Miss Silver Deals With Death (10 page)

It was twenty-seven minutes past seven when Meade Underwood opened the door to a scared Ivy.

“Ivy, you are late! Lucky for you Mrs. Underwood isn’t back.”

Ivy’s eyes stared out of her peaked face.

“But, Miss Meade, she come in in front of me—I see her go up in the lift. Oh lor—I must hurry! Did you put on the gas for the steamer, miss?”

Ivy hurried. As it turned out, she had plenty of time. It was twenty minutes to eight before Mrs. Underwood entered the flat. She went straight to her room and shut the door. Ivy came sidling in to Meade.

“That’s a queer start, Miss Meade. I see her in front of me all the way from the corner. If it had been a bit darker, I’d have tried to get past, but I didn’t like to chance it. I thought maybe she’d go to her room and I’d have time to slip me coat off.”

Meade looked up, shaking her head.

“No, Ivy—really!”

She got a street-child grin.

“All right, all right—but my boy friend was late—we only had five minutes. And he’s very good-looking, and lots of girls after ’im, so I had to wait. But when I see Mrs. Underwood just in front of me, and Miss Roland—”

“Do you mean they were together?”

Ivy giggled.

“Not likely! Miss Roland, she was on in front—I see her white dress. She was in and gone before I come up, and Mrs. Underwood standing there in the hall waiting for the lift to come down, so I’d to wait too—see? Kept back in the porch till I see the lift come down and Mrs. Underwood go up. Wonder where she went to though.”

Meade looked up with a faint smile.

“Perhaps you’d like to ask her, Ivy,” she said.

At half past eight Bell “stepped out”, punctual to the minute as he always was, and with the consciousness of a good day’s work behind him. As he came into the hall from the basement stair, the front door was shutting. Someone had just gone out, but he couldn’t see who it was, for they were already on the other side of that closing door. But when he got out on the steps he could just distinguish the figure of a man disappearing in the direction of the right-hand gate. There were the two gates, one to the right and one to the left as you came out of the house, and the gravel sweep and shrubbery between.

The man went off to the right, and Bell took the left-hand gate, which was nearer the town. Just as he got to it he heard a car start up, and saw it coming sliding past him down the slope of the road. He was to be very much pressed about this brief appearance of a man in the darkness, but all that he could ever say about it was that he took the man who had started the car to be the man he had seen going away from the house in the direction of the right-hand gate, but as to identifying him— “Well, I ask you!”

Bell took his way to the Hand and Glove, where he met his brother-in-law Mr. William Barker and played a friendly game of darts. Mary Bell had been Mary Barker in the days when Bell had bought a wedding ring in old Mr. Jackson’s shop. William Barker was now a widower like himself, living with his daughter Ada and her husband, a master butcher and a very warm man. From the bottom of his heart Bell pitied poor William. “Can’t call his soul his own ’cept of an evening when he steps out to the Hand—and she’d stop him doing that if it didn’t take him out of the way of an evening.” But then Bell had no use for his niece Ada. Purse-proud was what he called her in his own mind, and uppity—“a purse-proud female with uppity notions.”

In the intervals of play and refreshment they discussed Ada and her notions. It was a very great relief to Mr. Barker and enabled him to support a comfortable but enslaved existence in which his daughter made him wear a stiff white collar every day—“And if it was possible to wear two on Sundays, she’d make me do that.”

“Give ’em an inch, and they’ll take an ell—that’s women all over,” said Bell.

Mr. Barker gloomed.

“Her mother was just such another. Ah—she was a good wife was Annie, but a terrible one for keeping things up before the neighbours. That’s where Ada gets it from. I remember Annie giving me a pair of blue vases for me birthday—saved out of the housekeeping money. Very showy they was on the parlour mantelpiece, with gilt ’andles and bunches of flowers painted on the front. And when I took and said to her how I’d rather she’d put good food in my stomach than blue vases on the parlour shelf, she up and told me they was my present and I had ought to be ashamed of myself not to be grateful about it.” Mr. Barker took a pull at his beer. “Ah,” he said—“that’s where Ada gets it from. We had words about them vases, but she got the better of me.”

