by Annie Haynes
“I suppose I must, and thank you. There’ll be a bit of a pension for you, Mrs. Mayer – the superintendent was killed while doing his duty. Not much, I’m afraid, but it’s all to the good.”
“Thank you, inspector,” she replied quietly, “but I’m not worrying about that. His lordship’ll see to it – Bill having died inside of his own gates, so to speak. He isn’t one to let a poor woman suffer, even though my family is out in the world and all. Still a bit of pension will be all to the good.”
The inspector nodded. “If anything should turn up you’ll know where to find me,” he said kindly and left, cudgelling his brains for a solution to what appeared to be now an insoluble problem.
As the door closed on him Mrs. Mayer glanced round her with a hint of secretiveness in her eyes. She was alone in the house. Her son from Devonshire was to arrive in the evening, her daughter had gone home to put a finishing touch to her own mourning to wear at the funeral. Instead of going back into the kitchen where Betty had left the potatoes for dinner peeled and ready for boiling, she slipped up the short flight of narrow stairs into the bedroom she and her husband had shared for so many happy years, and closed the door softly behind her.
Tiptoeing across the room, although there was no one in the house to hear her, she opened a drawer in an old-fashioned piece of furniture standing against the wall and slipped her hand into the back of it.
At the same moment the door below opened and a footstep crossed the passage. Mrs. Mayer drew her hand back as though it had been stung, closed the drawer as softly as she had opened it, and stood up.
“There’s Betty back.” She stood still and her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t care,” she muttered defiantly, “not if it is the law of the land! Not if the King of England was himself to ask on his bended knees. Yes, Betty, coming,” she cried in answer to her daughter’s voice calling her from below, and with a backward glance to make sure the drawer was safely closed she went downstairs.
“I saw Mrs. Yates in the town, mother,” Betty said, divesting herself of hat and coat. “She says she’s coming in to see you day after tomorrow.”
“So long as she don’t bring that daughter of hers with her I shall be glad enough to see Susan Yates,” her mother replied without enthusiasm. “When’s she coming?”
“I told her to look in somewhere about four o’clock and you’d give her a cup of tea. It’ll be early closing and Frank’ll be having his afternoon off, so it’ll be company for you. Frank’ll want me at home.”
“You’ve been very good to me, dearie,” Mrs. Mayer said warmly, “but I got to stick it out, I suppose – moving and all that. How I’ll do it, God knows! Susan Yates lost her husband a matter of five years ago now, and his lordship let her five on at the lodge. That’s the worst of living in a police station – very nice while it lasts, but the widow has to break up her home and clear out when her husband leaves her.”
Mrs. Mayer looked round the little room and sighed. It was so familiar, and yet with life turned grey and the pivot of her very existence removed it all looked flat and unresponsive. The clock on the mantelpiece that she and Bill had bought when he got promoted to sergeant still ticked on with the same monotonous perseverance as ever, but it seemed somehow to be telling quite a different story. The chenille table-cloth that she had bought out of savings on the housekeeping one year and been a surprise for her husband who always had an eye for a bit of bright colour; the arm-chair worn almost through to the stuffing where his elbow had rubbed it; the broken bar round the fender which one of them had remarked ought to be mended at least once a week since it had got broken months before – all, everything reminded her of the companion who was gone. Life seemed very empty.
When Mrs. Yates paid the promised visit two days later she found her old acquaintance a trifle more settled in her mind. The funeral was over. It had been well attended, for Superintendent Mayer had been respected not only by his companions in the Force, but by the whole countryside. “Very gratifying for you, Mary,” her visitor consoled, “on foot and in cars – the mayor and the gentry all turned out to pay respect to poor Bill’s memory; and not more than they should do, either. He died doing his duty, and what can a man do more?”
The platitude seemed to bring comfort of a sort. Mrs. Mayer nodded and poured out the tea with a hand that shook pitifully.
“Hard on you having to move. I was lucky that way,” the other went on. “Seems like tearing you up by the roots. Have you got a place to go to yet, Mary? Perhaps Betty’ll take you for a bit while you have a look round?”
Mrs. Mayer shook her head. “I don’t hold with plumping yourself down on other people – maybe where you’re not wanted. There’s a cottage belonging to his lordship on the edge of Holford Common he’s offered me – rent free too – and I’m to move in soon as I can.”
“Is the new superintendent appointed yet?”
“I don’t know, but he will be almost at once, and I must get out of this,” Mrs. Mayer said drearily.
“You poor thing! Well, I know what you’re suffering. I felt just like that when my Tom was took. Mighty bad it is, whatever way you look at it.”
There was silence for a moment. Mrs. Mayer cut her guest another slice from the loaf and pushed the butter towards her.
“Your girl’s with you, isn’t she?” she asked after a pause. “Funny her being married like that and you not knowing. To that Mr. Saunderson too – and he murdered.”
“They don’t seem getting on much about who murdered him,” Susan Yates remarked. “I don’t understand Mary Ann. You’d think she was taking it to heart the way she goes on, and yet I know she isn’t – not because she was fond of him, that is.”
