Vanishing Point

by Patricia Wentworth

  Miss Silver came out to the kitchen with the coffee-tray. Mrs. Merridew had just dropped off behind the morning paper, an after-lunch practice in which Miss Silver had never allowed herself to indulge. A sad waste of time, and a habit which was apt to grow. She carried the tray down the passage, and as she approached the door she became aware of voices on the other side of it. She had no intention of listening, but they forced themselves upon her ear. It all happened quite naturally. She had paused when she realized that Florrie was not alone, and the door in front of her was ajar. She heard Florrie say in her deep, harsh voice, “If you’re hinting there was a string tied across those stairs to trip Miss Cunningham when she came down, well, who is supposed to have put it there?”

  Miss Silver stood where she was. As a private gentlewoman she would not have dreamed of listening to a conversation not intended for her ears. As a private detective she had not infrequently considered it her duty to do so. She stood quite still, holding the tray, and heard Mrs. Hubbard turn the question aside and say that she must be getting along. When the back door had closed upon her, Miss Silver retired down the passage, and then returned, her footsteps rather more evident than usual. Arrived at the kitchen door, she said, “May I come in Florrie?” and pushed it with the tray.

  It was not until then that Florrie started and turned round. She had been standing at the kitchen table and staring down at it, too much immersed in her thoughts until the tray knocked against the door.

  Miss Silver came into the room and set it down upon the table. As she did so she saw that what Florrie had been staring at was a little curl of tarred twine and a knot. The knot had been tightly tied and afterwards cut away. Across the coffee-tray with its two empty cups Miss Silver looked at Florrie Hunt, and Florrie looked back. It was an angry, puzzled look, but behind the puzzle and the anger there was fear. When Miss Silver said, “What is it?” Florrie answered in a lost voice,

  “I don’t know-”

  “It would be better if you would tell me.”

  There was a slow shake of the head. Miss Silver leaned across and touched the curl of twine. She said,

  “When I came down the passage the door was ajar, and I heard what you said. It was something about a string tied across the stairs to trip Miss Cunningham. You had a visitor, and you asked her who was supposed to have put it there.”

  Florrie spoke angrily.

  “She hadn’t got nothing to say!”

  Miss Silver gave a slight corrective cough.

  “I noticed that she did not say anything. May I ask who there was in the house who could have done such a thing?”

  Florrie tossed her head.

  “No one that I can see! There would be her, and Mr. Henry, and Mr. Nicholas. Well, it stands to reason she wouldn’t do it herself, and that leaves Mr. Nicholas and Mr. Henry. Well, I ask you! Annie Hubbard’s got little enough to think of, coming round here with a story like that!”

  She got a brightly interrogative glance.

  “She works at the Dower House?”

  “Took on the job after Maggie went.”

  “And what, do you suppose, put this story into her head?”

  Mrs. Hubbard’s story about the marks on the balusters and finding the pieces of twine just underneath in the hall and the knot upstairs in Miss Cunningham’s grate along with what looked like the burnt remains of a longer piece, was retailed in what began by being a scornful voice. But somehow by the time Florrie had come to the weal on Miss Cunningham’s leg the scorn had gone out of it and something like fear had taken its place. The last words dragged and were followed in a rush by a scared,

  “Who’d do a thing like that? I put it to Annie Hubbard, and you could hear for yourself she hadn’t got nothing to say.”

  Miss Silver said in a meditative tone,

  “There was no one else in the house except the two Mr. Cunninghams?”

  “Not without someone come round visiting, and then one of the family would have had to let them in.”

