Who Pays the Piper?: An Ernest Lamb Mystery

by Patricia Wentworth

  “She must have heard the shot,” said Bill. “And I don’t see why she didn’t bump into us either going or coming, unless—” He stopped on the word, took Susan by the shoulder, and pulled her round so that they faced each other. “Look here—did Cathy shoot him?”

  It marked the distance they had travelled that Susan made no real protest. She said in a tired voice,

  “Oh, no—she couldn’t—not Cathy.”

  Bill frowned deeply.

  “I don’t know—I don’t think you can cut it out like that. She’d had a bad shock—she was in a queer state—she’d heard him blackmailing you. By her own account of it she woke up and felt she had to tell him that she wouldn’t let you marry him. She didn’t dress. That shows that she wasn’t normal. She took a coat and your shoes. Now why did she take your shoes? They must have simply slopped about on her feet.”

  “I don’t know. Hers may have been downstairs. I suppose she was dazed.”

  He gave an emphatic nod.

  “There you are. She was dazed. She went up there with the idea that she’d got to stop him marrying you. She wouldn’t have shot him if she had been herself. But that’s the whole point—she wasn’t herself. Suppose she went up there and he wouldn’t listen to her—laughed at her—perhaps threatened her—”

  All Susan’s colour was gone. She said “No” in a kind of horrified whisper.

  “It’s no good saying ‘No’. It might have been that way, and if she had run out on to the terrace at once she could have got away before I got there—I don’t know—”

  Susan shook her head.

  “You’ve forgotten about the glass door. It was shut, or nearly shut, when you came up the steps and went along to the side window. It must have been, or you would have noticed it, because the first thing you did notice when you came back was that the glass door was open. Someone must have opened it in the time between your leaving the terrace and coming back again.”

  He said, “I had forgotten. But if someone opened that door—why, then it fits. Don’t you see how it fits? Cathy was there between the curtain and the door. She may have seen me look in at the window, and when I turned away she pushed the door and ran out. If she went down the far steps she wouldn’t meet you.”

  Susan said “No” again, and this time her voice was strong. “It couldn’t have been Cathy—I can’t believe it. Don’t you see it’s all wrong? He wouldn’t have got that pistol out to frighten Cathy—he had plenty of other things to frighten her with. And you can’t believe that Cathy went right round the table and got the pistol out, and then got behind him and shot him while he just sat there and did nothing. It doesn’t begin to make sense. No, I think she came up after we had gone and saw him lying there. There was plenty of time for her to come and go before Raby found him at a quarter to seven. And that would explain why she didn’t hear the shot. She mightn’t have heard it if she was still in her room—the windows were shut—Aunt Milly didn’t hear anything—” Her voice trailed away.

  She said suddenly and sharply,

  “That doesn’t help you. Oh, Bill, it doesn’t help you at all.”

  “No.” He laughed. “We had our exits and our entrances, hadn’t we? They might have been timed. Perhaps the counsel for the prosecution will take hold of that—I shouldn’t wonder. Anyhow the moral dilemma is off. We haven’t got to make up our minds to be noble and let me be hanged in order to save Cathy, because so far as I’m concerned I don’t see that her story makes a pennorth of difference. She may have been there before me, or she may have been there after me, but unless she’s going to say she did it, this story of hers is neither here nor there, and she’d better keep her mouth shut. Rub that into her good and hard. There’s absolutely no sense in dragging her in—absolutely none. What you can do is to press her just as hard as you can about whether she was behind the curtain when I looked in at the window. You can just see the window from that door.”

  “Then you could see the door from the window.”

  “I suppose I could. Yes, of course I could. And the curtain was drawn—yes, I’m sure about that. She must have been there. Press her as hard as you can.”

  Susan shook her head.

  “It’s no good—she says the same thing every time. She stood just inside the door and saw him lying on the floor. She went right up to him and saw that he was dead. She must have dropped my handkerchief then. She was dreadfully frightened and she ran away. She says she came down the near steps. If she was behind the curtains when you were looking in at the window she would have passed me going down the garden. No, it wasn’t Cathy behind that curtain. If there was anyone there, it wasn’t Cathy, and we’ve got to find out who it was.”

