The Dower House Mystery (25 page)

Piggy's small, light eyes caught the dark look, the puzzled expression. He threw down his pen and said quickly,

“What is it, old man? Don't you think you'd better tell me a little more?”

Julian nodded.

“Half a minute,” he said.

Nita King had been in Ledlington too. Yes, he'd better tell Piggy the whole thing. The bother was that, if by any chance Annie Brown was mixed up in the thing,—if Anita King were Annie Brown—, he wanted time to think, to decide how much and what to say.

“Piggy,” he said, “can you give me five minutes? The fact is I'm a bit bothered, and I want to sort things out. Can you give me five minutes or so to do the sorting? I expect you're horribly busy as usual.”

“Busier,” said Piggy briefly. “At the moment we're engaged in the interesting pastime of looking for a needle in a bundle of hay. You don't happen in your wanderings to have come across any fair damsel known alternatively as Mademoiselle Anaïs and Flash Annie, do you?—believed to have red hair and to be up to her neck in the forged note business. As she seems to be our one real clue up to date, we're rather anxious to find her. But you'll keep that to yourself, please. Take your five minutes if you want them, by all means. I've always got letters to write, worse luck.”

Julian Forsham had strolled to the far end of the room. He stared at a picture which hung there; it appeared to interest him deeply. After some moments' pause he spoke over his shoulder:

“I'm afraid five minutes won't do me. I should only be wasting your time at present. My business'll keep. Thanks awfully for getting me that information about the calls. I'll tell you why I wanted it another time.”

Piggy looked up in surprise.

“My good Ju-Ju,” he began.

But Julian wheeled round suddenly, and, coming across the room, clapped him on the shoulder.

“Well, I've bothered you no end, and I'll be going. I'll come and unburden my soul in a day or two. Tell Isobel she's to come to my wedding. The piglets may come too if they're good. So long.”

The door shut. Piggy looked at it and raised his eyebrows.

“Ju-Ju's a bit erratic to-day,” he commented. “I suppose it's being in love.”

Chapter XXXII

Julian got back to Forsham by the six-twenty. He had a carriage to himself—and plenty to think about. The moment in the office when Piggy had asked him in jest, “You don't happen to have come across a fair damsel called alternatively Mlle. Anaïs and Flash Annie?—she's up to her neck in the note forging business,” had been a moment of revelation. He had been within an ace of telling Piggy everything—the mysterious happenings at the Dower House; his fears lest Annie Brown should be mixed up in them in such a way as to bring fresh shame and sorrow on poor old Brownie—when Piggy himself had stopped him with two words, a name—Flash Annie. It was under that name that he had traced Annie Brown to Paris ten years ago and lost her there. That she was found, or half found now, he had no doubt. “Up to her neck in the note forging business”—oh, Lord, poor Brownie!

The events of the last few days began to emerge from the confusion which had veiled them, began to cohere and become intelligible. If Annie Brown were really up to her neck in the note forging business, what more convenient place for the production of those notes than the lonely Dower House with its reputation for being haunted? It was easy to see the necessity for keeping tenants away—as easy as it had been to frighten those tenants into hurried flight.

Annie Brown—what was one to do about Annie? That was the question. Get her away quietly for Brownie's sake before the rest of the gang were roped in. Yes, that was all very well; but it brought him back to a problem still unsolved. Granted that Annie Brown and Flash Annie were one and the same person, he had still to find that person in the neighbourhood of Forsham. There had been an instant when he thought that he had found her in Anastasie Lemoine; and there had been other saner moments when he had traced Jenny's features in Anita King. He must see both women to-night, and resolve these doubts for good and all.

It was Anita King who had sent Agatha Moreland to the medium. Anita King had been in Ledlington when Mrs. Thompson had been called by the Queen's Hotel. And Anita King had paid Ferdinand Miller a visit yesterday afternoon.

The train arrived at Forsham punctually. Julian walked up the hill, and stopped at the cottage for five minutes to pick up some papers.

Mr. Miller, who had arrived by the same train, had the advantage of having a bicycle at the station. As Julian approached the Dower House from the garden, Mr. Miller, in a sufficiently bad temper, was leaving it by way of the drive on the other side of the house.

