Ladies’ Bane (17 page)

“You see, my dear Frank, she believes that there is a curse upon the place.”

“My dear ma’am!”

“That is why she hesitates to sell, though the money would be very welcome indeed.”

“A good thing the Chief isn’t here! There would have been a major explosion! Of course the bother with him is that deep down inside he has the remnants of a lurking belief in curses, witches, ghosts, bogles, and things that go bump in the night. Now what about this curse? Does Trent believe in it? It might have a bearing if he did. Anyhow, what is it?”

“It is extremely old. It goes back, in fact, to the fifteenth century. The young Falconer who was Lord of the Manor went over to France and came back with a French wife instead of the heiress his mother had planned for him to marry. She was portionless, and she spoke hardly any English. She was a stranger, and she had strange ways. She would go out and gather herbs by moonlight, and she made potions. It began to be whispered that young Falconer had had a spell cast upon him. In the end there was a formal accusation of witchcraft, brought by his mother. The girl stabbed herself and left a dying curse. Since she had lost the thing that was dearest to herself in all the world, every mistress of the manor should likewise lose the thing upon which she had set her heart.”

He was looking at her with his quizzical smile.

“And how did it work out?”

Miss Silver coughed demurely.

“Miss Falconer is a little vague about that. There were some deaths of children. Young Falconer married the heiress whom his mother had chosen for him, and their eldest son was killed in the tiltyard at the age of seventeen. This would naturally be put down to the French girl’s curse.”

“In fact once you’ve got a curse like that in the family, everything would go down to it. People had fourteen or fifteen children and didn’t expect to rear more than half of them, but every time a Falconer child died it would be the curse. But to come down to more modern times. Any further evidence?”

Miss Silver said drily,

“Miss Falconer’s great-grandfather lost a fortune on the turf, and her grandmother, who had been left a famous parure of emeralds, was robbed of them whilst staying on the Riviera.”

“Not really!”

Her tone changed.

“I am afraid Miss Falconer does believe in the curse, Frank. She was herself in some sort mistress of the Ladies’ House when her nephew was killed in the war. He was the last male Falconer, and she had certainly set her whole heart upon him, poor thing. It is difficult to argue with anyone when such feelings as these are involved.”

He said,

“Yes.” And then, “Difficult to see how all this might affect Trent. Difficult to see anything in this case of yours-if you can call it a case. It began in a fog, and it seems to me to have stuck there. All I can do is to give you a bit of advice which you can pass on to Miss Ione Muir. If there is anything in the yarn, she ought to clear out of Bleake as quickly as she can. If there is anything in the story at all, Mrs. Trent is safe so long as Miss Muir is safe. Nobody is going to attempt Mrs. Trent’s life if her money is going to her sister. Her danger only begins if and when something happens to Miss Muir. So Miss Muir must get out and stay out, and look after herself as well as she can.”

Miss Silver shook her head.

“I am very much afraid that she will not go.”

Fred Flaxman was talking big in the local. He had been in foreign parts, not just as so many of them had, under the tedium and discipline of army life, but in a kind of glorious splashing freedom.

“When I was valet to the Honourable John de Bent-” he would begin, and before you knew where you were you were in the midst of most thrilling adventures-lovely women, dark secrets, night-clubs more astonishing than could be imagined, murder, mystery, and what have you.

“Cross my heart, chaps, he said good-night to us with no more than fifty yards to go-up one street and round the corner-and no one never saw him again!”

Or it might be, “Nobody hadn’t seen her come in. No noise, no sound of the door-nothing. And there she was, staring at us out of those big eyes and holding her cloak tight up under her chin. Till all of a sudden she drops down dead with a great stab wound in her side, and no one to say how she come by it!”

This was a side of Flaxman’s character which would have greatly surprised his present employer. On the whole, it went down well in the Falcon. Some of the men laughed at him behind his back, but they found him good company and were willing to be entertained. It was only Tom Humphreys who kept his shoulder turned and stared moodily down at his beer while the tales went on. He was old Humphreys’ second son and the father of the handsome Nellie.

There had certainly been stories about Nellie in the past. She had a roving eye, and no disposition to keep anyone’s house but her father’s. She had always been perfectly frank about it. “Marry, and you have half a dozen kids under your feet before you can turn round! It’s no thank you for me! Look at poor Milly-up nights with that baby teething and looking fit to drop, and another one on the way! You’d never think she used to be better looking than me-now would you? Well, she was, and see where it’s landed her! I’m not walking into anything like that, thank you!” Tom Humphreys was said to be afraid of her. At any rate he knew when he was well off. His house was spotless and his food well cooked. He worked at some big nursery gardens at Wraydon, and he could be relied on to drink his couple of pints most nights and make them last till closing-time.

