Death Knocks Three Times

by Anthony Gilbert

  “So you’re going down to do the police’s job for them?” said John with sudden brutal candor. “Why doesn’t your friend, whoever she is (it didn’t occur to him that it might be a man), go to the police direct?”

  Miss Pettigrew shut up like a clam. “Really, that is her affair. Personally, if I am asked to confer a small favor, it does not occur to me to suggest to my friend that the police are paid for this purpose. Besides, there are occasions when a private individual may be of more use than the authorities.”

  John found himself reflecting that if he were the criminal in question he’d walk from the police fast enough, but if it were Miss Pettigrew in pursuit you wouldn’t see him for dust.

  “Perhaps you have suspicions?” he hinted.

  “Hardly, since I am not yet on the scene. But I am a logical person. If I see a vase hurtle across a room, I look for the hand that flung it. If my house burns down and there has been no storm and I have no electricity on the premises, I look for some human agency at work. And if letters appear without a signature or even a stamp, I am not persuaded that they were delivered by some celestial or diabolical messenger. I am, on the contrary, convinced that they were written by someone in close contact with myself, and by a process of elimination and by using such wits as God has given me, I set about discovering the author.”

  John Sherren, reminding himself he was a published novelist and the speaker no more than an ex-governess who looked the part, pulled himself together.

  “Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, I perceive,” said he, politely. “Are you—if one may ask—making this journey in a professional capacity?”

  She replied, with perfect composure: “My friend considers that she is in some danger from the writer of these unsigned letters, and she has asked me to give her my company and my assistance.”

  “When you say danger, do you imply violence?”

  “That is what the writer of the letters appears to have done.”

  Some people have all the luck, thought John. He’d never even seen an anonymous letter himself. “And what reason … ?” he began delicately.

  “Brakemouth is like every other place on the map,” snapped Miss Pettigrew. “People there are just as acquisitive as anywhere else, and if your neighbor has something you cannot afford or do not inherit, then what I understand is known as a jealousy complex is set up, and when this complex is sufficiently developed we may expect trouble in tangible form.”

  It all sounded a bit highfalutin to her hearer. “So someone is jealous of your friend,” he simplified. “I remember meeting an ex-inspector of the Yard once. He told me that all crimes of violence, by which he meant murder, are committed for one of two reasons —passion and greed.”

  “The majority are a mixture of the two,” said Miss Pettigrew, unbending slightly. “I am convinced they are in this case.”

  “But your friend—I mean, why … ?”

  “She recently sujffered a severe bereavement, a very close relative died in distressing circumstances.”

  “I think I see.” John nodded intelligently. “X claims to believe that she knows more of the tragedy than she has chosen to reveal. Is it a matter of an inconvenient husband being conveniently removed?”

  Miss Pettigrew’s face seemed to close up. Her eyes returned to the book open on her knee.

  “Like myself,” she said, “my friend is a spinster.”

  A sudden suspicion, so monstrous that he would not allow himself to contemplate it, floated like some enormous balloon filled with poisonous gas into John’s mind.

  “This relation?” he compelled himself to ask. “A brother, perhaps? Or a sister?”

  “A sister,” said Miss Pettigrew, and it seemed that the balloon was about to burst. “A woman of emotional make-up, easily alarmed, easily dominated. I need hardly say that no other person, so far as we know, attaches any suspicion to my friend …”

  “So far as you know,” agreed John.

  Miss Pettigrew’s face suddenly loomed up enormous, so that it seemed to fill half the carriage.

  “May I ask what you mean by that?”

  “Well, but you don’t know, I mean nobody knows. Perhaps half Brakemouth is saying the same thing.” He couldn’t imagine why he was being so reckless. The old woman annoyed him, that was all.

  Miss Pettigrew continued to regard him as if he were some monster unexpectedly revealed under a flat stone. “How very singular!” she said, after a moment, and he felt an icy thrill run through him. He tried to say something hearty and amusing, just to show her he had been pulling her leg, but another glance assured him that no one would dare hint she even possessed such a limb.

