“I see. And now, Mrs. Jackson, what about the gentleman’s name? I think you know it.”
She looked distressed.
“Yes, I do, but-”
Lamb shook his head.
“That won’t do, I’m afraid. We’ve got to have it. Things can’t be kept private in a murder case, Mrs. Jackson. You’ll have to give it to us.”
“Well, it’s Mr. Maundersley-Smith-the Mr. Maundersley-Smith.”
Frank Abbott’s eyebrows went up as far as they would go. Old Lamb stared and frowned. Maundersley-Smith! By gum! No wonder the girl thought it was worth while to bury herself in Vandeleur House and live like a nun, for Mr. Maundersley-Smith was a hub of the Empire, a prince of the shipping world, a household word for success and wealth. Miss Carola Roland had played high, and if the fingerprints on the larger glass proved to be his, Mr. Maundersley-Smith might be called on to foot a heavier bill than even he could afford. Well, well, that was as might be. Meanwhile-
He addressed himself again to Ella Jackson.
“Did you see anyone besides Bell, either coming or going?”
There were signs of definite relief at the change of subject. For the first time information was volunteered.
“Well, not exactly coming or going, because it was while I was up here with Carrie. He came and rang the bell, and she sent him away-laughed at him, and called him a silly little man, and said she hadn’t got time for him.”
“Who was it?”
“Oh, just Mr. Willard from the flat downstairs. There wasn’t anything in it, you know-she only laughed at him. But I told her she oughtn’t to encourage him because of his wife-even if it didn’t mean anything at all, his wife would have her feelings.”
Over her head Frank Abbott looked at Lamb and Lamb looked back. So the Willards’ row probably had been about Carola Roland. And Alfred Willard had come straight from it up the stair to try and see her, for it was soon after seven that he had left his flat, and he had not returned to it until this morning.
After a minute Lamb spoke.
“Was Mr. Willard the only other person you saw besides Bell?”
Ella Jackson hesitated.
“Well, I don’t know about saw,” she said, “but when we were going down in the lift the door of one of the flats opened and someone looked out. I couldn’t see who it was myself, but Carrie laughed and said, ‘Hope she’ll know me again-she had a good look at me.’ And I said, ‘Who?’ and she said, ‘Miss Garside- prying old maid.’
CHAPTER 30
As Ella Jackson was coming away from Vandeleur house she met a small, dowdy-looking woman coming in-curled fringe under a close net, small neat features under a black hat with a bunch of mignonette and pansies pinned on one side and two old-fashioned hatpins keeping it in place, black cloth jacket with the shoulder line and waist of a bygone day, laced shoes very neatly blacked, thick grey stockings, and a fur tie which had probably been at its best round about the time of King George V’s accession to the throne. Black gloved hands carried a small case and a tidily rolled umbrella. A black handbag depended from the left wrist.
The encounter took place upon the steps. Miss Silver enquired if this was Vandeleur House, and receiving an affirmative reply, passed on and took the lift to the first floor, where Mrs. Underwood welcomed her with relief.
Miss Silver let her talk until she had said everything she wanted to say and said it twice over. She listened with admirable patience to an account of Giles Armitage’s loss of memory, his engagement to her niece, and her determination that there should be no shilly-shallying about it. She heard what Mrs. Underwood herself knew or had gathered about the murder- a narrative derived mainly from Mrs. Smollett-and she received an almost verbatim account of Mrs. Underwood’s own interview with Chief Inspector Lamb, at the end of which Mabel Underwood burst into tears and said,
“I know they think I did it!”
They were in Mrs. Underwood’s bedroom, a cheerful flowery room with a good deal of the same pink as in Meade’s room next door-rose chintzes, pink and green cushions heaped on the bed and smothering a comfortable deep sofa, moss-green carpet, and pink lampshades. Miss Silver thought it was all very pretty. She looked at Mrs. Underwood, who was gulping and dabbing with her handkerchief, and said briskly,
“Dry your eyes and stop crying. I cannot help you if you give way like this. Naturally it has been a shock, but you must control yourself. Now, Mrs. Underwood, if I am to help you I must know what really happened last night. Did you see Miss Roland?”
Mabel Underwood gave a faint sob.
“No-I didn’t-”
Miss Silver coughed.
“If that is not correct, it would be better to admit it at once. If you did see Miss Roland last night, some evidence of your visit may be in the possession of the police. It is difficult to be in a room without touching anything, and you may have left fingerprints.”
Mrs. Underwood flushed.
“I didn’t take my gloves off. But I didn’t go in-I swear I didn’t. I didn’t even ring the bell. I was going to, but when it came to the point I hadn’t the nerve, and that’s the fact. I never had more than half a look at that letter in her bag, and every time I got up to the bell I thought what I’d look like if she showed it to me and it wasn’t my letter at all.”
