Eternity Ring (14 page)

Albert Caddie came into the room with a jaunty air. He was not very tall, but he was very well built and beyond all question a handsome young man. His curly dark hair was now rather longer than he had been allowed to wear it in the Army. His bold dark eyes looked over Lamb, looked over Miss Silver, and didn’t think much of either of them. He said in a defiant tone,

“Here, what’s all this?”

Lamb stared him down. A man who is sure of his authority and who has a thousand years of solid English law behind him has got something, and knows it.

Albert Caddie’s eyes did not fall, but they shifted. Then, and not till then, Lamb spoke.

“You are Albert Caddie?”

Albert Caddie hitched a shoulder up and said,

“That’s me.”

“You are employed by Mr. Harlow as his chauffeur?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I just want to ask you a few questions. You can sit down.”

Albert’s look said plainly, “This is my house, isn’t it? You’ve got a nerve, telling me to sit down in my own house!” With a smile which showed some fine white teeth he crossed to the large easy chair and flung himself into it. If there had been any doubt before, it was now quite clear that he was the master of the house, taking his rightful place, and taking his ease in it.

Lamb had met his sort before. He said sharply,

“I should like particulars of your movements from half past four on Friday, January eighth.”

“Really?” Tone and accent were in impudent caricature of Sergeant Abbott.

Lamb said, “That sort of thing isn’t going to get you anywhere, Caddie.”

“And suppose I don’t want to be got anywhere?”

Lamb sat up straight.

“That will be enough of that! There have been two murders in this neighbourhood, and I’m inquiring into them. It’s everyone’s duty to co-operate with the police. I can’t force you to answer questions or to make a statement, but if you’re an innocent man you’ll be glad to do so. I don’t mind telling you that you’ve got something to explain. I’m giving you the opportunity of explaining your actions, and you can begin with the afternoon of Friday, January eighth. If you can’t explain them, I shall have to detain you.”

Albert Caddie sat up too. He sat up and said,

“What are you getting at?”

“I’ve told you. I want to know your movements after four-thirty on that Friday afternoon.”

Albert put his hand on his hip and stuck his chin in the air.

“Why?”

“I’ll tell you why. You had an appointment to meet a young woman that evening. You were in the habit of meeting her at the Forester’s House in Dead Man’s Copse. You went out about five o’clock to keep that appointment.”

Albert showed those white teeth again.

“Well then, I didn’t.”

“You went out—”

Albert laughed scornfully.

“Here, here—what’s wrong with going out? This is a free country, isn’t it? That’s the bother with you cops—you’re too clever. A young lady may have made an appointment with me—I’m not saying whether she did or whether she didn’t— but that’s not to say I kept it. I suppose my wife’s been tattling. Well, she’s jealous—a jealous woman’ll say anything.”

“Look here, Caddie, you had an appointment with Mary Stokes—”

“What if I did? I’m not saying one way or the other, but what if I did?”

“Your wife followed you. She saw a light in Dead Man’s Copse, and she heard someone going away. She found the dead body of a young woman named Louise Rogers hidden under some leaves. She got blood on her coat—that’s how it has all come out. I think you must realize your position. You are not obliged to make any statement that will incriminate you.”

Anger blazed in the black eyes. A surge of colour ran up to the roots of the dark hair. The voice rang.

“What do you mean, incriminate? I haven’t done anything! You seem to know a lot about my affairs! All right then, I’ll tell you some more! This Mary Stokes, she wasn’t any good, and I was through with her. She had me on, and she had me off, and then she wanted me on again, and I wasn’t for it—see? There’s lots of other girls if you want them. Well, I’ve got another girl— over in Lenton. Mary Stokes, she left a note for me to meet her Friday. I didn’t meet her, I went into Lenton, and she could put that in her pipe and smoke it! Saturday morning she comes round with the butter and eggs and pushes a note in my pocket as she goes by—says she’ll give me one more chance and I can meet her at the old house between half past five and a quarter to six. Did me a lot of good, that note did—when half past four come round I got on my bike and went to see my girl in Lenton!”

Lamb maintained a hard, impassive stare.

“You had quarrelled with Mary Stokes?”

