“Why, Mrs. Mayhew-what’s up?” he said, and didn’t get a word or anything except that stare. He put down the milk on the dresser and looked round for Mayhew, because for certain sure there was something wrong, and he couldn’t go away and leave her like that.
He went across the kitchen to the door on the far side and opened it. There was a darkish bit of passage, and the door of the butler’s pantry standing wide. He could see Mayhew’s shoulder and right arm, and his hand holding the telephone receiver. The hand shook, the arm and shoulder shook. When his head came into the picture it shook too-not as if Mayhew was shaking it, but as if the whole of him was quivering like one of his wife’s jellies. His teeth chattered. Mr. Stokes was of the opinion that nobody couldn’t make head nor tail of what he was trying to say. He was probably right, because it became obvious that he was being adjured to speak up, and to speak distinctly. He said, “I’ll try,” and shook all over again and said, “It’s the shock-I found him-he’s a dreadful sight-oh dear!”
Mr. Stokes had a well founded local reputation as a nosy parker. He could contain himself no longer. It was obvious to the meanest intelligence that Something had Happened. Mr. Stokes did not think at all meanly of his intelligence. It immediately suggested that the Something, if not Murder, was at the very least of it Sudden Death. In a friendly and sociable manner he came up to the shaking Mr. Mayhew and laid an arm across his shoulders.
“What’s up, chum? Who are you talking to-the police? Here, have a drink of water and see what that’ll do.”
Having filled a cup at the tap, he removed the receiver from Mr. Mayhew’s nerveless hand, pressed it to his own ear, and stooped to the mouthpiece.
“ ’Ullo! This is Stokes speaking-milk roundsman. Are you police?”
The sort of voice which suggests a large policeman said it was. It also asked what Mr. Stokes was doing on the line.
“Just happened to come in with the milk, and seeing Mr. Mayhew wasn’t in shape for what you might call making a statement, I’ve given him a drink of water and told him I’ll hold the line. Lenton police station, is it?”
The voice said it was. It also said it wanted Mayhew back on the line.
“Easy does it,” said Mr. Stokes. “Bit of dirty work been going on, if you ask me-Mrs. Mayhew next door to a faint in the kitchen, and this pore chap looking as if someone had got him up to be shot at dawn. He’s spilling half the water I give him instead of getting it down. Here, hold on a jiff and I’ll see if I can get out of him what it’s all about.”
Constable Whitcombe waited impatiently. A number of disconnected and extremely irritating sounds reached him. There was some gasping, some choking, and, superimposed on these, an impression of Mr. Stokes administering a mixture of soothing syrup and encouragement. Then, very distinct and sharp, Mr. Stokes saying, “Gosh!” and then a pause which went on for so long that Constable Whitcombe flashed the exchange and wanted to know why he had been cut off. Exchange said he hadn’t, and was rather crisp about it. After that there were one or two gasps, and then the sound of running feet. Mr. Stokes was back on the line, his voice risen in key and all detachment gone.
“It’s Mr. Lessiter,” he said-“murdered-in his own study! Bin hit over the head with the poker something crool! That’s what Mr. Mayhew was trying to tell you, only he couldn’t get it out, and no wonder. It fair turned me up! I’ve just been along to have a look… No, of course I haven’t touched anything! What d’you take me for? Children five year old know enough not to disturb nothing on the scene of the crime… No, I didn’t touch the door, and didn’t need to. Standing wide open it was, the way Mr. Mayhew left it after he looked in and seen the horrid sight. Couldn’t get back to his pantry fast enough, and I don’t blame him. And if you ask me, the sooner you get someone out here the better… All right, all right, all right, I didn’t say you did! No need to take me up like that-I’m only trying to be helpful.”
Everyone got their milk very late that morning. There was not only the delay caused by the interlude at Melling House, but it was obviously impossible for Mr. Stokes to call anywhere else without making the most of the dramatic fact that he had practically been on the spot when the murder was discovered. By the time he reached Mrs. Voycey’s on the other side of the Green he was not only word-perfect, but he was also in a position to retail some first-hand observations on the manner in which the news had been received.
