It wasn’t Aggie. It was Bertha Cummins.
“Is that you, Sid? I want to see you at once… No-no -it’s not on my account, it’s on yours. Things have been happening at the office. There’s been an Inspector from Scotland Yard-”
“Shut up!” He couldn’t get it out fast enough. The leaky tongues women had! She was trying to say something again, but the rasp in his voice stopped her. “I didn’t get what you said just now-the line’s bad. I’ll be at the corner of West Street in say twenty minutes. We can do a flick.” He hung up and went to meet her.
Bertha Cummins came out of the call-box where she had been ringing up. There are hundreds just like her in any big city-neat, nondescript-the efficient secretary, clerk, manageress. She was thin without being slender, well-featured without making any effect. She had one of those smooth colourless skins which are an excellent foundation for make-up, but she had never done more for it than wash it in soap and water and dust it with powder if the day was warm. She wore neither lipstick nor nail polish. Her clothes were as drab as herself. She was forty-four years old and no man who wasn’t an elderly relation had kissed her until a month ago, when she had dropped her umbrella coming out of the office and Sid Turner had picked it up.
She had let him pick her up too. Even now she couldn’t think how she had come to do it. He had been most respectful in his manner. There had been a little talk about dropping things and somehow he was walking along the street beside her, and when she thanked him again and said goodbye he had given her that wonderful smile and said, “Does it have to be goodbye?” After that it really seemed quite natural to have tea together, and then they went to the pictures, and he told her how lonely he was and she let him hold her hand. After that he met her every day, not coming right up to the office but waiting for her round the corner. No one had ever made love to her before. She couldn’t believe that he cared for her, but he convinced her that he did. The barriers fell one by one. She walked in a daze of happiness and only thought how wonderful it was that he should be so interested in everything she did. She hadn’t wanted to talk about the office, because she thought it would bore him, but it was wonderful how interested he was. She found herself telling him about everything that happened. He didn’t know any of the people, so what did it matter? She told him about Jonathan Field changing his will. The barriers were down in good earnest.
He was waiting for her at the corner of West Street. She could see the black look on his face before she came up to him. He didn’t raise his voice, but it had a cutting tone in it.
“Don’t you ever say things like that on the phone again, or I’m done with you!”
“Things?”
“You heard! And we’re not talking here-there are too many people about. We’ll get on the next bus separately and get off at the fourth stop from here. We’re not to look as if we’re together.”
They finished up at the back of a very nearly empty tearoom. When the waitress had brought them tea and cakes they had as much privacy as it was possible to achieve.
She had taken only one strong comforting sip, when he said,
“Now what’s all this about a police Inspector?”
She set down her cup again because her hand was shaking too much to hold it.
“He came in after we got back from lunch. He saw Mr. Maudsley, and as soon as he had gone Mr. Maudsley sent for me. He was dreadfully angry and upset. He said there had been a leakage of information from his office and he meant to find out who was responsible. I don’t know what I felt like.”
Sid Turner made it clear that he took no interest in her feelings.
“Tell me what he said.”
“It’s that girl-” When it came to naming Mirrie Field she couldn’t keep her voice from trembling. “You oughtn’t to have rung her up. You ought to have kept right away from her until the will was proved-I could have told you that.”
He said in a low dangerous tone,
“When I want you to teach me my business I’ll let you know. What about the girl?”
“Someone listened in when you were talking to her. They’ve got one of those party lines. I suppose you didn’t know about that, but they have. Anyone can just lift a receiver and listen in on the others. Someone did when you were talking to Mirrie Field. She was telling you about the will having been signed, and you said you had a friend at court so you knew already. When the police asked her what you meant by a friend at court she said it was someone in Mr. Maudsley’s office. Oh, how could you tell her about me! I’ve never done anything like it before, and I wouldn’t have done it for anyone else in the world. You wanted to know, and I told you, but I never thought you would give me away.”
He said,
“Stop nattering! Does Maudsley suspect you?”
