Miss Silver Deals With Death (19 page)

Mrs. Willard had plugged in her electric iron and was slipping a damp dress over the ironing-board when the bell rang. She looked surprised to see the Chief Inspector and Sergeant Abbott, but not at all disconcerted. She liked doing her ironing in the sitting-room because two of the chairs there were of just the right height to take the board. Well, she supposed that both the men had seen a woman ironing before now, and it wasn’t as if it was underclothes. She led the way into the room and went over to turn the iron off. So easy to forget, and she didn’t want a hole in her board and the flat smelling like a fire. When she straightened up, there they were, both of them, looking down at the damp dress. For the first time something touched her like a cold finger.

The large man who was the Chief Inspector looked up from the dress and said,

“There are just a few questions we should like to ask you, Mrs. Willard.”

She managed a hesitating smile and said,

“Yes?”

“I think you told Sergeant Curtis that your husband left you soon after seven o’clock last night and did not return until this morning.”

Mrs. Willard said, “That’s right.”

She was standing behind one of the big chairs. She put out a hand now and rested it upon the back.

“I’m sorry to put a personal question, but I’m afraid I must ask you if this was in consequence of a quarrel between you.”

She took a moment before she said,

“Well, it was—but it’s all made up now.”

“Was the quarrel about Miss Roland?” Lamb’s tone was very direct.

Mrs. Willard flushed all over her face and made no reply. She stood quite still behind the chair and looked down at her hand.

Lamb said in an authoritative voice,

“Then I take it that you did quarrel about Miss Roland. You can correct me if I’m wrong.”

Mrs. Willard said nothing. She stood there looking down. Her hand had closed on the back of the chair and was gripping hard.

“Mrs. Willard, I can’t force you to answer—I can only invite you to do so. If you have nothing to conceal on your own account, you know that it is your duty to assist the police. Did you leave your flat at any time last night and go up to No. 8? Did you wash this dress because it became stained whilst you were in Miss Roland’s flat?”

Frank Abbott had lifted the right-hand sleeve and turned it over. The stuff was only faintly damp. A red and green pattern straggled over a cream-coloured ground. The colours were fast and had not run at the edges, but on the outside of the sleeve from wrist to elbow the cream was clouded by a stain of brownish red. Frank Abbott exclaimed,

“Look here, sir!”

Mrs. Willard looked up, and the Chief Inspector down. There was a pause before Lamb said,

“A laboratory experiment will prove whether that stain is blood or not. Is there anything you would like to say, Mrs. Willard?”

She took her hand off the chair and came up to the ironing-board.

“It ran up my sleeve when I was washing the little statue,” she said in a meditative tone. “A stain does spread so on silk. I suppose it was the shock, but I forgot all about it till I saw Alfred looking at it this morning. I don’t know what he thought, because I was too tired to talk—I’d been up all night. I just put the dress in to soak and went and lay down—”

Lamb broke in.

“I have to warn you that anything you say will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you.”

They were both looking at her. Abbott had his notebook out.

Mrs. Willard looked down at the stained sleeve and went on.

“Alfred must have just wrung it out and put it in the cupboard to dry. I never thought of his doing that. The stain hasn’t really come out at all—has it?”

Lamb said, “No,” and suddenly she looked up at him with a ghost of her pleasant smile.

“You want me to tell you about it, don’t you? Shall we sit down?”

They sat, the two men on the sofa, Mrs. Willard in her own chair facing them, her manner quite easy and unembarrassed now.

“I suppose I ought to have told you this morning, but I was feeling so dreadfully tired. Of course you must be thinking it strange, my dress being stained like that, but it’s quite simple really. You see, we’ve been married for twenty years, and there’s never been anyone else with either of us. And then Miss Roland took the flat upstairs, and I couldn’t help seeing that Alfred admired her. I don’t want to say anything hard about her now she’s dead, but she was the sort of girl who lays herself out to catch a gentleman’s eye. There wasn’t anything in it, but last night—it’s no good pretending, is it?—we did have words about her, and Alfred went off to his brother’s and stayed away all night.”

Mrs. Willard sat there in a dark blue dress with the collar pinned crooked, her grey hair rumpled and her eyes fixed on the Inspector’s face with the candid gaze of a child. Her hands lay in her lap, and as she talked she fingered her wedding ring. It was impossible for anyone to look less like a murderess. She went on speaking simply and directly, with the least trace of a country accent cropping up here and there.