“I’d done with her—that’s that! And don’t you go trying to make anything out of it either—when I’ve done with a girl I’ve done with her—I don’t come sneaking back to break her neck!” He laughed. “I’ve never cared enough for any woman to swing for her, and I wouldn’t begin with Mary Stokes! I’m sorry for the poor devil who did her in and I hope he gets away with it, but it wasn’t me—I wouldn’t take that much trouble. And if you think you can pin it on me, you can think again! Joe Turnberry saw her home, didn’t he—round about eight o’clock? They come off the ten to eight bus. Well, I didn’t break her neck, because I wasn’t there to break it. And I wasn’t there, because I couldn’t have been there—see? I was in the Rose and Crown at Lenton, and I was playing darts—properly on my game I was. Me and my girl, we were there from eight o’clock till ten, and a matter of fifteen to twenty people will tell you so if you ask ’em. So what price arresting me now?”

Lamb said, “Let me see your hands, Caddie—both of them. Lay them out flat.”

“Look here, what are you getting at?”

“Lay them out!”

Albert said, “Play-acting, aren’t you?” But he laid his hands out, one on either knee.

The top joint of the left forefinger was missing.

Mrs. Barton was a good deal troubled in her mind—angry too. She hadn’t been housekeeper at Deepside for thirty years without learning to hold her tongue and control her temper. Old Mr. Hathaway wasn’t one of the easiest. There had been troubles, like when his wife died, and when Mr. Roger the only son was killed out hunting. And there had been other things—things you didn’t talk about, though she supposed everyone would know. There wasn’t much people didn’t know in a village. But if Mr. Hathaway sat emptying the decanter till it was all he could do to get himself upstairs, no one had ever had word or look about it from her, poor lonely old gentleman. Then they’d had a thieving maid once—with good references too and wonderful smooth manners. Everything just a bit too good to be true when you looked back on it, but it seemed all right at the time, and then off she went with the silver candlesticks out of the dining-room and a gold box that Mr. Hathaway set a lot of store by—given to his great-grandfather by some French gentleman that he saved from one of their nasty revolutions. But they had never had anything like this before—

The colour flushed up to the roots of her grey hair as she thought about it. If it hadn’t been for Mr. Grant going off early on the Sunday morning and staying the night, she wouldn’t have been into his room once the bed had been made—she would have helped Agnes and had no call to come back again. But today being Monday and the bed not slept in, there had been no need to make it, and nothing to take her into the room if it hadn’t been that it came to her to drop a word to Agnes about a hot bottle to air the sheets. Perhaps she had got fidgetty, living so long with an old gentleman, but it was nasty cold weather and a bottle in the bed would take the chill off.

Her flush deepened as the scene rose quick before her eyes— Agnes in the room, the door not quite shut to, and herself going to it and pushing it a little so that she could see in. And what did she see? She couldn’t have believed it if it hadn’t been her own two eyes telling her it was true—that Agnes stooping over the bed kissing the pillow, and the tears running down off her face on to it! It made her right down ashamed—sobbing and crying and kissing Mr. Grant’s pillow. She didn’t know how she kept herself, but she did. Pulled the door to without making any noise and back to her kitchen. And when Agnes came down for her elevens she had given her her notice—no reason named, just that they were thinking of making a change. Queer how the girl stood there and never said a word—funny sort of smile on her face, funny sort of look in her eyes. And not a word out of her till she was going through the door. It made Mrs. Barton angry all over again to call back the way that Agnes looked at her. “Think yourself someone!” she said. “Don’t you?”

It might have been expected that both Mrs. Barton and Agnes would have had other things to think about on this Monday morning. A double murder had been committed, the bodies of two young women discovered, yet here was Agnes weeping over Grant Hathaway’s pillow, and Mrs. Barton unable to think of anything except this scandalous behaviour. The fact is that, for most of us, what happens to ourselves is so much more important than what happens to other people that the smallest mote in our own eye will prevent us from being unduly harrowed by somebody else’s beam. When Mr. Stokes’ cowman arrived late with the milk on Sunday morning and brought the news that Mary had been murdered and her body found in one of the barns, Agnes had cried hysterically, and Mrs. Barton had been quite suitably shocked. When, on the Sunday evening, a second body was discovered in the cellar under the Forester’s House, the impersonal thrill which the news provided was not very much more horrifying than if they had read about it in the paper. As far as Mary Stokes was concerned, Mrs. Barton had always been persuaded that she was a fast young woman and would come to a bad end, while Louise Rogers was just a nameless stranger who had somehow got herself murdered in Deeping. But a scandal in the house which had had the benefit of her presence and moral example for thirty years was quite another matter. Fast young women got themselves murdered every day, but a scandal in the same house as Mrs. Barton was so unthinkable that at the threat of it every fibre of her thought stiffened in protest.

