“Professor Camm?” he asked.
“Yes,” Constance answered.
“I’m very sorry to have to intrude like this,” the man said, “and also to have to tell you some very bad news. Perhaps if we could go inside…” He gave Andrew another glance, as if he were hoping that he would help him. “I’m Detective Superintendent Stonor and this is Sergeant Southby.”
“It’s about my sister Mollie,” Constance said, staying where she was. Her voice was steady.
“I’m afraid so,” Superintendent Stonor replied. “But may we come in? I think it might be best.”
“Yes, come in,” Constance said in the same calm voice. “But please tell me what’s happened. Has she been in an accident?”
If Mollie had been in an accident, Andrew thought, it would not have been a detective superintendent who stood on the doorstep.
The man was still reluctant to answer while he was there, but Constance did not move aside so that he could enter.
“It wasn’t an accident,” he said finally. “Her body was found by two boys about an hour ago in the stream at the bottom of Clareham Hill. She’d been stabbed in the back. Stabbed several times with what we think was a kitchen knife. I’m afraid it was murder.”
Chapter Five
Thrice looked he at the city;
Thrice looked he at the dead…
Andrew was thankful that he did not have to look three times at Mollie’s empty, colourless face. Once was enough.
When Superintendent Stonor had told Constance regretfully that as a formality he would have to ask her to go to the mortuary in Maddingleigh with him to identify her sister, she had given Andrew a swift look and he had known that he would have to accompany her.
He took it as a matter of course that he should go, and when they were taken into the chilled room where Mollie’s body, covered by a sheet, had been laid out, it had not surprised him that Constance had suddenly slipped her hand into his and had held on tight. But at the same time her calm had disturbed him. Though her hand was icy cold, her gaze at Mollie, during the moment when the sheet had been turned back, was as steady as if she were looking at a specimen in a laboratory. The brief nod that she gave when the superintendent asked her if this was her sister expressed nothing.
Andrew knew that in her way she was a very strong woman and he believed that she was capable of facing many things which would make most people crumple, but he felt that there was something desperate about this self-control and that it would have been better for her to give in to her emotions.
After they emerged from the mortuary they got back into the police car that had brought them to Maddingleigh and were driven back to Lindleham. The superintendent went with them. When they arrived at Cherry Tree Cottage he addressed Andrew.
“Do you think Professor Camm could answer a few questions now, or shall I come back later? This must have been a great shock for her.”
He had been glad, as Andrew had realized when he first saw him, that Constance was not alone and particularly that it was a man who was there with her, a man with whom the detective would find it far easier to talk than with this small, old, terribly tense woman.
Andrew said, “Constance?” knowing what the answer would be.
“Now,” she said. “Now. Let us deal with this at once. There are questions I want to ask you as well as what you want to ask me.”
“Of course,” the superintendent said. “Very well then, if we may, we’ll come in with you.”
His voice was quiet, with a touch of the Berkshire accent in it, and was full of sympathy. Andrew wondered how it would have sounded if Constance had refused to let him come in and to answer his questions.
She led the way into the house. The time, Andrew noticed as they passed a grandfather clock in the hall, was ten minutes past seven. That surprised him. He felt sure that it was far later. The day seemed to have been going on interminably.
Sergeant Southby followed Superintendent Stonor in and took a chair in the corner of the room, making himself as inconspicuous as possible. Constance sat down in her usual char beside the fireplace. She was very pale and the lines from her nostrils to the corners of her mouth were deeper than usual, but her eyes were as bright as ever. Almost more bright, Andrew thought, and he wondered uneasily what would happen to her once she yielded to the effect of shock. From experiences of his own he knew that it did not always make itself felt immediately. At a time of crisis many people can be totally calm, can even appear almost indifferent to what has happened, but they pay for it later.
“I think Professor Camm could do with a drink,” he said to Stonor. “What about you?”
A little to his surprise, because he had been reared in the belief that policemen do not drink when they are on duty, both men accepted. Perhaps, he thought, Stonor felt that it would help Constance to relax if he joined her in a drink. It was Constance who rejected hers. She accepted the glass that Andrew filled for her, but put it down on a small table beside her and did not touch it.
“I’ve several things to tell you,” she said. “Things that perhaps I ought to have told you before now. Professor Basnett thought I should. Perhaps if I had, this terrible thing wouldn’t have happened. I don’t think it would have made any difference, but who can tell? It might have. In any case, I shall always blame myself. But first will you tell me how and when you found my sister?”
She could have asked the same question when they had been in the car on their way into Maddingleigh, but she had been completely silent. Andrew wondered if she could have been trying to persuade herself that the body that she was going to see might not be Mollie’s. She spoke now in as careful and precise a manner as if it had been the beginning of a lecture.
“As I told you,” Stonor said, “Mrs. Baird was found—it’s about two hours ago now—by two boys who’d gone fishing in the stream at the bottom of Clareham Hill. You know that hill we went down on the way into Maddingleigh. You remember we crossed a bridge over a stream there. And there’s a lane branching off the main road on either side of the bridge along the side of the stream.”
