Who Pays the Piper?

by Patricia Wentworth

And then, just as he turned, he caught the faintest of faint sounds. He thought it was the click of a latch. He thought the click came from the door on the far side of the room. It took him a moment to come round the table and cross to it. When he reached the door and opened it there was no one there.

  The straight passage ran through to the hall, with the second study door opening upon it to the right. The stair to the bedroom floor ran up a dozen feet away, light, and bare, and empty. There was a door to the left and a door beyond the stair, one shut, the other ajar. He opened first one and then the other—a cold, small room like a waiting-room—the main hall of the house. No one in either place—no one at all.

  As he stood looking into the hall, Raby crossed from a room on the other side. He had not met anyone or seen anyone—he had been making up the dining-room fire, he said.

  Frank Abbott’s light eyes went over him. He said,

  “Isn’t that Robert’s work?”

  With a vaguely nervous gesture Raby said, “Yes.” And then, rather haltingly, “Robert—Robert has just stepped out to the post.”

  CHAPTER XXXV

  Cora de Lisle was packing. She had been packing, or trying to pack, for the best part of an hour, ever since the front gate had creaked and clanged to behind Mrs. Clancy. Not that there was such a dreadful hurry. Mrs. Clancy had gone to the pictures, and it would be three hours good before she was back again. As long as Cora was gone by then, everything would be all right. But she ought to have gone yesterday. She ought to have gone right away on the Tuesday morning. She’d have had to change the fifty-pound note anyhow. But that was all right. She’d got Lucas Dale’s signature to show, and they’d made no trouble about it. Of course they hadn’t heard about Lucas being dead then, but her going there and changing the note and showing what Lucas had written—well, that was all to the good, because it looked as if she didn’t know anything either. And whatever it looked like, she had to have the money. But when she’d got it—that’s where she’d made her mistake. She ought to have been out of Ledlington and off back to London just as quick as the train could take her. Nowhere in the world so easy as London if you wanted to be out of the way for a bit, and with fifty pounds she could have stayed quiet till everything had blown over.

  Her hands shook as she tried to fold the orange negligée. She ought to have gone right away, but the feel of the money, that’s what had done her down—the feel of it, and the thought of what it would buy. Not the brandy, but what the brandy would do for her. She just hadn’t been able to resist it, though she’d known at the time that she ought to be getting away.

  The orange negligée dropped from her shaking hands. She picked it up, crammed it in anyhow, and threw the tinsel shoes in after it. She ought to have gone yesterday before the detective came. She would have gone too if she’d been herself, but with that awful cold shaking in her, how was she going to pack, and get to the train, and start looking for somewhere to hide at the other end? No, not hide—somewhere where she could be quiet and make the fifty pounds last a good long time. Things blow over, and out of sight is out of mind. She wondered if old Mrs. Isaacs would take her in.…

  Stupid to go on shaking like this—not like her either, but her nerves weren’t what they used to be. Some would say it was the brandy—but you’d got to have something, hadn’t you? Where she’d made her mistake was going back. She’d got away with fifty pounds, and she ought to have let it go at that. It was when she was having that last drink in the Crown and Magpie that it had come over her what a fool she was to let Lucas off with fifty pounds when she might just as well have had a hundred out of him, or a hundred and fifty. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen the other notes. He had had the four of them out, and she had been fool enough to let herself be fobbed off with one. By the time she had finished the brandy she had made up her mind to go back. It would be worth more than a hundred pounds to Lucas if he could stop her mouth. There were things she could tell Miss Susan Lenox that he wouldn’t want her to hear.

  Well then, she had gone back——

  She stood there fumbling with the half-packed clothes. It wouldn’t be so bad if she didn’t keep on hearing the shot. And Lucas lying there—just his hand and his arm—that was all you could see from the window. But it was Lucas all right. When you’ve been married to a man you don’t forget even if you’ve come to hate him. Lucas Dale’s hand—with the ring on it which she’d seen when he took out the notes—there hadn’t been any money for rings in the old days. Lucas Dale’s hand and arm, and Lucas lying dead—and as like as not they’d try and make out she’d done it. And she’d lost her head, run on to the terrace, and then back again the way she’d come, all along by the side of the house and almost into someone there at the corner. That’s what frightened her. There’d been someone there, and it might have been the one that shot Lucas, or it mightn’t. She couldn’t tell whether it was man or woman—and hadn’t wanted to then. Hadn’t wanted anything except to get away.

