The Blind Side

by Patricia Wentworth

  The Inspector burst out laughing.

  “Well, you wouldn’t find you’d done much damage, Miss Fenton. Ever hear of a safety catch?”

  “Yes-I think so.”

  “Know what it is?”

  “Something to do-with a pistol-”

  “But nothing that you would have any idea of what to do with. That’s about the size of it-eh?”

  Lee’s lips began to tremble.

  The Inspector laughed quite heartily.

  “Well, Miss Fenton, I don’t think you shot Mr. Craddock. I don’t think you’d have known how to set about it even if you had wanted to-and you’d no call to want to that I can see.”

  “But it wasn’t Peter,” said Lee, in a tone of misery.

  “Well, it looks more like someone else at present,” said Inspector Lamb. “And you needn’t be so unhappy about him, because we haven’t arrested him yet. He’s only gone along with Abbott to get a statement from Miss Craddock.”

  Quite a bright colour came into Lee’s face. She jumped up and stood there breathing quickly.

  “And you let me go on and tell you things because I thought you’d arrested Peter! I never heard of anything so mean!”

  The Inspector began to say, “Well, there’s no harm done,” but he broke off in, the middle because the door bell was ringing and Lee had gone to answer it. He followed, a little on his dignity. He had been jocose, and when the law unbends it expects appreciation.

  The door stood open to the landing, and just outside Mrs. Green was leaning on a broom.

  “I thought as how he might like to know the way the telephone bell was ringing in there in number eight, and the door being locked, there’s no one can’t go in and answer it, not without they’ve got the key, which I suppose the police has got. And anyhow, seeing I knew the Inspector was in here with you, I thought I’d better ring the bell and let him know.”

  Long before the end of this speech the Inspector had his key in the door. The shrill insistence of the telephone bell came to them for a moment before it was muffled and finally cut off.

  “There’s something about the police in an ’ouse that fair gives you the creeps,” said Mrs. Green. “My nerves won’t stand it, and that’s a fact, Miss Fenton. Badgering you out of your life and suspecting innocent people-that’s all they’re good for. Good for nothing is what I say, or we shouldn’t be murdered in our beds like pore Mr. Craddock.”

  “Well, he wasn’t in his bed,” said Lee firmly.

  “And well you may so, miss, but that’s where he ought to have been at two o’clock in the morning instead of carrying on with those that did ought to know better.”

  Lee removed her eyes from the door behind which the Inspector had vanished. It was senseless to imagine that the telephone bell was bound to mean bad news. Anger against herself sharpened her voice as she said,

  “You know a lot more about it than I do, Mrs. Green.” Mrs. Green pressed her hand to her side and groaned: “I’m sure I wish I didn’t know nothing,” she said gloomily. “My ’ealth isn’t strong enough for all this kind of thing, Miss Fenton, and when that there Rush talks about giving me my notice, well, he may think himself in luck’s way if he sees me here again, for what with that last turn not being properly gone off, and what with the sight of the police fair turning my stomach, well, I give you my word I haven’t kep’ down nothing today if it wasn’t for a bit of a bloater I made myself take, with a mite of spirits to keep my strength up-and the floor rising under me this minute. Well, I don’t suppose I’ll be here again, Miss Fenton. There’s my pore sister been wanting me this month past, only I wouldn’t put no one about, seeing it was holiday time. But if I’m to be misjudged and mistook, well, I’m through, and so I told that Rush just now. ‘You can keep your notice to yourself, Mr. Rush,’ I said, ‘It’s me that’s giving in mine,’ I said. ‘Places where gentlemen get murdered and nobody any the wiser-well, they’re not what I’ve been accustomed to, and you can put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Rush,’ I said. So you won’t be seeing me any more, Miss Lee.” Her voice dropped to a carneying tone. She looked sideways and shifted a step or two nearer. “Miss Craddock’s been a good friend to me, and pore Miss Mary that’s gone. If there was any little remembrance now-” Lee felt a wave of nausea. “There’s things I can shut my mouth about, and there’s things that I could tell-” The words made hardly any sound. “There’s many a little thing I’ve done-and likely as not you won’t be seeing me again-”

  Lee lost her temper, suddenly, satisfyingly, and completely. She said, “I’m sure I hope not!” and slammed the door upon the offended Mrs. Green.

