The Blind Side: An Ernest Lamb Mystery

by Patricia Wentworth

  “I began to go upstairs. The light was on in the hall as usual, but all the landing lights were out. I thought that was very strange indeed.”

  “You didn’t put the lights on?”

  “No, I went up in the dark. I thought I would put on the light when I came to my own landing. You see, I had given the key of my flat to Lee Fenton, so I knew I should have to ring and wake her up.”

  “And did you?”

  “No.” She sank back against the cushions and clasped her hands again. She said in slow, halting sentences, “I had to find the switch. It is on the wall by the door of Ross’s flat. I was feeling for it when I pushed the door and felt it move. I remembered the front door being open, and I was very frightened. It didn’t seem to me to be at all right. I opened the door a little way, and there was a light coming from the sitting-room. I called out, and I said, ‘Ross, are you there?’ ”

  Her voice quavered in the telling, as it must surely have quavered when she stood in the dark and called to the man who lay dead in the room beyond. She drew a long breath and went on.

  “I thought I ought to see if everything was all right. I went into the hall. The sitting-room door was standing wide open. From where I stood I could see a broken wine glass lying on the floor. There was a horrible smell of spirits and—and gunpowder. I thought about fireworks—and then I thought Ross wouldn’t. And then I began to be very, very frightened indeed. I felt as if I must go in, but I was so dreadfully afraid. I had to go in. I was sure something dreadful had happened. I saw Ross lying on the floor—with a pistol in his hand—”

  “Miss Craddock, are you sure about that?”

  Lucy Craddock began to cry.

  “Oh, yes—he was dead—he was quite dead. I saw him—lying there.”

  “Miss Craddock, please. You said just now that the revolver was in his hand.”

  “Oh, yes—it was.”

  “Are you quite sure about that? You know, when the body was discovered the revolver was lying some way off.”

  Lucy Craddock’s eyes opened till they looked quite round.

  “But I saw it in his hand—and I thought, ‘He has shot himself.’ And then I thought, ‘But why is this door open, and why is the street door open?’ And I thought, ‘No, he’s been murdered, and they’ve tried to make it look like suicide—because that is what Jasper Crosby did in Crimson Crime.’ So I am quite sure about the pistol, Mr. Abbott, and if it wasn’t there when he was found, then somebody must have moved it afterwards, because he was—oh dear!—quite dead.”

  “Somebody moved it,” said Frank Abbott. “And somebody took care to confuse any fingerprints there might have been.”

  He looked at Peter Renshaw, and Peter looked back. There was an infinitesimal pause. Then Abbott said,

  “Will you tell us what you did next, Miss Craddock?”

  “I ran away,” said Lucy Craddock simply. “I ran out of the house and down the street. I ran until I couldn’t run any more, and then I didn’t know where I was. It took me a long time to get to Phoebe’s, but at last I did. And then I fainted.”

  Frank Abbott leaned forward.

  “Why didn’t you alarm the house?” he said.

  Lucy Craddock stared at him. Her chin began to tremble.

  “Why didn’t you rouse the house? You say you thought your cousin had been murdered. You must have more than suspected that you had just seen the murderer. Miss Fenton and Peter were both within call. Why didn’t you call them?”

  She went on staring.

  “I—I couldn’t.”

  “Why couldn’t you? Miss Fenton—Peter—both within call—your own flat waiting for you—why should you run out into the street and wander there for an hour? Why, Miss Craddock?”

  She said in a dry whisper,

  “I—I was so frightened.”

  “But you ran away from the people who could have helped you. Miss Craddock, you must have had a reason for running away like that. Shall I tell you what I think that reason was?”

  Lucy Craddock said, “No—no.”

  Abbott went on speaking in his quiet, pleasant voice.

  “It was something you saw that sent you running out of the house—I think it was someone you saw.”

  She gasped, and got breath enough to speak firmly.

  “No, no, Mr. Abbott, I didn’t see anyone—only poor Ross, and he was dead.”

  He watched her face.

  “You didn’t see your niece, Miss Mavis Grey?”

  “Oh, no, Mr. Abbott.”

  “Or Miss Fenton?”

