Latter End (20 page)

Julia opened her lips to speak, and closed them again. What was there to say? Better say nothing at all. Better go back to bed and wait for the morning. The morning—and Jimmy’s arrest? A long, slow shudder went over her. She turned away, went up the stairs, and into the room where Ellie lay asleep.

Miss Silver followed. When she was in her own room she took off the red woollen dressing-gown and laid it neatly across the chair upon which her clothes were folded. Then she dropped her slippers side by side and got into bed, all very deliberately and rather as if her thoughts were somewhere else. Before she put out the light she took up the shabby black Bible in which it was her custom to read, and turned to the thirty-seventh psalm. She perused it with gravity, giving particular attention to the seventh and fifteenth verses:—

“Fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.

Their sword shall enter into their own heart, and their bows shall be broken.”

It was half-past seven next morning when Polly Pell knocked lightly and came in to draw the curtains and set down an early morning tea tray. The room had two windows, but only the nearer one had been screened. As Polly turned round from it, there was plenty of light to show how pale she was, with no colour anywhere except in the reddened lids.

Miss Silver turned her thoughts away from the consideration of early morning tea as an indulgence—but such a very pleasant one—and focussed them upon Polly Pell. She had already wished her good morning and received a shy response. She now said,

“Please come here for a minute.”

Polly wanted to run out of the room, but she had not had two years training under Mrs. Maniple for nothing. She blinked at the light, wished it a good deal less bright, and came to stand by the bed and pleat her apron.

“You’ve been crying, Polly. What is the matter?”

Polly blinked again, but a tear got past her lashes and began to trickle very slowly towards her chin.

“It’s all so dreadful, miss!”

Miss Silver looked at her kindly and searchingly.

“Yes—murder is dreadful. But it lays a duty upon us all. If everyone does his duty and tells all he knows, the truth will come to light. If anyone does not do his duty, an innocent person may suffer.”

She had spoken in general terms, but now the expression in Polly’s eyes arrested her very particular attention. She had seen fear too often to mistake it. The child was sick with terror. No girl looks like that unless she has something to hide. If there was one thing overwhelmingly obvious besides the fear, it was Polly’s anguished desire to get out of the room. She said in a small, breathless voice, “If you’ll excuse me, miss,” and then stopped short with a quiver, because Miss Silver had taken her by the hand.

“Sit down, Polly—I want to talk to you. Yes, here on the edge of the bed. I shall only keep you a very short time. And pray do not be frightened. If you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to be afraid of. You know that.”

The original tear was now quite drowned by those which followed it. In a choking whisper Polly was heard to say,

“It’s not true they’re going to arrest Mr. Latter? They couldn’t do a thing like that, could they—not to Mr. Latter?”

Miss Silver coughed.

“I cannot tell you that. Why are you so frightened, my dear? Is it because you know something and have been keeping it back? If you are doing that, it is very wrong of you, and I do not wonder that you are very unhappy. What will you feel like if Mr. Latter is arrested?”

Polly choked back her tears, sniffed desperately, and whispered,

“They’d put my picture in the papers—”

“What did you say, my dear?”

The sobs broke out again.

“Gladys—said—they would—Gladys Marsh. She wants— to have—her photo took and put in the papers. But I never. I feel as if I’d die—having everyone look at me—and having to stand up and swear. Oh, miss, I couldn’t. Oh, miss, don’t make me!”

Miss Silver patted the hand she was holding. Then she took her own away, produced a clean folded handkerchief from under her pillow, and gave it to Polly.

“Blow your nose, my child, and wipe your eyes. And stop thinking about yourself. We have to think of Mr. Latter, who is in a very dangerous position, and we have to find out whether you know anything which will make his position less dangerous.”

Polly blew, dabbed, sniffed, and dabbed again.

“Oh, miss!”

“That’s a good girl. Now listen to me. What would you feel like if Mr. Latter should be arrested?”

“Oh, miss!”

“And because you were only thinking about yourself you let him go to prison—”

Polly was past words. She could only gulp.

“Are you going to let him be hanged?”

The gulp turned to an anguished sob.

“Oh, no! Oh, miss!”

Miss Silver let her cry until she thought she had cried enough. Then she said very briskly indeed,

“Now, my dear, that is quite sufficient. Crying will not help you. If you know anything that might prevent his arrest, do you not think it would be more sensible to tell me what it is?”

Polly scrubbed at her reddened eyes and nose. The handkerchief was quite wet through.

“I dunno if it would stop them taking him to prison. Gladys, she says she wants to have her photo in the papers, but—Oh, miss!”

