Eternity Ring (13 page)

Lamb lifted a large hand and let it fall again on his knee.

“Well, that leaves us just where we were before. Either of them could have slipped out to the Forester’s House as soon as it was dark. Nothing to show they did—nothing to show they didn’t.”

There was a pause. Frank Abbott looked at Inspector Smith and said in his cool voice,

“What about those other fingerprints?”

Lamb turned his head.

“What fingerprints?”

“Some I asked Smith if he’d get out.”

“Some you asked! What’s it got to do with you?”

“Just being co-operative, sir. As a matter of fact—”

“Well, come along out with it! What have you been up to?”

Frank subdued an inclination to smile. That he was about to produce a red rag and might be called upon to face a charging bull, he was amusedly aware. He got on with it.

“There was an idea that these fingerprints might be of interest.”

Inspector Smith had left the room, Lamb therefore felt no need to restrain himself. His colour deepened to plum as he said in an alarming voice.

“Look here, what’s all this? Whose fingerprints are they, and whose idea was it—yours, or Miss Silver’s?”

“Oh, not mine, sir.”

Lamb’s fist came down on the table.

“When I want amateurs to give me advice I’ll ask for it!”

“Well, not advice, Chief—fingerprints.”

The fist came down again.

“Whose fingerprints—and how did she get them?”

“Albert Caddie’s—he’s Harlow’s chauffeur. I believe she dropped an envelope and he picked it up.”

Still in that stormy voice, Lamb said,

“Harlow’s chauffeur? Why? What makes her think he had anything to do with it?”

Judging the worst to be over, Frank set himself to appease the official mind with facts.

“Well, sir, he’s married to a woman considerably older than he is, and I gather that he’s a bit of a lad. Mrs. Caddie has been going about looking as if the roof had fallen in on her. I suppose I ought to have thought of it for myself, but that is where Maudie scores—she gets the tea-table gossip. As a matter of fact I suggested to my aunt that she might have one or two of her more talkative friends to tea. They seem to have talked about the Caddies—quite a lot.”

Inspector Smith came quickly back into the room.

“Ashby’s just got them done,” he said. “Look here, sir!”

Frank got up and came round the table. The three men leaned together over as clear a set of prints as the law could wish for. Lamb brought them side by side with the prints from the Forester’s House. They all looked, they all saw.

After a moment Lamb spoke.

“Well, there’s one thing cleared up at any rate. We needn’t look any farther for the man who was meeting Mary Stokes.”

The rain-storm which had turned Mrs. Caddie back to Rectory Cottage had, after the first ten minutes, subsided into a drizzle. Mrs. Caddie, who had hung her coat in the scullery in order that it might not drip on the kitchen floor, now put it on again and, accepting the loan of Miss Alvina’s second-best umbrella, went out into the dusk and resumed her homeward way.

It was about a quarter of an hour later that Cicely Hathaway, answering the telephone, heard an agitated voice enquire if Mr. Frank was at home.

“I’m afraid he isn’t. It’s Miss Vinnie, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes. Oh dear—what shall I do!”

“Is there anything wrong?”

She heard Miss Alvina catch her breath.

“Oh, my dear, yes! I’m afraid so—I’m really dreadfully afraid so. But I don’t know what to think—I feel I must have someone to advise me. It’s too much responsibility, and I’m afraid it may be very serious indeed. I don’t like to think what it may mean, only of course one can’t help—and I did so hope that Mr. Frank would come down—”

“But, Miss Vinnie, what is it?”

“My dear, I couldn’t possibly say—on the telephone—so public. I have always said that it was a very bad arrangement, and it’s no good pretending that there are not people who take advantage of it, because we all know that there are. I wouldn’t like to mention any names, but everybody knows—” The sentence ended in a sob.

“Miss Vinnie—”

There was a faint twitter from the other end of the line.

“Oh, my dear, I don’t know what to do. I feel quite giddy.”

“Miss Vinnie, listen! I could drive Miss Silver down in my car. If you’re worried about anything, I expect she would be able to help you. Frank thinks a tremendous lot of her.”

Miss Vinnie gulped.

“I must tell someone,” she said.

