寓所谜案23

Twenty-two

Inspector Slack’s orders, once I had got him on the telephone, were briefand emphatic. Nothing was to “get about.” In particular, Miss Cram wasnot to be alarmed. In the meantime, a search was to be instituted for thesuitcase in the neighbourhood of the barrow.

Griselda and I returned home very excited over this new development.

We could not say much with Dennis present, as we had faithfully prom-ised Inspector Slack to breath no word to anybody.

In any case, Dennis was full of his own troubles. He came into my studyand began fingering things and shuffling his feet and looking thoroughlyembarrassed.

“What is it, Dennis?” I said at last.

“Uncle Len, I don’t want to go to sea.”

I was astonished. The boy had been so very decided about his career upto now.

“But you were so keen on it.”

“Yes, but I’ve changed my mind.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to go into finance.”

I was even more surprised.

“What do you mean—finance?”

“Just that. I want to go into the city.”

“But, my dear boy, I am sure you would not like the life. Even if I ob-tained a post for you in a bank—”

Dennis said that wasn’t what he meant. He didn’t want to go into a bank.

I asked him what exactly he did mean, and of course, as I suspected, theboy didn’t really know.

By “going into finance,” he simply meant getting rich quickly, whichwith the optimism of youth he imagined was a certainty if one “went intothe city.” I disabused him of this notion as gently as I could.

“What’s put it into your head?” I asked. “You were so satisfied with theidea of going to sea.”

“I know, Uncle Len, but I’ve been thinking. I shall want to marry someday—and, I mean, you’ve got to be rich to marry a girl.”

“Facts disprove your theory,” I said.

“I know—but a real girl. I mean, a girl who’s used to things.”

It was very vague, but I thought I knew what he meant.

“You know,” I said gently, “all girls aren’t like Lettice Protheroe.”

He fired up at once.

“You’re awfully unfair to her. You don’t like her. Griselda doesn’t either.

She says she’s tiresome.”

From the feminine point of view Griselda is quite right. Lettice is tire-some. I could quite realize, however, that a boy would resent the adject-ive.

“If only people made a few allowances. Why even the Hartley Napiersare going about grousing about her at a time like this! Just because she lefttheir old tennis party a bit early. Why should she stay if she was bored?

Jolly decent of her to go at all, I think.”

“Quite a favour,” I said, but Dennis suspected no malice. He was full ofhis own grievances on Lettice’s behalf.

“She’s awfully unselfish really. Just to show you, she made me stay. Nat-urally I wanted to go too. But she wouldn’t hear of it. Said it was too badon the Napiers. So, just to please her, I stopped on a quarter of an hour.”

The young have very curious views on unselfishness.

“And now I hear Susan Hartley Napier is going about everywhere sayingLettice has rotten manners.”

“If I were you,” I said, “I shouldn’t worry.”

“It’s all very well, but—”

He broke off.

“I’d—I’d do anything for Lettice.”

“Very few of us can do anything for anyone else,” I said. “Howevermuch we wish it, we are powerless.”

“I wish I were dead,” said Dennis.

Poor lad. Calf love is a virulent disease. I forebore to say any of the obvi-ous and probably irritating things which come so easily to one’s lips. In-stead, I said goodnight, and went up to bed.

I took the eight o’clock service the following morning and when I re-turned found Griselda sitting at the breakfast table with an open note inher hand. It was from Anne Protheroe.

“Dear Griselda,—If you and the Vicar could come up andlunch here quietly today, I should be so very grateful.

Something very strange has occurred, and I should likeMr. Clement’s advice.

Please don’t mention this when you come, as I have saidnothing to anyone.

With love,

Yours affectionately,

Anne Protheroe.”

“We must go, of course,” said Griselda.

I agreed.

“I wonder what can have happened?”

I wondered too.

“You know,” I said to Griselda, “I don’t feel we are really at the end ofthis case yet.”