  She turned from the shabby, half-filled suit-case, poured out a stiff tot of brandy, and gulped it down. There wasn’t much left. She could put the rest into the empty eau-de-Cologne bottle and have it in her handbag so that she could have a nip in the train. She wouldn’t be getting any more until she was safe in Mrs. Isaac’s back room. Then she could have all she wanted—enough to stop the fear and the horrible cold shaking. She tilted the two bottles together, heard them rattle with the shaking of her hands, and saw half the brandy spill and waste itself, running down in a yellow trickle over the edge of the chest of drawers and dripping on to the littered floor. Her lipstick had dropped. She couldn’t be bothered to pick it up. Very little of the brandy went where it had been meant to go, but she screwed down what there was and slipped the eau-de-Cologne bottle inside a battered handbag. For the moment she felt better. The spirits she had swallowed gave her warmth and confidence, but she had been nipping all day, and with each return to the brandy bottle she became less able to co-ordinate her thoughts or to fix them upon what she had to do. Yet at the back of everything there was a fear which drove her.

  The suit-case filled slowly. If she put in a shoe she would forget its fellow, spend muddled time looking for it, and come upon it by chance already stuffed in under a huddle of torn underclothes. Once she found that she had packed the skirt which she must wear to travel in. Tugging to get it out, she spilled half the contents of the case. She put the skirt on without noticing that she was wearing one already.

  It was while she was struggling to fasten the belt that she heard a motor-bicycle come chugging up the street. She heard it stop, and after that the squeak and clang of the gate. Oh, well, if it was anyone for Mrs. Clancy, she was out and there was an end of it. Curiously enough, she did not think that it might be anyone for herself. The brandy swam in her head, and it never crossed her fuddled mind that it might be the police.

  The man who had ridden the motor-bicycle knocked on the front door. He wore a leather cap and goggles, and a loose waterproof coat. He looked through the goggles and observed that the parlour was in darkness—the room above it too. Well, people who lived in Gladstone Villas would be more apt to be found at the back of the house.

  He went round to the back and found all dark below, but a lighted window overhead. He tried the door and found it locked. He kicked his foot against the mat and, feeling underneath it, came upon a key. He used it, wiped it, and put it back again. There was a glove on his hand as he turned the handle and went in with the faint beam of an electric torch to show him the way.

  When he had come soft-foot up the stair to where a thread of light showed beneath a closed door he switched off the torch and put it in his pocket. Then he opened the door and went in.

  Miss de Lisle was on her knees in the corner beyond the fireplace. The recess had been fitted with pegs and screened by a dingy curtain. She was stretching forward to reach a forgotten pair of shoes, when she heard footsteps behind her. It was the last thing she heard. There was no time to turn. Her drugge
d mind moved slowly. There was no time to be afraid. She did not even cry out.

  The man laid the poker back upon the hearth and went quickly and noiselessly down the stair and out of the house Nobody saw him come or go. The motor-bicycle chugged and receded. There was no sound in the house.

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  The car turned in to Gladstone Villas and stopped at No. 17. Inspector Lamb got out. Frank Abbott, who had been driving, followed him. The gate creaked and the door-knocker sounded, the silence of the house was jarred by the shrill tinkle of an electric bell.

  Presently the two men went round to the back, as the motor-cyclist had done. Like him they saw the lighted bedroom window, and like him they presently found the back door key, but not until they had rapped and called, and been answered only by the silence. As they came up the stair, the silence warned them. No house with a lighted window should be as still as this.

