Comes a Stranger (33 page)

In his memorandum, too, he drew special attention to three things said and done by Miss Kayne: first, her cry mentioned by Olive that there was an unspecified person she had recognized again at once. Bobby now felt fairly certain who that person must be, and why Miss Kayne had been so sure of her recognition. Secondly, there was her half contemptuous, half challenging declaration to Bobby himself that Virtue's story was both a lie and the truth. Bobby felt he could now understand how that might be. Thirdly, too, there was her futile, and on the face of it meaningless, accusation of theft against Miss Perkins, the accusation that Mr. Broast had simply laughed away. Bobby was inclined to think that he could guess both why the accusation had been made and why it had been withdrawn.

Another point to which he felt that it was necessary to attach great significance was the abrupt manner in which Miss Perkins had announced her belief in a marriage existing between Mr. Broast and Miss Kayne. She must have suspected it long enough, and Bobby thought he perceived now why she had chosen that particular moment to tell him of it.

Miss Kayne's story of her former lover's buried letters and poems had naturally always been in the forefront of his mind, and though now he was inclined to think it untrue, yet he felt also it might well contain the cause and origin of these so many deaths that had come, as a stranger, into this quiet countryside.

Finally, there was the incident of the damage done to the portrait Olive's father had painted of Miss Kayne as a young girl as well as the more recent incident of the forget-me-nots some unknown person had sent him.

All these things it seemed to him now took their place in a coherent scheme, a closely-woven pattern of cause and effect: a series in terms of, because that was, therefore this must be.

When at last he finished, feeling that now his theory was complete and that even the Public Prosecutor's department, adepts though they are at the job, would have some difficulty in picking holes in it, he went back to the police station, where he found Killick. He handed in his memo, and with some hesitation, for it is a delicate matter to suggest a course of action to superior officers, he said:

“You know, sir, if I may say so, and if Major Harley agrees, I do think it would be better to act at once without bothering about the Public Prosecutor's office or anything else. I feel a bit uneasy after that scene this morning.”

“Yes, I know,” agreed Killick, not usually a nervous man, but now evidently on edge. “I'll get in touch with Major Harley at once. I'll back you up now, and I don't suppose he'll object. It's taking a big responsibility, but then so is waiting any longer.”

The telephone bell rang. They heard the constable on duty answer it. He was one of those who had helped in the digging that morning. A moment later he came running.

“The Lodge, sir—that was Miss Perkins. She says as Mr. Broast has done himself in and will we go along at once? Poison, she says, and she saw him take it.”

“Suicide,” said Killick dispassionately. “Well, that's that, and some ways it's best.”

“Plain enough it was, after how he carried on this morning,” said the constable. “Defiant, I call it. Defiant, a sort of ‘Yes, that's me, and what are you going to do about it?' Well, now he's gone and been and saved us a lot of trouble.”

“No hurry now,” observed Bobby. “We can take our time, now.”

“Only,” said Killick thoughtfully. “I wonder why? when he made it so plain this morning he felt as safe as houses.”

“It gets them in the end,” said the constable; “it does that, I've seen it before. In the end it gets them.”

At the lodge Major Harley, Killick, Bobby, were received by Olive, who had been obliged to take charge of a thoroughly disorganized household, with two maids in recurring hysterics, Miss Kayne shut up in her bedroom and refusing to answer knocks at her door, the butler, Briggs, in a state of dithering helplessness.

He had called up apparently every doctor he could think of, and two were already on the scene. Mr. Broast's body had been carried into the dining-room and laid on a couch there. Death had already taken place before the arrival of either doctor, and the characteristic symptoms of poisoning by strychnine were too plainly marked for any doubt to exist concerning the cause of death.

On the table lay, too, a neatly-typed statement, signed ‘Eliza Perkins,' giving a very brief, yet clear and detailed account of what had happened.

Two cups of tea had been brought to the library by one of the maids at four o'clock, as was part of the established routine of the household. Tea was always served at four and Miss Kayne always poured out two cups, which were taken, with a plate of biscuits, to the library, one cup for Mr. Broast and one for Miss Perkins. Miss Perkins kept one cup for herself and one or two of the biscuits, and took the other cup and the remaining biscuits to Mr. Broast.