“He went off, and I didn’t know where he had gone. He’d never done such a thing before, and I got fancying things the way you do when anything’s happened and you’re sitting alone and thinking about it. I kept going to the door and looking out to see if he was coming back. It was stupid of me, but I didn’t think about his brother. It kept coming over me that we’d had words, and that perhaps he had gone upstairs to her.”

Frank Abbott wrote, his fair sleek hair catching the light as he bent over his notebook. Lamb said,

“Did you know that he did in fact go up to Miss Roland’s flat soon after seven o’clock?”

She nodded.

“Yes—he told me. She laughed at him and sent him away. She didn’t take him seriously, you know. He was very much hurt about it.”

“She had her sister with her—that’s why she sent him away. Well, you didn’t know all this at the time, I take it. He told you afterwards?”

“Yes—when he came back this morning.”

“Well, let’s get back to last night. You were wondering where your husband had gone—”

“Yes, I was dreadfully unhappy, and it kept on getting worse. When it came to eleven o’clock and Alfred not back, I couldn’t bear it any longer. I’d got to know whether he was up there with Miss Roland or not, so I went up.”

“Yes, Mrs. Willard?”

“I meant to ring the bell. I didn’t care whether she was in bed and asleep or not. But when I got up there I didn’t have to ring— the door was ajar.”

“What!”

She nodded.

“I didn’t think anything but that someone had shut it carelessly and it hadn’t latched. And I thought that wouldn’t be like Alfred, because he’s always so particular, but it might have been Miss Roland. And I thought here was my chance of catching them if he was there, so I pushed the door and went in.”

“Just a moment, Mrs. Willard. How did you push it—with your hand?”

She shook her head.

“No—I don’t think so. I wouldn’t if it was like that. I’d just give it a push with my shoulder.”

“All right—go on.”

“Well, the lights were on, so I thought she hadn’t gone to bed.”

“What lights?”

“Oh, the hall, and the sitting-room. The door was half open and I could see in. I stood in the hall and called, ‘Miss Roland!’ and no one answered, so I went in.”

“Did you touch the sitting-room door?”

Mrs. Willard looked faintly surprised.

“Oh, no—the door was half open. I just walked in and saw her. It was a most dreadful shock.”

“You mean that she was dead?”

The surprise was in her voice as she responded.

“Oh, yes, she was quite dead, lying there on the floor—I suppose you saw her. I didn’t touch her except to feel her pulse, and the minute I took hold of her wrist I knew that she was dead.”

“Why didn’t you give the alarm, Mrs. Willard?”

She looked worried for a moment.

“I suppose I ought to have, but—I expect it was the shock— and I didn’t know where Alfred was—”

“You thought he might have done it?”

She actually smiled.

“Oh, not really—he wouldn’t, you know. It was just the shock, and not knowing where he was. Why, he was at his brother’s by a quarter past eight. I rang up my sister-in-law and asked just now, but of course I didn’t know any of that last night.”

Lamb sat there grave and solid, a hand on either knee. The overhead light picked out his bald patch and the strong black hair growing round it. He said,

“Go on—tell us what you did.”

Mrs. Willard fingered her wedding ring.

“Well, after I’d felt her wrist I just stood there. I didn’t know what to do. It was a shock, you know, seeing her like that, and not knowing where Alfred was. I didn’t seem to be able to think properly. I’d never seen anyone murdered before—it was dreadful. It seemed as if I ought to do something, but I didn’t know what. There was that silver statue she had on the mantelpiece— a girl dancing—it was lying on the sofa all over blood. I couldn’t bear to see it like that. It had made a dreadful stain on the cover— I couldn’t bear to see it. Well, the next thing I knew I’d got it in my hand taking it into the bathroom to wash the blood off. There was some nice hot water, and I gave it a good scrubbing with the soapy nailbrush. I suppose that’s when I stained my sleeve. The blood had dried and I’d a job to shift it. Why, the basin and the taps and all were stained. I had to go over them with the brush and fresh hot water.”

“And then?”

“I put the statue back.”

“On the mantelpiece?”

“Oh, no—on the sofa.”

“Why did you do that?”

A slightly bewildered expression came over her face.

“I don’t know—I found it there. Does it matter?”

He shook his head.

“I just wanted to know—that’s all. Now, Mrs. Willard—the whole time you were in the flat, did you handle anything except Miss Roland’s wrist, and the statuette?”

