Who Pays the Piper? (20 page)

Mrs. O'Hara smiled graciously upon Frank Abbott, and appeared to find nothing unusual in his request to be allowed to see her shoes.

“Really, it is quite like Cinderella,” she remarked. She looked complacently at the toe of her small black velvet slipper “Do you want me to take this pair off? Susan my dear——”

“They look very nice where they are,” said Frank Abbott, gravely.

His eye glanced along the row of shoes which Susan had produced from the wardrobe—brocade, glacé, suede, satin, all with an arched instep, a high heel, and an appearance of extreme fragility. Size four again, and not one that could possibly have made that footprint on the study carpet. He looked up quickly at Susan and said,

“What about outdoor shoes?”

She detached the thin pair of glace kid and pushed them forward an inch, kneeling on the faded carpet and not looking at him.

“I'm afraid she hasn't got any.”

Mrs. O'Hara allowed the smile of a brave invalid to relax her pretty, pale lips.

“You see, I never go out—at least not during the winter—and not in the summer unless it is quite warm and dry, and that is so very seldom. And I hardly walk at all. My health is not what I should like it to be, I am sorry to say.”

Frank Abbott had seen all he wanted to, but he lingered for some social minutes, making sympathetic conversation, agreeing that the season was a mild one compared with last year, and picking up and restoring a ball of wool, a spare knitting-needle, and a small embroidered handkerchief. After which he made his farewells with address and followed Susan back along the passage to her own room.

She stopped in the doorway and said with sudden energy,

“What are you looking for, Mr. Abbott?”

His face remained expressionless even when he smiled. It was a smile that said nothing, and his eyes were cold. He murmured, “Sergeant”, and left the question unanswered.

She repeated it.

“What are you looking for?”

“I don't quite know. I'm looking at shoes under orders from my superior officer. May I look at yours?”

She set them out as she had done the others—two pairs of brown walking-shoes, one a little heavier than the other, a pair of dark blue house shoes, an old brown pair, some evening slippers.

He ran his eye down the line and picked up the heavy walking-shoes. These were the right size, the right shape. He turned them about and about. They were clean and polished. There was no clay on them, no sign that the left foot—the print was a left-foot print—had trodden in a puddle of clay on Monday night. He wondered if it had.

“When did you wear these last, Miss Lenox?”

“Yesterday. I've been wearing them every day.”

He put them down and picked up the lighter pair.

“And when did you last wear these?”

Susan said, “I don't know.”

He was turning them in his hand.

“Have you had them on today?”

“Oh, no.”

“Yesterday?”

She shook her head.

“No—I've been wearing the others. They're thicker.”

“Did you wear this pair on Monday?”

Monday was so far away that she had to force her thoughts back to it. She had not been out all day on Monday until she ran out through the scullery to follow Bill up the garden way to King's Bourne. She touched the old brown house shoes.

“No—these are what I was wearing on Monday.”

“All day?”

“All day.”

“You didn't stop to change them before following Mr. Carrick up the garden?”

The thought of her agony of haste left her dumb. She shook her head.

“You were in too great a hurry?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

She was silent.

“You were afraid of what Mr. Carrick might do?”

She lifted her eyes to his and said,

“He didn't shoot him—he really didn't.”

Frank Abbott was inclined to believe her. Old Lamb would say that it was because the dark blue eyes which were looking straight into his were quite unreasonably easy to look at. But it wasn't that at all. She might have had the handsomest eyes in the world and he could still have believed her to have a guilty knowledge. No, it was something else—a kind of simplicity.

He withdrew an appraising gaze, diverting it to the pair of shoes in his hand. They had not the polish of the thicker pair. He discarded the right shoe and turned the other one over. It had been worn and wiped, not cleaned or polished. Rather roughly wiped too, for where the upper joined the sole there was a muddy smear and a caking of what looked uncommonly like clay. He frowned at it and said,

“I am afraid I must ask you to let me take this pair.”

