魔手28

VI

I stood staring at it. I looked at the title page. It had been published in1840.

There could be no doubt at all. I was looking at the book from the pagesof which the anonymous letters had been put together. Who had cut themout?

Well, to begin with, it could be Emily Barton herself. She was, perhaps,the obvious person to think of. Or it could have been Partridge.

But there were other possibilities. The pages could have been cut out byanyone who had been alone in this room, any visitor, for instance, whohad sat there waiting for Miss Emily. Or even anyone who called on busi-ness.

No, that wasn’t so likely. I had noticed that when, one day, a clerk fromthe bank had come to see me, Partridge had shown him into the littlestudy at the back of the house. That was clearly the house routine.

A visitor, then? Someone “of good social position.” Mr. Pye? Aimée Grif-fith? Mrs. Dane Calthrop?

VII

The gong sounded and I went in to lunch. Afterwards, in the drawingroom I showed Joanna my find.

We discussed it from every aspect. Then I took it down to the police sta-tion.

They were elated at the find, and I was patted on the back for what was,after all, the sheerest piece of luck.

Graves was not there, but Nash was, and rang up the other man. Theywould test the book for fingerprints, though Nash was not hopeful of find-ing anything. I may say that he did not. There were mine, Partridge’s andnobody else’s, merely showing that Partridge dusted conscientiously.

Nash walked back with me up the hill. I asked how he was getting on.

“We’re narrowing it down, Mr. Burton. We’ve eliminated the people itcouldn’t be.”

“Ah,” I said. “And who remains?”

“Miss Ginch. She was to meet a client at a house yesterday afternoon byappointment. The house was situated not far along the Combeacre Road,that’s the road that goes past the Symmingtons.’ She would have to passthe house both going and coming…the week before, the day the anonym-ous letter was delivered, and Mrs. Symmington committed suicide, washer last day at Symmington’s office. Mr. Symmington thought at first shehad not left the office at all that afternoon. He had Sir Henry Lushingtonwith him all the afternoon and rang several times for Miss Ginch. I find,however, that she did leave the office between three and four. She wentout to get some high denomination of stamp of which they had run short.

The office boy could have gone, but Miss Ginch elected to go, saying shehad a headache and would like the air. She was not gone long.”

“But long enough?”

“Yes, long enough to hurry along to the other end of the village, slip theletter in the box and hurry back. I must say, however, that I cannot findanybody who saw her near the Symmingtons’ house.”

“Would they notice?”

“They might and they might not.”

“Who else is in your bag?”

Nash looked very straight ahead of him.

“You’ll understand that we can’t exclude anybody—anybody at all.”

“No,” I said. “I see that.”

He said gravely: “Miss Griffith went to Brenton for a meeting of GirlGuides yesterday. She arrived rather late.”

“You don’t think—”

“No, I don’t think. But I don’t know. Miss Griffith seems an eminentlysane healthy-minded woman—but I say, I don’t know.”

“What about the previous week? Could she have slipped the letter in thebox?”

“It’s possible. She was shopping in the town that afternoon.” He paused.

“The same applies to Miss Emily Barton. She was out shopping early yes-terday afternoon and she went for a walk to see some friends on the roadpast the Symmingtons’ house the week before.”

I shook my head unbelievingly. Finding the cut book in Little Furze wasbound, I knew, to direct attention to the owner of that house, but when Iremembered Miss Emily coming in yesterday so bright and happy and ex-cited….

Damn it all—excited… Yes, excited—pink cheeks—shining eyes—surelynot because—not because—

I said thickly: “This business is bad for one! One sees things—one ima-gines things—”

“Yes, it isn’t very pleasant to look upon the fellow creatures one meetsas possible criminal lunatics.”

He paused for a moment, then went on:

“And there’s Mr. Pye—”

I said sharply: “So you have considered him?”

Nash smiled.

