“So you scooped the kitty. Cut up warm?” He vulgarly rubbed a big thumb and forefinger.
“I don’t know how you’d regard it. About ten thousand pounds.”
“Ah, well,” said Crook, tolerantly. “I’ve known murder committed for less.
Thought of going to the police?”
She opened her capable hands in a gesture of despair. “What would be the use? My husband’s made two attempts to murder me. Paul would say the first time I had a slight attack of vertigo—everyone knows I can’t stand heights; the next time I confused two medicine bottles. They’d simply laugh or suggest I was mad.”
“You could have something there,” Crook acknowledged. “The bulls are only interested in you about the same time as the undertakers. Now, let’s have it, sugar. How long had you known dear Paul before you said, ‘I will’?”
“Not very long.” Mrs. Ames sounded reluctant.
“How long? Months? Weeks? Da y s?”
“About three weeks.”
“Meet by chance?”
“ Well — not exactly.”
“Don’t seem too sure,” murmured Crook. “How was it? Hangover?”
“Certainly not!”
“Remember where you met him? Hotel? Bar? Party? Railway station?”
“In an hotel.”
“Fellow-guests? Miracle of propinquity?”
“No. That is, he wasn’t exactly staying there at the time.”
“I should warn you,” said Crook, chattily, “I charge for advice by the minute. If he wasn’t stayin’ there, was he visiting?”
“You might say he came at my invitation.”
Light burst on Arthur Crook. “Why not make a pen-friend?” he chanted.
“Why spend your evenings solitary and unloved? You were Little Miss Lonely-Heart, so you thought you’d invite a Big Bad Wolf to tea. Trouble with women,” he added, thoughtfully, “is they don’t believe the Big Bad Wolf won’t turn into a domestic pet for them. All little St. Francises, there’s women for you.”
“You’ve seen my husband,” protested Maud Ames. “Does he in the least resemble a wolf?”
“Never heard of the one that went round in a lambskin, havin’ first devoured the lamb? Never occur to you that chaps that want to get spliced don’t have to answer ads. They’ve only got to stand at the nearest street corner with a label round their necks and take their pick.”
“He said he’d been so much alone he’d really dropped out of social circles. He seemed very nervous. I didn’t blame him. I was nervous myself. I’d almost decided to say I was out when he came.”
“Make any discreet inquiries as to your financial status before he popped the question?” asked the unfeeling Mr. Crook.
“We were perfectly frank with each other. At least, I was, and I took it for granted he was the same.”
“And they say men are the adventurous sex ... Tell me something, honey. Say you was to drop dead tomorrow, would Mr. A. get your little all?”
“We each made a will after we were married—Paul said it was usual.” Crook groaned. “Why anyone teaches dames to read beats me,” he confessed. “Never heard of George Joseph Smith and his Brides of the Bath? Never thought of finding out if Hubby has anything to leave?”
Before Mrs. Ames could answer, her husband, accompanied by the “manhunter”, whose name proved to be Meg Farrer, came out of the roadhouse and crossed to the coach.
Mr. Ames looked a little surprised to see his wife’s companion.
“Didn’t you want any coffee, Maud? Oh, this is Miss Farrer. She’s travelling alone, so I thought ...”
“Your husband’s been telling me about his Alpine adventures,” said Meg Farrer, in a husky voice that might have caused a West End audience to swoon but only made Crook want to offer her a cough lozenge.
“Hardly adventures. Just a little climbing on a modest scale.”
“I’ve done a bit of climbing myself. Are you an enthusiast, Mrs. Ames?”
asked the manhunting female.
“I can’t stand heights,” said Maud, flatly.
“And that goes for me,” put in Crook, looking puzzled. He didn’t generally wear a cloak of invisibility.
Maud Ames hurriedly introduced him; and then the rest of the party
began to emerge, Arsenic complaining loudly about the toilet, and Old Lace about the tea.
“What on earth are you doing in this galére?” Meg asked Crook in her outspoken way. “Shadowing an international spy or something?”
Crook said it could be Something.
“What sort of Something?”
