Wicked Uncle

by Patricia Wentworth

“Do you know where it came from?”

  “The little boy must have got at it. It was in his toy-cupboard. Nurse was saying how spoilt he’d got whilst she was away. She said Miss Brown picked up a photograph from the nursery floor and took it away.”

  “What happened to the photograph?”

  “Mrs. Oakley said it was spoilt, and she went over and dropped it in the fire.”

  “Mr. Porlock came to see her on Wednesday afternoon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did she see him?”

  “Upstairs in her sitting-room.”

  “And how much of their conversation did you overhear?”

  “I don’t listen at doors.”

  “Is there a door you could have listened at-a door through to her bedroom?”

  “I don’t listen at doors.”

  “I’m asking you if there’s a door through from her bedroom. I can ask Mrs. Oakley, you know.”

  “There’s a door.”

  “And you don’t listen at doors? Look here, Miss Hooper, I’m making no threats, and I’m making no promises-I’m just poiting out one or two facts. This is a murder case. It’s a serious thing to obstruct the police in their inquiries. If you listened at that door and got any information that would help the police, it’s your duty to tell them what it is. If you have any idea of trying to dispose of that information for your own profit, it would be a very serious offence-it would be blackmail. Blackmail is a very serious offence. You know best what your past record is- whether it will bear looking into. I don’t want to have to look into it. Now then-how much of that conversation between Mrs. Oakley and Mr. Porlock did you hear?”

  She stood there weighing her chances. Mr. Oakley would pay her to hold her tongue. Would he? Gregory Porlock was dead. Mrs. Oakley would pay her. Yes, and go and cry on Mr. Oakley’s shoulder next minute and tell him all about it. Mr. Oakley was the sort that might turn nasty. She couldn’t afford to have the police come ferreting round. Chances were all very well when you were young and larky. She’d got past taking them. Safety first-that’s what you came to. It wasn’t safe to get on the wrong side of the police. Better tell him what he wanted to know, and see what pickings she could get from Mrs. Oakley- quick, before it all came out. She’d be easy managed the way she was, crying herself silly one minute, and wanting her face done up so that Mr. Oakley wouldn’t notice anything the next.

  Lamb let her have her time.

  “Well?” he said at last.

  She gave a businesslike little nod.

  “All right, sir.”

  “Good! You’d better have a chair.”

  She took one with composure, settled herself, folded her hands in her lap, lifted those cold eyes, and said,

  “The door wasn’t quite shut. I didn’t do it, Mrs. Oakley did. She knew Mr. Porlock was coming, because he telephoned-I took the message. But she didn’t have any idea who he was-she didn’t know who she was going to see.”

  “Sure about that?”

  “I don’t say things unless I’m sure.”

  “Go on.”

  “I thought I’d like to hear what they said, because all he’d told me was, I was to go there as maid and tell him anything he wanted to know. He didn’t tell me why, and I don’t like working in the dark, so I thought I’d listen.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, the first I heard was him calling her by her Christian name. ‘Well, Linnet,’ he said, ‘I thought it would be you, but I had to make sure.’ Then he said to pull herself together. And she said, ‘I thought you were dead,’ and she called him Glen.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, I can’t remember it all, but she was crying and saying why did he let her think he was dead. And he said, ‘I suppose you told Martin you were a widow?’ and she said she thought she was.”

  “Do you mean-”

  She nodded.

  “It was as plain as plain-you couldn’t miss it. They’d been married, and he’d gone off and left her, and nine months after she’d married Mr. Oakley. Mr. Porlock, he kept talking about bigamy, and saying she’d broken the law and he hadn’t, and in the end he got her so she’d do anything he wanted. And what he wanted was for her to put Mr. Oakley’s dispatch-case out on the study window-sill. Mr. Oakley was expected down by tea-time. She was to put the case outside the window when he went to dress for dinner, and leave the window unlatched, so that everything could be put back and no one any the wiser. And in the end that’s what she agreed to.”

  “Did she do it?”

