Speedy Death (6 page)

‘Poor devil, though,’ observed Bertie, and then fell silent, for over all their minds hung the fact, insisted upon by Alastair Bing, that there was no need to let Eleanor know that her fiancé had turned out to be a member of her own sex.

‘It’s bad enough for the poor girl as it is,’ Alastair had declared to his son, ‘without breaking her pride as well as her heart.’

It was a remarkable fact, however, that Eleanor,
so far, had betrayed no signs that her heart was not in its normal state of well-being. She seemed less affected, almost, than anyone by the tragedy.

‘Although you never know what she really thinks or feels about anything,’ Garde confided to Dorothy. ‘Old Sis never did give herself away.’

He himself seemed to have recovered completely from his breakdown of two nights before, and looked his usual cheerful, healthy self.

Eleanor presently left the group, on the plea that she had the orders of the day to attend to, and that lunch waited for no man.

Her absence from the circle was a palpable relief, and the talk circulated more freely.

Presently Carstairs appeared, fresh from a morning walk which he had taken in order to persuade himself that his overnight fears, doubts, and suspicions were groundless.

He had returned, however, more convinced than ever that a good deal of explanation was needed to cover the facts, if the death of Everard Mountjoy were to be counted an accident.

‘First thing’—so his conclusions ran—‘find out exactly who the man—woman was, and, communicate with relations, if any. Must see whether Bing knows anything about Mountjoy’s private life. I’ll get busy with that and see where it leads me.’

So thinking, he entered the morning-room.

‘Well, Mr Carstairs!’ Garde challenged him. ‘Blown away the morning dew of heavy theory yet?’

Carstairs smiled somewhat grimly.

‘I don’t want to discuss my theories, light or heavy,’ he said.

‘Let’s play tennis.’

‘What—after—oh, I couldn’t,’ cried Dorothy. ‘I think it’s horribly callous of you to suggest it.’

‘I bow to your superior judgment,’ said Carstairs dryly.

‘Nasty,’ said Dorothy, wrinkling her nose. ‘Very nasty. It isn’t fair to crush me like that.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ said Bertie, blushing, but heroically taking her side against the quizzically smiling, elderly little man. ‘It isn’t that we—well, speaking for myself—cared a hang about Mountjoy really, but—somehow——’

‘Somehow your ancient British prejudices won’t allow you to follow the dictates of your preferences,’ concluded Carstairs. ‘Somebody is dead—doesn’t matter who, how, or why, but we shouldn’t play games.’

Bertie grinned, and subsided.

Carstairs turned to Garde.

‘Where’s Eleanor?’ he asked suddenly.

‘Ordering the grub and chasing the servants,’ her brother replied glibly. ‘Why?’

‘I—wondered how she was,’ said Carstairs slowly.

‘Oh, right as rain. Right as rain,’ said Garde, waving his hand expressively, and nearly losing his balance on the arm of Dorothy’s chair.

‘And how are
you
, Miss Clark?’ asked Carstairs, turning to look at her.

The light was full on Dorothy’s pretty but, this morning, rather pale face. She gave a little shudder.

‘I’m—frightened,’ she confessed.

Alastair Bing folded the paper noisily and flung it on to the small table. Then he rose abruptly and stalked out into the garden.

‘Thank goodness!’ said Garde half-audibly.

‘Mr Carstairs,’ cried Dorothy, leaning forward, ‘it—wasn’t—what was—oh, I mean—it
was
an accident, wasn’t it?’

‘What was?’ asked Carstairs levelly.

Dorothy threw herself back in her chair and looked at him reproachfully.

‘You do know what I mean,’ she told him, pouting a little. ‘That—that—accident in the—in the bathroom—it
was
an accident, wasn’t it? Oh, do say it was! I want you to say it was.’

‘My dear young lady——’ Carstairs began, with some embarrassment, for in her wailing cry he detected the note of stark fear. But, before he could continue, Eleanor came in, and an awkward silence descended upon the little party, until Carstairs, murmuring something about a microscopic slide, took his departure.

‘Where is Mrs Bradley?’ asked Bertie, in order to break the uncomfortable silence which Eleanor’s coming had imposed upon them.

