Dead Man's Quarry (31 page)

Mrs. Field raised her expressive eyebrows.

“Thought so?”

“The first time I met Isabel she informed me that Hufton was a thief, and at first I could not imagine how she knew. But I soon deduced that she had heard it from you.”

There was the slightest pause, while Mrs. Field took the cosy off the teapot. Then:

“Did you know, then, who I was? Before you came here this afternoon, I mean?” she asked in a casual, expressionless tone.

“Of course.” John spoke gravely, and his eyes met hers directly, hoping that they might betray her. Certainly she looked surprised. But she only said, absent-mindedly smoothing down the cosy's embroidered cover:

“Well, I think it's awfully clever of you. But I do hope you didn't let the Brownings know. They'd think it so curious, Isabel not letting them know that I was there. But really, we did it with the best intentions.”

John evaded this question.

“I hope,” he said gently, “you won't be offended when you discover how much I know about you, Mrs. Field. You see, when one's investigating a case like this one's bound, incidentally, to find out quite a lot about people who have no connection with the case at all.”

She laughed and affected to consider her reply, looking thoughtfully at a pointed finger-nail.

“What awful revelations are you going to make, Mr. Christmas? No, of course I won't be offended. I don't think I've been doing anything very dreadful lately, so you can be quite frank. Fire away.”

“Well,” said John bluntly, judging that it would be politic to come quickly to the point and not give the lady time to exercise her invention:“You paid your rent to the old woman at Sheepshanks Cottage with a five-pound note.”

“Yes?”

“That note had been in the possession of Charles Price only a day or two before. We have reason to think that several notes were taken from his wallet after he was shot, and that your note was one of them.”

He watched her closely as he spoke. She flushed pink, then scarlet, and seemed for a moment at a loss for words. The consternation on her face was genuine, he could have sworn.

“But do you mean to say—” she began, and broke off, looking from John to Felix, from Felix to John.

“So of course,” finished John more gently, and began to feel assured that the lady was innocent, “we're awfully anxious to know where you got that note.”

She gazed at him with bright, troubled eyes.

“But !” she said. “You don't mean that you think I—But no, of course you don't! Oh, let me think!”

She bit her thumb-nail and looked out of the window. Suddenly her face cleared.

“But of course!” she cried. “I got it from Upper Ring Farm in exchange for a cheque!” She turned excitedly to John. “Yes! I didn't want to leave a cheque for the old lady because I knew she hadn't a banking account. And I hadn't enough spare cash to pay her. So I went up to the farm and got them to change a cheque. They gave me two five-pound notes. I was a bit surprised at the time, but I thought they probably had a hoard under the bed or somewhere. Of course! I believe I've still got the second note somewhere. Shall I go and see?”

She got up. She was flushed, excited, glad to help. Genuinely excited, genuinely glad to help, John felt perfectly sure. She left the room, and John heard another door on the landing and then a drawer being hastily opened.

“I say!” said Felix with the first sign of animation he had shown since they had arrived. “If that's true—it's something definite, isn't it? Why, it means—why, that Hufton or somebody did it, for the sake of the money! Doesn't it, John?”

“Seems like it,” agreed John for the benefit of the lady in the adjoining room. At heart he was troubled. Was it really possible that all the elaborate edifice he had constructed round Mrs. Field was without foundation in fact? He seemed to hear Rampson's kindly, warning voice:“It's hopelessly unscientific! I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed, John!”

“Yes, it certainly seems like it,” he repeated with a cheerfulness he did not feel, as the lady re-entered the room.

“There!” she said triumphantly. “That's the other note! I say! I've just thought—could it have been Hufton? I'm not only thinking of the beans. According to my old lady, he had a bad reputation all round.”

She hung excitedly over John as he took a notebook from his pocket and compared the number of the five-pound note with a string of numbers written there.

“Yes. This is one of them.” He laid it down on a side table and looked thoughtfully at the carpet, then at Mrs. Field, who had resumed her place beside the tea-table. “Can you remember exactly when you got these notes, Mrs. Field?”

