Miss Silver Deals With Death (22 page)

Miss Silver gave a tea-party a few days later. She was back in her own flat with Bubbles, The Soul’s Awakening, The Black Brunswicker, and The Monarch of the Glen gazing from their maple frames upon the scene. Bubbles and the damsel in The Soul’s Awakening could not truthfully be said to enjoy a view of anything but the ceiling, but that was the fault of the upturned gaze with which the artist had endowed them. The Black Brunswicker’s lady and the Monarch had been more kindly treated. They looked down upon Nicholas and Agnes Drake, Meade Underwood and Giles Armitage, and upon Frank Abbott, off duty and very much at his ease.

Miss Silver’s tea was of the excellent blend and making dreamed of but seldom achieved. There was enough milk, there was real sugar, there was even a little cream in a small antique silver jug. There were scones and buns of the valuable Emma’s best. There was raspberry jam. It was like the pleasantest kind of schoolroom tea.

Miss Silver beamed kindly upon her guests. She was delighted at the happiness which radiated from the Drakes, and delighted to hear that Meade and Giles were to be married without delay. She received with pleasure the admiring attentions of Sergeant Abbott. Altogether a very pleasant party.

But the dark background against which they had played their parts so short a time before could hardly be ignored. Behind the happiness and the agreeable talk it was still there, like a shadow which has been left behind but cannot be forgotten. At first they did not speak of it at all. The Drakes were leaving Vandeleur House. The lease of his flat was up, and they were looking for something in the country.

“It doesn’t really matter where I live, you know,” said Nicholas Drake.

Frank Abbott, with his lazy, impudent smile, now put the question which everyone wanted to ask.

“Are you really a pork butcher?”

“Selwood’s Celebrated Sausages,” said Mr. Drake, looking more romantic than ever.

“Lucrative?” said Frank.

“Oh, very. I’ll tell you about it if you like. I was going to the other day, but the roof fell in. I’d like to, because it’s a story about some very nice people and some very good friends. I was reading for the Bar when the last war started. I hadn’t any near relations, and I had quite a reasonable income. By the time I got out of the army in 1919 I hadn’t any income at all. My gratuity went west, and by 1921 I hadn’t the price of a meal. Then I bumped into Mrs. Selwood. She’d been our cook, and she married Selwood from our house when he had a little shop in a little country town. By the time I met her he had three shops, and the sausages were beginning to take on. She made me go home with her, and they gave me a job. After three years they made me manager of one of the shops. Business boomed—the three shops increased and multiplied many times—the sausages became celebrated. When Selwood died two years ago I was stupefied to find he’d left the whole concern to me. He said I’d been like a son to them, and Mrs. Selwood wouldn’t want to be bothered with the business. He’d settled enough to make her comfortable, and he knew I’d look after her.”

Miss Silver smiled her kindest smile.

“That is a very nice story, Mr. Drake. It is indeed pleasant to realise how many kind and generous people there are in the world. It is particularly salutary when one has been brought into unwilling contact with crime.”

Frank Abbott looked at her with a malicious gleam in his pale blue eyes.

“It was our duty and we did,” he murmured. “Now you’re going to reward us, aren’t you—let us ask questions and tell us all the answers?”

He received an indulgent smile.

“I think, Mr. Abbott, you know the answers already.”

He murmured, “Call me Frank,” and went on a thought hastily, “I’d love to hear them again. And I don’t know them all—least I don’t suppose I do. Everyone else is perishing with curiosity, and what they all want to know is, how did you do it?”

Miss Silver coughed.

“It is really extremely simple—”

Frank Abbott broke in reproachfully.

“When you say that, you know, you put all the rest of us into a sort of C iii category below the infant class. It would save our pride a lot if you’d just set up as a superwoman and have done with it.”

Miss Silver looked quite shocked.