Miss Alvina had not much more than ten minutes to wait, but they were the most dreadful ten minutes of her life. She would herself have piously excepted the time spent at her father’s deathbed, but it was not in nature that the peaceful departure of a good old man should raise the feelings of horror and distress which now invaded her. Until she had spoken to Cicely on the telephone she had not found it possible to realize the full implications of her discovery, but in these endless minutes of waiting this realization became more and more dreadfully clear.

She was white-faced and shaking as she opened the door to Miss Silver. Cicely Hathaway, it appeared, had gone on to the church. “She won’t need me,” she told Miss Silver. “I want some of the music to take home, and I can always put in an odd half hour practising. I’ll leave the little side door open and the light on, and you can just let me know when you are ready.”

Miss Silver came into the cottage with a reassuring air of competency and calm. There was something so ordinary, so everyday, so perfectly normal about her that Miss Alvina’s sense of security, which had been rudely shaken, began to return. Dreadful things happen to other people—they don’t happen to us. It is on this simple foundation that most of us build. Murders are things you read about in the newspaper. Murderers are people whose pictures you see there. They are always caught, and when they are caught they are tried and executed. They are not people who walk about in your own village. A murderess couldn’t possibly be a person who made your bed, and washed up your breakfast things, and cooked your dinner. She couldn’t possibly be someone who had a unique recipe for strawberry jam, and whom you had taught in Sunday school when she was a little girl. The monstrous idea receded, only to be followed by the distressing thought that she had been making a fool of herself. A flush of embarrassment came to her face.

“Oh dear—I am afraid you will think me very foolish. I am all alone in the house, and it gave me such a shock.”

Miss Silver said with authority,

“Then it was certainly very wise of you to ring up. Now suppose you tell me what gave you this shock.”

“Oh, yes—I will. How kind you are! But I mustn’t keep you standing here.”

They were in the little square hall which had been contrived by sacrificing one room of the cottage. On the right a door led into the living-room, and on the left another gave upon the kitchen.

Both doors were old and solid, each with its iron latch. In the background a steep wooden stair went up to the two bedrooms above, its treads worn and polished by the feet of many generations, its handrail smooth as glass from all those sliding hands. Miss Alvina lifted the latch of the kitchen door and switched on an incongruous electric bulb. A modern cooking-stove stood small and lonely in the big inglenook. A black beam crossed the ceiling. Under the light stood a Victorian kitchen table, its top protected by a spread of green American cloth. There was a strip of carpet on the floor. The tick of a solemn old wall-clock came upon the warm air. There was an agreeable smell of cooking— bacon, perhaps, with just a hint of cheese. No room could have looked or smelled more homely.

Just short of the middle of the room Miss Alvina turned. Her flush had faded, she was pale again. Because after all she had been very much frightened, and now she had to talk about it. Her hands shook, and she caught at the top of a kitchen chair to steady them.

“Pray tell me what alarmed you,” said Miss Silver.

Miss Alvina began to twitter.

“It was Ellen Caddie—Mrs. Caddie, you know, who does for me. She comes in every day from nine to four, but if I have friends to tea she will stay on. And I have always thought how fortunate I was, because she is really an excellent cook and so nice, and I have known her ever since she was a baby. It really isn’t possible that she can have anything to do with it.” The last sentence had a quite desperate sound.

Miss Silver laid a firm hand in a black woollen glove upon Miss Alvina’s shoulder.

“Anything to do with what?”

Miss Vinnie fixed her eyes upon her and said in a shuddering voice,

“It was the—blood—”

Miss Silver said, “Dear me!” And then, “What blood, Miss Grey?”

The shoulder jerked under her hand.

“It was on the scullery floor—”

Miss Silver said “Dear me!” again. “There was blood on the scullery floor?”

Miss Alvina burst out crying. Words, sobs, and tears all came gushing out together.

“Oh, yes!” she said. “It was there on the scullery floor. She laid my tea and she went out, but it came on to rain and she hadn’t an umbrella, so she came back for the storm to go by, and she hung up her coat in the scullery because it had got quite wet. Such heavy rain, but it didn’t last very long, so then she borrowed my umbrella and went away. And I went into the scullery—oh dear, I can’t remember what I went for, but I took a candle—there’s no electric light in there—and I saw the pool on the floor where her coat had dripped. There is a row of pegs, and I could see where the coat had hung, because of the pool on the floor.”