“It was the evening before I left for London,” she replied promptly. “The evening of the twenty-ninth. I went up to the farm myself and saw the woman there. I didn't think she would really be willing to change my cheque, though you never know with those Welsh farmers. Often they've got no end of money and quite heavy banking accounts, for all they live so simply. But she was quite ready to change me one for ten pounds. She went off upstairs and came back with two five-pound notes. Oh, I am glad I've been able to help after all!” Suddenly her face fell a little. “But, Mr. Christmas—if the notes were stolen from Charles—surely she'd never risk putting them into circulation so soon?”

“Oh, I don't know! She seemed a fairly ignorant sort of woman. Perhaps she didn't realize they could be traced. We must go and interview her as soon as we get back. Thank you very much, Mrs. Field. This may be the beginning of the end of all our troubles.”

But he did not really think so. What should Hufton have been doing with Morris Price's revolver? If the notes came from Hufton, how much more likely that he had stolen them from the dead Charles when he found him lying in the quarry! The five-pound notes, John feared, would prove to represent a blind alley in his investigations.

“And now,” said Isabel's aunt gaily, “we'll have some tea, and you shall tell me all the other dreadful things you've discovered about me. Tell me honestly—now do, I shan't be offended—did you ever think that I had anything to do with the murder?”

John laughed.

“I kept an open mind.”

“No, but really! You must have thought it very suspicious my having that five-pound note. Do tell me. Really I shan't mind. How could I mind? I was a perfect stranger to you, and for all you knew I might have been capable of anything.”

John was about to make a tactful evasion, but suddenly altered his tactics. He determined to make one more attempt at shocking the lady into self-betrayal before he allowed his growing conviction of her innocence to have its way with him. He looked her straight in the eyes.

“I hadn't any clear theory as to what you'd done,” he replied. “I had a very interesting theory as to who you were.”

Did her grey eyes snap with a smothered alarm? Or was it a very natural surprise at a turn of the conversation she had not looked for?

“But do tell me,” she said, with the sugar-tongs poised over the basin, “who did you think I was?”

John replied gravely:

“I thought you were Felix's stepmother.”

There was a pause. Mrs. Field looked at Felix and Felix, in some embarrassment, at her. Then she gave a little deprecating laugh.

“Oh, but I'm sorry I'm not!” she said, and added with half-humorous gravity:“I should like to have a stepson, and such a nice one. I've got nobody but Isabel, you see. But why ever did you think so, Mr. Christmas? Doesn't Felix know his stepmother, then?”

“No. He hasn't seen her for twenty years.”

“Dear me! Then of course he wouldn't know her. Well, I wish I were she. It would make such an interesting story. Does Felix want to find his stepmother?”

She smiled in friendly, teasing fashion at the embarrassed Felix, who looked at John.

“I do,” said John frankly.

“She may be dead.”

“No. She was at Rhyllan Hall a week ago.”

Mrs. Field looked up with vivid interest.

“And you mean to say she's vanished since? Sugar, Mr. Price? Oh, dear! Amy's brought the wrong milk! The worst thing about a flat, Mr. Christmas, is that there's no cellar. I do hate tired milk, don't you?”

She rose and departed with the little silver jug. John sat and looked round the room. A pleasant little room with its pink, chintz-covered chairs, light walls, and bowls of roses. It gave no clue at all to its owner's past. There was not a photograph, not a book beyond two or three novels lying on the work-box. The front-door bell rang. “That's Isabel, I expect,” said John.

Felix agreed indifferently.

“I expect so.” But he turned his face with a sort of strained expectancy towards the door.

Mrs. Field came in with the jug of fresh milk and resumed her place at the table.

“And now,” she said, “we'll really have some tea. That was Isabel, I expect. Do you take sugar, Mr. Christmas?”

“Please.”

“Hullo! Hullo, Felix! What are you doing in London?”

Isabel, cool and pale like a mermaid in a dress of green flowered muslin, entered and threw her hat on to the piano. She took Felix's hand with an easy, unembarrassed friendliness, and stood thus a moment, smiling, before she let it go.

