Green for Danger (18 page)

“Well,
I'm
used to a streamlined flat in town,” said Woody abruptly.

“Oh! Are you? Town-bred girl, eh?”

“Mostly,” said Woods, automatically picking up a hairbrush and an outsize brassiere and pushing them under a cushion.

“I see. I only wondered,” said Cockie, “because there were some people of your name living in these parts once.”

“My father did have a house down here once, ages ago, when we were—when I was a child.”

“How many ages ago?” said Cockie, lighting a cigarette before getting down to work.

“Well, actually—I mean
that
was ages ago, when I was a child, of course; but they lived here till—oh, I don't know, four or five years ago.”

“I see,” said Cockie again. “Quite a short age, really. And where are your parents now?”

“They're dead,” said Woody. She dived under the line of washing, holding up a garment for the Inspector to follow her. “Excuse the Jaegar coms and things, but chiffon and
crêpe de chine
don't quite suit the life of a V. A.D. Sorry about the fug; it's not us—it must be the results of the gas.”

“Let's have a look at the meter,” said Cockrill.

She opened a cupboard door. “Here it is … Good lord, somebody seems to have been dusting it. It hasn't looked so clean for months.”

“My sergeant has been going over it for fingerprints,” said Cockrill. “He always clears up after himself.”

“We must get him down for the spring cleaning,” said Woody equably.

He examined the meter carefully. “I see that there's six shillings in here,” he said, peering at the little dials. “Would that be about right, do you know?”

Woods considered this, muttering calculations to herself. “Me and then Freddi and then Esther, and twice three's six, but last week Freddi put in two.… Yes, that's right; we put in the shillings in turns, and it was Esther's turn this time. Actually 1 suddenly remembered that I had put a bob under the clock for emergencies, only I'd forgotten it, so now Esther owes me a shilling.”

“It boils down to this, that nobody but yourselves has put any money in the meter since it was last cleared?”

“No such luck,” said Woods.

“Well, now, let's go up to the bedroom, shall we? I want to look round up there.”

The window had finally been got open and most of the fumes had blown away from the little room. “The tap of the gas fire was turned on,” said Cockrill, pointing to it with the toe of his shoe. “The fire wasn't lit, and of course the gas was pouring into the room. I wonder how the tap can have been turned on?”

“Not by accident, for a start,” said Woody decidedly. “That tap was always frightfully stiff; and besides, it's very un-get-at-able, isn't it? I mean, nobody could have pushed it on with their foot by mistake, or anything like that.”

“Exactly,” said Cockie, scattering cigarette ash all over the bedroom floor.

“I came up just before we left the house,” went on Woody, “and it certainly wasn't on then, because the gas had only just petered out downstairs, and if it had been on before that, there would have been a smell of gas which there wasn't. Esther came up a few minutes afterwards to close the window, only actually I'd already closed it, but she didn't know that; and
she
says there wasn't any smell either.”

“You both seem very thoughtful of your friend,” said Cockie.

Woody smote her large bosom a resounding thud. “Under our mountainous exteriors, we have hearts of gold.”

“Oh yes?” said Cockie politely. He produced a little wooden object from his pocket. “I wonder what heart of gold it was that thought of wedging up the window with this, so that it wouldn't open.”

Woods stared at it, electrified. “Do you mean to say that that was stuck in the window? It
can't
have been! It's one of our clothes pegs, out of the kitchen.”

“I noticed that one pair of corns was hanging a bit skew-wiff,” said Cockrill.

She took the peg from him and stood, leaning back against the dressing-table, turning it over and over between her fingers, looking down at it as though she could not believe her eyes. “I don't understand. This was jammed in the window …? But
why
?”

“It would take a very long time to gas a person in a room with an open window,” said Cockrill, sitting on a corner of the bed, looking up at her.

She dropped the peg, as though it had suddenly become contaminated with evil. “It's too horrible … it's inconceivable! Are you telling me that somebody deliberately jammed up the window so that poor little Freddi would be gassed to death? It's too … I …”

He looked at her curiously. “You're so surprised? Yet you knew this was an attempt at murder; you said so yourself, just now.”