Susan frowned too.

“What do you mean? Why should you take them? What do you want them for?”

“You can't make a guess?”

“Of course I can't.”

He said, looking past her,

“This shoe stepped in a puddle. I think it was that puddle half way up the hill. It stepped in it, and it came out sticky with clay, and after that—after that, Miss Lenox, it stepped on the study floor up at King's Bourne and left a print there.”

It was at this moment that Mrs. Green, unable to bear the dull solitude of the kitchen any longer, looked round the open door and saw, as she told Lily afterwards, “every drip and drab of colour go clean out of Miss Susan's face”.

CHAPTER XXX

Mr. Montague Phipson walked down the garden in the direction of the Little House. He wore a worried and preoccupied air. Everything was really very difficult, very difficult indeed. The atmosphere of gloom and officialdom pervading the house—the impending inquest—the impending funeral—the extreme uncertainty of his own position—and nothing, literally nothing, sacred from the prying activities of the police. He had reason to believe that even the fragments of his torn-up letter to Evangeline Bates had been abstracted from the waste-paper basket in his room and carefully pieced together. In the circumstances he could not be too thankful that he had not in any way committed himself. It was just a warm letter of friendship, no more, but that correspondence even of a platonic nature should be subjected to the scrutiny of the police was a most disturbing occurrence. And as if all this were not enough, there was the continued presence in the house of Mr. Vincent Bell, a person so uncongenial that prolonged association with him would at any time have been a trial. In the present delicate situation Mr. Bell's jaunty air, his cheerful voice, his frank admission that he considered Mr. Dale no particular loss to a world which he had very successfully exploited, was extremely distasteful.

Mr. Phipson had ventured to express this view to Inspector Lamb that very morning. He had seen his opportunity and had nerved himself to take it. The Inspector, a stolid person, had gazed at him with eyes which really had a most extraordinary resemblance to bull's-eyes—the round, old-fashioned, peppermint-flavoured kind—and said,

“Well, I expect you'll be getting rid of him as soon as the inquest is over, Mr. Phipson. Moving on yourself too, I dare say?”

Not a very helpful way of putting it—not tactful. But of course one didn't expect tact from the police. He had responded with dignity that he really could not say what his plans might be, but that if, as he understood, Mr. Duckett the solicitor and Miss Lenox were the executors under Mr. Dale's will, they would probably be glad of his assistance in settling up the estate.

He thought the Inspector's manner rather off-hand as he inquired how he knew that Mr. Duckett and Miss Lenox were the executors, and he was rather pleased with the dignity of his own reply.

“In my capacity as Mr. Dale's confidential secretary, would you consider it strange that I should have prepared a rough draft embodying the points which Mr. Dale desired should be incorporated in the will?”

The Inspector's reply was still more off-hand.

“In the circumstances, very strange indeed.”

He had downed him though, he had downed him, because he had been able to produce the draft, and neither the Inspector nor anyone else was to know that it was a copy of Mr. Dale's own notes.

And why not? And why not, if you please? A secretary who was conversant at all points with his employer's business was in a position of considerable strategic importance. There were times when knowledge became a very valuable thing. Mr. Phipson rather thought that this was one of those times.

He walked slowly down the orchard path between the apple, pear and plum trees which would be sheeted with pink and white blossom in another two months time. He went round the house to the front door, knocked, and was pleased when Susan herself opened it. They had not met since the day when she had talked with Lucas Dale in the rose garden. That was Thursday—the day Lucas Dale had proposed to her—the day Vincent Bell had arrived—the day that all this horrible business had begun. It was not quite a week ago, but it felt like years. Susan looked at him across the gap and felt dizzy.

But Mr. Phipson was quite at his ease. He said, “May I come in?” and when she moved away from the door and they were in the hall he led the way to the drawing-room and made the careful little speech which he had prepared.

“May I offer my condolences, Miss Lenox, and, if you will accept them, my services?”

