“ Anderson is below, sir.”
Lamb turned a preoccupied face.
“All right-tell him to wait.”
Curtis retreated. Frank Abbott shut the door. Pity Curtis couldn’t be this side of it-he was going to miss the show. Or was he? So Maudie had done the trick. Astonishing woman. He took off his hat to her, metaphorically speaking. And to the Chief. Nothing small about him. He could take Maudie in his stride. To look at him sitting there, imperturbable and solid, no one could have guessed that Curtis’ message was anything but the dullest routine stuff. Only three people in the room knew what it meant. The things had been found where Maudie had said they would be found. So now what?
Lamb was speaking in his steady, ponderous way.
“Well, we seem to have got a little off the rails. We’d better get back. Was there something more you wished to say, Miss Silver?”
Miss Silver coughed. She sat primly upright with no trace of triumph about her, a dowdy old governess with an old-fashioned decorum of manner.
“I should just like to complete my time-table,” she said. “I think I can do so now. We will return to the moment when Miss Roland’s friend went down in the lift, leaving her on the landing. This was at 8:30. At 8:35 or thereabouts Miss Garside let herself in with the spare key of No. 8, which she had obtained from the basement. She had reason to believe that Miss Roland had gone out for the evening. She had, in fact, seen her go down in the lift with her sister, Mrs. Jackson, at twenty minutes past seven, and she did not know that Miss Roland had gone no farther than the corner of the road, and that she was back in her flat again by half past seven. Miss Garside remained in the flat for about a quarter of an hour, and during that quarter of an hour Miss Roland was murdered. I am going to tell you why she was murdered, and who murdered her. Carola Roland came to this house for a purpose. She was being blackmailed, and she was determined to discover her blackmailer, and to turn the tables. Mrs. Jackson will tell you that her sister believed the person who was blackmailing her to be resident in one of these flats. She did not disclose this person’s identity, but she was determined not only to free herself but to punish the blackmailer. With this end in view she secured a post in one of the flats for a girl with whom she had been friendly in the past, and who was peculiarly qualified to assist her. I refer to Mrs. Underwood’s maid, Ivy Lord. This girl had been an acrobat, she was devoted to Carola Roland, and she had a useful reputation for walking in her sleep. At Miss Roland’s instigation Ivy got out of her window at night and pursued certain investigations.”
Abbott looked round at all the faces and found them looking at Miss Silver-flushed, pale, eager, nervous, distressed. There was a general air of expectancy about them. Even Mr. Willard’s superiority and Mrs. Lemming’s hauteur were tinged with it.
Miss Crane said, “Dear, dear-how unpleasant!”
Miss Silver continued in her quiet, carrying voice.
“One day Ivy brought Miss Roland a letter which gave her the evidence she required. It was the answer from one of the blackmailer’s victims to a demand for money. With Ivy’s testimony as to where it had been found, it afforded conclusive proof of the blackmailer’s identity. But Carola Roland had no idea of prosecuting. She thought she could make a good bargain for herself and get the upper hand. She communicated with the blackmailer, and a meeting was arranged for Wednesday evening at approximately 8:45. It will be remembered that Miss Garside was still somewhere in the flat at this time-probably in the bathroom, as a ring belonging to her was subsequently found there. She did not wish to be seen, and was waiting for a chance to get away unobserved. Miss Roland, awaiting her visitor in some excitement, probably had the sitting-room door ajar, if not wide open. She might have walked to and fro between the sitting-room and the hall. She might have been expecting that the bell would ring. Or she might have known that her visitor would come by another way.”
“What way?” Giles Armitage asked the question which was in everyone’s mind.
“By the fire-escape and the window,” said Miss Silver. “And that, I believe, was in fact the way by which the murderer came. The sash was lifted, the blackmailer admitted, some talk perhaps followed. After which Miss Roland turned towards the table which stood on the window side of the room. She may have been going to produce the compromising letter. We do not know, but that is a reasonable conjecture. As soon as her back was turned the blackmailer caught up that little silver figure which you see on the mantelpiece and struck the fatal blow. It makes a very dangerous weapon. The head and bust are easy to grip, the pointed foot is sharp, and the blow would have the weight of the base behind it. Dropping the figure upon the couch, the murderer went to the door of the flat and set it ajar, thus widening the field of suspicion. Miss Garside, I think, had already gone. She may have heard the blow and the fall, or she may have slipped away as soon as the sitting-room door was shut. There is an uncertainty upon this point which can never be cleared up. This uncertainty was shared by the murderer-and murderers cannot afford this kind of uncertainty. Miss Garside was found dead last night after having received a visit from a smartly dressed woman with conspicuous fair hair. This woman was seen coming out of Miss Garside’s flat, and her appearance noticed and described. There is reason to suppose that Miss Garside was having tea when her visitor arrived. I do not know how she explained herself, but I am convinced that she found an opportunity of introducing strong morphia tablets into Miss Garside’s tea. The affair was very cleverly planned, and arranged to look like a suicide, but circumstantial evidence pointing to murder is now forthcoming.”