If Mr. Miller was in a bad temper, Julian was in a mood of happy anticipation. He pushed away into the back of his mind the whole miserable business that had been occupying it, and allowed other words of Piggy's—pleasanter words—to come to the fore. “A home's a pretty good place to come back to.” For the first time since he was a schoolboy he felt that he was coming home. For all these years he had lived in a house, a tent, an hotel, a caravanserai, or under bare skies; but no one place had been home to him. Now he was coming home. Amabel would be waiting for him.

He walked in, and called to her as he took off his overcoat and hat. When there was no answer, he ran up the stairs, as eager as a boy. The sitting-room door was open. The room was empty. He went back into the passage and called again. The doors were all shut. There was no answer. With a little chill on his mood he went back into the room he had just left, and rang the bell. As Jenny came out into the hall, he called over the stairs to her:

“Where is Mrs. Grey, Jenny?”

“I don't know, Mr. Julian,” said Jenny. “Isn't she upstairs?”

“No,” he said. “Just come along up and see if she's in her room or Miss Miller's room—by the way, where is Miss Miller?”

“Gone to Ledlington,” said Jenny, coming up the stairs—“been gone all day.”

Julian frowned, but made no comment. His thought was that there was a great deal too much Miller in this business.

They went into every room without finding Amabel, and Jenny volunteered the brilliant suggestion that “Mrs. Grey must have stepped out.”

“Was she in to tea?”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Julian. Mr. Bronson called, getting on for four, and he wouldn't stay to tea. And then she had hers, and I come and cleared away at five like I always do.”

“And she was here then?”

“Standing in front of the fire with her back to me, warming her hands.”

“And you didn't hear her go out?”

“No, Mr. Julian. The first I heard was when Mr. Miller rang the bell.”

“Miller! When did he come?”

“Just before you did, Mr. Julian. He wanted to see Mrs. Grey most particular. I come upstairs and looked for her while he stood in the hall. He seemed terribly put out when I couldn't find her. And when I told him Miss Miller'd been gone all day, he went away down the drive swearing to himself—or that's what it sounded like.”

There was a pause.

“All right, Jenny,” said Julian, “you can go. I expect Mrs. Grey must have gone out.” Jenny went downstairs, and after standing over the fire for a minute, Julian began to walk up and down the room. His sense of homecoming had gone cold. What on earth had taken Amabel out at this hour, and in this weather?

It was as he turned for the second time that he saw the sheet of paper lying on the front of the writing-table, half on, half off the blotting-pad. He stopped, picked it up, and read the simple sentence which ran unsteadily across the top of the page: “I can't stand it any longer.” The words were in Amabel's writing. The sheet of paper was one taken from her block. About an inch of the bottom of the sheet had been torn off.

“I can't stand it any longer.” A ghastly stab of fear went through Julian as he read the words. Anne Miller away all day in Ledlington. Amabel alone here—quite alone from four o'clock. What happening, what suggestion of terror had made her write those words, and then go—where?

With a quick reaction he thought of the Berkeleys. “She's gone down to Susan. I urged her to go, and she's gone.” Yes, of course that was it. Some sound—something—anything had startled her, and she had gone to the Berkeleys to wait there for him, leaving this scrawl to explain her absence.

He was half downstairs before the thought was complete, and out of the house before there came, chill and insistent, the conviction, “Amabel wouldn't do that. It's not like her.” To lose her head and run out of the house without a word to Jenny—that wasn't Amabel at all, unless—his mind refused to picture a terror which might have driven her out, blind, unthinking.

He came into the Berkeleys' smoking-room with a short “Is Amabel here?” And when Lady Susan said “No” in a tone of surprise, the shadow in his face brought them both to their feet. He did not know himself how much he had built on her being there until Susan spoke:

“No, she's not here. Julian, what is it? You look dreadful.”

Julian's face was ghastly.

“I can't explain—not now. But I want the telephone. I want a trunk call. Susan!”

