Murder at Renard's (Rose Simpson Mysteries Book 4) (23 page)

‘Well?’

‘I opened the door and went into the corridor. I looked through the arch and the first thing I saw was Jacques trying to put out a fire. Madame Renard, she was shouting instructions to Miss Jennings. I looked around for Miss Beckett. She was not there. I thought, she is still in the dressing room.’

‘Did you go into the dressing room?’ demanded Inspector Deacon.

There could be no mistake this time that the inspector was leaning forward in his chair. Rose suddenly realised that she had been half conscious all the time of Sergeant Perkins scribbling in his notebook. Now she was aware only of the silence. It seemed that he too was waiting with bated breath.

‘No,’ said Marcel Girard. ‘I did not. You see, I could hear that Sylvia had someone in the room with her.’

‘How did you know someone was in the room with her? Did you hear them talking?’

‘No, not as such. I might have been tempted to go in if it had only been that. I would have thought it was only Miss Jennings or Miss Simpson here.  Rose would not have minded me disturbing them. But I heard a laugh. A frightful, awful laugh. It wasn’t a nice laugh at all. It sounded malicious. It chilled my blood, as you say.’

‘Was it a man’s laugh or a woman’s? Could you tell?’

‘Yes, it was a woman’s laugh.’

‘Did you recognise the woman from her laugh?’

‘Yes, it was Sylvia.’

As soon as Marcel Girard came out of the room, he left with exaggerated haste for his own lodgings. Rose remained in the square room, which looked oddly forlorn and empty now that it had only two occupants. Rose longed to sink onto the settee which, while far from being snug, offered a degree of comfort lacking in the rigid straight back chairs of the other room. It was past two o’clock in the morning. The long hours and laborious activities of the day, coupled with the shock of the murder, were having their toll. She was feeling distinctly weary and desired nothing more than to sink between sheets and sleep. This, however, was not a possibility. For one thing, sleep may very well have eluded her, given that her brain was still trying to process and digest all the information she had received during the course of the various interviews she had attended. Her mind was busily attempting to separate the useful facts and comments from those that could be disregarded. It was a particularly difficult thing to do, Rose felt, when one was not certain what was, or was not, a relevant detail. But more importantly, Mary was still to be interviewed, and she had a feeling the girl would require her assistance.

Mary’s interview may well have been the last, yet in Rose’s mind it was one of the most frightening. For one thing, she was scared about what Mary might say. She herself had paved the way with the policemen as best she could. She had warned them not to take what Mary said too seriously, had as good as told them that the girl would not hurt a fly. Even so, Rose was apprehensive as to how the interview would unfold.

Mary, who had been so very self-contained and removed from them since the discovery of Sylvia’s death, as if she were an isolated being, looked up at Rose now with eyes heavy and red from weeping. It was painfully obvious that while Rose and Marcel had been in the other room with the policemen, by the look on her face, the girl had taken the opportunity to cry almost to distraction. Whether she had wept for herself or for Sylvia, it was impossible to say. Rose felt a tinge of guilt. She should have insisted that Mary be one of the first to be interviewed. She really did not look fit to have been left alone with all her troubles given freedom to race around in her head and fester.

‘Mary, I’m sorry. Come with me now into the other room. They’re waiting for you,’ said Rose, taking her hand. It felt as cold as ice and she was reminded again of death and Sylvia lying spread-eagled on the floor. Inadvertently she shuddered. ‘They’ll get the questioning over and done with quickly, see if they don’t.’

‘They’ve left me to last to be interviewed. They’ve waited until everyone else has left. Why? Is it because they are going to arrest me? They think I’m guilty, don’t they? I’ve been sitting here watching people come and go and I’ve been feeling more and more afraid.’

‘There’s no need to be scared,’ said Rose, adopting a brisk manner. ‘And as to seeing you last, it’s because the police don’t think that you will have very much, if anything, to tell them. So you see, it was silly of you to worry.’

‘You’re only saying that.’ Mary reminded Rose of a sulky child who couldn’t make up its mind whether or not to allow itself to be comforted. ‘I could tell them a great deal if I chose to, which I don’t,’ Mary added. She spoke so quietly, barely above a whisper that Rose wondered if she was talking to herself. Perhaps she had not meant to utter the words out loud.

Rose hesitated, wondering whether to say anything. A part of her was afraid to ask Mary to elaborate on what she meant. She decided instead to focus only on the first bit of Mary’s answer.