It wasn’t much after nine o’clock when Flaxman looked at his watch, finished his beer, and said he must be off. He went out with a laughing “Good-night, all!” and the darkness swallowed him up. He had not been gone for more than ten minutes, when Tom Humphreys muttered something to which nobody could put words and went lurching out after him. There was a loose joke or two, and then no more about it.

But Fred Flaxman didn’t come home that night. Mrs. Flaxman sat waiting, seething with jealous anger until round about three in the morning the anger died in her and she was cold. He wouldn’t stay out all night, not with Nellie Humphreys-he darsn’t! Everyone knew Tom Humphreys went home as soon as the pubs were shut. Ten o’clock. Even if he’d stayed in Wraydon and gone to the Rose or the Gardener’s Arms he’d be home by the half hour or the quarter to. And Nellie wouldn’t dare keep a man in her room if her father was home. Or would she?
Would
she? She fell into uncertainty again. Her code was a very simple one of black and white. There were good women and bad women. Good women were good, and bad women were bad. The bad woman was the enemy from the beginning. She would take a man from his duty, she would take him from his wife and children, she would spend his money. There was nothing bad she would not do. She was badness itself. She had to be fought. But the good woman had no weapon. If she spoke her mind, the man only ran the more eagerly to the woman who spoke him fair. She began to be sure that Nellie had kept Fred there in the dark cottage, with her father asleep and deceived under the selfsame roof.

At four o’clock she left the back door unlocked and went heavily upstairs to bed, where she fell into a dreary sleep, and waked with a start to the sound of the alarm clock. It was half past six, and Fred Flaxman had not come home.

Come nine o’clock there was a ring of the front door bell. When Florrie went to answer it she found a tall policeman there. She knew more about him than he did about her. His name was Ben Sales, and he was new at Wraydon. All the girls had seen him on point duty, and they thought he was lovely. She wondered what he had come for. If it was tickets for the police dance, perhaps Mr. Trent would give them all one like he did last year. She put on her best smile as she took him to the study, and tripped away to tell Geoffrey Trent that there was a policeman to see him.

Geoffrey had not yet sat down to his breakfast. He was warming himself at the dining-room fire. He said in a tone of annoyance,

“What an hour to come bothering one! What on earth can he want?”

Out of the abundance of the mouth the heart speaketh. Florrie looked at him with eyes like saucers.

“Please, sir, I thought it might be about the police dance.”

Geoffrey went out frowning. When he had shut the study door on himself and the good-looking young man who towered between him and the light, any opening he had intended was quashed by the enquiry,

“You have a butler of the name of Frederick Flaxman?”

“Certainly.”

“Are you aware that he did not return to your house last night?”

Geoffrey’s “No!” was sharp. “What on earth-”

Constable Sales said,

“I’m afraid you must be prepared for a shock, sir. The man was found dead this morning on the piece of waste ground at the end of Marsham Lane.”

“Dead! You don’t say so! He never complained of any illness!”

“He didn’t die of any illness, sir. He had received a charge of shot about the head and shoulders, but it would not have proved fatal. The cause of his death was a stab wound.”

When Mrs. Flaxman was told she did not cry. She just sat in a kind of heavy daze and thought of all the times that Fred had run after women. And now it was a woman who had brought him to his death-because there was nobody doubted but that Tom Humphreys had let his temper get the better of him and done murder on the man that was making his daughter the talk of the place.

Tom was arrested at the nurseries where he worked. Mrs. Larkin who had the next cottage could testify to hearing high words the night before. The time would be round about half past nine. The voices were so loud she came out on to the front door step to listen. “There was Tom Humphreys carrying on something shocking, Nellie crying, and Mr. Flaxman standing off out in the road trying to smooth it all down, saying things like, ‘No harm done,’ and ‘Couldn’t anyone drop in for a friendly chat?’ And Mr. Humphreys says, ‘Not in a single woman’s bedroom he can’t! And not in my house he don’t!’ ”

Mrs. Larkin was more than willing to repeat her statement to all and sundry.

“And with that he goes in, and comes out again with his gun, and, ‘You be off,’ he says, ‘or you’ll get a peppering! And if I ever catch you here again, you’ll get something worse!’ Mr. Flaxman he calls out something and he turns to go. I couldn’t hear rightly what he said, but it must have aggravated Mr. Humphreys, for he let fly with his gun. Nellie she lets out a screech, and Mr. Humphreys takes her by the shoulder and pushes her into the house. Then he goes in himself and locks the door. Mr. Flaxman he stands there shaking himself and swearing. But when I called out to him was he all right, and was there anything I could do, he said I could mind my own business. Real nasty of him, I thought it was, so I went in and shut my door and went to bed.”

