Palk hesitated a second, then said:
“Would you object very much if I asked you to allow me to have another look at it?”
She handed it to him without a word, and sat almost at attention while he emptied everything out on to the table. A white satin cloth partly embroidered in red silk and gold thread first came to light, wrapped in an old cream silk handkerchief; then a packet of crewel needles; tiny scissors in the shape of a stork, the two blades forming the beak; a small bag of round, white peppermints of extra strength; a book of Bible readings. He satisfied himself that there was no knitting-needle hidden in any part of the bag, and began to put the contents carefully back again.
“It’s a new altar cloth I’m making for the dear Vicar,” Miss Astill explained anxiously. “I’m not very clever with my needle, but it’s such a labour of love to me.”
Palk handed the bag over to her and she settled it comfortably on her knee.
“So upsetting, all this legal procedure,” she twittered, eying the two constables.
“I’m sorry, but it has to be done if we are to catch the person who murdered Miss Blake,” replied Palk. “You don’t mind answering a few questions, I hope.”
“Yes, yes, of course. Anything I can do to help... But all this is a very hard experience for me, Inspector. I have been so delicately reared; my dear parents kept me away from the hard knocks of life, and now to be plunged into a – a murder – I don’t know what my poor mother would have thought.”
The words, though apparently stupid coming from a woman well past middle age, evoked a certain amount of sympathy from Palk. Miss Astill looked so definitely a product of an older age, so unfitted, as she had said, to be involved in a crime of violence. She belonged to the placid Edwardian days, when, as a girl in her twenties, she had no doubt waited on an irascible father and an invalid mother, slowly watching her chances of marriage fade into certain spinster-hood. She exuded a faint odour of moth-balls, and looked as if she ought to have worn a dress of red plush trimmed with antimacassars.
Palk treated her as tenderly as he would have treated his own mother.
“You have heard about the... death of Miss Blake?”
Miss Astill raised her hands, palms outward.
“Yes, yes. The poor girl –”
“You knew her well?”
The hands were lowered, and moved restlessly in her lap.
“Not well, no. We did not see each other much. I am sensitive. I always was sensitive as a child. I felt she despised me. She was young and beautiful and healthy, all the things which I am not. Oh, indeed, I know!’’ as Palk made a slight gesture of protest. “She drank cocktails in her bedroom, and wore immodest clothes, and smoked cigarettes. I belong to a different age, when girls were taught to cover their bodies decently and to speak softly, and behave like ladies.”
“You thought her immodest and indecent?”
Miss Astill sat very erect, as if she still felt the straps of the backboard she had worn as a child. A sudden blaze of anger came into her faded eyes like a white flame.
“I did. Exposing her naked body to the gaze of all the men on the premises!”
“But surely, not naked,” protested Palk.
She glared malevolently at him.
“What else could you call it? She used to wear those disgusting things called shorts, and no stockings in the summer. You could see her legs right up to her thighs and beyond, if you cared to look. And her evening dresses! No back and very little front! What else could you call it but naked? She was immodest and immoral!”
She had some difficulty in controlling herself, but suddenly the anger died away from her eyes, leaving them dull and brown.
“It’s very wrong of me to say such things about her,” she said. “She’s dead now, and won’t wear any more of those clothes.”
Palk waited for a second, then, as if a new thought had struck him, asked: “Did Miss Blake wear much jewelry?”
“Yes, indeed, she did. No one could help noticing it. She had some lovely jewels, and I know something about them. They were real stones, I’m sure, and not synthetic rubbish. Her diamonds must have been worth hundreds of pounds. She used to wear them with tweeds as no real lady would have done, but they were really valuable.”
The Inspector wrote a hurried note and sent it to Sergeant Jago by a constable.
“Then you think she might have been murdered for her jewelry by some burglar?”
“By a burglar? Oh no, surely not. Someone in the Hydro murdered her.”
“How do you know that?” Palk barked the question at her, and she gave a start.
“But you – you think so yourself, or why would you forbid us all to go out of the Hydro?”
“You have no suspicions of anyone yourself?”
Miss Astill’s eyes gleamed eagerly.
“I’m not of a suspicious nature, Inspector,” she said, in tones which seemed to presage ill to someone, “but when I see people under suspicious circumstances I can’t help having suspicions, can I? When I saw Miss Blake upstairs in the corridor after the concert –”
“What?” The Inspector’s exclamation was like the crack of a whip. “You saw her upstairs after the concert? At what time?”
“It must have been after one o’clock in the morning, because I know I didn’t feel well. I’d taken a cup of coffee, and it always upsets me, but I thought that just one cup during the evening wouldn’t have any bad effect. It just shows you that you can never relax your dieting for a second when you have such a delicate digestion –”
Palk interrupted her. If you once let people talk about their digestions here, he thought, there’s no stopping them.
“When did you see Miss Blake?”
Miss Astill looked aggrieved.
“I’m telling you, Inspector. I didn’t feel well after the concert, and I was going along the corridor upstairs –”
“Where were you going to?” asked Palk bluntly.
Miss Astill hung a modest head, and Palk began to think that there was much to be said for the modern girl despite her shorts, at least where police questionnaires were concerned.
