Four Strange Women

by E. R. Punshon

  “What on earth?” began Bobby, quite taken aback.

  The window of the study opened and the colonel looked out.

  “Anyone there?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. A woman, sir,” Bobby answered.

  “What’s she want?” the colonel inquired unemotionally —he seemed a man hard to surprise, Bobby thought. “Better bring her in,” he added, closing the window.

  “Very good, sir,” said Bobby, addressing, however, only a closed window. “This way,” he said to the woman.

  She made no attempt to protest or resist—to Bobby’s great relief, for if there was one thing he dreaded more than another it was having to handle a woman throwing a fit of hysterics. He could still remember from his uniform days the feel of ten very sharp nails scoring ten distinct and extremely painful channels down his cheeks. He could still remember, on the same occasion, the look on a youthful colleague’s face as a most ungentle hand twined itself in his curling locks and pulled and pulled and pulled. True, Bobby also remembered the callous advice given by an old and experienced sergeant on the same occasion that still was mentioned with a certain awe in the district where it had happened.

  “Dip the end of a towel in cold water,” the sergeant had said, “and apply it to the face hard and frequent.” Good advice, no doubt, but then towels and cold water are not always so immediately available as are finger nails and hairpulls, so that Bobby’s relief remained intense as his captive continued to walk sedately by his side. He even had the impression that in some way she was pleased, that this was what she had wished to happen, and he found himself wondering if those faint noises he had heard had been less unintentional than they had seemed. He had left the front door open and they passed through, the woman still walking meekly by his side, and on into the lounge. The three by the fire looked up in a surprised way at his return with this unexpected companion. Bobby was walking straight on, but abruptly the woman turned from his side, made a step or two towards the little fireside group, and then stood still in a curiously intent and eager, even challenging attitude, her deep-set, hollow, burning eyes concentrated in turn on each of the three others with a kind of fierce and passionate energy.

  It was the first time Bobby had seen her clearly, for, at the door of the public-house the night before, only her white, thin face had shown in the light issuing from the building. He could see now that she was about thirty or thirty-five, tall for a woman, thin and emaciated, with white, pinched features drawn and fine, her cheeks hollow, the skin stretched tight over the bones of the face, the eyes deep sunk with dark lines beneath, the small mouth tightly closed by thin, bloodless lips. She was dressed almost in rags, in an old coat and skirt that once perhaps had been of good material but now was stained and torn. She wore, too, an ancient raincoat, her shoes were worn out, down at heel, altogether deplorable, her stockings sagged about her ankles and were badly and carelessly darned. She had no hat and her hair showed untidy and uncared for, and a woman has indeed gone far into the depths when she neglects her hair. A deplorable figure; and yet, it seemed to Bobby, puzzled and uneasy, showing nothing of that sad acquiescence in defeat which is stamped upon so many of those for whom society has no place. Rather, he thought, there burned within her a fierce and secret flame of purpose, and he wondered, once more puzzled and uneasy, what that purpose could be.

  It was indeed as though this homeless outcast dominated and controlled the scene, as though all these surroundings, these comfortable surroundings of middle-class life, had no importance save as a background for her personality.

  Bobby did not attempt to interfere. He was conscious of an impression growing stronger every moment that this scene had a significance that he did not in the least understand, but that, if he could grasp its meaning, would explain many things.

  For a brief moment the woman stood there in the same attitude while in startled silence the three by the fire looked up at her. Slowly—or so it seemed, though probably it was but the fraction of a second—the passionate intensity of her gaze concentrated itself upon Lady May; and it was as though Lady May’s beauty shrivelled and passed beneath those burning eyes as a thing of no account or consequence. Lady May shrank back in her chair and lifted a hand as if to protect herself, that slim white hand on which still glistened the stone that was not, she said, the real Blue John.

