The Listening Eye (5 page)

THE news was a shock. Miss Silver felt it as such. She recalled the moment when Paulina Paine had terminated their interview and gone out to meet her death. Could she have pressed her more strongly to go to the police? She was unable to believe that it would have made any difference. Could she have insisted on calling for a taxi? She did not know. Would insistence have been of any use? If the knowledge accidentally acquired by Miss Paine was so dangerous as to warrant murder, there were other times and other places where this might have been accomplished. She remained silent for a little before saying,

“I was most uneasy. I feel that I should not have let her go.”

Lamb said heartily,

“And that, if you will allow me to say so, is nonsense. You couldn’t possibly have expected the woman to be murdered—if she was murdered, which to my mind is a thing there is no manner of proof about.”

“She had some idea that she might have been followed on her way to me. There was a man in a taxi at the end of the street. She was sufficiently alarmed to turn back and ask one of her tenants to call a taxi for herself. She was not sure of being followed after that. She says the taxi came after them, but she thinks they lost it in the traffic. It looks as if they had not done so. I urged her to let me call a taxi when she took leave of me, but she refused, saying that she thought she had given way to a nervous impulse and made a mountain out of a molehill. I did not feel easy about it, but I let her go.”

Frank Abbott said, “You can’t possibly blame yourself,” to which she replied soberly, “I suppose not. Yet it is difficult not to feel that she came to me for help and that I failed her.”

Lamb said in his most decided voice,

“If she had taken your advice and come to us she would have been safe.”

“Are you sure that you would have taken her story so seriously as to give her police protection? If her death was determined on, nothing less would have saved her.”

He frowned.

“I’m not ready to say that her death wasn’t an accident. She could have been mooning along with her head full of this story, and being deaf she wouldn’t hear a bus coming. We’ve asked for details of the accident, but we haven’t had them yet. What beats me is why should they go to the trouble of murdering her? What, after all, did she hear, or lip-read or whatever you call it? Nothing that’s the least bit of use to us as far as I can see, or the least bit of danger to them.”

Miss Silver looked at him very directly.

“There was the chance that she might recognize the man who spoke.”

Lamb laughed.

“My dear Miss Silver—what a chance! Even if she connected what he said with the theft of the Bellingdon necklace, what sort of odds were there against her ever coming across him again?”

She said gravely,

“I do not know. They may have been less than we imagine. In this connection, one thing she reported him as saying has remained in my mind.”

“And what was that?”

“It was when he was speaking of the robbery, and what he said was this. ‘I won’t take any chances of being recognized, and that’s final.’ From which I infer that he was someone whom the secretary might recognize.”

Lamb said with impatience,

“He’d have taken precautions against that.”

“So strong a precaution as the murder of the person he feared might recognize him?”

Lamb said impatiently,

“You say he was planning a murder?”

“What else, Chief Inspector, when he said that he was not taking any chances of being recognized, and that all he wanted was a clear stretch of road where no one would turn his head at a shot! There may have been a protest from the man whose lips Miss Paine was unable to see, and then the first man said, ‘I tell you I won’t touch it on any other terms. This way it’s a certainty.’ ”

Frank Abbott said, “Now I wonder if this man really said certainty. If we knew that, it would help to place him, because the ordinary crook would almost certainly have said cert.”

Miss Silver gave a slight reproving cough.

“I am repeating Miss Paine’s own words.”

Lamb leaned forward.

“Yes, yes, we know that you can be trusted to be accurate. But Frank has got a point there, you know. Most men, let alone crooks, would have made it cert. Pity we can’t ask Miss Paine whether she prettied it up, but there it is! What would she be likely to say herself? I mean, what was her own way of speaking—schoolmarmish, or plain everyday?”

In the way of business Miss Silver was not apt to take offence. She let the derogatory “schoolmarm” pass.

“Miss Paine was a plain, downright person, and that was the way she spoke. I think she was repeating to me what she believed herself to have read.”

“You mean she might have mistaken the word?”

“It would be possible that she might have completed it.”

Lamb said,

“Making cert into certainty? Well, there’s no means of knowing one way or the other that I can see, and we’re getting off the track. Seems to me we were talking about what precautions the murderer would have taken against being recognized. You take what Miss Paine got as meaning that he was planning murder as a precaution. At a guess I should have said he’d have used a motorbike for the job. There’s no safer disguise than the goggles and helmet—in fact the whole rig-out.”