“You mean not till someone has really been arrested?”

“No,” I said, “I didn’t mean that. I mean that there are ramifications, un-dercurrents, that we know nothing about. There are a whole lot of thingsto clear up before we get at the truth.”

“You mean things that don’t really matter, but that get in the way?”

“Yes, I think that expresses my meaning very well.”

“I think we’re all making a great fuss,” said Dennis, helping himself tomarmalade. “It’s a jolly good thing old Protheroe is dead. Nobody likedhim. Oh! I know the police have got to worry—it’s their job. But I ratherhope myself they’ll never find out. I should hate to see Slack promoted go-ing about swelling with importance over his cleverness.”

I am human enough to feel that I agree over the matter of Slack’s pro-motion. A man who goes about systematically rubbing people up thewrong way cannot hope to be popular.

“Dr. Haydock thinks rather like I do,” went on Dennis. “He’d never givea murderer up to justice. He said so.”

I think that that is the danger of Haydock’s views. They may be sound inthemselves—it is not for me to say—but they produce an impression onthe young careless mind which I am sure Haydock himself never meant toconvey.

Griselda looked out of the window and remarked that there were re-porters in the garden.

“I suppose they’re photographing the study windows again,” she said,with a sigh.

We had suffered a good deal in this way. There was first the idle curios-ity of the village—everyone had come to gape and stare. There were nextthe reporters armed with cameras, and the village again to watch the re-porters. In the end we had to have a constable from Much Benham onduty outside the window.

“Well,” I said, “the funeral is tomorrow morning. After that, surely, theexcitement will die down.”

I noticed a few reporters hanging about Old Hall when we arrived there.

They accosted me with various queries to which I gave the invariable an-swer (we had found it the best), that, “I had nothing to say.”

We were shown by the butler into the drawing room, the sole occupantof which turned out to be Miss Cram—apparently in a state of high enjoy-ment.

“This is a surprise, isn’t it?” she said, as she shook hands. “I never shouldhave thought of such a thing, but Mrs. Protheroe is kind, isn’t she? And, ofcourse, it isn’t what you might call nice for a young girl to be staying aloneat a place like the Blue Boar, reporters about and all. And, of course, it’snot as though I haven’t been able to make myself useful—you really needa secretary at a time like this, and Miss Protheroe doesn’t do anything tohelp, does she?”

I was amused to notice that the old animosity against Lettice persisted,but that the girl had apparently become a warm partisan of Anne’s. At thesame time I wondered if the story of her coming here was strictly accur-ate. In her account the initiative had come from Anne, but I wondered ifthat were really so. The first mention of disliking to be at the Blue Boaralone might have easily come from the girl herself. Whilst keeping anopen mind on the subject, I did not fancy that Miss Cram was strictlytruthful.

At that moment Anne Protheroe entered the room.

She was dressed very quietly in black. She carried in her hand a Sundaypaper which she held out to me with a rueful glance.

“I’ve never had any experience of this sort of thing. It’s pretty ghastly,isn’t it? I saw a reporter at the inquest. I just said that I was terribly upsetand had nothing to say, and then he asked me if I wasn’t very anxious tofind my husband’s murderer, and I said ‘Yes.’ And then whether I had anysuspicions, and I said ‘No.’ And whether I didn’t think the crime showedlocal knowledge, and I said it seemed to certainly. And that was all. Andnow look at this!”

In the middle of the page was a photograph, evidently taken at least tenyears ago—Heaven knows where they had dug it out. There were largeheadlines:

WIDOW DECLARES SHE WILL NEVER REST TILL SHE HAS HUNTEDDOWN HUSBAND’S MURDERER.

Mrs. Protheroe, the widow of the murdered man, is certainthat the murderer must be looked for locally. She has sus-picions, but no certainty. She declared herself prostratedwith grief, but reiterated her determination to hunt downthe murderer.

“It doesn’t sound like me, does it?” said Anne.

