“So it’s literally as well as figuratively. Well, well—the world’s a good place after all.”
“Of course it is.”
“Miss Humbleby, may I be impertinent?”
“I’m sure you couldn’t be.”
“Oh, don’t be too sure of that. I wanted to say that I think Dr. Thomas is a very lucky man.”
Rose blushed and smiled.
She said: “So you’ve heard?”
“Was it supposed to be a secret? I’m so sorry.”
“Oh! Nothing is a secret in this place,” said Rose ruefully.
“So it is true—you and he are engaged?”
Rose nodded.
“Only—just now—we’re not announcing it officially. You see, daddy was against it and it seems—well—unkind to—to blazon it abroad the moment he’s dead.”
“Your father disapproved?”
“Well, not disapproved exactly. Oh, I suppose it did amount to that, really.”
Luke said gently:
“He thought you were too young?”
“That’s what he said.”
Luke said acutely: “But you think there was something more than that?”
Rose bent her head slowly and reluctantly.
“Yes—I’m afraid what it really amounted to was that daddy didn’t—well, didn’t really like Geoffrey.”
“They were antagonistic to each other?”
“It seemed like that sometimes…Of course, daddy was rather a prejudiced old dear.”
“And I suppose he was very fond of you and didn’t like the thought of losing you?”
Rose assented but still with a shade of reservation in her manner.
“It went deeper than that?” asked Luke. “He definitely didn’t want Thomas as a husband for you?”
“No. You see—daddy and Geoffrey are so very unlike—and in some ways they clashed. Geoffrey was really very patient and good about it—but knowing daddy didn’t like him made him even more reserved and shy in his manner, so that daddy really never got to know him any better.”
“Prejudices are very hard to combat,” said Luke.
“It was so completely unreasonable!”
“Your father didn’t advance any reasons?”
“Oh, no. He couldn’t! Naturally, I mean, there wasn’t anything he could say against Geoffrey except that he didn’t like him.”
“I do not like thee, Dr. Fell, the reason why I cannot tell.”
“Exactly.”
“No tangible thing to get hold of? I mean, your Geoffrey doesn’t drink or back horses?”
“Oh, no. I don’t believe Geoffrey even knows what won the Derby.”
“That’s funny,” said Luke. “You know, I could swear I saw your Dr. Thomas at Epsom on Derby Day.”
For a moment he was anxious lest he might already have mentioned that he only arrived in England on that day. But Rose responded at once quite unsuspiciously.
“You thought you saw Geoffrey at the Derby? Oh, no. He couldn’t get away, for one thing. He was over at Ashewold nearly all that day at a difficult confinement case.”
“What a memory you’ve got!”
Rose laughed.
“I remember that, because he told me they called the baby Jujube as a nickname!”
Luke nodded abstractedly.
“Anyway,” said Rose, “Geoffrey never goes to race meetings. He’d be bored to death.”
She added, in a different tone:
“Won’t you—come in? I think mother would like to see you.”
“If you’re sure of that?”
Rose led the way into a room where twilight hung rather sadly. A woman was sitting in an armchair in a curiously huddled up position.
“Mother, this is Mr. Fitzwilliam.”
Mrs. Humbleby gave a start and shook hands. Rose went quietly out of the room.
“I’m glad to see you, Mr. Fitzwilliam. Some friends of yours knew my husband many years ago, so Rose tells me.”
“Yes, Mrs. Humbleby.” He rather hated repeating the lie to the widowed woman, but there was no way out of it.
Mrs. Humbleby said:
“I wish you could have met him. He was a fine man and a great doctor. He cured many people who had been given up as hopeless just by the strength of his personality.”
Luke said gently:
“I’ve heard a lot about him since I’ve been here. I know how much people thought of him.”
He could not see Mrs. Humbleby’s face very distinctly. Her voice was rather monotonous, but its very lack of feeling seemed to emphasize the fact that actually feeling was in her, strenuously held back.
She said rather unexpectedly:
“The world is a very wicked place, Mr. Fitzwilliam. Do you know that?”
Luke was a little surprised.
“Yes, perhaps that may be.”
She insisted:
“No, but do you know it? It’s important that. There’s a lot of wickedness about…One must be prepared—to fight it! John was. He knew. He was on the side of the right!”
Luke said gently:
“I’m sure he was.”
“He knew the wickedness there was in this place,” said Mrs. Humbleby. “He knew—”
She burst suddenly into tears.
Luke murmured:
“I’m so sorry—” and stopped.
She controlled herself as suddenly as she had lost control.
“You must forgive me,” she said. She held out her hand and he took it. “Do come and see us while you are here,” she said. “It would be so good for Rose. She likes you so much.”
“I like her. I think your daughter is the nicest girl I’ve met for a long time, Mrs. Humbleby.”
“She’s very good to me.”
“Dr. Thomas is a very lucky man.”
“Yes.” Mrs. Humbleby dropped his hand. Her voice had gone flat again. “I don’t know—it’s all so difficult.”
Luke left her standing in the half gloom, her fingers nervously twisting and untwisting themselves.