On this occasion all had passed as usual. But the statement went on to say that Miss Perkins had seen Mr. Broast shake a few grains of a white powder into the cup as soon as she put it down by his side. She had not, the statement said, attached any importance to the incident at the time. She had merely supposed that he was taking some kind of medicine or tonic. He had made a rather odd remark. It was: “Well, they've dug something up, but I know the answer to that.” She had not known what he meant. She had not asked because it was never wise to ask Mr. Broast what anything meant. He expected you to know. Sometimes, of course, you had to, and then you nearly got your head bitten off. On this occasion she had not thought it necessary to ask the meaning of a remark apparently not specially addressed to her. She had gone away to get on with her work, of which there was plenty waiting. At five o'clock, having occasion to speak to Mr. Broast to get his instructions, she had gone into the library again and had found him lying on the floor in convulsions. She had at once given the alarm.

The statement was precise, very nicely typed, quite clear, and phrased in curiously formal language. When he had read it, Major Harley said discontentedly:

“Might be a letter to a bookseller, ordering new stuff. Owen, ask if we can see Miss Kayne.”

Bobby went to find her. Meanwhile the little party adjourned to the breakfast-room and the dead man's body was removed to his own apartment. Miss Kayne was still not visible, and when Bobby got Olive to go to her room, Olive returned looking a little worried.

“She's not there,” she said. “Briggs says he saw her a few minutes ago going down the library corridor. Bobby, why is she going to the library? Briggs says she looked so strange he asked if he could do anything, and she said, no, but there was something she must do, because now it was enough. What did she mean?”

“What did she mean by the ‘something' she had to do?” Bobby countered.

“I don't know,” Olive answered. “I think it's the library, I mean something about the library. I think she hates it more and more every day, I think she thinks it has been the cause of everything.”

“Better see what Major Harley thinks, I suppose,” Bobby said.

He went back to the breakfast-room where the police party had now established itself. Major Harley was reading a telegram that had just arrived. It was the reply to the one Bobby had sent off to the Fromavon authorities and the Major handed it across to Bobby to read.

“Much what you expected,” he said, and then returned to question the maid for whom he had sent and who now came into the room. She was still hovering on the border of hysterics, but finally, by tactful treatment, was induced to explain that she always collected the used tea cups from the library at half-past four, but on this occasion when she went for them she was given only Miss Perkins's cup, Miss Perkins explaining that Mr. Broast had not yet drunk his tea. That had surprised her a little, but she hadn't thought much of it.

“It was unusual?” Major Harley asked.

The maid could not remember that it had ever happened before. Not that she had given it a second thought at the time. But it was notorious that Mr. Broast liked his tea scalding hot. He always drank it at once, and grumbled if for any reason it had gone cold. It was the same at breakfast. He always drank it the moment it was poured out, and if it wasn't hot—‘fair boiling' was the maid's expression—he would ask for it to be thrown away and fresh poured out at the desired temperature. Olive, questioned, agreed that this peculiarity was well known.

“He didn't much mind whether it was strong or weak, but he made a fuss if it wasn't hot enough,” she said.

“On this occasion,” Major Harley asked the maid, “there was nothing said about wanting fresh tea because the other had gone cold?”

“Oh, no, sir,” the maid answered. “Miss Perkins only said he wasn't finished yet.”

“Were those her actual words, what she actually said?” the Major asked, a little slowly, and he and Bobby exchanged uncomfortable glances.

“Yes, sir, that's what she said,” the girl answered. “So I took her cup and went away.”

“That would be about half past four?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Miss Perkins had drunk her tea, I suppose.”

“Oh, yes.”

“I don't quite see,” observed the Major thoughtfully. “how she knew Mr. Broast hadn't finished his tea, when she says in her statement that after taking him his cup, she didn't go into the library again till five.”

“Miss Perkins was in the library when I came to clear,” the maid told him. “She wasn't in her own room, so I knocked at the library door—Mr. Broast didn't like you going in and interrupting—and she came out and said that about he wasn't finished yet.”