  A look of simple surprise answered this before she said in a tone of relief,

  “Oh, no, not Lee.”

  “Or—Peter?”

  The relief was still in her voice.

  “Oh dear, no.”

  “Miss Craddock, whom did you see?”

  “I didn’t see anyone—I didn’t indeed.”

  “You saw something that sent you running out into the road. Won’t you tell me what you saw? It was something to do with your niece, wasn’t it—with Mavis Grey?” He saw her face quiver. “You see, we know she had been there.”

  She turned at that to Peter, and he said,

  “They know that Mavis came back with Ross. He frightened her, and she came over to me at one in the morning. Miss Bingham saw her. Ross was alive then. Miss Bingham, fortunately, saw him too.”

  Abbott struck in.

  “Miss Craddock, you are not helping your niece by holding anything back. A full statement might help her very much, because, you see, she returned to Craddock’s flat at three o’clock. Miss Bingham saw her when she was coming back. Miss Grey foolishly denies this second visit and refuses to explain it. But if you saw Ross Craddock dead at a quarter past two, don’t you see how important that is to your niece? My idea is that she went back to the flat at three o’clock because she had left something there.”

  “Her bag,” said Peter. “She said she had dropped it on the landing. You know, Fug, she couldn’t have expected to find Ross’s front door open.”

  “She may have had a key.”

  “I don’t think so. If she had, it would be in her bag. She had that bag at the Ducks and Drakes, and she didn’t have it when she came over to me at one o’clock, but it was in her hand when she came back at three.”

  “She didn’t tell you where she had been?”

  “She told me she had dropped the bag on the landing.”

  “Did you believe her?”

  “No.”

  “Was Craddock’s door shut—then—when she came back to your flat?”

  “The landing was dark—I suppose Miss Bingham told you that—and I never left my hall, so I don’t know whether Ross’s door was open or shut. It was shut first thing in the morning.”

  This rapid interchange of question and answer seemed to pass Lucy Craddock by. When it ceased she said,

  “I see what you mean, Mr. Abbott. Indeed that is why I wished to make a statement. If poor Ross had been shot before Mavis went back to that dreadful room to look for her bag at three, then no one could suspect her of having anything to do with it.”

  “She did go back for her bag then?”

  Lucy Craddock looked at him nervously.

  “Perhaps I ought not to have said that, but, as I told her, it is our duty to help the law, and he was dead long before she came into the room.”

  “And it was her bag that you saw, Miss Craddock. Was that it? Was that why you didn’t give the alarm?”

  “Oh, no, Mr. Abbott. I didn’t see the bag at all. I wouldn’t have left it there if I had seen it. Oh, no, it had slipped down behind the cushion in that big chair, and I never saw it at all.”

  “Then what did you see?”

  “It was her powder compact,” said Lucy Craddock. “It must have fallen off her lap and rolled. It was right at my feet, and of course I knew it at once, because it was a birthday present from Bobby Foster—blue enamel, with her initials on it in diamonds—only of course not real o
nes, because Bobby couldn’t possibly afford that, and I hope Mavis doesn’t encourage him to be extravagant.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Lee looked out of the bedroom window and saw Peter getting into a taxi with Detective Abbott. Her heart stopped beating, because this meant that Peter had been arrested and was being taken away to prison.

  Detective Abbott shut the door with a good resounding bang and the taxi drove away up the street, and round the corner and out of sight.

  Lee’s heart had begun to beat again, painfully and hard. She hadn’t known just how much she loved Peter until she saw him go away like that. She never doubted for a moment that he had been arrested, and if they could arrest him, perhaps they could find him guilty. The most dreadful pictures rushed into her mind, causing her so much agony that she became giddy and had to grope her way to the bed.

  But she hadn’t time to be giddy. She must do something at once, and she knew just what she had got to do. She ran out of the flat on to the landing and almost bumped into Inspector Lamb. Before he had time to say “I beg your pardon” she had him by the sleeve.

  “I want to tell you something! Oh, please, please listen! He didn’t do it—he didn’t really! I want to tell you!”

  The Inspector looked pardonably surprised.

  “Steady on, Miss Fenton. What’s all this?”