  Frank Abbott led the way to the second door on the left, knocked upon it, and, answered only by that warning silence, threw it suddenly open. The smell of spilled brandy hung upon the close air. There was a half-packed suit-case on the bed, an untidy muddle everywhere—a coat hanging over a chair, a hat on the chest of drawers beside the empty brandy bottle. And, face downwards in the corner beyond the fireplace, Miss Cora de Lisle with the back of her head smashed in. The poker which had quite obviously been used to smash it had been laid tidily back upon the hearth.

  Inspector Lamb stopped to feel for a non-existent pulse. The wrist he touched was limp and warm. He straightened up, his rosy face hard and set.

  “It’s only just happened—she’s warm. Cut round to the station and tell them—and hurry.”

  Frank Abbott hurried, and as he went, and made his report, and came again, and the whole machinery which waits on murder clanked into action, his thoughts raced and swirled. When the Ledlington Inspector and his men had trooped into the little crowded room he touched Inspector Lamb on the arm.

  “If I could speak to you, sir——” His tone was urgent.

  Lamb said, “Presently.” But the urgency of the tone stayed with him, and in what he himself would have called ‘half no time’ he came out upon the narrow landing and said,

  “Well, what is it?”

  “We’ve got to get back, sir—leave them to it and get back. The murderer came from King’s Bourne, and if we go straight back we’ll have a decent chance of getting him.”

  “King’s Bourne?”

  Frank Abbott’s face was more nearly eager than the Inspector had ever seen it.

  “Yes—yes! There isn’t a minute to lose! Let the locals get on with the photographs and the fingerprints this end, but we’ve got to get back. There’s something I didn’t tell you—I didn’t think it important then. But we must get back. I’ll tell you as we go.”

  Inspector Lamb gazed imperturbably. Something about this case seemed to have stirred young Frank right up. It wouldn’t do him any harm either. In a slow and ruminating voice he remarked that if that was the way of it, he would just have a word with Inspector Grey, and Frank had better be starting the car.

  They cleared the narrow exit from Gladstone Villas and came out by this way and that to the comparative quiet of a long road running between ribbon edgings of small twinkling houses and their attendant lampposts to the dark, silent country beyond.

  Frank Abbott began to speak, taking up his own last words and repeating them as if there had been no interval of sound, silence and suspense.

  “There’s something I didn’t tell you—I didn’t think it important. When I went to shut the window in the study after we’d finished with that girl, the door clicked—the far door, not the one behind you. I think there was someone there with the door ajar. I think he had been there most of the time listening, and when I shut the window the door clicked to. He may have shut it, or it may have shut itself because he wasn’t there any more to hold it. You saw me go out of the room. I went through to the hall, and saw Raby coming out of the dining-room. He said he’d been making up the fire, and I said, ‘Where’s Robert?’” Frank Abbott paused and went on again. The break and the even repetition which followed were curiously mechanical—the needle lifted from a gramophone record and set down again to reproduce a phrase. “I said, ‘Where’s Robert?’ And he said, ‘Robert’s just stepped out to the post’.”

  “Robert?” The Inspector’s bulk shifted. His large face turned. “Here, what’s this? Sounds nonsense to me.”

  “We met a motor-cyclist a little way back from here as we came in. Remember?”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Robert’s got a motor-bicycle. Did you know?”

  “What’s that—a motor-bike? Are you sure?”

  “Oh, quite. I saw it this morning. He keeps it in one of those sheds round the yard. The Doris girl told me all about it. Robert’s grandmother left him a legacy, and he bought an aged Douglas. He’s got a girl over at Ledcott, Mary Leeson by name, and he can get over in ten minutes any time. Seems to me we’ve got to reconsider the question of Robert’s alibi. He was having his birthday party at Ledcott on Monday evening, and I’m beginning to wonder if he didn’t slip away for half an hour and murder Lucas Dale. Ledcott’s only two miles. Give him half an hour, and he and the Douglas could have done it on their heads.”

  “Letting your imagination run away with you, aren’t you, Frank?”

  “Perhaps—I don’t know. I want to get back and see if that bike has been out, and what Robert’s alibi is this time.”

