The Riddle of the River

by Catherine Shaw

  I rang, and the door was opened by a plump lady wearing a housedress and an apron. Her waist was cinched rather tightly, and below and above it her body burst out like a pillow upon which no stays could have any truly significant effect. Her white hair was piled under a cap.

  ‘Are you looking for a room? I haven’t got any empty right now,’ she said, ‘but I’ve got a beautiful one’ll come free in a day or two, if you can wait.’

  With a flash of intuition, I realised that she must already know that Ivy was dead – after all, the police had already been to the theatre, and they had almost certainly been here as well – and felt certain that the room to come free was Ivy’s. I wondered why it was not free already, and then thought that perhaps she needed time to clear away the dead girl’s things.

  ‘I am very interested in taking a room here. May I see it at once?’ I asked, seizing the opportunity.

  ‘Well,’ she said dubiously, ‘it’s not free yet. It’s very nice,’ she added, ‘one of the biggest ones. Just up those stairs. It looks out over the back and has got two large windows.’ She hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘Well, there’s no one there right now. Come with me. I’ll show it to you.’ Her eyes swept approvingly over my dress, my gloves, my parasol and my hat.

  I followed her up the short flight of stairs, impatient, wondering. She took a key from a large ring hanging at her waist, and unlocking the door, she opened it and held it for me to enter.

  The first thing I saw was that the room in front of me was shared by two occupants. A curtain of some dark stuff hung loosely from a stretched cord dividing the room in two; to each side of this curtain was placed a narrow bed of iron scrollwork painted white, a chair, a dresser with a mirror on it, and a washstand. The room was quite large enough to contain this furniture without appearing crowded. Each tenant had a trunk under the bed, as well as a number of articles of clothing arranged on shelves and in drawers, and hanging on a row of hooks on the wall. I looked carefully on both sides, and walked over to peer out of one of the windows, in order to gain a little time. The lady joined me without haste.

  ‘The view’s not so bad,’ she said. ‘There’s plenty of light.’

  The view showed nothing but the backs of the houses across the street, into whose windows one could see a little too clearly. I looked around.

  ‘The ladies who live here are moving away?’ I said, feigning polite interest.

  ‘Ye-es,’ she said with a flash of hesitation. I began to feel sure that this room was shared by Ivy Elliott with another girl, and I conceived a tremendous desire to discover her name.

  ‘They – they’ll be gone in another day or two,’ she continued. ‘We’ll arrange the furniture for one person, of course. We can take one of the beds away. It’ll be a lovely room for one, won’t it?’ In order to increase my perception of its spaciousness, she pulled the dividing curtain all the way to the back of the room. I had already determined, by a few small details, which side of the room must have belonged to the dead girl, for only one of the washstand bowls was wet, and there was dust on the other mirror, something no girl will allow. I fixed my attention on that side of the room, and walked through it thoughtfully.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, longing desperately to open some of the drawers, ‘I should like to keep this bed. If we take away the bed and dresser from the other side, perhaps I could put in a small sofa?’

  ‘Certainly,’ she was beginning, when Providence suddenly intervened in my favour, and the doorbell downstairs rang.

  ‘I’ll be right up, ma’am,’ she said, hurrying ponderously, if such a thing is possible.

  My movements were quicker than light. I first handled the clothes hanging from nails, seeking anything written: letters, documents, a diary in the pockets. There was nothing, though the dresses themselves flashed sequins, rhinestones and feathers. I then slid open the drawers one at a time and ran my hands through the contents. I was looking for anything written, yet could not help noticing, in the blink of an eye, that the top drawer held chemises, petticoats, corset-covers and corsets in two heaps; white cambric and cotton to the right, flower-patterned, and lace-trimmed and black silk to the left. The right-hand items looked new, the left-hand ones well-used. I stored this information in the back of my mind for later, closed the drawer, and opened the one below. It stuck – I gave it a little jerk – and it came out in my hand, bumping onto my lap as I sat on my knees in front of the dresser. I lifted it hastily to push it back in, and that is when I felt a little rustle of paper against my dress; a bundle of letters had been hidden underneath the drawer, slipped into a crosswise band of wood. I pulled them out and thrust them into my dress, then pushed the drawer back into place just as I heard the landlady come puffing up the stairs – not before having had time to perceive, at a glance, that my hunch was correct. The letters were addressed to Ivy Elliott.