  “Please, please listen to me!”

  “I’ll listen to anything—it’s my job. But not out on the landing. There are too many eavesdroppers in this house. Now suppose you ask me into your flat and tell me what it’s all about. I’m a bit tired of number eight.”

  She took him into Lucy Craddock’s sitting-room, where he sat down in the big armchair. Lee sat down too, because something seemed to have happened to her knees. She said in a small, rigid voice,

  “I want to tell you about Tuesday night. Peter didn’t do it—he didn’t really. I didn’t know you were going to arrest him or I would have told you before.”

  He looked at her shrewdly.

  “I didn’t know myself.”

  “I want to tell you about Tuesday night.”

  “You have made one statement already, Miss Fenton.”

  He got an agonized glance.

  “I didn’t tell you everything.”

  “Nobody ever does,” said Inspector Lamb.

  “But I will now—oh, I will really.”

  The Inspector’s second daughter was his favourite, perhaps because she had been delicate as a child. It so chanced that the eyes which gazed at him so imploringly were of the same deep grey as Ethel Lamb’s. He coughed, and said in a less official voice than the words warranted,

  “If you are thinking of saying anything that would incriminate you, it is my duty to point out that I shall have to take it down, and that it is liable to be used against you.”

  “Yes—I know. But that doesn’t matter at all,” Lee said.

  She felt a sort of dreadful impatience as she watched him get out his notebook, open it, try the pencil, and very leisurely improve its point. And then she was off on her story, the words tumbling over one another, and every now and then her voice catching and holding them up. Every time the Inspector looked up her eyes were fixed on him with the same desperate intentness. “Are you believing me?” they seemed to say. “Are you—are you? Because you must—oh, you must!”

  She was telling him about her father and mother, about the accident, and how she had walked in her sleep for months afterwards.

  “That is years ago. I was only fifteen. I’m twenty-two now. I hadn’t done it since, not until Tuesday night.”

  “And what makes you think you walked in your sleep on Tuesday night?”

  All the colour went out of her face as she told him.

  “You say your foot was stained, and your nightgown.”

  “Horribly stained. And then I found my footprints all the way from Ross’s door, and the door was shut. I didn’t know what had happened. I was afraid to call anyone. I washed my nightgown, and I washed the marks.”

  “Yes—you shouldn’t have done that.”

  “I was so frightened,” said Lee, her eyes wide and piteous.

  He went on asking her questions, and to most of them she had to answer, “I don’t know.”

  “You say you woke up with the feeling that something dreadful had happened.”

  “Yes, but I thought it was in a dream.”

  “Well, what did you dream?”

  “I don’t know—I don’t remember.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “No—I never do—I mean, I never did remember anything when I had been walking in my sleep.”

  The Inspector sat back and looked at her with a frown.

  “You know, I don’t think this helps us very much, Miss Fenton. All it points to is that whoever shot Mr. Craddock left the door open, and that you walked in your sleep and wandered in there and got yourself messed up.” He altered his tone sharply. “Was there any blood on your hands?”

  She shuddered and said, “Oh, no—no—not on my hands.”

  “Well now, Miss Fenton—what do you think about it all yourself? Do you think you shot Mr. Craddock?”

  He saw her wince, but she said quite steadily,

  “I don’t know. Perhaps I did.”

  “Had you any motive for shooting him?”

  “No—not him. But I might have thought he was someone else.”

  She told him about René Merville.

  “He—he frightened me—rather badly. If Ross took hold of me, I might have thought—”

  “Did you know Mr. Craddock had a revolver?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Have you ever fired a revolver?”

  “Why, no.”

  “Well, suppose you were going to fire a revolver, what would you do? Just tell me. Imagine you’ve got one in your hand now, and that you’re going to fire it at me. What would you do? Go on—tell me.”

  “I should point it at you, and—and—I should try and aim it.”

  He nodded encouragingly.

  “And then?”

  “I suppose I should fire it.”

  “Well, how would you fire it. Come along—tell me!”

  She was frowning now and puzzled.

  “I should—press the trigger—you do, don’t you?”

  “That all?”

  Her eyes were perfectly blank.