  “Motive,” said Lamb—“what’s your imagination got to say about that? Unless you’re plain homicidal you’ve got to have a motive. And what motive would Robert have for murdering Cora de Lisle?”

  “None, unless he was the murderer of Lucas Dale—and we don’t know what motive he might have for that. But I’ve never been so sure about anything in all my life as I am that Dale’s murderer stood eavesdropping by the study door whilst Lily Green made her statement. He heard that she had seen Cora de Lisle by the open study window just after the shot was fired. We took it to mean that she had murdered Dale, but if that was so, she wouldn’t have been murdered herself. She wasn’t killed for the balance of the fifty-pound note, because it was there in her handbag. No, she was murdered because Dale’s murderer stood at the study door and heard that she had been, or might have been, a witness of his crime. The window was open, the curtain was drawn back, and a moment after the shot was fired Lily saw Cora de Lisle by that open window. Dale’s murderer couldn’t risk what she might have seen. He got away before we did—say ten minutes start and no regard for the speed limit. He had the luck to find the house empty, and he silenced her. They’re wasting their time looking for fingerprints. There won’t be any—he’s a cunning devil.”

  “Robert?” said Inspector Lamb in his solid voice.

  The mechanical precision deserted Frank Abbott. He said uncertainly,

  “I don’t know——”

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  They picked up a young constable in Netherbourne, and sat silent in front whilst he sat silent behind until they reached the house. The yard was dark. Beyond it vague light from blinded windows, and very faintly the rhythmic throb of dance music from the wireless in the servants’ hall.

  Frank Abbott’s torch sent a sharp beam into the dark. He led the way to a shed on the left, flung the door open, and let the beam come to rest upon a motor-bicycle. With Lamb still on the threshold, he swung round.

  “Only just off the road—the engine’s hot, and look at those tyres.”

  The Inspector looked, took the torch from his hand, and turned it about. From a nail on the wall depended a motor helmet and goggles. He put down a hand to feel the engine, gave Abbott back his torch, and walked out of the shed.

  “We’ll need to see Robert,” he said. “Now you and me, we’ll go along to the front door and ring for Raby. And you, Gill, I’d like you to go in this way. Ring the back door bell and say I’m expecting you. If Robert S
tack is there, tell him I want to see him and bring him along to the study. Got that?”

  The young constable said, “Yes, sir.”

  Waiting on the front door step for Raby, neither of the two men spoke. Through the dragging silence came at last the sound of footsteps, a key turning, and the grinding of the bolt. King’s Bourne kept its approach well guarded on this side at least. But if the enemy was within the gate——

  The door swung in. With Frank Abbott’s thought unfinished they passed into the hall.

  Lamb said, “Robert in yet?” and at Raby’s half surprised, “Oh, yes, sir,” he added, “Send him through to the study. I want to see him.”

  Raby was apologetic.

  “I’m afraid the fire’s been let down, sir. I didn’t understand that you would be coming back.”

  “It doesn’t matter—just leave it. Send Robert along. Here, just a minute—when did he come in?”

  “Ten minutes ago, or a quarter of an hour, sir—I couldn’t say for certain.”

  Though the fire had died, the study was still warm. Order and sober beauty sprang into view as the light came on. There was a strong contrast with the room they had left in Ledlington, yet the two rooms were held together by the dreadful link of murder. Frank Abbott went to the fireplace and stood looking down at the sunk ash upon the hearth. A charred log still smouldered. He pushed it with his foot, and a stray spark or two flew up.

  The Inspector took his accustomed seat, and almost at once Robert Stack came in—a thin young man with dark eyes and a sallow complexion. He looked nervously about the room, and started slightly as the door was closed behind him by Gill.

  Abbott straightened up and walked over to the table. His light eyes scanned the pale face, the thin, rather ungainly figure. How much nerve did you have to have to commit two murders in three days? It occurred to him that Robert did not look as if he would have the nerve to kill a rabbit. But then murderers never did look like murderers. They had the outward shape and aspect of the ordinary man. Only within there lurked the thing which set them apart.