“I dare say it might have been worse,” I said, handing back the paper.

“Impudent, aren’t they?” said Miss Cram. “I’d like to see one of those fel-lows trying to get something out of me.”

By the twinkle in Griselda’s eye, I was convinced that she regarded thisstatement as being more literally true than Miss Cram intended it to ap-pear.

Luncheon was announced, and we went in. Lettice did not come in tillhalfway through the meal, when she drifted into the empty place with asmile for Griselda and a nod for me. I watched her with some attention,for reasons of my own, but she seemed much the same vague creature asusual. Extremely pretty—that in fairness I had to admit. She was still notwearing mourning, but was dressed in a shade of pale green that broughtout all the delicacy of her fair colouring.

After we had had coffee, Anne said quietly:

“I want to have a little talk with the Vicar. I will take him up to my sit-ting room.”

At last I was to learn the reason of our summons. I rose and followedher up the stairs. She paused at the door of the room. As I was about tospeak, she stretched out a hand to stop me. She remained listening, look-ing down towards the hall.

“Good. They are going out into the garden. No—don’t go in there. Wecan go straight up.”

Much to my surprise she led the way along the corridor to the extremityof the wing. Here a narrow ladder-like staircase rose to the floor above,and she mounted it, I following. We found ourselves in a dusty boardedpassage. Anne opened a door and led me into a large dim attic which wasevidently used as a lumber room. There were trunks there, old broken fur-niture, a few stacked pictures, and the many countless odds and endswhich a lumber room collects.

My surprise was so evident that she smiled faintly.

“First of all, I must explain. I am sleeping very lightly just now. Lastnight—or rather this morning about three o’clock, I was convinced that Iheard someone moving about the house. I listened for some time, and atlast got up and came out to see. Out on the landing I realized that thesounds came, not from down below, but from up above. I came along tothe foot of these stairs. Again I thought I heard a sound. I called up, ‘Is any-body there?’ But there was no answer, and I heard nothing more, so I as-sumed that my nerves had been playing tricks on me, and went back tobed.

“However, early this morning, I came up here—simply out of curiosity.

And I found this!”

She stooped down and turned round a picture that was leaning againstthe wall with the back of the canvas towards us.

I gave a gasp of surprise. The picture was evidently a portrait in oils, butthe face had been hacked and cut in such a savage way as to render it un-recognizable. Moreover, the cuts were clearly quite fresh.

“What an extraordinary thing,” I said.

“Isn’t it? Tell me, can you think of any explanation?”

I shook my head.

“There’s a kind of savagery about it,” I said, “that I don’t like. It looks asthough it had been done in a fit of maniacal rage.”

“Yes, that’s what I thought.”

“What is the portrait?”

“I haven’t the least idea. I have never seen it before. All these thingswere in the attic when I married Lucius and came here to live. I havenever been through them or bothered about them.”

“Extraordinary,” I commented.

I stooped down and examined the other pictures. They were very muchwhat you would expect to find—some very mediocre landscapes, someoleographs and a few cheaply-framed reproductions.

There was nothing else helpful. A large old-fashioned trunk, of the kindthat used to be called an “ark,” had the initials E.P. upon it. I raised the lid.

It was empty. Nothing else in the attic was the least suggestive.

“It really is a most amazing occurrence,” I said. “It’s so—senseless.”

“Yes,” said Anne. “That frightens me a little.”

There was nothing more to see. I accompanied her down to her sittingroom where she closed the door.

“Do you think I ought to do anything about it? Tell the police?”

I hesitated.

“It’s hard to say on the face of it whether—”

“It has anything to do with the murder or not,” finished Anne. “I know.

That’s what is so difficult. On the face of it, there seems no connectionwhatever.”

“No,” I said, “but it is another Peculiar Thing.”

We both sat silent with puzzled brows.

“What are your plans, if I may ask?” I said presently.

She lifted her head.