‘So devilishly awkward having to remember that Eleanor doesn’t know her young man was a young woman,’ as Garde expressed it to Bertie afterwards.

‘She is not down yet. She prefers to breakfast in bed,’ observed Eleanor in reply to Bertie’s question, with just that tinge of disapproval in her voice which breakfasting in bed appeared to her to warrant. Eleanor emphatically was not one of Nature’s breakfasters-in-bed.

‘Oh, well,’ said Garde pacifically, ‘I daresay she’s getting on a bit in years, you know, and, anyhow, it does keep her out of the way. Although she’s a good old sort, is Mrs Bradley,’ he added reminiscently.

‘I am glad you find her so,’ said Eleanor.

It was one of those conclusive remarks of which the daughter of the house appeared to possess quite a store.

INSTEAD OF GOING
to his microscope, however, Carstairs searched his pocket for a pipe, tobacco, and matches, and, walking across to the pleasantly situated summer-house, sat down there to think things out.

‘I’ve got mental indigestion already over this business,’ he told himself. ‘Now, then, let’s get down to it.’

But his thoughts were confused and led him nowhere.

‘What I really want is an intelligent listener,’ he said aloud.

‘Will I do?’ asked Mrs Lestrange Bradley, appearing with Cheshire-cat-like abruptness from the side of the summer-house, and confronting him.

‘You will do very nicely,’ replied Carstairs, courteously rising. ‘That is, unless you are a murderer.’

‘Of course, I might be,’ Mrs Bradley confessed,
‘but then so might all of us. And the servants, any of them, or all of them, might be thugs in disguise. It is all very, very confusing, not to say muddling, puzzling, amazing, and irritating. I’ve been in bed thinking it over.’

Carstairs laughed.

‘Let us sit here and take it in turns to talk,’ went on Mrs Bradley. ‘You may have your say first.’ She seated herself, folded her hands, and gazed expectantly up at him. Carstairs sat down beside her and stretched out his legs.

‘That’s right. Now begin,’ said Mrs Bradley, peering in bird-like fashion into his face. Carstairs was silent. ‘Here!—have my sunshade and poke the gravel with it,’ she went on, pushing it into his hands.

Carstairs laughed again, and took it.

‘Well,’ he began, detaching a little round pebble from the main body of the path and chivvying it to and fro with the ferrule of the parasol, ‘I’m sure Mountjoy was murdered, and the fact that Bing chooses to be pigheaded has not altered my opinion one jot.’

‘Oh, our host does not agree with you? That’s very amusing,’ said Mrs Bradley.

‘I’m afraid I find it merely exasperating,’ replied Carstairs.

‘And he is leaving us to the further mercies of the thug or thugs,’ Mrs Bradley continued, in her mellifluous voice. ‘That is very amusing too.’

‘I’d give a good deal to know what motive anybody in this house had for murdering Mountjoy,’
went on Carstairs, pursuing his own train of thought.

‘For, of course, we shall not be let off with one death, or even two,’ murmured Mrs Bradley, pursuing hers.

‘What?’ said Carstairs, so sharply that Mrs Bradley stared at him in surprise.

‘I beg your pardon?’ she said.

‘And I yours for shouting at you,’ laughed Carstairs. ‘No, but, speaking seriously, have you any reason for saying that?’

‘Saying what? I was thinking aloud, that’s all.’

‘Yes, I know. But why should you suppose—you don’t really suppose that we are again——’

‘I do, though.’ Mrs Bradley nodded her head very firmly several times. ‘I have thought a good deal about this sudden death of an apparently well-liked, inoffensive woman, and I begin to sense something very queer about this house. Don’t ask me what I mean. I don’t know myself. But there’s something peculiar going on, and it perturbs me.’

Carstairs knitted his brows in perplexity. ‘Can’t you explain at all?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Mrs Bradley.

‘You do think it was murder, then?’ was Carstairs’ next remark. ‘But the police——’

‘Are persons of some common sense,’ Mrs Bradley interrupted, ‘but usually of no imagination or sensitiveness whatsoever. They want facts, whereas you and I are content with feelings.’

‘Oh, I want facts too,’ said Carstairs, ‘and, after all, we’ve got them, you know. The facts are here
all right. They must be all round us, numbers and numbers of little tiny facts, each one of them impotent and useless without all its brothers. And we can’t even see them. It is rather annoying, isn’t it?’

