Ladies’ Bane (19 page)

Inspector Howland was a slight middle-aged man with a retiring manner. There were, in fact, times when it became so hesitant that the person to whom he was talking might feel a kindly impulse to help him out. He saw Geoffrey Trent, and asked him a number of questions relating to his business in the Near East. Geoffrey, at first annoyed, passed to a state of rather contemptuous tolerance. If a check-up on these things was required for Customs purposes, he could not imagine why a more competent and businesslike person had not been sent down. In any case, as he told the embarrassed Howland, there were a number of the questions which he could not possibly answer without access to the books of the Company in which he held an interest.

“That would be as trustee for your late ward, Miss Margot Trent?”

The question was put in so small and shy a voice that no offence could be taken.

“Certainly.”

“These interests have now passed to you?”

“Yes, I am sorry to say they have.”

“Sorry, Mr. Trent?” Howland peered through the thick lenses behind which his shortsighted eyes blinked at the world.

“I was very fond of my ward.”

“Ah, it was a sad accident. But to return to this Company. You hold a majority of the shares?”

“About fifty-five per cent-beside some which I hold in my own name. May I enquire why I am being asked all these questions? So far as I am aware everything is in order. If there is an idea that there has been some breach of the Customs regulations-”

“I have no connection with His Majesty’s Customs, Mr. Trent. If you jumped to that conclusion, it was not my fault.”

Geoffrey frowned.

The questions went on, still in that diffident tone, but becoming more and more difficult to answer.

“Do you know a man called Muller?”

“Well, yes.”

“He was the assistant manager of your general trading company?”

Geoffrey raised his eyebrows.

“Was?”

Howland blinked.

“I am afraid he has been arrested.”

“What for?”

“Trafficking in illicit drugs.”

Geoffrey Trent clapped a hand to his head and exclaimed,

“Oh, my God!”

Another person interviewed by Inspector Howland was Florrie Bowyer.

“You work by the day at the Ladies’ House?”

Florrie felt pleased and important.

“Oh, yes, sir-I’m housemaid.”

“Like working there?”

“Oh, yes-Mr. Trent is ever so kind.”

“And what about Mrs. Trent?”

She wouldn’t have answered just anyone who asked her that, but this poor little man did seem so shy you kind of felt you’d got to help him out. She dropped her voice and said,

“She’s been ill-sometimes she’s ever so strange. You won’t say I said so.”

“What makes her strange?”

They were in her mother’s front room, but she looked over her shoulder as if someone were listening for what she was going to say.

“It’s the medicine she takes-white stuff in a powder. Mr. Trent he asked me had I ever seen any such, doing her room and putting her things away. And when I said yes, he said to show him, and he took the whole lot and put it on the fire-said it was making her ill and she mustn’t have any more of it.”

“And did she seem to get better after that?”

“Oh, yes, she did. Dr. Whichcote came up to see her once a week. He thought she was better too, because I was in the hall once when Mr. Trent was letting him out, and he said something like ‘definite progress,’ and, ‘we’ll just go on with the diminishing doses.’ ” She looked up suddenly with a flush on her face. “I wouldn’t say nothing about it, not to anyone, only you can’t be in a place without knowing when there’s talk, and if it’s anything against Mr. Trent, well, I thought I’d better tell what I seen with my own eyes and heard too, because there never was a gentleman that took more thought for his wife. Never an unkind word, and she used to be ever so queer sometimes-enough to put any gentleman out. But Mr. Trent
never
!”

Howland looked through his thick lenses at the little pleading face. Earnest child with every appearance of being truthful. He said,

“You were quite right to tell me what you know.”

Florrie felt a good deal uplifted.

There was another interview, and a longer one, with Jacqueline Delauny. She made an effective entry in her black dress, and avoided the chair which he had set for her facing the light.

“Thank you, I should prefer to stand, and as I am feeling cold I should like to warm myself a little.”

She took up a graceful bending position with a hand on the mantelpiece and a foot raised upon the kerb of the hearth. She was thus only half facing him and could look away, or down into the fire as she wished. He began to think that she was clever, and then to wonder whether it would not have been cleverer not to take so obvious a precaution. But then she probably put him down as a fool-people very often did.

She stood there waiting for him to begin, her dark eyebrows a little raised. When he let her wait, she bit her lip and said,

“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand. May I ask why you wanted to see me?”

“Certainly. I am an officer from Scotland Yard. A question has arisen out of the affairs of the late Mr. Edgar Trent. I believe you were his secretary.”