“Pray go on.”

The shoulder jerked again. The voice caught.

“I put the candle down on the table and took a cloth to wipe the floor. It’s a brick floor, not stone like it is in here—that’s why I didn’t see. Oh dear—I only thought it was careless of Ellen. But she wouldn’t have troubled to light a candle—she would just have felt for a peg and hung her coat there, and so of course she wouldn’t have noticed that there was a pool, or she would have wiped it up. She would feel for the coat. It’s not like having a switch that you just turn on.”

Miss Silver’s hand exerted a little pressure.

“Pray, pray continue.”

There was a quick sobbing breath.

“Oh, yes! Oh dear—it was so horrid! I mopped the floor and— oh, it was dreadful! The cloth was all—red. Not the sort of red that would come off the bricks, but blood. Oh dear, oh dear! You can’t make any mistake about blood, can you?” Her voice had sunk to a horrified whisper.

Miss Silver coughed.

“What did you do?”

“I’m afraid I was very foolish. I dropped the cloth—I didn’t feel as if I could touch it again. I washed my hands at the scullery sink. The most terrible thoughts kept coming into my mind— about poor Ellen Caddie—because the blood must have been there on her coat—quite a lot of it. It’s an old black coat and very shabby—it wouldn’t show—until it got wet and dripped out on to the scullery floor. She got so wet in the rain. Oh, Miss Silver, how did all that blood get on to her coat—that’s what I keep thinking. And she’s been looking so dreadful, poor Ellen, only I thought it was something to do with her husband—we all thought so. But all that blood—I thought-—I thought suppose it had something to do with that poor girl who was murdered— not Mary Stokes, but the poor girl she said she saw murdered in the wood—the one they found in the Forester’s House. It was very foolish of me, I expect, but I couldn’t help it coming into my mind.”

If she was looking for reassurance, she found none. The small, neat features were gravely set. The hand in the black woollen glove was withdrawn. Miss Silver said,

“Perhaps you will kindly allow me to use your telephone.”

The knocking on the door came through the fog which had settled over Ellen Caddie’s mind. It would lift a little when she was down at the Cottage with plenty to do and Miss Vinnie fidgetting in and out the way she always did, but when she’d got home and done what there was to do, and Albert not back till after closing time, then it would come down on her thick and heavy until she was lost in it. Come getting on for a fortnight Albert hadn’t been in for his tea—

The knocking came through the fog. She got up and went to the door, and all at once she was dreadfully afraid. They came in out of the darkness, and the darkness came in with them—came right in and stayed, like you heard it read in church: “Outer darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” But it was the outer darkness that had come in. It clouded her eyes, but through the cloud she saw Mr. Frank Abbott, and the big man who was a high-up London policeman, and the little lady who was staying at Abbottsleigh. There was no way to keep them out, so she stepped back, and the big man said,

“Can we have a word with you, Mrs. Caddie?” She took them into the sitting-room which she had been so proud of when she married Albert and he let her furnish it out of her savings. He had grumbled about it afterwards, but you can put up with a bit of grumbling when you’ve got a good bit of Axminster on the floor, and real nice curtains, and a suite from the best shop in Lenton. It was icy cold, and the air felt dead in the room, because Mrs. Caddie only used it when she had company, but even now a faint half-animate pride stirred in her breast. Everything was good, everything was new, everything that could be polished was polished till you could see your face in it.

As she closed the door, the big man asked where Albert was. “Where’s your husband?”—just like that. She thought of all the times she would have given her soul to be able to answer that, and opened her pale lips to give the only answer there had ever been.

“I don’t know.”

“He’s out?”

“He’s always out of an evening.”

“Down at the local?”

“I don’t know.”

Lamb turned to his sergeant.

“Go out and tell the man with the car—what’s his name, May?—to go down and see! If Caddie’s there, he’s to bring him back!”

Frank Abbott went out, and presently came back again. Lamb put down his hat on the arm of the couch and lowered himself into the corner seat. It was a tribute to the best shop in Lenton that the springs made no protest.