“Mrs. Welby, she put her head out of the window to ask for another half pint, and when I told her, she must have sat down sudden, because there she was one minute and there she wasn’t the next, so I thought maybe she’d gone off in a faint with the shock. I called up to the window and asked if she was all right, and she looks out again as white as death and says, ‘Are you sure?’ And when I told her I seen him with my own eyes she says, ‘Oh, my God-what a horrible thing!’ ”
Variants of this remark seem to have been made at every house. To his own regret, and to that of all his listeners, he had no knowledge of how the White Cottage had reacted, since he had most unfortunately delivered the milk at Miss Rietta Cray’s before going up to Melling House.
Cecilia Voycey’s stout, elderly housekeeper listened with the same amiable interest which she had accorded during the past year to the birth of twins in the Stokes family and the decease of an uncle of Mrs. Stokes who had married for the fourth time in his eighty-ninth year and left his house and a nice little sum in the bank to the designing widow. “Yellow hair, and makes out she’s under thirty!” had been Mr. Stokes’s embittered conclusion. Upon all these items of news Mrs. Crook had had the same comment to make-a slow “Fancy that!” followed by “Who’d ha thought it!” The murder of James Lessiter provoked her to no higher flights, but having absorbed all that Mr. Stokes could tell her and shut the back door after him, she went through into the dining-room where Mrs. Voycey and Miss Silver were partaking of breakfast. With slow and lumbering accuracy she repeated her garnered news.
“Mr. Stokes, he waited till the police came. He don’t know if there’s anything missing, but the grate was fair choked with burned paper, and the poor gentleman sitting there with his head smashed in, and the poker on the hearthrug. Mr. Stokes was able to leave us two pints this morning, but he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to keep it up.”
Miss Silver said, “Dear me!”
Mrs. Voycey waved away the milk.
“Good gracious, Bessie-don’t talk about food! Have the police got any clue?”
“Not that they told Mr. Stokes. There was a Constable, and an Inspector, and a Superintendent, taking photographs and fingerprints and all sorts when he come away. He did say it looked like someone had tried to burn the poor gentleman’s will. All scorched down one side it was.”
“His will!” exclaimed Mrs. Voycey in what was almost a scream.
Mrs. Crook gazed at her in a ruminative manner and said placidly,
“They do say that everything was left to Miss Rietta Cray.”
CHAPTER 17
Superintendent Drake of the County Police sat in one of the tapestry-covered armchairs in the housekeeper’s room at Melling House. Mrs. Mayhew sat in the other. Constable Whitcombe had made her a cup of tea, and Mayhew had laced it with whisky out of the case which James Lessiter had brought down with him. If she had been capable of coherent thought on any but the one dreadful subject, she would have been very much shocked at the idea of taking spirits so early in the morning. She had come out of that deathlike rigor. The whisky had got into her head and confused it. It had also loosened her tongue. But there was one thing she wasn’t ever going to say, not if they burnt her at the stake. The improbability of this form of persuasion did not present itself. Nobody wasn’t going to hear from her about Cyril coming over from Lenton on the bike he borrowed from Ernie White. If it wasn’t for no other reason, whatever was Fred going to say? Fred didn’t know, and he wasn’t going to know. What was the use of saying he’d done with Cyril and he wouldn’t have him coming about the place? You ca
n’t be done with your own flesh and blood, any more than you can cut off your hand and say you’ll do without it. She’d got to manage so that Fred didn’t know about Cyril coming down and-all the rest of it.
The terror began to come over her again. He mustn’t know-the police mustn’t know-nobody mustn’t know- not ever.