Susan stopped feeling dizzy, and could have laughed. What a ridiculous little man he was, with his dignity and his absurd stilted speeches. They had been meeting continually for months, but they were still Miss Lenox and Mr. Phipson, though he called Cathy by her name. Susan and Cathy and Bill had always called him Fibs behind his back. Cathy said he crept and crawled, and Bill said he was like one of those pale, flat, jointed insects which you turn up under a stone. If he only knew——She said as quickly as possible,

“It's frightful—isn't it? It was nice of you to come.”

She supposed this was a call. They sat down, Susan in one corner of the sofa, Montague Phipson in the other. He gazed, cleared his throat, and said,

“I wished to lose no time in offering you my services.”

Susan hesitated.

“That's very kind of you.”

He shook his head.

“I am entirely at your disposal.”

Susan thought, “If Fibs is going to propose to me, I shall scream.” She said in a controlled voice,

“It sounds very kind, but I don't really know what you mean.” And then she had a panic, because if he was thinking of proposing, she didn't want to know what he meant, and he would be certain to think she did.

Mr. Phipson looked atrociously solemn and important. If he had belonged to an earlier generation he would have addressed Susan as “My dear young lady”.

“When I said I was at your service, I was alluding to the trying and protracted business of settling so large an estate as Mr. Dale's. You will certainly require assistance, and I think you will agree that there is no one so well qualified as myself.” He shifted his pince-nez and gazed at her through the lenses. “Without any failure of modesty, I think I can say that.”

Well, he wasn't proposing. But this was almost as bad, because if it meant anything at all, it meant that he knew about Lucas Dale's will. She winced from the thought and said,

“I don't know what you mean.”

His gaze sharpened, shifted, and then came back to dwell upon her with a certain quality of reproach.

“You don't really mean that, Miss Lenox.”

The colour of anger came to Susan's face.

“I think you had better explain.”

Mr. Phipson desired nothing better.

“Certainly, Miss Lenox. As you are probably aware, I was a good deal in Mr. Dale's confidence, and I am naturally aware that he made a new will on the very day of his death. I am also aware of the terms of that will. Mr. Duckett and yourself are the executors, and you are the sole legatee. I naturally assume——”

Without waiting to hear what Mr. Phipson assumed, Susan broke in vehemently.

“It's all a dreadful mistake! The will should never have been made!”

“But it was made, Miss Lenox. I believe it is perfectly in order, and that Mr. Duckett will be coming to see you about it as soon as this very painful business of the inquest is over. I understand it is to take place on Friday, and——”

Susan broke in again.

“Mr. Phipson, all this has nothing to do with me—that will has nothing to do with me. Mr. Dale made a dreadful mistake. I couldn't possibly take anything.”

Mr. Phipson's mouth fell open, his pince-nez fell off. He considered that his ears must have deceived him. He could not possibly have heard a penniless young woman assert that she intended to refuse a fortune. Things like that didn't happen. As he replaced his glasses he fully intended to ensure that this rule held good.

“You are the sole legatee,” he repeated.

“Not if I won't!”

“My
dear
Miss Lenox!”

Susan's eyes were dark with indignant distress. A bright colour burned in her cheeks.

“Nothing would induce me to take a penny of it!”

“That,” said Mr. Phipson, “is nonsense.”

“I don't think so. I couldn't possibly take it.”

“I hope you will change your mind.”

Someone else had said that to her—someone else—Lucas Dale—on the far side of the gap that had opened so suddenly between Monday and all the time that went before. Lucas Dale had said it when he had asked her to marry him. And she had said no—and she had changed her mind—or had it changed for her. The words put a chill upon her angry mood. She said, “No,” and he repeated them.

“I hope you will. I can't tell you just what the estate is worth—Mr. Duckett will be able to do that—but there is at least four hundred thousand pounds invested in this country, and the American holdings come to as much again or more.”

The cold and the anger had fused. Susan felt an icy rage. She said in a level voice,