by Leo Bruce
“Mr and Mrs Humbell, yes. They’re very nice. I like sticking to the same place, and as soon as I saw their furniture going in I went and offered and started straight away. I was with them quite recently till my daughter wanted me to stay at home. Well, there was no need for me to go out any more. My daughter has a good job and her husband earns wonderful money as he’s a skilled carpenter. Besides, someone’s got to give the children their dinner in the middle of the day. So I gave it up. But they’re very nice people, the Humbells.”
“Was the house unoccupied long?”
“Not with the shortage of houses. No sooner was the Rathbones’ furniture out of the way . . .”
“They took that?”
“No, sent for it afterwards. I’d like to have gone in and put it straight before the moving men saw it. Clattons had the keys, I believe, the estate agents in the High Street. The Rathbones had only been gone about a week when their furniture was sent for from London. Mr Humbell saw the house next day and took it at once. You couldn’t get a place, not to rent, in those days and he thought he was lucky. I always think it’s damp, but they’ve made it very nice inside now. Quite different to what it was when the Rathbones were there.”
“So you were only away from the house for a week or ten days, then, between your notice from Rathbone and your starting with the Humbells?”
“It couldn’t have been any more.”
“Did you notice anything changed in the garden?”
“No. And I had a good look round. The Rathbones took no interest and had a jobbing gardener in once a week. I liked to see what he’d done but, so far as I could notice, there was nothing. It was just as I’d seen it.”
Carolus asked Mrs Richards for Dr Whistley’s address, thanked her for her assistance and drove to the doctor’s. Here he explained to an elderly woman, as intelligent and polite as everyone else in the suburb, that he would like to see Dr Whistley on a private matter. He was shown into a pleasant sitting-room. The doctor was elderly, but quick and shrewd. He looked at Carolus as though impatient to size him up. Carolus wasted no time at all, but told him succinctly the reason for his visit.
“Now that’s odd,” said Whistley. “I always thought someone would come and ask me about the Rathbones, but I expected it at the time—not years afterwards. It was a curious case. I was treating Mrs Rathbone when quite suddenly they moved away and I was never consulted by any colleague elsewhere.”
“She had pernicious anaemia, I believe?”
“Yes. Anaemia should not be considered as a disease in itself. It is rather the symptom of some underlying disorder. This I was trying to discover when the couple suddenly moved away.”
“What are the symptoms?”
“They’re rather technical and vary from case to case. Mrs Rathbone had several of the classic ones. Her hair was greying rapidly and prematurely. The tongue was smooth and red. Then there was developing a disturbance of the spinal cord which we call combined system disease. She grew very pale with a typical yellowish cast to the skin. She had become listless, in fact was in danger of being crippled.”
“Could this be fatal?”
“Like many other diseases, not many years ago it certainly would have been. It was not until the 1920s that the use of liver extracts was properly understood and manufactured for injection purposes. Then, only a year or two before I treated Mrs Rathbone, we began using Vitamin B 12. There was no reason to suppose, in Mrs Rathbone’s case, that if she continued this treatment she might not live to an advanced age. On the other hand, as I have explained, I do not know what caused her condition. There may have been something which could produce a very rapid decline and possibly death. She greatly improved with Vitamin B 12, but she was still in a low nervous condition. Almost neurasthenic, in fact.”
“Her removal need not have harmed her?”
“No. Not necessarily. Rathbone apparently told people that he was taking his wife to the sea, but he gave me no indication of this. I was seeing her once a week and arrived one morning to find they had left.”
“You did not feel it necessary to report the matter?”
“To the police? No. Why should I have? The sudden departure of a man with an invalid wife is not a police affair. I am far too busy to be inquisitive about comings and goings among my patients. I gather there was talk about this at the time, but a GP gets used to talk of that kind.”
“Yet you say that you expected inquiries afterwards?”
“Well, yes. Perhaps from a colleague who treated her. You see, that treatment had to be maintained. Otherwise the anaemia would return and perhaps a crippling of the nervous system which might not be curable. I’m afraid I am not being very helpful when all you want is to find these people.”
