The Listening Eye (4 page)

MISS SILVER stood at the window and watched Paulina Paine until she was out of sight. This was quite soon, because she took the first turning to the left, which would bring her out upon a busy bus route. She was uneasy. She did not know when she had felt more uneasy about a case on which she could not really be said to be engaged. Miss Paine had reached out for help, refused to be guided by her advice, and then gone away, leaving nothing between them except the words which, once spoken, could not be taken back. She looked down at the people passing along the opposite pavement, half a dozen perhaps, who had gone by since Miss Paine had done so—an elderly man, a young one, two middle-aged women, a young girl, a man in a black felt hat. From opposite the side street a man crossed over. He turned off as Paulina Paine had done. So did the two women, the young girl, and the man in the black felt hat. When she had watched them out of sight Miss Silver sat down at her writing-table. But she did not immediately go back to her interrupted letter. There was a moment when she picked up the pen she had laid aside to greet Miss Paine, but it was almost immediately set down again. A few moments passed during which she finally made up her mind to an unwonted course of conduct. A client’s confidences were sacred, but in a case where a violent crime might be contemplated there must be an over-riding public duty. She put out her hand to the telephone, dialled Scotland Yard, and asked to speak to Chief Inspector Lamb.

They were old friends, and though he was sometimes conscious of a feeling of exasperation when he found her mixed up in a case, she enjoyed his most profound respect. As always, she was punctilious in her greetings and in enquiries after his family.

“Mrs. Lamb is well, I hope. And the daughters? Lily’s little Ernest and the baby? They must be such a pleasure to you.”

Lamb’s daughters were his weakness. Lily was very happily married, and her children were the core of his heart. Even over his office line he could not resist the temptation to embark upon a fond anecdote or two. Had Miss Silver’s interest been simulated, the temptation would not have existed. It was the genuine warmth with which she responded to his family news that made it irresistible.

She passed to his daughter Violet, a pretty girl with a habit of getting engaged to highly unsuitable young men, the more recent of whom had included a South American dance-band leader and a long-haired crank with an enthusiastic belief that only the British Navy, Army, and Air Force stood in the way of universal brotherhood and perpetual peace. These two young men had almost brought the Chief Inspector to the point of manslaughter, from which only the calming influence of Mrs. Lamb and his other two daughters had restrained him. Miss Silver was relieved to hear that they had now faded from the scene, and that Violet’s current boy friend was an atom scientist.

“And what she sees in him, I don’t know. Head full of figures and no thought for anything else. But Mother says not to worry, it won’t last. There’s one thing, Myrtle never gives us any trouble except that she thinks of nothing but her nursing, and we’d like to see her happy in a home of her own.”

Appropriate and sympathetic comment having been made, Miss Silver came to the point.

“You are always so kind, Chief Inspector, so I hope you will forgive me for taking up your valuable time. The fact is, I have had a caller with a story which has left me uneasy, and I thought I should feel happier if I could pass it on to you.”

He listened while she repeated what Miss Paine had told her. When she had finished he exhibited some of the scepticism that Paulina had anticipated.

“You’re not asking me to believe that a couple of men would meet in a public gallery to discuss a robbery and a murder for anyone to hear!”

Miss Silver gave a gentle cough.

“That is the point, Chief Inspector. My caller’s seat was too far removed from the men for them to be within earshot of her, and there was no one else in the gallery at the time. Also the two men were not together. They arrived separately, and to an ordinary observer would have appeared to be merely exchanging a few casual remarks about the pictures in front of them.”

“You say she was too far off to have heard anything?”

“That is my information.”

“And she asks you to believe that she can tell what a man is saying at such a distance by the movement of his lips?”

Miss Silver said steadily,

“She sat in my own room and conversed with me as if she could hear every word I said.”

Lamb’s hearty laugh came to her along the line.

“And what makes you think that she didn’t?”

“Mrs. Charles Moray told me that she was stone-deaf. Charles Moray’s cousin, a young artist, rents a studio in her house.”