As she spoke, Lamb sat with an elbow on the arm of his chair, a big hand propping his chin, his face heavy and expressionless.
Miss Crane said “Dear me!” in a very interested manner. Then she heaved a sigh and got to her feet. “You make it so very interesting-you do indeed,” she said in the husky voice which always seemed a little short of breath.“You must come and have tea with me and tell me all about it. But I must go now. Packer will be busy with the evening meal, and we do not like to leave Mrs. Meredith alone.”
“Just a moment,” said Miss Silver. “I was going to ask you a question about Tunbridge Wells. Mrs. Meredith used to live there, did she not?”
Miss Crane had her foolish smile.
“Now who could have told you that?”
“She used to talk about the Pantiles and the Toad Rock when she first came here, did she not-and about her house on Mount Pleasant? To anyone who has ever been in Tunbridge Wells-”
Miss Crane laughed her giggling laugh.
“Oh dear-how clever you are! I should never have thought of that!”
“No,” said Miss Silver. “You were not with Mrs. Meredith then, I think? You have not in fact been with her for very long, have you?”
Miss Crane stopped laughing. She looked puzzled and concerned.
“I don’t understand. No, really. There is no secret about it all. Oh, none at all. A very dear cousin of mine was with Mrs. Meredith for many, many years. When she died I was only too pleased to take her place. I am sure I have tried to make up for her loss in every way. You will not ask me to neglect her now, will you? I really must be going.”
She began to move towards the door. She still had the large white handkerchief in her hand. Giles Armitage, who had risen when she did, walked beside her. She lifted the handkerchief to her eyes for a moment, and then, still holding it, her hand went down into the pocket of the drab raincoat and there remained, gripped and held by Giles.
In a flash she twisted to free herself, and with such a sudden trick of the muscles that she was almost out of his grip.
It was Miss Silver who caught the other wrist and held on to it till Frank Abbott got there. There were some horrible moments. Meade sickened and shut her eyes. A woman struggling with men-three of them trying to hold her. Horrible!
Fierce panting breath. The men’s feet scuffing on Carola’s blue carpet. And then the sound of a shot.
Meade op
ened terrified eyes, got to her feet, and felt the floor tilt under them. Giles-the shot-Giles! And then what had been a swaying, struggling group resolved itself, and she saw him. He was still holding Miss Crane by the wrist, but she was falling back, limp and pale, between Sergeant Abbott and the Chief Inspector. A small automatic pistol lay where it had fallen at Giles’ feet. As Meade looked, he hooked it dexterously and kicked it away. Mrs. Underwood screamed on a high, shrill note, but whether this came first or next, Meade never was quite sure, because at the time everything seemed to happen together- Mr. Willard saying in a horrified voice, “She has shot herself”; Miss Crane sagging against the two men, her head hanging, her eyes fixed, her pale mouth horribly open; Mabel Underwood’s scream; and then Miss Crane suddenly, galvanically in action again. There was a yelp from Lamb as the hand which was holding her was bitten almost to the bone. With a violent twist she was free and with a single spring had reached the open window.
Giles and Sergeant Abbott reached it too, but not in time. Desperate haste had taken her over the sill to the ledge beneath, and from there on to the fire-escape. They could see her a yard or two below, going down at a speed which spoke of practice. As Giles threw a leg over the sill to follow her, Frank Abbott caught his arm.
“No need,” he said. “They’re waiting for her down there.”
They watched her drop the last few feet and turn to find herself surrounded.
This time there was no break-away.
CHAPTER 49
Miss Silver gave a tea-party a few days later. She was back in her own flat with Bubbles, The Soul’s Awakening, The Black Brunswicker, and The Monarch of the Glen gazing from their maple frames upon the scene. Bubbles and the damsel in The Soul’s Awakening could not truthfully be said to enjoy a view of anything but the ceiling, but that was the fault of the upturned gaze with which the artist had endowed them. The Black Brunswicker’s lady and the Monarch had been more kindly treated. They looked down upon Nicholas and Agnes Drake, Meade Underwood and Giles Armitage, and upon Frank Abbott, off duty and very much at his ease.
