Ladies’ Bane

by Patricia Wentworth

  Yes, Jacqueline Delauny had been endlessly patient. It did not need anyone to tell Ione that. She had seen it for herself. Everything that Geoffrey said about her was true. And Geoffrey had made out a good case for himself. A man with a drug addict and an abnormal girl on his hands would not lightly part with devoted efficiency in the shape of a Jacqueline Delauny. All the same, she would have to go. Amongst all the uncertainties which filled her mind Ione took firm hold of this necessity. She said,

  “She will have to go, Geoffrey.”

  “For a single breakdown after years of self-control?”

  “It went a little farther than a breakdown, I think. There was a definite proposal that Allegra should be got rid of, and that you should marry her.”

  “She didn’t know what she was saying.”

  “My dear Geoffrey, she knew perfectly well. And I don’t think-you know, I really don’t think that it was the first time she had tried to get an answer to that question. And right on the top of that she was asking you why you had let Margot have the rope that killed her. Doesn’t it strike you that anyone who is capable of throwing that sort of bomb is a good deal too dangerous to be under the same roof as Allegra?”

  “She didn’t know what she was saying. If you were listening, you must have realized that she was beside herself. I have told you just how it all happened. I can’t make you believe me. We had better stop talking about it now, because I want to go to Allegra.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Miss Silver took a journey to town next day. She explained to Miss Falconer that she might be obliged to stay the night, but she would let her know in good time.

  Arrived at the terminus, she entered a telephone-box. After some little delay she was connected with the extension for which she had asked. To a familiar voice saying, “Hullo?” she replied, “Miss Silver speaking.”

  The voice, which was that of Detective Inspector Frank Abbott, immediately took on a tinge of warm affection.

  “My dear ma’am-what can I do for you?”

  Miss Silver coughed.

  “I have been down in the country, but I have come up for the day. I am speaking from a call box. I wondered if it would be possible for you to see me for half an hour.”

  He permitted himself to laugh.

  “Someone been getting himself murdered amidst bucolic scenes?”

  Miss Silver’s tone rebuked him.

  “I hope to prevent a murder. I think perhaps the Yard may be able to give me some information.”

  “Well, anything we can do. Come right along!”

  It was a tribute to the importance of her errand that she took a taxi. When she entered his office Frank Abbott gave her as warm a welcome as if she had been a favourite aunt. There were, in fact, very few people who had seen his glance soften and heard his voice change as they did for his Miss Silver. No two people could have provided a more complete contrast-the tall fair young man with the beautifully cut suit, his hair slicked back above a bony nose and ice-blue eyes, and the ex-governess with her flavour of the family photograph-album of some forty years ago. She was wearing the good black cloth coat which had served her for many years and her best hat, not new but freshly trimmed with a ruche of magenta velvet ribbon and two rather irrelevant bows. The hat, of course, was black. All her hats were black, like the stout laced shoes upon her feet, the worn handbag, and the shabby kid gloves.

  She smiled at Frank with great affection as she seated herself, and observed,

  “I was sure that you would help me if you could. What I should like to know is whether the Yard has any information about a Mr. Geoffrey Trent.”

  “In any particular connection?”

  Miss Silver coughed in a deprecating manner.

  “I did just wonder if there was any link with drugs and drug-running. I will be quite frank with you and tell you that I have no knowledge or evidence of any such link. I have no knowledge of any illegal activity on Mr. Trent’s part. He is just one of a group of people around whom some odd things have been happening. There has been a death attributed to accident. There has been a very narrow escape from a second accident which would almost certainly have proved fatal. One of the members of the group has been taking an illicit drug. And there are connections with the Near East.”

  Frank whistled.

  “It might add up to something,” he admitted. “Wait a minute and I’ll call up Howland-drugs are his pigeon. What’s the fellow’s name? Geoffrey Trent? Geoffrey with a G, or a J?… All right, I’ll just get him on to it.”

  “One moment, Frank. You might at the same time enquire whether anything is known of a Miss Jacqueline Delauny.”

  He cocked an eyebrow.

  “Sounds as if it might be an alias-or even one of a series.”

  A slight frown rebuked him.

  “I know nothing at all to Miss Delauny’s discredit. I merely mention her because she is one of the group of which I was speaking. I believe she did at one time occupy a secretarial position.”

  “Which is not in itself a crime. All right, if they don’t know anything about her she leaves the court without a stain upon her character.”

  He turned to the telephone, had a short friendly conversation of which Miss Silver could only hear his side, and finally hung up, to turn back to her with a smile.

  “He says he’ll get on to it right away. He’s an astonishing fellow-industrious past belief-in fact King Beaver number one. And now perhaps you’ll tell me all about these people.”

  He listened attentively whilst she told him what she knew-things she had observed herself, and things which she had heard from Josepha Bowden, from Miss Falconer, from old Humphreys, and from Ione Muir.