“Oh, yes, we’ve considered him all right. A very curious character—not,I should say, a very nice character. He’s got no alibi. He was in his garden,alone, on both occasions.”

“So you’re not only suspecting women?”

“I don’t think a man wrote the letters—in fact I’m sure of it—and so isGraves—always excepting our Mr. Pye, that is to say, who’s got an abnor-mally female streak in his character. But we’ve checked up on everybodyfor yesterday afternoon. That’s a murder case, you see. You’re all right,” hegrinned, “and so’s your sister, and Mr. Symmington didn’t leave his officeafter he got there and Dr. Griffith was on a round in the other direction,and I’ve checked upon his visits.”

He paused, smiled again, and said, “You see, we are thorough.”

I said slowly, “So your case is eliminated down to those four — MissGinch, Mr. Pye, Miss Griffith and little Miss Barton?”

“Oh, no, no, we’ve got a couple more—besides the vicar’s lady.”

“You’ve thought of her?”

“We’ve thought of everybody, but Mrs. Dane Calthrop is a little tooopenly mad, if you know what I mean. Still, she could have done it. Shewas in a wood watching birds yesterday afternoon—and the birds can’tspeak for her.”

He turned sharply as Owen Griffith came into the police station.

“Hallo, Nash. I heard you were round asking for me this morning. Any-thing important?”

“Inquest on Friday, if that suits you, Dr. Griffith.”

“Right. Moresby and I are doing the P.M. tonight.”

Nash said:

“There’s just one other thing, Dr. Griffith. Mrs. Symmington was takingsome cachets, powders or something, that you prescribed for her—”

He paused. Owen Griffith said interrogatively:

“Yes?”

“Would an overdose of those cachets have been fatal?”

Griffith said dryly:

“Certainly not. Not unless she’d taken about twenty-five of them!”

“But you once warned her about exceeding the dose, so Miss Hollandtells me.”

“Oh that, yes. Mrs. Symmington was the sort of woman who would goand overdo anything she was given—fancy that to take twice as muchwould do her twice as much good, and you don’t want anyone to overdoeven phenacetin or aspirin—bad for the heart. And anyway there’s abso-lutely no doubt about the cause of death. It was cyanide.”

“Oh, I know that—you don’t get my meaning. I only thought that whencommitting suicide you’d prefer to take an overdose of a soporific ratherthan to feed yourself prussic acid.”

“Oh quite. On the other hand, prussic acid is more dramatic and ispretty certain to do the trick. With barbiturates, for instance, you canbring the victim round if only a short time has elapsed.”

“I see, thank you, Dr. Griffith.”

Griffith departed, and I said goodbye to Nash. I went slowly up the hillhome. Joanna was out—at least there was no sign of her, and there was anenigmatical memorandum scribbled on the telephone block presumablyfor the guidance of either Partridge or myself.

“If Dr. Griffith rings up, I can’t go on Tuesday, but couldmanage Wednesday or Thursday.”

I raised my eyebrows and went into the drawing room. I sat down in themost comfortable armchair—(none of them were very comfortable, theytended to have straight backs and were reminiscent of the late Mrs. Bar-ton)—stretched out my legs and tried to think the whole thing out.

With sudden annoyance I remembered that Owen’s arrival had inter-rupted my conversation with the inspector, and that he had just men-tioned two other people as being possibilities.

I wondered who they were.

Partridge, perhaps, for one? After all, the cut book had been found inthis house. And Agnes could have been struck down quite unsuspecting byher guide and mentor. No, you couldn’t eliminate Partridge.

But who was the other?

Somebody, perhaps, that I didn’t know? Mrs. Cleat? The original localsuspect?

I closed my eyes. I considered four people, strangely unlikely people, inturn. Gentle, frail little Emily Barton? What points were there actuallyagainst her? A starved life? Dominated and repressed from early child-hood? Too many sacrifices asked of her? Her curious horror of discussinganything “not quite nice”? Was that actually a sign of inner preoccupationwith just these themes? Was I getting too horribly Freudian? I re-membered a doctor once telling me that the mutterings of gentle maidenladies when going off under an anaesthetic were a revelation. “Youwouldn’t think they knew such words!”