  The woman’s glance passed on and rested next on Becky, and to Bobby it seemed that just as Lady May’s beauty had shrunk beneath it to unimportance, so Becky’s air of anger and sullen hostility diminished to the status of a little girl’s bad temper. Bobby was aware of an impression that Becky herself felt this, and that she was astonished, knowing that in some strange way she had met in this outcast of the streets a stronger than herself. She made a movement as if to rise and then changed her mind and turned to the other a sulky and reluctant shoulder. Bobby was reminded of a child bewildered by a rebuke it did not understand, and he was sure Becky drew a breath of relief when the stranger looked away from her and at Hazel Hannay.

  But Hazel, unlike her two companions, met the other’s gaze with one as deep, as questioning, as passionately intent as her own, and it was as equal antagonists that their eyes met, in equal search and equal challenge. Hazel spoke, very quietly. She said:—

  “Who are you? What do you want?”

  But now Bobby thought it was time to interfere. “Colonel Glynne is waiting,” he said, and touched the woman on the arm.

  Instantly there left her all the strange intensity she had seemed to show, all the fierce restrained passion her manner and her bearing had so strangely expressed. She drooped, she veiled her eyes, she made herself seem small and humble and of no importance, and in doing so she intensified tenfold the menace of her presence, the dark and hidden threat that somehow she had managed to convey. In silence she turned to follow Bobby and they went on and along the passage to the colonel’s room; she in meek obedience, Bobby profoundly uncomfortable as he tried to attach some meaning to the odd scene he had just witnessed, that had hidden in it, he was convinced, a warning of ill things to come.

  Of one thing only his close observation of what had passed had convinced him—that none of the other three had ever before, to their knowledge, seen this wanderer of the streets and yet that she herself knew something of each one of them. Though how indeed could ever their orbits have crossed, the orbit on the one hand of a vagabond singer at the doors of public-houses, on the other those of three prosperous, carefully brought-up young ladies with all that young ladyhood still implies? How could they ever have come into closer contact than that provided by the stray coppers wherewith the well-to-do express their knowledge that they, too, are indeed their brothers’ keepers?

  Bobby opened the door of the study. The woman went in. Bobby followed her. The colonel was sitting at his desk. She stood silently before him, her hands folded, her attitude humble and pleading. Bobby, staring at her, could hardly believe it was the same woman whose fierce gaze had but the moment before seemed to challenge the place and life and safety of those other three.

  “Now then, my good woman,” said the colonel briskly, “what’s all this?”

  “Please, sir, I didn’t mean no harm, sir,” she answered in a small, whining voice, certainly assumed.

  The colonel looked at her sharply. It seemed he, too, recognized the false note in her voice.

  “What’s your name?” he asked. “What were you doing out there?”

  “Please, sir, I didn’t mean no harm,” she answered in the same whining tones. “Please, sir, I didn’t mean nothing. Please, sir, I’m Mrs. Jane Jones. Please, sir, I only thought if I went to the back door they might give me a little bite of something to eat. Please, sir, they do sometimes, if I sing for it, sir.”

  “Sing for it?” the colonel repeated in a puzzled way. Then, more sharply:—“You say you are married. Where’s your husband?”

  “Please, sir, he’s dead, sir, a long time ago, sir. At least, I think so, sir. He left me, sir.”


  “Where do you live?”

  “I don’t live nowhere, please, sir. At least, I mean, anywhere, sir. That’s why I sing, please, sir, to get the price of a bed. I’ve got that, please, sir.” She dived into the recesses of her appalling old raincoat and produced a filthy rag that once perhaps had been a handkerchief and that now appeared to have a few coins tied up in one corner. “I thought if they let me sing at the back door they might give me some supper, sir. Sometimes I get enough for breakfast, too.”

  “Why were you listening at the window?” the colonel demanded abruptly.