“Women always do,” said Bell with a twinkle in his eye.

Mr. Barker heaved a reminiscent sigh.

“Ada’s very like her,” he said.

At half past nine Bell took his way back to Vandeleur House. At ten he shut the outside door and adjourned to the basement, where he had a final look round before going to bed. Everything was neat and clean, everything was in order. On the old kitchen dresser eight keys hung in a row, each from its own brass hook. They were all there. Miss Underwood had brought back Mrs. Spooner’s key. She must have come down with it whilst he was out. All the keys were there. Bell went to bed, and slept until his alarm-clock went off at half past six on Thursday morning.

In due course all except three of the inhabitants of Vandeleur House went to bed, and some of them slept. Those who did not go to bed were Miss Carola Roland, Mrs. Willard, and Miss Garside. Mr. Willard did not go to bed either—at least not to his own bed in his own flat. But, as it turned out afterwards, he was not in Vandeleur House at all, which is one of the reasons why Mrs. Willard sat up all night.

Meade Underwood went to bed and to sleep. She went to bed because she wanted to be alone, and she slept because she was too exhausted to stay awake. It was a troubled sleep, vexed by dreams which cast a shadow on her thoughts but never came to sight.

She woke suddenly to the sound of the telephone bell. It rang again before she could lift the receiver. Giles’ voice came urgently to her ear.

“Meade—-Meade—is that you?”

She said, “Yes,” and as she said it, the pink enamel clock on the mantelpiece began to strike twelve.

Giles said, “What’s that?” and she said, “It’s only the clock striking.” And then he said, “Never mind about the clock. It’s all right, darling. I can’t tell you about it now, but it’s all right— she won’t bother us any more. I can’t tell you over the telephone, but there won’t be any more trouble. I’ll be round in the morning.”

The line went dead. The clock had finished striking. Meade lay awake a long time, but her waking thoughts were happier than her sleeping ones had been.

The first thing she heard in the morning was that Carola Roland had been found dead in her flat.

It was Mrs. Smollett who found her. Eight o’clock was her time for going up to No. 8, and she was punctual to the minute. Afterwards she produced a dramatic version in which as soon as she took the key from its hook she had a kind of sinking in her inside—“Felt cold in my hand that key did—not like it ought to have done—cold and kind of heavy, if you take my meaning. And all the way up those stairs—which is enough to break any woman’s heart, but I wouldn’t get in that lift, not if you paid me—all the way up I kept thinking to myself, ‘There’s something wrong. I don’t feel like this, for nothing.’ And when I saw the door was on the jar, well—”

Actually, Mrs. Smollett had felt nothing at all except the stairs, which were an old story and a standing grievance. She came out on the top landing, turned to face the door of No. 8, and found that she would not need to use her key. Even then it did not occur to her that there was anything wrong. She thought Miss Roland must be up and had unlatched the door for her. She put the key in her apron pocket and walked in. The light was on in the hall, but there was nothing remarkable about that, these entrances being lighted only by way of glass transoms over the doors which opened upon them. If the curtains were still drawn in these rooms, there would be no light at all. She went into the kitchenette, took down the black-out curtains, drew up the blind, and put on a kettle. Then she opened the sitting-room door.

Under the shaded light of an ornamental bowl which hung from the ceiling she saw Carola Roland lying face downwards on the pale blue carpet. She was still in her white dress. Her face was hidden, but she lay as the living do not lie. Here Mrs. Smollett’s version coincides with the facts. It never occurred to her for a moment to doubt that Miss Roland was dead. The light showed a horrible dark stain on the carpet and on that bright synthetic hair. The colour of the stain was a reddish brown.

Mrs. Smollett backed away from the door with her hand at her side—backed right out of the flat and across the landing, and ran helter-skelter down the stairs for Bell.