It may be imagined how Bleake seethed.

Old Humphreys came up to Miss Falconer’s on the evening of the second day. He had changed his boots and put on his Sunday suit. Standing in the middle of Miss Falconer’s faded Persian carpet, he shifted an aged cap from one hand to the other and said,

“I was wishful to speak to you, ma’am.”

Miss Silver had been brought up with the manners of a gentlewoman. There was really nothing for it but to rise to her feet and gather up her knitting. But to her immense relief the sacrifice was not required. Old Humphreys jerked his head in her direction and said,

“The lady can stay if she’s a mind to-I’ve no objections. Arrh! ’Tis the evildoers that needs to say their says and do their deeds in secret. Those that lives respectable and speaks the truth, they haven’t got nothing that wants hiding.”

“Sit down, Humphreys,” said Miss Falconer in her benevolent voice.

“Thank you, ma’am, but I’m more at my ease standing. They’ve arrested my boy Tom, and what I’ve come here to say is he never done it.”

Miss Silver lifted a bright, intelligent glance to his face. That he was affected by it is certain, since he tended more and more to address himself to the stranger lady rather than to his own Miss Falconer. When at times he seemed to become aware of this he would once more direct himself to the accustomed quarter, only to experience the same gradual falling away.

“Tom never done it,” he said firmly. “He’s got a temper same as every man that calls hisself a man did ought to have. I’ve got a temper myself. If a chap was interfering with a daughter of mine, I might give him a walloping, or I might loose off a charge of small shot at him same as what Tom did. But I wouldn’t go a-murdering of him with a knife. Think I’d be such a fool as to hang for a chap like that? Arrh! well, Tom isn’t a fool neither, nor he isn’t the sort to go sticking knives in people. I’ve got things against him. He don’t keep his daughter in order, for one thing. I’d like to see any gal of mine that darst act the way that gal of Tom’s does. Took a stick to ’em, I did, when they was young. Arrh! That was what that there Nellie needed and didn’t never get!”

Miss Falconer said, “Oh-” and then stopped. The idea of a young woman being beaten by her father was really very shocking, but on the other hand this hardly seemed the moment-

It was Miss Silver who said,

“Your son went into his house and shut the door, and Mrs. Larkin saw Flaxman go away. Your son did not follow him?”

“No, ma’am, he didn’t. He was giving that Nellie what she’d been asking for, a right good hiding-and pity she didn’t get it sooner.”

Miss Silver considered. Could Tom Humphreys have beaten his daughter and still had time to follow up a badly peppered man? Whoever had stabbed him, Flaxman had got no more than a hundred yards from the Humphreys’ cottage. The waste piece of ground where his body had been found was on the other side of the road and about that distance nearer the village. Flaxman could have been in considerable pain. He could have stumbled off the road without much idea of what he was doing. If Tom Humphreys had come up with him there, a knife in his hand and murder in his heart, the crime might have been an easy one. She said,

“Flaxman received a fatal wound. If it was not your son who stabbed him, who was it?”

Old Humphreys said, “Arrh-” in a meditative manner. Then, lowering his voice to a churchyard whisper,

“There’s those that knows too much. There’s those that don’t know when to keep a still tongue in their head. And there’s those that think theirselves too clever by half.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“You are alluding to Flaxman?”

He gave his head an affirmative jerk.

“My son Tom, he got his grudge against Flaxman all right, and put a charge of shot into him on account of it. Scandalous goings on with his daughter and bringing of us all to shame. But maybe there was others that got things against him too-and weightier matters than a light wench.”

“What do you mean, Mr. Humphreys?”

He was turned wholly towards Miss Silver now. Miss Falconer looked on in astonishment. She heard him say,

“Before I answers that question, ma’am, there’s one as I’d like to put to you, and here ’tis. Be you, or be you not the Miss Silver as was staying in Greenings in the autumn and found out who done the murders there?”

If Miss Silver received any shock of surprise, it did not appear. She said soberly,

“I was in Greenings in the autumn.”

He nodded, as if with satisfaction.

“Arrh! That’s my sister as keeps the shop there-youngest of the family-Mrs. Alexander. Come visiting us at Christmas, and a wonderful lot to say about they murders and how clever you found them out-said the police thought the world and all of you too. So when it come to my lad Tom being took I thought maybe I’d come up and talk it over like.”

‘Then you had better sit down, Mr. Humphreys. It will be easier for us both.”

To Miss Falconer’s continued astonishment he accepted this ruling, fetched himself a solid Chippendale chair, and sat down. Then, with a hand firmly planted on either knee, he addressed himself to Miss Silver.