Aimée Griffith?

Surely nothing repressed or “inhibited” about her. Cheery, mannish,successful. A full, busy life. Yet Mrs. Dane Calthrop had said, “Poor thing!”

And there was something—something—some remembrance… Ah! I’dgot it. Owen Griffith saying something like, “We had an outbreak of an-onymous letters up North where I had a practice.”

Had that been Aimée Griffith’s work too? Surely rather a coincidence.

Two outbreaks of the same thing. Stop a minute, they’d tracked down theauthor of those. Griffith had said so. A schoolgirl.

Cold it was suddenly—must be a draught, from the window. I turned un-comfortably in my chair. Why did I suddenly feel so queer and upset?

Go on thinking… Aimée Griffith? Perhaps it was Aimée Griffith, not thatother girl? And Aimée had come down here and started her tricks again.

And that was why Owen Griffith was looking so unhappy and hag ridden.

He suspected. Yes, he suspected….

Mr. Pye? Not, somehow, a very nice little man. I could imagine him sta-ging the whole business…laughing….

That telephone message on the telephone pad in the hall…why did Ikeep thinking of it? Griffith and Joanna—he was falling for her… No, thatwasn’t why the message worried me. It was something else….

My senses were swimming, sleep was very near. I repeated idiotically tomyself, “No smoke without fire. No smoke without fire… That’s it…it alllinks up together….”

And then I was walking down the street with Megan and Elsie Hollandpassed. She was dressed as a bride, and people were murmuring:

“She’s going to marry Dr. Griffith at last. Of course they’ve been engagedsecretly for years….”

There we were, in the church, and Dane Calthrop was reading the ser-vice in Latin.

And in the middle of it Mrs. Dane Calthrop jumped up and cried ener-getically:

“It’s got to be stopped, I tell you. It’s got to be stopped!”

For a minute or two I didn’t know whether I was asleep or awake. Thenmy brain cleared, and I realized I was in the drawing room of Little Furzeand that Mrs. Dane Calthrop had just come through the window and wasstanding in front of me saying with nervous violence:

“It has got to be stopped, I tell you.”

I jumped up. I said: “I beg your pardon. I’m afraid I was asleep. Whatdid you say?”

Mrs. Dane Calthrop beat one fist fiercely on the palm of her other hand.

“It’s got to be stopped. These letters! Murder! You can’t go on havingpoor innocent children like Agnes Woddell killed!”

“You’re quite right,” I said. “But how do you propose to set about it?”

Mrs. Dane Calthrop said:

“We’ve got to do something!”

I smiled, perhaps in rather a superior fashion.

“And what do you suggest that we should do?”

“Get the whole thing cleared up! I said this wasn’t a wicked place. I waswrong. It is.”

I felt annoyed. I said, not too politely:

“Yes, my dear woman, but what are you going to do?”

Mrs. Dane Calthrop said: “Put a stop to it all, of course.”

“The police are doing their best.”

“If Agnes could be killed yesterday, their best isn’t good enough.”

“So you know better than they do?”

“Not at all. I don’t know anything at all. That’s why I’m going to call inan expert.”

I shook my head.

“You can’t do that. Scotland Yard will only take over on a demand fromthe chief constable of the county. Actually they have sent Graves.”

“I don’t mean that kind of an expert. I don’t mean someone who knowsabout anonymous letters or even about murder. I mean someone whoknows people. Don’t you see? We want someone who knows a great dealabout wickedness!”

It was a queer point of view. But it was, somehow, stimulating.

Before I could say anything more, Mrs. Dane Calthrop nodded her headat me and said in a quick, confident tone:

“I’m going to see about it right away.”

And she went out of the window again.

 

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