Miss Silver’s tea was of the excellent blend and making dreamed of but seldom achieved. There was enough milk, there was real sugar, there was even a little cream in a small antique silver jug. There were scones and buns of the valuable Emma’s best. There was raspberry jam. It was like the pleasantest kind of schoolroom tea.
Miss Silver beamed kindly upon her guests. She was delighted at the happiness which radiated from the Drakes, and delighted to hear that Meade and Giles were to be married without delay. She received with pleasure the admiring attentions of Sergeant Abbott. Altogether a very pleasant party.
But the dark background against which they had played their parts so short a time before could hardly be ignored. Behind the happiness and the agreeable talk it was still there, like a shadow which has been left behind but cannot be forgotten. At first they did not speak of it at all. The Drakes were leaving Vandeleur House. The lease of his flat was up, and they were looking for something in the country.
“It doesn’t really matter where I live, you know,” said Nicholas Drake.
Frank Abbott, with his lazy, impudent smile, now put the question which everyone wanted to ask.
“Are you really a pork butcher?”
“Selwood’s Celebrated Sausages,” said Mr. Drake, looking more romantic than ever.
“Lucrative?” said Frank.
“Oh, very. I’ll tell you about it if you like. I was going to the other day, but the roof fell in. I’d like to, because it’s a story about some very nice people and some very good friends. I was reading for the Bar when the last war started. I hadn’t any near relations, and I had quite a reasonable income. By the time I got out of the army in 1919 I hadn’t any income at all. My gratuity went west, and by 1921 I hadn’t the price of a meal. Then I bumped into Mrs. Selwood. She’d been our cook, and she married Selwood from our house when he had a little shop in a little country town. By the time I met her he had three shops, and the sausages were beginning to take on. She made me go home with her, and they gave me a job. After three years they made me manager of one of the shops. Business boomed-the three shops increased and multiplied many times-the sausages became celebrated. When Selwood died two years ago I was stupefied to find he’d left the whole concern to me. He said I’d been like a son to them, and Mrs. Selwood wouldn’t want to be bothered with the business. He’d settled enough to make her comfortable, and he knew I’d look after her.”
Miss Silver smiled her kindest smile.
“That is a very nice story, Mr. Drake. It is indeed pleasant to realise how many kind and generous people there are in the world. It is particularly salutary when one has been brought into unwilling contact with crime.”
Frank Abbott looked at her with a malicious gleam in his pale blue eyes.
“It was our duty and we did,” he murmured. “Now you’re going to reward us, aren’t you-let us ask questions and tell us all the answers?”
He received an indulgent smile.
“I think, Mr. Abbott, you know the answers already.”
He murmured, “Call me Frank,” and went on a thought hastily, “I’d love to hear them again. And I don’t know them all-least I don’t suppose I do. Everyone else is perishing with curiosity, and what they all want to know is, how did you do it?”
Miss Silver coughed.
“It is really extremely simple-”
Frank Abbott broke in reproachfully.
“When you say that, you know, you put all the rest of us into a sort of C iii category below the infant class. It would save our pride a lot if you’d just set up as a superwoman and have done with it.”
Miss Silver looked quite shocked.
“My dear Frank-pray! This talk of supermen and superwomen always seems to me to be rather impious. We are endowed with certain faculties by our Creator, and it is our duty to make good use of them. I have a retentive memory, I am naturally observant, and I was trained in habits of industry. When I came into contact with this case I was immediately struck with the fact that blackmail was at the bottom of it. The two people who were being blackmailed were both in a position to furnish the blackmailer with something more important than money. Ship construction, aeroplane construction-information about these two key industries was what had been aimed at. The money payments were in each case only intended to compromise the persons who were being blackmailed, and to render it impossible for them to break away. In the Mayfair blackmail case last spring there was a strong hint of the same procedure. But my memory took me back a great deal farther than that. The most dangerous organisation of this kind was that of which the Vulture was the head. This was smashed in 1928, but some years later it revived under a pupil of his, a woman known under the names of Deane, Simpson, and Mannister-the latter being her legal designation. I have taken some interest in her career, and have had the opportunity of talking it over with Colonel Garrett, the head of the Foreign Office Intelligence Service. He told me that in his opinion Mrs. Simpson was the most dangerous criminal he had ever come across. She was arrested three years ago for the murder of a woman who had been her cook, and who had had the misfortune to recognise her. I refer, of course, to the Spedding case. She shot this poor woman dead in cold blood, and attempted to murder two other people. After her arrest she managed to escape, and knowing her to be at large, the possibility that she might be involved in these cases of blackmail presented itself to my mind. There were other possibilities, but amongst them I considered this one.