  “I couldn’t say, but if you want my opinion, she’d be too frightened not to. She’s easy frightened, and he’d got the whip hand-talking about putting her in the dock for bigamy, and Mr. Oakley putting her out in the street. Well, in my opinion she wouldn’t have dared not do what he told her.”

  “Now look here-did she tell Mr. Oakley?”

  “She wouldn’t do that-not if she’d any sense.”

  “Why do you put it that way?”

  “Because that’s the way Mr. Porlock put it-said he knew she couldn’t hold her tongue, but if she went crying to Mr. Oakley about it she’d find herself in the dock for bigamy.”

  “So you don’t think she told him?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “They didn’t have anything like the scene there’d have been if he’d found out she wasn’t really married to him?”

  “No-nothing like that.” She hesitated. “Not unless it was just before they started for the dinner party. He came in when she was dressing, and I left them there. She might have said something then, or in the car.”

  Lamb grunted.

  “But you don’t know whether she did?”

  “No, I had to go downstairs.”

  When he had sent her away with instructions to say that the Chief Inspector would like to see Miss Brown, he turned to Frank Abbott and said in an expressionless voice,

  “That gives Mr. Martin Oakley a pretty big motive.”

  “If she told him.”

  “We’ll know more about that when we’ve seen her.”

  Chapter XXV

  Miss Masterman was writing a letter. It began, “Dear Mr. Trower-” and it ended, “Yours sincerely, Agnes Masterman.” It was written in a firm, legible hand.

  When she had signed her name she folded the sheet, put it in an envelope, and addressed it to Messrs. Trower and Wakefield, Solicitors. Then she put on her hat and the shabby fur coat and walked down the drive.

  She came back in about twenty minutes. Mr. Masterman was knocking about the balls in the billiard-room. When he saw his sister come in, still in her outdoor things, he frowned and said,

  “Where have you been?”

  She came right up to the table before she answered him. Watching her come, he felt a growing uneasiness. When she said, “To post a letter,” the uneasiness became an absolute oppression. He wanted to ask her, “What letter?” but he held the words back. It wasn’t any concern of his, but she wrote so few letters-none at all since old Mabel Ledbury died. Why should she write to anyone now?

  They stood there, not more than a yard apart, with that uneasiness of his between them. He didn’t like the way she was looking at him. There was something hard about it, as if she had made up her mind and didn’t give a damn. He put down his cue and said,

  “Hadn’t you better take your things off? It’s hot in here.”

  She didn’t take any notice of that, just looked at him and said in quite an ordinary voice,

  “I’ve written to Mr. Trower.”

  “You’ve-what?”

  “I’ve written to Mr. Trower to say that we’ve found another will.”

  “Agnes-are you mad?”

  “Oh, no. I told you I couldn’t go on. I said it was hidden in her biscuit-box-there won’t be any trouble about it. I told you I couldn’t go on.”

  He said in a stunned voice, “You’re mad.”

  Agnes Masterman shook her head.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “I thought I�
��d better tell you what I’d done. Now I’m going to take my things off.”

  Afterwards he was glad that Leonard Carroll chose this moment to drift into the room, obviously bored and wanting a game. Agnes walked out with the same detached air which she had worn throughout their brief encounter, and he had the satisfaction of beating young Carroll’s head off. Much better than having a row with Agnes. No use having a row if the letter was posted. They’d have to go through with it, but he would keep her to her offer about the fifty thousand. He’d be no worse off if he had it, and he’d be safe. If he had known how Agnes was going to carry on he would never have risked it at all. Women hadn’t the nerve for a bold stroke, and that was a fact.

  Whilst the game of billiards was going on Justin went up to the Mill House.

  “Put your hat on and come out,” he said.

  Dorinda went away and came back again. They walked down the road towards the village in the late dusk of a damp, misty evening. Little curls of smoke came up out of the chimneys of the village houses to join the mist and thicken it. Here and there a lighted chink showed where a curtain had been drawn crookedly. There was a faint smell of rotted leaves-especially cabbage leaves-manure, and wood smoke.

