by Leo Bruce
Carolus did not answer or turn, but nodded his head.
“I oblige here,” the voice croaked on. “Mrs Plum. Haven’t I seen your car in Sandringham Terrace? I thought it was the same one. It’s almost next door to where I live. I know where you are. I don’t know her to speak to, but I’ve seen her about for years. Well, I live at number thirty-seven. If you like to pop in there this evening when I get back from work I’ll tell you something that will give you a nasty turn. If you was to know all I do you’d never feel the same again. Ssss. One of them’s coming. See you this evening.”
Carolus walked on. Before returning to Wee Hoosie, however, he sent a telegram to a man in London who had several times obtained for him supplementary information about persons in his cases. Please obtain fullest details parentage record background of Cribb family of whom Lillianne Bomberger was daughter. Believe some still living Forest Hill.
Then, exhausted and hungry, he went to see what Mrs Stick would give him for lunch.
8
CAROLUS decided to postpone his interview with Alice Pink until after he had seen the secretive Mrs Plum and felt some of the remarkable physical effects which she had promised him. He had often wanted to know what creeping flesh was and how his hair could be made to stand on end except by a crew cut.
So after lunch he telephoned a postponement of his visit to Miss Pink and went for a swim with Fay and Priggley.
“You’re slacking, sir,” said Priggley. “You can’t let up in the middle of a case like this. In fact I think your whole handling of the thing is a bit corny.”
“You do?”
“Certainly. After all, the old kind of detection’s on its way out. We’ve gone forward from Baker Street. I don’t see how you expect to get away with a mysterious murder, examination of suspects, digging up the clues, keeping everyone in the dark, then Bang, the big revelation. It was all right for the first fifty years or so, but it’s completely outmoded now.”
“Really? And how do you think I should deal with my cases?”
“Far more suspense. Personal danger the whole time. The American school. You start with being shot at as you’re walking home, long before you’re investigating anything. Then a touch of the macabre—a brace of human skeletons in your bed at night. Rumours of great and gruesome organizations working. Odd little things like a woman at a bar suddenly screaming with terror. Pile it on. You might get filmed or anyway televised. As it is you’re dated, sir, honestly.”
“Thank you, Priggley.”
“I’m not denying that you have a certain flair. You do seem to stumble on the truth at the end. But I find it all too staid and sticky. Look at you now, lying out here sunbathing. You ought to be up and being shot at somewhere.”
“Carolus,” said Fay. “There’s that character.”
“Allowing for your vagueness, Fay …”
“No. Really. You know the one. When we were driving up to the house. They swore they’d never heard of him. Gold teeth. Squint. You remember?”
“Oh yes. Walking along the lower promenade behind us?”
“Yes, just level with us now. He’s not looking for anyone, I think. Just strolling.”
“There you are, Priggley. Instead of talking so much, tail that oaf. Let me know where he stays.”
There was no sign of the blase young man in Priggley as he dashed off.
“Watch him till I’m dressed,” he told Fay.
He was back in a moment and presently, when the man moved on, he followed.
Carolus lit a cigarette, and when the sun began to drop he and Fay left the beach.
At five o’clock he knocked at 37 Sandringham Terrace, envying Mrs Plum her simple digits. When she came to the door he saw her for the first time, a scrawny little woman with hispid upper lip and chin and an expression which suggested that her life was passed among the darkest mysteries and her nights were full of horror.
“Come in,” she whispered, keeping herself half concealed behind her door. “No one’s seen you, have they?”
“I think the woman who lives next door to me happened to be looking out as I passed.”
“Oh, she was, was she?” hissed Mrs Plum. “From behind the blinds, you mean? She doesn’t miss much. Mrs James, her name is, and she’s very thick with the one where you are. Oh, very thick they are.”
“I haven’t seen my landlady,” admitted Carolus.
“No. You wouldn’t,” said Mrs Plum. “She keeps herself to herself.”
“Is she Scottish?”
“Not that I know of. What makes you ask?”
“The name of the house.”
“That was there before her time. It’s number thirty-one, if the truth were told. Now you want to know about Trumbles. Only I’m not supposed to Speak. They said there would be a bit of extra if I managed to keep my mouth shut, which I did with the nosy coppers. But when I heard a gentleman as was a gentleman had come to ask questions, and not them lousy narks, I thought I better say what I know, though it chokes me. You won’t believe the half of it. It isn’t as though I haven’t got nothing to tell, either, because when you hear some of the things, I know you’ll go white as a sheet. You’ll shake in your shoes. You’ll be struck all of a heap. I know you will. Only them having said it would mean a little extra not to talk I thought, well, there you are.”
And there was Carolus handing over a pound note with great scepticism.
They were in a little room which corresponded to the ‘front’ one in Carolus’s house, but here there were bamboo tables and large, dusty ferns. Carolus sat in one straight chair and Mrs Plum in another.
“I’ve read about such goings-on in the papers, but I never thought it would be where I was working. Some of the things will make your blood run cold. When you’re working in a house like that with people you can’t help hearing and seeing, and I tell you it will chill your spine. When I first come to realize what was going on I trembled all over like a haspin leaf…”
“Yes, yes. What did you notice?”