“My dear Frank—pray! This talk of supermen and superwomen always seems to me to be rather impious. We are endowed with certain faculties by our Creator, and it is our duty to make good use of them. I have a retentive memory, I am naturally observant, and I was trained in habits of industry. When I came into contact with this case I was immediately struck with the fact that blackmail was at the bottom of it. The two people who were being blackmailed were both in a position to furnish the blackmailer with something more important than money. Ship construction, aeroplane construction—information about these two key industries was what had been aimed at. The money payments were in each case only intended to compromise the persons who were being blackmailed, and to render it impossible for them to break away. In the Mayfair blackmail case last spring there was a strong hint of the same procedure. But my memory took me back a great deal farther than that. The most dangerous organisation of this kind was that of which the Vulture was the head. This was smashed in 1928, but some years later it revived under a pupil of his, a woman known under the names of Deane, Simpson, and Mannister—the latter being her legal designation. I have taken some interest in her career, and have had the opportunity of talking it over with Colonel Garrett, the head of the Foreign Office Intelligence Service. He told me that in his opinion Mrs. Simpson was the most dangerous criminal he had ever come across. She was arrested three years ago for the murder of a woman who had been her cook, and who had had the misfortune to recognise her. I refer, of course, to the Spedding case. She shot this poor woman dead in cold blood, and attempted to murder two other people. After her arrest she managed to escape, and knowing her to be at large, the possibility that she might be involved in these cases of blackmail presented itself to my mind. There were other possibilities, but amongst them I considered this one.

“When it transpired that the occasion of one of the blackmailing demands was a trifling incident which occurred a good many years ago at Ledlington, the possibility which I had been vaguely considering became a sharply outlined probability. Mrs. Simpson was, you see, the daughter of a Ledlington clergyman, the Reverend Geoffrey Arthur Deane. She was recently married to Mr. Simpson but still resident in Ledlington at the time of the occurrence I have mentioned. Some of her father’s parishioners were involved. The link was too significant to be accidental. I had now to consider the possibility that Mrs. Simpson was one of the residents in Vandeleur House. I had studied her history, and found that when hard pressed she had always saved herself by assuming a new identity. She had in turn impersonated her own brother, an old professor, a chorus girl, an exotic medium, a middle-aged secretary, and an eccentric spinster. With this in mind I reviewed everyone in Vandeleur House, and at once discarded Bell and Mrs. Smollett who were well known local characters, Mr. Drake on account of his height, and Mr. Willard whose credentials were quite unimpeachable. Mrs. Willard I rejected for the same reason. Mrs. Underwood and her connections were known personally to friends of my own. Miss Garside and Mrs. Lemming were of a physical type impossible for Mrs. Simpson to imitate, both having the regular features which no amount of make-up can counterfeit. Miss Lemming I did not consider at all.” Here Miss Silver paused for a moment and smiled at Agnes Drake. “Goodness, like classical features, is not to be imitated. I was therefore left with Mrs. Meredith’s household, and Ivy Lord. Mrs. Simpson, at forty years of age, would certainly not be able to pass for a girl of eighteen. There remained Mrs. Meredith, her companion, and her maid. When I discovered the connection with Tunbridge Wells the obvious course was to go down there and make enquiries.”

“I hope,” said Nicholas Drake, “that I shall never have a secret which you have set yourself to find out.”

Miss Silver smiled benignly.

“Happiness is a secret which should be shared, not hidden,” she observed.

“What did you find out at Tunbridge Wells?” said Giles Armitage. “The balloon went up before you had time to tell us what you did there.”

