The big drawing room stood empty and unwelcoming in the grey light. Beyond it, the library still had its heavy curtains drawn. No doubt this was one of the hysterical Andrews’ duties. Automatically, Patience pulled back the curtains and started at the sudden rattle of their heavy rings in the too silent house. Pausing, as she always did, to look at the rising sweep of the downs outside, she saw two cars speeding along the narrow road from the village. The police already? She hurried to pull the curtains at the next window, where she would get a better view, but as she did so the door at the far end of the room opened and Josephine appeared.
“Good, there you are, Patience. I was just coming to look for you.”
Looking past her, Patience saw the family gathered in the little, disused study: Joseph, dominant at the mantelpiece, Seward drooping beside him, their wives huddled on an old sofa, Leonora and Ludwig in a corner as usual, Priss close to them, pleating and unpleating the hem of her dress, Mark and Mary side by side on the window seat. All the Ffeatherses were there and as they turned and slowly, silently gazed at her, she had an overwhelming feeling, worse than any she had suffered as a child, that they were strangers, aliens, the enemy. It was absurd, of course, and half-consciously she turned to Mark for reassurance, but it seemed, strangely, that he did not see her. His back was to the light, so that she could only make out the outline of that handsome face, and he seemed to be looking straight through her.
Pure nerves. She must pull herself together and listen to Joseph. “A sort of family council,” he was saying. “Didn’t like to disturb you as you were resting, but I’m glad you turned up when you did. You see, there’s bound to be a bit of unpleasantness about this – poor old Mother going off so suddenly, you know – and of course we want to draw it as mild as we can. No sense going into anything that’d make the poor old dear look ridiculous – like that idea of hers that someone had stolen five pounds from her. We all know what she was like, but tell a thing like that to the police and there’s no knowing what ideas they may not get into their heads. You know what I’m getting at, Patience; least said, soonest mended and all that kind of thing. No reason to expect there’ll be any trouble, but the less we all talk, the less trouble there’ll be. You see my point?”
“Yes, of course. I won’t say anything.” If he was protesting too much, she found it impossible to sound convincing at all. And yet it was all perfectly reasonable. So why this feeling of nightmare? Again her eyes sought Mark’s, but he had turned to look out of the window behind him.
“Here are the police,” he announced flatly. And still he did not meet her eyes.
Six
High up under the roofs of New Scotland Yard, Detective Sergeant Geoffrey Crankshaw and his office mate were reading reports of action taken in country districts. They were supposed to be filing and cross-indexing these for further reference, but in fact they were drinking cups of tea and grumbling.
“I wish I was back on my beat in Bermondsey,” said the office mate, demolishing an overblown doughnut. “At least things happened there, even if it was only drunks. Here it’s just read, read, read till your eyes fall out of your head. I don’t know about you, Crankshaw, but much more of this red tape and sealing wax and I’m packing it in.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more,” said Crankshaw. “I didn’t join the force to be turned into a paper pusher. Some of my university friends are earning real money by now, and just look at us! Can’t even afford to take a girl out decently.”
“Rotten,” agreed his office mate. “Still, at least that was a short one.” A careful young man, he wiped the sugar off his fingers before dropping a report into the basket marked ‘File’.
“Anything interesting?”
“Not particularly. Bit of snappy work by the boys in Sussex. Old lady found dead Christmas morning. First view, natural causes. Poor old lady; excitement of Christmas, sorrowing relatives, the old story. Then the doctor takes a look at her, and she’s chock full of sleeping pills.”
“Her own?”
“Lord, yes, her own all right, but too damn many of them. The poor old girl went off in her chair and never woke up no more.”
“And what did our Sussex friends do about that?”
“Asked twenty-five pages of questions –” he flipped through them rapidly – “and discovered one good reason why the family were sorrowing so. The old thing had cut them off without a bean.”
“Too bad. And too bad for us, too.” Crankshaw always thought professionally. “Not much motive in that.”