Miss Silver said in a kind, firm voice,

“You have not to worry about that. You have to think about Mr. Latter, and to tell me what you know, then you will have done what is right, and you will feel a great deal happier.”

Polly gave a last sob and said,

“It wasn’t none of my doing. Mrs. Maniple sent me up.”

Miss Silver’s mind worked quickly at all times. It worked very quickly indeed now. Without any appreciable pause, she had gone back to the Chief Inspector’s interview with Mrs. Maniple, detached one piece of evidence, assimilated it, and was saying,

“Mrs. Maniple sent you upstairs on Wednesday morning just before lunch to ask Mrs. Latter whether she was coming down.”

It was no bow drawn at a venture. It was the result of rapid, accurate deduction. At that moment and no other would Polly have been brought into contact with Lois Latter. At that time, and at no other time, would she have had the opportunity of seeing or hearing something which might throw a light upon the impending tragedy.

Polly stared at her and said,

“Oh, yes, she did.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“Then you had better tell me just what happened. No, you are not going to cry any more—you are going to be a sensible girl. Just tell me exactly what you did.”

Polly managed to stop everything except the sniff.

“Mrs. Maniple, she told me to go up and find out whether Mrs. Latter would be wanting a tray took up, so I come upstairs and I knocked on the door. I knocked twice and there wasn’t any answer. There was a kind of a hammering sound going on like as if it was in the bathroom. There’s a door through from Mrs. Latter’s bedroom, you know. It’s her own bathroom and nobody else doesn’t use it. Well, I thought, ‘She’s in the bathroom hammering something, and she won’t hear me knock.’ ”

“What kind of a hammering sound was it, Polly? Was it loud?”

“Oh, no, miss—only just so as I could hear it. But she would be close up to it, and I don’t knock very loud.”

Miss Silver smiled.

“No—I have noticed that.”

Polly sniffed.

“I don’t seem as if I can—it seems so kind of rude.”

Miss Silver nodded.

“Go on, my dear, you are doing very nicely. You heard the knocking, and you thought Mrs. Latter might be in the bathroom. What did you do then?”

“I opened the door a little and looked in. Mrs. Latter wasn’t there. The door to the bathroom was a bit open, and the hammering came from there. I went across the room to knock on the bathroom door.”

“Go on, Polly.”

Polly looked at her round-eyed.

“I don’t know if you’ve been in Mrs. Latter’s room, miss’ The gentlemen from the police locked it up, but it was open again yesterday. Mrs. Huggins is going to turn it out today.”

“Yes, I have been into it.”

“Then you know, miss, one side of the room’s all looking-glass, and the bathroom too. Mrs. Latter had it done as soon as the war was over. If the bathroom door’s a certain way open, you can see the bath in the looking-glass that’s in the bedroom. I hadn’t gone no more than a few steps, when I could see the bath and I could see Mrs. Latter.”

“You mean you could see her reflection?”

“Yes, miss.”

“What was she doing?”

“She was stooping over the bath. There’s a ledge runs all round it. She’d got a piece of white paper on the ledge, folded over, and she’d got her shoe off, hammering the paper with the heel. That was the knocking I’d heard.”

“Yes, Polly?”

“I didn’t know what to do. I thought I’d wait. She stopped hammering and opened the paper. There was a lot of white powder in it, and one or two bits that wasn’t quite powder yet. There was a box on the ledge. It’s a little box Mrs. Latter has on her dressing-table. It used to be a snuffbox. She took it up and opened it. I could see right inside. There were some white tablets. She took them out and put them down on the white powder, and folded the paper over and hammered them with the heel of her shoe. I didn’t ought to have stood there and watched her, miss—I dunno what come over me to do it—I was kind of frightened.” She caught her breath and twisted the corner of her apron with thin, nervous fingers. “I dunno what come over me—indeed I don’t. It didn’t seem as if I could move, not anyways.”

Miss Silver gave a gentle cough.

“How much of Mrs. Latter could you see, Polly? Could you see her face?”

Polly looked at her with frightened eyes. All the colour seemed to have been cried out of them and out of her face. Only the tip of her little thin nose was red. Her voice jerked and the words stumbled.

“Not at first I couldn’t, not when she was bending over and hammering on the ledge, but when she’d finished and she was putting the powder into the box, I saw her then.”

“How did she look?”

Polly twisted the corner of her apron and shook.

Miss Silver laid a hand on her knee.