Miss Silver nodded, and asked who was in charge of the case. On being informed, she nodded again approvingly.
“A most excellent man-very sound indeed. I know him. Mrs. Underwood, can you put me up? I would like to be on the spot.”
Mabel Underwood looked rather blank.
“We’ve only got two bedrooms-and Ivy’s room. But Mrs. Spooner did say to make any use of her flat if my husband was coming on leave or I wanted to invite a friend. I could send Ivy up there to sleep-”
“I hardly think that would be advisable. She would be afraid to be alone up there after there had been a murder in the house. But if I might occupy one of the rooms, that would be a great deal more suitable. Could you not telephone and get Mrs. Spooner’s permission? I think you said she was in Sussex. Perhaps Miss Meade could ring her up at lunchtime. Then after lunch-if I might make a few suggestions-”
Miss Silver’s suggestions resulted in Ivy being sent out to shop whilst Mrs. Smollett obliged with the washing-up. In the next three-quarters of an hour Miss Silver acquired a mass of information about everyone in Vandeleur House. She was an excellent listener, the best Mrs. Smollett had ever had, not wanting to hold forth herself, but always ready with the encouraging monosyllable and the attentive glance.
“Mind you,” said Mrs. Smollett, “I’m not one to talk.”
As she gave a hand with the washing-up Miss Silver learned that Mrs. Spooner was pleasant enough and very bright about the house but not what Mrs. Smollett would call a lady, and that Mr. Spooner liked his glass and didn’t always come home the way he should. That Miss Roland had a deal too much jewellery to be what Mrs. Smollett would call out and out respectable, but of course her sister’s husband being in the trade she might have got a good bit off the price, and no use saying anything about the pore thing now she’s dead. That Mr. Drake was a nice enough gentleman for those who liked a gentleman to be what Mrs. Smollett called secretive. “Two years he’ve had his flat, and off in the morning and back at night and not a word to anyone where he goes or what he does, and if he’s got friends he doesn’t bring them here-never seen him with anyone if it wasn’t with Miss Lemming yesterday, and I couldn’t hardly believe my eyes when I see them going into Parkinson’s together and set down to have tea. I’d just looked in to see if they’d any of their sausage rolls, but they hadn’t. Very scarce and difficult to get they are now, and I’m sure-”
Miss Silver recalled her gently.
“You must have a very interesting life, Mrs. Smollett, going in and out of so many people’s homes. Do you help Mrs. Willard at all-in No. 6? Mrs. Underwood was telling me-”
“Twice a week regular,” said Mrs. Smollett. “And very nice to wo
rk for, I must say-likes everything shined up proper but lets you alone to do it your own way and no fuss about where everything goes. Now I put it to you, when you go in and out of arf a dozen places, how can you be expected to remember what goes where? Miss Garside in No. 4, she’s dreadful that way-a place for everything and everything in its place. A proper old maid if you don’t mind my saying so. But Mrs. Willard don’t care where anything goes so long as it’s clean.”
“Do you help Miss Garside also?”
Mrs. Smollett tossed her head in a majestic manner.
“Used to be there every day. But she don’t have anyone now- come down in the world if you take my meaning.” She clattered plates into a rack and started to scrape a saucepan. “Well, miss, if you really want to, there’s that soft cloth and the silver to polish. My word, Ivy hasn’t half let this pan catch! Girls don’t trouble these days, and that’s a fact. She’d have found out what’s what if she’d worked for Miss Garside and no mistake about it. You’d got to see your face in everything there, and the floor fit to take your dinner off any time of the day. Lovely furniture she’d got too before she took and sold it. Gone to be mended, she says, but there wasn’t nothing wrong with it, and it never come back. And if you ask me, things have been pretty bad over there, for I was in Talbot’s Tuesday and the girl in the groceries says to me, ‘What’s come to Miss Garside up at Vandeleur House? We haven’t had an order from her this last three weeks, butter, nor margarine, nor tea, nor fats, and she haven’t been in for her bacon neither. Is she all right?’ And I says, ‘So far as I know’-not being one to talk. If ever I see anyone starving on her feet it’s been Miss Garside this last week, pore thing, white as a sheet and her cheeks regular drawn in, but this morning I see her come in with her shopping basket all piled up, butter and marge and tea and all-you could see the packets sticking out over, and a nice tin loaf right across the bag. And I thought to myself, ‘Well, that’s a funny time to go out shopping, right on the top of someone being murdered,’ so I up and says, ‘This is ’orrible news, Miss Garside, isn’t it?’ And she says, ‘What news?’ just as if she hadn’t took my meaning, and I says, ‘Oh, Miss Garside, haven’t you heard-Miss Roland’s been murdered.’ She looks at me and she says, ‘Oh, that?’ as if it wasn’t nothing at all, and then she says, ‘I’m going to have my breakfast,’ and she goes into her flat and shuts the door. Funny- wasn’t it?”