“I’m going to live here for at least another six months!” She said it defi-antly. “I don’t want to. I hate the idea of living here. But I think it’s theonly thing to be done. Otherwise people will say that I ran away—that Ihad a guilty conscience.”

“Surely not.”

“Oh! Yes, they will. Especially when —” She paused and then said:

“When the six months are up—I am going to marry Lawrence.” Her eyesmet mine. “We’re neither of us going to wait any longer.”

“I supposed,” I said, “that that would happen.”

Suddenly she broke down, burying her head in her hands.

“You don’t know how grateful I am to you—you don’t know. We’d saidgood-bye to each other—he was going away. I feel—I feel so awful aboutLucius’s death. If we’d been planning to go away together, and he’d diedthen—it would be so awful now. But you made us both see how wrong itwould be. That’s why I’m grateful.”

“I, too, am thankful,” I said gravely.

“All the same, you know,” she sat up. “Unless the real murderer is foundthey’ll always think it was Lawrence—oh! Yes, they will. And especiallywhen he marries me.”

“My dear, Dr. Haydock’s evidence made it perfectly clear—”

“What do people care about evidence? They don’t even know about it.

And medical evidence never means anything to outsiders anyway. That’sanother reason why I’m staying on here. Mr. Clement, I’m going to find outthe truth.”

Her eyes flashed as she spoke. She added:

“That’s why I asked that girl here.”

“Miss Cram?”

“Yes.”

“You did ask her, then. I mean, it was your idea?”

“Entirely. Oh! As a matter of fact, she whined a bit. At the inquest—shewas there when I arrived. No, I asked her here deliberately.”

“But surely,” I cried, “you don’t think that that silly young woman couldhave anything to do with the crime?”

“It’s awfully easy to appear silly, Mr. Clement. It’s one of the easiestthings in the world.”

“Then you really think—?”

“No, I don’t. Honestly, I don’t. What I do think is that that girl knowssomething — or might know something. I wanted to study her at closequarters.”

“And the very night she arrives, that picture is slashed,” I said thought-fully.

“You think she did it? But why? It seems so utterly absurd and impos-sible.”

“It seems to me utterly impossible and absurd that your husband shouldhave been murdered in my study,” I said bitterly. “But he was.”

“I know.” She laid her hand on my arm. “It’s dreadful for you. I do real-ize that, though I haven’t said very much about it.”

I took the blue lapis lazuli earring from my pocket and held it out to her.

“This is yours, I think?”

“Oh, yes!” She held out her hand for it with a pleased smile. “Where didyou find it?”

But I did not put the jewel into her outstretched hand.

“Would you mind,” I said, “if I kept it a little longer?”

“Why, certainly.” She looked puzzled and a little inquiring. I did not sat-isfy her curiosity.

Instead I asked her how she was situated financially.

“It is an impertinent question,” I said, “but I really do not mean it assuch.”

“I don’t think it’s impertinent at all. You and Griselda are the bestfriends I have here. And I like that funny old Miss Marple. Lucius wasvery well off, you know. He left things pretty equally divided between meand Lettice. Old Hall goes to me, but Lettice is to be allowed to chooseenough furniture to furnish a small house, and she is left a separate sumfor the purpose of buying one, so as to even things up.”

“What are her plans, do you know?”

Anne made a comical grimace.

“She doesn’t tell them to me. I imagine she will leave here as soon aspossible. She doesn’t like me — she never has. I dare say it’s my fault,though I’ve really always tried to be decent. But I suppose any girl resentsa young stepmother.”

“Are you fond of her?” I asked bluntly.

She did not reply at once, which convinced me that Anne Protheroe is avery honest woman.

“I was at first,” she said. “She was such a pretty little girl. I don’t think Iam now. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s because she doesn’t like me. I likebeing liked, you know.”

“We all do,” I said, and Anne Protheroe smiled.