“It was really very simple,” said Miss Silver. “I telephoned to the leading house agent, and having discovered the name of Mrs. Meredith’s former residence, I paid one or two calls upon the neighbouring houses. A Miss Jenkins who had lived next door for about fifteen years was particularly helpful, though I must confess that for the first twenty minutes or so it seemed as if I was to have my journey for nothing. Miss Jenkins, as well as a Mrs. Black whom I had already interviewed, spoke in the warmest possible terms about Miss Crane—so kind, so conscientious, so devoted to Mrs. Meredith. When I asked how long the association had lasted, she told me that it was already of long standing fifteen years ago when she made their acquaintance. It was only as I was rising to go that she sighed and said she really did not know what Mrs. Meredith would do without her faithful Miss Crane, and a great pity she had not stayed among her old friends, whose society would have done something to make up for the loss. A few questions brought to light the astonishing fact that the devoted Miss Crane had passed away about six months previously. Mrs. Meredith and she had gone up to London on a short visit. They stayed in a family hotel which Mrs. Meredith had patronised for years, and whilst there Miss Crane was found dead in her bed, having taken an overdose of some sleeping mixture. I have not the slightest doubt that she was murdered by Mrs. Simpson, who was in urgent need of a change of identity. It is now quite certain that she was the principal in the Mayfair blackmail case, and that it was necessary for her to disappear. It was by no means the first time that she had done this. The method was very simple. Some middle-aged woman of no importance and without relatives was selected, and removed. There is very little fuss made about the death of such a person, since none of the ordinary motives for foul play are discernible. Mrs. Meredith was naturally in the greatest distress. When Mrs. Simpson presented herself as a cousin of her beloved companion she was received with open arms and with no difficulty at all persuaded to take the dead woman’s place. What followed is still a little obscure, but Mrs. Meredith speaks of a visit from a doctor who advised a course of treatment which would necessitate her being within reach. He also told her that the air of Tunbridge Wells was very bad for her. There is no doubt, I think, that he was not a genuine medical man but an accomplice of Mrs. Simpson’s. Mrs. Meredith was persuaded to sell her house. She never returned to Tunbridge Wells. The new companion acquired an unbounded influence over her. A very respectable maid who had been with her for some years was got rid of and Packer engaged to take her place. This woman’s real name is Phoebe Dart. She figured in the Denny case, but disappeared and was never traced. She had been nurse in the Reverend Geoffrey Deane’s household, and Mrs. Simpson’s influence over her has always been complete. The party moved to Vandeleur House, and from this safe retreat the blackmailing activities were continued. When the police searched the flat they found all the evidence they required.”

“What did you really think we were going to find?” said Frank Abbott. “And did you know, or were gambling?”

Miss Silver gave him a glance of mild reproach.

“That is not an expression which I should choose,” she said. “On my return from Tunbridge Wells I saw the Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard. At that time I was tolerably certain that a search of Mrs. Meredith’s flat would discover the fair wig and the smart black clothes worn by the woman who visited Miss Garside at tea-time on the day of her death. I thought it more than likely that there would be other disguises, and some compromising papers. On my return to Vandeleur House I confronted Ivy Lord with the evidence which I possessed. She then told me what I had already guessed, that, instigated by Miss Roland, she had entered several of the flats at night, using the fire-escape and the ledges which run round the house. She said she rather enjoyed doing it, and if she had been seen, there was a genuine history of sleep-walking to get her off. She had not, of course, the least idea that there was anything serious involved. She said Miss Roland told her that someone had been playing a practical joke and she wanted to get even. They quarrelled over the letter which Ivy found on her second visit to Mrs. Meredith’s flat. She took it from the drawer in which many similar letters were afterwards discovered, and she selected this one because she knew the writer. She showed it to Miss Roland, but she did not mean her to keep it. She said she did not think it would be right. In the quarrel that followed, a corner of the letter got torn off. This afterwards furnished me with an important clue.”

“Why didn’t Ivy come upstairs with all the rest of us?” said Meade.

“She was so much upset that suspicion would inevitably have been aroused. Also Mrs. Simpson is an extremely vindictive person, and I was afraid of what she might do if she realised that Ivy Lord was going to be the chief witness against her. As regards the first point, it was highly necessary to keep everything going smoothly until Sergeant Curtis had had time to make a thorough search. Miss Crane having been separated from her accomplice, this search and Packer’s subsequent arrest took place without any untoward incident. No resistance was offered, Mrs. Meredith was not alarmed, and the compromising clothes and papers were duly discovered. When Sergeant Curtis appeared at the door to say that Anderson was below he was, in fact, notifying the Chief Inspector that the search had produced results which warranted the arrest of Miss Crane.”

“The Chief has a good poker face,” said Frank Abbott. “The bored official stare when Curtis showed up—good, wasn’t it?”

Miss Silver coughed.

“If Miss Crane had been given the slightest warning, the situation might have developed very dangerously. I was quite sure that she would be armed, and Major Armitage had been warned to look out for any movement of her right hand in the direction of that capacious raincoat pocket. He is much to be congratulated on the promptness with which he acted. It would have been impossible to place one of the police officers next to her without putting her on her guard. Well, we have all cause to be grateful that so dangerous a criminal is now under lock and key.”