As he walked home his mind went over various aspects of the conversation.
Dr. Thomas had been absent from Wychwood for a good part of Derby Day. He had been absent in a car. Wychwood was thirty-five miles from London. Supposedly he had been attending a confinement case. Was there more than his word? The point, he supposed, could be verified. His mind went on to Mrs. Humbleby.
What had she meant by her insistence on that phrase, “There’s a lot of wickedness about…?”
Was she just nervous and overwrought by the shock of her husband’s death? Or was there something more to it than that?
Did she perhaps know something? Something that Dr. Humbleby had known before he died?
“I’ve got to go on with this,” said Luke to himself. “I’ve got to go on.”
Resolutely he averted his mind from the passage of arms that had taken place between him and Bridget.
Thirteen
MISS WAYNFLETE TALKS
On the following morning Luke came to a decision. He had, he felt, proceeded as far as he could with indirect inquiries. It was inevitable that sooner or later he would be forced into the open. He felt that the time had come to drop the book-writing camouflage and reveal that he had come to Wychwood with a definite aim in view.
In pursuance of this plan of campaign he decided to call upon Honoria Waynflete. Not only had he been favourably impressed by that middle-aged spinster’s air of discretion and a certain shrewdness of outlook—but he fancied that she might have information that would help him. He believed that she had told him what she knew. He wanted to induce her to tell him what she might have guessed. He had a shrewd idea that Miss Waynflete’s guesses might be fairly near the truth.
He called immediately after church.
Miss Waynflete received him in a matter-of-fact manner, showing no surprise at his call. As she sat down near him, her prim hands folded and her intelligent eyes—so like an amiable goat’s—fixed on his fac
e, he found little difficulty in coming to the object of his visit.
He said: “I dare say you have guessed, Miss Waynflete, that the reason of my coming here is not merely to write a book on local customs?”
Miss Waynflete inclined her head and continued to listen.
Luke was not minded as yet to go into the full story. Miss Waynflete might be discreet—she certainly gave him the impression of being so—but where an elderly spinster was concerned Luke felt he could hardly rely on her resisting the temptation to confide an exciting story to one or two trusted cronies. He thereupon proposed to adopt a middle course.
“I am down here to inquire into the circumstances of the death of that poor girl, Amy Gibbs.”
Miss Waynflete said:
“You mean you have been sent down by the police?”
“Oh, no—I’m not a plainclothes dick.” He added with a slightly humorous inflection, “I’m afraid I’m that well-known character in fiction, the private investigator.”
“I see. Then it was Bridget Conway who brought you down here?”
Luke hesitated a moment. Then he decided to let it go at that. Without going into the whole Pinkerton story, it was difficult to account for his presence. Miss Waynflete was continuing, a note of gentle admiration in her voice.
“Bridget is so practical—so efficient! I’m afraid, if it had been left to me, I should have distrusted my own judgement—I mean, that if you are not absolutely sure of a thing, it is so difficult to commit yourself to a definite course of action.”
“But you are sure, aren’t you?”
Miss Waynflete said gravely:
“No, indeed, Mr. Fitzwilliam. It is not a thing one can be sure about! I mean, it might all be imagination. Living alone, with no one to consult or to talk to, one might easily become melodramatic and imagine things which had no foundation in fact.”
Luke assented readily to this statement, recognizing its inherent truth, but he added gently:
“But you are sure in your own mind?”
Even here Miss Waynflete showed a little reluctance.
“We are not talking at cross-purposes, I hope?” she demurred.
Luke smiled.
“You would like me to put it in plain words? Very well. You do think that Amy Gibbs was murdered?”
Honoria Waynflete flinched a little at the crudity of the language. She said:
“I don’t feel at all happy about her death. Not at all happy. The whole thing is profoundly unsatisfactory in my opinion.”
Luke said patiently:
“But you don’t think her death was a natural one?”
“No.”
“You don’t believe it was an accident?”
“It seems to me most improbable. There are so many—”
Luke cut her short.
“You don’t think it was suicide?”
“Emphatically not.”
“Then,” said Luke gently, “you do think that it was murder?”
Miss Waynflete hesitated, gulped, and bravely took the plunge.
“Yes,” she said. “I do!”
“Good. Now we can get on with things.”
“But I have really no evidence on which to base that belief,” Miss Waynflete explained anxiously. “It is entirely an idea!”
“Quite so. This is a private conversation. We are merely speaking about what we think and suspect. We suspect Amy Gibbs was murdered. Who do we think murdered her?”
Miss Waynflete shook her head. She was looking very troubled.
Luke said, watching her:
“Who had reason to murder her?”
Miss Waynflete said slowly:
“She had had a quarrel, I believe, with her young man at the garage, Jim Harvey—a most steady, superior young man. I know one reads in the papers of young men attacking their sweethearts and dreadful things like that, but I really can’t believe that Jim would do such a thing.”
Luke nodded.
Miss Waynflete went on.
“Besides, I can’t believe that he would do it that way. Climb up to her window and substitute a bottle of poison for the other one with the cough mixture. I mean, that doesn’t seem—”
Luke came to the rescue as she hesitated.