“There were the taps, and the soap and nailbrush—”

“They would be too wet to take fingerprints, or if there were any on the taps you scrubbed them off. What about the bathroom door?”

“It was open—I didn’t have to touch it.”

“And the light?”

“I had to turn it on, but I found I’d left a smear there, so I took it off with the brush.”

“Did you happen to notice Miss Roland’s rings whilst you were in the bathroom?”

“Oh, yes—they were lying by the side of the washbasin. I didn’t touch them.”

They came out of the flat and stood for a moment on the landing. Lamb said,

“There’s another queer start.”

“Think she was speaking the truth?”

“If she wasn’t she’s the best hand at a tale I’ve ever struck. It all fits in, you see. The statuette—well, the way she told about that, it all seems natural enough. And there being none of her fingerprints in the flat—well, that all fits in too. There’s always a place where a patched-up story comes away from the cloth, but this story of hers doesn’t. She’s either a very clever woman or else she’s telling the truth—and she don’t look clever to me.” Then, with an abrupt change of voice, “Where’s Miss Silver?”

“In the Underwoods’ flat, I suppose. That’s where she told me she’d be.”

Lamb gave a sort of grunt.

“Well, go and get her! I’m going to take her along. If this Garside woman hasn’t been eating anything for the best part of a week, as likely as not she’ll be fainting on our hands—I’d like to have a woman there. Go and get Miss Silver—just say I want to see her. And look out for the door being shut after she comes out. That’s the worst of flats—everybody looks into everybody else’s front door. Cut along and get her!”

They stood at Miss Garside’s door and rang the bell. Frank Abbott could hear the faint buzzing sound of it. He thought the kitchen door must be open. At the third or fourth repetition the sound began to remind him of a fly buzzing on the window pane of a deserted room. Something in Maudie’s favourite Lord Tennyson… “The blue fly sung in the pane”… Mariana in the moated grange—“ ‘He cometh not,’ she said.”

Lamb put his thumb on the bell and kept it there. The buzzing was continuous. Nobody came.

The Inspector’s hand dropped. He said over his shoulder,

“Go and get Bell! He’s got a key—tell him to bring it along! And just see where he gets it from. I never heard of such a thing as letting them hang on the dresser! I told him he was to keep them locked up. Just you see if he’s done it!”

Miss Silver stood grave and prim beside the door whilst they waited for Abbott and Bell. The Inspector leaned his big shoulder up against the jamb, his face heavy and stern.

Two or three minutes can seem a very long time. A cold draught came up the well of the stairs, bringing with it a smell of cellar-damp and mist. Then the lift shot up and the two men emerged from it, Bell first, with the key, his face puckered, and his hand not quite as steady as usual, because if they couldn’t get an answer out of No. 4 there must be something very badly wrong. Miss Garside, she’d never go out at this time in the evening with a fog coming up like it was.

They opened the door and went in.

Two doors faced them. The sitting-room door on the right was open, the bedroom door on the left closed but not latched. They went into the sitting-room and found it empty and full of shadows. It was not dark outside yet, but with the mist hanging like a curtain at the windows there was very little light to see by.

The Inspector pulled down the switch and a ceiling light came on. There was no sign of the tea-tray which had been set two and a half hours before. The tray was back in the kitchen, the teapot washed and put away, the cup and saucer clean and in its place. The biscuits, which had been laid out upon a plate, were back in their airtight tin. Everything was in order, and there was no one in the room.

It was Miss Silver whose eyes picked up a single crumb upon the hearth-rug. She pointed it out to the Inspector. He looked round with some impatience.

“A crumb? Well, I daresay! What of it?”

Miss Silver gave her slight cough.

“She had had her tea. It is a biscuit crumb, and you can see that a stool has stood just here on the hearth-rug. That stool over there by the wall, I should say.”

He looked at her sharply, grunted, and went through the hall to the bedroom door. After knocking on it he pushed it open and went in, switching on the light. Abbott and Miss Silver followed him, but old Bell stayed in the hall and said his prayers. He didn’t know what things were coming to—he didn’t indeed. It wasn’t what he was accustomed to, and he didn’t know what to do.

Inside the light shone down upon a clean, bare room. What furniture there was stood stiffly in place. The bed with its old-fashioned brass knobs and rails faced the door. The counterpane had been neatly folded back and the faded eiderdown pulled up to cover Miss Garside to the waist. She lay there fully dressed in an attitude of profound repose, her left arm bent with the hand lying across her breast, the right arm stretched out straight.