Crook said his guess ’ud be Murder.
“Oh, good,” exclaimed the volatile Miss Farrer. “I’ve never been involved in a murder.”
“Often,” said Crook, politely, “once is once too many.”
“I shall look to you to avenge me,” cried Miss Farrer, giving him a killing glance. Crook felt as if a hurricane had struck him. If there was going to be any murder on this trip it seemed pretty clear she was going to be in on it.
And how right that was ...
* * *
The party soon split up into component groups. Crook and the two husbands he’d had his eye on from the first got together immediately. One husband fished, another gardened, Crook investigated, and they all drank. Pretty soon they were known as the Three Sandboys. Arsenic and Old Lace never spoke to anyone except the courier, when they wanted to find fault, and that used up most of his spare time. The odds and bods sorted themselves out and went on perpetual shopping excursions—and why they hadn’t stayed in London and gone to Oxford Street was something Crook couldn’t imagine. Meg Farrer tagged along with the Ameses; and since Maud didn’t care for energetic sports it usually resolved itself into Paul Ames and the manhunter going off in couples.
“That gel’s disgraceful,” panted Arsenic to Old Lace. “Positively disgraceful. Look at the way she follows Mr. Ames round. Just as though he hadn’t got a wife.”
“It isn’t only on her side,” Old Lace panted back. “Do you think we should give Mrs. Ames a hint?”
“No,” said Arsenic firmly. “You remember what happened last year on the Dolomites tour? The courier was most unpleasant. Well, I told him, I wasn’t brought up to condone immorality ...”
“It’s very fortunate for me you’re on this trip,” said Paul Ames to Miss Farrer. “My wife doesn’t care for walking or climbing—she has a phobia about heights. I hope she doesn’t feel neglected.”
“She’s always got the human toffee-apple,” retorted Miss Farrer, who had quite a reputation for wit of this kind.
“Mr. Crook? Ah, yes, I heard he was a lawyer.” Mr. Ames sounded dubious.
“He told me he was interested in murder.”
“Really!” said Mr. Ames. “Is that so? How very, very interesting!”
There was one incident in France before the party crossed the Austrian border that might have been pure accident—and might not. Several of the party were waiting to cross a cobbled street and had just stepped into the road when a motor vehicle suddenly came speeding up. Meg and Maud both jumped back, but somehow Maud’s foot slipped, and for an instant it looked as though she were going under the wheel. Then her husband and Crook had her by an arm apiece, and she was dragged out with just inches to spare.
When she had regained her balance, she caught Crook by the arm, “If you hadn’t been there, Mr. Crook, nothing could have saved me.”
“Now, come, Maud,” expostulated her husband. “Don’t exaggerate. I was there—and an accident of that kind could happen to anyone.”
“Yes,” said Maud, “but, as it was, it only happened to me. But, as you say, you were there.”
Crook couldn’t make up his mind if it was an accident or not. He was inclined to think Maud really had slipped, but—if he hadn’t been on the other side, would Paul have seized his opportunity and given a little push instead of a little pull?
“Really, some women make the most absu
rd fuss about trifles,” said Arsenic to Old Lace. “To hear Mrs. Ames, one might imagine her husband had tried to thrust her under the wheels.”
One might, reflected Crook.
* * *
“That’s a very nice girl, that Meg Farrer,” remarked Paul to his wife the next evening. “Lives alone in London. You might perhaps ask her to dinner when we get back. It would be nice to see more of her.”
“Nice to have her with him permanently,” said Maud to Crook. “Of course, that’s what he has in mind. She’s fallen for him, as they say. Anyone can see that.”
“I’m no slouch myself,” admitted Crook frankly, “but you’re like the young lady called Bright, whose progress was faster than light. I suppose even a husband can be polite to a good-lookin’ gal without havin’ murder in mind.”
“Polite is rather an understatement, don’t you think? And she’s very well off—she told me as much. And quite besotted about Paul. Not that I blame her there,” she added, candidly. “He may not be striking to look at, but he’s got something that appeals to women on sight. I felt it myself that first day. Charm, I think, is the word.”