“You are. Most. But my problem is becoming a tough one. I started to look for a Mrs Rathbone who was missing and I now find traces of three of them. Unless the Mrs Rathbone you remember could possibly have become someone described as a ‘dumpy’, ‘plump’, ‘cheerful’, ‘most sociable’, ‘affable’ woman, who sang vulgar songs at the piano, drank more than was good for her, had a love affair with a commercial traveller under her husband’s nose, was rubicund with ‘a hint of purple’ in her cheeks and had legs the calves of which were ‘unbecomingly solid’.”
“Impossible, if the description is reliable.”
“Or, on the other hand, could have become ‘tall’, ‘always smiling’, ‘a bit of a gorgon’, ‘wearing glasses and old-fashioned clothes’, a ‘funny old thing’, ‘old-fashioned-looking’, ‘a big woman, tall and big-made’, ‘a funny-looking old crow’, ‘always had a smile’, ‘cheery-looking’, ‘appeared to have excellent health’, ‘never without a toothy smile’. It doesn’t fit very well, does it?”
“It doesn’t. But it’s the same man each time?”
“Yes. Rathbone.”
“I don’t like the sound of it. Something like this would have emerged if anyone had started going back over the life of Brides-in-the-Bath Smith, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose so.”
“Rathbone was a rather strange being, I remember. But these wife murderers are supposed to be the most ordinary little men.”
“So I believe. It’s an interesting case, but a nasty one. You never saw Mrs Rathbone’s sister, did you?”
“No. I believe she came down once but I was not there.”
“Thank you very much, Doctor.”
“I should like to hear what you discover.”
“I think you will—from any newspaper. If I’m right about this, you won’t be able to escape hearing about it.”
Before leaving for his club where he intended to stay the night, Carolus returned to the Lodge to meet Mr Humbell, who would by now have returned from work and eaten.
“This is the gentleman I was telling you about,” Mrs Humbell said, “who is trying to trace the Rathbones.”
Mr Humbell, a sturdy, grey-haired elderly man who looked as though he came from Yorkshire but spoke without dialect, invited Carolus to sit down. “There’s not a lot I can tell you,” he said. “They had left here before we arrived. I moved our furniture in almost as theirs went out, as you had to in those days. I had the place done up afterwards and it needed it.”
“Nothing was left behind, by chance?”
“Absolutely nothing. It was moderately clean, as Mrs Richards had been looking after them until a day or two before they left.”
“Yes. I’ve seen Mrs Richards. And since then you’ve never come on anything anywhere . . .”
“No. Would you expect it?”
“You see, Mr Humbell, this is the third place I’ve been to from which the Rathbones moved suddenly and rather mysteriously. One of the others was a house in a town without a garden but at the other, in a lonely part of the country, the police have investigated thoroughly. Dug the garden and everything.”
“What did they find?”
“Nothing, I believe, but a pair of ear-rings.”
“You’re n
ot suggesting that here there may be evidence hidden?”
“I’m past suggesting,” said Carolus. “This affair is getting me down. But it was only because a later tenant pulled down a wall, or something, that Christie was discovered.”
“Then why haven’t the police been here?”
“I don’t know, but I imagine the police are going forward, instead of back. Looking for Rathbone and his wife wherever they may be. They are probably quite right. I go about things in my own way. But in time they may trace the Rathbones here and wonder, as I do, whether a search would be worth while.”
“Yes. I see. I shall have to think it over.”
So, Carolus thought as he drove back to London, so would he. For although he began to see the vague shape of the truth it was ghostlike and elusive. Perhaps if he could trace that woman “Cara” who had lived with Charlotte Bright (known as “Lucille French”) it might advance matters. Charlotte could have told her about her visit to Bolderton during her sister’s illness, or something else that would be valuable. He still had that address to visit—the house in which “Frenchy” had died.