“Hullo, Mr. Christmas! Now don't say you've come here to look for clues, or I shall be so nervous, I shan't dare to speak a word! Tea, give me tea, Puffy darling! I'm simply exhausted with trying to explain to those idiots at the stores what kind of paper I want.”

Puffy! One of the names by which Clytie Meadows had been known in her youth. Not such a very uncommon nickname, perhaps, in a world of idiotic nicknames. A coincidence? Perhaps, but a teasing one. John looked at Isabel and her aunt. How easy, how unembarrassed was their behaviour. How satisfactorily Mrs. Field had explained all the, circumstances which had seemed so suspicious! A kindly, middle-aged lady and her pretty niece. And yet—Puffy!

“Has Aunty Margaret told you about the weak-minded way she first followed me to Penlow and then dragged me away from it? You must have thought that an awfully good clue.” She stood at the table selecting a cake. “Oh, Margaret! You've got the wrong milk! Never mind. I'll change it.”

She took the little silver jug which had already made one journey to the kitchen and back, and was at the door before her aunt could speak.

“No, darling, it's fresh! I've just fetched it myself!”

Isabel sniffed it daintily and made an expressive grimace.

“You must have gone to the wrong bowl. Shan't be a minute.”

She vanished.

Extremely particular about the quality of their milk, these ladies. John noticed that Mrs. Field had flushed pink, and that her finger-nails were beating an impatient tattoo on the silver tray. She looked for a moment, in fact, extremely cross.

“I hope you're not taking all this trouble for our sakes,” said John, as Isabel returned with the jug and set it on the tray with a queer, defiant smile at her aunt's still rather resentful face. “Neither Felix nor I take milk in our tea.”

There was a pause.

“I do,” protested Felix. “I hate tea without milk.”

“My dear Felix,” John reminded him firmly, “remember what the doctor said. No milk in either of our teas, please, Mrs. Field.”

Felix submitted. Isabel gave a little laugh.

“Then I've fetched fresh milk for nothing!” she said merrily. “For Aunt Margaret and I both take lemon.”

She handed their cups and offered slices of lemon, which Felix, with a regretful glance at the milk-jug, refused. They talked of this and that. A queer constraint had settled upon the little party. Was it the advent of charming Isabel, waking numb wounds in Felix's heart, that caused it? Mrs. Field became almost silent, and Felix spoke only in monosyllables when Isabel addressed him, stirring his milkless tea and looking out of the window. Only John and Isabel chattered through the little meal.

Isabel saw them to the door when they rose to go. A little comedy of cross-purposes took place on the landing. Felix made an attempt to detain Isabel for a few private words, and Isabel seemed determined to hurry after John for the same purpose. John, going downstairs, heard her impatient:

“Oh, bother, Felix! I want to speak to John!”

She had her way. Felix passed them in the hall, and with a stiff “Good-bye, Isabel!” stalked past them to the car.

“John,” said Isabel, “what did you come here for?”

“To ask your aunt some questions,” replied John frankly. “She'll tell you about it.”

The girl hesitated. She looked at Felix, standing with the haughty immobility of a Pharaoh beside the car, and looked up the stairs, and then back at John.

“Don't come again,” she said earnestly, in a low voice. “Please, John. Don't come again. Or if you must come, don't bring that silly infant, Felix, with you. It isn't fair to him.”

She turned abruptly and went upstairs again without a backward glance, leaving John pensive. Was it Felix's wounded heart she wished to spare, or something even more important to him, perhaps his life?

John and Felix drove in silence back to the Brompton Road. Poor Felix! He had over-estimated his imperviousness. Isabel at a distance might have become a shade, but the lady's near presence still had power to wound.

At the neat, pretty house of Nora's sister they were informed that Nora was out.

“She didn't expect you to come for her so soon,” explained Nora's sister, an older, smaller, prettier copy of Nora's delightful self. “In fact, we didn't think you'd be going back to Penlow till to-morrow. You'd better leave Nora here, I think. She can go home by train to-morrow or the day after.”

“Where's she gone?” asked John, vaguely uneasy.

“What, now? Only to buy some paints. You'll stay to dinner, won't you, and go back really late, if you must go?”