  When the landlady returned, she found me sitting calmly upon the bed, observing the room from different angles.

  ‘How long has the room been let to these young ladies?’ I asked as we descended the stairs.

  ‘They’ve had it for a year,’ she said, frowning.

  ‘And why are they leaving?’

  Her frown deepened. ‘I can’t say exactly,’ she said. ‘They’ve given notice, so it will be very soon.’

  ‘What is the rent of the room?’ I finally asked. She looked me up and down, and said,

  ‘Five shillings a week.’

  It seemed expensive, but I suspected that it might suddenly have been increased for my benefit. I wanted more than ever to know the name of the young woman who was sharing Ivy’s room. It seemed to me that no one, if not she, could tell me the details of Ivy’s private life. But I could not think of a good way to induce this lady, whose friendliness was fast evaporating, to tell it to me. I began to wonder if I should spend the following days hovering in the vicinity in the hopes of catching the mysterious tenant as she entered or left. But the landlady, feeling, no doubt, that I had spent sufficient time in a private dwelling not yet my own, was ushering me towards the door.

  ‘I’ll take the room!’ I said impulsively. ‘When can I have it? Do you think tomorrow would be too early?’

  She looked pleased.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’ll see if I can arrange it.’

  ‘I don’t want to put the ladies – what are their names? to excessive inconvenience,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll speak to – them,’ she replied, and I detected the microscopic hesitation before the word ‘them’.

  ‘If they have paid through to the end of the week, or have not been able to find new lodgings yet, I hope they will allow me to offer some compensation,’ I said, still hoping to find some way to enter into contact with the remaining occupant of the room. ‘Perhaps I can discuss it with them tomorrow?’

  ‘I’ll take care of that,’ she said again, ‘I’ll see how I can arrange things.’

  I felt that she was going to try at all costs to prevent a meeting, and I could understand why. She very likely thought that no one would want to rent the room of a dead girl, little imagining that this was my dearest wish. But I could hardly tell her so.

  An idea struck me, and I quietly withdrew a banknote from my purse.

  ‘Then let me at least leave this, as some compensation for my haste,’ I said. ‘I should like to put it in an envelope, and leave it for the young ladies with a note explaining the circumstances.’

  She yielded, and allowed me to enter the drawing room and avail myself of paper, ink, blotter and seal. Alas, she stood over me as I wrote, although I tried to shift my shoulders in such a way that she could not see the words. This was most annoying, since I would have liked to write something of the truth, and beg the young woman to contact me at once. Thus observed, I found that I could not write exactly what I wished. So after a moment’s thought, I composed the following.

  ‘I am very sorry for any inconvenience I may be causing you by my urgent need to take over the room you are
vacating as soon as possible, preferably tomorrow. Please let me know at once whether or not you agree to this plan. I may be able to be of assistance to you, in finding a new lodging, or otherwise.’ I added my name and address, folded over the paper, and looked up at the landlady with as much authority as I could muster.

  ‘What names shall I put on the front?’

  She hesitated, then said, ‘Address the note just to Miss Wolcombe. That will be enough.’ I wrote the name, pleased to have finally extracted it and wondering if by some ruse I could manage to obtain the Christian name as well. The landlady took the note from my hand, and accompanied me to the door with a great show of friendliness masking a state of apparent nerves. Strange? perhaps not, in view of the fact that she had very probably learnt of Ivy’s fate only that morning, and it must certainly have afforded her a severe shock. I was in a state of nerves myself, although I hid it, forcing myself to keep a staid pace until I had turned the nearest corner. Then I pulled Ivy’s letters from my pocket and turned them over feverishly.