  Just short of the first house a lane went off between high hedgerows and overarching trees. Until they had turned into it neither of them had spoken. There was that feeling of there being too much to say, and an odd sense of being too much out in the open to say it. Here in the lane they were shut in-alone.

  Justin spoke first.

  “How are you getting on?”

  She didn’t answer the question, but said quickly,

  “The police came-”

  “Did they see Mrs. Oakley?”

  “No-Mr. Oakley wouldn’t let them. He said she wasn’t well enough. They’re coming back tomorrow. They saw the maid, and they saw me.”

  “You’d better tell me about it.”

  “They were very nice. I mean they didn’t make me feel nervous or anything. The Chief Inspector asked all the questions, and the other one wrote down what I said. And-oh, Justin, the very first thing he asked me was how long had I known Mr. Porlock.”

  “What did you say?”

  She had turned and was looking at him through the dusk. It was really almost dark here between the hedges and under the trees. He had sent her to put on a hat, but she had come down in her tweed coat bareheaded. The colour of the tweed was absorbed into all the other shades of brown and russet and auburn which belonged to drifted leaves, brown earth, and leafless boughs. Her hair had vanished too, melting into the shadow overhead. There remained visible just her face, robbed of its colour, almost of its features, like the faint first sketch of a face painted on a soft, dim background. The sunk lane gave an under-water quality to its own darkness. She seemed at once remote and near. He could touch her if he put out his hand, but at this moment it came to him to wonder whether he would reach her if he did.

  The pause before she answered was momentary.

  “I said I didn’t know him at all when we went there last night. Justin, it doesn’t seem as if it could be only last night- does it?” She caught her breath. “I’m sorry-it just came over me. Then I said when we came into the drawing-room I recognized him.”

  “Oh, you told them that?”

  She said in a voice which was suddenly very young,

  “I thought I must. And I thought if I was going to, then I had better do it at once.”

  “That’s all right. Go on.”

  “Well, they asked a lot of questions. I told them his name was Glen Porteous when I knew him, and that he was Aunt Mary’s husband. And they asked when she died, and I said four years ago. So then they wanted to know whether there had been a divorce, and I said yes, she divorced him about seven years ago after he went away the last time, and that I hadn’t seen him since. They wanted to know whether I was sure that Gregory Porlock was Glen Porteous, and I said I was, and that he knew I had recognized him. He did, you know. You can always tell by the way anyone looks at you, and that was the way he looked at me. Well, after that they asked about the photograph I picked up off the nursery floor. I don’t know who told them about it. I said it was the twin of the one Aunt Mary had and I recognized it at once. And then they went back to that horrid business at the De Luxe Stores. And do you know what I think, Justin? I think the Wicked Uncle cooked that up to get me out of my job with the Oakleys. You see, he couldn’t count on my not recognizing him, and if he was going about being Gregory Porlock he wouldn’t want a bit of his past turning up and saying, ‘Oh, no-that’s Glen Porteous, and my Aunt Mary had to divorce him because he was an out and out bad lot.’ I mean, would he?”

  “Probably not.”

  “They seemed to know about Miss Silver. The young one got a sort of twinkly look when I told them how she talked to the manager at that horrid Stores. He said something that sounded like ‘She would!’ and the Chief Inspector went rather stiff and said that Miss Silver was very much respected at Scotland Yard. Oh, Justin, I do wish she was here!”

  “What makes you say that?”

  She caught her breath.

  “It’s the Oakleys. Justin, I feel frightened about them. You know how she called out when she saw that he was dead? She called him Glen. She must have known him before he was Gregory Porlock. She wasn’t supposed to know him at all. There’s something frightening there. She does nothing but cry, and Mr. Oakley looks as if it was a funeral all the time. There’s something they’re both dreadfully afraid about. She’s afraid to tell him what it is, and he’s afraid to ask her. It’s grim.”

  He said, “I don’t like your being there.”

  “Oh, it isn’t that. I can’t help feeling sorry for them-even if-”

  “What did you mean by that, Dorinda?”