“I’ll tell you one thing. They hated that Mrs Bomberger. Hated her so that they didn’t hardly know what to do. Real hate it was.”
“I know.”
“Ah, but you don’t know. Not like I do. If you could have seen their eyes sometimes. Like coals of fire, they was. And she just went on being sarcastic with them as though she didn’t care how much it made them feel small. I tell you it gave me the creeps. It was as much as I could do to get through my work.”
“Did you see any particular act which made you feel this?”
“Hundreds. What would you call it when Babs picked up the carving-knife and told me to take it with me and have it sharpened because it was blunt?”
“Was it?”
“I’m not saying it was like a razor, but when she said that to me it took my breath away. I began to be afraid of my own shadow. Then that Alice Pink putting things in Mrs Bomberger’s coffee before she took it up in the morning.”
“What sort of things?”
“Saccharine, she said it was, but when I saw her it turned me over inside. I thought I should go out of my wits. But what really gave me the horrors was that Graveston.”
“I haven’t seen him yet. He was the odd man, wasn’t he?”
“You may well say it. He was the oddest man I’ve ever seen, and I’ve known a few. He used to push her up to the top of the cliff in her bath-chair, and every time they went I never thought to see her back again. I could hear my teeth chattering at the thought of it. I couldn’t sleep at night for seeing her go over the edge, bath-chair and all, and being dashed to pieces on the rocks three hundred feet below.”
“But I understand that it was Mrs Bomberger who chose that way.”
“Ah, but that was just his artfulness. He made her think he didn’t like pushing her up there so that she should want it. There’s no denying she was very contrary. Oh, very contrary, she was.”
“Yes, but Graveston certainly didn’t push her over the edge of the cliff.�
�
“Not yet he hadn’t done, but you never knew when he wouldn’t, did you? Then I haven’t told you about those Cribbs. If ever anyone had murder in his heart he had. Well, I wouldn’t put it past both of them. I’ll never forget one afternoon when I happened to be passing the door where they was and I heard him. ‘It can’t go on,’ he said, just like that. ‘It can’t go on.’ I thought to myself, no it can’t, else you’ll do some wicked evil thing and there’ll you’ll be. Mind you, I’m not saying she wasn’t a difficult woman herself, Mrs Bomberger, though she never tried anything with me. I did my work and that was it. But being difficult’s one thing and being murdered’s another.”
“Undoubtedly,” said Carolus. “Now, Mrs Plum, I want you to try to remember the Thursday morning when you went up to the house and the police came to report that they had found Mrs Bomberger’s body.”
“Remember it? As if I should ever forget it to my dying day! It isn’t as though I’d been used to anything like that, because I’ve never been one to have anything to do with policemen, and as for murder, well! I never thought I’d get over it. I was in such a state …”
“Yes, but tell me about it as it happened. What time did you reach the house?”
“I caught the eight o’clock bus as usual which passes the end of the lane. I got up there at half-past eight, and as soon as ever I opened the back door …”
“You had your own key?”
“Yes. As soon as ever I opened the back door I knew there was something wrong.”
“What made you think that?”
“I just felt it.”
“Nothing was unusual? Out of place?”
“Not at first, there wasn’t. But when I went into the big sitting-room where they always sat at night, I thought, This is funny.”
“What?”
“Well, there was usually some cups and glasses lying about. Used ash-trays and that. That morning it was just as though they’d never been in there. Or if they had, someone had done the room before I arrived.”
“Had you ever known that before?”
“Not in the three years I’ve worked there. And when I went out to the kitchen there was nothing in the sink. They always washed up the supper-things—I think she made them do that—but there was nothing brought out from the big room. So I thought, I’ll just have a look at the cupboard where she keeps the drink, what there is, and bless me if the key wasn’t in it. Now that was unusual, because no one could ever get hold of that key but Mrs Bomberger herself, and she kept it with her. I can’t say what had gone from the bottles because I never got a sight of them, but I saw the whisky bottle on the shelf was empty.”
“Please go on.”
“By this time I was in a nice state, knowing what I did, and began to notice other things. Her bath-chair, for instance.”
“Yes?”
“Well, Graveston used to keep it in a sort of extra scullery we’ve got, and there it was. But I’d seen it when he put it away the night before, and now it was different. Clean as a new pin. What do you think of that?”
“I think it’s very interesting. What else?”
“Everyone seemed to be asleep. That wasn’t unusual for Mrs Bomberger, because sometimes she lay in all day, and woe betide anyone who disturbed her before she rung her bell. But when I listened at the foot of the back stairs I could hear Graveston snoring and there wasn’t a sound from the rest of the house. Still, I thought, it’s no business of mine, and I started on my work as though nothing had happened.
“Graveston was the first to come down. Him and me never have a lot to say to one another, and that morning I didn’t think it my place to ask any questions. I was just wondering whether I should go up and call Miss Gracie when there was a rat-tat on the front door to wake the dead and I felt my heart jump into my mouth. No sooner had I gone out than there were the police, two of them in plain clothes. Talk about a shock! I thought I should have the convulsions.”
“You let them in?”