“I said there was others might have their grudges let alone my Tom, and I can tell you one of ’em straight away, and that’s Mr. Geoffrey Trent.”

Miss Falconer threw up her hands.

“Oh,
Humphreys
!”

“Sorry, ma’am, but there ’tis. That Flaxman, he knew too much. When that there Miss Margot come after my rope, he needn’t think I didn’t see him a-watching atween the bushes, for I did. Arrh! There he was, and must ha’ heard every word that was said. And one of the things he must ha’ heard was me saying she’d no business to take my rope, and that audacious brat a-calling back, ‘Well then, Geoffrey said I could!’ No two ways but what he heard that, and off between the bushes like a weasel. Well now, maybe you’re wondering what I’m a-driving at. I didn’t say nothing to nobody-it wasn’t any of my business. But there’s some might make it their business-and the kind of business that might put a pretty penny in their pocket.”

“You mean, or you have some reason to believe, that Flaxman was attempting to blackmail Mr. Trent?”

“Arrh! Mr. Trent wouldn’t ha’ liked for to have that piece about the rope repeated. That there brat saying as he told her she could take one of they old crazy things! ’Twould ha’ caused a powerful lot of talk to my way of thinking-him coming in for the money and all!”

“Undoubtedly. But have you any reason to suppose that Flaxman did indeed make an attempt at blackmail?”

He gave her a vigorous nod.

“That’s what I’m a-coming to. When I heard as how Tom had been took I went round to see that Nellie and find out the rights of it. I knew she’d had a good lambasting from her father, and I thought maybe she’d be singing a bit small. Well, there she was, and all the pride gone out of her. Tom had beaten her proper. She couldn’t hardly move without a-calling out. ‘Well, my gal,’ I says, ‘you’ve brought your pigs to a fine market,’ and she bursts out a-crying and says as how everyone is against her. ‘Well,’ I says, ‘blood’s thicker than water, and you’re my grand-daughter and Tom’s my son. There’s a time for hard words, and there’s a time for telling the truth, and if you don’t want your father to hang, that’s what you’ll be telling me now.’ And, when she’d quieted down a bit that’s what she done-and a heap of it not what I’d like to repeat to you ladies. Proper bad lot she’d been, and a pity Tom didn’t take the stick to her afore.

‘A woman, a whelp, and a walnut tree,

The more you beat ’em the better they be.’

That’s a proper good old saying.”

Miss Silver coughed. She could not possibly approve such sentiments, but like Miss Falconer she could not feel that this was the moment to say so.

“Did she say anything which would lead you to suppose that she knew of an attempt on the part of Flaxman to blackmail Mr. Trent?”

Humphreys lifted one of his big square hands and let it fall again upon his knee.

‘That she did, ma’am! Said as how Flaxman told her he’d as good as come into a gold mine. And when she arst him what he meant by that, he up and laughed and said it was just a little bit of something he knew, and maybe there was some that would pay good money for him to keep a still tongue about it.”

Miss Silver had become very grave indeed.

“To blackmail a criminal is an extremely dangerous thing. When that criminal is quite possibly a murderer, the attempt may very well prove fatal. A person who has killed once will not feel the same reluctance to kill again. If he has killed twice without incurring suspicion, his conscience will have become indurated and he will be in a dangerous state of self-confidence.”

“Too clever by half-that’s what he’ll be thinking he is-thinking he’s diddled everyone, and putting the blame on my poor Tom! Tom’s pruning-knife, that’s what they say as that Flaxman was stabbed with. But there’s other pruning-knives aside of Tom’s, and here’s what I found in my potting-shed.” He pulled a newspaper parcel out of his pocket and spread it open across his knees. The light shone down on a knife with a sharp, bright edge. “ ’Tis my knife certain sure, but I keeps it on the shelf, and ’twasn’t there. ’Twas shoved in with a lot of old muck where I’d never keep nothing as has got an edge on it same as this. What ’tracted my ’tention to it was the way there was a fly a-buzzing round the thing. These warm days we’ve had there’s been one or two of ’em about, but ’twasn’t natural the way that fly kept a-buzzing round this here knife. So I takes a look, and there’s a brown smear right up by the handle, and what with the fly and the colour of it, it come to me as it was blood.” He pointed with a horny finger. “There, ma’am, you can see for yourself! The blade it was clean enough-looked to me as if it had been pushed into the earth to clean it. But right up by the handle there’s the stain. So I thinks about they fingerprints as the police is so set on, and I wraps it up in a bit of paper and I brings it along. And maybe you’ll tell me what I’m to do with it, ma’am.”

He sat there with the newspaper across his knees and the bright edge of the knife under the light.

Without any hesitation at all Miss Silver said, “You must take it to the police, Mr. Humphreys.”