Miss Silver’s features expressed a mild firmness. She said,

“He may have done so. Yet he was still afraid of being recognized and was prepared to shoot the secretary to avoid any risk of it. In my opinion this may be a valuable clue. Such a strong apprehension that he might be recognized does to my mind suggest that the murderer was someone in Mr. Bellingdon’s immediate circle. He certainly had inside knowledge of just how and when the necklace would be transferred from the bank.”

“Well, Ledshire have asked us to come in on the job, and Frank will be going down to Merefields. By the way, Mr. Bellingdon will be in town this afternoon. He wants to call and see you. He’ll be coming here first. Would four o’clock suit? He wants to have all that lip-reading business first-hand from yourself. I think he finds it a bit difficult to swallow.”

His tone informed her that the interview was at an end. She rose to her feet.

“Four o’clock will be quite convenient, Chief Inspector.”

LUCIUS BELLINGDON was quite a personage. Even in a crowd he was liable to be remarked. In Miss Silver’s Victorian sitting-room his big frame and massive features, the jutting chin of the photograph, and an eye decidedly competent to threaten and command, might have been considered overpowering. Miss Silver was interested, but she was not overpowered. She remembered fantastic stories about Mr. Bellingdon’s rise to fame and fortune, she remembered that she had listened to them with scepticism. Now, in his presence, she found them less difficult to entertain. He occupied the largest of her walnut chairs, and occupied it as if it were his own. He wore a town suit, but he looked like a man who spent a good deal of time in the open air. His dark skin had a healthy tan and his eyes were bright. He might easily have been credited with ten years less than the fifty-two which the reference-books accorded him. He leaned forward with a hand on his knee, a strong hand admirably kept, and said in a voice not loud but full of resonance,

“Now do you mind just repeating what Miss Paine told you she—well, I don’t know how to put it, but I suppose I had better say—read. I take it you are convinced that she definitely could and did read what was being said from the motion of the lips. It is a point upon which I have felt some doubt.”

Miss Silver was knitting. The needles moved rhythmically above the pale blue wool in her lap. She said,

“I met her first in a crowded drawing-room. I had talked to her for half an hour without experiencing any difficulty before someone informed me that she was completely deaf. When she came to see me here it was just the same. She did not appear to be at a loss for a moment.”

“The police say they have made enquiries and there seems to be no doubt that she really was deaf, and that she had acquired great proficiency in this lip-reading. So I suppose I must accept the fact that she could see what a man was saying thirty or forty feet away?”

Miss Silver inclined her head.

“Yes, I think you must accept that, Mr. Bellingdon. In any art the performance of an expert must seem surprising.”

Lucius Bellingdon laughed.

“You used to teach, didn’t you? When you said that, I felt as if I were back at school again.”

She gave him the warm smile which had so often won her both confidences and hearts, and said,

“Everything seems difficult until you know how to do it, does it not?”

He nodded.

“True enough. Well now, we’ll take it that Miss Paulina Paine really sat in the Masters galleries and watched two men on a seat about thirty-five feet away. One came in after the other, looked at some of the pictures, and then sat down. After a bit he turned his head and spoke. Now this is where you take over. I want you to repeat what Miss Paine told you she had read from his lips, word for word just as she said it.”

Miss Silver rested her hands upon the cloud of blue wool in her lap. In her mind she reverted to the picture of Paulina Paine sitting just there across the hearth from her and speaking. Her own features took on a listening look as she repeated what had come to her in those short jerky sentences.

“These were her words, Mr. Bellingdon— ‘It’s for tomorrow. The secretary leaves the bank with it at twelve noon. Nothing can be done whilst he is on the main road, but as soon as he turns into the lane, that will be the time. It should be quite easy. When I’ve got the stuff I meet you as arranged, and there we are.’ She said he stopped there, and the other man said something. She could see the muscle moving in his cheek, but she couldn’t see his lips. When he stopped, the first one said, ‘I’m not taking any chances of being recognized, and that’s final. Give me a clear stretch of the lane, and no one on it to turn his head at a shot, and leave the rest to me.’ The other man spoke again, and the first one said, ‘I tell you I won’t touch it on any other terms. This way it’s a certainty.’ The other man put up his hand with a catalogue in it and said something, and the first one said, ‘Then there will be two of them for it, that’s all!’ and he laughed and got up and went over to look at one of the pictures.”