She really did look genuinely surprised.

“That seems like a very old story. And I am afraid I must correct you. I wasn’t really Mr. Edgar Trent’s secretary. I did some translation work for him, and he would occasionally ask me to help him with a foreign letter.”

“Our information is that you lived in his house and acted as his confidential secretary.”

She shook her head.

“Oh, no-nothing like that. I went to live in his house because he asked me to take charge of his daughter. He was a widower, and the child, who was then about eight or nine, had been left to run quite wild.”

“That was the girl Margot Trent who met with a fatal accident here?”

The tears rushed to her eyes.

“Yes, it was Margot. She had been terribly neglected, and she was not quite normal. I can assure you that looking after her left me with very little spare time on my hands.”

“But you were in Edgar Trent’s confidence?”

“With regard to his daughter, I may say that I was. I could not have stayed with so difficult a child if I had not had the full support and confidence of my employer.”

“Miss Delauny, I was not talking about your employer’s daughter, I was talking about his business. Were you not equally in his confidence about that?”

“But of course not! I knew nothing about his business except what everybody knew. He was a rich man who had done very well at it, but just what he did-” She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m afraid business has always seemed very dull to me. I really wasn’t interested in it.”

Howland looked at her hard.

“Are you going to say you didn’t know he was running dope?”

Her hand dropped from the shelf, her foot from the kerb. She stood up straight and angry.

“That is a most insulting question!”

“I am afraid it is one that you will have to answer.”

“Naturally. I should insist upon answering it. Of course I have no knowledge of the sort you imply.”

“You knew that your employer committed suicide?”

“I was no longer in Alexandria by then. Naturally I heard of his death. He had sent Margot home in ’39 just before the war broke out, and I accompanied her.”

“You remained in charge of her?”

“Not entirely. Margot was for a time with her old nurse, a very suitable person. I used to visit her constantly and report to her father. After his death Mr. Geoffrey Trent invited me to take charge again. Nurse was getting old and felt that she could not go on. When Mr. Trent married two years ago we joined him here.”

A perfectly natural, simple, straightforward story, and no evidence to break it down. There is a long sliding scale between the nursery governess who looks after your difficult child and occasionally writes a foreign letter for you and the confidential secretary with every detail of your business at her fingers’ ends. Their advices had not mentioned the child. If she was really there, and Jacqueline Delauny in charge of her, it was going to be very difficult to get her where they wanted her, at the incriminating end of that scale. He went away with a feeling that he hadn’t got very far.

Howland had gone and they were all at lunch, when Allegra turned one of her rather vague looks upon her husband and said,

“Did I tell you that Miss Falconer and her friend are coming to tea?”

Geoffrey started. His fresh colour was less in evidence than usual, and his thoughts appeared to have been wandering.

“What did you say?”

“I just wondered if I had told you that Miss Falconer and her friend are coming to tea.” Allegra rather dropped than raised her voice.

“No, I don’t think you did. I didn’t think we were having anyone just now.”

“I thought it would be nice for Ione. Miss Falconer knows so much about the house.”

“And she has had two years to tell us what she knows!” said Geoffrey Trent.

It was the first time that Ione had seen him put out about a domestic matter. Allegra’s face puckered up as if she were going to cry, and all in a moment he was his old smiling self again.

“Darling, that was horrid of me. But I’ve got a lot of letters to write, and I shall just have to run away as soon as tea is over. After all, you and Jackie and Ione ought to be enough to entertain two old ladies. By the way what is the friend’s name? I keep forgetting it.”

It was Jacqueline Delauny who said,

“It is Miss Silver-Miss Maud Silver-and she is like all the old maids in the world rolled into one.” She had a short dry laugh for this.

Geoffrey said,

“
Really
, Ally!”

He used what was Ione’s own special name. No reason why he shouldn’t of course, and there had to be a first time for everything, but she didn’t like it.

Allegra smiled vaguely and repeated,

“I thought it would be nice for Ione. But Jackie must stay too, because I don’t always want to talk-I get so tired.”

The two ladies arrived punctually at half past four, Miss Silver wearing her best hat with the magenta trimming and the plum-coloured cashmere dress which had been new in the autumn. Since she invariably bought the stuff and had it made up by an elderly dressmaker in Chiswick, the pattern of these garments changed very little. A bog-oak brooch in the form of a rose with an Irish pearl at the heart fastened the folds in front. Miss Falconer never varied now from her shabby black, and wore, as always, a wide-brimmed felt of a mushroom shape and a limp discouraged scarf about her neck. But the pearls which showed occasionally were real and had been her mother’s. Where so much else had gone, she held on to them, and would continue to do so until confronted by some final emergency.

