Death Knocks Three Times (18 page)

“Don’t blame her,” muttered John. “I don’t have it unless I’m compelled.”

“You had some saccharine with you last night, I believe?”

“Just for emergencies.”

“And—you offered some to your aunt to sweeten her tea?”

“And got heartily cursed for my pains. How was I to know she had a supply of sugar in her bag for her own use?”

“You brought your saccharine from London, Mr. Sherren?”

“No. I never use it in London, but they are remarkably parsimonious with the sugar at my hotel here. I got it from one of the shops in the High Street.”

“And doubtless you still have it on you?”

“Well—no—as a matter of fact, I finished it last night. I threw the empty container into the waste-paper basket in the hall as we came out after playing bridge.”

“I see.” The Inspector made a note to check up on that. John couldn’t think how a man with the Inspector’s unimaginative countenance could find so many new points to raise; and of course he was hampered by a sense of guilt and a terror of betraying what he knew. At last they let him go.

“You’ll be remaining in Brakemouth for the next few days, of course, Mr. Sherren,” they said, and he, with an assumption of ease he was far from feeling, said cheerily, well, yes, he’d have to stay for the inquest, wouldn’t he? The last relation and the last person to see her alive. But the Inspector was evasive. They hadn’t got all the evidence yet. This chap Marlowe … And so, after a time they let him go, with the air of cats indulgently watching a mouse hurry ofiE toward its hole, knowing that before it reaches the woodwork a long curving paw will come out and scoop the poor little victim back to the prison it believes it has escaped.

“Funny nobody mentioned finding the empty saccharine bottle in the waste-paper basket,” suggested the Sergeant.

“The worst of amateur witnesses is you never can be sure where you are with them. They might have thrown out half a dozen bottles without thinking anything of it.”

However, the contents of the waste-paper basket were still on the premises—another point an amateur witness might easily overlook—and there wasn’t a saccharine bottle or tube in any of them.

A
S JOHN emerged from Mr. Hammond’s private room, where the inquiries were taking place, he discovered Mr. Twemlow sitting in the lobby cheek by jowl with Mr. Crook. They were both short men, but there the likeness ended. Mr. Twemlow looked as though he might have been carved out of a walnut shell; Crook looked like a huge advertisement for somebody’s succulent ham. Nevertheless, they seemed to be getting on remarkably well.

John was so much surprised by this improbable juxtaposition that he exclaimed, without preamble: “I didn’t realize you had come, Mr. Twemlow,” And then to Crook: “So you’re still at Brakemouth. Between you, you ought to put the place on the map.”

Twemlow looked as if such vulgarity was beneath his notice, but Crook didn’t take offense easily.

“Called into consultation by Miss Pettigrew,” he said in insufferably smug tones. John was astounded, as the speaker had anticipated, and he sounded even more insufferable than Crook.

“Miss Pettigrew? I wonder what she imagines she stands to lose.”

“You must ask Mr. Twemlow that. He was your aunt’s man of affairs.”

Mr. Twemlow looked outraged. “It is perhaps a little soon to be discussing the provisions of the will. That is usually left until after the funeral; but since Mr, Sherren is so anxious for information and I should be sorry to keep him in suspense, I may say that neither Miss Pettigrew nor anyone else stands to lose or win anything by Miss Bond’s death. I shall count myself exceedingly fortunate if the amount standing to my late client’s credit is sufficient to cover the expenses unfortunately inseparable from an event of this nature.”

“I don’t understand,” John stammered. “I mean—my aunt was, I have always understood, very comfortably off.”

Mr. Twemlow’s expression said that clearly he hadn’t understood much.

“I dare say you know the provisions of the late Colonel Bond’s will,” encouraged Crook.

John, who had sneaked into Somerset House some time ago in order to acquaint himself with his own expectations, muttered something unintelligible.

“A very curiously worded will, as I am sure Mr. Sherren will agree,” said Mr. Twemlow, who could put even Miss Pettigrew in her place. “The Colonel provided that all of which he died possessed should go to his daughter, Clara, on the understanding that she made a home for her younger sister, Isabel. If, however, Isabel should marry, then she was to receive as her portion one-half of the capital then standing in Miss Bond’s name. You perceive the flaw, of course.”