I had one more task to perform. That was to get a word alone with Let-tice Protheroe. I managed that easily enough, catching sight of her in thedeserted drawing room. Griselda and Gladys Cram were out in the garden.

I went in and shut the door.

“Lettice,” I said, “I want to speak to you about something.”

She looked up indifferently.

“Yes?”

I had thought beforehand what to say. I held out the lapis earring andsaid quietly:

“Why did you drop that in my study?”

I saw her stiffen for a moment—it was almost instantaneous. Her recov-ery was so quick that I myself could hardly have sworn to the movement.

Then she said carelessly:

“I never dropped anything in your study. That’s not mine. That’sAnne’s.”

“I know that,” I said.

“Well, why ask me, then? Anne must have dropped it.”

“Mrs. Protheroe has only been in my study once since the murder, andthen she was wearing black and so would not have been likely to have hadon a blue earring.”

“In that case,” said Lettice, “I suppose she must have dropped it before.”

She added: “That’s only logical.”

“It’s very logical,” I said. “I suppose you don’t happen to rememberwhen your stepmother was wearing these earrings last?”

“Oh!” She looked at me with a puzzled, trustful gaze. “Is it very import-ant?”

“It might be,” I said.

“I’ll try and think.” She sat there knitting her brows. I have never seenLettice Protheroe look more charming than she did at that moment. “Oh,yes!” she said suddenly. “She had them on—on Thursday. I remembernow.”

“Thursday,” I said slowly, “was the day of the murder. Mrs. Protheroecame to the study in the garden that day, but if you remember, in her evid-ence, she only came as far as the study window, not inside the room.”

“Where did you find this?”

“Rolled underneath the desk.”

“Then it looks, doesn’t it,” said Lettice coolly, “as though she hadn’tspoken the truth?”

“You mean that she came right in and stood by the desk?”

“Well, it looks like it, doesn’t it?”

Her eyes met mine serenely.

“If you want to know,” she said calmly, “I never have thought she wasspeaking the truth.”

“And I know you are not, Lettice.”

“What do you mean?”

She was startled.

“I mean,” I said, “that the last time I saw this earring was on Fridaymorning when I came up here with Colonel Melchett. It was lying with itsfellow on your stepmother’s dressing table. I actually handled them both.”

“Oh —!” She wavered, then suddenly flung herself sideways over thearm of her chair and burst into tears. Her short fair hair hung down al-most touching the floor. It was a strange attitude—beautiful and unres-trained.

I let her sob for some moments in silence and then I said very gently:

“Lettice, why did you do it?”

“What?”

She sprang up, flinging her hair wildly back. She looked wild—almostterrified.

“What do you mean?”

“What made you do it? Was it jealousy? Dislike of Anne?”

“Oh!—Oh, yes!” She pushed the hair back from her face and seemedsuddenly to regain complete self-possession. “Yes, you can call it jealousy.

I’ve always disliked Anne—ever since she came queening it here. I put thedamned thing under the desk. I hoped it would get her into trouble. Itwould have done if you hadn’t been such a Nosey Parker, fingering thingson dressing tables. Anyway, it isn’t a clergyman’s business to go abouthelping the police.”

It was a spiteful, childish outburst. I took no notice of it. Indeed, at thatmoment, she seemed a very pathetic child indeed.

Her childish attempt at vengeance against Anne seemed hardly to betaken seriously. I told her so, and added that I should return the earring toher and say nothing of the circumstances in which I had found it. Sheseemed rather touched by that.

“That’s nice of you,” she said.

She paused a minute and then said, keeping her face averted and evid-ently choosing her words with care:

“You know, Mr. Clement, I should—I should get Dennis away from heresoon, if I were you I—think it would be better.”

“Dennis?” I raised my eyebrows in slight surprise but with a trace ofamusement too.

“I think it would be better.” She added, still in the same awkward man-ner: “I’m sorry about Dennis. I didn’t think he—anyway, I’m sorry.”

We left it at that.

 

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