Let Him Lie (21 page)

“I know. It didn't mean anything.”

“‘You have all my devotion, always,'” quoted Finister reflectively.

“Why not? A romantic devotion.”

'Plenty of crimes have been committed under the influence of a romantic devotion.”

Jeanie sat down. She felt suddenly limp and depressed. The man had made up his mind, it was obvious, that Peter Johnson was Molyneux's murderer, and Jeanie's championship was doing only harm. Let her say no more. What did it matter in the long run? There could be no real evidence brought against an innocent man. Let Finister run his silly obstinate head against the brick wall of Peter's innocence if he chose!

Finister walked to the window and stood for a moment, hands clasped behind him, gazing out into the quiet garden.

“You know,” he said at last gently, “or rather, you probably don't know, that yesterday my men fished up the Colt automatic from the bottom of Hatcher's Pond?”

Jeanie said:

“Oh?”

She found herself shaking a little all over.

“Yes.”

A silence fell.

“Well,” said Jeanie at last, for obviously somebody must say something: the silence was becoming unbearable. “Well, it was clever of you to know it was there.”

“It was simple. If people want to lose things they always throw them in water if they can. And Hatcher's Pond is the only water near Cleedons. And when Mr. Johnson first approached Mr. Agatos on the day of the murder, he came from the direction of Hatcher's Pond.”

“That doesn't sound very incriminating,” said Jeanie, trying to speak lightly.

“Not in itself, perhaps, no,” replied Superintendent Finister politely. He added: “The pistol is one which Mr. Johnson was in the habit of using for target practice. Didn't he tell you?”

“Why should he?”

“No reason, of course. I just thought he might. I'm told he's a brilliant shot.”

“I know.” In spite of herself, Jeanie's voice sounded defensive and unhappy. 

“Well,” said the superintendent, giving Jeanie a melancholy valedictory smile, “I'm glad little Miss Sarah wasn't too scared the other night. Thank you, Miss Halliday. I can see myself out.”

Jeanie pulled herself together and accompanied her detestable visitor to the door.

‘Tm afraid I've disturbed you,” said he apologetically.

Jeanie felt sure that he was as well aware as herself of the double meaning of the words.

He had, in fact, so much disturbed her that she found herself when he had gone unable to settle down again to her lunch. She had a dry taste in her mouth and an uneasy feeling in her heart. She made herself some tea, and stood at the window looking dismally out at the half-dug garden and sipping an infusion that tasted like sawdust.

“But damn it, Peter!” she cried angrily to the indifferent garden. “You said you'd told me everything!”

A robin perching on her spade cocked his head at her movement and flew off. Jeanie put down her cup, put on her coat and went out. She had had enough of innuendoes and suspicions and suppressions of the truth. She would ask Peter, who was supposed to be a friend of hers, a plain question about that pistol. And she would ask Agnes, also supposed to be a friend of hers, a plain question about that zircon brooch. It would be something to do, anyway, Jeanie told herself miserably, tramping along the damp road towards Cole Harbour. She could not go on placidly eating her lunch and digging her garden and waiting to hear from Mrs. Barchard or some other gossip that Peter was arrested. She thought of Peter, gay, casual and talkative, as he had been in Gloucester. She did not know whether she felt more frightened, angry, or sad. Her heart ached extraordinarily.

Hugh Barchard, in his character of houseman, opened the door.

“Is Mr. Johnson in?”

“He'll be back soon, I expect, Miss Halliday, if you care to wait. Mr. Fone's at home. He's on the library roof.”

“The roof? Why?”

“There's going to be a meeting of the Field Club gentlemen there next Wednesday, and Mr. Fone's going to try and convert them to this old straight track theory he's taken up. You can see over the country in most directions from the library roof. Perhaps you'd like to go up there yourself, Miss Halliday? It's quite safe behind the balustrade. The roof's quite flat.”

“No, Mr. Fone's invited me for Wednesday, and I think I'd better not anticipate the meeting. I'll wait till Mr. Johnson comes back.”