  Miss Silver said,

  “Yes-I suppose so-”

  She went through to the drawing-room and sat down with her knitting. Little Josephine’s cherry-coloured hood was now finished, and she had embarked upon leggings to match. She was not anxious to pursue the subject of the accident which Miss Cunningham had so narrowly escaped. She wished to be able to give it some quiet reflection. If anyone had intended to injure Lucy Cunningham by fastening a trip-cord across the stairs, what would be the most likely time to carry it out? It would surely only be attempted when the normal comings and goings had ceased and everyone had gone upstairs for the night. Lucy Cunningham-her brother Henry-her nephew Nicholas-

  When the trip-cord had been fixed, there would have to be some device to bring the intended victim from her room, and in so much of a hurry that she would not notice the cord until too late. A black cord on a dark stair, and a woman hurrying down. Why? The thought of the telephone-bell presented itself in a very convincing manner. There is no sound more startling in the middle of the night. Yet how ensure that the telephone-bell would ring? To employ an accomplice would be extremely dangerous. There came to her memory a sound very familiar in her own flat, the ringing of the bell on the alarm clock. Heard from any other room except her bedroom it was indistinguishable from the sound of the telephone-bell. If anyone had wished to startle Miss Cunningham into running downstairs in the middle of the night, how easy to set the alarm at any of the hours past midnight and leave the clock in the hall, whence it could be retrieved before anyone observed it. It occurred to Miss Silver, and not for the first time, that all the things that had happened and were happening in Hazel Green had some association with Crewe House and the neighbouring Dower House, and that the occupants of these two houses were intimately connected. Furthermore, if two crimes had indeed been carried out and a third was being attempted, there was certain economy of method calculated to arouse no suspicion and leave no trace. This would imply a criminal of no ordinary capacity, quick to decide upon a plan and ruthless in carrying it out.

  When Mrs. Merridew awoke from her nap Miss Silver was ready to suggest that it would be pleasant to take the air. A remark as to her interest in old houses, coupled with the mention of Miss Cunningham’s name, produced some information with regard to the Dower House, followed by the remark that,

  “Of course Lucy knows far more about it than I do. I am sure she would be only too pleased to show you the house. The Cunninghams are quite recent comers, but you know the saying about being more royalist than the king-well, it’s like that with Lucy. She has all the stories, by heart, and there’s nothing she likes better than repeating them. We can call on her this afternoon if you would care to do so.”

  CHAPTER 24

  When Frank Abbott dropped in after supper that evening he was struck with the gravity of Miss Silver’s expression. He had come to tell her the result of the post-mortem on Miss Holiday. They sat in the dining-room, and she gave him her usual strict attention whilst her busy needles clicked and little Josephine’s legging lengthened.

  “Well,” he began, “she was alive when she got that bump on the head, and she was alive when she went into the water, but no one is going to swear that she didn’t hit her head on the side of the well as she went down. It could have been that way, you know, though I’ll give you this-the police surgeon doesn’t think it was. He is inclined to believe that there may have been an earlier bruise.”

  “Were there any signs of a struggle?”

  He paused for a moment before answering this.

  “Not as far as any damage to her clothes went. But you will remember that Mrs. Selby said she was wearing a string of blue beads-”

  “Yes, Frank.”

  “Well, when we got her up out of the well it looked as if the string was missing, but afterwards at the mortuary it was discovered that two or three of the beads had run down inside her clothes and been caught there, which looks as if the string had broken when she was attacked.”

&
nbsp; “That could well have happened. And quite compatible with a theory that she may have been stunned by an initial blow but not put down the well until later. You seemed to suggest this as a possibility.”

  “Something like that.”

  She pulled on her ball of wool.

  “It is what I would expect. She must have been attacked in the short distance between the Selbys’ bungalow and the cottage. But it would be unlikely that the person or persons who attacked her would have taken the risk of carrying the body to the bottom of Mrs. Maple’s garden at an hour when she might still be supposed to be about. Florrie informs me that her bedroom looks to the back of the house, and though she is too deaf to have heard footsteps in the garden, she would certainly be able to perceive the transport of an inanimate body if she had happened to be looking out of her window at the time.”

  Frank nodded.

  “People do look out of the window the last thing.”