Miss Silver laid down the spoon she had been polishing and agreed.
“You have such a graphic way of telling things, Mrs. Smollett. I am sure you quite make me feel I know all these people. Do pray go on. It is most absorbing. What about the two ground-floor flats? Do you know the people in them?”
Mrs. Smollett preened herself.
“Old Mrs. Meredith in No. 1, I’m there regular twice a week- have been ever since they come. The beginning of the summer it was, if you can call it a summer.”
“They are newcomers?”
“They and Mrs. Underwood and Miss Roland, they all come round about the spring. Spooners, they’ve been here since Christmas. Mr. Drake, and the Willards a matter of two years, Miss Garside and the Lemmings nearer five. You see, Mrs. Meredith’s got to be on a ground floor because of going out in her chair-and awkward enough getting it up and down the steps, but there’s two of them and Mr. Bell gives a hand.”
“Two of them?”
Mrs. Smollett nodded.
“Miss Crane-she’s the companion. And Packer-she’s the maid.”
“I hope they look after the old lady well. It is very sad to be dependent upon strangers.”
Mrs. Smollett heaved a sigh.
“That’s right, miss, and if it was that Packer, I wouldn’t like to be the one that depended on her. Mind you, I don’t say but what she’s good at her work. Give everyone their due, she keeps the place and the old lady well enough with me going in twice a week, but not a word out of her half the time and sour enough to turn the milk. I don’t know how Miss Crane puts up with it. Quite a different kind of person she is, and devoted to the old lady-well, you wouldn’t credit it. Only yesterday she says to me, ‘Mrs. Smollett,’ she says, ‘I don’t know what I should do if anything happened to Mrs. Meredith.’”
Miss Silver took up another spoon.
“Has she been with her long?”
“Bound to have been,” said Mrs. Smollett, wringing out a dishcloth. “She’s not the changing sort Miss Crane isn’t. Come to think of it, there was Mrs. Meredith’s nephew that come to say good-bye before he went off to Palestine, and I heard him say when he come in, ‘Well, Miss Crane, it must be a matter of ten years since I saw my pore aunt. I’m afraid I’ll see a great change in her.’ And Miss Crane she says, ‘I’m afraid you will, Colonel Meredith. There’s changes in us all in ten years,’ she says, ‘and I don’t suppose you’d have reckernised me if you’d a-met me in the street,’ and he laughs and says, ‘I’d a-known you anywhere.’ A very jolly, laughing gentleman, but I thought he was having her on, for the hall was that dark you could hardly see your way let alone reckernising anyone you hadn’t seen for ten years. Seems he’d been in Ireland and India and all over the place, and about the only relation the pore old lady’s got by all accounts. Funny the way things turn out, isn’t it? There’s Miss Garside and pore old Mrs. Meredith with next to no relations at all, and Miss Lemming in No. 2 that’s got one too many, pore thing.”
Miss Silver said “Indeed?” in an interested voice.
Mrs. Smollett stood the washing-up bowl on end and hung the dishcloth over it to dry.
“Well you may say so!” she said. “If ever there was a pore trampled slave it’s Miss Agnes Lemming. Day nor night her mother don’t give her no peace. It’s ‘Do this!’ and ‘Do that!’ and ‘Come here!’ and ‘Go there!’ and ‘Why did you do this?’ and ‘Why didn’t you do that?’ till you’d wonder how any ’uman woman could put up with it. She don’t do it to me, Mrs. Lemming don’t, for I wouldn’t take it not from her nor from nobody, not if I was a heathen black I wouldn’t. And why Miss Agnes don’t walk out and leave her passes me. Her spirit’s broke, pore thing, that’s what it is, and a crool shame, for she’s as nice a lady as you could find, and a very feeling heart-too feeling, if you was to ask me.” Miss Silver went on asking her.
CHAPTER 31
It was a little later that Sergeant Abbott came in on his Chief Inspector and said,
“Guess who is here.”
Lamb removed his gaze from Sergeant Curtis’ report and said,
“What’s that?”
Sergeant Abbott permitted himself a faint malicious smile.
“I said, ‘Guess who is here.’”
“Haven’t time for guessing.”
“Well, then, I’ll tell you-Miss Silver.”
“What!”
“The one and only Maud Silver. In the character of visiting friend to Mrs. Underwood.”