But perhaps Peter Johnson would not be coming back, except to collect whatever few things a man under arrest is allowed to take with him to the police station. Jeanie had little doubt, after her interview with the superintendent, that Peter's arrest was impending. The only thing that puzzled her was why Finister should have allowed her to know of it. Perhaps, after all, the police were not quite sure of their man, and Finister hoped to get from Jeanie some further incriminating evidence. If so, she flattered herself he had not got it!

Barchard showed her into the little white panelled parlour where an ordnance survey map lay open on the table with a ruler and pencil beside it.

“I'm just working out some leys for Mr. Fone,” explained Barchard, indicating a network of pencil lines drawn across the map. “Mr. Johnson's been helping me.”

He put a chintz-covered chair for Jeanie by the fire and was about to depart when it suddenly occurred to Jeanie that if she wanted to spend an embarrassing afternoon asking plain questions of people who did not want to answer them, here she had a victim ready to her hand. She flushed, plucked up her courage and called him back. He turned and awaited her pleasure, friendly, incurious, at ease.

“I expect Mr. Fone told you,” said Jeanie, in an unexpectedly loud voice which she instantly toned down. “We went to a picture show in Gloucester. I had a picture hung there.”

“I congratulate you, Miss.”

Leaning against the table, his pose was easy, but his blue eyes set in their nets of crow's-feet were watchful. No doubt he wondered what on earth Jeanie was leading up to, blushing like an idiot and shouting at him like a sergeant-major! Oh dear, thought Jeanie, I shouldn't make at all a good detective! I don't how to handle people.

“So had—so had Mr. Southey a picture there. Hubert Southey.”

Jeanie turned upon Hugh Barchard an eye which, she hoped, was not too fixed and stern. His watchful look relaxed, and he smiled faintly as if he guessed at her embarrassment and its reason.

“Yes, I know the chap you mean. He used to stay down here in the summer.”

“Yes. Well, this picture he's exhibiting in Gloucester is a portrait.”

“Of Valentine?” asked Barchard simply. “I know the one, I expect. With her sitting in a field, wearing red gloves. It was a very good likeness.”

He spoke calmly, gently, as of someone dead. And after all, as Jeanie reminded herself, the trouble had occurred two years ago: there was no need for her to feel this excessive embarrassment.

“Hubert Southey was there,” added Jeanie. Barchard showed no emotion.

“Was Valentine there?”

“No.”

“I'd like to see her again.”

More freely now that the ice was broken, Jeanie stammered:

“In this picture, she's wearing a zircon brooch.”

“Zircon?”

“Cingalese diamonds. A star-shaped brooch, quite large.”

“Oh yes, I remember it. Her diamond brooch.”

For the first time a sort of emotion showed itself in Barchard's bearing. The brooch perhaps recalled some words, some scene he had forgotten. His voice went oddly gruff. He cleared his throat and as if to cover his emotion took a ruler from the table and played with it, bending it backwards and forwards.

“Well—diamonds! It isn't real diamonds, you know.”

“Not?”

“Zircons like those, small ones, have hardly any value.”

“Val always spoke as if it was very valuable. She used to say they were real diamonds.” He looked at Jeanie thoughtfully. “How do you know about that brooch, Miss Halliday, if it isn't a rude question?”

“I'm afraid it's I who am going to ask rude questions!” replied Jeanie, and they both smiled. “Well, you see, Mr. Barchard, I recognised the brooch. I bought it.”

“You
bought
it, Miss?” 

“Yes. A long time ago. Six years! And I couldn't be mistaken. It's too well painted for that. And so I wondered—I thought perhaps you might know how Miss Frazer came by it, and wouldn't mind telling me,” faltered Jeanie, for now that she had come to the point the question seemed a rather impertinent one. The brooch had long ago passed out of her legal possession! She felt a little qualm when Barchard, frowning a little and bending the ruler like a bow in his strong fingers, said slowly:

“I don't quite understand, Miss Halliday. Did you lose the brooch, then?”

“No, I gave it away. I bought it to give away.”

“Oh?”

Rapidly thinking things over, Jeanie saw no reason why she should not reply to Barchard's unasked question. She owed candour, if she expected it.