  “It is an extremely common practice. I do not think that a murderer’s guilty conscience would have allowed him to take the risk. He would, I am sure, decide to wait until there was no chance that anyone would be abroad. The question would then arise as to what was to be done with the body. We know now that she was not dead. For his purpose it was important that she should go into the water alive. He could not, therefore, just finish her off and conceal the body in a ditch, and he must have been faced with a considerable problem. It is, of course, of the very highest importance to discover what his solution was. I need not ask you whether you have given particular attention to all this. The Selbys’ premises constitute the nearest shelter. They comprise the bungalow, a garage, two sheds, and a number of hen-houses. Mrs. Selby was alone in the bungalow between seven o’clock and ten. Mr. Selby is supposed to have been at the Holly Tree.”

  “He was there till closing time.”

  Miss Silver laid down her knitting for a moment, an occurrence so unusual as to direct particular attention to what she was about to say.

  “I do not doubt that he was there at closing-time. Is there, however, any evidence that he was there continuously between the hours of seven and ten, and particularly during the quarter of an hour just before and after nine o’clock? The distance from the Holly Tree to the bungalow is a very short one. If a game of darts was going on and Mr. Selby did not happen to be playing at the time, would anyone have noticed if he had been absent for, say, fifteen minutes?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ll do my best to find out. Fifteen minutes doesn’t give him very long to come and go, hit Miss Holiday over the head, and get her out of the way.”

  “It would have had to be very carefully planned-but then careful planning is evident at every stage of this affair.”

  Frank said in a thoughtful tone,

  “Yes. But why Selby?”

  “He is a stranger.”

  “My dear ma’am, the countryside is littered with strangers.”

  “There have been many changes since the war, but not so many in Hazel Green.”

  “There are a great many in and around Melbury, which is not so far away.”

  “But Mr. Selby is here. And he was here a year ago when Maggie Bell disappeared. I am puzzled to account for it.”

  He sketched a shrug.

  “Business men do retire. Quite a lot of them have an urge to settle down in the country and keep hens. A foul employment-”

  He gave a sudden laugh. “No, no, withhold your lightnings! I swear I didn’t intend the pun-didn’t even know it was there until I heard myself say it.”

  Rightly dismissing this as trivial, she said,

  “It is obvious that Mrs. Selby has no leanings towards a country life. Mr. Selby, whilst professing his enjoyment, is not infrequently away for several days at a time. He makes a joke of it and says the pavements call him. During his absence the care of the hens devolves upon Mrs. Selby.”

  “All this from Florrie, who I suppose had it from Miss Holiday?”

  “Yes, Frank. I gather that Mrs. Selby not only dislikes the care of the hens, but that she is extremely nervous at being alone in the bungalow, especially as Mr. Selby would not hear of their having a dog.”

  “Which might mean anything, or nothing at all-except that Mr. Selby doesn’t like dogs. You know, there really are people that don’t.”

  Miss Silver herself had a preference for cats, but she did not consider this the moment to say so. She allowed him to proceed, which he did, and in a graver voice.

  “You may care to know that Selby’s antecedents are all on record. The Security lads thought of that over the question of leakages at Dalling Grange. As a newcomer, he was naturally suspect, but nothing emerged. He and his brother used to run a garage business in the Streatham Road. Perfectly decorous and respectable. Regular subscriber to the local Conservative Association. Life and soul of the party at local whist drives. In fact a perfectly blameless past.”

  Miss Silver inclined her head. It was in her mind that a perfectly blameless past would be essential if a man was to be either a catspaw or an active agent in some nefarious business. Not judging that this was the moment to say so, she observed that a careful examination of the garage and outhouses attached to the bungalow would, she supposed, be a part of the routine enquiries which the police would undertake. She was assured that this would be the case.

  “They shall be gone over with a toothcomb. I suppose you don’t include Mrs. Selby in your suspicions?”

  Miss Silver gave a slight hortatory cough.