It was in this frame of mind that she descended to the study after lunch and requested the favour of a few words with Mr. Grant.

He looked up from the letter he was writing.

“If it’s important, Mrs. Barton. I’m rather busy.”

She stood like a rock—massive in form; grey hair brushed smooth on either side of an immaculate parting; black dress neatly buttoned over swelling contours; a snowy collar pinned with a cameo brooch depicting a female with snaky hair. Incredible that Mrs. Barton should be wearing a head of Medusa but nevertheless true, the explanation being that classical mythology was a sealed book to her, and that the brooch had been a legacy from a most respectable great-aunt. Her own features being regular, her eyes very fine, and her manner one of dignity, she had a handsome and imposing presence.

Grant resigned himself, laid down his pen, and said,

“What is it?”

“I will not detain you, sir. I thought it right to let you know that I have given Agnes her notice.”

Grant said, “Oh?”

He was aware of scrutiny. Mrs. Barton’s grey eyes dwelt upon him in a steady and purposeful manner. He was unaware that his unguarded expression of mingled surprise and boredom was the most satisfactory thing those eyes could have beheld.

Never for a moment would Mrs. Barton be prepared to admit that she had suspected Mr. Grant of so far forgetting himself as to encourage that Agnes, but there he was, a gentleman separated from his wife, and why, nobody knew except their two selves. And a very great pity it was. A nicer young lady than Miss Cicely Abbott there couldn’t be, nor a happier couple. Dreadfully quiet it left the house when she’d gone, after brightening it up the way she did—she and that Bramble dog that got around you whether you liked it or not, galloping up and down the stairs like a little colt and sparkling his eyes at you when he wanted a bone. A nasty kind of a hole they had left, he and Miss Cicely— and when gentlemen are lonely it’s surprising what they’ll do. Farther than that she wouldn’t go.

These thoughts were in her mind between Grant Hathaway saying “Oh?” and going on with, “What’s the matter with Agnes? A little on the gloomy side, but I thought she was doing all right.”

“I have no fault to find with her work.”

“Well?”

“I would rather not say any more, Mr. Grant.”

“Oh, well, it’s your affair.”

“Yes, sir.”

He went back to his letter.

When Agnes brought tea to the study at half past four he was still writing. She switched on the light as she came in, and then stood for a moment looking at him as he sat at the writing-table. She could not see much more than the rough tweed of his coat, the set of his shoulders, the back of his head, and the hand which moved across the paper as he wrote, but these things her eyes devoured. She was a thin, dark woman with a sallow skin and thick, straight black hair. Her eyes had a brooding expression.

As if conscious of the intensity of her regard, Grant checked suddenly and without turning said over his shoulder,

“All right—just leave it, will you? I want to finish this.”

After a momentary hesitation she went silently out of the room and shut the door. He wrote three or four more lines, signed his name, swung his chair about, and poured out a cup of tea. Whilst it cooled, he put his letter into an envelope and addressed it to James Roney, Esq., Passfield, Ledstow, near Ledlington.

All the time he was having his tea he was thinking about the decision which he had just taken. James was ready to pay a handsome premium with young Stephen, and the money would come in uncommonly handy. He liked the boy too—brains, and keen on using them this way. You’d got to mix your farming with brains nowadays if you wanted to make it pay. You couldn’t do without them, but you couldn’t do without money either.

He sat on, making plans. In the end, with a queer twist of the mouth, he came to wondering what Cicely would say. In the curious and intricate game that they were playing, Stephen Roney represented a small but useful trump. He looked forward to seeing his wife’s face when he played it.

He was still sitting there when Agnes came back to draw the curtains and take away the tea. She approached the table, but made no move to pick up the tray.

“If I might speak to you, sir—”

Until that moment he had hardly been aware that she was in the room. The routine of her entrance, the sound of the curtain rings sliding smoothly into place, had made the vaguest and most surface impression. It was only when she spoke that he became definitely aware of her, and of an impending scene.

He said, “What is it?” and heard his voice sharper than he had meant it to be.

Agnes stood there staring—there really was no other word for it. The overhead light made shadows on her face, the bony ridge of the brows darkening the eye-sockets, the cheekbone shading the hollow of the cheek, the tightened under lip doing something odd to the contours of the chin, the whole effect being one of plainness cruelly intensified. A throbbing atmosphere of emotion began to fill the room.

