Ladies’ Bane (20 page)

At half past eight that evening Frank Abbott betook himself to see Miss Silver. The two elderly ladies would have partaken of a light meal, and the sacred ritual of washing up would have been accomplished.

Miss Falconer, who opened the door to him, was a good deal fluttered. There had been a time when young men came in and out of the house laughing and talking with Robin, but it was all so long ago, and not this house. There was nothing to bring young people here any more-not since Robin went away to the war and never came back. Just for a moment the sight of Frank’s tall, light figure and the tone of his voice brought everything up. Time did take away the worst of the pain, but you could never tell when it would come upon you suddenly like this.

She showed him into the little dining-room, switched on the electric fire, and went away to find Miss Silver. He was wondering what he had done to frighten her, when Miss Maud Silver came in, knitting-bag on arm. She was wearing last year’s summer dress-art silk of a shade rather too reminiscent of boiled greens-this garment being reinforced by the now aged black velvet coatee without which she never went down into the country. Even in the height of summer she knew only too well how draughty the English cottage, the English vicarage, and above all the English country mansion could be. But with her coatee, so cosy, so comfortable, she felt secure.

When she had seated herself and extracted Derek’s last stocking from her knitting-bag she smiled and said,

“Well, Frank?”

A leaf of the dining-table had been let down, and they sat one on either side of the hearth in Windsor chairs. Miss Falconer never lost her secret regrets for the Chippendale set which she had been obliged to sacrifice, but Frank, who had an eye for such things, allowed it to rest appreciatively upon the Windsors and thought how perfectly they suited the room. He laughed and said,

“And why should it be you who say ‘Well?’ in that tone to me?”

She smiled demurely.

“You would not have come to see me if you had not had anything to say.”

He had a protest for that.

“I might have wanted to hear what you had got to say. Or I might, who knows, have had an urge to come and sit at your feet. As the late revered Tennyson has put it:

“My dear Frank, you really do talk very great nonsense.”

“
Dulce desipere in loco
!”

Miss Silver coughed.

“I am not familiar with Latin. It was not considered a necessary part of a girl’s education when I was in the schoolroom.”

He cocked an impudent eyebrow.

“Something you don’t know! My dear ma’am, let me make the most of it-it will probably never occur again! I was merely remarking that it is sweet to play the fool sometimes.”

She regarded him with indulgence.

“If you have anything to tell me, do you not think you had better begin?”

“Unless you would like to shoot first.”

She considered this.

“There is one point upon which you should be informed. Miss Muir has not, I believe, communicated it to Inspector Grayson.”

“But she told you.”

“And I have given no pledge of secrecy. It concerns a conversation which she overheard between Mr. Trent and Miss Delauny. I think that I had better repeat it to you.”

He listened to the careful, accurate repetition of what Ione had heard through the shaft in the wall. As soon as she had finished he said,

“She can’t keep that back, you know. She’ll have to come across with it.”

“Yes, I have told her so. She is in a painful position.”

He said in his most cynical tone,

“Murder does make it painful for the relations, doesn’t it?”

She could have nothing but reproof for this. It was expressed by a brief silence, after which she observed with some restraint,

“And now I believe that you will have something to tell me.”

He laughed, and then was as serious as she could wish.

“Well, I suppose you would like to know what Howland’s impressions are. He’s the dope expert, and we came down together bright and early this morning. He’s gone back to town to make his report whilst I linger on the scene.”

“And what does Mr. Howland think?”

He laughed again.

“Inspector-same as me. But so very, very much more like a plain John Citizen. I should like to have been a fly on the wall whilst he was talking to Trent and Miss Delauny. He manages to give the impression that he is almost too shy to ask any questions at all, and yet out they come one after the other. I believe he really is shy, you know, but he has managed to polish up his natural diffidence until it has become a very effective technique.”

Miss Silver’s needles clicked.