Lucius Bellingdon had a retentive memory. Scotland Yard had furnished him with a copy of Miss Silver’s account of her interview with Paulina Paine. He remembered it perfectly. He had just listened to a repetition of this account from her own lips. To the best of his belief and recollection it had not varied by so much as a single word. He said,

“The second man—the one who was turned away from Miss Paine—she didn’t get what he said. If you had to make a guess at filling in those gaps when he was speaking, what sort of guess would you make?”

She was knitting again easily and fast, her eyes not on the work but on his face.

“I suppose that on the occasion when the first man had spoken of a shot we may presume the other to have made some protest or objection. This would fit in with the first one’s reply that he would not touch the affair on any other terms, but that this way it was a certainty.”

“He said certainty—not cert?”

“The Chief Inspector raised that point. I agree that it is an important one and might afford a possible clue to the man’s identity. I can only say that the word as repeated by Miss Paine was certainty.”

Bellingdon nodded.

“And the other gap—how would you fill that? The one which the first man came in on with his ‘Then there will be two of them for it, that’s all!’ What do you make of that?”

Miss Silver said soberly,

“I think there can be no doubt that the other man had raised the question as to what was to be done should there be a second person in the car. It is, I think, the only explanation which would fit in with the callous response. Had there been such a second person, there would no doubt have been a second murder.”

“Not much doubt about that, I should say. Now about this poor woman. Did she run into an accident, or was she murdered too? Just go over all that about her thinking she might have been followed, will you? They showed me your statement at the Yard, but what a thing looks like in cold black and white, and what it sounds like when you hear it, are two different things. Which is why I wanted to see you for myself.”

Miss Silver said,

“I can repeat Miss Paine’s words, and I can undertake to be accurate in repeating them. What I cannot do is to reproduce her voice, her manner, her expression. I can only endeavour to convey the impression that they left on me.”

Lucius Bellingdon was becoming increasingly aware of the impression that Miss Silver herself was making. Scrupulous accuracy, a temperate judgment, considerable powers of observation—of these she was giving him proof. But above and beyond these qualities he was aware of a poised and keen intelligence. It was a thing which he respected above everything else, and he had seldom been more instantly aware of it.

He said, “Just give me as much as you can,” and listened attentively to the repetition of Paulina Paine’s story about a taxi which had waited just beyond the Square and been lost sight of in the traffic.

“She was sufficiently alarmed to go back into the house and take a taxi herself instead of walking as she had intended. She left no doubt in my mind that her experience in the gallery had been a very severe shock. She undoubtedly believed that she had become cognizant of a plot which involved robbery and murder, and the fact that one of the persons concerned in this plot had subsequently become aware of her deafness and her proficiency in lip-reading could not fail to intensify that shock. She began to fear that she might be traced and followed. Such a course would have been perfectly possible if this man had really believed her to be in possession of the highly incriminating remarks which he had made in the gallery. Do you suppose he would have hesitated over silencing her or lost any time in doing so?”

“I don’t suppose he would.”

Miss Silver continued to knit and to speak.

“When Miss Paine came to see me she was a badly shaken woman, but she was, I believe, of a very courageous and resolute disposition and she possessed a strong vein of common sense. As soon as she had relieved her mind by telling me of her experience she returned to her normal condition. She was able to dismiss the fear that she might have been followed, and to consider the impulse which had brought her to me as a trick of the nerves. She would not allow me to send for a taxi, and I am sure that when she left this room she had no idea of the possibility that her life might be in danger.”

“And you think it was?”

She gave him a very direct look.

“What do you think yourself, Mr. Bellingdon?”

He lifted a hand and let it fall again.

“No proof—probably never will be. One has one’s own ideas—” Then, with a change of manner, “And now to business.”

She was loosening some strands of the pale blue wool. Her “Yes?” held a question.

With the change in his manner there had come also a change of position. He sat up straight and said,

“I am informed that you undertake private enquiries, and that you are extremely efficient and discreet. Chief Inspector Lamb tells me that you have often been of considerable help to the police.”

