The Blind Side: An Ernest Lamb Mystery

by Patricia Wentworth

  Lee said, “It doesn’t prove she did it.”

  “It will make the police sit up and think a bit. And she’s rather given herself away by disappearing. Just a little bit too clever, that business of ringing up Scotland Yard saying she’d got some hush-hush evidence, and then working off the piece about being frightened of me, and of poor old Rush. The damnable thing is that it might have come off. Lee, do you realize how very easily it might have come off? By gum, she’s a clever woman! What was it Lucinda said—very versatile? I’ll say she is. She probably came down here in the first instance to spy out the land. Ross wouldn’t give her any more money, and she may have wanted a line on him for blackmail, or even for a divorce. I wonder if she bribed old Mother What’s-her-name to retire and let her in here as charwoman. Ross hadn’t seen her for twenty years by all accounts. Mrs. Green was an ironclad disguise, and she put on the port-wine mark just to make quite sure. I don’t suppose Ross ever really got a look at her. She had nothing to do with his flat, and it would be easy enough to keep out of his way. Even if he passed her on the stairs, she’d only got to go down on her knees and start dusting between the banisters or something like that. I shouldn’t think he ever saw her face, but he might have seen it a dozen times without recognizing her. He probably remembered her like this.” He reached over for the first photograph and gave a short laugh. “Tights, curves, eyes, teeth, hair—not much there that you would connect with Mrs. Green, is there? Well, there she was. And all the time someone was moving around from one lot of cheap lodgings to another, calling herself Rosalie La Fay, forwarding Aggie’s letters to old Prothero, and getting his answers back. I wonder who it was. Didn’t you say there was a sister?”

  “Yes,” said Lucy Craddock in a flustered voice—“oh, yes, a sister—but I don’t remember her name.”

  Peter nodded.

  “Probably the sister then. Anyhow somebody she could trust to hold her tongue and do what she was told. Then Aggie gets her opportunity. She finds Ross’s key sticking in the door of his flat. She pinches it, and when Ross and Peterson are both out of the way for the day she goes in and has a good worry around. It was easy enough to dodge old Rush, because he’s got his settled times for everything, and she’d know what they were by then. Well, we know that Ross left his own bunch of keys lying about that day. That’s what he had the row with Rush about. He saw his papers had been meddled with and he accused Rush—‘Clean forgot himself Mr. Ross did,’ as the old boy put it to me. But it was Aggie. It must have been Aggie. And the first thing she saw when she opened that despatch-case was old Prothero’s letter urging Ross to make a will, and saying that the unsettled property amounted to a very considerable fortune and he ought to provide against any possibility of an intestacy. Mrs. Green mightn’t have made much of that letter, but you can bet your life that Aggie sucked it dry. If she was in any doubt she had only got to get the sister in Birmingham to go and ask the nearest solicitor. She could have copied the letter without names, or with different names, and have asked what the position of a widow would be if the husband died leaving a lot of unsettled property and no will. And I expect it was right there that she began to think of being Ross’s widow in desperate earnest. I don’t know how she brought it off all the same. She went home, and she went to bed drunk at half past nine. But I suppose she probably wasn’t really drunk at all, and allowing for that—”

  Lee caught him suddenly by the arm.

  “The Connells’ flat!” she said in a breathless voice.

  All this time Lucy Craddock’s eyes had been round and fixed. They did not leave Peter’s face, but they did not really appear to be seeing him or anything else. She blinked rapidly now, and said in a small, obstinate voice,

  “Oh, no, my dear, the Connells were away. And in any case—”

  “Not the Connells,” said Lee—“their flat. Mrs. Green—she had their key. She said so when she was going off on the Tuesday night. She said she had just finished cleaning up after them, and Rush was furious because she didn’t give him the key before she went. You know she had one of her bad turns, but I suppose it was just acting really. I am sure she just went home and pretended to be drunk so that the other people in the house would leave her alone, but I think she slipped back here—Rush doesn’t lock up till eleven—and hid in the Connells’ flat. It—it’s just underneath Ross’s, and she would be able to listen and make sure that everything was quiet before she came out.”

  “You think she shot Ross?” said Lucy Craddock in horrified accents.