  Alas, they were most grievously disappointing. A milliner’s bill, two or three letters from a dressmaker with questions about a costume design, and several brief notes from Alan Manning containing information about rehearsal schedules comprised the whole of the little packet. And the one item that could have indicated something out of the ordinary refused to yield up its secret. An envelope postmarked Cambridge, the address inscribed in an educated hand by a pen of excellent quality, had somehow slipped inside another envelope. I pulled it out and opened it with a thump of excitement. But it was quite empty, and though I examined it hopefully from every angle, there was nothing to indicate who had addressed it.

  Well, there was the handwriting. I supposed that it might be identifiable eventually. But I thought sadly that it would probably turn out to be no more than the handwriting of Mr Geoffrey Archer. And what could one conclude from that? Why, nothing at all, except that he occasionally wrote to her, as he himself had freely stated.

  I wondered why there were no other envelopes or letters from him. Probably Ivy simply did not keep them. Perhaps she did not care for them, or feared the landlady’s prying eyes. I put the little bundle away with a sigh and took stock of what information I had gathered so far.

  The theatre people seemed to know her only somewhat distantly, or professionally. It seemed difficult to imagine a motive for the killing, although professional jealousy can always be evoked. But that would mean a woman. Obviously Jean was the closest thing that Ivy might have had to a rival, although Mr Manning seemed to consider them as very different. However, there had clearly been at least some discussion as to who was to play one of the characters in The Wild Duck, so a rivalry was not out of the question. On the other hand, if Jean had been playing on that very night, then she could not have been murdering Ivy in Cambridge. I remembered how the woman called Paula had claimed that the whole company remained to dismantle the stage sets. She must have meant all of those who had roles in the production. I wondered how many there were, and determined to examine the dramatis personae as soon as I could find a copy. After all, anyone who had not been cast could still remain as a suspect.

  Apart from the actors and Mr Manning, I now knew of four people personally acquainted with the dead girl: Mr Archer and Miss Wolcombe, whom I had not yet met, the landlady, and Ernest. In order to obtain information from the landlady, I would have to install myself in her room and work upon her for days, but this did not seem to me to be a priority, as she probably knew very little. Much the greatest chance of learning about the private life of the dead girl lay with Miss Wolcombe, who must have been a very close friend of hers if they had decided to set up house together. I very much wondered what kind of a woman Miss Wolcombe would turn out to be. Two young women living independently in rooms indicated a working-class background, and from what I had learnt of Ivy Elliott, she could be said to be situated on the margins of decent society. Yet what did that reveal? Those margins, as every other class, contain an immense variety of human beings.

  Mr Archer was an unknown quantity, and I could only continue hoping that Mrs Burke-Jones would be able to find or create an opportunity for us to meet. There remained Ernest. Ernest could hardly be the murderer, since he had charged me with the solution of the crime. Of course, the occasional murderer has been known to make such a grandiose gesture as a bluff, but such an act would make absolutely no sense in Ernest’s case. He had only to keep silent about his acquaintance with the girl and it was quite unlikely that it would ever have been discovered.

  Yet, after all, I reasoned, it was not entirely unimaginable. If the girl had been expecting Ernest’s child – I shuddered at the thought – then she might have told her friends, and she may even have threatened to make a scandal. Ernest knew Cambridge well, he came quite often. And in fact, he came regularly to our house, and was familiar with the area…and with the Cam in that part of Cambridge.

  But no! Ernest’s behaviour made no sense, if he were the murderer. He talked of the girl constantly – surely he would have kept away from all references to the pretty actress in his conversations with us. Surely he would not have called upon my services – and as much as told me that he loved her.

  Of course, people cannot always control their obsessions.