“Not much for the family; no. But a whopping great one for the girl she left it all to.”
“Not a cat and dog home?”
“No; she’d got beyond that. Apparently she’d left it to just about everything in her time, but last week she sat down and willed it all to a long-lost great-niece – and that was the end of her, poor old thing.”
“The great-niece did it? It seems almost too simple.”
“I know. To judge by the questions, they could hardly believe their luck. But there it was: motive as big as a barn door; the girl in financial straits; a forged prescription for the sleeping pills; a whole bottle of them among her nylons; the best opportunity of the lot; her fingerprints over everything – the defence’ll plead insanity of course, but I doubt if they’ll get away with it – and goodbye Patience Smith.”
“What?” Crankshaw knocked over the table between the two desks and snatched the report. Five minutes later, white in the face and quite unaware of the black ink smudge across his left cheek, he was stuttering slightly at his superior officer who, knowing him for a calm young man, listened with unusual patience.
“You see, sir,” said Crankshaw for the fourth time, “I know her. I swear she didn’t do it. Couldn’t have.”
The tall, grey-haired man behind the executive’s desk looked worried. “I understand how you feel, Crankshaw, but it’s a strong case – a very strong case. I don’t quite see how we could interfere. There’s been no question of their asking our help. And it isn’t even as if we had any facts to contribute. Of course,” he went on kindly, “I know you well enough to take this feeling of yours seriously – you’re not usually wrong about people – but you can hardly expect them to do so at Leyning.”
He was being almost impossibly kind, Crankshaw knew. He flogged an unresponsive brain; there must be some fact to prove his point if he could only come far enough out of his shock to think coherently. His thoughts dived down improbable corridors – Patience saying goodbye in Suffolk, her help on his case there – all ancient history, all useless. Then he almost ground his teeth at his own stupidity. “I’ve got it, sir.”
“Yes?”
“You remember you sent me along to look out for that shoplifter at Gogarty’s? Well, an odd thing happened there the first day I was on duty. I ran into this Patience Smith, or rather, to be precise, I saw her in the glove department, and, to tell you the truth, I followed her.” He was still liable to uncontrollable blushes. “We’d met in Suffolk, you see.”
“Yes, I see.” Clearly, he did.
“I caught up with her in the fur department.” Once started Crankshaw wasted no time. “She was collecting a mink cape and I waited about while she talked to the salesgirl and put it on. I felt a bit of a fool, you know, but once she was leaving I went up and spoke to her. We talked a bit, and walked through to the glove department again; she left me there and I saw her go through to the main entrance – and five minutes later I found her in the manager’s office accused of shoplifting.”
“Did you so?”
“Yes, a frame-up if ever there was one. It was a good thing for her she had her wits about her and remembered me – I’d told her I was on duty there – or she’d have been on the spot all right. Someone – a dark-haired girl – had pointed her out to a salesgirl; said she’d seen her lift a string of pearls from the counter and put them in the pocket of her fur cape. As a matter of fact Patience – Miss Smith – didn’t even know there was a p
ocket in the cape. She was just picking it up for a cousin of hers.”
“There’s no doubt it was a frame-up?”
“Not the slightest. She was actually with me when she was supposed to be being pointed out to the salesgirl and I’d been with her ever since she put on the cape. The shop detective followed her to the door and then took her straight back to the manager’s office. Unless she pinched it when she was with me or when he was following her … well, there you are. Besides, the salesgirl in the fur department remembered a dark-haired girl trying on the cape by mistake. It’s easy enough to see how it was done. But why? I just thought it was a practical joke at the time, though Miss Smith couldn’t think who’d have done it to her, but now – well, it makes you think, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” said the grey-haired man, looking at the worried, hopeful face across the desk. “It does make you think.”
A few days later the Chief Constable of Sussex received a personal note from an old friend of his at Scotland Yard. It was brought by a pleasant-looking, fair-haired young man, who introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Geoffrey Crankshaw, CID, and sat very still while the Chief Constable read his friend’s letter.