Geoffrey Trent made himself perfectly charming during tea, and then vanished with the time-honoured excuse of letters to write. Whilst Allegra lapsed into one of her abstracted moods and Ione led Miss Falconer on to talk about the family history Miss Silver found herself practically tête-à-tête with Jacqueline Delauny. Her hands occupied with her knitting, she explained that the stocking on her needles was for her niece Ethel Burkett’s second boy Derek.

“There are three of them, Miss Delauny, and all at school now, so they get through their stockings very quickly indeed. I have finished three pairs for the eldest boy, Johnny, and as soon as these are done I shall be knitting a set for Roger who is the youngest.”

“Indeed?”

Miss Silver beamed upon her.

“And then I shall be able to think about a pretty knitted frock for little Josephine.”

It was not until the conversational possibilities of the Burkett family had been thoroughly explored that Miss Silver sighed and observed that she was afraid she talked too much about them.

“But when you are as fond of children as I am-I was for some time engaged in the scholastic profession-”

Miss Delauny’s lip twisted.

“It is very hard work.”

“Ah, yes, but so rewarding. I am sure you must have felt that too.”

A sudden failure of the blood beneath the skin made Miss Delauny’s lip rouge stand out with a rather ghastly emphasis. The effect was for a moment only. Then Jacqueline said with a kind of bitter composure,

“I am afraid I did not find it so.”

Miss Silver was all compunction.

“My dear Miss Delauny! I had no intention of making any reference-do, pray, believe me!”

“It doesn’t matter. Mr. Trent and I are, perhaps, too sensitive on the subject. You see, we were both very fond of Margot. But nobody seems able to believe that. They write and talk as if it was all very painful but it must of course be a great relief to us.”

Miss Silver observed that far too few people had been endowed with tact.

“Even if they thought such a thing, it is really the height of bad taste to say so.”

“Mr. Trent feels it very much.”

In spite of her remark about tact Miss Silver did not seem able to get away from the subject of Margot Trent. She asked a number of small and quite harmless questions about her tastes, her temperament, and the difficulties which attend the education of an abnormal child, the whole copiously illustrated by anecdotes from her own experience and from that of friends also engaged in the scholastic profession. If Miss Delauny had any idea of breaking away and joining the other group, it was made quite impossible for her to do so.

Ione and Miss Falconer were away in one of the half dozen centuries which had elapsed since Robert Falconer received his grant of land and built himself a house upon it.

Allegra took no part in either conversation. She sat in the sofa corner and did not pay any attention to what was going on until right at the end, when she broke in suddenly with an irrelevant,

“Ione has had such a charming flat lent to her. Her friend Louisa Blunt. She is going abroad or something, and wants to get it off her hands. Where is she going, Io?”

Thus directly addressed, Ione returned from the Middle Ages.

“I don’t think she is going anywhere, except just for a short holiday in Paris. And she isn’t lending me the flat. It is too much for her, and I am taking it over.”

“So much nicer,” said Allegra. She spoke to the company at large. “You see, she can have her own furniture and things. We were looking at materials for curtains at Kenlow’s the other day.”

Miss Falconer nodded approval.

“They have very good materials at Kenlow’s, only everything is so expensive-” She ended on a sigh.

Ione said gently,

“Yes, they are. But my friend will leave her things there for as long as I want them, so I need not get everything at once.”

There was a little more talk. About the position of the flat-“So convenient for shopping. And your sister can come up and stay with you-it will do her good.”

Allegra said brightly, “Oh, yes,” and then appeared to lose interest again. She leaned back in the sofa corner and closed her eyes. It became obvious that the tea-party might be considered to be over.

The front door was no sooner closed behind the visitors than Jacqueline Delauny swept tempestuously into the study. She shut the door with what was almost a bang and said,

“Of all things in the world I detest a prying old maid!”

Geoffrey Trent looked up with half a smile.

“My dear Jackie-how fierce!”

She flung round at him from the hearth.

“It is all very well for you-you ran away!”

It was an effort to maintain the smile. She had become a great deal too prone to make scenes. It seemed painfully probable that she was going to make one now. He found himself for the first time not altogether unsympathetic towards Ione’s demand that Jacqueline should go. You could not count on what an hysterical woman might say. What the situation demanded was the appearance of a perfectly normal household-saddened, it is true, by a recent death but at peace within itself.