Mrs. Caddie remained standing. She had grown very thin. The black dress she was wearing threw up the hollows in her cheeks, her deathly pallor, her reddened eyelids. At Miss Silver’s touch on her arm she gave a painful start.

“Pardon?”

“I think you had better sit down.”

It didn’t matter to Ellen Caddie whether she stood or sat. She took the chair which was indicated. It was what the Lenton shop had described as an occasional chair—small, stiff, upright, with a line of yellow inlay on the back and a seat of bright artificial silk surrounded by gold-headed nails.

Miss Silver took the other corner seat of the couch, and Frank Abbott the smaller of the two easy chairs. Lamb, sitting up square and grave in a voluminous overcoat, allowed the silence to settle before he said,

“How did you get all that blood on your coat, Mrs. Caddie?”

The question ripped through the darkness and the fog like a stab of lightning. For a horrible moment it lit Ellen’s mind so brightly that she could see all the things which she had been trying so hard to push down and away out of sight. There they were, blindingly clear, so that it was like seeing them for the first time. It was only for a moment, and then they were gone again, hidden in the fog. She didn’t know whether she had cried out or not. She found her hand at her throat. She found her dry lips parting to say,

“What coat?”

Lamb looked at Miss Silver, who gave a little cough.

“Your black coat, Mrs. Caddie—the one you have just taken off. I think Chief Inspector Lamb would like to see it presently. You got wet in it this afternoon and you hung it on a peg in Miss Grey’s scullery. It dripped on to the floor and made a pool there. There must have been quite a lot of blood on the coat to make the pool so red.”

Ellen Caddie stared, her eyes open and glassy. Lamb said sharply,

“How did all that blood get on your coat?”

Something was happening to Mrs. Caddie. All the feeling was going out of her. It was like a hand or a foot going numb. The part which had agonized in pain and terror was going numb— it hurt less and less. In a little while it stopped hurting at all. It was a most extraordinary thing to happen, and a most blessed relief. She sat up stiffly on her occasional chair as if her body was holding her up just by itself without any help from her mind, and said,

“It must have been when I knelt down in the wood.”

Miss Silver said, “Dear me—” under her breath. Lamb leaned forward.

“If this a confession, I have to tell you that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence. You understand that?”

She nodded.

“Well then, are you going to tell us how it happened?”

She kept her eyes on his face and said,

“It was Albert—”

Frank Abbott’s pencil dinted the page. Lamb said quickly,

“You say your husband killed the woman who was found in the Forester’s House?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t know who killed her. It was Albert I was looking for.”

“When were you looking for him—what day are you talking about?”

She said, “Friday—it was the Friday evening.”

“Friday, January eighth?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, you say you were in the wood. What wood?”

“Dead Man’s Copse—across the other side of the Lane.”

“What were you doing there?”

“I went after Albert.”

“What made you think he would be there?”

Her hand went up to her throat. Nothing hurt any more, but just for a moment she remembered how bad the pain had been. She said,

“I’d known a long time he went into the Copse. There wasn’t anything to take him there, only a girl. People don’t fancy going there. I didn’t know what girl would fancy it. Then I thought of Mary Stokes—she was one of the don’t care sort—I thought it might be her. She used to come round with the butter and eggs, and I’d see the way Albert looked. She’d been round on the Wednesday. I took some eggs, and I left her whilst I got the change. In the kitchen she was, and when I come back she was putting Albert’s pouch up on the shelf—the one he keeps his tobacco in. I was outside the door. She didn’t know I saw her—I didn’t make any noise. When she was gone I looked in the pouch. There was a screw of paper in among the tobacco. It said, ‘Friday—same time, same place.’ ”

She heard herself saying the words which had been like a twisting knife in her heart. There was no feeling there any longer. They were just words which she had seen on a scrap of paper, but they had taken her to Dead Man’s Copse. Her voice ceased.

Lamb said,

“You thought that was a note making an appointment for your husband to meet Mary Stokes at the Forester’s House on Friday? You needn’t mind answering that, because we know he used to meet her there. They left their fingerprints all over the place.”

Ellen Caddie shook her head. She didn’t mind anything at all. She said so.

“I don’t mind.”

“Well, you’re doing nicely. Just go on and tell us about Friday.”