He received an impression that the distance between them had somehow been increased. She gave a slight formal cough and said,

“The Chief Inspector is very kind.”

In the midst of his serious preoccupation Bellingdon experienced a twinge of amusement. He had not got where he was without certain powers of discernment. He was aware that he had been tactless, and that the Chief Inspector was considered to have presumed. He allowed his voice to become a little warmer than it would have been over an ordinary business deal.

“I should think myself very fortunate if I could persuade you to give me your professional help in this matter. You see, there are aspects to which I do not really wish to invite the attention of the police. There are, in fact, points which they couldn’t possibly handle.”

Miss Silver said primly, “I could not undertake to keep anything from the police in a case of so much gravity.”

“Quite so. Perhaps you will let me explain what is in my mind. I think you are too acute an observer not to have been struck by the stress which the murderer placed upon the danger of his being recognized. He said he wasn’t taking any chances of it, and he was prepared to do murder rather than run any risk in that direction. Well, nobody wants to be recognized when he is committing an armed robbery, but a turned-up collar and a turned-down hat with a muffler over the lower part of the fact would mess up any casual description. Now did Miss Paine describe him to you?”

“She did. But I am afraid there is not very much to be made of the description. She was a plain, downright person, and her mind was taken up with the shock she had received and the knowledge which she believed herself to have acquired. In these circumstances, her description did not go beyond the fact that the man wore a drab raincoat, that he was somewhere about thirty, and that he was of average height and complexion. The caretaker at the gallery does not seem able to add anything to this, though he appears to have had some conversation with him—and, significantly enough, upon the subject of Miss Paine’s portrait, which I understand you have purchased. He recognized it, and most unfortunately the caretaker mentioned both her deafness and her proficiency in lip-reading.”

“He recognized Miss Paine?”

“As the woman who had been looking in his direction when he made what he must have remembered as some highly compromising remarks. They could not have been overheard at the distance, but Miss Paine’s lip-reading must have suggested a dangerous possibility. We do not know, and can only surmise, the lengths to which such a conclusion might have carried him. Inspector Abbott did go round to the gallery to see whether anything could be added to Miss Paine’s description of the man she had watched.”

Bellingdon said,

“Yes, I believe he did. As a matter of fact, I went round myself. Pegler is a nice old boy. I had met him, and I thought I’d like a word or two with him direct. He remembers seeing two men on the seat, and he didn’t think they had anything to do with one another—says they came separately and left separately. That is all he does seem to have noticed about the one in the dark raincoat, but he remembers the other one stopping and talking about Miss Paine’s portrait. By the way, Pegler says she came back afterwards and he told her how interested this man had been about her picture and her being deaf, and the lip-reading. And he said she looked as if he had said something that upset her, and he hoped she didn’t think he had taken a liberty.”

Miss Silver said, “She had reason to be upset.”

Bellingdon nodded.

“Well, to get back to this man and his description. I don’t think Pegler is any help. He said he was quite a pleasant gentleman— and that was about all there was to it. Height? ‘A bit taller than me, sir. At least that is what I should say.’ Fair or dark? ‘Nothing that you would notice either way.’ Colour of his eyes? ‘Well, I couldn’t really say, sir.’ And when you put all that together you’ve got something that would fit any man that wasn’t extra tall or extra short, or that hadn’t got red hair, or a beard, or a moustache, or something that stuck out so that you couldn’t miss it.”

Miss Silver agreed. Bellingdon went on.

“So we get back to the murderer. Why was he so much afraid of being identified that he must do murder? As the Chief Inspector has suggested, a motor-cyclist’s cap and goggles would flummox anyone who wasn’t an intimate. There you have it, Miss Silver—he wouldn’t trust any disguise to shield him from the man he was going to rob. Perhaps it was his voice that would have given him away—voices are very individual. I don’t know, but there must have been some reason why he preferred what he called a certainty and was perfectly prepared to shoot two people if there had been two in the car. There is another reason why I am forced to believe him to have been in close touch with my family circle. It was only in that circle that anyone knew when the bank would be handing over the necklace. I suppose you have heard about the necklace?”

She turned the soft mass of wool upon her lap. The delicate fern pattern displayed its fronds for a moment and then fell lightly together again.