  The image of Kathleen suddenly started into my mind. She could be said to have a motive, if anyone did. She was aware of her husband’s habits in the matter of love. She was a strong, well-built woman. But on the other hand, how could she have known where Ivy Elliott would be spending her evening off? It was easy to find Ivy when she played at the theatre, but it might not be so simple at other times. Still, she might have followed her. All the way to Cambridge? Yet why not? What better way to deflect suspicion than killing your enemy in a faraway town?

  I thought over Kathleen’s behaviour. Had it been in any way incompatible with the idea of her being the murderer, as Ernest’s obviously was? No, it had not. She had woken me in the night to ask about him, but that did not prove that she was unaware of the girl’s death. What had she said when I told her? Ophelia…She had known at once to whom I was referring. A creeping horror began to overtake me at the thought that I had meant to spend a second night in her home, before returning to Ivy’s house the next morning in the hopes of catching Miss Wolcombe.

  I shook myself impatiently. Kathleen couldn’t be the murderer – she was my friend! It was unfair to even think of her that way. It made me wonder if people would so easily assume that I could be a murderer. In fact, I soon began to ask myself the question. If I discovered that Arthur was in love with an actress, might I…? No, out of the question. I saw myself, rather, living like Mrs Burke-Jones in lonely dignity, bringing up my children, keeping a pleasant home, and holding up my head proudly day after day in front of an entire society aware of the whole sordid story. But Mrs Burke-Jones’s husband had left, gone to live in France with the governess of her children. I wondered what I would do if I discovered, or realised, that Arthur was pursuing an affair while continuing to live tranquilly (or nervously) at home. I found it impossible to imagine him behaving thus. I was presented with a vivid mental image of Arthur delicately peeling away the arms of a seductive lady in a black lace corset, with painted lips, and extracting himself from them with a tinge of distaste. I burst out laughing at myself.

  Kathleen was not the murderer; she was my friend. But I am a professional, and as such, there was no better way to spend the evening than with her, attempting to detect evidence of any kind. I set my feet firmly in the direction of the Dixons’ flat.

  I felt much cooler and more self-possessed by the time I reached the flat and rang the bell. I had entirely prepared what I meant to say to Katherine. My plans, however, were immediately foiled by the fact that it was Ernest who opened the door.

  ‘Are you staying on?’ he said, in a timbre of voice for which it was obvious that Kathleen was not at home, and that he meant to talk at once about the subject that most interested
him. ‘Did you have a fruitful day? Did you find out anything important?’

  ‘A few things,’ I said, ‘But Ernest, I need to talk to people who knew Ivy Elliott. I’ve been to the theatre, but the problem is partly that the people there really didn’t seem to know much at all about her private life. And also, on the night of the murder, they were putting on a play. Ivy didn’t have a role, but everyone who did obviously has an alibi.’

  ‘Who was in it?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ I replied.

  ‘Well, do you know which play it was?’

  ‘Ibsen’s Wild Duck. Do you happen to have a copy here?’

  ‘Of course. I’ve got all Ibsen; I’ve got complete works of all of the world’s great playwrights,’ he said. Going over to the bookshelf, he browsed for a moment and then pulled out a volume and opened it. We studied the list of characters together.

  ‘The young girl, the mother, and the housekeeper,’ I said, ‘that accounts for the three other women in the company. They are definitely excluded. But I am afraid the same holds for the men, because there are quite a number of male characters. They must all have been cast.’

  ‘I can find that out easily enough,’ he said, throwing down the book.

  ‘So we may assume, unless you discover something unexpected, that the members of the theatre company are not involved, as they were acting,’ I said. ‘Except for Mr Manning, perhaps? He does not act.’

  ‘But he must have been there,’ he said at once. ‘The director is there every night, every minute of the play.’

  ‘Well then, subject to your verification of the cast, that means that the theatre people are out of it. I will need to investigate the people she knew outside of her professional life.’