Latter End (14 page)

Life would be much easier if it could be arranged as in a play or a novel, where the curtain may be rung down or a chapter closed, and the action or the narrative resumed after a lapse of days, weeks, or even years. In real life there are, however, no such intervals. Whatever happened yesterday, you have to rise and dress, endure a family meal, and face whatever the hours provide. If Julia could have rung down a curtain before her interview with Mrs. Maniple, and rung it up again afterwards with what had been said between them relegated to the past, she would have confronted the daylight with a better heart. If it had to be done, she would do it. And if she had to do it, the sooner she got it over the better.

Nobody was disposed to linger over breakfast. The general gloom was definitely deepened by the arrival of the post. Jimmy looked down the table after opening the long envelope which bore his name and said in a dazed voice, “She has left me all that damned money.” After which he sat there staring at nothing, until quite suddenly he pushed back his chair and went out of the room.

The Chief Inspector and Sergeant Abbott arriving, first interviewed him in the study, where the party was joined by Miss Silver, and then, after he had gone unhappily away, remained there with her.

Julia cleared and washed up the breakfast things, sent Antony off to walk Jimmy round the garden, and then went through the kitchen feeling rather as if she was going to attend an execution.

She found Mrs. Maniple weighing out the ingredients for a pudding, with Polly in attendance. It must be a special one, because Manny didn’t weigh things as a rule, she just threw in butter, and flour, and milk, and eggs, and what not in a splendidly inattentive manner, and the result was a dream.

“Yes, Mrs. Maniple,” said Polly, and fetched the lemon essence.

Julia came into the room.

“Manny—could Polly go and give a hand upstairs? Miss Minnie had a bad night, I’m afraid—”

“Looks fit to drop,” said Mrs. Maniple. “Polly, you take and go along and see what you can do. There’s nothing here I can’t manage. No call for you to come back before eleven, so you get right on with the bedroom floors, and Miss Ellie can do the dusting.”

The table faced the long window looking into a stone-paved court with a very old chestnut tree growing in the middle of it. Julia stood and looked out at the tree. There was a story about it. A Cavalier Latter had hidden in the branches whilst the Roundheads ransacked the house for him. Everyone in the village knew that he had come home wounded, but no one gave him away. It was an old story—

She turned round from the window, to see Mrs. Maniple looking at her shrewdly.

“Well, Miss Julia, what is it? You may as well come out with it soon as late. It wasn’t Polly you came after—was it?”

“No, Manny.”

“And no call to look as if we was at our own funeral neither. There’s some that can be spared, and I’m not saying nothing about them, but no reason why you and me should cry our eyes out neither.”

“Manny—don’t!”

Mrs. Maniple had her hands in the pudding-bowl. There was a dusting of flour on her strong arms. The sleeves of her lilac print dress were rolled above the elbows. She wore it high to the neck with a little turndown collar of the stuff, and it fastened with hooks and eyes all down the front like dresses used to when she first went into service. An out-sized apron with strings to it was tied in a bow at the back of what had once been a waist. Her hair was still very thick. It stood up strongly from her forehead and was coiled into a large knot behind. It was iron-grey in colour, and if she had allowed it to curl it would have curled. Under it black eyebrows gave a very decided look to eyes which were as nearly black as eyes can be. She turned them defiantly on Julia.

“Now, Miss Julia, what’s the good of saying that? I don’t hold with speaking ill of the dead no more than you do, not without there’s a reason for it, but I don’t hold with pretending neither, nor yet with crocodile’s tears which isn’t my way, as well you know. And no good your coming here and saying, ‘Don’t, Manny!’ ”

Julia took hold of herself. It wasn’t any good thinking of all the times she had watched Manny breaking eggs, and stoning raisins, and buttering tins as she was doing now, to the accompaniment of the village news and all the stories of everything that had ever happened to everyone in it. It wasn’t any good. She found she was saying the words out loud,

“It isn’t any good, Manny.”

Mrs. Maniple tossed her head.