‘… To introduce Geoffrey Crankshaw …’ he read, ‘… very promising young man … needs some work on the preparation of a case for trial… that affair at Featherstone Hall that your people handled so quickly … very useful experience for him … a favour to me …’
The double-edged flattery went home and the Chief Constable’s eye on Crankshaw was friendly. “So you want to do some work on that affair at Featherstone Hall,” he said. “A bit unusual, of course, but I expect it can be arranged. Just between you and me, we’re rather short-handed just now and I think they’ll be glad to have you. You want to do the full report on the case, is that right?”
“Yes, sir. If it’s at all possible.” Crankshaw tried not to sound too desperately in earnest.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Two hours later Crankshaw found himself on his way to Featherstone Hall. Inspector Harris, who was in charge of the case, had been unfeignedly glad to see him. “Time they did realise how short-handed we are,” was his comment. “To tell you the truth, there’s hardly been a bit of paperwork done yet on this case; we’ve been too busy making our arrest.” A simple man, he did not try to conceal his pride in the announcement. “I’ll be delighted to have you take over the desk side. Record-keeping has always bored me to death; action is my line.” A large hand clenched on the wheel of his car.
“You’ve actually arrested Miss Smith then?” Crankshaw managed to sound merely interested.
“Well, no; to be precise, she’s held for questioning. It’s easier that way, you know –” Harris enjoyed instructing the young – “the coroner feels he’s been given a clear field, for one thing. But after the inquest – click.” He sketched the closing of handcuffs and the car swerved slightly.
“It’s as certain as that?”
“Plain as the nose on your face. I feel almost sorry for the girl in a way. You wouldn’t think anyone could have been so stupid. College educated, too. I’m glad I didn’t let my girls fool around with any of that stuff. Educates their minds at the expense of their common sense, that’s all it does. Look at this one. The old lady took a fancy to her and left her all her money – plenty of it, too, by the look of things. You wait till you see the house: not my cup of tea, you understand, but very fancy stuff, very fancy indeed. But, as I was saying, the old girl left her the lot – pretty near broke, she was, when she came to them, too. Just the other day, that was. She was some sort of cousin they found starving and took in.”
“Is that so?” Crankshaw was gladder than ever that he had said nothing about knowing Patience.
“Yes; flat broke, poor girl, so when she got left this packet and heard that the old lady never let a will stand for more than a week or so she decided she’d better do something about it. Oh, and I forgot, she tried a spot of forgery first – just couldn’t wait for the cash, apparently.”
“Forgery?”
“Yes; forged the old girl’s signature to a cheque for fifty pounds and tried to cash it in the Black Stag in Leyning on Christmas Eve. The poor fool couldn’t think of a likelier story than that the old lady had asked her to cash it for her on account of having always gone there. Of course she’d never had a thing from there – all her wines and so on came straight down from town – so there wasn’t anything doing. Naturally when the news of the murder came out, they remembered and came along to us pretty quick. And, would you believe it, it turned out that old Mrs Ffeathers had missed the cheque from her book already and stopped it at the bank! There wasn’t much got past her, by the sound of it.”
“They remembered the number of the cheque at the Black Stag, then?”
“Well, no” – he was momentarily checked in his enthusiasm – “but the old lady had stopped one, and this one turned up: you’d bet they were the same, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, I suppose one would. What does Miss Smith say about it?”
“Sticks to her story that the old lady asked her to cash it. She must be crazy. The old thing had made her lawyer bring her down fifty pounds in cash when he made the new will; she still had forty-five pounds of it when she died. No reason in the world why she should have wanted another fifty over the holiday.”
“Blackmail?” Crankshaw threw it in almost for luck.
“Paying it? Not her. She was more likely to be squeezing it out of other people, by the sound of her. A proper old tartar, her family make her sound.”