  “I do not suspect either Mr. or Mrs. Selby. There are not, as yet, any grounds for doing so. I merely suggest that their premises may have been used, and that in view of the fact that Miss Holiday’s body must have been concealed somewhere, and that Mr. Selby’s garage or one of his outhouses stand out as the most likely if not the only possible places of concealment, there is an urgent necessity for a very careful and thorough investigation. As Lord Tennyson put its-‘And in its season bring the law… Set in all lights by many minds, To close the interests of all’.”

  He took the impact of this with fortitude. After a slightly stunned silence he remarked,

  “As you say. Everything shall be gone through with the toothcomb. Well, I suppose I had better be getting along.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Miss Silver detained him with the slightest of gestures.

  “If you can spare me a few moments-”

  “Of course. What is it?”

  “There are some enquiries which it would not be possible for me to attend to, but which I must be very glad if you could make.”

  He was able to recognize this mild and tentative approach and allow himself some irreverent amusement. There were chestnuts to be picked out of the fire, and he was for it. Recalling some other occasions, the amusement subsided and an alert attention took its place.

  “Well, ma’am, what are they?”

  “You will, perhaps, remember that I mentioned a Mrs. Maberly to you.”

  “Did you? I believe you did-Henry Cunningham and the fatal diamond ring. She left it about, it vanished, and everyone made up their minds that Henry had taken it. After which he fled the country and didn’t come back for twenty years. It’s rather an old story, isn’t it? Who am I supposed to interrogate- Mrs. Maberly, or the submerged Henry?”

  She looked some slight reproof and said,

  “Neither. Mrs. Maberly left the neighbourhood and, I believe, the country not very long after the loss of the ring. I understand that she and her husband went to America. I merely wished to remind you of the occurrence.”

  There was a faint sardonic gleam in his eye.

  “Synopsis of the story up to date. Now read on! What is the next instalment?”

  She said soberly,

  “I have been struck by the fact that there seemed to have been quite a number of other incidents connected with the theft, or perhaps I should say the abstraction, of jewels. Mrs. Merridew introduced the subject on Sunday when Miss Crewe was here at tea. A La
dy Muriel Street was mentioned. She and her husband live at Hoys, a large place just beyond the village. I gather that she is one of those people who run round telling everyone their family affairs down to the last detail. It seems she has just discovered that a large and handsome diamond brooch left to her by her godmother is merely an imitation. The centre stone is of considerable size, and she had always supposed the ornament to be worth a very large sum, but on attempting to sell it she was informed that the stones were paste.”

  Frank said,

  “Well, well. I think she would have done better to hold her tongue.”

  Miss Silver turned the cherry-coloured leggings.

  “That was Miss Crewe’s remark. She then capped Mrs. Merridew’s story with one about Lady Melbury, who appears to have suddenly discovered that a necklace supposed to be extremely valuable and worn by her great-grandmother at Queen Victoria’s coronation was in reality a mere imitation. Miss Crewe commented very unfavourably upon Lord Melbury’s folly in talking about the matter. Lady Melbury would, I gather, have remained silent, but her husband, who is one of those easygoing sociable men, went about telling everyone and rather openly wondering which of his ancestors had effected the substitution.”

  Frank said quickly,

  “The necklace would have had to be valued for probate. I’m afraid he can’t put it on the ancestors.”

  Miss Silver coughed.

  “That does not seem to have occurred to him. Lady Melbury is an extravagant woman, and has been a beauty. He is probably the only person in the county who does not believe that she disposed of the necklace herself. These grand jewels appear so seldom, and then only in circumstances where they are unlikely to be exposed to the eye of an expert, that a substitution could be made with very little risk of discovery.”

  He laughed.

  “And by the time it came to valuation for probate Lady Melbury wouldn’t have to worry! Just between you and me, I wonder how often it has been done. Most of the great families are broke, and why keep capital locked up in jewels which only the expert can tell from a copy? Well, all this is very interesting, but where does it get us?”