“Well, go on,” he said.
“I heard someone coming along the corridor, so, of course, I went back to my room and waited for them to go past.”
“But you saw who it was, first?” Palk knew that there was no need to ask such a question in the scandal-loving Hydro.
“Certainly I saw them. I’m not blind. If people will walk about the corridors at that time in the morning they must expect to be seen.”
Palk thought the argument faulty, but did not say so. “You say that you saw them. Who were they?”
“Miss Blake and Sir Humphrey Chervil, of course.”
Palk whistled.
“You’re quite sure of that?”
“I’m the daughter of an Army officer, and am not accustomed to having my word doubted,” said Miss Astill stiffly. “Besides, you can find out from Sir Humphrey himself.” Palk secretly thought that this might not be so easy as she seemed to think.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t doubt your word. Did you happen to hear anything they were saying?”
“No, they were too far away.”
“So you did not see either of them again?”
“No, and I didn’t hear them, either!”
But Palk was tired of chasing clues.
“What, exactly, do you mean by that remark, Miss Astill? If you have any further evidence, I must ask you to give it to me at once.”
Miss Astill leaned forward eagerly.
“Well, Sir Humphrey’s room is along the corridor to the left of my room, so that he has to pass my door to reach it. Of course, I left my door open a little so that I should know when he had gone past... But,” she paused impressively, “I never did hear him come past. I waited for ten minutes, then risked looking out. The corridor was empty and Miss Blake’s door was shut.”
“Perhaps he passed so quietly that you couldn’
t hear the sound of his footsteps,” suggested Palk.
“But I should have seen him. I had switched off the light in my room and was standing looking through the gap in the door. The corridor lights were still on. He couldn’t possibly have passed without my seeing him.”
Palk had a sudden vivid picture of the little spinster standing in her bedroom, clutching a scarlet flannel dressing-gown, with a purple collar, around her scanty figure. She was probably wearing metal hair-curlers under a decorous boudoir cap, he thought, glancing at the waves in her hair, which were narrow and crimped, where Miss Blake’s had been so smooth and wide.
“Where do you think Sir Humphrey went, then?” he asked.
“Into Miss Blake’s bedroom, of course,” replied Miss Astill, in triumph. “I heard voices from her room when I passed afterwards. I don’t know what else you could expect from a girl who wore such clothes.”
Chapter 18
Sergeant Jago entered, looking very pleased with himself.
“Found it, Sergeant?” asked Palk.
“Not the handle yet, sir, but we’ve got the jewels.” He placed a large pigskin jewel-case on the table. “You didn’t send me a list to check them by, but I should think they’re all here. There do seem to be a powerful lot of them.”
“I suppose there’s no doubt about their being Miss Blake’s.”
“Hardly, sir. Her name’s inside. We found them in room twenty-seven. They weren’t hidden much; just the usual place, on top of the wardrobe.”
Inspector Palk ran his finger down the list of rooms, then leaned back in his chair, and threw his pencil down with a satisfied air.
“I think that settles it, Jago,” he said. “Just stay at that door. I may need you. Bring Sir Humphrey Chervil,” he said to the constable.
Sir Humphrey looked still apprehensive, but more collected than at his first interview. Some of his composure vanished, however, when he saw the jewel-case.
Palk nodded to him pleasantly.
“I want to ask you a few questions about that, Sir Humphrey,” he said, while Sergeant Jago felt ashamed of his superior’s lack of finesse. To his way of thinking, the jewel-case should have been concealed at the beginning of the interview, only to be whipped out at the crucial moment when the witness had perjured himself. But Jago read detective novels in his spare time, and Palk did not.
The Inspector had his own methods, and did not care whether they were orthodox or not. He preferred to place all his facts before a suspect, leaving him to explain them away. If anyone was disposed to tell lies, he argued, those lies were more likely to stand out against the nucleus of truth around which they must thus, inevitably, be woven. But he could never get the sergeant to see this, which is probably why he remained a sergeant for a very long time, while Palk’s promotion was more speedy.
After cautioning Sir Humphrey, Palk went on:
“I have reason to believe that the jewels in this case be-long to Miss Blake. They have just been found on the top of your wardrobe. Can you explain how they got there?”
“No.” Sir Humphrey’s neat black moustache served to accentuate the pallor of the tensed skin round his mouth.
“You have been cautioned about the seriousness of your replies. Do you still persist in the assertion that you had not met Miss Blake before you came to this Hydro?”
“Yes.”
“Before you met her here, she was a complete stranger to you?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. I believe that you told me that you last saw Miss Blake in the drawing-room, that she was going upstairs from there, but that you did not actually see her go through the door.”
“Yes.”
The monosyllables were strange. Palk, suddenly had the feeling that this man was not unused to official police questionings.
“Yet you were observed by a witness to be walking along the upstairs corridor to Miss Blake’s room after one o’clock. Is that true, Sir Humphrey?”
A ghastly pallor spread over Sir Humphrey’s face. He put up his hand to steady the trembling of his mouth.
“Yes,” he said again.
“You went upstairs with Miss Blake, and you entered her bedroom? Why?”
“She wanted to give me her jewels.”