  Chapter XXVII

  Well, sir, here’s her statement,” said Detective Abbott. “And if I may say so, I think she was telling the truth. The only thing against it is that Peter Renshaw was particularly anxious to impress upon me beforehand that Miss Craddock was so truthful that she couldn’t tell a lie if she tried.”

  “H’m!” said the Inspector. “He might be very anxious for you to believe that she was truthful, and yet it might be the fact, you know.”

  “Yes, I know, sir. But you’ve got to consider the tremendous importance for the whole Craddock family of this point about her having seen someone slip down the steps of Craddock House just before she got there at two-fifteen. If that’s true, it lets out Peter Renshaw, Miss Fenton, and Mavis Grey.”

  “Lets herself out too.”

  “Yes-only I don’t think she needs letting out, really. I’m quite sure her statement is true in the main. I’m certain she did try to find Mavis Grey and make a last appeal to her, and that the reason she didn’t give the alarm when she found Ross Craddock lying dead was that she saw Mavis’s powder compact and was so frightened at the idea of her being mixed up in the murder that she just panicked and ran away. That’s all natural enough. But that shadow slipping down the steps sticks in my throat, and if there’s no corroboration, I shouldn’t expect a jury to swallow it either.”

  “We haven’t got as far as a jury,” said the Inspector. After a pause he added the word “Yet.”

  He picked up Lucy Craddock’s statement and read it through to the end. Then he said,

  “What’s made her so worked up about this affair between Mr. Craddock and Miss Grey? That’s what I’d like to know. Seems to me it’s all a bit out of reason. She mightn’t like him, and she mightn’t want her niece to marry him, but she wasn’t even Miss Grey’s guardian, and I don’t see why she put herself in such a state as this amounts to.” He tossed the statement down upon the table. “To my mind there’s something behind it, and I’d like to know what it is.”

  “Yes, sir-you’re perfectly right. I pressed her about it, and I think I got something. Craddock couldn’t marry Mavis Grey because he was married already.”

  “What?”

  “Miss Craddock was a bit incoherent, but I gather that there had been some sort of a war marriage-old history-many years ago-very upsetting for the whole family. The woman was an actress and older than he was, but he was over twenty-one at the time and they couldn’t get the marriage upset. It didn’t last any time to speak of, but Miss Craddock said she was quite sure there had never been a divorce. She said she didn’t think Craddock wanted a divorce, because it suited his book to philander around and then be able to say that of course he hadn’t any intentions, because he was a married man.”

  “Anything known about the wife?”

  “I gather that none of them has ever seen her. Miss Craddock says that during the lifetime of her cousin, the elder Mr. Craddock, a small allowance was paid to her through Mr. Prothero, the family solicitor, but she believes Ross Craddock stopped it. There was a thing that struck me there, sir-once I’d got her started Miss Craddock fairly poured all this out. I couldn’t help wondering whether this rather mythical wife wasn’t a red herring. And that’s making me wonder whether Miss Lucy is quite the truthful innocent that Peter wants to make me think she is. First she sees a very convenient shadow slip do
wn the steps of Craddock House, then she says she finds the front door open, and lastly she releases a whole news-reel about a twenty-year-old marriage.”

  “I thought you said you believed she was telling the truth.”

  Detective Abbott ran his hand back over his hair.

  “I know I did. That’s the funny thing-when I was talking to her and taking down that statement I could have sworn it was all straight, but the moment I come to go over it to you I can see how fishy it looks. It’s too convenient for the Craddocks-that’s how it strikes me. And that story of someone coming down the steps-look how beautifully vague she leaves it. It might be a man, it might be a woman-she only says it was someone. And there’s no corroboration.”

  The telephone bell rang. The Inspector lifted the receiver, listened for a while, and then said,

  “That’s good enough-we’ll pull him in. Good work, Lintott! I’m coming straight over.”