  He made a sudden movement. His voice was heavy with discouragement.

  “Susan, it’s no use—we’re trying to make bricks without straw. The curtain was drawn, and there isn’t a scrap of proof that there was anyone behind it.”

  “The door,” said Susan urgently—“the door! It wasn’t open when you passed it to go to the window, but it was open when you came back. Someone opened it.”

  “I don’t know—I couldn’t swear to all that about the door. I’ve thought about it till I can’t think straight. It didn’t amount to more than an impression. You go over and over a thing like that until you don’t know what you thought at the time. The fact is you don’t notice things because you don’t know they’re going to be important. They just slide by you with the thousand and one other things which you’re not particularly noticing all day long. They’re part of a pattern, and you notice the pattern, but you just don’t notice the details. And then quite suddenly one of those details is so important that you’ve got to remember it, and you can’t. That’s where I am. It’s a matter of life and death about that door, and for the life of me I can’t remember. It was too unimportant at the time, and it’s too important now. I can’t get it into focus, and the more I try the less certain I am about anything. By the time it comes to standing up and being cross-examined I shan’t be able to open my mouth without getting tied into knots. And if you get down to rock bottom, there’s no more in it than this—I didn’t actually notice whether the door was open when I went past to the window.”

  “But you would have noticed.”

  “Would I? I don’t know. You see that’s what we come back to every time—I don’t know.”

  Susan caught him by the arm.

  “Wait! Bill, when you came back and found the door was open and went in, was the curtain still drawn?”

  “I think so. Yes, it was. I remember I had to pull it back before I could see into the room. And that would account for my not noticing whether the door was open. If the curtain had been pulled back, I should have seen the light. I did see the light from the window. That’s why I went there—I thought I would look in and see if he was alone. But there wasn’t any light from the door—I’m quite sure about that. It may have been open all the time.”

  Silence came down between them. There was no more to be said. Presently he threw up his head and laughed.

  “I took my shadow a good deal farther than he wanted to go this morning. He’s that young Lane from Ledcott, and he’s much better on a motor-bike than he was up the Quarry hill on his own flat feet. He may get his own back by arresting me, but I can give him points and a beating when it comes to a rough climb. I took him up through the gorse, and he wasn’t loving me much.”

  “I wondered where you were.”

  He laughed again.

  “I found a flat, sandy place and roughed out a pretty good plan for old Gilbert Garnish. I expect Lane thought I was crazy, but he didn’t mind having a rest. I came down the steep side over the rock, and I believe he had thoughts about suicide. Anyhow he’ll have taken off the best part of half a stone, and that’s all to the good. Actually, I’ve had a brain-wave about the Garnish affair—” He stopped suddenly, put his arms round her, and said with suspicious lightness, “I’m afraid I’ll get the sack if I’m arrested�
��and it’s a pity, because it was coming out a treat.”

  Susan said “Don’t!” in a muffled voice, and all at once she was holding him as he was holding her, and they were kissing with a desperate, straining passion—with blinding tears. Their world had broken round them and there was no protection anywhere, no safety and no help. The only happiness and comfort they could know was in this embrace which might be their last.

  They clung together without words.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Lily Green had her afternoon and evening out on Wednesday. Since William Cole would not be free until after five, she would put in a little gossip with Annie Gill or Florrie Pipe and then come home to tea. Mrs. Green had an old cottage right on the village street. It was picturesque, insanitary, and quite destitute of modern conveniences. Mrs. Green still pumped water from a well in the back garden, and everything else was to match. The rooms were dark, the floors uneven, the bedroom ceilings sloped to catch an unwary head. But when Lily came into the kitchen there was a nice clear fire with some buttered toast on the hob, and an excellent currant cake of Mrs. Green’s baking on the table, which was covered with a bright checked table-cloth. A well trimmed wall-lamp diffused a warm yellow light and a perceptible odour of paraffin. On the dresser, and only used upon state occasions, was the pink-flowered china tea-set which had been a wedding present from Mrs. O’Hara’s mother. There was also a figure of Red Riding Hood stroking an affectionate wolf, a King George V jubilee mug, two copper candlesticks, and a Dick Turpin in a blue coat and sprigged waistcoat on his famous mare Black Bess. He had very long black moustaches and rode in a peculiar manner with both hands on the same side of the mare’s neck.