“She’ll get a good bit of money, won’t she?” the other asked curiously. “Bill told me as how it didn’t seem there was a Will – died intestinal don’t they call it? – and the wife’ll get most of what’s going.”
But Mrs. Yates felt herself to be on thin ice and disinclined to discuss the point. Mary Ann had done nothing so far as she knew to establish her claims as Saunderson’s widow, and, with a slippery customer such as he had been, there was no saying whether the form of marriage gone through at the Marylebone Register Office might not prove to have been a sham. Saunderson himself had said it was, but Mary Ann had not believed him. At any further reference to the subject her daughter turned crusty and said there was time enough to go into the rights and wrongs of it later on.
“She shuts herself up in her room and won’t see anybody,” Mrs. Yates went on evasively, “and goes white if you so much as mention the police. She’s talked too free to the police as it is, in my opinion, and I told her so, and ever since she keeps her mouth shut like a mouse-trap and won’t speak.”
“That’s a sight better than talking too much,” Mrs. Mayer replied with the wisdom born of many years’ close contact with a member of His Majesty’s police force.
“Truth is, if you ask me,” the other observed, “I believe she’s frightened, and it was I that did it. There’s a lot of talk about motive these days, and if it comes to motive – who’s going to benefit by Saunderson’s death more than his wife?” She glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice. “That’s what I says to her. She’ll have to face it all in the long run. It’s no sort of use trying to keep anything from the police – within reason, that’s to say.”
Mrs. Mayer turned scared eyes on her visitor.
“Not keep anything from the police!” she echoed in a voice that had turned shrill. “Depends what it is,” with a note of defiance in her manner. “If it don’t do anybody any harm –”
“They’ll find it out sooner or later,” Mrs. Yates put in, “bound to, and then where are you?”
Mrs. Mayer lowered her eyes and with nervous fingers rolled her handkerchief into a tight ball under the shelter of the table-cloth.
“Wouldn’t you keep anything from the police, Susan?” she asked earnestly.
Mrs. Yates hesitated.
/> “Tom kept something back once – nothing to matter, nothing he’d done himself – but they found it out. They always find out, Mary.”
Mrs. Mayer glanced about her nervously.
“There’s things,” she said in a thin, high voice again, “that don’t hurt anybody – I wouldn’t tell the police, not for all you could offer me!”
The other looked at her in astonishment.
“And you the widder of a superintendent, Mary!”
“It’s because of that I say it,” was the enigmatical reply. “And there’s things I wouldn’t tell the police – not if it was ever so – and I’m not ashamed of it, either!”
CHAPTER 20
Inspector Stoddart, sitting at his desk at Scotland Yard, had decided to confront Lady Medchester with Garwood’s statement – that he had seen her in the gardens at Holford on the night and about the time of Robert Saunderson’s murder.
He had always had a suspicion she knew more than she had admitted, and congratulated himself on the brain-wave that had prompted the little trap he laid for her, and for which he had invoked Anne’s innocent connivance. He had been certain she knew something about those beads; he had discovered by his ruse she did not know so much as she thought she did. She had imagined they belonged to Anne.
The inspector had no love for Lady Medchester. He felt instinctively hers was a mean mind, secretive and vindictive. Where it served her purpose he suspected her to be capable of going to great lengths to gain her own ends: no scruples would be allowed to interfere with their achievement. He could easily understand why she and Anne had never been friends, a fact well known in the neighbourhood; their natures were apart as the poles. He believed Garwood’s tale and wondered in his own mind whether it had been she who had made an assignation with Saunderson that night in the summer-house. Somebody had, that was certain, and rumour had been pretty free in coupling their names together.
The definite clues they had to the crime were more or less unsatisfactory and seemed likely to lead to nothing; the slip of paper found in Saunderson’s notebook bearing the words, “I accede because I have no choice,” was badly written in block letters and paper torn apparently off the end of a half-sheet of so ordinary a type that it might have been bought at any stationer’s in any town, and results from it were hardly to be hoped for.
There was also the note signed with the letter M, that Harbord had found in Saunderson’s flat. On reading it their minds had simultaneously jumped to Lady Medchester, but so far there was nothing to prove she had written it. It, too, was in non-committal block letters, on very ordinary notepaper. Had the date suggested in it for the proposed assignation coincided with the date of the murder Stoddart might have been justified in taking immediate action. But it did not; the date mentioned was considerably previous to that of the crime, and although that did not preclude the possibility of a second meeting having been, arranged there was nothing to prove it. Saunderson could quite well have met a dozen women, without making his actions any concern of the police, and if Lady Medchester chose to deny authorship of the letter, as she assuredly would, they had no means so far of proving it against her.
His strongest asset in the case lay in her denial of having been out in the gardens that night. Persons with clear consciences don’t need to tell lies. She had every right to go out into her own grounds at any time of the day or night, and had she admitted the fact in the first instance and said frankly she had seen nothing, or, if that were not so, had told what she had seen, she would have been believed and there would have been no more trouble about it.