“I should be interested to know what he thought of Mr. Trent and Miss Delauny.”

“Well, they both put up very good stories. Trent admitted frankly that he had been horrified by some of the things which had cropped up when he went out after the war to settle up his cousin Edgar’s affairs. Chap committed suicide in ’42 and there was a pretty bad mess to clear up. Trent said he hadn’t the slightest idea of there being anything wrong since then. Couldn’t understand it, and couldn’t be expected to go into business details without having access to the books. Professed himself ready to fly out to Alexandria and go into everything with the police.”

“And is he going to do that?”

“Not if I can help it, but I don’t know whether I can. You see, if there’s anything in this idea that he may be tied up with a couple of murders, Alex would be a great deal too convenient for him. Back doors and back stairs ad lib, and if his trading company has been up to any funny business, there will be plenty of keys to open those back doors. The question is, how much is there in this idea that there was some hanky-panky about his ward’s death, and that he may have stuck a knife into his butler for knowing too much about it. Grayson was telling me about what they had got, and frankly it doesn’t amount to much, does it? Grayson is a very nice chap and as honest as they come. But then he has married into the Humphreys family, and you can’t expect him to want Tom Humphreys to hang-to put it no stronger than that. So however hard he tries to be impartial, he can hardly help at least hoping that there’s something in old Humphreys’ story.”

Miss Silver coughed in a gently meditative manner.

“Do you want me to tell you what I think?”

He was quite serious now.

“Yes, I do.”

“Very well then, I will do so. Where evidence is slight, and possibly biassed, I have always felt that the best results may be obtained by going behind the evidence to what springs directly from the disposition, character, and temperament of the people concerned. In this case we have a young woman of loose morals engaged in an affair with Mr. Trent’s butler who is a married man. They are surprised by her father, and after a violent scene Tom Humphreys fires a charge of shot at Flaxman, who is by this time too far off to be dangerously affected. He staggers away. Tom Humphreys pushes his daughter into the house and goes in and beats her. Up to this point the whole scene has been witnessed by the next door neighbour, Mrs. Larkin. According to her account she calls after Flaxman to ask if he is all right, and he tells her to mind her own business. After which she would have us believe that she went into her cottage and took no further interest in the proceedings, though she has already stated that she knew Tom Humphreys was beating his daughter. Bearing in mind that she is an extremely voluble and inquisitive woman, does that strike you as credible?”

“Frankly, no. What do you think she really did?”

The busy needles clicked.

“I think she would go into her house. Tom Humphreys was in a violent state, and he had a stick in his hand. He might have adopted a threatening attitude towards an eavesdropper. But she could go into her house and look out of an upstairs window. There is hardly a woman on earth who would not have done so. She would be listening for Nellie’s screams and watching to see whether Flaxman was going away. The night was overcast, but there was a moon behind the clouds. I am told that Mrs. Larkin prides herself on her good eyesight. I think she could have commanded quite a considerable field of vision from her upper window.”

He whistled.

“You mean that she would have seen Tom Humphreys if he had left the house?”

“I believe that she must have done so. If she did not see him leave the house, it was because, having beaten his daughter, he went to bed.”

“My dear ma’am, he could have waited until he was sure that a prying neighbour had given it up, and that he would be able to slip out unobserved.”

Miss Silver shook her head.

“You are not really thinking,” she said in grave reproof. “When you have peppered a man with shot you do not expect him to hang about waiting for you to come out and stab him. And you are getting away from what we agreed to consider-the characters of the people concerned. Tom Humphreys has the reputation of being a man surly in manner but not given to violence in action. On this occasion he received very grave provocation, with a consequent lack of control which led him to fire a charge of shot at Flaxman and beat his daughter. That is, say, in the first immediate heat of anger he turns to a shotgun. The firing of the gun was not followed up. His anger turned towards Nellie, and he beat her with a stick. By this time his first violence would have expended itself. If it had not done so, he would, I feel sure, have gone out stick in hand to make sure that Flaxman had cleared off. I find it impossible to believe that at that period of the proceedings he took a pruning-knife and went out to stab a man who he could not really have supposed would still be there. And if he had done so, Mrs. Larkin would have seen him.”