He said gruffly,

“Well, well, it’s all one. Seems to me a pretty fancy sort of thing, and nothing we can do about it. Suppose it’s all genuine, or she thinks it is, what does it amount to? There isn’t a clue to the men, and as she describes them you could pick up a dozen like them anywhere. There isn’t a clue to the bank, or to the stuff that’s being removed from it. A secretary is mentioned, but there isn’t a clue to whose secretary he might be. How many banks do you suppose there are in London alone? And from what you’ve told me this one could be in Edinburgh, Glasgow, York, Leeds, Birmingham, Hull, Manchester, or any one of dozens of other places. No, no, I’d follow up anything if there was anything to follow, but there isn’t. If you give me the address of the gallery, I’ll send someone round to make enquiries about the two men who are said to have been there at—what time did you say?”

Miss Silver said,

“Just before five. But they were not known at the gallery. My informant enquired.”

“Well, well, that’s that, and nothing we can do about it. I’ll be surprised if we hear anything further. But I’d better have that address.”

Miss Silver gave it to him, after which he said goodbye and rang off. She had done what she could. She could neither do nor suggest anything more. She completed the letter which she had been writing to Ethel Burkett.

The next day was very fully occupied. She travelled down to Blackheath to see Andrew Robinson, the husband of her niece Gladys, and found that she would have her work cut out if a reconciliation was to be effected. Mr. Robinson was nearly twenty years older than his wife and had indulged her whims and condoned her extravagances for a very long time. Gladys was now over forty, and he expected a more reasonable standard of conduct and some peace and harmony in his home. But if this was not forthcoming, he contemplated a separation, and his income being no longer what it had been, the sum he was prepared to allocate to Gladys was one which would necessitate the strictest economy. Miss Silver returned home persuaded that the situation was indeed a serious one, and that Gladys must be made to realize the fact. She wrote a long letter to Ethel Burkett and another to Gladys herself. She wrote to Andrew Robinson.

Her mind, being thus taken up with family affairs, had neither the leisure nor the inclination to concern itself any farther with the problem presented to her by Paulina Paine, yet waking suddenly and unexpectedly in the night, she found it vividly present. So much so that it was a long time before she fell asleep again.

ARTHUR HUGHES came down the steps of the County Bank at Ledlington, a goodlooking young man and very well aware of the fact. If Lucius Bellingdon was dispensing with his service as assistant secretary after a comparatively short trial, it did not occur to him for a moment that there could be any reason for this beyond the carping disapproval with which Lucius was practically bound to regard a penniless young man who had found favour in his daughter’s eyes. He would have to come round of course. The irate parent, stock figure of countless romances and now in these modern times a mere shadow of his former self, always did come round in the end. He would be a laughingstock if he didn’t. Besides, even if the worst came to the worst, Moira had money of her own, settled on her when she married Oliver Herne.

Arthur frowned as he walked in the direction of the Market Square, where he had parked the car. He had known Olly Herne, and he hadn’t liked him at all. He had actually been at his wedding when he married Moira Bellingdon. He hadn’t minded then because he wasn’t in love with Moira at that time. There had been a girl called Kitty. She had married someone else, and he could hardly remember what she looked like. And after her there was Mary, and Judy, and Ann, and quite a lot more. But none of them was like Moira. She did something to you, he didn’t quite know what. He used to think of her as cold—icy and unapproachable. And then quite suddenly she wasn’t icy any more, she was a flame in the blood. Even if she hadn’t had a penny… No, of course that was nonsense—you can’t get married without money. Anyhow it would be all right because she had her settlement. And she might say what she liked, she couldn’t very well go back on him now, not whilst he had her letters and those photographs. He wouldn’t have to use them of course. It would be quite enough to let her know that he hadn’t burned them after all—and a lover’s excuse ready to his hand, “Darling, I just couldn’t bear to part with them.” It was all perfectly simple, safe, and water-tight. But the time had come to get a move on. Once they were married his position would be secure. And Lucius Bellingdon would come round. You didn’t cut your only child out of your will—not nowadays.

All the time he was walking down to the car and getting into it and starting up he went on thinking about Moira Herne. It pleased him immensely to be taking her the Queen’s Necklace. A bit of luck that old Garratt should have had one of his attacks and not have been able to go for it. He had a pleasant picture of himself throwing the sealed packet into Moira’s lap and saying, “There you are!” After which she would open the packet and take out the necklace and put it on and he would kiss her. The fact that this pleasant daydream deviated in every possible particular from what was in the very least bit likely to happen had no power to detract from the pleasure it gave him.