“He don’t charm me,” said Crook, simply. “Just a nice ordinary sort of chap, I’d have said.”
* * *
It was when they got to Austria that things came to a climax. The Scarlet Runner promoters had discovered a small village, popular in the winter but pretty well disregarded for the remainder of the year, where no other touring company took its clients. “The others,” said Davidson, the courier who was there to keep the travellers from scratching each other’s eyes out or assaulting the hotel staffs, as well as making sure they didn’t miss anything, “the others go on to St. Anton, with the result that the hotels there are crowded all through the season. This hotel’s so small our tour practically packs it, and we go on, one tour after the next, right through to the end of September. And that’s what our people seem to like. Oh, well, not many of ’em speak a foreign language. I suppose it’s easier if you only meet the English abroad.”
“Can’t see what difference it makes, seeing no one ever listens,” was Crook’s candid comment.
On the first morning of their stay Davidson told his charges that he had arranged two plans for the day. Anyone who wanted could go up by the ski-lift, lunch at the hotel on the top, and then walk or laze or potter until they felt like coming down again. Those who didn’t want to go aloft would be taken into St. Anton, where they could waste their money at the tourist shops, buying knick-knacks to collect dust for the next twelve months.
There were two ski-lifts, one of which was out of use at this time of year; but, thanks to the heavy rains of the past weeks, there had been something of a landslide, and tourists were warned to keep away from the second of the lifts—the one not in use—as walking there might prove dangerous.
“There are boards up to warn you,” Davidson said, “but there may be more rain later in the day, and you’ll find it extremely slippery. Another thing—it looks bright enough now, but the chaps at the hotel say you can expect mist later on, and that doesn’t just mean a little thickening of the atmosphere, it means a curtain like a fog. And it comes up almost in a minute. At two o’clock, say, you could be basking in sunshine, and at five past hope to goodness you can find your way back to the hotel.”
Ames, of course, voted for the heights, and Meg said she’d go, too.
“You come, Maud,” she pleaded. “Paul says he’s going to make for St.
Christophe, and get the bus there later in the day back to St. Anton. I’m no Amazon, I only want to laze. So let you and me laze together.”
“Yes, do go up, Mrs. Ames,” Davidson implored her. “Then you can keep her out of mischief.”
There’s always one fly at least in a courier’s ointment, and Meg Farrer was Davidson’s. She was out for sensations, and in Amiens had gone out alone quite late and strayed into a bar where only one sort of woman is recognised. If the courier of another Scarlet Runner tour hadn’t happened to see her going in and remembered her—they were all stopping at the same hotel that night—there might have been a very unpleasant incident.
“Oh, rubbish,” said Meg. “If I hadn’t wanted a bit of fun I’d have brought my nursie and perambulator.”
The Three Sandboys also voted for the heights, and the wives of two of them surprised everyone by deciding to go along.
“Spent all their currency in advance,” muttered one husband gloomily to the other.
So that made eight of them going up; everyone else preferred the coach run to St. Anton and a morning of window-shopping.
The view from the heights was voted incomparable by the obliging tourists. Crook reserving his own opinion that Hampstead Heath had it “whacked a treat”. He and the husbands found a nice little bar and vanished into that; the two wives found some fashion papers and comfortable chairs in the lounge and settled down for a cosy chat till lunch; Ames set out on his tramp in the direction of St. Christophe, promising to turn back if the weather should deteriorate; and Meg and Mrs. Ames strolled out into the sunlight on the gentler slopes.
“Don’t forget about the mist,” called Floss, one of the knitting wives. “Oh, I don’t mean to go far,” said Maud, “and Meg won’t be able to, not in those silly shoes.”
Meg laughed. She was wearing expensive high-heeled sandals and a bright cotton frock.
“Listen to granny!” she jibed softly, observing Maud’s sensible brogues and the rose-coloured plastic mackintosh she had insisted on bringing with her. “That’s a nice colour, Maud, though. Goes with your scarf.”
“Paul bought me that.”