  He hung up and turned a satisfied face on Abbott.

  “That was Lintott. He rang up whilst you were out to say he’d got a lot of stuff about Foster, and a number of good fingerprints from his brushes and shaving tackle. Foster wasn’t there, but he’d got a search warrant. I told him to rush the fingerprint business through and let me know the result. That was it, and it’s good enough to put Mr. Bobby Foster in the dock. His prints correspond exactly with the ones we couldn’t place, on the banisters and the sitting-room door. He was here that night, and he made those marks and he dropped his cigarette-case. His landlady says he came back in a taxi about midnight and made a lot of noise on the stairs. She says he didn’t go to bed, but walked up and down in his room talking to himself and kicking the furniture. Her husband went in to him at half past one and told him he was disturbing the whole house. The man says Mr. Foster was in an awful state-told him his girl had thrown him over, and he was going to buy a revolver and shoot himself, but he was going to shoot the other man first. He says there was a bottle of whisky on the table and Mr. Foster kept pouring himself out another drink. He says he tried to calm him down, but it was no good, and all of a sudden Mr. Foster shouted out that he wasn’t going to stand it any longer. ‘I’ll have it out with him,’ he said, ‘if I have to blow his head off!’ and with that he was down the stairs and out of the house and no stopping him-and by all accounts they were glad enough to be rid of him. They went to bed again, but they didn’t bolt the street door. Round about three in the morning the man heard something fall. He opened the bedroom door, and there was Mr. Foster on the stairs in his stocking feet with one shoe in his hand and the other where he’d dropped it on the half-landing. He didn’t look drunk any more, but he looked worse. The man says he looked as if he had seen a ghost. And he went back and picked up his shoe and on up to his room, all without making a sound. I’ll say we’ve got our man all right, or will have as soon as I get that warrant. There’s no doubt what happened, to my mind. He got round here somewhere about two o’clock, quarrelled with Mr. Craddock, and threatened him. Mr. Craddock had had a bang over the head already and he wasn’t feeling too grand. He gets scared, or wants to scare the other man, opens this drawer, and pulls out his revolver. Mr. Foster gets it from him-he’s a very powerful young man-and, either in a struggle or deliberately, Mr. Craddock is shot. Mr. Foster throws down the pistol and gets away just as Miss Craddock comes along. It fits in well enough with what she says she saw.”

  “She says she saw the pistol in Ross Craddock’s hand.”

  “Well, isn’t that where Foster would put it if he’d any sense in him at all?”

  “He might. There’s one thing though-Miss Craddock had a key to the front door of Craddock House, but Bobby Foster hadn’t.”

  The Inspector looked at him, frowning.

  “You mean?”

  “How did he get in, sir?”

  Chapter XXVIII

  When will you marry me, Lee?”

  Peter stood on the hearth-rug and surveyed her with frowning intensity. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets. His tone was business-like and his manner abrupt.

  Lee said, “I haven’t said I’m going to marry you at all.”

  His frown deepened.

  “Of course you’re going to marry me. I do wish you would stick to the point.”

  “I said I hadn’t promised to marry you. That is the point.”

  “No, it isn’t. We settled that yesterday. The present point is, when are you going to marry me? And I think it had better be as soon as possible. This is Thursday, and the licence business takes three days… Damn! that means the week-end comes in, so I suppose it will have to be Monday-or will a parson marry you on a Sunday? I don’t see why he shouldn’t-in the afternoon.”

  Miss Fenton had a clear and pretty voice. She raised it perceptibly.

  “Peter, I am not going to marry you-either on Sunday or Monday. I haven’t said that I am going to marry you at all.”

  He swooped, pulled her up out of her chair, and held her at arm’s length.

  “Why?”

  “It’s not-it’s not a time to get married.”