  “Oh, I wasn’t, sir. Please, sir, I wouldn’t never think of such a thing, so I wouldn’t. Only sometimes it’s a help to know what the gentleman’s like, because there’s some you could see at once would as like as not set the dog on you or send for the police, even though you ain’t doing nothing wrong. And then again there’s some as look as if they might listen theirselves, and that’s generally good for silver as well as a bite to eat. And sometimes I can see they’re Welsh and then I know it’s all right.”

  “Why?”

  “I sing Welsh songs then,” she answered.

  “Do you mean you know Welsh?” the colonel asked; “that you sing in Welsh?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The colonel looked a trifle incredulous. Bobby, speaking for the first time, said:—

  “That much is true, anyhow. I happened to notice her outside a pub last night. It was an old lament in Welsh she was singing.”

  The woman who called herself Jane Jones flashed at Bobby a glance that reminded him of her other personality, the one she had shown in the lounge. He found himself thinking of little Mr. Eyton. Had everyone, he wondered, a second personality? Did each commonplace, every-day exterior conceal such hidden fires? Bobby continued:—

  “I believe a constable told her to move on. There was some sort of fuss and afterwards a complaint was made against the constable for being too officious. Inspector Morris got it, he sent it on to the city police. It was their man and their affair.”

  “I slipped away, I did,” the woman said in the same whining voice she had used throughout, a sort of ‘kind-sir-spare-a-copper’ voice. “I always do if there’s trouble. Not that there ain’t nothing wrong in singing nor in kind- hearted ladies and gentlemen giving a copper or two. Why shouldn’t they? And me always moving on at once when so told by the police gentlemen.”

  The colonel was plainly more puzzled than ever. Bobby said:—

  “May I ask a question, sir?” The colonel nodded. Bobby said:—“Mrs. Jones, were you in Wychwood Forest the other night, at the ‘Green Man’, on the Long Dene road?”

  There was caution in her eyes now. She said:—

  “Is that where they let me come inside? They were very kind. After I had sung a bit, they made a collection for me.”

  “The landlord wanted you to stay, didn’t he?” Bobby asked. “I think he said you could sleep there, said you could have a job if you liked, help in the day, sing at night. You refused. He was annoyed, told you to take yourself off. Is that so?”

  “I didn’t think he really meant it,” she answered, still cautious. “I didn’t trust him. He wasn’t drunk, but he had had a drop. I didn’t expect he would feel the same in the morning.”

  Bobby looked at the colonel. It was his chief’s examination, not his. But Glynne nodded.

  “Carry on,” he said briefly. “Your pigeon.”

  Bobby turned to the woman again.

  “Was it because you thought he might change his mind next morning that you refused the offer of a good bed for the night?”

  “A woman can’t be too careful about an offer of that sort,” she told him. “I’ve always been respectable.”

  “Of course, that’s nonsense, as you very well know,” Bobby said. “The landlord’s married and there are three or four women employees. The ‘Green Man’ does a good trade, gets all the Long Dene traffic. What was your real reason for refusing? Where did you spend the night?”

  She was plainly on the defensive now. She said:—

  “I’ve forgotten.”

  A familiar phrase, a useful phrase when both the truth and a lie seem equally dangerous.

  “Your memory is rather suddenly defective,” Bobby said dryly. “Did you spend the night in the forest?”

  “Oh, no, why should I? It was a barn somewhere, I don’t know where. It was dark; and it was dark when I left in the morning. I always do when I sleep in a barn; I mean, I go before the farm people are up.”

  “Do you know that was the night when a caravan in the forest caught fire and a man lost his life?”

  “Please, sir, I don’t know nothing about that.”

  “For goodness’ sake,” snapped Bobby impatiently, “don’t talk in that idiotic way. Anyone can see it’s put on—and not very well put on, either.”

  “Please, sir, I don’t know nothing about that,” she answered deliberately, and Bobby recognized the note of mockery in her voice.

  “You are merely making us certain you have something to hide,” Bobby told her. “I suppose you know this gentleman is Colonel Glynne, chief constable of the county.”

  “No, sir, please, sir, I don’t know nothing about that,” came the same response.