“Nor never will be if you go looking at it the way you’re looking at me! I always did say you’d the heartrenderingest way of looking I ever did see, right from a child in arms. And I’ll thank you not to, Miss Julia, for there’s quite enough to do in the house without your turning the milk and making my pudding go sad.”

She was scooping it into the buttered tin as she spoke. When she had finished she went over and put it in the oven. Then she went through to the scullery, ran the cold tap over her hands and arms, and dried them on the roller towel behind the door.

Julia stood where she was and waited till she came back.

“It isn’t any good, Manny. I’ve come to talk to you.”

Mrs. Maniple’s round, apple-red cheeks took on a deeper shade.

“And what was it you was going to say, Miss Julia?”

“I think you know.”

“And what I think is you’d better say it straight out and be done with it. If there’s a thing I can’t abide, it’s hinting, which wasn’t never my way nor it usen’t to be yours. So if you’ve anything to say, you come out with it and let’s have done!”

Julia said, “Very well then, I will. The police have got to be told about those sick attacks that Lois had. They’ve got to be told you gave her ipecacuanha.”

Mrs. Maniple’s colour had deepened to plum. Her bright black eyes looked steadily at Julia.

“And who’s going to tell them?”

Julia wouldn’t look away. She didn’t know how white she was. She wouldn’t look away. She said,

“They’ve got to know.”

Mrs. Maniple came up to the table and put the lid on the flour-bin with a steady hand.

“Then you can tell them—if you don’t think there’s trouble enough in the house already. What I give her didn’t have no more to do with what she died of than the turkey we had for Christmas, and well you know it—a drop of ipecac that wouldn’t have harmed a child—and the last she had going on for a week before she died! Go and tell them, my dear— the sooner the better! I’m not asking you not to.”

Julia said in a different voice,

“They think Jimmy did it—”

Mrs. Maniple dropped a spoon. It fell clattering into the mixing-bowl, but she took no notice.

“They darsn’t!”

“They think it was Jimmy. You know they had quarrelled.”

“No chance of anyone not knowing that with Gladys Marsh in the house—telling everyone what I wouldn’t repeat, though you know it as well as what I do! Like mistress like maid, and not as much shame between them as would lie on a threepenny bit!”

Julia said steadily, “They know about what happened the night Antony was here. They think it gave Jimmy what they call a motive. They’ll think he had another motive too. He got a copy of Lois’ will from her lawyer this morning. She has left him a lot of money. He didn’t know anything about it, but they won’t believe that. Manny, it’s very, very dangerous—they really may believe he did it.”

Mrs. Maniple said, “More fools they!” in a loud, brisk voice. Then she began to roll down her sleeves and fasten the hooks and eyes at the wrists. “And if I’m took, you’ll have to see to the lunch. There’s the cold meat can go into a stew, and Polly can do the vegetables. That’s a slow oven I’ve put the pudding in and you don’t want to touch it. And when the baker comes, tell Polly to take two fresh and one stale.”

“Manny—”

“What’s wrong now? I’m doing what you wanted, aren’t I? Seems to me about time someone up and told those policemen not to make more fools of themselves than they can help. Mr. Jimmy indeed! Why, he’d have laid down on red-hot coals and let her walk over him if she’d wanted to, more’s the pity!” She put a firm hand on Julia’s shoulder. “Don’t you take on, my dear, for I’ll never believe Mr. Jimmy’ll be let come to harm for what wasn’t much better than a common bad woman with no more heart in her than what you’d find in a rotten nut. You make yourself a nice cup of tea and don’t take on. And don’t let that Gladys Marsh into my larder. As likely as not she’ll try it on so soon as my back’s turned— and I won’t have it, and that’s flat!”

In the study Chief Inspector Lamb sat in Jimmy Latter’s writing-chair with a hand on either knee, looking sometimes across the table at Frank Abbott, and sometimes to his right where Miss Silver, a little detached from the proceedings, was knitting. She was halfway through one of the useful grey stockings destined for her niece Ethel’s second boy, Derek. The needles clicked busily. A portrait in oils of the late Mr. Francis Latter looked down from over the mantelpiece and gloomed upon the scene. Considered by all who knew him to be a depressingly accurate likeness, it raised the question as to how near-relations could have so little in common. No one could have supposed him to be Jimmy Latter’s father. Francis Latter stood there, tall, dark, and haggard. There was a hint of his nephew Antony, but Antony had not the tragic look which was, however, very appropriate to the present occasion.