Old Jimmy Bell behaved with great presence of mind. He told Mrs. Smollett to stay where she was and went up in the lift. Outer and inner doors of No. 8 stood wide. There was no need to touch them, and he took care not to do so. Well, it was murder and no mistake about it. Little Carrie Jackson that he had seen going to school with her hair in a plait—old Mr. Jackson’s little Carrie that he’d been mortal proud of until she broke his heart. Spoiled, that’s what she was—spoiled. Spare the rod and spoil the child. Not that he held with beatings and suchlike for children, but they did ought to be checked. Carrie had never been checked. His crumpled cheeks lost their rosy apple-colour as he stood looking down at her. He had served through the last war and seen plenty of dead men in his day, but you got out of the way of it, and a girl was different. This was murder—a girl murdered in one of his flats.

He went over to the telephone and called up the police. It was while he was waiting for them that he noticed the tray set out with drinks. It stood on a low stool between two armchairs in front of the electric fire. Both bars of the fire were on. He started to turn them off, but stopped himself in time. Of course nothing must be touched until the police came.

The tray was of scarlet lacquer with a gilt pattern round the edge, and the glasses very fine and showy with gold rims. There was a bottle of whisky, a syphon of soda, some red wine in a cut-glass decanter, and a plate of sweet biscuits. Both the glasses had been used, one for the whisky, and the other, a much smaller glass, for the wine. He could smell the whisky.

The tray was the first thing he noticed. It wasn’t until just before the police arrived that something else struck him. The mantelpiece—there was something queer about the mantelpiece. Well, what was it? Difficult to say, but something queer. That there photograph for one thing—photograph of Major Armitage with his name written across it. That was queer if you like. But it wasn’t the photograph, it was something else. And then it came to him. It was that gimcrack statue of a dancing girl doing a high kick with next to nothing on, and none too decent by his way of thinking. That was it—the statue was gone from the mantelpiece.

And then he saw it, thrown down on the couch. He went over and looked at it. Because the queerness didn’t end with its being there, it only began that way. The dancer lay where she had fallen from somebody’s hand. The pointed silver toe was sharp and bright—almost as sharp as a dagger, almost as bright as steel. The whole poised figure was silver-bright and clean, but just where it had fallen there was an ugly stain on the blue and grey brocade, and the colour of the stain was the same as the colour of the stain on the pale blue carpet.

With the tramping of boots and the sound of voices the police arrived. Bell turned away from the couch and went to meet them.

Chief Inspector Lamb sat at a table in what had been Carola Roland’s sitting-room. It was the most solid of the tables in the flat, but his mind condemned it as gimcrack. He himself was on the massive side, a stout man with a small, shrewd eye and a heavy jowl. His hair was thin on the top, but even his promotion had brought no grey to it—very strong black hair.

The routine which waits on murder had run its course. The photographer and the fingerprint man had done their jobs. The body had been removed and the blue carpet rolled up. The figure of the dancing girl had been carefully packed up and taken away for examination.

Lamb looked up as Sergeant Abbott came into the room. Quite a different type—public school and Police College—very fair hair slicked back; tall, light figure; very high bony nose; light eyes a little more blue than grey, and flaxen lashes.

“I’d like to see the woman who found the body,” said Lamb.

“Yes, sir. Miss Roland’s sister is here.”

“Sister? Who is she?”

“Mrs. Jackson—wife of a jeweller in the town.”

“All right, I’ll see the other woman first. What’s her name?”

“Smollett.”

“That’s right—Mrs. Smollett. Bring her in!”

Mrs. Smollett entered with an air of importance. And why not? Hadn’t she found the body? And wouldn’t she be called— at the inquest for sure, and at the trial if they caught the murderer? “And it’s to be hoped they will, or we’ll none of us be safe in our beds.”

In order to support the dignity of the occasion she had reassumed her outdoor clothes—the black cloth coat with its mangy fur collar, the black felt hat with its frayed and faded ribbon. She gave her name—Eliza Smollett; her state—honourable widowhood; and her vocation—daily help. When a good deal of corroborative details had been got through or cut short, it emerged that she washed down the stairs and “obliged” in some of the flats.