“To Mrs. Molyneux.”

This, it seemed, did startle him. The ruler dropped with a little clatter on the polished boards. He looked blankly at Jeanie.

“Mrs. Molyneux?” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“Mrs. Molyneux? But what had Val to do with Mrs. Molyneux? As for that brooch—”

He paused so long that Jeanie prompted him.

“Well?”

“I thought the painter fellow gave it her. In fact she told me he did. As a sort of payment for sitting to him. We quarrelled a bit about it, because I thought it was too valuable, thinking it was real diamonds, you see.”

“I gave twenty-five shillings for that brooch in Islington cattle-market.”

“Well, I don't know anything about diamonds and their value, and neither did Val, evidently. She certainly thought it was valuable, because we had a bit of a row about it. The painter chap had given her a pearl necklet already. Not real ones, you know, but still I didn't like her taking jewellery from the chap. Not that I minded her sitting to him. Only I didn't like her being paid for it. Well, it's ancient history, now. This chap Southey flattered Val, and told her she was a marvel to paint. And she got the idea that all the big artists in London would come falling over themselves to paint her. And so off she went. Poor Val! I bet she didn't find being a model all she thought it'd be.”

At a loss, Jeanie stared at Barchard. Lolling against the table, fiddling with his ruler, he wore a thoughtful, regretful look, as though his mind were occupied with pleasant memories.

“But—”

He looked up mildly.

“Yes?”

“Well, for one thing, the pearl necklace. That
was
real. It was quite valuable.”

Barchard frowned, and after a pause asked slowly:

“But, Miss Halliday, how do you know?”

“That's the extraordinary thing. I found a piece of it, about half the string, in the cupboard under the stairs at Yew Tree Cottage.”

“At Yew Tree!” echoed Barchard. He stared in the fire as though he might find the answer to this puzzle there, and found it not, and with a shrug appeared to give it up. “Well, I certainly understood from Valentine they were a cheap cultured string. And you say they were valuable?”

“Quite valuable. Worth about fifteen hundred pounds.” 

“Good Lord! Miss Halliday, there must be some mistake. Val can't have thought they were valuable, or why should she have left them behind? Perhaps they're not the same string!”

“Is it very impertinent of me to ask if you know who Valentine Frazer was? I mean, where she'd lived and what she'd done, and so on?”

Barchard looked thoughtful, and taking his pipe from the table began to fill it.

“I'm afraid I don't know much about her. It's queer how well you can know a person and still not know much about them. I met her in London. She'd been on the stage. She'd been abroad, dancing in shows at cabarets, though she hadn't done anything in that line for years. I never asked her what her life had been, and she never asked me.” He smiled faintly. “When two people who've knocked about the world a bit and aren't so very young any longer—Val was thirty-three when I first met her—take a fancy to one another, it's generally better for both of them not to be too inquisitive. Or so we thought.”

“I see.”

“Poor Val, I hope she's happy. I'd like to see her again. I wonder if Mr. Southey would know her address.”

“But—”

Barchard looked at Jeanie and smiled a little ruefully.

“I suppose folks have been telling you she went off to live with Southey?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, your mother—”

“Mother's never set foot farther than Gloucester in her life,” said Barchard tolerantly. “And she just loves gossip like all the rest of them. After all, it makes life interesting for people that haven't had many interesting things in their own lives. But Val never felt like that about that little painter chap! Not she! No, she got tired of me and the quiet life down here, and she got it into her head to make a fortune as an artist's model and have her portrait in the Royal Academy every year, and off she went. If you listen much to Mother, you'll hear all sorts of interesting things,” said Barchard, smiling. “But I'd advise you not to believe too many of them, Miss.”

He puffed at his pipe and smiled at Jeanie, as one citizen of the great world to another.

“Had you any reason except Mother's gossip to think that?”

“No. I hadn't, really. In fact, on Saturday Mr. Southey spoke as though he hadn't seen Miss Frazer since he painted that portrait.”

“Oh? That's funny! He was going to introduce her to other artists, she said. Surely she went to see him when she left here!”

“Didn't she write to you at all after she left?”