“My dear Jackie, be reasonable!”

She threw up her head.

“Do you suppose that I feel reasonable?”

He did not suppose anything of the sort.

Her voice choked as she hurried on.

“For one whole hour that damned prying old cat has been grilling me! First she bored me with her relations till I could have screamed, and then she got on to Margot-Margot, oh, my God!”

There was no question of a smile between them now. He dropped his voice.

“What did she say?”

“Oh, it didn’t amount to anything. It was just one niggling question after another. Did she read-did she write? A friend of hers had been very successful with a similar case. The girl could write a passable letter,
and had even made some attempts at keeping a diary
! Of course I could see at once that someone had been talking-Allegra, or Florrie. And there was this inquisitive old devil all set to find out whether Margot kept a diary!”

“What did you say?”

She flung out a hand.

“What was there to say? I said she scribbled a lot of nonsense, and as often as not destroyed it. But do you think I could get that woman off the subject? She just went on, and on, and on!”

“Well, she has gone now. Sit down and have a cigarette.”

She shook her head impatiently.

“You think you can shrug everything off and smooth it down, don’t you! I tell you I don’t know what Margot may have put in those missing pages! She was in her very slyest mood that afternoon and brim full of spite! She kept looking sideways at me and laughing to herself!”

“She was writing in her diary then?”

“I told you she was! But I didn’t know she had torn the pages out! I’d never have let her go out of the room with them if I’d known!”

He said uneasily,

“Well, after all, Jackie, the most of what she wrote was only a child’s scribblings. I don’t see you need be in such a state.”

“Don’t you? I tell you she was just as full of spite as she could be! Are you prepared for those pages to turn up, and find out that she had written, ‘Geoffrey says I can take one of those old ropes from the shed and so I shall’? I can just see her sitting there, putting down things like that and hiding them for someone to find!”

There was a silence. He was staring down at his blotting-pad. In the end he said,

“Don’t you know where she used to hide things?”

“Those pages are not in any of the usual places. Do you suppose I haven’t looked? I believe they are somewhere in Ione’s room.”

“Why?”

“She had been fairly haunting it. It was her last new craze, and I believe she stumbled on some hiding-place. The trouble is I never really have a chance of getting down to looking there. I thought I would get one the day Ione and Allegra went into Wraydon. I came back as quickly as I could, and there was Florrie turning out the room!”

He bent a frank look upon her.

“But why don’t you tell Ione and ask her to help you?”

She broke into unsteady laughter.

“You damned, damned fool! Can’t you get it into your head that what Margot wrote on those missing pages may very well put a rope round your neck? Not the rope you told her she could have, but one that can be trusted to do its job!” She came up close to him and went down on her knees by his chair, catching him by the wrist, the arm. “Geoffrey-Geoffrey-can’t you see the danger you are in? They are raking up all that old business of Edgar’s again, and if they get only half a chance they’ll try and pin Margot’s death on you! They haven’t got anything on me, but they could be made to believe that they have quite a lot on you! You don’t seem to realize it, and you’ve got to! There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you-
nothing
! But I can’t help you if you won’t help yourself!”

He disentangled himself from her clinging hands and got up. What an unbridled lust for emotion women had! But not Allegra. She came into his mind, passing through it as she might have passed through a room, small, and pale, and cool. He went round to the farther side of the table and stood there.

“Get up, Jackie!” he said. “Get up and take a pull on yourself! You’re seeing everything through a magnifying-glass, and at least three-quarters of what you see is in your own imagination. You and I are going to quarrel if you keep trumping up this damned story about my having told Margot she could take that rope. It is utterly and wickedly untrue, and I absolutely forbid you to bring it up again!”

She got to her feet, stumbling on the edge of her skirt, catching at the table for support. When she was up, she leaned on it shaking, her eyes ablaze in an ashy face.

“You don’t”dream about her?” The words only just reached him.

He said, “No.”

“You don’t feel as if you might meet her on one of those damned staircases-closed in, the two of you?”

“Certainly not.”

She leaned a little nearer. The slightest breath-the least sound of words-

“She doesn’t come in the night and-show you-the rope?”

He drew back a step.

“My dear Jackie, I’m not an hysterical woman. You are, and I suggest that you should go up to your room and use enough cold water to steady your nerves.”

He went over to the door, opened it, and went out, leaving her standing there by the study table.