  Mrs. Green gave Lily a hearty kiss and began at once to make the tea and to tell her all about Detective Sergeant Abbott and the shoes.

  “And I thought Miss Susan was agoing to faint. There wasn’t a drip nor a drab of colour in her face. ‘Miss Lenox’ he said, ‘that shoe is the one that stepped in the old clay puddle going up the garden way. It stepped in and it stepped out’, he said, ‘and after that it made a print on the study floor. And I must take the shoes away with me’, he said. And there was poor Miss Susan as white as a bit of sugar icing.”

  Lily Green put three lumps of sugar in her tea. She was just what her mother must have been at twenty-two, and a very pretty girl—nice skin, nice hair, nice eyes, and a pleasantly rounded figure. She leaned an elbow on the table and dropped her voice.

  “It’s right enough about that footprint,” she said. “Mr. Raby, he saw it, and I heard him tell his wife. They put one of the big chairs right over it so as it shouldn’t be trod on till the London police came down. But whatever makes them pick on Miss Susan? There’s plenty of others might have trod in a puddle besides her. What about that Miss de Lisle that pushed her way in past Mr. Raby? She came up from the Magpie, didn’t she, and there’s clay down there. Why couldn’t she have made the mark on the floor?”

  Mrs. Green looked thoughtful. She munched buttered toast. Then she said,

  “There wouldn’t be enough clay left on her shoes to mark a floor by the time she’d come all the way round by the road from the Magpie.”

  “Nor there wouldn’t,” said Lily. She looked doubtfully at the hot toast. “I don’t know that I ought to, Mum—I’m putting on.”

  Mrs. Green laughed her jolly laugh.

  “And I’ve put on, so what’s the odds? You don’t want to be one of the break-in-half-as-soon-as-look-at-them kind, do you? William’ll have a word to say about it if you do. Men don’t like bones, and that’s a fact. They like something they can get their arm around.”

  Lily laughed and frowned.

  “If William goes on the way he’s been going he won’t put his arm round my waist. Thinks himself a sheikh, I wouldn’t wonder, the way he carries on. I’m not to say this, and I’m not to say that, and I’m not so much as to breathe a word about—” She pulled herself up with a noticeable jerk and buried her face in her cup of tea.

  Mrs. Green took another piece of buttered toast and said firmly,

  “About what?”

  Lily finished her tea and pushed up her cup for more.

  “I suppose we’ll all be getting our notice,” she said. “I told William I’d look for a place the other side of Ledlington if he went on like he’s been going—and what do you think he had the nerve to say?”

  Mrs. Green put three lumps of sugar into Lily’s cup.

  “They’ve got the nerve to say anything, Ducks. What did he say?”

  Lily tossed her head.

  “Said I needn’t expect he’d come over there to walk out with me, and there were plenty hereabouts would be pleased to have his company.”

  “I hope you didn’t give in to him,” said Mrs. Green in a shocked voice. “Time enough when you’re married. There’s ways you can get your own back then, but a girl that lets her young man right down tread on her before they’ve been to church together, well, she’d better stay an old maid and make the best of it, because she’ll be trod as flat as any worm, and no good putting the blame on him. Men are made that way, and if you ask for it you’ll get it. So you mind and keep your end up, Lily, and don’t go giving in to William any more than what’s right.” She changed her tone suddenly. “What’s all this that he won’t let you talk about?”

  Lily took the last piece of buttered toast and bit into it with a fine row of even teeth.

  “Nothing,” she said with her mouth full.

  “Now, Lily—” Mrs. Green settled herself back in her chair and put a hand on either knee—“now, Lily, what are you a-keeping back?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh, yes, you are. And if William Cole’s going to set you on telling lies to your own mother—”

  Lily’s shoulder jerked pettishly.