“Well, I suppose I knew in my mind that it was, but one can't sort of rea
lise
it, one doesn't really face it …” She broke off” and said wretchedly: “But who could have done such a thing? Who put the shilling in the gas meter, for a start?”

“Well, as for that—you did, didn't you?” said Cockrill, still watching her.

“I?
I
did?”

“Of course,” said Cockie.

“But, Inspector …”

“Miss Woods,” said Cockrill patiently, “let's get this straight. At twenty-past seven this morning, the gas died in your meter; we know that the tap up here was not turned on then, because there was no smell of gas. Very well. After that you came up to this room to put a hot-water bottle in Miss Linley's bed, and you closed the window. Later still, Miss Sanson came up to close the window, but found it already shut. At half-past seven you both left the house.

“At about ten to eight, Miss Linley came back and went to bed. She found that she couldn't open the window. That is to say that in the half-hour between the time the gas ran out in the meter, and the time she came back to bed, somebody had jammed up the window, and it's only reasonable to assume that the same person had turned on the gas-tap in here.”

“But Freddi would have smelt the gas,” protested Woods.

“No, she wouldn't,” said Cockie. “There was no gas to smell; there was none coming through the meter—yet.”

“My God!” said Woody.

“Yes, it is rather ‘my God!' isn't it?” said Cockrill calmly. “It's a very old dodge, of course. At a quarter to nine, by which time Miss Linley would be fast asleep after her heavy night's work, you yourself were all scheduled to come across and make yourself a cup of tea; and that necessitated …?”

“Putting a shilling in the meter,” finished Woody obediently.

6

Cockrill finished his cigarette, and ground out the stub in Freddi's little ash-tray. “Do you usually come over and make yourself tea?”

“Yes, I do,” said Woody, at once. “I'm the theatre V.A.D., as I suppose you know by now, and I go on duty at half-past seven like the others, and clean up and check instruments, and all the rest of it; but operating doesn't begin till half-past nine, in the ordinary way, so a bit before that I come over and make myself a cuppa, and have a cigarette and put up my feet for twenty minutes or so before the dog-fight. It's all quite fair and above-board; everybody knows I do it.”

“Everybody?” said Cockrill.

“Well, actually I meant Theatre Sister and so forth; but now I come to think of it, everybody else does too. All the theatre staff”, I mean … Major Moon and Barney, and Gervase—Major Eden, that is. I often walk back with them when they're going on duty after their breakfast. And of course Freddi and Esther; I don't know that anybody else knows.”

“Well, those are the ones we're interested in, anyway, aren't they?” said Cockie smoothly.

She leaned back against the dressing-table in her favourite attitude, her lovely long legs stretched out before her, her arms crossed over her breast; and her friendly, intelligent face was drawn with worry. “I suppose they are: Frederica and Esther, and Major Moon and Barney and Gervase—and me.… Nobody else can have known that Higgins was in the hospital; nobody else knew that Sister Bates had the ‘proof' of the murder; and now there's this; just those five people knew that I could come across and make myself some tea. It can't be true—and yet it must be true. One of us—one of
us
!” She was silent for a moment, thinking deeply; but at last she cried, raising haggard eyes to his: “But, Inspector,
why
? Why should any of us have done these things? I don't see who would want to. Who would want to kill Higgins, for a start? None of us had ever set eyes on him before; he was just a country postman, and as far as we know, he'd never been out of Kent. Sister Bates came from a London hospital. Frederica had always lived abroad. What was the connection? What was the sort of a—the common denominator between these three? Why should any one person want to kill these three particular people?” She added, suddenly, struck by an idea: “There couldn't be a maniac involved, Inspector Cockrill? You don't think it could be a maniac, or something like that?”

“No, I don't,” said Cockie. “Maniacs don't plan murders; at least they don't plan deaths that will take place when they're not there to see. They like killing people; not just having them die. A maniac wouldn't shut anybody up in a gas-filled room and go away. He'd want to see the fun.”