He extricated himself from the crowded marketplace as skilfully as if his mind had really been on what he was doing, threaded one of the two narrow passages which connected the Square with the High Street, and began to move with its stream of traffic at the snail’s pace dictated by an absence of width and the presence of two famous bottlenecks. Emerging upon the outskirts of the town where the houses were set far enough apart to allow of a wider road and more accommodation for the traffic, he was able to pick up speed. He did not really want to go very fast. The morning was a pleasant one. There was a hint of spring in the air. His fancy occupied itself with thoughts appropriate to the season. When eventually he turned into Cranberry Lane they distracted his mind from the fact that another car was doing the same thing. There was no reason why it should not do so. He just hadn’t noticed it, nor had he been aware that it had followed him out of Ledlington.

Cranberry Lane has the twists and turns which are a common feature of the English by-way. When it twisted, the car that followed him would be out of sight. After one such turn the driver accelerated and came up with him. Before he realized that anything was going to happen the two cars were abreast and he was being forced off the road. His near front wheel bumped down into the ditch. He braked, ran scraping along the hedge, and came to a stop. As he turned, between fear and anger, he saw the other car at a standstill too and the driver already out.

He had time to curse, to stop halfway, to say “You!” and to see the revolver in the gloved hand. After that there was no more time. He may have heard the shot which killed him, or he may not. Evidence on this point is not available.

OF the two newspapers to which Miss Silver subscribed she was in the habit of glancing through the one addicted to headlines and pictures at the breakfast-table, whilst reserving the perusal of The Times for a more leisured hour. On the morning following her visit to Blackheath she had no more than sat down and reached for the former than there stared at her from the front page a heading which instantly fixed her attention. It ran:

daring jewel robbery

the bellingdon necklace stolen

secretary found shot

Like Sally Foster, Miss Silver had heard of the Bellingdon necklace. She had even read the same article about it and its conjectured history that Sally had. She was aware of the intention ascribed to Lucius Bellingdon of presenting it to his daughter in order that she might wear it at the fancy dress ball he was proposing to give. Her eye travelled over a repetition of these particulars and came back to all that seemed to be known about the robbery. It was not much. The necklace had been in safe keeping at the County Bank in Ledlington. Mr. Bellingdon, who had a large account there, had written to say that his secretary, Hubert Garratt, would call for it at 12 noon on the 14th instant. The secretary, duly provided with a written authorization, arrived punctually, signed for the valuable package, and left again by car, driving himself. That was the last time he was seen alive. The car was found twenty minutes later on the grass verge of a turning off the London road with the secretary dead at the wheel and the necklace gone. The turning, an unfrequented one, would be a short cut to Merefields, Lucius Bellingdon’s country home.

There were photographs of Merefields, of Mr. Bellingdon, a gentleman of dominating appearance with a jutting chin, his daughter Mrs. Herne, and the unfortunate secretary.

Miss Silver read all that there was to read, and had no more than come to the end of it, when the telephone bell rang. It was not with any great surprise that she recognized the voice of Detective Inspector Frank Abbott.

Since he announced himself in this manner instead of his off-duty “This is Frank”, she was instantly aware that he was ringing up from Scotland Yard. She said,

“Miss Silver speaking.”

His voice came back with a touch of formality quite noticeably absent from their private relationship. There was between them a strong tie of affection, and on his side a high degree of respect which did not prevent him from regarding her idiosyncrasies with appreciation and enjoyment. She was, he considered, a period piece, from her Edwardian hair style with its controlling net to her beaded shoes of a smaller size than is usual today, and from her admiration for the late Lord Tennyson to the stock of elevated maxims which he was in the habit of referring to as Maudie’s Moralities. What he said now was,

“I suppose you have seen the paper?”

The gravity of her reply informed him that he need not particularize any special item of news. He said,

“The Chief would be glad if you could make it convenient to come round to the Yard. It is with reference to the conversation you had with him the day before yesterday. He would be glad to have a talk with you.” About three-quarters of an hour later she was being ushered into the Chief Inspector’s room. It was by no means the first conversation she had had with him there, but as he rose from behind his desk to greet her, she thought he appeared to be vexed and burdened beyond his wont. With the briefest preliminaries he sat down again, filling his chair squarely—a big man of country stock with a florid face and strong dark hair which only the most rigorous cut prevented from curling.

Frank Abbott, standing on the hearth, presented as great a contrast as was possible—tall, slim, elegant, with a long bony nose, fair hair mirror-smooth, and the light blue eyes which were capable of so icy a stare. Miss Silver was one of the people for whom they could soften. They did so now.