“When it transpired that the occasion of one of the blackmailing demands was a trifling incident which occurred a good many years ago at Ledlington, the possibility which I had been vaguely considering became a sharply outlined probability. Mrs. Simpson was, you see, the daughter of a Ledlington clergyman, the Reverend Geoffrey Arthur Deane. She was recently married to Mr. Simpson but still resident in Ledlington at the time of the occurrence I have mentioned. Some of her father’s parishioners were in
volved. The link was too significant to be accidental. I had now to consider the possibility that Mrs. Simpson was one of the residents in Vandeleur House. I had studied her history, and found that when hard pressed she had always saved herself by assuming a new identity. She had in turn impersonated her own brother, an old professor, a chorus girl, an exotic medium, a middle-aged secretary, and an eccentric spinster. With this in mind I reviewed everyone in Vandeleur House, and at once discarded Bell and Mrs. Smollett who were well known local characters, Mr. Drake on account of his height, and Mr. Willard whose credentials were quite unimpeachable. Mrs. Willard I rejected for the same reason. Mrs. Underwood and her connections were known personally to friends of my own. Miss Garside and Mrs. Lemming were of a physical type impossible for Mrs. Simpson to imitate, both having the regular features which no amount of make-up can counterfeit. Miss Lemming I did not consider at all.” Here Miss Silver paused for a moment and smiled at Agnes Drake. “Goodness, like classical features, is not to be imitated. I was therefore left with Mrs. Meredith’s household, and Ivy Lord. Mrs. Simpson, at forty years of age, would certainly not be able to pass for a girl of eighteen. There remained Mrs. Meredith, her companion, and her maid. When I discovered the connection with Tunbridge Wells the obvious course was to go down there and make enquiries.”
“I hope,” said Nicholas Drake, “that I shall never have a secret which you have set yourself to find out.”
Miss Silver smiled benignly.
“Happiness is a secret which should be shared, not hidden,” she observed.
“What did you find out at Tunbridge Wells?” said Giles Armitage. “The balloon went up before you had time to tell us what you did there.”
“It was really very simple,” said Miss Silver. “I telephoned to the leading house agent, and having discovered the name of Mrs. Meredith’s former residence, I paid one or two calls upon the neighbouring houses. A Miss Jenkins who had lived next door for about fifteen years was particularly helpful, though I must confess that for the first twenty minutes or so it seemed as if I was to have my journey for nothing. Miss Jenkins, as well as a Mrs. Black whom I had already interviewed, spoke in the warmest possible terms about Miss Crane-so kind, so conscientious, so devoted to Mrs. Meredith. When I asked how long the association had lasted, she told me that it was already of long standing fifteen years ago when she made their acquaintance. It was only as I was rising to go that she sighed and said she really did not know what Mrs. Meredith would do without her faithful Miss Crane, and a great pity she had not stayed among her old friends, whose society would have done something to make up for the loss. A few questions brought to light the astonishing fact that the devoted Miss Crane had passed away about six months previously. Mrs. Meredith and she had gone up to London on a short visit. They stayed in a family hotel which Mrs. Meredith had patronised for years, and whilst there Miss Crane was found dead in her bed, having taken an overdose of some sleeping mixture. I have not the slightest doubt that she was murdered by Mrs. Simpson, who was in urgent need of a change of identity. It is now quite certain that she was the principal in the Mayfair blackmail case, and that it was necessary for her to disappear. It was by no means the first time that she had done this. The method was very simple. Some middle-aged woman of no importance and without relatives was selected, and removed. There is very little fuss made about the death of such a person, since none of the ordinary motives for foul play are discernible. Mrs. Meredith was naturally in the greatest distress. When Mrs. Simpson presented herself as a cousin of her beloved companion she was received with open arms and with no difficulty at all persuaded to take the dead woman’s place. What followed is still a little obscure, but Mrs. Meredith speaks of a visit from a doctor who advised a course of treatment which would necessitate her being within reach. He also told her that the air of Tunbridge Wells was very bad for her. There is no doubt, I think, that he was not a genuine medical man but an accomplice of Mrs. Simpson’s. Mrs. Meredith was persuaded to sell her house. She never returned to Tunbridge Wells. The new companion acquired an unbounded influence over her. A very respectable maid who had been with her for some years was got rid of and Packer engaged to take her place. This woman’s real name is Phoebe Dart. She figured in the Denny case, but disappeared and was never traced. She had been nurse in the Reverend Geoffrey Deane’s household, and Mrs. Simpson’s influence over her has always been complete. The party moved to Vandeleur House, and from this safe retreat the blackmailing activities were continued. When the police searched the flat they found all the evidence they required.”
Miss Silver Deals With Death Page 22