But she had not been frank, and had thereby immediately laid herself open to suspicion. The fact of Lord Medchester being a person of some importance in the county did not simplify matters. Stoddart felt that for his own sake he must tread warily: the authorities strongly objected to becoming embroiled with persons of influence.
He had made up his mind; he would have yet another interview with Lady Medchester, and, without warning, confront her with Garwood’s statement about her movements that night. If she could prove an alibi so much the better; but she had made no effort to do so in the first instance, had produced no evidence proving her own assertion of not having left the house, and a belated explanation born of second thoughts would have to be peculiarly unassailable to carry any weight.
Then there was the matter of the beads. He intended to press that point, to force the truth from her. He could quite understand her astonishment at seeing the crystal beads hanging round Anne’s neck when she had thought the chain to be broken and in the hands of the police. That was no more than he had expected.
But if she had imagined she recognized Anne’s property in the broken necklace found near the scene of the crime, and the three loose beads in the dead man’s pocket, why had she shown no surprise when first confronted with them? It would almost seem it had not been a surprise to her. The two necklaces were so much alike there was every reason for her to have been mistaken, but why had she not said – as she believed – the beads belonged to Anne Courtenay when asked?
An instinct told the inspector it was not in order to shield her husband’s cousin.
Then there was Miss Delauney’s story bringing Lord Gorth and his sister into it. That, too, was, mere chatter – nothing to go upon – and her own assertion of being married to Robert Saunderson, by the registrar in Marylebone had had to be substantiated. Police inquiries had disclosed the fact that Saunderson had been lying when he said the marriage ceremony had been a sham. The record of the marriage was there sure enough; in their own names, and no question about it. Miss Delauney of the halls was Mrs. Saunderson without a doubt. All these threads, apparently leading into blind alleys, had to be followed up, and Garwood’s evidence had to be dealt with first.
So about four hours later Inspector Stoddart walked into the first floor sitting-room at the “Medchester Arms,” where Harbord, with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, was writing up a report.
“Ring up the Hall,” he said, flinging down his hat, “while I get a bit of something to eat. I caught the train by the skin of my teeth. Find out if Lady Medchester’s at home and, if not, when she will be – but don’t say why you want to know. I am going to have a word with her, and I’d as soon Lord Medchester was out of the way.”
It was six o’clock when a footman informed Lady Medchester that Inspector Stoddart would like to speak to her. She was writing letters at her writing-table, and as the man delivered his message stared straight in front of her without looking round. When she spoke, after a perceptible pause, her face was white to the lips.
“Inspector Stoddart – what does he want?”
“To speak to you, my lady,” the man answered stolidly.
“Yes, but what about?” she asked impatiently.
“He didn’t say. He’s got the other detective – I think his name’s Harbord, my lady – with him, and says he would like to see you at once.”
“Tell him I can’t –” she began; then with a little helpless gesture, “I – suppose it’s no good. Where’s his lordship?”
“Gone over to East Molton, I believe, to see Mr. Burford.”
She turned and faced the man in the doorway for the first time.
“Show the inspector into the library and say I will be with him directly.” As the door closed and she was left again alone she flung the pen angrily on the table and rose. “What is it now?” she muttered. “Am I never to have any peace? Oh, Dick! – my dear –” She broke off with a sob.
Moving across the room to the mirror over the mantelpiece she drew powder and puff from a vanity-bag hanging at her wrist, and applied it skilfully to eyes and nose. A delicate brush of geranium to cheeks, white for the moment as chalk, and a finishing touch of lipstick made her feel herself again, and with lips firmly set and anything but welcome in her eyes she crossed the wide hall to the library.
The detectives turned as she entered.
“What do you want?” she said abruptly.
“I suppose it’s more questions about these – these murders? I have already told you all I can – and I have nothing further to add.”
Stoddart drew a chair a few feet forward.
“Won’t you sit down?’’ he suggested. “A new development has arisen, and there are one or two questions that must be asked.”
Lady Medchester frowned at the implication that the interview might be a long one, and shook her head.
“I prefer to stand, thank you. Surely there is some limit to this continual inquisition on the part of the police! Why should an innocent person be subjected to this sort of thing? It’s not my idea of British justice!”
The inspector’s eyes scanned her face with so uncompromising a look that her own dropped.
“The innocent?” he said coldly. “But innocence has to be proved – and proved up to the hilt in cases of this sort.” He paused – no one knew better than Inspector Stoddart when to give his actions a dramatic setting. “Why did you say you had spent the hours between nine and eleven on the evening of Saunderson’s murder in your bedroom, Lady Medchester?” he asked sternly.
She stared at him angrily.
“Because I did. I can’t prove it because, as it happens, I was seen by no one between those hours. I was in my bedroom, and my maid –”
Stoddart moved a step forward.
“On the contrary, you were seen – in the garden,” he interrupted. “Wait,” as she attempted to speak, “don’t make matters worse by denying it.”