“Come, my dear, if you saw her face you can tell me how she looked—grave—sad—unhappy?”

Polly went on shaking.

“Oh, no, miss, she didn’t.”

“Then how did she look?”

Breaking, stumbling, catching on the words, the small scared voice said,

“Oh, miss—she looked—ever so pleased.”

“Are you quite sure about that?”

“Oh, yes, miss. It frightened me ever so—I dunno why.”

“There is no need to be frightened. Did Mrs. Latter see you?”

“Oh, no, miss. When she finished putting the powder in the box I run out on the landing again and shut the door, and I knocked on it real hard and loud. And Mrs. Latter, she come and asked me what I wanted, and I said Mrs. Maniple wanted to know was she coming down to lunch, and she said she was, and I come away. Please, may I go, miss?”

Miss Silver looked at her encouragingly.

“Not just for a minute, Polly. You say Mrs. Latter put the powder into the little box. Had she taken all the tablets out of it? Was the box empty?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Have you seen this box since Wednesday?”

“No, miss.”

“Will you describe it to me?”

“It isn’t very big, but it’s ever so pretty—about two inches long, and all gold round the sides and underneath, with a painted picture on the top—a lady with nothing on but a sash, and a little boy with wings and a bow and arrow. It’s ever so pretty.”

“Just one more question, Polly.” Miss Silver’s voice was so equable that no one could have guessed how anxiously she awaited the answer to this question. “Just one more, and you shall go. Did Mrs. Latter take a bath when she dressed for dinner on Wednesday evening?”

“Oh, no, miss—she wouldn’t do that. Mrs. Latter, she always had her bath when she went to bed at night. The water had to be kept hot for her to have it then.”

Miss Silver said, “Thank you, Polly.” A sober gratitude filled her.

As soon as Polly had hurried away Miss Silver put on her dressing-gown, went downstairs to the study, and called up the Bull. When Frank Abbott came on the line, it was to tell her that the Chief was breakfasting with a view to an early start for Crampton, where he was meeting the Chief Constable and Inspector Smerdon.

Miss Silver coughed in a manner which informed him that she had not come to the telephone to listen. In grammatically correct but unmistakably homemade French she informed him that important new evidence had come to light, and that he should lose no time in repairing to Latter End.

Frank whistled.

“It’s really important?”

Miss Silver coughed.

“It clears my client,” she said, and replaced the receiver.

Sergeant Abbott reported to his Chief Inspector, who was putting away bacon and eggs and looking forward to toast and marmalade. The beds at the Bull had exceeded Frank’s worst fears—lumpy flock mattresses, short sheets, and narrow blankets. The bacon was underdone, but the eggs, being local produce, were fresh. Lamb was not so fastidious as his Sergeant. When he went to bed he slept, and when he sat down to a meal he ate with good appetite. He looked up now as Frank took the chair beside him, observed his expression, and said,

“Well, what is it?”

Sergeant Abbott lifted an eyebrow and said, “Maudie,” adding after an explosive pause—“in French. All very hush-hush.”

Lamb’s shining morning face had become decidedly overcast.

“What’s she want?”

Frank was smiling.

“You, sir—or, shall I say, us. I told her you were meeting the Chief Constable. She says evidence has turned up which will put Latter in the clear.”

Lamb’s voice said in its deepest growl,

“Tell you what it was?”

“No, sir.”

“Mare’s nest,” grunted Lamb. He added gloomily—“as like as not.”

“It sounded a good deal more like the ace of trumps.”

Lamb banged the table.

“Go on—back her up! That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? Who do you take your orders from?”

“You, sir,” Voice and manner were deferential in the extreme.

His Chief Inspector looked at him sharply and said,

“Just keep on bearing that in mind, will you!” Then, after a pause, “Well, you’d better go along and see what she’s got. I can be back by half-past ten. If there’s anything urgent, you can give me a ring—Crampton 121.”

Sergeant Abbott had his breakfast, eschewing the bacon and playing for safety by ordering two boiled eggs. He then betook himself to Latter End, and after a short interval rang up the Chief Inspector, who was not best pleased.

“Well, what is it? I’m talking to the Chief Constable.”

“Well, sir, you told me to ring you up if the new evidence was important—and it is. I think you’d better come out here as soon as you can. Meanwhile I’ve got specimens of a white powder taken from the lady’s bathroom which ought to be analysed without delay. I’ve sealed them up, and the local constable is bringing them out on his bike. We ought to have a report before the inquest opens.”

“Probably toothpowder!”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

The Chief Inspector said, “Tchah!”