“Oh, no. That is what is so dreadful-he trusts me. And he thinks it’s Jenny Gregg.”
He laughed.
“Then what’s all the fuss about? You’re in the clear, and Jenny gets the sack. That’s all. If a girl talks out of place, there isn’t anything the police can do about it.”
He looked at her and thought what a stupid woman she was. One good thing, he wouldn’t have to keep up with her after this. He liked a girl to be warm and willing. He could make love to pretty well anything if it was in the way of business, but this thin, anxious woman with her scruples and the marks like bruises under her dark eyes, well, it would certainly be a relief to be rid of her.
She was watching him. She hadn’t been twenty-five years in a lawyer’s office for nothing. She was very much afraid.
“Sid, don’t you realize what this means? I’m not thinking about myself or about Jenny Gregg. The police are asking these questions because they are thinking about you.”
He looked at her with contempt.
“There’s nothing for them to think about. I’ve known Mirrie since she was a child. She lived in my sister’s house-in a way you may say I am a relation. I got to know you, we liked each other, and you happened to mention Mr. Field’s name- said he was leaving a lot of money to a girl called Mirrie Field. There’s nothing the police can do about that, is there?”
“It would lose me my job, and I should never get another.”
“Oh, well, there’s no need to mention names. I can just say it was a girl in the office. If they press me, I’m the perfect gentleman and couldn’t give a young lady away. You don’t need to worry about your job. No one is going to think of you having a boy friend when there are a couple of girls around. Is Jenny the fair one?”
She said, “Yes.”
She was cold right through and through-cold and numb. Presently she would remember what he had said and feel the bruise which his words had left. At the moment she felt nothing but the numbness and the cold.
He said,
“Well, we’d better not be seen together. You go home and take some aspirin or something and get that look off your face. Better say you’ve got a headache, or people will be beginning to wonder what’s happening to you.”
She said,
“You don’t seem to realize the police think you had a motive for Mr. Field’s murder. They’re trying to connect you with it. They think he was killed because he had signed that will. They think you went down there and shot him on Tuesday night because that will he had signed in the afternoon left a lot of money to Mirrie Field. I think she has told them whatever she knows.”
“She doesn’t know anything, and there isn’t anything to know. As for Tuesday night, the Jenkins, where I live, can tell your nosey-parker policeman I came in to fetch my raincoat about nine. Coming downstairs I caught my foot in it and took a nasty fall. They came running out and found me knocked clean out at the bottom of the stairs. Tom had to give me brandy and help me up to bed. Mrs. Jenkins gave me two of her sleeping-tablets and they put me out till the morning. Pretty bad head I had too, but no bones broken. They said to knock on the floor if I wanted anything, but I slept like the dead. Not much the police can do about that, is there?”
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She had kept those strained dark eyes upon him. They searched his face. She said,
“You’ve got a motorbike, haven’t you?”
“So what?”
“Where do you keep it?”
“In the shed at the bottom of the yard.” He met her look with a savage angry one. “What are you getting at? You don’t think I fell downstairs, had to be helped to bed, and then got up and took the bike out and went down to this place Field End to shoot a man I’d never seen, do you?”
In her own mind she said, “I don’t think you fell downstairs.” She didn’t say it aloud. She went on looking at him and she went on thinking. He could have faked that fall- thrown something down, clattered down the last few steps and made quite a noise, bumping and calling out without really being hurt at all, and if he wasn’t hurt he could have climbed out of his bedroom window. And the motorbike needn’t have been put away. He could have left it handy and wheeled it out when something heavy was passing along the road. She didn’t want to have these thoughts, but they were there in her mind. She was to wonder afterwards whether Sid knew they were there, because quite suddenly he changed. The smile that had charmed her came into his eyes. He edged his chair round a bit and slipped his hand inside her arm, running it up and down with the caressing touch which had set her heart beating, beating.
Now she was too cold to feel anything at all-too cold, and too much afraid. Presently there would be the sense of loss, the sense of shame, but for this moment there was only the fear and the bitter cold.