“Where does he get his currency from?” murmured Meg, with an enormous wink. “Let’s get going.”
“Don’t you girls lose yourselves,” Crook warned them, en route for the bar.
“You’ll be able to add babysitter to your list of qualifications when you get back,” Meg threw after him, and off they went.
* * *
Bill had sent Crook a copy of the Record and when they called a halt in their drinking Crook opened it. It was enough to break anyone’s heart. An old girl had been found propped at the window of an empty flat and the doctor said she must have been there a week; a man had gone to fetch a trunk from Waterloo and found a body in it that, he assured the police, hadn’t been there three days before; a bus conductor, mounting to the top deck, found his sole passenger stabbed to the heart with a skewer; two wives and one husband had tired of their mates and disposed of them, without benefit of clergy
... It was almost more than an ambitious man could endure. He threw the paper down and lapsed into a peevish study.
He was startled suddenly by the sound of his own name. “Mr. Crook!”
“All present and correct,” he exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “Merciful Moses, look at that!”
While he had been immersed in his reverie the whole face of the day had changed. The threatened mist had come marching over the hills and was now battering against the windows like a ghostly force.
“Everyone back?” he queried.
“That’s what we want to know. You haven’t seen Mrs. Ames?”
“I’ve been a million miles away,” Crook acknowledged. “How about Miss Farrer? She back?”
“Not yet.”
“Oh, well.” Crook sounded tolerant. “Dames have no sense of time. Anyone tried the bar?”
“They’re not there. Anyway, no one’s seen them come in.”
“If they’ve got any sense they’ll stay put till the mist lifts a bit. That’s probably what they are doing.”
“Yes, but where, Mr. Crook? The hotel’s the nearest place, and the mist came on quite a long time ago. They’ve had plenty of time to get down here.”
Crook considered. “There was that little caffy-place by the ski-lift. Maybe they took the wrong path and landed up there, and are drinking nice hot soup at this very minute. More to the point, where’s Ames? Along with the three fishers who
lay out on the shining sands?”
Like an actor entering on cue, Ames thrust open the door. His face was pale and damp, and his dark fine hair was damp also.
“Hullo!” he said. “I was never more pleased to find myself under a rooftree. I say!” He looked sharply from one to the other. “Anything wrong?”
“Mr. Ames,” said Floss, “have you seen your wife?”
“Yes,” said Ames, “about twenty minutes ago. Isn’t she back?” “No. We were getting anxious.”
“Where did you see her?” put in Crook.
“Up by the ravine. On the edge of it, in fact.”
“She can’t have known what she was doing,” cried the second wife, whose name was Lil. “She has a fear of heights—she told us!”
“I know. That’s why I was so alarmed. It’s curious, because she’s an excellent sailor, while I’m as sick as a dog at sea, she can swim like a seal, she doesn’t mind going up in a plane, but put her even on the edge of a subway platform, and she begins to shake like jelly.”
“She must have lost her way in the mist,” insisted Floss.
“In that case, why not walk clean over the edge?” asked Crook, simply.
“Come to that,” he turned back to Ames, “you must have been precious close to see her, in this weather.”
“As a matter of fact, I was some way off. But—didn’t you notice, about twenty minutes ago, there was a sudden momentary break in the mist? The sun came through like a knife slicing through a curtain. For a minute everything was brilliantly illuminated—everything within range, that is. It’s like the landscape just before a storm—you know that grape-bloom radiance... .”
“And at that moment you saw Mrs. Ames standing on the edge of the ravine. Did she go on standing there, when she realised where she was?”
“She was looking down.”
Crook said sharply, “What about Miss Farrer?”
“There wasn’t any sign of her. If I’d had any idea they were going to separate, I’d never have set out for St. Christophe.”
“Look here,” insisted Crook, “are you sure you’ve got it right? I mean, if you were some way off, how can you be so sure it was Mrs. Ames and not Miss Farrer you glimpsed for that split-second? I take it, that’s all it was.”
Sequel to Murder: The Cases of Arthur Crook and Other Mysteries Page 5