“Well, then, all I can say is that it's utterly hideous,” said Woody, desperately. “You suggest that one of us, one of my friends, has killed, or tried to kill, three absolutely unrelated people, for no apparent reason.… I mean, supposing for the sake of argument, that Higgins had been blackmailing Major Moon or Barney because he'd been delivering feelthy postcards from Paris at their doors—what could that have to do with Sister Bates? What could it have to do with Freddi?”

“As far as Bates is concerned, we know that she was murdered because of what she could reveal about the original murder,” suggested Cockrill, reasonably.

“Well, all right, but that doesn't explain this business of Frederica? What's the connection between her and Higgins?”

“There's one connection that you don't seem to have thought of,” said Cockrill, looking up at her from under his eyebrows; “Higgins talked of ‘goings-on' in the sisters' bunk that night that he was brought in … there was one other person who could have witnessed those ‘goings-on'—and that was your friend Frederica.”

The rouge stood out very pink and blotchy on Woody's cheekbones, as the natural colour drained away from beneath the skin; she said, breathlessly: “But—but Freddi herself was mostly connected with the ‘goings-on'; I mean, she and Barney were talking in there. So if Freddi's killed—I mean if anyone tries to kill Freddi …”

“I believe Major Eden and Sister Bates were also talking in there.”

“Oh, good lord, that was all nothing,” said Woods, brushing it aside. “Gervase had a slight affair with Bates, everybody knows that; and he was tired of it and she was full of lamentations and reproaches.…”

“And threats?” said Cockie.

She caught her breath; but went on, earnestly, almost at once: “She may have threatened to make a fuss; she was jealous and miserable and perhaps a bit hysterical—but what could she have done? Nothing very dreadful. He's already divorced from his wife, or anyway, separated. There was nothing to be wrecked by a scene with Marion Bates.”

“Except his practice,” suggested Cockrill. “I understand that Major Eden had a great many women in his practice?”

“He's a general surgeon,” said Woods stoutly.

“Largely patronised by women,” insisted Cockie; “and though I don't suggest for a moment that Major Eden consciously exercises his charm over these ladies, well, I dare say they wouldn't flock to him if he were old and ugly and disagreeable.”

“He
is
old and ugly and disagreeable,” said Woody, impatiently; but she added, ruefully: “At least
rather
old, and
rather
ugly.…”

“And not at all disagreeable,” said Cockie, smiling.

“No, he isn't,” admitted Woods, smiling too; a little, affectionate, reminiscent smile that she immediately checked.

“And so I say that, supposing there had been a sordid breach of promise case, or something of that kind—it would have done Major Eden's private practice no good; no good at all.”

“What would that matter? He's in the Army now.”

“He won't always be,” said Cockrill.

She jerked her head impatiently. “Good lord, Inspector, are you seriously suggesting …? It's nonsense. People don't murder people for things like
that!
”

“People have been known to murder people for a great deal less,” said Cockie, grimly ironical.

“But I … But he couldn't.…” She said, with belated caution: “I don't know why I should take it upon myself to defend Major Eden like this, but the point is, you're all wrong. He just couldn't have done it. He isn't that kind of person.”

“Well, that's a most rational defence, I must say,” said Cockie, mockingly. “He isn't that kind of person! Isn't that just like a woman! Now, look here, Miss Woods.… I don't say for a moment that Eden killed Bates and Higgins; but he's one of six equally unlikely people, and he had some sort of motive, which is more than can be said for the rest of them, as far as I can see … and he
could
have done it. He's accounted to me for the time after he saw Higgins in the ward; but he has no alibis for the time between his seeing the man carried through the hall and the time that he visited the ward.”

“Oh, good heavens,” cried Woody, impatiently; “what rubbish all this is! Saw the man carried through the hall! We saw a bundle of rags carried through the hall, huddled up on a stretcher with his face all covered with dust and filth and his poor old toes sticking out through the remains of his boots. Are you suggesting that on the strength of that, Gervase made up his mind to commit murder, concocted a deep and elaborate plot, and started the whole thing going? It's nonsense, of course it is. Of course it wasn't Gervase.”