10
HE decided next day to make straight for Montgolfier Street and hope to find someone who remembered Charlotte Bright. He realized that the chances were against him, for the population in such an apartment house would be a shifting one and it was five years since Charlotte’s death; but this was the sort of challenge which he enjoyed.
It took him three days to pick up the lightest thread. During that time he inquired of a great variety of people, from Makroides himself to the barman of a pub in Charlotte Street, from ladies with busy telephones to a girl in a lung hospital. He met a good deal of hostility, some ridicule and some unselfish kindness, and he covered considerable distance on foot and by car, largely in regions between Soho and St Pancras. Five years ago seemed to be pre-history to most of those he asked and the apartment house in Montgolfier Street had long since become respectable. The less pleasant part of his search was in arty little clubs, and it was in one of these that he was told off-handedly—“You ought to ask Old Maree. She lived in that house for donkey’s years.”
More hours of search brought him to “Old Maree” herself and that would have rewarded him even if she could have told him nothing. For “Old Maree” was remarkable.
First, though her hair blazed with a lurid copper color, she was old. But not old enough, as she said, to have “crumpled”. She sat proudly upright on a straight chair in the little bar she had suggested and said—“Old? I can’t afford to be. Though it’s surprising how often the young ones get passed over. It’s not years or even lines in your face. It’s how you stand up. Once you begin to Go you’ve had it. I remember seeing No, No Nanette, so you can see I wasn’t born yesterday. But I don’t complain.
“I tried to settle down once. I’d always had a fancy for chickens. That’ll seem funny to you but, if there’s one thing I like, it’s a nice fresh egg. So I took this place in the country with another girl. I stuck it six months, then I was back. It’s what you get used to. Thanks. I’ll just have plain gin.
“So you want to know about poor Frenchy. Well, I can tell you because I had the room next but one to hers in Montgolfier Street. That’s all been done away with now. The Law got on to it and that Makroides they used to call Daddy did six months. But it was handy then. Right in the center and no one to interfere with you. Frenchy came to live there after the girl she’d been with went off with a fellow to the country. A girl called Cara. She’s still about, because I saw her the other day. Only she doesn’t get around the West End any more. She’s living steady with a fellow called Myberg. She was a character, was Cara. Anything for a laugh. She told me the other day: ‘I’m Mrs Myberg now. What d’you think of that?’ Got a place Bayswater way and nicely settled down, she says. I was pleased to see her and we had quite a chat. I asked her if she’d heard about Frenchy and she said: ‘Yes, I heard the poor cow was dead.’ That’s the way she talked, even about anyone Gone. But she didn’t mean anything. It was just her way.
“I’d left Montgolfier Street before Frenchy died there, but I heard about it. Nobody seemed to know what the cause of it was. It was quite sudden, though she was never what you might call strong. A long string of a girl, she was, with big dark eyes. You couldn’t help noticing her. Long neck and sort of prancing walk. When she used to live with Cara, they got on well together, because they were so different. But Cara went away suddenly with this fellow. Said she was only going to be away for the day, then never came back. Frenchy thought she must have been seeing him for some time on the sly. She never said anything to Frenchy. So Frenchy, who knew me, met me one evening and said Cara had gone off, so did I know of a room she could afford on her own, and I told her about Montgolfier Street. She came round and moved in, and after that I saw quite a lot of her. Only after a time I couldn’t afford that place. Makroides used to charge something wicked for the rooms. They all do, but his was the worst of the lot and I moved out. It can’t have been more than month later when poor Frenchy was found dead.”
“Found dead?”
“Yes, well that’s what happens. No one’s going to disturb you and it may be a day or two before anyone begins to wonder. When they found her, they said she’d been dead the best part of two days. Yes, I don’t mind. Just plain gin. I hope I’m not doing all this talking for nothing?”
“No,” said Carolus. “You’re on to a fiver.”
“I should think so. There’s no one else could tell you all this. Where was I? Oh, yes, there she was, dead for two days. So they had to find out who she was, didn’t they? Lucille French she called herself, but that didn’t mean much. So they started going through her things and all they found to identify her was a letter from some lawyer about ten years ago saying her old man had died and left her a thousand nicker. Only that was before I’d known her. I forget her real name. Charlotte something.”