  “What do you think, Lucinda?” said Peter drily.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  What Inspector Lamb thought was that it wasn’t going to be at all an easy job and he’d better get busy with a timetable.

  “The bother is, we don’t know where she may be making for. Just get on to Mr. Prothero at his private house, Mr. Renshaw, and ask whether he hasn’t had any word about a change of address from the woman in Birmingham. Mrs. Green won’t go to the place where her confederate has been staying, so I’ll lay they’ve got a move planned, and when it’s over it’ll be Mrs. Green who has taken on being Miss La Fay, and the other will have gone back to her own name or else gone off the map altogether.”

  He immersed himself in the timetable. Presently Peter came back, and he looked up alertly.

  “Well, what did you get, Mr. Renshaw?”

  “He’s on his dignity. Doesn’t keep clients’ addresses at his private house. Doesn’t expect to be rung up on a Saturday evening. But I did drag one thing out of him. All this chopping and changing of addresses falls into the last three months, and before that Mrs. Ross Craddock was living at Doncaster under the name of Miss La Fay. You see, I thought she might go back to wherever she was living before she started being Mrs. Green.”

  “Did he give you the Doncaster address?”

  “No, he didn’t. I haven’t rung off. Would you like to deal with him?”

  The Inspector heaved himself out of his chair. He could be heard coping with Mr. Prothero in a highly official voice, after which he returned and addressed himself to the timetable again.

  “He’ll get the address and let the Doncaster police have it. Now about these trains? Let’s see what she could catch—” He flicked pages, made notes, used the telephone, and turned a considering eye upon Peter. “The trouble is she isn’t going to look like Mrs. Green by the time she gets anywhere at all. If she goes to this Doncaster address she goes there as Miss La Fay, and of course we can question her. But it’s not going to be so easy to prove that she ever was Mrs. Green unless she’s got the clothes with her. She mayn’t have been able to get rid of them, or she mayn’t have thought it necessary. If it hadn’t been for the photographs, no one would ever have connected her with Mrs. Green. She could have gone ahead and claimed all that money, and no one would ever have dreamed of suspecting her. Mind you, we’re very far from having a case against her as things stand. The best hope is that she’ll give herself away. Now, Mr. Renshaw, I’m going to Doncaster, and if you like you can come along too. I’m sending Abbott to Birmingham. I make it this way. I don’t suppose for a moment that the woman was really ringing up from Charing Cross—much more likely King’s Cross. And she’d get the first train she could. Well, the first train’s a slow one, and she had twenty minutes to catch it. She may have got out of Mrs. Green’s clothes and taken the mark off her face before she rang me up, or she may have still had it to do. I should think she would have done it already, because she wouldn’t want to attract attention by being seen at King’s Cross looking like Mrs. Green, and twenty minutes wouldn’t give her too much time for what she would have to do. She wouldn’t want to hang about the station waiting for a fast train either—she’d want to get clear away out of London, because she knew she’d started a hue and cry. Now this is where we come in. There’s an express thirty-five minutes from now, and it reaches Doncaster ten minutes before that slow train. If she didn’t take that, she’ll be taking this. So either we get to Don
caster ten minutes before she does, or we all get there together, and I’ll be very glad of your assistance to identify the lady.” He paused, turned a hard, solemn gaze upon Peter, and added, “Always supposing she’s going to Doncaster, which I don’t feel at all sure about myself.”

  “I’m with you,” said Peter. “Lucinda, lend me a pound. One needs a margin on a wild goose chase. Better make it two, or even three. She may have gone to Jericho. What happens then, Inspector? Do we charter an aeroplane? What—a whole fiver? Lucinda—how prodigal! By the way, you’d better make Lee go to bed—she’s all in.” He kissed them both and ran to catch up the Inspector, who had already begun to descend the stairs.

  The last of the summer daylight was gone long before their train reached Doncaster. The Inspector displayed a most unexpected agility. As the train slowed down, he had the carriage door open and was out upon the platform before it came to rest. He and Peter stood unobtrusively on either side of the exit. A local constable came up, spoke low, and went through into the booking-hall.