Crook did, even if John didn’t. “Miss B. bein’ left in full control of the capital? I get you. Nothing to prevent her selling out before the old man was cold in his grave, and settin’ up a racin’ stable on her own account.”

Mr. Twemlow permitted himself to smile, still completely ignoring the hapless John. You might have thought that years of such treatment at the hands of every one except his landladies, who were never left in ignorance of the fact that one day he would be soundly independent, would have hardened him, but it hadn’t. He was as sensitive and ill at ease as he had been twenty years ago. Only as the lawyer’s story unfolded did he feel his heart, that had dropped into his stomach with Twemlow’s first words, sink into his neatly pointed, perfectly polished gent’s black shoes. Because the story Twemlow was now telling simply couldn’t be true. He could believe a good deal about his Aunt Clara, but not this, not that she had, so to speak, beggared herself and her sister for the sake of a comparative stranger, for the most rabidly sentimental reason any romantic novelist ever conceived.

Yet that was what Mr. Twemlow actually was saying.

“Aunt Clara quixotic?” gasped John. “You might as easily believe in Molotov becoming a regular Yes-man.”

“That’s what’s wrong with the world,” Crook reproved him. “No faith left. Don’t you believe in miracles, Mr. Sherren? I thought there was no end to what you writing chaps could stomach.”

“If we might have some details,” whispered John, weak with distress and indignation. He’d seen the will himself. There had been no mention of any other name. So how could he or the Colonel or poor, deceived Isabel dream that when the old lady breathed her last there wouldn’t be any capital at all?

Yet that was what Mr. Twemlow was telling them. “When the Colonel had his last illness, the doctor, in the teeth of Miss Bond’s objections, insisted on sending in a nurse. I didn’t meet the lady myself, but she was apparently not merely competent but sympathetic enough to attract the Colonel’s interest to an unusual extent. The first I knew of the situation was when I received a letter from the Colonel telling me he wished to make a fresh will, dividing his money equally between this lady on the one hand and his two daughters on the other. He said that, had circumstances been more propitious, he would have asked her to marry him, but since that was out of the question, he wanted to be sure that she would be provided for for the future. I never actually saw the lady, but I gather she was not exactly in the first bloom of her youth. Miss Bond would then be about thirty years of age, and this lady was probably her contemporary. I felt it my duty to point out to my client that such a suggestion was exceedingly unfair to his daughters and moreover would help the nurse less than he supposed, since when the information became public property, which would inevitably be the case, a good deal of gossip would attach itself to her name. It was even possible that Miss Bond would bring an action on the ground of undue influence.”

“Did that move the old gentleman?” asked Crook, enchanted by this development, which was precisely his cup of tea.

“It moved him to a still more precipitate action. He wrote that he appreciated my forethought for the lady—I regret that I do not recall her name—and in the circumstances he was arranging to go through the marriage ceremony, so that there should be no possibility of her being defrauded of what he chose to consider her rights.”

John had been listening to this story with a face of absolute anguish.

“But that wouldn’t help,” he exclaimed. “The tongues would wag faster than ever.”

“Ah, but it’s one thing to proceed against a scheming nurse and quite another when said nurse has become a wife,” Crook warned him. “Don’t tell me he actually pulled it off?”

“He did not, but that was because he was suddenly carried ofiE by a heart attack before he could put his plan into action. Well, there was nothing very surprising about that …”

“But damned convenient for Miss Bond,” suggested Crook, putting John’s thoughts into words.

“Quite,” agreed Mr. Twemlow dryly. “The surprising thing came later, when she wrote to me that she wished the provisions of her father’s unsigned will to be carried out.”

Even Crook was silenced for a minute by that; the more impetuous John burst out: “I don’t believe it. Why should she?”

“That’s the point,” Crook agreed. “Why should she? You say he hadn’t signed the new will?”

“He didn’t intend to do that until he was actually married.”

“Then there can’t be any question of Miss Bond destroyin’ it. Now, now, my dear chap, keep that face for your clients. You and me know what the world is. Miss Bond didn’t give away half her fortune without she had to. And if she had to do that it was because this woman had something on her. Question is, what could it, be?”