Lamb was speaking.

“It looks pretty black for him—you’ll admit that?”

Miss Silver coughed.

“I am not prepared to contradict you, but I would ask you to bear in mind some of Lord Tennyson’s wisest words. He observes that—

any man that walks the mead,

In bud, or blade, or bloom, may find,

According as his humours lead,

A meaning suited to his mind.”

Lamb’s eyes bulged visibly.

“Well, I don’t know about meads and buds and blooms, but when I see a man that’s got every reason to think his wife isn’t any better than she ought to be, and when that man has to admit she’d made a will leaving him a fortune, I don’t have to ask Lord Tennyson’s leave to suspect Mr. Jimmy Latter of having two very good motives for poisoning Mrs. Latter.”

Miss Silver’s needles clicked.

“Two motives may be one too many, Chief Inspector.”

Frank Abbott’s look sharpened to interest.

“Meaning that if he was knocked off his balance by jealousy he wouldn’t be thinking about the money, and if he was all out for the money he wouldn’t have been knocked endways by that scene in Antony Latter’s room?”

Lamb thumped his knee.

“That’s just where you’re wrong then! That’s where you young chaps can make a big mistake. People aren’t all that simple—they’re all mixed up. You’d be surprised if you knew how many different things a man can have in his mind at the same time, first one thing coming up on top and then another. Say a man’s jealous about his wife, but not jealous enough to kill her—he has a quarrel with her about something else. He begins to see that she means to take her way about everything and leave him to take his. He remembers that she holds the purse strings, and that gets his goat. There are sharper and sharper differences about family affairs—he wants to keep the family together, and she wants to split them up. He’s pretty hard up—it’s doubtful if he can run the place without her money—it’s an old place that’s been in the family a long time. That pulls at him. The way she’s carrying on pulls at him—she wants to break up the family, and she’s setting her cap at his cousin. They’re heading for a breach, and if there’s a breach, perhaps he won’t be able to carry on. Then overnight the breach becomes inevitable—he finds her in his cousin’s room. Don’t you see how it all works in together? If it weren’t for the money, he could let her go. If she hadn’t gone too far for him to overlook it, the money by itself mightn’t have got him to the point of murdering her. I say there are two motives here, both of them strong in themselves, and the way they come to bear on this case each of them strengthens the other.”

Miss Silver gave her slight cough.

“You illustrate my quotation perfectly, Chief Inspector. You have found a meaning suited to your mind.”

His florid colour deepened.

“I use my mind to get a meaning—is that what you’re after? And if there’s any other way of getting a meaning, I’d like to know about it. To my mind that will of Mrs. Latter’s is very damaging—you can’t get away from it. And on the top of that comes this report from Smerdon. Miss Mercer’s medicine-chest has been examined by the police surgeon. Besides the ordinary household remedies which you’d expect, there’s a quarter-full glass bottle of morphia tablets. He says they’re of German manufacture and much stronger than what you could get in this country. Now all the things in the medicine-cupboard have got Miss Mercer’s fingerprints on them— some old, some fresh, which is just what you’d expect. This bottle of tablets has a very good set of her prints. But it’s got Mr. Jimmy Latter’s prints on it too. They’re a bit smudged, as if she’d taken hold of it after he had, but they’re his all right. He’d been to that chest, picking things over. There’s a very clear set of his prints on another very similar bottle with quinine pills in it. I’d say he was looking for the morphia and picked the other one up by mistake. There’s a bottle of ipecac there too, but no fingerprints on it. If you’re right, Miss Silver, about those preliminary attacks—well, I’d say he was being careful to start with. Wiped the bottle, or wore gloves—something like that. I don’t know why he should have risked the attacks at all, but I daresay we shall find out before we’re through. Well, I didn’t put any of this to Mr. Latter when we had him in here just now, because I thought I’d like to see what Miss Mercer had to say about it first. She handled that morphia bottle after he did, and I want to see what she’s got to say about it. She may have moved it to get at something else, in which case I’d like to know if it was out of its place. Or—” he looked hard at Miss Silver—“it may be that she was in on the job. She may have been—there’s no saying.”