For the first time since she had met him she counted the moments until she could get away from his look, his touch. It was the only relief that she could hope for.
Chapter XXXV
FRANK ABBOTT dropped in at Field End on Tuesday morning. He asked for Miss Silver, and she came to him presently with her knitting-bag on her arm and the white woolly shawl now two thirds of the way towards completion wrapped up in a soft old face-towel-one of those fine white ones with a diaper pattern on it now quite out of date and superseded by cleansing tissues. The much faded date in the corner of this one was 1875, and it had been part of the wedding outfit of an aunt.
Miss Silver took out the shawl, spread the towel over her knees, and turned her attention to Frank.
“The enquiries about Sid Turner? Have they had any success?”
He gave a faint shrug.
“Beyond producing considerable alarm and despondency in Maudsley’s office I should say none, if it were not for the fact that to have a perfectly good alibi for Tuesday night is in itself a suspicious circumstance.”
Miss Silver inserted a second needle into the fluffy white cloud on her lap and began to knit with her usual smoothness and rapidity.
“Sid Turner has an alibi?”
“Certainly. You will remember we agreed that he would have one. Blake went down, or shall I say up to Pigeon Hill and saw his landlady and her husband. Retired railwayman and his wife. Nothing against them. Sid has lodged with them for about six months. Mr. Jenkins said he was all right, and Mrs. Jenkins said he was ever so nice. The alibi consists in his coming in to fetch a raincoat about nine o’clock on Tuesday evening, catching his foot in it, and falling down the best part of a flight of stairs. The Jenkinses depose to finding him unconscious in the hall. They roused him with brandy, and Jenkins helped him to bed. There were no bones broken, and he said he didn’t want a doctor. Mrs. Jenkins produced a couple of sleeping-tablets and told him to knock on the floor if he wanted anything. He replied that all he wanted was to be left alone to go to sleep. So they left him. As you are about to observe, he could have got out of the window and just made Lenton on his motorbike in time to ring Jonathan up from there.”
Miss Silver gave a faint doubtful cough.
“It would have been running it very fine, and he would be taking the risk of the Jenkinses looking in to see how he was before they went to bed.”
Frank nodded.
“According to Blake there wasn’t any risk of their doing that. They sleep in the basement and Jenkins keeps off the stairs as much as he can. He’s got a dicky foot, which is why he left the railways, and Mrs. Jenkins weighs about seventeen stone.”
Miss Silver’s needles clicked.
“Did Inspector Blake see Sid Turner?”
“He wasn’t at home. Asked where he was likely to be, Mrs. Jenkins bridled and said she wouldn’t wonder if he was at the Three Pigeons. Very friendly with the lady there he was-a Mrs. Marsh. Her husband had been dead about a twelvemonth, and there were those who thought she might be going to make it up with Sid. And he’d be doing well for himself if she did. Nice bit of money the husband had left her, to say nothing of the pub.”
“So Inspector Blake went round to the Three Pigeons? Was Sid Turner there?”
“He was, and so were a lot of other people. And do you know what they were doing? Celebrating Sid’s engagement to Mrs. Marsh-drinks on the house and a good time being had by all. Sid is a quick worker!”
Miss Silver looked thoughtful.
“If one of the girls in Mr. Maudsley’s office was friendly with him to the point of giving away confidential information, do you not suppose that she would have let him know about Inspector Blake’s visit to the office?”
“She probably did. Why?”
“I was thinking that it would be a clever move to announce his engagement to this Mrs. Marsh. It would cast doubts on the likelihood of his having had designs upon Mirrie and upon anything she might have inherited from Jonathan Field.”