  Bobby began to get a little red. Colonel Glynne was beginning to look a little amused. Bobby felt his examination was not being a great success. He tried again. He said:—

  “Do you know murder is a serious matter?”

  “Yes, I know that,” she answered; and this time there was that in her voice that startled both men, so did it seem vibrant with a quick and unexpected passion. She saw them looking at her, and instantly she seemed to feel she had betrayed something she had wished to keep concealed. In those whining tones she had begun by using, and then forgotten for a time, she repeated: “Please, sir, I don’t know nothing about that.”

  Bobby looked at her steadily and thoughtfully and for a time there was silence in the room. Then he said more gently than he had spoken before:—

  “I think you know that there was murder done the other night and have you then made up your mind you will not help?”

  She made no answer, but in her eyes, those deep and hollow eyes, there came now a different look, though one that Bobby could not fathom. He waited patiently and then she said:—

  “I have nothing to say.”

  He was silent, watching her closely, hoping to see some sign of weakening, some sign that she might change her mind. But she stood impassive, patient and inscrutable, and after a time, he said:—

  “What is your name?”

  “Mrs. Jane Jones.”

  “I mean your real name.”

  “I have forgotten,” she answered.

  “What was in your mind in the lounge?”

  “Only what sweet young ladies they looked and if one of them would be likely to give me sixpence if I asked for it.”

  “That is a foolish answer,” Bobby said.

  “You’ll get no other,” she told him.

  Bobby looked rather helplessly at his chief. He felt this kind of question and answer could go on for ever. The colonel had told him to carry on and he had done so, with, so far, a conspicuous lack of success. The colonel said now, speaking to Mrs. Jones, since that is the name by which she chose to be known:—

  “You said you wanted some supper. Mr. Owen will take you to the kitchen and ask them to give you something.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said. “I’ll sing for it, sir. I always like to sing for my supper.”

  “I am sure they will enjoy listening to you. I’ve no doubt I should myself,” the colonel answered. “Owen, you might see to it, will you? And you might see if Biddle is there. Tell him Mrs. Jones is waiting for a little as we may want to have another chat with her. You won’t mind, Mrs. Jones, will you?”

  She dropped him a curtsey and another to Bobby, both full of a scarcely concealed mockery. She said:—

  “Mind, when I�
��m in such luck to meet two such kind gentlemen and be given my supper without hardly asking for it. Why, I haven’t had such luck since the night I was at ninety-nine Mountain Street, off the Edgware Road, and they gave me a five-pound note, almost for nothing at all.”

  She bobbed to them both once more, and then made quickly for the door and Bobby followed her, frowning and puzzled, and more disturbed than he was quite willing to admit, even to himself. He noticed her shuffling, sloppy tread in those worn-out shoes of hers and wondered how in them she managed to move at all.

  CHAPTER IX

  CLUES

  What do you think of all that?” demanded the colonel when Bobby returned from depositing Mrs. Jones in the kitchen and seeing that Biddle was there to take care she made no unauthorized departure.

  “There’s something she doesn’t mean to let us know,” Bobby answered slowly. “Whether it’s about herself or about Mr. Baird’s death, I’m not sure. It might be either. It will be difficult to get her to talk.”

  “You asked her about what happened in the lounge. What was it?”

  Bobby tried to explain. He found it difficult. As he told the story there did not seem, even to himself, to be much in it. Colonel Glynne looked merely puzzled. Bobby, either from lack of skill in the telling, or from lack of imagination on the colonel’s side, entirely failed to convey the impression of strain, of concealed passion, of an unknown and brooding menace that had affected him so powerfully; so powerfully, he believed, the three young women.

  The colonel continued to look puzzled.

  “Mrs. Jones didn’t say anything?” he asked.

  “No, sir,” Bobby agreed. “It was the—the atmosphere,” he concluded, remembering the word little Mr. Eyton had used to Inspector Morris.