“Oh, good lor!”
“You’ve said it, sir.”
“What’s brought her here?”
“Mrs. Underwood-obviously. She’s rattled-wants someone to hold her hand. Enter Maudie as the discreet friend.”
Lamb gave a long soft whistle and tilted back his chair.
“She’s discreet enough. I wonder what she’s up to.”
Frank Abbott sat down on the arm of one of the big chairs.
“What are you going to do about it-let her in?” Then, as Lamb frowned and made no answer, “She’s lucky, you know. Every time she touches a case the police come out of it in a blaze of glory. Maudie the Mascot. The Policeman’s Joy-Promotion waits upon her Path.”
Lamb nodded.
“It isn’t all luck either,” he said. “Remember the first time we ran up against her? I don’t mind saying I put her down as a harmless old maid and I handed her off-politely, you know, because you don’t want to be hard on a lady. Well, as often as I handed her off, there she was back again, and the next thing I knew, it was, ‘May I have a word with you, Inspector?’ and she was giving
me the answers as neat as a crossword puzzle and no fuss about it. I’ve got a respect for Miss Silver.”
Frank Abbott laughed.
“Oh, so have I. She makes me feel like the bottom of the infant class in a kindergarten. That’s why I call her Maudie-it’s just whistling to keep my courage up. Are you going to let her in on this?”
“You can’t keep her out,” said Lamb-“and I don’t know that I want to. This is the sort of case where she could be useful. She’ll be watching Mrs. Underwood’s interests over the blackmailing, I take it. Mrs. U. may have been in touch with her before the murder-probably was. That would account for her coming in at once like this. Yes, she might be useful, and I’ll tell you why. People-that’s her strong suit-she knows people. Learnt it in the schoolroom teaching kids-I don’t know-but she’s got it. She sizes people up quicker than anyone I’ve known, and she don’t make mistakes. Remember the Poisoned Caterpillars case-March told us about that-and the Chinese Shawl? If she’s got a line on this blackmailing business-and I suspect she has, or Mrs. Underwood wouldn’t have called her in-then we want whatever it is she’s got. There hasn’t been time for Mrs. U. to make a new contact, but if she had already been to Miss Silver about the blackmailing, then she’d have done exactly what she has done-gone straight out of this room to the telephone and called Miss Silver in. You see, the blackmail may be at the bottom of the whole business, and we want to know all about it. The girl may have been mixed up with the Mayfair people-may even have been a principal. If it weren’t for that accommodation address, I’d think she’d only been having a kind of private flutter with Mrs. Underwood, and that the Armitage business was just what her sister says, a nasty spiteful joke. But the address sticks in my throat. It was the one the Mayfair people used, and Mrs. Underwood sent her first letter there-the one with the money in it. Then the Mayfair business blows up, and Mrs. Underwood gets a different address next time, and the answer she sends there turns up in Carola Roland’s bag. There’s something there, and I’d like to know what Miss Silver knows about it. Of course the girl may have been murdered by the man she had drinks with. Mr. Maundersley-Smith will have to account for his movements. He may have been the man Bell saw going away at half past eight. If he’s got an alibi, the man may have been Major Armitage-he had plenty of time to come back and kill her. It’s no good saying she was just having a joke with him, because he didn’t know that until after she was dead. She certainly upset Miss Underwood very much indeed, and the letter she showed her and Major Armitage must have looked uncommonly like proof that there had been a marriage. And he didn’t remember that she was his brother’s widow until midnight, when she had probably been dead for an hour or two. You remember he accounted for the sudden recovery of his memory by saying he supposed it was due to the shock, and he explained that by saying he meant the shock of having Miss Roland claim to be his wife. But it might quite easily have been the shock of having killed her. I don’t say he did, and I don’t say he didn’t, but he might have done… Then there’s Mrs. Willard. I don’t think a lot about her, but she’s there. Mr. Willard seems to have been dangling after Miss Roland, and it looks as if he and his wife had had a fair-sized row, or he wouldn’t have stayed out all night. But husbands and wives quarrel a lot more than anyone thinks, and it’s oftener about little things than big ones, so it mayn’t have had anything to do with Miss Roland at all. I don’t give much for their being upset this morning. If he liked the girl he would be upset, and the more he showed it, the more upset Mrs. W. would be-that’s human nature. Well, I’m expecting the fingerprints and the surgeon’s report along any time now, and then we’ll know where we are. I think Curtis got prints from most of the people in the house, so we’ll be able to see whether any of them were up here or not. Major Armitage and Miss Underwood were, we know, but I’m curious about whether Mrs. U. was telling the truth when she said she didn’t come in.”
Miss Silver Deals With Death Page 14