“It may have been that, or it may simply have been that Mirrie being out of the will, and therefore out of the running, Sid was declining upon the not unattractive Mrs. Marsh, her bit of money in the bank, and her flourishing pub. Blake reports him as being very well pleased with himself-in fact cock-a-hoop to the point of impertinence. Pressed as to his movements on Tuesday night, he gave the same account of his fall as the landlady and her husband. He said it knocked him clean out and left him muzzy in the head. Put his hand to the place and said the bump had gone down but it still felt tender. He had crawled into his bed, and certainly had no desire or temptation to leave it. Well, there you are, and we haven’t got a case. We can prove his knowledge of the fact that Jonathan had signed a will in Mirrie’s favour, and that’s all we can prove. Maggie Bell says that the voice which made the appointment with Jonathan Field during a call from Lenton at ten-thirty on the night of the murder was the same voice which had replied to Mirrie’s call at a quarter past eight. Mirrie admits that the person she called was Sid. The number he had given her for an emergency is the number of Mrs. Marsh’s pub, the Three Pigeons. But what Maggie says is just her opinion, and even if it was admitted as evidence, which I should say was doubtful, I don’t think a jury would look at it unless it was backed up by something a good deal more conclusive. You see, we can’t prove that Sid ever set foot in this house, and to have a case against him that is what we have got to do. We could prove motive, but we should have to prove opportunity. We have got, in fact, to prove that he was here in this room on Tuesday night.”
Miss Silver had been listening with an air of bright attention. She now laid down her hands on the mass of white wool in her lap.
“The album!” she said.
“The album?”
“If it was Sid Turner who tore out the page, he could not have done so without handling the album and leaving his prints upon it.”
“The album was, of course, examined for prints. You’ve got to remember that it had Jonathan’s own prints all over it.”
“And no one else’s?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But, Frank, that is in itself a very suspicious circumstance. Someone tore out that page and took Mr. Field’s notes out of the envelope which marked the place.”
He shrugged.
“Well, someone shot Jonathan and was careful to leave no prints. He could have worn gloves, or he could have protected his hand with a handkerchief.”
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br /> She said with unusual earnestness,
“Think again, Frank. To have worn gloves must have appeared highly suspicious. So suspicious that it might have led Mr. Field immediately to ring the bell and alarm the house. To carry out the murderer’s plan, Mr. Field must be lulled into a state of security, induced if he has not already done so to get out the album, and to sit down at the table. I think the murderer would certainly have been obliged to remove his gloves. He may, as you suggest, have protected his hand in some way after the murder had taken place, but I think there must have been a time when his hands were bare, and however careful he was he may during that time have touched some object, let us say a table or a chair. Amongst the prints which were taken from this room on Wednesday morning, are there none which have not been identified?”
“You mean-”
“I have remembered something which should have occurred to me before. When I was speaking to Sid Turner after the funeral we were standing to one side of the dining-room against the sideboard. During the first part of our conversation Sid Turner’s hands were a good deal occupied with his drink. He sipped from it, changed it constantly from one hand to the other, and appeared nervous and jerky in his movements. In answer to his questions I had intimated that, as I understood it, Georgina Grey was the principal legatee under Mr. Field’s will. Looking back, I can see that he must have been on the rack of anxiety as to whether Mirrie had misled him, of if she had not, as to what after so short an interval could have happened to the will under which she inherited.”
“In fact quite a nasty moment.”
“When Sid Turner had set down his drink his restless mannerisms increased. He put his hands in his pockets and took them out again, and then, whilst suggesting that Mr. Field could have been murdered and the page in his album torn out by someone who might be compromised by the fingerprint preserved upon it, he began a kind of nervous tapping upon the edge of the sideboard. He appeared, in fact, to be tapping out a tune. But the tapping was done in an unusual way, and it is to this that I wish to draw your attention. During all the time that I was observing him his hand was held sideways and the tapping was on the under surface of an overlapping edge. It came to me to wonder whether he might not have left his prints in this room, under the arm of the chair in which he sat or under the edge of the table. I do not, of course, know whether this way of tapping was a constant mannerism with him, but he employed it at a moment of tension when he was talking to me, and when I recalled this just now I considered that I had better mention it.”
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