  “I suppose so.”

  The Inspector burst out laughing.

  “Well, you wouldn’t find you’d done much damage, Miss Fenton. Ever hear of a safety catch?”

  “Yes—I think so.”

  “Know what it is?”

  “Something to do—with a pistol—”

  “But nothing that you would have any idea of what to do with. That’s about the size of it—eh?”

  Lee’s lips began to tremble.

  The Inspector laughed quite heartily.

  “Well, Miss Fenton, I don’t think you shot Mr. Craddock. I don’t think you’d have known how to set about it even if you had wanted to—and you’d no call to want to that I can see.”

  “But it wasn’t Peter,” said Lee, in a tone of misery.

  “Well, it looks more like someone else at present,” said Inspector Lamb. “And you needn’t be so unhappy about him, because we haven’t arrested him yet. He’s only gone along with Abbott to get a statement from Miss Craddock.”

  Quite a bright colour came into Lee’s face. She jumped up and stood there breathing quickly.

  “And you let me go on and tell you things because I thought you’d arrested Peter! I never heard of anything so mean!”

  The Inspector began to say, “Well, there’s no harm done,” but he broke off in the middle because the door bell was ringing and Lee had gone to answer it. He followed, a little on his dignity. He had been jocose, and when the law unbends it expects appreciation.

  The door stood open to the landing, and just outside Mrs. Green was leaning on a broom.

 
“I thought as how he might like to know the way the telephone bell was ringing in there in number eight, and the door being locked, there’s no one can’t go in and answer it, not without they’ve got the key, which I suppose the police has got. And anyhow, seeing I knew the Inspector was in here with you, I thought I’d better ring the bell and let him know.”

  Long before the end of this speech the Inspector had his key in the door. The shrill insistence of the telephone bell came to them for a moment before it was muffled and finally cut off.

  “There’s something about the police in an ’ouse that fair gives you the creeps,” said Mrs. Green. “My nerves won’t stand it, and that’s a fact, Miss Fenton. Badgering you out of your life and suspecting innocent people—that’s all they’re good for. Good for nothing is what I say, or we shouldn’t be murdered in our beds like pore Mr. Craddock.”

  “Well, he wasn’t in his bed,” said Lee firmly.

  “And well you may so, miss, but that’s where he ought to have been at two o’clock in the morning instead of carrying on with those that did ought to know better.”

  Lee removed her eyes from the door behind which the Inspector had vanished. It was senseless to imagine that the telephone bell was bound to mean bad news. Anger against herself sharpened her voice as she said,

  “You know a lot more about it than I do, Mrs. Green.”

  Mrs. Green pressed her hand to her side and groaned.

  “I’m sure I wish I didn’t know nothing,” she said gloomily. “My ’ealth isn’t strong enough for all this kind of thing, Miss Fenton, and when that there Rush talks about giving me my notice, well, he may think himself in luck’s way if he sees me here again, for what with that last turn not being properly gone off, and what with the sight of the police fair turning my stomach, well, I give you my word I haven’t kep’ down nothing today if it wasn’t for a bit of a bloater I made myself take, with a mite of spirits to keep my strength up—and the floor rising under me this minute. Well, I don’t suppose I’ll be here again, Miss Fenton. There’s my pore sister been wanting me this month past, only I wouldn’t put no one about, seeing it was holiday time. But if I’m to be misjudged and mistook, well, I’m through, and so I told that Rush just now. ‘You can keep your notice to yourself, Mr. Rush,’ I said, ‘It’s me that’s giving in mine,’ I said. ‘Places where gentlemen get murdered and nobody any the wiser—well, they’re not what I’ve been accustomed to, and you can put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Rush,’ I said. So you won’t be seeing me any more, Miss Lee.” Her voice dropped to a carneying tone. She looked sideways and shifted a step or two nearer. “Miss Craddock’s been a good friend to me, and pore Miss Mary that’s gone. If there was any little remembrance now—” Lee felt a wave of nausea. “There’s things I can shut my mouth about, and there’s things that I could tell—” The words made hardly any sound. “There’s many a little thing I’ve done—and likely as not you won’t be seeing me again—”