“It’s not the act of an angry lover? I agree. In my opinion we can wash Jim Harvey right out. Amy was killed (we’re agreeing she was killed) by someone who wanted to get her out of the way and who planned the crime carefully so that it should appear to be an accident. Now have you any idea—any hunch—shall we put it like that?—who that person could be?”
Miss Waynflete said:
“No—really—no, I haven’t the least idea!”
“Sure?”
“N-no—no, indeed.”
Luke looked at her thoughtfully. The denial, he felt, had not rung quite true. He went on:
“You know of no motive?”
“No motive whatever.”
That was more emphatic.
“Had she been in many places in Wychwood?”
“She was with the Hortons for a year before going to Lord Whitfield.”
Luke summed up rapidly.
“It’s like this, then. Somebody wanted that girl out of the way. From the given facts we assume that—first—it was a man and a man of moderately old-fashioned outlook (as shown by the hat paint touch), and secondly that it must have been a reasonably athletic man since it is clear he must have climbed up over the outhouse to the girl’s window. You agree on those points?”
“Absolutely,” said Miss Waynflete.
“Do you mind if I go round and have a try myself?”
“Not at all. I think it is a very good idea.”
She led him out by a side door and round to the backyard. Luke managed to reach the outhouse roof without much trouble. From there he could easily raise the sash of the girl’s window and with a slight effort hoist himself into the room. A few minutes later he rejoined Miss Waynflete on the path below, wiping his hands on his handkerchief.
“Actually it’s easier than it looks,” he said. “You want a certain amount of muscle, that’s all. There were no signs on the sill or outside?”
Miss Waynflete shook her head.
“I don’t think so. Of course the constable climbed up this way.”
“So that if there were any traces they would be taken to be his. How the police force assists the criminal! Well, that’s that!”
Miss Waynflete led the way back to the house.
“Was Amy Gibbs a heavy sleeper?” he asked.
Miss Waynflete replied acidly:
“It was extremely difficult to get her up in the morning. Sometimes I would knock again and again, and call out to her before she answered. But then, you know, Mr. Fitzwilliam, there’s a saying there are none so deaf as those who will not hear!”
“That’s true,” acknowledged Luke. “Well, now, Miss Waynflete, we come to the question of motive. Starting with the most obvious one, do you think there was anything between that fellow Ellsworthy and the girl?” He added hastily, “This is just your opinion I’m asking. Only that.”
“If it’s a matter of opinion, I would say yes.”
Luke nodded.
“In your opinion, would the girl Amy have stuck at a spot of blackmail?”
“Again as a matter of opinion, I should say that that was quite possible.”
“Do you happen to know if she had much money in her possession at the time of her death?”
Miss Waynflete reflected.
“I do not think so. If she had had any unusual amount I think I should have heard about it.”
“And she hadn’t launched into any unusual extravagance before she died?”
“I don’t think so.”
“That rather militates against the blackmail theory. The victim usually pays once before he decides to proceed to extremes. There’s another theory. The girl might know something.”
“What kind of thing?”
“She might have knowledge that w
as dangerous to someone here in Wychwood. We’ll take a strictly hypothetical case. She’d been in service in a good many houses here. Supposing she came to know of something that would damage say, someone like Mr. Abbot, professionally.”
“Mr. Abbot?”
Luke said quickly:
“Or possibly some negligence or unprofessional conduct on the part of Dr. Thomas.”
Miss Waynflete began, “But surely—” and then stopped.
Luke went on:
“Amy Gibbs was housemaid, you said, in the Hortons’ house at the time when Mrs. Horton died.”
There was a moment’s pause, then Miss Waynflete said:
“Will you tell me, Mr. Fitzwilliam, why you bring the Hortons into this? Mrs. Horton died over a year ago.”
“Yes, and the girl Amy was there at the time.”
“I see. What have the Hortons to do with it?”
“I don’t know. I—just wondered. Mrs. Horton died of acute gastritis, didn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Was her death at all unexpected?”
Miss Waynflete said slowly:
“It was to me. You see, she had been getting much better—seemed well on the road to recovery—and then she had a sudden relapse and died.”
“Was Dr. Thomas surprised?”
“I don’t know. I believe he was.”
“And the nurses, what did they say?”
“In my experience,” said Miss Waynflete, “hospital nurses are never surprised at any case taking a turn for the worse! It is recovery that surprises them.”
“But her death surprised you?” Luke persisted.
“Yes. I had been with her only the day before, and she had seemed very much better, talked and seemed quite cheerful.”
“What did she think about her own illness?”
“She complained that the nurses were poisoning her. She had had one nurse sent away, but she said these two were just as bad!”
“I suppose you didn’t pay much attention to that?”
“Well, no, I thought it was all part of the illness. And she was a very suspicious woman and—it may be unkind to say so—but she liked to make herself important. No doctor ever understood her case—and it was never anything simple—it must either be some very obscure disease or else somebody was ‘trying to get her out of the way.’”
Luke tried to make his voice casual.
Murder Is Easy Page 11