‘No, I’m not just saying that. It’s the truth. But you will need to pull yourself together, Mary, or the police will think the worst.’

Mary sniffed and mopped at her eyes with the back of her hand. It made an ineffectual handkerchief and Rose handed her a lace edged cotton one from her own wrist, which had been tucked into the strap of her watch. 

‘Mary, there is something you must do.’ Rose knelt beside the girl so that she could speak quietly. ‘Promise me you will? You must tell the policemen what Sylvia had done to upset you so.’

‘No, I can’t,’ cried Mary, drawing away from her with one swift movement. A fresh set of tears threatened to spill. ‘I can’t, Rose, I can’t. Please don’t make me.’

‘It can’t be as bad as all that,’ Rose said soothingly. Despite her reassuring words, she felt afraid. It was so easy to think of Mary as meek and mild, rather like a lamb. The nursery rhyme ‘Mary had a little lamb’ came as if from nowhere into her head. Even timid people can be provoked into doing something truly dreadful, she thought. If they are pushed too far, they can snap. Sylvia was just the sort of girl who would have teased and goaded Mary to distraction. She would have thought it fun, like a game. She wouldn’t have minded very much that Mary hadn’t been laughing, and she wouldn’t have noticed if she had pushed Mary too far. Rose took a deep breath. She mustn’t think such things. She was allowing her thoughts to run away with themselves and become fanciful. She put it down to tiredness and the events of the day. Surely Sylvia had not been as bad as all that, and Mary … well, Mary wasn’t really so very weak, was she?   

‘I’d rather die than tell them. I’d rather throw myself out of that window there.’ Mary threw a desperate gesture at the velvet curtained window, the one which Jacques and Marcel had been standing in front of earlier in the evening.

‘Stop it! Stop it now!’ Rose spoke more forcefully and angrily than she had intended. ‘Don’t you dare talk such nonsense. Don’t you think the police are used to hearing all sorts of things? There is nothing you can tell them that will shock them so very much, or that they haven’t heard a good many times before.’

‘Do sit down, Miss Jennings. I am very sorry to have kept you waiting, but I’m afraid it couldn’t be helped,’ said Inspector Deacon. ‘Would you like a glass of water perhaps?’

The girl’s deathly pallor alarmed him. She really was as pale as anything. Her skin was so very white as to be almost translucent. He half expected her at any moment to pitch sideways off the chair and fall into a dead faint. He wondered whether she always looked so delicate and fragile, the word insipid sprung to mind. The same great aunt that he had had recourse to think of earlier would have said the girl looked washed-out. He stared at the hands lying in her lap. They were making quite a mess of the handkerchief she had clutched between them. She had wrapped it up into a messy sort of ball which she held fast in one fist, while the fingers of the other hand pulled at the flimsy material. She was hardly looking at what she was doing, quite unaware of the fact that she was pulling away the lace edging from the handkerchief. In a moment it would be completely ruined.

It occurred to the inspector, as it had done to Rose, that they had been foolish to leave interviewing Mary to last. In Inspector Deacon’s case, it was because he remembered what Rose had said about the girl’s friendship with the deceased. There had been a falling off of affection, and the girl’s words that evening before the murder had been a cause for alarm. Now that Mary sat before him, wringing the handkerchief between her hands and all but shaking, it was also very apparent to his practised eye that the girl was hiding something. He had encountered many nervous suspects and witnesses in his time, and this girl appeared to him utterly wretched and close to despair. Perhaps due to the lateness of the hour, or because the girl obviously had some information to impart, or even because he felt that he had made so little headway in the investigation so far, he found himself minded to go less gently with her than he might have done.

‘Now, Miss Jennings, I understand that you and Miss Beckett were by way of being friends?’

Mary gave the briefest of nods, so slight in fact that Sergeant Perkins was compelled to lean forward in his seat to catch it. Even then he looked at the back of her head rather hesitantly, as if he were not certain.

‘For the benefit of my sergeant who is taking notes, you indicated in the affirmative, did you not?’

‘Yes,’ said Mary, through lips that barely moved.

‘You would know if she had a particular young man.’ Inspector Deacon phrased this more as a statement than a question. ‘I understand that the young lady was rather keen on Monsieur Renard?’

‘She used to be. But recently she talked of another young man, one with better prospects.’

‘Oh?’

‘She said he was mortal fond of her. I didn’t know whether to believe her. Sylvia liked to exaggerate, you see. She was awful jealous of Rose … Miss Simpson, on account of her walking out with the gentry as she put it.’ Mary stole a glance at Rose, who smiled encouragingly.