  Knowing the meticulous accuracy with which she could repeat a conversation, Frank did not doubt that he was hearing word for word what these people had told her. But what a confused, unintelligible business it all was. Or was it? Geoffrey Trent coming in for his cousin’s business in trust, together with his cousin’s abnormal child. The girl saying she had a big fortune, and Geoffrey Trent saying that the war had more or less smashed it, and that there wasn’t much left. It might be a case of fraudulent conversion, and a day of reckoning ahead when the girl’s money would have to be accounted for. Motive enough there for a contrived accident, especially if she was a bit of a problem anyhow. Well, suppose that was one thread clear of the tangle. What about the others? The fog story-Ione Muir hearing somebody bargaining over whether he would risk his neck for two thousand pounds. It might have meant anything. It might have meant murder. Miss Muir insisted that she followed the bargaining gentleman, who was diffusing a Scottish accent and an aroma of whisky, and that having run into a rising architect of the name of Severn, the three of them spent the best part of the night together in an empty house waiting for the fog to lift. The Scottish gentleman’s remarks during that time might, or might not, shed some light upon his previous conversation in the fog. He produced the old chestnut about the Chinese mandarin whose death was somehow to prove immensely beneficial to the human race-if by pressing a button you would kill this person, would you press it? As a sequel to the conversation about risking one’s neck for two thousand pounds, there was certainly something suggestive about this artless tale. There followed Miss Muir’s identification of the narrator as a Variety artist known as Professor Regulus Mactavish or The Great Prospero, and the very narrow escape experienced by Mrs. Trent and herself when the Professor was standing in the crowd behind them on a street island in Wraydon.

  He turned, frowning, to Miss Silver.

  “He could have pushed them?”

  She shook her head.

  “I cannot say. I was standing behind him, and I had no view. I believe that he could have done so.”

  “You say Mrs. Trent went staggering out into the road right in the track of the bus, and that he then reached out with the crook of his stick and snatched her back. You did see that?”

  “Everyone saw that. He is very tall, or he would not have been
able to save Mrs. Trent. What he did was to reach across over the shoulders of the people in front of him and catch her arm with the crook of his stick.”

  Frank got up and walked over to the hearth. Standing there looking down at Miss Silver, he said,

  “But it doesn’t make sense. Why should he push her one minute, and snatch her back the next?”

  “I do not think that he ever intended to push Mrs. Trent. She was holding her sister’s arm. Miss Muir had just moved some inches to the right. The blow therefore fell more or less between them, causing Mrs. Trent to lose her hold and totter out into the road.”

  “You mean that the push was intended for Miss Muir?”

  “I do.”

  “Why?”

  “Mrs. Trent and Miss Muir are considerable heiresses. If Mrs. Trent had suffered a fatal accident, her share of the inheritance would have passed to her sister. If it had been Miss Muir who was killed, her portion-her very considerable portion-would have passed to Mrs. Trent, who could then have made a will leaving both shares to her husband. I think you can see now why I find myself in some anxiety about the position of Miss Ione Muir.”

  Frank nodded.

  “Might be something-might be nothing. Might be one of those mare’s nests the Chief is so fond of casting up at us. There is, of course, no evidence.”

  Miss Silver said with gravity.

  “I would not wish to wait until the evidence of another crime was forced upon us.”

  The telephone bell rang. Frank strolled across to his writing-table and picked up the receiver. There ensued a long and mostly inaudible conversation during which the telephone gurgled and Frank occasionally said things like, “Oh, there was, was there?… Well, well-” and finally, “Good work!” and, “Thanks very much, old chap.” He hung up, came back to stand in front of the fire, and said briefly,

  “That was Howland.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, there is a certain amount of information, but I don’t know what you will think about it. Here it is. The Trent cousin ran a very lucrative business in the Near East. He called himself a general exporter. I suspect he had a good many of the local people eating out of his hand, but the police of one or two other countries were beginning to sit up and take notice. All this, by the way, was before the war. There never was what you might call actual concrete evidence, but there was a very strong suspicion. Trent died some time in the early forties. Some idea that he had been trying to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. He was found shot, with a revolver in his hand. He may have done it himself, or someone may have done it for him-double-crossing is not a particularly healthy game. After the war was over Geoffrey Trent came out to clear up the mess. Quite a job! But there were, of course, the remnants of a legitimate business. He got it on its legs again, put in a manager, and left things running. Since then nothing has happened to revive the former suspicions. The business now appears to be a perfectly ordinary one-nothing like so extensive or so lucrative as it used to be, but no longer of any interest to the police.”

  Miss Silver said, “Dear me!”

  Frank laughed.

  “It doesn’t get you any farther with your suspicions, does it? Except for just one thing. You do get the drug motif cropping up-not in Geoffrey Trent himself, but in his predecessor. Of course a cynic might say that the business owes its present blameless reputation to the fact that Geoffrey Trent is being cleverer than his cousin, and has so far been able to avoid being found out. But then you and I, my dear ma’am, are not cynics.”

  Miss Silver took no notice of this. She said in a meditative tone.

  “Is that all, Frank?”

  “Oh, yes. Except about Miss Delauny. Nothing on record about anyone of that name, but as I said, it has a very strong smell of the alias. You say she was a secretary?”