She had taken the chair which had been set for her on the far side of the writing-table. She wore the black cloth coat which had seen so many years of service and, the wind being exceptionally cold, an antique tippet of faded yellowish fur. Her hat, no more than two years old, was of black felt renovated last autumn, the trimming being now of black ribbon arranged in loops, with a bunch of violets added recently to mark the approach of spring. She wore black kid gloves and carried a well-worn handbag.

Lamb sat back in his chair and said in a voice that kept its country sound,

“Well, Miss Silver, I suppose you can guess why I wanted to see you.”

She inclined her head.

“I have read the account in the paper.”

He lifted a big square hand and let it fall again upon his knee.

“And I suppose you’ve been saying to yourself, ‘Well, I told them, and they wouldn’t take any notice.’ That’s what you’ve been doing, isn’t it?”

She said with a touch of primness, “I hope I should not be so unjust.”

His eyes, irreverently compared by Frank Abbott to the larger and more bulging type of peppermint bullseye, were turned upon her for a moment.

“Well, I ask you! Ledlington! Who’d have thought of that? You bring me a mare’s nest that might have been anywhere in the kingdom! I believe I mentioned a good few places on the telephone when we were talking—and not a clue to which of them would be the least unlikely, or what any of it was about anyhow! And then it turns out to be Ledlington and the Bellingdon necklace! Of course if we’d known what was going to be stolen—” He broke off with a short laugh. “Pity your Miss Paine didn’t get hold of something useful whilst she was about it!”

Miss Silver looked at him in a manner which reminded Frank Abbott of a bird with its eye upon a worm. There was nothing contemptuous about it, it was just bright and enquiring.

“I do not remember that I mentioned my caller’s name.”

“No, you didn’t. Careful not to, weren’t you? But you did give me the address of the gallery, and you did tell me there was a portrait of her hanging there, that the artist rented her top floor, and that his name was Moray. And no need for anyone to be Sherlock Holmes for Frank here to get his address and go round and see him. And when you hear a couple of the things he walked into, I’m expecting you to have a bit of a shock. There—it’s your pigeon, Frank. You’d better get along with it and tell her.”

Miss Silver transferred her attention to Inspector Abbott.

“Well,” he said, “the gallery identified the picture for me as soon as I said it was a portrait of a deaf woman by an artist called Moray. And a very good portrait I thought it was—streets ahead of most of the other stuff they’d got there, so I wasn’t surprised to see that it was marked ‘Sold’. What did surprise me, and what’s going to surprise you, is the name of the man who bought it. There was an old chap called Pegler taking the entrance money, very friendly and chatty and tumbling over himself to link the picture up with this morning’s smash-hit headlines. Because it seems that the man who bought Miss Paine’s portrait is no other than Lucius Bellingdon, ‘And you’ll have heard all about his having his diamond necklace stolen and his secretary shot in the papers this morning,’ as Mr. Pegler put it.”

Miss Silver said, “Dear me!”

“He had quite a lot to say about Miss Paine one way and another. Told me how she’d been in to see her picture, and how she ‘did that lip-reading a treat’, and had advised him about his grand-daughter who was going deaf. He said she was a very nice lady and a lot of people were ever so interested when he told them how good she was at the lip-reading. ‘They wouldn’t hardly credit it,’ he said. So then he told me about the gentleman that was in there the same time as she was, and how he wouldn’t believe she could tell what anyone was saying—not the length of the gallery—‘but I told him she could, because I’d heard Mr. Moray use those very words, and the gentleman went away and he didn’t look any too pleased’. I asked him if he would know the man again, and he said he would, but when it came to a description it was the sort where there’s nothing to take hold of. He wouldn’t go so far as to say the gentleman was tall, nor yet short—he wasn’t to say fair-complexioned, nor you wouldn’t say he was dark, but he had a black felt hat and a drab raincoat.” Here Inspector Abbott broke off and addressed his Chief. “I don’t suppose we have any statistics as to how many men in Greater London would have been wearing black hats and drab raincoats on that particular day—”

Lamb said curtly, “Get on with your story!”

Frank obliged.

“I got Moray’s address, which is 13 Porlock Square, and I went down there. The woman who came to the door said she lodged in the basement3 and when I asked for Miss Paine she got out her handkerchief and said Miss Paine had been run over by a bus coming home the day before yesterday evening, and they took her off to the hospital but she never came round.”