“I have sometimes wondered,” Mr. Twemlow conceded with unusual recklessness.

“Good luck to you,” crowed Crook. “But her nephew and me, we don’t have to wonder. We’re pretty sure we know.”

John, taken aback by this correct reading of his mind, began to stammer an incoherent denial.

“No, no, I didn’t say a word. I mean, it’s out of the question—I realize, of course, you’re hinting at blackmail …” He stopped there, remembering the old saying that history repeats itself, and at the time of her death Miss Bond was still being blackmailed. “But this was her own father.” ‘7bAnd here his inconvenient , memory banged at the door to say. And the last time it was her own sister, wasn’t it?) He felt himself caught up in a whirlpool. “She couldn’t,” he concluded weakly. “It’s unthinkable.”

“Only putting on the clock a little,” urged Crook, unabashed. “Well, there had to be some motive, and what else could nursie have held over her head?”

They thought about that for a moment, then John said thinly: “What, in effect, did Miss Bond do for this nurse?”

“She carried out her father’s wishes. Half the capital was to be made over to this lady; on the other half she and Miss Isabel would live. That had been her father’s intention, and to that, she insisted, she would adhere.”

“Had Papa confided in her?” asked Crook. And answered his own question. “Yes, of course he must have—or else she found out by irregular means. Did Miss Isabel know?”

“Miss Bond enjoined me most earnestly never to let her sister know the facts. She must think they could continue to live on their previous comfortable scale. The income, of course, deteriorated considerably during the war, and when it became obvious that

these various social-service schemes were to come into being, she took my advice and sold out all her remaining investments—she had had to call some in during the war to meet current expenses— and purchased an annuity on which she and her sister lived as simply as possible until Miss Isabel’s death.”

“Suppose the sister had suddenly decided to get married? That would have let the cat out of the bag,” said Crook.

Mr. Twemlow smoothed his neat upper lip with his neat little fingers.

“Fortunately that contingency did not arise. If it had. Miss Bond would have been compelled to warn her that she would be a dow-erless bride, apart from the very small interest she had under her mother’s will, and unfortunately very few of those shares have been paying their way since 1939.”

“No wonder …” began John, and stopped.

“Pray continue,” said Mr. Twemlow.

“I meant, no wonder she didn’t encourage suitors for Aunt Isabel.”

“I always understood that Miss Isabel was delicate, not only physically but mentally. Marriage, therefore, was out of the question.”

“She must have been as tough as an ostrich egg to have stood up to the old lady all those years,” objected Crook. “Still, you do see Miss Bond’s point. She might have found herself in quite a spot if she’d had to tell the truth.”

“Yes, indeed,” agreed John, his voice choked with fury.

Twemlow was looking from one to the other with little hostile eyes.

“I should point out that you have no grounds for the amazing suggestion you have made,” he observed.

“Don’t give me one of your old-fashioned looks, Twemlow,” Crook said pleasantly. “You know what I mean. When did you ever know the old girl to make a gesture like that? I bet she was the kind that brings out last year’s poppy on November the eleventh, and then you’re asking us to believe she’d part with half her ill-gotten gains just to reverence her daddy’s memory.”

Mr. Twemlow shivered. It seemed obvious that such an explanation had not previously occurred to him.

“I—I can hardly believe …” he mumbled.

“It was mighty convenient for Miss Bond that the old gentleman died when he did, or would have been if nursie hadn’t had something on her. That’s the worst of these amateurs,” he continued, blissfully disregarding Mr. Twemlow’s horrified attempts at interruption, “they think nobody’s goin’ to be as clever as they are. No, I think it’s pretty safe to assume the old lady slipped up and the other gold-digger on the premises was on her neck at once, and eventually they settled down and decided to diwy the swag.”

“Murder is murder—since you appear to prefer plain speaking, sir—even if the victim’s expectation of life is no more than a few days,” Mr. Twemlow pointed out severely.

“Just what I’m trying to tell you,” said Crook, looking a little bit injured.

“If that’s true,” said John thoughtfully, “it would make it much easier to understand about Aunt Isabel. I never understood how someone so afraid of heights as she was came to fall over the edge of a balcony.”