  “Miss Falconer gave me that impression. She said she was a great help to Mr. Geoffrey Trent with his business correspondence.”

  “Besides looking after the abnormal girl? Well, well! She must be a tiger for work! And what is Geoffrey Trent like-how does he strike you?”

  Miss Silver was not immediately ready with an answer. This was in itself something of a portent. In the end she said,

  “You will probably laugh if I say that his extreme good looks make that a very difficult question to answer. With some people this would predispose them in his favour. With others it would have an exactly opposite effect. I know quite a number of women who would distrust so good-looking a man at sight. I myself greatly prefer the type whose features have been shaped by character and by the stress of events rather than that which appears to have been cast in a perfect mould. But I should, of course, use every precaution against allowing myself to be prejudiced against a man because he is unusually handsome.”

  Frank considered that his Miss Silver was excelling herself. He could not resist saying,

  “Let me be grateful that I have been spared the fatal handicap.”

  He received a slight frown of reproof.

  “The matter is a very serious one. Miss Falconer appears to be much attached to Mr. Trent. She describes him as the soul of consideration and kindness, and she has greatly admired his goodness to his unfortunate ward and to his invalid wife.”

  “Then what is troubling you?”

  “The old Venetian saw, Frank-cui bono-who profits? Geoffrey Trent is hard up. He has one of those strange passions for the fourteenth-century house which he rents from Miss Falconer. He wants to buy it, but he cannot produce the money himself, and so far Mrs. Trent’s trustees have refused to allow any of her capital to be used.”

  “And pray, how do you know all this?”

  “From Miss Falconer, and from Miss Muir.”

  “One at the seller’s, and one at the buyer’s end! Should be reliable. Well, go on.”

  “The ward’s death gives Mr. Trent whatever was left of her fortune. If Miss Muir had been killed yesterday, as she very well might have been, everything she possessed would have passed to her sister, who could then have done what she liked with it. I cannot refrain from asking myself how long, in these circumstances, Mrs. Trent might have been expected to survive. She is known to be a drug addict. There is a reputable local doctor in attendance, and a husband to whose solicitude everyone can testify. How easy to arrange for an overdose! Drug addicts are known to be incredibly cunning. She obtains a supply and, impelled by her craving, she takes a fatal quantity. Geoffrey Trent would be free, and a very rich man. He could buy the Ladies’ House and have it for a possession.”

  Frank said,

  “Well, you are making out a case-you always do. That could be the plan of it, but-no evidence, just a lot of threads that seem to lead in the same direction. In fact, ‘much suspected, nothing proved.’ ” He paused, then went on abruptly. “You said just now that Trent had ‘one of those strange passions’ for this house he wants to buy. What exactly did you mean by that?”

  “Just what I said, Frank. It obsesses him-he has a craving to possess it. Miss Muir tells me there are times when he can hardly think or speak of anything else. Miss Falconer confided to me that if she could bring herself to sell, it would be to someone who thinks the world of the place, as Mr. Trent does. ‘Sometimes, do you know,’ she said, ‘I feel as if he cares about it too much. In the old days people might have said that it had bewitched him. But then, of course, they were very superstitious in those times, and we ought not to take any notice of their fancies.’ ”

  “And what did she mean by that?”

  Miss Silver folded her hands in her lap, looked him straight in the face, and said,

  “You see, my dear Frank, she believes that there is a curse upon the place.”

  “My dear ma’am!”

  “That is why she hesitates to sell, though the money would be very welcome indeed.”

  “A good thing the Chief isn’t here! There would have been a major explosion! Of course the bother with him is that deep down inside he has the remnants of a lurking
belief in curses, witches, ghosts, bogles, and things that go bump in the night. Now what about this curse? Does Trent believe in it? It might have a bearing if he did. Anyhow, what is it?”

  “It is extremely old. It goes back, in fact, to the fifteenth century. The young Falconer who was Lord of the Manor went over to France and came back with a French wife instead of the heiress his mother had planned for him to marry. She was portionless, and she spoke hardly any English. She was a stranger, and she had strange ways. She would go out and gather herbs by moonlight, and she made potions. It began to be whispered that young Falconer had had a spell cast upon him. In the end there was a formal accusation of witchcraft, brought by his mother. The girl stabbed herself and left a dying curse. Since she had lost the thing that was dearest to herself in all the world, every mistress of the manor should likewise lose the thing upon which she had set her heart.”

  He was looking at her with his quizzical smile.

  “And how did it work out?”

  Miss Silver coughed demurely.

  “Miss Falconer is a little vague about that. There were some deaths of children. Young Falconer married the heiress whom his mother had chosen for him, and their eldest son was killed in the tiltyard at the age of seventeen. This would naturally be put down to the French girl’s curse.”

  “In fact once you’ve got a curse like that in the family, everything would go down to it. People had fourteen or fifteen children and didn’t expect to rear more than half of them, but every time a Falconer child died it would be the curse. But to come down to more modern times. Any further evidence?”