There was a knock upon the door. Lamb said, “Come in!” and there entered Mrs. Maniple, very majestic in the almost visible panoply of more than fifty years’ service, her head high, her colour steady, her manner dignified and purposeful. She came round to the far end of the writing-table and stood there, the Chief Inspector on her right, Sergeant Abbott on her left, and Miss Silver in her direct line of sight. There was something about her entry which proclaimed an occasion of the first magnitude. No one spoke until she did. She put her hands down flat on the table edge and said,

“There’s something I’ve got to say.”

Lamb swung round to face her, moving his whole big body. He said,

“You’re the cook, aren’t you—Mrs. Maniple?”

She said, “Yes.”

Frank Abbott got up and brought her a chair.

“Won’t you sit down?”

She looked at him, sizing him up, and said,

“No, thank you, sir.”

For once in his life Sergeant Abbott was abashed. He went back to his seat with some colour in his face, and busied himself with writing-pad and pencil.

The Chief Inspector looked grimly at the old woman who had kept her “sir” for his subordinate. He knew what it meant quite as well as she did. Something in him respected her. Something else made a mental note that Master Frank mustn’t be allowed to get wind in his head. He said,

“I see you have something to say, Mrs. Maniple. Will you tell me what it is?”

She stood there very upright.

“That’s what I’ve come for. Before Mrs. Latter died she was taken sick two or three times. I’ve come to tell you, those turns she had—they were along of what I put in her coffee.”

There was a short electric silence. Miss Silver stopped knitting for a moment and gave her a long, steady look.

Lamb said, “If this is a confession, it is my duty to warn you that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence against you.”

There was no change in Mrs. Maniple’s expression, nor in her voice when she spoke.

“I’ve no objection to anything being taken down—I wouldn’t be here if I had. And I’m not confessing nothing about what Mrs. Latter died of, only about those sick turns she had, which was along of ipecac—in her coffee mostly, but there was once I put it in the fruit salad.”

Lamb leaned back in his chair, his face as expressionless as her own.

“What made you do a thing like that?”

The answer came grim and short.

“To punish her.”

“Why did you want to punish her?”

“For what she was doing to everyone she come in contact with.”

“As what?”

“It ’ud take a long time to tell the half of it.”

“Never mind about that. You tell us why you thought she ought to be punished.”

She drew her black brows together briefly.

“Very well, then—I’ll put it as short as I can. There was what she did to Mrs. Marsh.”

“Do you mean the young woman, Gladys Marsh, who was acting as Mrs. Latter’s maid?”

“No, I don’t. I mean her husband’s mother, Lizzie Marsh, that’s a cousin of my own and that that there Gladys got sent away to the workhouse. Institute they may call it now, but workhouse is what it is. And Mrs. Latter backed her up. She wouldn’t have darsn’t do it, nor Joe Marsh wouldn’t have let her, if it hadn’t been for Mrs. Latter backing her up and telling Mr. Jimmy all manner of lies.”

“And you put ipecacuanha in her coffee because of that?”

“Not for that by itself. It was for that and other things. There was Miss Ellie—Mrs. Street—that she worked to death like I wouldn’t have stood for any housemaid being worked, and when she’d taken all the strength out of her she was turning her out—wouldn’t let her have her husband, Mr. Ronnie, here to look after. And the same with Miss Minnie that’s been here ever since the old doctor died. Worked her pretty well to death, and then out she could go, and it wasn’t Mrs. Latter that ’ud care whether she lived or died. And more lies to Mr. Jimmy, making him think Miss Minnie wanted to go. That’s why I done it. Maybe I didn’t ought to, but that’s why I done it. And it wasn’t done for no more than to punish her—a drop of ipecac like you’d give a child that had swallowed something. And no harm done. That’s what I come to say.” She took her hands off the table and turned to go.

