time, though, to find out whether the news was going to create the stir that she wanted, or whether it needed decoration, did she? That seems to me a bit odd…but, well, I suppose I must arrest her…”
“No doubt, although, in my opinion, it is unwise.”
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