Lamb stood over her, frowning, and spoke her name.

“Miss Garside—”

His deep voice filled the room but did not touch the stillness on the bed. With a sudden ejaculation his big hand went out to the left wrist. His fingers felt for a pulse, and did not find it.

He laid the hand back again, rapped out an order to Abbott, and began to look about him. On a table beside the bed there was a tumbler with a little water in it. Between the tumbler and the edge of the table a small glass bottle with one or two white tablets.

Lamb stooped to read the label and spoke over his shoulder to Miss Silver.

“Foreign stuff,” he said—“more in your line than mine. German, isn’t it?”

She stooped as he had done.

“Yes, German—morphia tablets. You could get them in Germany up to a few years ago.”

“Had she been in Germany, do you happen to know?”

“Yes. I believe she used to travel a good deal. Mrs. Lemming will be able to tell you about that. They were friendly.”

The pause which followed left the air so still that Frank Abbott’s voice came to them from the next room—no words, but just his quiet, unhurried voice speaking to Scotland Yard.

After minute Lamb said,

“The police surgeon will be along, but there isn’t anything he can do—she’s dead all right. Well, Miss Silver, there’s our case, finished and done with.”

“You think so?”

He humped a massive shoulder.

“What else is there to think? It happened the way I said, and this proves it. She was on the rocks, didn’t know where to turn for money, and went up to No. 8 when she thought Miss Roland was out. She’d seen her go down in the lift with her sister, you’ll remember. Well, she went to the basement for the key which that old fool Bell had hanging up where anyone could get at it. Miss Crane saw her coming back.”

Miss Silver said in a slow, reluctant voice,

“Mrs. Smollett says that Mrs. Lemming tried to get Miss Garside on the telephone three times between five-and-twenty to nine and some time after the quarter.”

Lamb nodded.

“Well, there you are—that’s when she went up to No. 8. There’s no way of knowing just what happened, but we know that Miss Roland had come back to the flat at half past seven after seeing her sister off. She catches Miss Garside, there’s a row, she turns round to go to the telephone and call up the police, and Miss Garside snatches the statuette off the mantelpiece and lays her out. After that she’s got to get away, and get away quick. She drops the weapon on the couch, changes the rings—she’d reckoned nobody would spot that—and she makes off, leaving the door ajar behind her, either because she’s in a panic or because she’s clever enough to see that with the door open it might be anybody’s job. First thing this morning she goes out as bold as brass and sells the ring. I don’t know when she begins to find out that she hasn’t brought it off. Mrs. Jackson and Mrs. Smollett had both tumbled to the fact that the ring found in Miss Roland’s bathroom wasn’t the right one. Mrs. Smollett recognised it as Miss Garside’s. Well, you couldn’t keep that woman from talking if you gagged her. I suppose she let on, and here we are. Miss Garside would know very well that she hadn’t a chance once we’d spotted the exchange of the rings. It’s as clear a case as you want.”

Miss Silver’s small neat features were set in an obstinate gravity. She gave a very slight cough and said,

“You have not thought that she may have been murdered?”

Lamb stared at her.

“No, I haven’t,” he said bluntly.

“Will you think about it, Inspector? I should like to urge you to do so.”

He met her earnest look with a frown.

“On what grounds?”

She began to speak in a steady, quiet voice, and in a manner at once firm and deferential.

“I do not feel that the central fact of the case is explained by the theory you have put forward, Inspector. I have all along felt that this central fact was not robbery but blackmail. Your theory leaves this quite untouched. Mrs. Underwood was being blackmailed.”

Lamb nodded.

“By Carola Roland.”

Miss Silver looked at him.

“I am not entirely sure of that.”

“Why, Mrs. Underwood’s letter was in her possession. We found it in her bag.”

“Where she had allowed Mrs. Underwood to see it on Monday evening whilst they were playing bridge in the Willards’ flat. To my mind that makes it impossible that Miss Roland herself was the blackmailer. We have to look deeper than that. If she had been blackmailing Mrs. Underwood, everything would depend on her keeping her identity a secret, yet she carried the letter carelessly in her bag and allowed it to be seen. This would be in keeping with the spiteful trait in her character which led her to pay off an old score against Major Armitage by a pretence that she was his wife. She knew very well that such a claim could not cause more than a few hours’ annoyance, but she seems to have thought it worth while. In the same way she may have enjoyed upsetting Mrs. Underwood, who had shown rather plainly that she did not wish for more than a casual acquaintance.”