  “ ’Tisn’t nothing,” she said, “only—”

  “Only what?”

  “Reelly, Mum—how you do go on! You don’t want to be drawn in any more than what William does.”

  “Drawn into what?” said Mrs. Green with some asperity.

  “Nothing.”

  Mrs. Green leaned forward and took the cup from her hand.

  “Don’t you answer me like that, Lily! What’s all this about? If it’s something about Mr. Dale’s murder, William Cole or no William Cole you’ll tell me this directly minute. Shuffling and hinting is what I’d whip any child for—and when you was a child I didn’t have to. Open as the day you was, like anyone ought to be that hasn’t got things to hide, and if William Cole is going to make you tell lies to your own mother, it’s the last time he comes inside my house, and that’s a fact!”

  Lily jerked again.

  “I’d as soon tell you as not. It was William said we oughtn’t to get drawn in.” She relaxed suddenly into a giggle. “And do you know what was at the bottom of it, I do believe? He’s jealous—that’s what he is. Thinks I’ll have to go into court, and be a witness, and have my photo in the papers. It wouldn’t be half exciting, would it, Mum? And I wouldn’t mind reelly, not if it wasn’t for William. The Inspector’s ever so nice, and that Sergeant Abbott, well, he might be a real gentleman, so I wouldn’t mind it myself, but William ’ud be fit to cut my throat.”

  “Don’t you talk that way,” said Mrs. Green in a shocked voice. “And you stop shallying about and tell me plain what it is you’ve been hiding up.”

  Lily leaned across the table and dropped her voice.

  “ ’Tisn’t anything, only—well, I suppose it might be something. You see, it was this way—and look here, Mum, don’t you go telling anyone, because Mr. and Mrs. Raby they’ve told the police and swore to it that us girls were all in along of Mrs. Raby listening to the wireless between six and a quarter to seven.”

  “And weren’t you?” said Mrs. Green.

  Lily giggled.

  “Esther and Doris were there all right, but I wasn’t. Mrs. Raby, she’s only got to set down and listen to a band programme and it send
s her off as sound as sound, so as soon as I see she was off I ran out by the back door into the yard.”

  “Whatever for?” said Mrs. Green.

  Lily giggled again.

  “Go on, Mum! What does a girl run out for? I’ll bet you did it yourself.”

  “William?” said Mrs. Green in a disapproving voice.

  “Well, we’d had a bit of a tiff Sunday night, so I thought he’d be round. It reelly was a tiff, Mum, and I wouldn’t make it up, nor let him kiss me nor nothing, so I made sure he’d be round. He carries on, you know, Mum, but he’s awful in love with me. Sometimes I wish he wasn’t quite so much. It’s bad enough when I don’t mean anything, but if I was reelly to throw him over I do believe he’d do something desperate, he’s that jealous. You know, he didn’t half like me being in service with a single gentleman—”

  Mrs. Green’s bright blue eyes very nearly popped right out of her head.

  “Lily! You’re not going to tell me it was William that shot Mr. Dale?”

  Lily had quite a prolonged fit of the giggles.

  “I’d like him to hear you say so! Why, Mum, whatever put that into your head?”

  Mrs. Green was justly annoyed. Her colour had deepened considerably, and her voice was sharp.

  “Now, Lily, that’s enough. You tell me right out what you know about Mr. Dale being shot. And if there’s any more beating about the bush—”

  Lily dropped to a confidential note.

  “Well, William was there like I thought he’d be, and we made it up—not all at once, because I wouldn’t after the way he carried on Sunday. I was ever so cold and haughty at first—I reelly was, Mum—but after a bit I give in.”

  Mrs. Green sniffed.

  “And always will!” she said.

  Lily took no notice.

  “Well, he got me to walk a bit of the way with him. I knew Mrs. Raby’d be safe till seven, so I was going to. We come round the corner of the house, and round the front to go down the drive. I said I’d go as far as the gate, when all of a sudden we heard a shot. I said, ‘What’s that?’ and William said, ‘It’s nothing to do with us’. But I ran as far as the corner of the house and looked round—”