  “I suppose I’m going off my head. It’s the strain,” he told himself foolishly. Hurriedly he buried himself behind his paper, and they didn’t exchange another word until they drew up at Brake-mouth. But like a worm tunnelling in his brain went the question, “What did she mean by that—how very singular? Did it have some personal application? Does she guess?” Who he was, he meant, why he’d come? She was such an old witch, anything was possible.

  At Brakemouth John moved half-heartedly toward the rack with a murmur about getting her bag down, but she said in that deep, unfeeling voice: “Thank you. A porter will attend to that,” so he picked up his own bag and scurried across to the Railway Hotel to dump it there. He called himself every kind of a fool, but all the same he wanted to get to Greenglades (that was the name of his Aunt Clara’s hotel) and make sure that his idiotic inspiration in the train had no foundation in fact. It was a relief to find that they had allotted him a quite good room at the Railway Hotel, and he tidied himself rapidly and then hurried down again. As he crossed the hall a man standing by the desk lifted his head and instantly dropped it again. He was a short, sturdy figure, wearing a suit of bright brown and a brown billycock hat, that he casually tilted over his face as he sauntered forward to watch which way the newcomer went. John was in such a hurry he noticed nothing. As he raised his arm to signal the only taxi in view, a porter came out and beat him by a couple of seconds. Behind the porter, like a figure of doom, came the detestable Miss Pettigrew. John looked around frantically, as though he expected another taxi to drop from the clouds. He didn’t notice a little red car standing by the gutter, and indeed in his present mood he wasn’t likely to notice anything so small and, at first sight, so primitive. The next instant the porter had ushered his bete noire into the taxi and was crossing to speak to him.

  “Mr. Sherren?” he said. “The lady told me to say that if you’re going to Greenglades she can take you along with her.”

  And, “Thanks, chum,” said Mr. Crook under his breath. “Now we know where we’re going.”

  Sheepishly John accepted the offer.

  “Well, Mr. Sherren,” said the dragon composedly, “I dare say I am right in thinking you are here for the same reason as myself—to visit Miss Bond. I noticed your name on your suitcase in the train.”

  He tried to pass it off casually. “Yes, I’ve come down for a night or two. Not that I had heard from Aunt Clara that she was troubled about any anonymous letters, but—^you might call it telepathy, I suppose. I had a feeling something was wrong.”

  “Really, Mr. Sherren? Very interesting. You feel something is wrong. I know she is in danger—in great danger.”

  He couldn’t meet her eyes. She was a terrible woman. He wondered if her secret source of knowledge told her anything else, that he’d come down to carry out the threats in the anonymous letters and murder his Aunt Clara. It wouldn’t have surprised him in the least.

  8

  MISS BOND might be in peril of her life, but there was nothing to indicate that fact as she came forward into the lounge of Greenglades to greet her visitors. When she saw John her brows rose.

  “My dear John, this is an unexpected pleasure. Or perhaps Miss Pettigrew has called you into conference.”

  “Not at all,” said John, quickly. “We met quite by chance on the train.”

 
“Traveling in the same carriage,” amplified Miss Pettigrew. “An unexpected pleasure for me also.”

  “I am afraid your letter must have gone astray,” Miss Bond continued. “However, as you are here, perhaps you can be of assistance. You call yourself a realist, I believe. I have something here real enough to make your hair stand on end—what’s left of it.” Smiling, she turned to Miss Pettigrew. “How are you, Frances?

  You never seem to change. It was good of you to come so far for an old woman’s whim.”

  She led the way into a small, cheerful, well-furnished sitting room. Miss Pettigrew looked around with interest.

  “I was very fond of Isabel, as you know, Clara. I always thought if I were a man I should have wanted to marry her. She was so obviously the type that needs looking after. Pretty and fluffy and no brains at all, as Mr. Herbert puts it—or words to that effect. Dear me, Clara, is this your private sitting room?”