The reply was so ingenuous that Palk was taken aback for a moment.
“What for?” he asked at length.
“To – to take care of them for her. She was nervous about having so many valuables in her room.”
Palk smiled.
“I see,” he said. “And you really expect me to believe that although she had never met you before she came here, and although you had never been alone together for long until last night, Miss Blake handed over jewels worth a few thousand pounds so that you could put them on top of your wardrobe, instead of handing them to the doctor to put into his safe?”
“Yes, you see, I... yes.”
He put up his hands to shield his face.
“Let me remind you of a few things you have forgotten,” said Palk. “A lady is murdered. Your cigarette-lighter is found down the side of the couch on which she was lying. You are the last known person to have seen her alive. Her jewelry, of very great value, is found concealed in your room. You have tried to clear yourself by lying. If you want to tell me the truth, I’ll listen. Have you anything to say?”
“I didn’t murder her,” Sir Humphrey said dully.
The Inspector waited.
“Well?” he asked, after a long pause.
Sir Humphrey shook his head. He looked a stricken man, and Palk had no compunction in placing him under arrest.
“A clear case,” he said to the sergeant, feeling permissibly well pleased with himself. “I may not be like the brilliant detective who, I am sure, strides through Mrs. Dawson’s books, but this old tortoise gets there just the same.”
It was not until the following morning that he remembered that he had not interviewed Miss Brendon and her attendant, Ada Rogers.
Chapter 19
The shadow which had been thrown over Presteignton Hydro by Miss Blake’s murder was lifted by Sir Humphrey Chervil’s arrest. The next day the residents awakened to a morning of brilliant sunshine and the knowledge that they were free once more to enjoy it as they would, out of doors. The thought was particularly pleasant after the gruelling hours of police questioning which they had been forced to spend in closer proximity with the staff and their fellow-guests than they liked.
Chambermaids drew up the heavy green Venetian blinds with a clatter for which they were, for once, not reprimanded. Early-morning tea was sipped without the grudging thought that it was an extra and not worth sixpence. The women all wore their brightest clothes. No one was late for breakfast.
Any qualms which Dr. Williams might have had about the residents packing up and moving to another hotel on account of the murder were soon dissipated, for no one showed any tendency to move. Possibly it might have been different if any of the older residents had been involved in the murder, but Miss Blake and Sir Humphrey had been like visitants from some other world whose actions left them entirely unaffected. It might have been different, too, if the case had dragged on for several weeks instead of being so quickly and satisfactorily solved by Inspector Palk, but, as it was, the murder merely became an engrossing new scandal which would serve as a topic of conversation for many months to come, and they all pursued the insignificances of their daily life as if they had never been disturbed by anything so upsetting.
The more sensational morning papers gave the first jolt to their complacency, but the residents were comforted by the fact that the reporters, in their eternal desire for new expressions, had only succeeded in making the headlines unintelligible. “Murder-Baronet’s Beautiful Bride”, they said, with more alliteration than truth, and “‘Unique Murder Weapon in Hotel Crime.” A syndicate consisting of the Chief-Constable of Devonshire, Inspector Palk, Sergeant Jago, Dr. Williams, Miss Lewis, and the housekeeper, had succeeded in keeping the reporters
from contact with the residents and staff of the Hydro, so that the only photographs appearing in the Press were those of the official view of Presteignton Hydro, and a blurred photograph of Inspector Palk (right) talking to Sergeant Jago (left). There was also a photograph of “Miss Molly O’Shea, pretty Irish girl, who discovered the body,” which effectively destroyed the hitherto unbroken friendship between her and Amy Ford.
Thus it was not until the following Sunday, when the first dusty grey charabanc jaunted up the hill and halted on the terrace, that the residents at Presteignton Hydro suffered any discomfort from Miss Blake’s murder. The charabanc relieved itself of its passengers and bumped round to the old coaching-yard to make room for two of its fellows. They had come to Presteignton on an advertised “Grand Surprise Trip,” but no one was more surprised than the doctor when he beheld the hundred excited, shouting, gesticulating people who stood on the terrace in their stiff Sunday clothes, criticizing the view and everything else in sight.
He took one look at the strangers and gave hurried instructions to Miss Lewis.
“I’ll lunch in my own rooms,” he said. “I can see no one at all today. You understand?”
“Yes, Doctor,” replied Miss Lewis, understanding full well that every resident would demand to make a personal complaint to the doctor and would insist that charabancs must, in future, be abolished from the Hydro.
Such an unexpected crowd of visitors had never been known in the Hydro in the experience of any resident, but the Hydro was a public hotel and, as such, could not refuse to accommodate visitors seeking refreshment. The staff set to work rearranging the dining-room, crowding the residents’ tables into one corner of the room, and bringing in long trestle-tables from the staff dining-room for the extra people. The kitchen staff, hastily reinforced from the garden, was working at full speed already, washing extra dinner services which were covered with layers of dust from long disuse, cleaning vegetables, opening tins of soup and fruit, while the chef and the housekeeper shouted and coaxed and sweated, and somehow contrived to have a four-course luncheon ready on time.
Knock, Murderer, Knock! Page 10