  “My child, marriage isn’t a beano. But I see your point. The inquest is tomorrow, and then I suppose they’ll let us get on with the funeral, say Saturday, and what’s to prevent our getting married on Monday? You want someone to look after you, you know. I can’t so much as go out for an hour or two but you go pouring confessions into old Lamb’s fortunately unresponsive ear. Poor old Lamb-first he thought Mavis had done it, then it looked as if I was a dead snip until Lucinda dropped on him out of the blue, on the top of which you came along with a confession, and now I gather that he’s quite sure it’s Bobby. But to return to our licence. You need looking after, I want to look after you, and-”

  She shook her head.

  “Peter, it won’t do-not till this is all cleared up. Don’t you see that if you marry me, the police will think I knew something and that you’d done it to make sure I couldn’t be called as a witness against you?”

  Peter let go of her rather suddenly.

  “What a perfectly horrible mind you’ve got!”

  “Well, isn’t that just what they would think?”

  “I don’t know-I suppose they might.”

  He took her by the elbow and began to walk her up and down the room.

  “Look here, my dear, you say put off getting married until the mess is cleared up. But suppose it isn’t cleared up-suppose it’s never cleared up. Do you realize that we are all under suspicion and we shall go on being suspected till kingdom come unless they really do find out who murdered Ross, and, what is more, prove it up to the hilt? Do you think Mavis did it? I don’t. I don’t suppose she’s ever handled a revolver in her life. Besides, look at what she did earlier on when he got fresh with her. She upped with the decanter and hit him over the head. Very nice, natural, womanly reaction. If she’d had a revolver handy she’d have hit him over the head with it or heaved it at him, but I’ll go bail she wouldn’t have fired it.”

  Lee nodded.

  “Yes, I think so too.”

  “Always agree with me, darling. You’ll find it a splendid foundation for our married life. We now come to me. Do you think I did it?”

  “No.”

  “I suppose there are circumstances in which I might have done it-I don’t know. But whoever shot Ross shot him sitting. That’s the medical evidence-the shot travelled downwards. He was shot sitting, probably whilst he was still dazed after the clip on the head Mavis gave him with the decanter. I don’t see myself doing that somehow.”

  Lee said “No” again.

  “Then there’s Lucinda. I don’t know if they believe her statement, but I do. Of course the wish is probably father to the thought, because if she really did see someone coming out of Craddock House at a quarter past two in the morning, it spreads quite a lot of whitewash over the Craddock family. And that’s the snag-they may think the whitewash altogether too convenient.”

  “I suppose so. I-I’ve been awfully frightened abo
ut Lucy, Peter. She was most frightfully worked up about Ross, and she doesn’t really seem to have known what she was doing on Tuesday night. The thing that frightens me is that as far as I can see she was the only person who could have got in from outside after Rush locked up. She says she found the door open, but-”

  “Mavis and Ross came in. They may not have shut the door properly. No-that won’t wash. I don’t believe anyone could forget to shut a door they’d just opened with a latchkey. You see, he took the latchkey out all right. It was there on his chain. He simply couldn’t have forgotten the door. Besides Mavis was there.”

  “Then who opened it? Someone did, if Lucy’s story is true. Oh, Peter, it frightens me.”

  “I know, but you’re not going to make me believe that Lucinda shot Ross. What about Miss Bingham? There’s a really bright idea!”

  Lee’s laugh was half a catch of the breath.

  “Peter, I had her here for an hour after the Inspector had gone, and it was the very last straw. Talk about third degree!”

  “I begin to feel quite sure she did it,” said Peter firmly. “She had a secret passion for Ross, and she slew him because he wouldn’t reciprocate. Why, she admits being on the spot at or about the fatal time. I believe we have her sleuthed. Call me Renshaw no more-I am Hawkshaw the Detective. I must ring up old Lamb and tell him all before he goes and arrests me, or Lucinda, or the unfortunate Bobby.”

  All this time he had been walking Lee up and down, with the pace getting faster and faster, until at its climax he stopped suddenly and embraced her after the French manner, with clasping arms and a kiss upon either cheek.

  “Peter! Don’t be so mad!”

  She got an injured stare.

  “Is it that you are offended? Is it not that one is permitted to salute one’s betrothed? Do you not love me passionately?”

  “No, I don’t! And if you think that’s a French accent, it isn’t!”

  He let go of her and ran his hands through his hair.