  She said almost inaudibly, “It frightens me.”

  The thought which frightened her hung between them in the dark. A desperate hand striking a desperate blow. Perhaps a woman’s hand-perhaps a man’s-

  She said with a little gasp,

  “He was the sort of person who gets himself murdered.”

  Chapter XXVI

  Will you see Miss Moira, my lady?”

  Lady Pemberley had breakfasted in bed. She was now reading the paper. She said,

  “Miss Moira? She’s very early. Yes, of course. Take the tray, and ask her to come up.”

  The paper she had been reading lay tilted to the light. A black headline showed-“Murder in a Country House. Guests Questioned.” When the door opened and Moira Lane came in it was the second thing she saw. The first was Sibylla Pemberley’s face, pale and rather austere under the thick iron-grey hair which she wore drawn back in a manner reminiscent of the eighteenth century. Everything in the room was very good and very plain-no fripperies, no bright colours; a dark oil painting of the late Lord Pemberley over the mantelpiece; a jar of white camellia blooms on the shelf below; a purple bedspread which Moira irreverently dubbed the catafalque; a lace cap with purple ribbons; a fine Shetland shawl covering a night-dress of tucked nun’s veiling. With all these Moira was quite familiar. They made up the picture she expected. Her first glance was for the look on Lady Pemberley’s face, which told her nothing, and her second for the newspaper, which told her a good deal. To start with, it wasn’t the sort of paper Cousin Sibylla read. Headlines and pictures weren’t what you would call in her line. That meant that Dawson had brought it up specially, and if she had, it meant not only that the murder was in it, but that Miss Moira Lane was mentioned.

  “Amongst those present was Miss Moira Lane.” Almost a daily occurrence in some paper or another. You got to the point where you took it for granted. “ Attractive Miss Moira Lane ”- “Lord Blank and Miss Moira Lane at Epsom”-“The Duke of Dash, Lady Asterisk, and Miss Moira Lane on the moors”- “ Miss Moira Lane and Mr. Justin Leigh…” Not so good when it was a murder story-“ Miss Moira Lane at the Inquest on Gregory Porlock.”

  She came up to the bed, tou
ched a thin cheek with her cold glowing one, and straightened up again.

  “Good-morning, Cousin Sibylla.”

  “You’re very early, Moira.”

  “I had the chance of a lift. Justin Leigh brought me up. He’s fetching papers from his office. We’ll have to get back by one or so. I suppose it’s all in the papers?”

  Delicate dark eyebrows lifted. There was no other likeness between the young woman and the old one, but those fine arched brows belonged to both. In Lady Pemberley they gave an effect of severity. The eyes beneath them were grey, not blue like Moira’s. Grey eyes can be most tender, and most severe. In Lady Pemberley’s rather ascetic face they tended to be severe. She said,

  “It is very unfortunate-very unpleasant.”

  Moira nodded. She sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “I’m going to tell you what happened.”

  The story did not go down at all well. The atmosphere became charged with all the things Lady Pemberley had said in the past. She didn’t say them now, but there they were, quite as insistent as if she had. If you kept to your own set you did at least know by what rules they played the game. If you went outside it you were out of your own line of country and anything might happen. A man could leave his own set and amuse himself elsewhere, but it was folly for a woman to attempt it. These themes, with endless variations, had been so often sounded in Moira’s ears that it needed no more than a single note to recall the whole. She went through to the end.

  Lady Pemberley repeated her former remark.

  “Very unfortunate-very unpleasant.”

  “Epitaph for Gregory Porlock,” said Moira with a tang in her voice.

  The eyebrows rose again.

  “My dear-”

  Moira was looking at her-a straight, dark look.

  “Do you know, I meant that.”

  “My dear-”

  Moira gave an abrupt nod. Her glowing colour had gone. She looked pale and hard in her grey tweeds.

  “He was a devil.”

  “Moira-”

  “He was a blackmailer.” She stood up straight by the bed. “He was blackmailing me. I’ve come here to tell you why.”