“Mrs. Spooner in No. 7—I do for her regular, but she’s gone away to join the A.T.S. Mr. Drake in No. 5—Mr. Bell does for him. And Mrs. Willard in No. 6—she has me twice a week, Monday and Thursday, to give the place a good clean up. Mrs. Underwood in No. 3—she’s got her own maid, and I don’t go there, not without there’s extra cleaning to be done. Miss Garside in No. 4—she used to have me all the time I could spare till she began to get rid of her furniture. Lovely stuff it was, and she said it was gone to be mended but it never come back. But that’s neither here nor there, as you might say. Then on the ground floor there’s old Mrs. Meredith, in No. 1, and I do the scrubbing there. A maid and a companion she keeps, but I do the floors. And Mrs. Lemming in No. 2—well, most times I go there once a week, but not regular. But Miss Roland that was, poor thing, I did for her regular.”

Frank Abbott, in a chair to the right of the table, sometimes made a note, and sometimes allowed his gaze to rest upon that portion of the smoothly painted wall where a cornice might have been if Miss Roland’s scheme of decoration had been less modern.

The Inspector listened patiently enough. If you want to know something about people, listen to those who go in and out of their houses and do their work. The listening may be tedious, but the gossipy information sometimes comes in handy.

“Well now, Mrs. Smollett,” he said, “just tell us how you found the body.”

Mrs. Smollett gave a recital in which she did full justice to her premonition that all was not well, the horrid feeling which came over her when she found the door of the flat ajar, the manner in which her blood ran cold when she saw the body, and the spasms which had been afflicting her ever since.

“And if I’d a-thought what was going to come of it when I heard what I did hear with my own two ears—well, it’s no good saying it mightn’t have been any different, and it’s no good trying to hush me up like Mr. Bell did.”

“What did you hear, Mrs. Smollett?”

Mrs. Smollett’s large face was warmly flushed. On the strength of the spasms she had accepted the offer of brandy from Miss Crane—“We always keep it in case of Mrs. Meredith being taken ill, and I’m sure, Mrs. Smollett, you’d be the better of a sip.” Mrs. Smollett had had considerably more than a sip.

Her face was flushed, her natural sense of drama heightened, and her tongue a runaway. She embarked with gusto upon a highly decorative narrative of what she had heard when she was washing the top landing on Wednesday morning.

“I been down to fill my pail. The water wasn’t hot right up at the top there, the way Mr. Bell has to spare the furnace these days, so I been down for a drop from the kettle, and when I come back, there they were at it hammer and tongs, and both doors open so you couldn’t help but hear them. I’m not one to listen at doors, I’d have you know, but as I said to Mr. Bell, I can’t be expected to go putting cotton wool in my ears, and there’s never been anyone deaf in our family.”

Frank Abbott gazed at the ceiling. This sort of woman went on for hours. Lamb said,

“Who was talking?”

Mrs. Smollett nodded affably. The brandy was having a levelling effect. She was a star witness—she was hobnobbing with the police—the Chief Inspector hung upon her lightest word.

“Ah!” she said. “Who indeed? Miss Roland and Miss Meade Underwood—that’s who! ‘And what’s brought her up here?’ I says to myself. And there she was, asking Miss Roland, ‘What’s this about Giles and you?’—Giles being Major Armitage that Miss Underwood got engaged to in America and that everyone thought was drowned till Monday, when he turned up again, none the worse by all accounts if it wasn’t that he’d lost his memory along of getting a crack on the head when his ship was torpedoed.”

Frank Abbott’s pencil had begun to travel. Lamb said,

“Miss Underwood asked Miss Roland what about her and Giles—meaning Major Armitage?”

Mrs. Smollett nodded again.

“That’s right,” she said. “And Miss Roland, she says, ‘Didn’t he tell you about me? Some people might think he’d mention he’d got a wife already.’”

“What?”

“That’s what she said—‘You’d think he’d mention there was one Mrs. Armitage already.’ And when Miss Underwood says she’s engaged to him, Miss Roland she flares up and says it isn’t her fault if he’s lost his memory, and she’s got her money to think about. And she says it was four hundred a year Major Armitage was giving her, and she says, ‘I’m Mrs. Armitage, and don’t you forget it.’ And Miss Underwood says, ‘He don’t love you.’ And when Miss Roland laughs, she says very loud and angry, ‘It’s no wonder he hates you!’ And with that she comes out and past me, and down the stairs.”