She sat in the tapestry chair, not leaning back against the comfortable patchwork cushion which had been a legacy from her aunt Ellen Blacklock, but sitting straight up in her blue overall, which was very clean and a little faded, her hands clasping one another tightly, her eyes fixed upon the Superintendent’s face. He hadn’t been very long in Lenton, and she hadn’t seen him before. If she had passed him in the street she wouldn’t have thought about him one way or another except for his having red hair, which was a thing she didn’t care about. Red hair and red eyelashes, they gave a man a kind of a foxy look. They’d never had them in their family, but of course it wasn’t her business what other people had-she wasn’t one for meddling with other people’s affairs like some. It wasn’t anything to her whether Superintendent Drake was fair or dark or foxy. Only no matter what he looked like, he was the police, and she’d got to keep him from knowing about Cyril. The terror in her took hold of her body and shook it.
The Superintendent said, “Now, Mrs. Mayhew, there’s no need for you to be nervous. You’ve had a shock, and I’m sorry to trouble you, but I needn’t keep you long. I just want you to tell me what time you got home last night. It was your half day off, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.” She was looking at him, but without shifting her gaze she could see that the young man sitting up to the table had written that down. They would write everything down.
It didn’t matter what they wrote just so long as she didn’t say a word about Cyril.
The Superintendent was speaking again.
“And on your half day, what do you generally do?”
“We go into Lenton.”
“Every week?”
“Yes.”
“What do you do when you get there?”
The dreadful grip of the terror had relaxed. He wasn’t asking her anything about Cyril-only what they’d done week in, week out for more years than she could count, when they had their day off.
“We do a bit of shopping, and then we go round to tea with Mr. Mayhew’s sister, Mrs. White.”
“Yes-your husband gave us the address.”
Ernie-Ernie and the bicycle-she didn’t ought to have mentioned Emmy White. But it wasn’t her-it was Fred, and Fred had given the address. She stared at the Superintendent as a rabbit stares at a stoat.
“And after tea, Mrs. Mayhew?”
“We go to the pictures.”
“You do that every week?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, it’s a great thing to have regular habits. I’m that way myself-when I get the chance. Now, Mrs. Mayhew, why didn’t you go to the pictures last night? Your husband says you came back by the early bus. He kept to the regular programme, but you didn’t. Why was that?”
“I came out by the six-forty bus.”
“Yes-it reaches Melling at seven, doesn’t it? Why did you come back early instead of going to the pictures with your husband?”
“I’d a bit of a headache.”
“Have you ever come back like that by yourself before?”
“Mr. Lessiter was here-”
There wasn’t any answer. The Superintendent said,
“You’d left him a cold supper, hadn’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you didn’t come back on Mr. Lessiter’s account.”
She couldn’t turn any paler, but a sweat broke upon the skin.
“My head was bad.”
“I see. Now, will you just tell me what you did after you got back.”
Her hands clutched one another. She must tell him everything just like it happened, only nothing about Cyril-nothing about going to the back door and Cyril saying, “Well, I made it. Ernie lent me his bike. If I’d come by the bus, every dog and cat in Melling ’ud know.” She’d got to leave out all the bits about Cyril and tell the truth about the rest. She moistened her stiff lips.
“I come in, and I made me a cup of tea-”
She mustn’t say nothing about giving Cyril his supper, and his saying right in the middle of it, “I’ve got to have some money, Mum. I’m in trouble.”
The Superintendent’s voice made her jump.
“Did you see Mr. Lessiter at all? You say you came home partly because he was here. Did you go to the study and see if he wanted anything?”
He saw her wince, and thought, “She’s hiding something.”
Instinct prompted her, as it will prompt any terrified weak creature. She said on a panting breath,
“Oh, yes, sir.”
“What time would that be?”
“It was just before the news.”
“Just before nine?” He frowned.
“That’s right.”
“You were in before a quarter past seven, weren’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But you didn’t go and see if Mr. Lessiter wanted anything until just before nine.”
She said very faintly, “My head was bad-I had to sit for a bit-I didn’t rightly know what I was doing.”
“It’s a long time from a quarter past seven till nine o’clock.”
A long time-a terrible long time… Cyril with his head in her lap-crying… She said in a weak voice,
“I didn’t hardly know how it went. Then I made me some tea and went along to the study.”