Lamb wore a good-tempered smile.

“You should write one of these detective novels, Miss Silver. I’m a plain policeman, and facts are good enough for me. Mrs. Underwood wrote a letter in reply to a demand for blackmail, and that letter was found in Miss Roland’s bag. That’s enough for me, and I think it would be enough for a jury. You know, what’s wrong with you amateurs is that you can’t believe in the plain facts of a plain case—they’re not good enough for you. You’ve got to have a case all tangled up with fancy trimmings before you can believe in it.”

Miss Silver smiled politely.

“Perhaps you are right, Inspector. I do not think so, but I should be sorry to appear ungrateful for the courtesy and help which you have given me. I am not very happy about this case. If you will bear with me for a moment, I should like to discharge my conscience by telling you what I suspect. I have no evidence to lay before you. I can only ask you to consider whether Miss Garside may not have been removed because someone whose life and liberty are at stake had come to realise that she must have been in Miss Roland’s flat at a time so near the murder as to make her survival dangerous.” Without any break or change of expression she went on speaking. “Do you recall the case of Mrs. Simpson?”

Lamb, who had turned aside, swung round with a slow rolling movement. He gave a kind of grunt and said,

“Well, I should think so!”

“She was a pupil of the Vulture’s, I believe. They specialised in blackmail of a political nature, did they not?”

“I think they did. It was a Foreign Office business—the Yard didn’t really come into it. There was the Denny case—-she set herself up as a medium—called herself—”

“Asphodel,” said Miss Silver. “Then there was a case of impersonation. In the end she was arrested for the murder of a Miss Spedding, but she was never brought to trial. I believe she escaped.”

Lamb nodded.

“Someone engineered a collision. The driver of the prison van was killed. Maud Millicent disappeared.”

Miss Silver frowned in a manner reminiscent of the schoolroom.

“I think we will allude to her as Mrs. Simpson. The name of Maud has been given such beautiful associations by the late Lord Tennyson.”

Lamb found himself apologising.

“Well now, Miss Silver, I’m sure that’s quite true—Mrs. Simpson it is. How do you happen to know so much about her? There wasn’t much publicity about the cases she was mixed up in. Hush-hush stuff most of it.”

Miss Silver gave a small discreet laugh.

“I have had a good many contacts with Ledlington. Mrs. Simpson’s father was the Vicar of St. Leonard’s church there. A most estimable man, I believe. I had the pleasure of meeting Colonel Garrett of the Foreign Office Intelligence at my friends the Charles Morays’ just after the Spedding case. When he found that I was conversant with Mrs. Simpson’s early history he told me a good deal more about her. She was never traced, I believe.”

“Never heard of again. Must be a matter of three years ago.”

“Did you ever suspect that she might be the principal in the Mayfair case?”

He shook his head.

“You’re making it too difficult. Blackmailers are as common as dirt—no need to drag Mrs. Simpson into it. She’s probably dead.”

Miss Silver said in a reserved voice,

“You would agree that she was a very dangerous woman.”

“Well there’s no doubt about that.”

“I said that I had no evidence to lay before you, but I was wrong—I have one item. It is this. Miss Garside had a visitor this afternoon.”

He gave her his attention.

“How do you know that?”

“Mrs. Underwood saw her come out. It was just after half past four, and she was looking out to see whether I was coming down to tea.”

“Who was it?” said Lamb.

“A stranger. Mrs. Underwood had never seen her before, and she only saw her then for a moment—fair hair, hanging down on her shoulders, smart black dress and hat, spectacles with light tortoiseshell rims, light gloves, very thin stockings and smart black shoes.”

Lamb allowed himself to laugh.

“She managed to see a good deal in her moment!”

“No more, I think, than any woman would.”

“Ah well—there you have me. And what’s the suggestion about this visitor? We’ll trace her of course. She must have been the last person to see Miss Garside alive. But as for her having any other importance—well, you’re not suggesting that she was the notorious Mrs. Simpson, are you?”

Miss Silver coughed.

“It is not my province to make suggestions. You would, however, agree that if Mrs. Simpson were implicated in this case she would not hesitate to remove any person whose evidence might prove dangerous.”