“Ah, yes,” the Major said heavily, and the hand with which he held the paper before him shook a little.

He asked one or two more questions about the supply of strychnine which apparently the whole household knew was kept in the library basement for use as a rat poison. So far as the maid knew, it had not been employed for some considerable time, two or three years perhaps, as the rats had been either exterminated, or, with their uncanny instinct, thought it better to seek less dangerous haunts. She agreed everyone knew the poison was there and where it was kept, in a tin box secured by a padlock. An ordinary tin box and an ordinary padlock so far as she knew, but plainly marked ‘Poison' in big white letters, so no one could make a mistake. She remembered having seen the box once, though her duties seldom took her into the library, and she was completely and absolutely certain that not a single grain of strychnine had ever been brought out of the library into the dwelling quarters of the house, for any reason or on any pretext whatever.

The girl was dismissed and Major Harley referred again to the telegram that had just arrived.

“We had better see what Miss Perkins has to say,” he remarked, and then, looking a little worried: “Owen,” he said, “Briggs states he saw Miss Kayne going to the library?”

“Yes, sir. I think she's there now,” Bobby answered.

“Better go along ourselves then,” the Major said. “What's she doing there?”

No one answered this inquiry, and the three of them, Harley, Killick, Bobby, went together down the corridor leading to the door that separated the library annexe from the house proper, and that admitted into the small ante-room where Miss Perkins sat day in and day out behind the big writing table, busy with her typewriter.

She was there now, very much occupied evidently, for as they drew near they could hear the swift, impersonal rattle of the machine as the lettering levers rose and fell, as the carriage was banged to its starting point. When they entered she looked up, executing a final fanfare on the machine.

“The work must go on,” she said.

“Some door,” Killick remarked to Bobby, struck by its size and weight.

“Fireproof,” Bobby explained, “The one to the library proper is stronger still.”

“Is Miss Kayne here?” the Major asked. “Have you seen her?”

“She came in a few minutes ago. She went through to the library,” Miss Perkins answered. “Oh, I'm so sorry, but I do Wonder who will sign the letters now. I asked Miss Kayne when she came in and she said ‘No one', but no one can't Sign letters, can they? Only you see this is an important one, because it's about something someone thought mightn't be genuine, and it's worth a Lot of money, only not if it isn't, is it?”

“Can you smell something,” Bobby asked Killick.

“Burning garden stuff probably,” Killick remarked, sniffing at the air.

Bobby said to Miss Perkins:

“You mean a forgery? something in the library?”

“Oh, No,” answered Miss Perkins with her accustomed giggle, “I'm quite sure there's no forgeries in Our catalogue. I'm sure poor, Dear Mr. Broast made quite certain of that. There might be in other catalogues, of course, and poor Mr. Broast used to Laugh quite a lot when he saw entries he was ever so sure were only forgeries. But he won't laugh any more now, will he?”

“Nothing to laugh at in all this,” said Major Harley with some distaste.

“Oh, no, there isn't, is there?” agreed Miss Perkins meekly.

“Perhaps they've been forgeries on your shelves though,” observed Bobby, “that have found their way, not into your catalogues but into other people's.”

“Oh,” said Miss Perkins, looking at him suddenly. She drew nearer her handbag that lay by her on the table. “Oh, yes,” she said, and into her manner as she uttered those words there had come a sudden and a startling change.

Major Harley noticed it and made up his mind suddenly.

“I won't bother Miss Kayne yet,” he said. “Miss Perkins, there are some questions it is necessary to ask you. I am not satisfied with some of the replies you have given, and with certain other matters. I am not satisfied that your real name is Eliza Perkins. I have received a telegram from the police authorities at Fromavon. The suggestion is that your real name is Agnes Elizabeth Moult, that you are the daughter of John Moult, of Fromavon, and of Agnes Mayne Moult, née Windham, of whom nothing is known since she left her husband, taking her child, Agnes Elizabeth, then about five years of age, with her, in the company of a junior assistant of the Fromavon College library, named Basil Royston Oast.”