“And you saw Mr. Lessiter?”
There was a little colour in Mrs. Mayhew’s cheeks, a flush born of whisky and desperation. She said,
“No, sir-I didn’t see him.”
The eyes behind the foxy lashes bored into her like gimlets.
“You went to the study, and you didn’t see him?”
Mrs. Mayhew nodded, sitting up straight and pinching her left hand with her right till it felt quite bruised.
“I went along to the study like I said, and I opened the door, but I didn’t open it no more than a little.”
“Yes?”
She caught her breath and said in a fluttering voice,
“Miss Rietta Cray was there.”
“Who is Miss Rietta Cray?”
“Lives at the White Cottage-just to the left outside the gates.”
“Go on.”
“I didn’t mean to listen-I wouldn’t do anything like that- I just wanted to know whether to go in. People don’t thank you if they’re talking private.”
“Were they?”
Mrs. Mayhew nodded with emphasis.
“Mr. Lessiter was saying he didn’t particularly want to be murdered.”
Superintendent Drake said, “What!”
Mrs. May hew repeated her nod.
“That’s what he said. And then he went on, ‘Funny you should come along tonight, Rietta. I’ve been burning your letters.’ That’s when I knew it was Miss Cray he was talking to. And then he said something about love’s young dream.”
“Were they engaged?”
She nodded again.
“A matter of twenty years ago-getting on for twenty-five. So I thought I’d better not go in.”
“Did you hear any more?”
She said, “I’m not one to listen.”
“Of course you’re not. But you might have happened to hear something before you shut the door. You did, didn’t you?”
“Well, I did. There was a piece about his turning everything out, looking for a memma something or other his mother left him. I remember that because it rhymed with Emma.”
“Memorandum?”
“That’s right.”
The terror in her was lulled. All this was easy, and no more than gospel truth. She was all right so long as she told the truth and kept away from Cyril. She had a picture in her mind of Cyril in the kitchen fiddling with the knobs of the wireless,
and herself a long way off at the study door. Instinct told her to stay there and make as much of it as she could- the same instinct which sets a bird to trail a wounded wing and trick a cat away from its nest. She repeated the Superintendent’s suggestion.
“Memma-randum. Something his mother left for him, and when he was looking for it he’d found Miss Rietta’s letters and-something else.”
“What else?”
“I couldn’t see-the door wasn’t open more than an inch. By what he said, it was a will, sir. Seemed he was showing it to Miss Rietta. And she said, ‘How absurd!’ and Mr. Lessiter laughed and said it was rather. And then he said, ‘Everything to Henrietta Cray, the White Cottage, Melling.’ ”
“You definitely heard him say that to Miss Cray?”
“Oh, yes, sir.” Her look was unwavering and truthful.
“Did you hear anything more?”
“Yes, sir. I wouldn’t have stayed, but I was that taken aback. I heard him say he’d never made another will. ‘So, if young Carr was to murder me tonight you’d come in for quite a tidy fortune.’ That’s what he said, and it give me the creeps all down my back-I don’t know what I felt like. And I pulled the door to and come back to the kitchen.”
The Superintendent said, “H’m-” And then, “Who is young Carr?”
“Miss Rietta’s nephew, Mr. Carr Robertson.”
“Why should he want to murder Mr. Lessiter-do you know of any reason?”
“No, sir, I don’t.”
“You don’t know of any quarrel between them?”
“No, sir-” She hesitated.
“Yes, Mrs. Mayhew?”
“Mrs. Fallow-she helps here, and she goes to Miss Cray Saturdays-she passed the remark only yesterday that it was funny Mr. Lessiter never coming down here these twenty years and not knowing scarcely anyone in the village, after being born and brought up here. And I said there wasn’t hardly anyone would know him by sight, and she said, ‘That’s right,’ and she brought in Mr. Carr’s name. Seems she’d heard him say he wouldn’t know Mr. Lessiter if he was to meet him-but I don’t know how he come to say it.”
Miss Silver Comes To Stay Page 9