Frank said,

“You’re making out a case, but I don’t know what a jury would say to it. And if Mrs. Larkin was really looking out of her window and didn’t see Tom Humphreys come out again, why doesn’t she say so and clear him?”

Miss Silver pulled on her ball of wool.

“Mrs. Larkin has been a widow for ten years. Miss Falconer tells me that she has made several very determined attempts to marry Tom Humphreys. She has had high words with Nellie, and not very long ago there was quite a violent quarrel with Tom himself. Since she talked about it all over the village, it is common knowledge that he told her to keep out of his affairs and leave him alone.”

“In fact, no fury like a woman scorned. You know, the immortal Sherlock was perfectly right when he pointed out that the English countryside fairly seethes with material for crime. I seem to remember that Dr. Watson couldn’t believe him! But I can!”

Miss Silver looked some slight reproof, and opined that human nature was very much the same wherever you found it, but that of course in the country people did know more about their next door neighbours.

Frank got up and stood in front of the fire.

“Well, Tom Humphreys couldn’t have done it, because Mrs. Larkin didn’t see him leave the cottage, and she won’t say so because he spurned her. As a matter of fact, the daughter is going to swear that her father didn’t go out again-but she would probably do that anyhow. Now where do we go from there?”

“We look for someone coming from the village,” said Miss Silver soberly. “Tom Humphreys is indoors beating Nellie. Mrs. Larkin has gone upstairs to look out of her window. Someone comes down the road from the village and meets Flaxman at or near that waste piece of ground. Let us consider Flaxman for a moment. He has been bragging to Nellie that he knows something which is going to be a gold mine to him. It is a sign of his weakness that he needs someone to whom he can figure as a bold, determined fellow. A really determined man would have held his tongue. Flaxman is weak. He feels the need of someone to bolster him up. Then observe him in the scene at the cottage. He has been found out, and his conscience has made a coward of him. He makes no attempt to stand up to Tom Humphreys or to protect Nellie. He just slinks off with his charge of shot, and there, by the waste piece of land, someone meets him. He is probably feeling extremely sorry for himself. If the person is known to him, he will be glad of an arm and of help upon his way. There would be every opportunity of administering that fatal stab.”

Frank looked at her in an enigmatic manner.

“And who do you suppose that someone to have been?”

Miss Silver coughed.

“There are four possibilities, one of them a very shadowy one, but we may as well examine it with the others. Of the four people who might have stabbed Flaxman, three would have come from within the Ladies’ House, and one from the gardener’s cottage.”

“Old Humphreys?”

“It was to him that I was alluding when I spoke of a shadowy possibility. I do not, in fact, entertain it at all seriously, but he might have heard someone who was returning from the Falcon remark upon the fact that his son Tom had left unusually early. He might have heard some coarse speculation as to whether he had done so in order to catch Flaxman with his daughter. Miss Falconer informs me that the affair has been the subject of village gossip for some time past. Mr. Humphreys could have decided to go and see what was happening. He could have put his pruning-knife in his pocket and yielded to a sudden temptation to use it.”

One of Frank’s very fair eyebrows lifted quizzically.

“We began by talking about character, didn’t we? Having regard to old Humphreys’ character, you think that likely?”

Miss Silver smiled.

“I think it extremely unlikely. In fact, now that the bare possibility has been mooted, I believe that we may rule it out of court. In view of his known character, I find myself unable to believe that he would stand by and allow his son to be arrested for a crime which he had committed himself. He would, I feel sure, have gone straight to the police.”

Frank nodded.

“I think you are right there. And now let us have your three real suspects-the ones from the Ladies’ House. I will leave you to name them.”