  “I told the proprietor I had a friend coming down and should require privacy to discuss personal afiEairs, and he put this room at my disposal.”

  “I mentioned to your nephew, when I realized his identity, my object in coming down here today,” acknowledged Miss Pettigrew. “Or shall I say one of my objects? Do you mean, Clara, there have been more letters?”

  “A truly significant one at last. Up to the present I had refused to take the matter seriously. The world is full of halfwitted people who think this sort of activity a joke.”

  “A joke in very poor taste, Clara, you will agree.”

  “My dear Frances, the taste of most people is deplorable. Here is the latest—effusion.”

  She opened her large black-velvet reticule and cast down a slip of paper on which was printed:

  Make the most of your next birthday. Miss Bond. It will be your last.

  “A definite threat, as you see.”

  “A climax, perhaps,” amended Miss Pettigrew. “Have you the others, Clara, or did you think them beneath contempt?”

  “I kept them, naturally. It is never possible to forecast how a matter like this will turn out. I have them here.”

  There were three notes leading up to the climax; all were roughly printed on cheap, lined paper, all were undated and unsigned. The first read:

  This is her aniversary. How are you Reeling now?

  and had arrived on the unfortunate Isabel’s birthday. The second ran:

  The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God. There shall no torment touch them.

  The words “righteous” and “diere” were heavily underscored. Indeed, in one place the pen had actually penetrated the paper.

  “When did these come?” inquired Miss Pettigrew, without looking up.

  “I have no note of the exact dates. The first, of course, arrived on her birthday. The second came about a month later. Then there was a time-lag—I think that is the correct expression. Then—say two months later, came a third.

  Do you remember how she hated the dark? It must be very dark where she is now.

  “Surely that helps us,” exclaimed John.

  “In what way, may I inquire?”

  “It proves that the letters aren’t written by some malicious person out to make trouble, but by someone who did actually know Aunt Isabel. For instance, it would be easy for any one to know the approximate date of your birthday. Aunt Clara, because it was always a fete day. I always came down …”

  “A fete indeed,” murmured Miss Pettigrew ironically.

  John ploughed on, pretending he hadn’t heard. “A special cake was baked, and Stroud, who made it, always had it on show the day before. He liked to show what people could do even in wartime. But Aunt Isabel’s birthday can only have been known to her own immediate circle.”

  “Let us get this quite clear, John,” said Aunt Clara in a deceptively pleasant tone. “You suggest that I wrote these letters to myself?”

  “Of course not.” He sounded genuinely shocked.

  “Then that eliminates one suspect. Now, who else could have the necessary information? There is yourself, of course, but then all the letters were left by hand, so that would involve your paying surprise visits to Brakemouth, and it is too much to believe that no one would have remarked a well-known novelist in our midst. That leaves—let me see—Locket. Or perhaps you and she had a pact.”

  “Aunt Clara, this is absurd.” John found his voice with an effort. “Locket isn’t even in Brakemouth now. She went to her brother in Wiltshire.”

  “That didn’t last long. She was back in three months. The brother was marrying again.”

  “Within three months? Surely a scandal, my dear Clara.”

  “According to Locket it would have been more of a scandal if he hadn’t married. But really, Frances, I cannot concern myself with the private lives of these people.”

  “Then she is actually in Brakemouth now?”

  “I believe so.”

  “You must be sorry you left Seaview, aren’t you?” Like any stoic of old, John opened his breast to his adversary’s spear. “I mean, it was because of Locket leaving that you felt you couldn’t keep the house going.”

  Clara looked at him like a particularly vicious boa constrictor eyeing a particularly inferior rabbit.