“I got back from Miss Grey’s about half past four. Albert had been washing the car—the yard was all wet. I called up to him to know if he would be in to tea. When he’s in we have it at half past five. I thought I’d cook him something, but he said no, he was going out. I asked him when he’d be back, and he said to mind my own business. When he came down he didn’t look at me and he didn’t speak. He got his bicycle and went out by the back gate.”

“What time was this, Mrs. Caddie?”

“It would be after five. I’d made up the fire and tidied round a bit, and then it was a bit of time before he came down.”

“Can you tell us what clothes he was wearing?”

She nodded.

“His blue serge. That’s how I was sure he was going to meet her—he wouldn’t put it on to go to the local.”

“Did he take a coat?”

“Yes, he took his uniform coat. It was cold out.” A tremor went over her, as if the remembered cold had power to shake her. But it was only her body that shivered. Her mind was quiet and numb.

“Go on, Mrs. Caddie. Your husband went out on his bicycle. What did you do then?”

“I went after him. I hadn’t put my things away. I took my coat and hat and ran out of the gate. I thought I’d see his rear light, but there wasn’t anything, it was all dark. I hadn’t thought about its being so dark. I went back to get my torch.” She stopped for a moment, looked at him in a distressed sort of way, and said, “I couldn’t find it. It ought to have been on the shelf, but it wasn’t there. I looked everywhere, upstairs and down, but I couldn’t find it. It must have taken me the best part of half an hour.”

“What did you do?”

She was still looking at him with the same expression.

“I went without it, but when I got down by the Copse I put my hand in my coat pocket without thinking, and there it was. I must have put it there myself, ready to go out. I don’t know how I came to do a thing like that.”

“Your mind was taken up—that’s how you came to do it. No need to worry about it. Just go on telling us what you did.”

“I put on the torch to find a way through the bushes, and I went into the wood—”

“Just a minute, Mrs. Caddie. Did you pass a car in the Lane or see one there at all?”

“No, sir.”

“If there had been a car there, would you have seen it?”

She said in a wavering voice,

“I’d have seen the lights—”

“I suppose you would. But if there hadn’t been any lights? How dark was it—-would you have seen a standing car?”

She shook her head.

“It’s all trees there. It was very dark.”

Lamb leaned back again into his corner. The light shone down on his stiff black hair with the thinning patch on the top where the scalp was beginning to show.

“All right, go on. You went into the wood. What were you making for?”

She said in a failing voice,

“I thought they’d be at the house—”

“Well, go on.”

“I kept the torch down. The wood isn’t so thick once you get in. I’d gone a little way, when I heard something. I put out the torch. I saw a light among the bushes. Then it went out. I heard someone go off through the wood.”

“Which way?”

“Towards the fields. I heard him go right away. If it was Albert, I thought maybe he’d left his bicycle on the field path—it runs out into the Lane. But I didn’t know if it was Albert. I went on to where I’d seen the light. There’s a clump of hollies—when I came up to them, that was the place I’d seen the light. I thought maybe they’d been meeting there. I went to see if there was any sign of it. I put my torch on. There were some leaves piled up among the hollies. I moved them with my foot, and I touched something. I put the torch on the ground and went down on my knees and pulled the leaves away. There was a girl there with her head smashed in. There was blood on the leaves—I suppose I knelt in it. I thought it was Mary Stokes, and I thought Albert had killed her. Then I saw it was a stranger. She had a diamond earring in her ear all set round with little stones. I didn’t know why Albert should have killed her. It wasn’t her he was going to meet, it was Mary Stokes. So then I thought it wasn’t Albert, and if it wasn’t Albert it wasn’t none of my business, so I put the leaves back and went home. But I couldn’t get it out of my mind.”

Lamb turned the frown of authority upon her.

“It was your duty to inform the police.”

She hadn’t anything to say to that—just sat there on the hard, uncomfortable chair with her hands in her lap. He said sternly,

“You did very wrong, Mrs. Caddie.” And then, “Well, that will do for the present. You’ll have your statement read over to you, and you’ll be asked to sign it. I’ll be glad if you’ll stay in the kitchen.” He turned to Frank Abbott. “I think that was the car. Just go and see if May has got Caddie there and bring him in!”