‘Did she happen to mention the young man’s name?’

‘No. She could be frightfully secretive when she put her mind to it. She liked to feel she knew something that other people didn’t. She thought it made her important,’ said Mary, a look of disdain on her face.

‘Did she know something about Madame Renard that no one else knew?’ interjected Rose quickly, before the inspector had the opportunity to put another question.

‘Miss Simpson, please –’

‘Yes, she did, Rose,’ said Mary excitedly, the colour flooding back to her cheeks. ‘At least she hinted at it. She went on something terrible about it. Said Madame was no better than she ought to be, and there she was giving herself airs and graces when if her customers knew the truth about her, why they wouldn’t touch Renard’s with a bargepole, let alone give her their custom.’

‘Do you know what it was that she knew about Madame?’

‘No, but it must have been something frightful, mustn’t it, for her to go on like that? I didn’t encourage her, Rose, I swear I didn’t. Whatever she knew, I didn’t want to know. Madame’s been awful good to me. Whenever Sylvia mentioned it, I pretended I wasn’t listening.’

‘Thank you. Miss Simpson. Now, perhaps you will kindly let me get back to asking the questions,’ said the inspector. Nevertheless, Rose thought he looked interested in what Mary had had to say on the subject.

‘Miss Jennings, I understand that there had been some sort of a disagreement between you and the deceased. That you were on less friendly terms than you had been previously?’

‘No. No, I don’t think so,’ said Mary, quickly, looking worried. The lost look had returned to her eyes.

‘Come, Miss Jennings, we have it on good authority, Miss Simpson’s in fact, that this very evening you said you thought Miss Beckett was horrible and hateful. I think you even went so far as to say that you wished that she was dead. You had even thought of the various ways in which you might kill her, I believe.’

‘Don’t!’ sobbed Mary. ‘Don’t, it’s too awful. It was frightful of me. You don’t know how much I’ve regretted thinking it and saying it after what happened.’ She turned and glared at Rose, her face screwed up and distorted with something akin to loathing. ‘Did you have to tell them I said that? How could you, Rose? How could you be so hateful? I didn’t mean anything by it. I thought you were my friend.’

‘I am your friend, Mary,’ said Rose gently. ‘I’m not surprised that you don’t think well of me. I didn’t mean to tell so much. But it is very important now that you tell us what Sylvia did to upset you so much.’

‘I can’t. I can’t. I’ve told you, I’d rather die than do that.’

‘Come, Miss Jennings, it can’t be as bad as all that.’ This was Inspector Deacon, at rather a loss as to what to say. ‘Suppose you tell us what is worrying you.’

‘Madame Renard, she will hate me. She’ll never trust me again. She’ll dismiss me without a reference, and you know how much this job means to me, Rose.’

‘I do,’ said Rose. ‘But no one will help you if you will not allow yourself to be helped.’ She paused and picked up the girl’s hand. ‘Tell me, is it anything to do with stealing from Renard’s?’

‘Oh!’ The word uttered involuntarily, was mirrored in the look upon Mary’s face, her mouth surprised and forming the letter ‘o’, her eyes wide and consumed with a haunted look.

‘How did you know?’

‘It was a guess, that’s all. Madame Renard told me this evening that she suspected Sylvia of being a thief. She had found money missing from the till and other things as well. She mentioned only one or two pairs of stockings, but I got the distinct impression that more had been taken.’

‘And she suspected Sylvia?’ whispered Mary.

‘Yes, but she didn’t have any proof. Today she caught Jacques rifling through her papers, or so she assumed. In actual fact he was looking for a sketch which he thought he might have left in her office. I don’t think she thought anything more of the incident at the time, but afterwards I think she wondered whether Jacques was the thief, instead of Sylvia.’

‘She never suspected me?’

‘No.’

‘Oh, Rose, I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t want to, really I didn’t. I lost my purse in the street, and I didn’t have enough to pay my week’s rent. Mrs Daley, my landlady, she’s awfully strict about that sort of thing. I knew she wouldn’t understand, that she’d think I’d spent it and give me my marching orders. I was wondering what to do when I happened to notice that the drawer to the cash till hadn’t been closed properly. Sylvia, I expect. You know how slapdash she was over that sort of thing. Anyway, it got me to thinking. I could borrow some money to tide me over for a couple of days. I’d scrimp and save like anything and then put it back as soon as I’d been paid.’

‘But Sylvia caught you?’ said Rose.