  Some twenty passengers had alighted. The first one or two approached the ticket-collector. A stout man in a bowler hat, with a stout wife in artificial silk and two stout little boys with apple cheeks, one flapping a banana skin and the other eating peppermints out of a paper bag. Here at least there could be no suspicion.

  There followed a jaunty, shabby young man with bow legs and a loud cloth cap. He hooked a ticket out of his waistcoat pocket, thrust it at the collector with a cheerful “Evening, George,” and swaggered off, whistling as he went.

  After him a woman with a shopping-bag full of brown paper parcels. She had a bent, discouraged look. Her hat had drifted to one side of her head. Her hair was in wisps. Her washed-out cotton dress sagged unevenly at the hem. She might have been Mrs. Green some dozen or so years ago. Peter looked at her with a sort of horror in his mind, because if this was the woman they were hunting, she seemed a most wretched and helpless prey. She sighed with utter weariness as she set down her bag and began a slow, ineffectual search for the ticket which she appeared to have mislaid. She had two pockets, a shabby handbag, and a purse. The ticket was in the purse, which was the last place in which she thought of looking for it. By the time she had given it up there was a little crowd of people waiting behind her, and Peter was quite sure that she was not Mrs. Green. Her eyes were the wrong colour. The light shone right down upon her as she looked up at the collector. It showed them hazel with faint brownish flecks. He remembered that Mrs. Green’s eyes were of a washed-out bluey grey. You can’t change the colour of your eyes. He looked across at the Inspector with a slight shake of the head, and, sighing heavily, the weary creature passed between them and went her way.

  There was no one else who could possibly have been Mrs. Green.

  The slow train came in ten minutes later, and they took up their places again, standing one on either side of the ticket-collector, but beyond him so that they were not seen by the passengers as they approached.

  Only some half dozen people got out when the train stopped, and four of these were men. Of the two women one was both tall and bulky, with great cushioned shoulders, enormous hips, and a heavy rolling walk. Her large red face shone with perspiration. Her strong black hair curled vigorously under a flat fly-away hat profusely trimmed with poppies, cornflowers, and white marguerite daisies. Her expression was one of complete satisfaction with herself and with the world in general.

  Last of the six came a woman in a neat dark coat and skirt and a close black hat. Copper curls rolling up from under the brim, an eye-veil standing out stiffly like an inverted halo, tinted cheeks, and a bright scarlet mouth—those things held Peter’s eye. A picture of Mrs. Green, wispy, bedraggled and down at heel, rose to the surface of his mind. The woman who was coming towards them along the platform wore thin silk stockings, and shoes with flashy buckles and heels like stilts. He saw Mrs. Green’s foot in a bulging shoe with a burst seam. He looked at the woman in black, and still saw Mrs. Green. It was like an effect in a film—one picture superimposed upon another, both pictures there together, flickering, combining, separating again. He felt horror, and the keenest excitement he had ever known. For no reason that he could have named he was quite sure that this was, not Mrs. Green who had served her turn and was no more, but Aggie Crouch—Rosalie La Fay—Ross Craddock’s wife. No, Ross Craddock’s widow—she had most efficiently seen to that.

  He looked across at Inspector Lamb. His eyes gave a scarcely perceptible signal as the woman came up ticket in hand. The two of them stepped forward together and blocked her way.

  The shock was absolute. It caught her on the peak of her success and knocked her spinning. The risks had all been run, the price had all been paid. She was secure, triumphant, utterly unprepared. And then, right in her path, the Inspector whom she had tricked, and Peter Renshaw whom she had left to bear the blame. She stopped, and froze before their eyes. Her chin dropped. The colour stood out ghastly on cheeks turned suddenly grey.

  The Inspector’s hand came down on her shoulder. He began to say his piece. “Agnes Craddock, alias La Fay, alias Green, I arrest you—” But he got no farther than that. She wrenched from under his hand, whirled round, and darted back across the platform through the first open carriage door and, banging it behind her, out on the other side.

  Peter stood where he was. He had identified her, but he would do no more. He saw the Inspector snatch at the carriage door and climb in. The air was suddenly full of loud commotion and noise—the shriek of a whistle, the roar of an oncoming train. Porters ran, the ticket-collector joined them, passengers who had just given up their tickets came streaming back. He saw them run, he heard them shout, and he heard the grinding and clanging of the train which came to rest against the far platform.