“I know it,” Constance said.
“If you follow the lane to the left,” he went on, “it eventually joins up with Bell Lane some way beyond Lindleham House, and it looks as if your sister may have been driven up Bell Lane and then along the lane towards the bridge and her body thrown into the stream about halfway along there. Then the car probably drove on to the bridge and turned towards either Clareham or Maddingleigh. You understand, so far we’ve only been guessing. We’ve had hardly any time to begin an investigation. There was no attempt to hide her identity. Her handbag was in the stream beside her and so was a basket of groceries.”
“Was she alive or dead when she was driven down to the stream?” Constance asked.
“Almost certainly dead,” he answered. “I’ll be able to tell you more when the forensic people have had time to form an opinion, but our assumption at present is that one of the stab wounds killed her, probably around midday.”
“And she’d been in the stream all that time?”
“We don’t know that yet.”
“But in any case, it was broad daylight when her body was thrown in. Wasn’t the murderer taking a fearful risk of being seen?”
“A considerable risk, yes. We’ve started inquiries to see if anyone saw a car turn down into that lane or emerge from it any time from about eleven o’clock this morning onwards. But if he was aware that anyone had seen him, presumably he’d have kept the body in his car and disposed of it somewhere else. It looks as if he was in a hurry to get rid of it, otherwise he could at least have waited for darkness. There may have been a reason for that.”
“I think you can narrow the time of your inquiries down at least a little,” Andrew said. “This morning Mrs. Baird went to Dr. Pegler’s surgery in Clareham and she left it with Nurse Grace, the district nurse, who gave her a lift to the crossroads. I had a talk with Nurse Grace this afternoon and she said it w
as about half past eleven when she dropped Mrs. Baird off and saw her start up Bell Lane.”
“I see. Thank you,” Stonor said. “That may be useful. But do I understand that you’d already started inquiries to find out what had happened to Mrs. Baird?”
“Yes,” Constance said. “You see, she went along to the surgery, as she does once a month, to pick up some pills, and I expected her to come straight home. She was walking, she hadn’t taken the car, but even so she’d normally have been home by twelve o’clock at the latest. But for a time when she didn’t come back I thought she might be having a drink with someone, and then just possibly that she’d stayed on for lunch wherever she was, though it wasn’t like her to do that without telephoning. In fact, it wasn’t like her to do it at all, because she was going to do a little shopping in the village for our lunch, and we’ve a guest, so she was likely to be home in good time to get the lunch, as she usually did. So presently I phoned Mrs. Roberts, who’s Dr. Pegler’s receptionist, and asked her if she’d seen my sister, and it was she who told me she’d seen her leave with Miss Grace. So later in the afternoon, when my sister still hadn’t come home, Professor Basnett went along to ask Miss Grace if she knew anything about her, and she told him about giving Mollie a lift to the crossroads. And that’s the last we know about her. And as a matter of fact, we’d just been talking about getting in touch with the police when you and the sergeant arrived here.”
While she had been talking Andrew had found himself wishing that her voice would shake, or that tears would appear in her eyes, but she went quietly and lucidly on. He was scared of what her reaction might be presently.
The sergeant was making jottings in a notebook. Stonor was looking at Constance with a gravity that gave his narrow, rectangular face a look of severity, but his voice remained gentle.
“Can you give us any idea why this horrible thing should have happened?” he asked.
She hesitated, then got up and went to a small bureau in a corner of the room. Opening a drawer, she took out a letter which Andrew recognized as the anonymous letter that she had shown him in his flat in London. She held it out to Stonor.
“My sister received this three days ago,” she said. “Will you read it?”
He glanced at the address on the envelope, then took the letter out and read it.
“Curious,” he commented.
“What do you make of it?”
“I would need some time to think about that. What did you make of it yourself?”
She sat down again. “My first guess was that it was the work of a lunatic. Then I began to think it might be just an ugly sort of hoax. Then I had another idea and when I’d thought of it I began to get scared and I went to London to see Professor Basnett, who’s a very old friend, to see what he thought of it. And he agreed with me that my idea was a possible explanation of the letter. It was that someone had written two letters, probably both of them with almost the same address in Bell Lane, then had got them muddled up so that my sister got one that had been intended for someone else, while that person got a letter that had been meant for her. And I should tell you that Professor Basnett advised me to show that letter you’ve got there to the police immediately, but I didn’t because of the other letter that someone else got. I was afraid of your finding out what was probably in it. But I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you about it now. It can’t hurt anyone.”
“Do I understand you think it referred to your sister and that now she’s dead you don’t mind who knows what was in it?”
“Just that.”
“Then you’re going to tell me now what you think it was?”
“Yes, but you must understand, I’m only guessing. It’s only a guess that there were two letters that got mixed up. I’ve no evidence of it. Perhaps I was right in the first place and it was just a bad joke or a bit of lunacy.”
“Yes, I understand. But what is it you’re afraid of?”