“I was too upset to do anything else. ‘You work here?’ said one of them. I don’t know what else he could have thought when there was me with the duster in my hand. Then he gave me the news about Mrs Bomberger and told me to go and call the household and bring them down. Shall I ever forget it? It was on the tip of my tongue to say I could have told them as much with what I’d seen in the house already, but I managed to hold myself in and went off to call them.
“Miss Gracie was crying and Babs as pale as a ghost; and those Cribbs! Well, they had call to be upset of course with them thinking their Auntie was safe asleep in her bed and all the time she was buried in the sand with only her head sticking out. The police said it would be enough if Mr Cribb was to go down and identify her, and it didn’t seem ten minutes before they was back and starting their questions. On they went all that day, and I was wondering when my turn would come. I couldn’t take a bite to eat, though I did make a cup of tea for them and took it up to find these policemen sitting there.
“They started on me that very day. How long had I worked there and what had I noticed, but I knew how to answer them. Upset I might be, but I wouldn’t have coppers asking me this that and the other and I was very short with them. Oh, very short I was. ‘I do my work’, I said, ‘and ask no questions, so there you are.’ No, I’d never noticed anything. By the time I’d done with them you’d have thought it was the nicest household you could find.”
“I think you should have told them what you told me.”
“Not likely. Not to coppers, I wouldn’t. Let them find out for themselves.”
“Did you do Mrs Bomberger’s room that day?”
“No. The next day. The police were in it all that day taking photographs and fingerprints and that.”
“But on the following day they let you clean it?”
“Yes. I did. Well, no one else wouldn’t have fancied doing it, would they?”
“The bed had been slept in?”
“Well, it looked like it. That’s all I can say. She wore nice silk pyjamas and they was in a heap on a chair as though she’d got dressed in a hurry. I didn’t look to see what clothes were missing, because I wouldn’t have known, Miss Pink looking after all that.”
“So that’s really all you have to tell me, Mrs Plum?”
“All? Well, isn’t it enough? I should have thought I’d told you enough to give you the willies for the rest of your life.”
Carolus stood up.
“Perhaps I don’t want them,” he said. “You’ve certainly given me some valuable information. Have there been any unusual callers since then?”
“I don’t know what you call unusual, but they’ve been coming, morning, noon and night ever since. Policemen, pressmen, I don’t know what. There was one wanted to take my photograph, but I wouldn’t have that….”
“You didn’t notice a man with a squint?”
Mrs Plum looked up.
“No. That I didn’t. And I would have because my husband had a squint and I always say it’s lucky. No, I can’t say anyone with a squint has been up there.”
“Rather noticeable gold teeth?”
“No. Not that either. Why, is he the murderer?”
“We don’t know yet that there was a murderer.”
“If there wasn’t I’d like to know what she was doing out there buried up to the neck in sand.”
“Thank you very much, Mrs Plum.”
“If there’s anything else, I’ll tell you. I know where you are. She’s lucky to have let that house, that’s what I say. I can’t think who else would have taken it with all that furniture. It looked to me like an auction sale whenever I passed the window. Still, she’s a very respectable person, I will say that.”
“Good night, Mrs Plum.”
“Wait a minute. I’ll come and see you out. I don’t want half the street knowing you’ve been here.”
Mrs Plum cautiously opened the front door and peered out.
“It’s all right,” she whispered; “only go
the other way first and walk back in a few minutes as though you’d never been here. Her friend’ll be watching, you may be sure of that, and it doesn’t do to have talk. Good night.”
Carolus did as he was told, and in a few minutes was back at Wee Hoosie, where Mrs Stick was waiting for him with her severest expression.
“There’s been someone hanging round,” she said. “I was afraid this would start, sir.”
“What kind of person?”
“Not at all the sort of person Stick and me would expect to see where we work, sir. A nasty, trampy-looking man with a squint.”
“Oh, that one,” said Carolus. “Did he come to the door?”
“I should think not,” said Mrs Stick. “Your dinner will be ready in twenty minutes.”
9
“MISS PINK,” said Carolus firmly when he faced the Secretary next day, “if you are going to tell me that you went up to bed at eleven on the night of Mrs Bomberger’s death, and slept until eleven the next morning without hearing anything in the night, don’t let us waste our time talking. I know it’s not true, and I’m tired of being told lies by people I’m supposed to help.”
“I … really … I don’t think you should speak to me like that. I haven’t told you any lie.”
“Yet,” said Carolus. “But you were going to tell me the one I’ve just described.”
“I scarcely know…. Perhaps it would be as well if you did not question me if it is going to be in this very hectoring manner.”
“I’m sorry if I was rude,” said Carolus. “But really it is rather exasperating to hear what one knows isn’t true.”
“I’m not the one….Surely you should put your questions to Mrs Bomberger’s nieces. Or to Mr Cribb.”
Miss Pink writhed. One might almost use the dangerous adverb and say she ‘literally’ writhed. She twisted her thin body about on the settee in alarming nervousness.
“What time did you go to bed?”
“It must have been quite midnight. I had many little things to do before retiring. I like to tidy up.”
“What was there to tidy up that evening? In the sitting-room where you had all been, I mean?”