Susan answered his look of appeal with a steady “All right, Julian. Just let us know if we can do anything,” and turned to the door.

Edward Berkeley, book in hand, touched him on the arm as he passed, and said, “Just let's know if you want anything. Might do worse than tell Susan if anything's gone wrong.”

Julian, left alone, gave the Le Mesuriers' private number, and waited an interminable five minutes for the call to come through. It was Isobel who answered, Isobel who began to pour out charming felicitations on his engagement. He stopped her with a quick “Not now, my dear. We're in horrible trouble. Is Piggy there? I want him badly.” He heard her call “Piggy, darling, it's Julian. There's something wrong,” and then Piggy's “Hullo, Ju-Ju! What is it?”

“Piggy, I was a damned fool this afternoon. I ought to have told you the whole thing then and there. But I didn't because I'm afraid old Brownie's daughter is badly mixed up in it.”

“Hullo! Steady on, what's all this?”

“I was going to tell you; and then you said ‘Flash Annie.' I traced Brownie's daughter to Paris under that name ten years ago. Now I've reason to think she's back in Forsham, and I believe the people she's working with have been using the Dower House for their purpose.”

“Yes—wait a minute—you're probably right. I had a report after you left this afternoon from a special man we've had working on the case. He lives in your parts, and seems to have stumbled on a clue by accident. You'd better see him and tell him everything you know, and—”

“Piggy, for the Lord's sake, listen! I got home to find Amabel gone. (Yes, another call, please. Don't cut us off!) Are you there, Piggy? Amabel's gone! I found a scrawl saying she couldn't stand it any longer—and she's gone.”

“I say, Ju-Ju, pull yourself together. What's she mean? What couldn't she stand any longer?”

“You know the stories about the Dower House—it's plain enough now how they got about. These people have been frightening tenants away for years. Amabel's been too plucky for them. I can't tell you the things she's stuck out. But, whilst I was away to-day, something worse must have happened—something that sent her right off her balance. Piggy, I've got the wind up.”

“So I see. You'd better get on to our man at once. He's a most reliable fellow, and quite handy to you. Don't give him away locally if you can help it. He does special jobs for us, and prefers to blush unseen.”

“Who is he?”

Piggy's voice came back very clear and distinct: “F. Miller, The Bungalow, Forsham.”

Chapter XXXIII

Amabel sat down and wrote letters after Miss Miller had departed for Ledlington. The letter to Daphne had to be written more than once. She had just torn up what she had written, when Jenny came in with the post, and there was a fat letter with the Neapolitan post-mark. She tore it open and found sheet after sheet—just a wild scrawl of delight:

“Oh, Mums, everything's too lovely, and I'm
too
happy. It only happened last night, and I didn't believe I
could
be so happy. I didn't know that anyone could care so much as Jimmy cares for me. And it makes me feel that I'm not the very, very, very least bit good enough for him. He cares so frightfully, and he thinks I'm all sorts of things that I'm not. And, oh, Mums, it does make me want to be what he thinks I am, and it makes me feel what a
beast
I was to you before I came away. Oh, darling, I promise I'll never, never be such a pig any more. And Jimmy—” There were pages and pages about Jimmy, and a letter from Jimmy's self—a very nice letter indeed over which Amabel wept.

All the nice things seemed to be happening together. Daffy and this nice Jimmy. Herself and Julian. The world seemed just full of love and happiness. It was easier to write to Daphne now—much easier. She wrote a long, happy letter, and walked down into Forsham to post it herself.

As she was coming back, the Bronsons' car passed her. She caught a glimpse of Angela and luggage. “They'll be glad to have her back,” she thought.

It was after lunch that the day changed. It had been fine all the morning, with faint sunlight and a pale turquoise sky. But the afternoon darkened at three o'clock, and the rain began to fall in floods. Amabel lighted up, and drew the curtains in the sitting-room. She remembered that she had meant to darn a rent in her waterproof, and went to her bedroom to get it. It wasn't there. She looked through the things in the wardrobe a second time. No, it wasn't there—Ellen must have forgotten to bring it from her old room. It must still be hanging in the big oak press opposite the door.