For the first time her hand closed round the glass on the table beside her and it looked as if she were about to drink from it. But then she let it go. Folding her hands in her lap, she said, “Do you know that my sister inherited a lot of money from Mrs. Ryan, who lived at Lindleham House, and for whom she worked for fifteen years?”
“No,” he said, “I don’t know anything about that.”
“That was what happened,” Constance said. “But there was a complication. Mrs. Ryan made the will that left the money to Mollie about a month before she died. She’d had a stroke and was semi-paralyzed. The witnesses were Dr. Pegler and Nurse Grace. There was a legacy to the housekeeper, Mrs. Grainger, and the house was left to Mrs. Ryan’s nephew, Nicholas, but all the rest of her money was left to Mollie.”
“Just a moment,” Stonor interrupted. “Your sister saw this will? She was certain of its terms?”
“So I understood from her.”
“I see. Go on.”
“Well, a few days before Mrs. Ryan’s death she made another will, and again the witnesses were Dr. Pegler and Nurse Grace, but neither of them knew anything about what was in it, or so they said. But Mollie told me she’d read it and that it left her and Mrs. Grainger only small legacies and everything else to Nicholas. But that will disappeared. It’s never been found. It seemed possible that Mrs. Ryan destroyed it herself, doing one more last-minute change of her mind, because she did tear up some papers and got Mrs. Grainger to remove the fragments. That at least was believed at the time and so the earlier will was accepted, one reason being that Nicholas never made any attempt to contest it. And so Mollie inherited a lot of money, while Nicholas got only that ugly great house. However…” For the first time her voice shook and her hand darted out to the glass of whisky and she drank a little.
“Yes?” Stonor said.
“It was Mollie who destroyed the second will,” Constance said abruptly. “She told me so herself. There, I’ve got that off my chest at last.”
In the last few minutes the superintendent’s face had become completely expressionless. There was only a blank sort of seriousness on it. He said nothing, apparently waiting for Constance to go on. He had guessed before she told him, Andrew thought, what she was going to say and he did not intend to help her now with questions.
“I told you,” Constance went on, and there was a note of desperation in her voice, “she told me so herself.”
“And that’s all the evidence of it you have?” Stonor asked. “Her spoken word?”
“Yes, but of course it was true.”
“What sort of woman was your sister?”
It took Constance a moment to decide how to reply. “She was—oh, she was—well, sometimes peculiar.”
“Dishonest in many ways?”
“Oh no, not at all. Never. Very scrupulous.”
“It was hardly scrupulous to destroy a will.”
“No, but I’ve said she was peculiar. What I mean is, she’d had two serious mental breakdowns. On the one occasion she was in a mental home for some months, and when she destroyed the will I was sure—what’s the phrase?—that the balance of her mind was disturbed.”
“So when she told you about this, you did nothing about the matter yourself. Was the balance of your mind disturbed too?” For the first time there was an edge on his voice.
The only effect that it had on Constance was to bring the twitch of a sardonic smile to her lips.
“Do you know, I think it may have been,” she said. “Certainly, on looking back, it seems to me my judgement was seriously at fault. I only thought of what I believed would be best for Mollie, and I don’t mean simply in financial terms. I thought of what it might do to her if she had to confess in public what she’d done. I thought of it perhaps getting into the newspapers and of what her friends would think of her. And I thought it might easily drive her over the edge again, and then—then there was always the chance that she’d never come back. Of course, ever since the last time it’s always been at the back of my mind that it could happen again. Have you ever had a
ny contact, Mr. Stonor, with anyone who you’re deadly afraid may one day turn out to be incurably insane?”
“I meet them every day of my life,” he answered. “And a good deal of my job consists of trying to decide whether they’re genuine or fakes.”
“I don’t think you happen to love them, however,” Constance said.
“No, it’s true, I’m spared that.” The hard edge had gone again from his voice. “So you thought it would be best for your sister if you said nothing about what she’d told you and if she said nothing either.”
“Yes, but I’ve been certain for some time that I was wrong. It would have been far better to get the whole matter into the open and to have it cleared up. Just how one could have cleared it up legally I don’t know, but I suppose it could have been done. As it was, it preyed on her mind and used to bring on attacks of depression that frightened me. And then that letter came…”
“Ah, I’m glad we’re getting back to that,” he said. “Do I understand you were afraid that a letter which may have been received by someone else when it was intended for your sister referred to her having destroyed that will and was an attempt to blackmail her?”
“That’s what I was going to say.”
“And that the letter which reached her, accusing her of murder, may mean that her murder isn’t the only one we’ve got to consider—but I’ll come back to that presently. What I’d like to ask you now is: who could have known what was in Mrs. Ryan’s second will, or that your sister destroyed it? According to what you’ve told me, it might conceivably have been Dr. Pegler, Nurse Grace, Mrs. Grainger or Mr. Ryan. One of them could have been the blackmailer who wrote to Mrs. Baird. But is there anyone else?”
The Other Devil's Name Page 10