“Bright,” said Carolus.
“I don’t remember that. But I know it was Charlotte because that’s a French name, isn’t it, and I remember thinking to myself, that’s why she took the name French. Oh, well, she’s Gone now. Here’s cheers.” “Old Maree” adjusted herself in the chair she overlapped and squared her shoulders. “One of the girls in the house told me about it, though I don’t know how she knew all the details. Must have been friendly with the cops. It seems they got in touch with these lawyers who’d written the letter, but they wouldn’t have anything to do with it, and put them on to her sister who was married and lived down at Brighton or somewhere.”
“Hastings.”
“It may have been. You seem to know more about it than I do. If you know everything, I’d like to know why you’re asking me.”
“No. I don’t. Please go on.”
“There’s not much more to tell. They’d taken poor Frenchy to the mortuary by then and the sister went there to identify her. After that she was cremated. I shouldn’t like that. Would you? Shrivelled up to a couple of cinders. Oh, well. We can’t live forever, that’s quite sure. Well, just one more, then I must run along. Plain gin.”
“So that’s all you can tell me about Frenchy?”
“Isn’t it enough? She’s Gone, so I don’t know what more’s to be said. If you want to hear more, you better see Cara. Only don’t forget she’s Mrs Myberg now. She won’t want a lot of this brought up again, you can be sure of that. But, if you can get her on her own, she might tell you something. What’s it all about?”
“It’s not really about Charlotte Bright herself. I’m trying to trace her sister, who has disappeared.”
“Oh, that’s it! And you think that poor Frenchy might have said something to Cara which would help?”
“Yes. Charlotte, I mean Frenchy, went down to see her sister when she was very ill.”
“When was that?”
“About six years ago.”
“Cara was living with her then for certain. They were together for years before Frenchy came to Mo
ntgolfier Street and that must be nearly that. I can’t remember time, not to the year. But you can be sure Cara knew her then. What’s the Law doing about it, anyway?”
“I don’t really know. I was asked by a relative if I could trace this woman.”
“Oh, well. It’s a funny life.”
“I suppose you haven’t got Mrs Myberg’s telephone number?”
“No, I haven’t. But I should think you’d find it in the telephone book. The way she was dressed and that. I believe this chap she’s with is in quite a big way of business.”
“I see.”
“Well, it looked like it, and Cara wasn’t a girl to settle down for nothing, if you know what I mean. Funny how they come and go, isn’t it? There’s not many of those around today I can say I know. Not to say know. Of course they all know me. There was a journalist chap talking to me the other evening, the cheeky bastard, and he says: ‘We all know you, Maree. You’re a bit of Old London,’ he says, ‘like the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street.’ ‘Who’s she?’ I asked. ‘I bet she hasn’t been round longer than I have. And what a pitch! What’s she expect to do up there in the evening?’ But he only laughed. Well, I’m not ashamed of it. And I keep wonderfully well. That’s the gin. Yes, I will have one for the road.”
Carolus brought it from the bar.
“As I was saying, it’s gin keeps me so well. I always drink it like that, not messed up with water or vermouth or anything. Have done for years. It’s the best thing for anything like indigestion. Then I give myself a good eight hours sleep, never mind what time I get to bed. That’s another secret. I tell them, I say I shall be still going when you poor cows are pushing up daisies. Here’s cheers.”
Carolus raised his glass, no longer expecting to hear anything highly pertinent but fascinated by “Old Maree”.
“That Cara liked a drink. I’ve seen her well away. I don’t know how she gets on now she’s right out there in Bayswater. I suppose she finds somewhere to go. But it seems this Myberg is very jealous. I dare say he knows what she was, as you might say, and keeps a good eye on her. That’s a change for her. So did Frenchy like a drink—or Charlotte, as you call her. You say she had a sister. I suppose I wouldn’t have known her, would I?”