‘Well, we do know some,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Look here, I’ll say them to you, and you see how many of them you can put together. Ready?’

Carstairs drew out a small memorandum book. ‘I’ll jot them down,’ he said. ‘Then we shall both know exactly where we stand. Yes, I am ready.’

Mrs Bradley leaned forward a little, fixed her unseeing eyes on the middle distance, and began.

‘Window open at the bottom. Unlikely deceased would have had it so. Door unlocked. Unlikely that deceased would have forgotten or neglected to lock it, especially as she must have felt it important to continue concealment of her sex. Bathroom stool missing.’

‘Oh, that has been found,’ interrupted Carstairs disgustedly. ‘My best clue gone west.’

‘Oh?’ Mrs Bradley turned to him swiftly. ‘Found? Where?’

‘In the bathroom on the next floor of the house,’ Carstairs answered. ‘Through some oversight, the maids appear to have put the two stools in the upper floor bathroom and none in the lower one.’

‘That is exceedingly amusing,’ said Mrs Bradley dryly.

Carstairs glanced at her, puzzled by her peculiar tone.

‘I’m afraid I don’t see,’ he began deprecatingly.

‘Don’t you?’ A strange little smile played about her thin lips. ‘Mr Carstairs, I’m afraid you and dear Mr Bing were just a tiny bit foolish yesterday morning, weren’t you? Just a little bit blind.’

‘Were we? I must confess that I can’t see how.’

‘My dear’—Mrs Bradley laid a claw-like hand upon his arm—‘did you question the maids about it? About the stool—the elusive clue?’

‘Well, no. It seemed hardly necessary,’ Carstairs admitted. ‘But, of course, I can, if you think it should be done.’

‘It is unnecessary now,’ Mrs Bradley informed him. ‘I can assure you, out of my housekeeping and servant-managing experience, that no maid ever moves bathroom stools. They won’t even dust them unless you insist, and determinedly stand there while they do it. I don’t refer to bathroom stools only, of course. I speak generally, and out of a profound and bitter experience.’ She cackled harshly. ‘And tell me why it should ever occur to a maid to carry a bathroom stool up on to the next landing. And, again, although I grant you girls are fools, even housemaids have eyes in their heads, and bathrooms are not extraordinarily large or particularly overstocked with furniture. They must have noticed that they were putting a second stool up there, mustn’t they?’

‘You don’t mean that Miss Bing told a lie?’ said Carstairs slowly.

‘Oh, it was Eleanor brought it down, was it?’
asked Mrs Bradley in a non-committal tone. ‘What exactly did she say?’

‘Oh, merely that she had found the stool on the landing above, and that she couldn’t imagine what the maids had been thinking about to put two stools in one bathroom, and none in the other.’

‘Oh, if Eleanor said she had found two stools up there, she was probably speaking the truth. But do you mean to tell me that you didn’t even go up to the other bathroom and have a look at the other stool?’

Carstairs smote his knee. ‘Good heavens!’ he said. ‘What a fool I’ve been! You mean that the
other
stool——’

‘Exactly,’ said Mrs Bradley placidly, with her eyes on the far end of the garden.

Carstairs was on his feet before the word had left her lips. He literally dashed across the lawn, and ran up the terrace steps.

‘Too late, my friend, I fear,’ observed Mrs Bradley, noticing with quiet amusement that he still held her sunshade clutched in his hand.

In less than ten minutes he returned, with disappointment and chagrin written on his face. ‘Not proven,’ he said shortly, sitting down by Mrs Bradley’s side.

‘Wonderful what a little turpentine will do,’ said the lady calmly.

‘Are you a witch?’ demanded Carstairs.

‘No. Merely a fairly observant human being,’ Mrs Bradley replied, smiling thoughtfully and not looking in his direction.

‘Hum! Well, of course you are quite right. As I went up the stairs yesterday I thought I detected the odour of turpentine, and, sure enough, in the second floor bathroom is a stool which obviously has been freshly cleaned. I met one of the maids on the stairs, and in answer to my question she informed me that Miss Bing had noticed a dark mark on the cork top of the stool, and had given orders that it should be cleaned off.’