“Do they? All of them?” Crankshaw put each question casually, wondering how much longer he would get away with the cross-examination, but Harris was only too delighted to expatiate on so successful a case. This question slowed him down for a minute.
“It’s a funny thing,” he said, “they all tried to do the bereaved bit, but it was a pretty thin show. The only one who really did sound sorry was our Miss Smith – well, I suppose it might set her back a bit to find she really had killed the old lady. I know her kind; they build a lot of castles in the air but if one of them really materialises, they’re struck all of a heap.”
As an analysis of Patience, it seemed to Crankshaw singularly wide of the mark, but he let it pass. “You don’t make them sound a very attractive family,” he said.
“They’re all right, as families go. You don’t tend to see people at their best in our line of business. And you can’t blame them for being upset about the money. She had it all, you know, every blessed penny.”
“And she left the whole lot to Miss Smith?”
“Two hundred a year to each of the others for life; annuities for the servants; all that kind of thing done quite regularly; and all the rest to Miss Smith. It was a regular thing with her, apparently. The form of the will was always the same, it was just the main beneficiary she kept changing.”
“Who had it been before Miss Smith came on the scene?”
“Some nonsense about a fifty-two letter alphabet, I believe. No wonder the family were sick.”
“Was it a long time since anyone else in the family had been left it all?”
“I don’t know.” Harris was beginning to sound bored with this line of discussion. “But I expect Protheroe will be able to tell you. He’s the family lawyer: capable man, very, and most helpful. He’s another cousin, by the way, but he wasn’t there on the night of the crime, so you don’t have to bother too much about him.”
Contrarily, Crankshaw at once resolved to bother extensively about Mr Protheroe. But there was too much ground to be covered before they got to the house. He turned to another point. “How about alibis?” he asked. “Could you eliminate most of the family right away? It was a most remarkably quick arrest, surely?”
“Detention,” Harris corrected him, pride dripping through his tone. “No, as a matter of fact, the servants were pretty clearly out of it, but, aside from them, pretty well any member of the house party could
have done it. In a way, that is; of course when we started to look at it closely there was a good deal more to it than that.”
“Naturally.” Crankshaw was all respectful attention.
“You see” – Harris was well away now – “the old lady always had an evening drink of Bovril – everyone knew it, and everyone knew that if she was extra tired or excited for any reason she had one or two sleeping pills in it. And some brandy to take the taste away.”
“Brandy and Bovril and sleeping pills,” said Crankshaw. “Good Lord.”
“Yes; you can see she was a tough old customer. Anyway, she was a bit wrought up, it being Christmas Eve and all, and she told Miss Smith she’d have two pills in the Bovril. I should have explained that the whole lot of them were in her room by this time; filling Christmas stockings or some nonsense of that kind. It was latish – eleven o’clock or so – they’d been playing charades earlier in the evening.”
“Sounds a happy party.”
“Yes” – he sounded doubtful – “it sounds cheerful enough, doesn’t it, but somehow it didn’t seem to have been, to hear them talk about it. Still that’s natural enough, really, when you think what happened later.”
“Nothing untoward happened earlier in the evening then?”
“Untoward? No. Not unless you count Miss Smith’s trying to cash her dud cheque that afternoon, and laying in an extra bottle of Mrs Ffeathers’ sleeping pills on a forged prescription.”
“She forged a prescription, too, did she?” Never, for one moment, would he believe it.
“Yes; quite a good imitation of Dr Findlayson’s hieroglyphics; it fooled the chemist completely, but of course when we came to check up we discovered that the old lady had had a new bottle from her own chemist just the week before. It’s a funny thing: the girl went to all the trouble of forging the prescription and then never used that lot of pills after all; we found the full bottle tucked in among her nylons. She just took some out of the bottle in Mrs Ffeathers’ bathroom; there were a lot missing from there. She used enough, all right; far more than were necessary, the doctor said. It’s amazing the old lady didn’t notice the taste, but she had her Bovril black and strong, apparently, and what with that and the brandy – well, there you are.”
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