  “My dear John, your memory is lamentably short. I told you at the time that my sole reason for maintaining a house and a stafiE at considerable trouble and expense was on account of your Aunt Isabel. She would never have adapted herself to hotel life, but when at last—at last—I could consider my own interests, I was thankful to be able to shelve all that responsibility and leave the management of a household to others. As for Locket, I should not dream of re-employing her even if she asked to come back. The way she went around after my sister died, talking about the house being haunted, hearing voices and Isabel crying at the windows— sheer hysteria, and so I told her. Really, I can hardly blame her brother if he did marry again at injudiciously short notice. It was like having a madwoman in the house. Pull yourself together. Locket, I told her, or you’ll end up in an asylum.”

  “She was very fond of Aunt Isabel,” John protested.

  “Are you suggesting / was not fond of her? If you knew the sac* rifices I have made all my life, first my father, then you as a helpless child abandoned by your parents—no, John, no argument if you please—and then all those years my sister, who was manifestly incapable of managing her own life. Oh, Frances, I know you were prepared to relieve me of that burden, but it was impossible. No one but I knew how it must be carried, I and my father who left me Isabel as part of his legacy on his death-bed. As for Locket, when I heard she was back I recommended her to Lady Trevanion, who, I knew, was looking for a housekeeper. She’s not perfect, I

  told her, but which of them is? At least she’s clean and honest, and she doesn’t ask the outrageous wages of these young women with their hair flying on their shoulders and fingernails looking as though they’d been dipped blood. But would Locket go? Dear me, no. She had tasted independence. She was never going to live in again. She ‘obliges,’ I understand, a number of residents, but really I can tell you nothing definite about her. Do I understand you to suggest that she may have written these letters?”

  “It’s a possibility, Clara,” said Miss Pettigrew, in her deep voice. “She had the necessary knowledge—about Isabel’s fear of the dark, for instance. All her friends were aware of it, but would a stranger be likely to know?”

  “My point precisely,” chimed in John eagerly, feeling himself one of that blessed band of brothers of whom Peter Wimsey and Albert Campion are shining lights.

  “Locket might talk, she was a great chatterbox. And then Isabel was highly indiscreet. She had an unfortunate habit of entering into conversations with strangers in omnibuses or in shelters on the sea-front. That was one reason why I was not anxious for her to go out alone. No one knows what she may not have said.”

  “The word anniversary is spelt with a single ‘n’ which might argue an illiterate person. The printing,
I dare say, is deliberately malformed. If the writer is someone known to yourself …”

  “I doubt if you can go much my the spelling,” demurred John, “Plenty of fellows with a Varsity education might spell anniversary that way.”

  “A great pity their parents wasted their money, if that’s so,” said Clara. “You, of course, would not make that mistake, John, except deliberately.”

  “As for maniacs,” continued John in dogged tones, “plenty of them take to religion, which could explain the text from the Bible.”

  “So we are now assuming that the letters are written by a religious maniac? That considerably enlarges the field.”

  “One thing that strikes me as odd,” for once John did not intend to be deflated by his alarming relative, “is that so far there’s been no talk of blackmail. What, then, is the motive behind the letters?”

  “That surely is obvious. I am being warned that I am in danger.

  The last letter, at all events, constitutes a threat against my life.”

  “And the motive?”

  Miss Pettigrew took up the tale. “It occurs to me that there may be a soupgon of truth underlying all this melodrama. For instance we are all aware of the coroner’s verdict, but did it never pass through your mind, Clara, as I must admit it did through mine, that perhaps Isabel’s death was not an accident?”

  “You mean that she deliberately threw herself off the balcony? But that is absurd. John here will tell you that only a few days before this tragedy she was in the highest of spirits.”

  “Ah, but that was a few days earlier. Supposing something had happened?”

  “What should happen?”

  “You were not in her confidence?”

  “She told me nothing that has any bearing on her sudden death.”

  “And you, Mr. Sherren?” Miss Pettigrew turned smartly on him.

  “As I told Aunt Clara at the time, she gave me the impression she had made some new friendship. I can think of nothing else that would have made her so happy, or caused her to speak as she did about life being worthwhile after one had given up hope. And if anything had happened to—to crash that friendship, she might have felt desperate …” He paused, letting the silence finish the sentence for him.