Lamb stopped her.

“We can’t leave it quite like that, you know. I think you’d better sit down.”

She came back to her former position.

“I can stand well enough.”

“Well, that’s just as you like. I want to ask you some questions. You needn’t answer if you don’t want to.”

“I’ll tell you when I hear them.”

“Well, we’ll start with an easy one. How long have you been here?”

There was pride in her voice as she said,

“It’ll be fifty-three years at Christmas.”

“You didn’t leave to be married?”

She stood up very straight.

“I’m single. The ‘Mrs.’ is what is only right and proper when you’ve turned fifty in a position like what mine is.”

“I see. Very fond of the family, aren’t you?”

“Wouldn’t anyone be after fifty years?”

“Very fond of Mr. Jimmy, as you call him?”

She said, “I saw him christened.” And then, “Anyone ’ud be fond of Mr. Jimmy—he’s one that’s got kindness for all. There isn’t anyone for miles round that don’t love Mr. Jimmy.”

Lamb shifted his position, leaning forward with an arm along the table.

“Well now, suppose you tell us about the times you put this ipecac into Mrs. Latter’s coffee. When did you start?”

He noticed that she did not have to stop and think. Her answer came pat.

“It was the evening Miss Julia come down, and Mr. Antony. They hadn’t neither of them been here for two years, and I thought, ‘Well, they shall have their evening the same as it was before Mrs. Latter come.’ She’d been up to her tricks with Miss Ellie that evening, wanting her to do the flowers all over again when anyone could see she was ready to drop— and she’d done them lovely. And I thought to myself, ‘No, you don’t, my lady!’ for I knew how it ’ud be, Miss Ellie and Miss Julia, they wouldn’t get a moment’s peace, neither with Mr. Jimmy nor Mr. Antony. I tell you she couldn’t abear to see anyone noticed if it wasn’t herself, so I took and put some ipecac in her coffee, she being the only one that took that nasty Turkish stuff—and it made her sick and kept her quiet like I thought it would.”

Frank Abbott turned a page and went on writing. Lamb said,

“Well, that was the first time. When did you do it again?”

“Next day at lunch. There was fruit salad in separate glasses, with cream on the top. Mrs. Latter never took cream, so there was one glass without. I put the ipecac in that.”

“And after that?”

“There was once when Mr. Jimmy was away seeing after Miss Eliza Raven’s affairs down in Devonshire, and there was once more after he come back—I think it was Tuesday last week. And then on the Saturday Mr. Jimmy come down from London, and he says to send in two cups of Turkish coffee because every time Mrs. Latter has it he’s going to have it too. So then I stopped.”

“You didn’t put any more ipecac into the coffee?”

Her eyes met his.

“Do you think I’d have risked making Mr. Jimmy sick?”

“Well, I don’t suppose you would. So you didn’t use any more ipecac. How did you get hold of the morphia?”

Her gaze never wavered. It was perfectly steady and perfectly blank.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“The stuff that was in Mrs. Latter’s coffee on Wednesday night—the stuff that killed her—it was morphia. How did you get hold of that?”

“I don’t know nothing about it.”

“Mrs. Maniple—did you put anything into the coffee on Wednesday night? You needn’t answer if you don’t want to.”

There was a touch of scorn as she said,

“Why shouldn’t I want to? I didn’t put nothing in, and Miss Julia can tell you so. She stood there watching me all the time—she can say what I did. And if I’d wanted to murder Mrs. Latter a hundred times over, do you think I’d have put poison in one of those cups and let Miss Julia go through with the tray and put it down for them to help themselves— Mrs. Latter, and Mr. Jimmy that I couldn’t love more if he was my own child—and not know which of them ’ud take the poison? Do you think I’d have done that? If I’d got the length of making up my mind to poison her, do you think I’d have risked Mr. Jimmy’s life, with no saying who would take which cup? It’s not sense, and you know it!”

He said, “Maybe.” And then, “I’d like to take you through Wednesday, Mrs. Maniple. Mrs. Latter kept to her room in the morning, didn’t she? That means her breakfast went up to her. Who took it up, and what did she have?”