  The ticket-collector came hurrying back, a fair-haired man with a face like a damp dish-cloth.

  “It got her!” he said, and leaned against the wall. “Ran right in front of it she did, and it caught her and knocked her flying. I dunno if she’s dead or not, but I’m to ring up for the ambulance.” He wiped his face with his sleeve and stumbled through into the ticket office.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Peter Renshaw came back to Craddock House on the Sunday afternoon. He thought, “Well, it’s all over now. Bobby’s safe, and I don’t give a damn whether Mavis is safe or not. No need to either, Mavis being very well able to look out for Mavis Grey.” He thought, “Lee and I can get married. I can take her right away out of this, and I hope to heaven we never see Craddock House again.”

  He rang the bell of Lucy Craddock’s flat, and when Lee opened the door he picked her up and held her close, and didn’t say a word.

  When they were in the sitting-room he said in an odd, unsteady voice, “Where’s Lucinda?” and Lee said,

  “She’s lying down. I think she’s asleep.”

  They stood looking at each other. Lee’s lips trembled.

  She said, “Why don’t you tell me what has happened?” And Peter said,

  “It’s all over—she’s dead. It’s a good thing—better than being hanged. When she saw old Lamb and me she lost her nerve and bolted—right under a train. Horrid business. They got her to a hospital, and she was able to make a statement. Old Lamb says she was as clear as a bell. She dictated a confession. I’ve got a copy of it here. Come and sit down.”

  He took out a number of folded type-written sheets and gave them to her. She sat down on the sofa. Peter sat beside her. They read the confession together.

  “My name is Agnes Sophia Crouch. My stage name is Rosalie La Fay. I married Ross Craddock at the Marylebone register office on August 25th 1917 when he was over from France on ten days’ leave. That was the only time we lived together. When he came home after the Armistice he’d had enough of me. He said so. Said he’d been a fool to marry me. Said I was older than him. And if I was, I was his wife just the same. He couldn’t get away from that, could he? I’d got my lines.

  His father di
dn’t like it, but he played up. There wasn’t anything against me, and so I told the lawyer. And old Mr. Craddock made me an allowance. It was three hundred a year to start with, but when the depression came he cut it down. And then he cut it again, and when he died Ross brought it down to twenty-five, and then this last year he stopped it altogether. Well, I wasn’t going to stand for that. How could I? I wasn’t getting any younger, and jobs weren’t getting any easier to find. Besides I wasn’t going to put up with it. No one’s ever scored me off without my getting my own back in the end. If he had treated me decently, I’d have let him alone, but he didn’t know how to treat anyone, and I wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

  I thought I’d come up to London and smell round a bit, and I thought I’d manage it so that no one would know. I left my room in Doncaster, and I got my sister Annie—she’s Mrs. Love, and a widow—to take a room in Birmingham and call herself Miss La Fay. There’s enough likeness for a description of one of us to fit the other. But first and last, all Annie knew was that I’d got business in London and didn’t want anyone to know I was there. She thought I was getting a divorce, and she sent my letters on to me care of the post office. She didn’t know anything more than that.

  Twenty years ago I played the part of a charwoman called Mrs. Brown. It wasn’t much of a play, but I got the best notices I ever had. Well, I took a fancy to play the part again. I bleached my hair and painted a port-wine mark on my face, and I took a lot of pains over the clothes—to get them shabby enough, you know—and I called myself Mrs. Green. First thing I did was to get friendly with the old woman who did the daily work at Craddock House. She was getting past it, and her married daughter was wanting her to go and help with the children, so I got her to take me round and speak for me. Nobody bothers where a daily comes from.

  What I thought was, if Ross wouldn’t give me my allowance I could run him in for a divorce, and then he’d have to give me alimony. I hadn’t any money to pay detectives, so I had to look about and find the evidence myself. Well, up to a fortnight ago I hadn’t got any further, and I was getting right down sick of the whole thing. I’d enjoyed it at first, doing Mrs. Green, and taking everybody in, and feeling what a good job I was making of it, but that had worn off and I was just about as sick of it as I could be.