Feeling singularly defenceless, Grant got to his feet, and the scene broke. In a choked voice Agnes said,

“Mrs. Barton has given me my notice. I want to know why.”

“I’m afraid you must ask Mrs. Barton.”

Agnes clasped her hands.

“Are you going to let her send me away?”

What an impossible situation! He found himself getting out his cigarette-case, lighting a cigarette, putting the case away again— anything to occupy his hands as he said,

“I’m sorry, Agnes, but I leave all that sort of thing to Mrs. Barton.”

She looked at him curiously, opened her lips to say something, and then seemed to change her mind. She spoke, but he had the strongest possible impression that what she said was not what she had been going to say.

“Mr. Grant—don’t let her send me away! I haven’t got anyone—” she choked—“I haven’t got anywhere to go. I haven’t done anything to be sent away like that—she hasn’t even said what she’s doing it for—if I done anything you don’t like I’ll do it different.”

It was extremely embarrassing—all this emotion on the surface, and under it what? He had a feeling that there were uncomfortable depths, and made his voice brisk.

“Look here, Agnes, this won’t do. There are lots of good places to be had. I can’t possibly interfere with Mrs. Barton’s arrangements. You’re only upsetting yourself.”

She fixed those shadowed eyes on him and said,

“I can upset more than me.”

Grant was beginning to be angry. He disliked scenes in general, and this one in particular. It began to occur to him that Mrs. Barton was displaying her excellent good sense in getting rid of this obviously neurotic female. He moved away to the writing-table, ostensibly to find an ash-tray, and said in rather a final tone,

“There’s really nothing to be done about it. Will you please take out the tea-tray.”

She came after him, moving in an odd gliding way which gave him the creeps. When she had come right up to the writing-table she put her hands on it, gripping the edge and staring at him across the top.

He thought, “The woman’s barmy,” and was convinced of it when she repeated her previous remark with a slight but sinister variation.

“There’s more than me would be upset if I was to tell what I know.”

“Please stop talking nonsense and take away the tray.”

She leaned right over the table and said in a weeping voice,

“Do you think I’d hurt you? I won’t say a word, but you mustn’t send me away. It makes me feel I don’t care what I do or who I hurt.”

He went over to the hearth and put up a hand to the bell.

When he looked round at her Agnes had turned. She still gripped the table edge, but she had her back to it now. Her eyes blazed from a colourless face.

“If you ring that bell you’ll be sorry! You won’t be able to take it back, not however much you want to. If there was a Bible here, I’d put my hand on it and swear. If you ring that bell, I’ll go to the police!”

He kept his hand where it was, quite still, quite steady.

“I suppose you know what you’re talking about. I don’t.”

Her voice went down to an almost soundless whisper. She said,

“They’ve found her—they’ve found them both—”

“I still don’t know what you mean.”

She said, “Hasn’t anyone told you? Hasn’t she told you? It isn’t in the papers yet, but it will be tomorrow. The girl that Mary Stokes said she saw murdered Friday week, they found her in the cellar under the Forester’s House last night.”

Grant said nothing. Everything in him toughened and stood to take the shock. He said nothing at all, but his hand fell from the bell. He heard Agnes say,

“Everybody said poor Mary Stokes had made it up, but she never. Pity they didn’t believe her before she got murdered herself.”

He called out in an angry, incredulous tone,

“Mary Stokes murdered?”

“Saturday night, after Joe Turnberry saw her home—but they didn’t find her till Sunday morning, and you’d gone off early. I thought perhaps you didn’t know they’d found her—and the other one.”

“No, I didn’t know. How should I?”

She went on looking at him.

“They were bound to find Mary. But not the other one— that was bad luck. If they hadn’t found her, they’d have thought Joe Turnberry had done Mary in. Everyone thought it was him till they found the other one in the Forester’s House, and then they could see how Mary had been put out of the way on account of what she’d seen. Saw the murderer’s hand, didn’t she, in the beam of her torch? Might have seen something on the hand that she’d know if she saw it again—might have seen something that would make the chap think he wouldn’t be safe till she was dead.”

He said, “Be quiet!” in a sharp hectoring tone, and she fell into an angry silence, leaning back against the table, staring at him out of those hollow eye-sockets.