Miss Silver Deals With Death (16 page)

Miss Silver sat in front of a gas fire in Mrs. Spooner’s sitting-room and studied the neatly written time-table with which Sergeant Abbot had furnished her. The privacy of No. 7 was a boon, the room a most comfortable one. The carpet, it is true, was a little too modern in design to appeal to her old-fashioned taste, but the colours were nice and bright, and the suite with its large deep couch and two well-cushioned chairs upholstered in moss-green velvet was, she considered, most tasteful and luxurious. She studied the time-table with attention.

6:15 Major Armitage arrives No. 3 (Mrs. Underwood’s flat).

6:30 to 6:50—Armitage at No. 8 (Miss Roland’s).

6:30 or so—Ivy Lord leaves No. 3.

6:35 Miss Lemming short call at No. 3.

6:50 Armitage returns to No. 3.

6:55 Armitage leaves No. 3.

About this time Mr. and Mrs. Willard in No. 6 appear to have been having a row.

7:00 Mrs. Jackson to No. 8 to see her sister.

7:10 Willard to No. 8. Refused admittance. Goes to his brother at Ealing for the night.

7:20 Mrs. Jackson leaves to catch 7:25 bus at corner accompanied by Miss Roland. Miss Garside in No. 4 sees them go.

7:28 Miss Roland returns, followed from bus stop by Mrs. Underwood. Ivy Lord close behind. Roland by lift to No. 8. Underwood waits for lift, and is seen going up in it by Ivy.

7:30 Ivy to No. 3. Finds Mrs. Underwood has not returned.

7:40 Mrs. Underwood to No. 3. She explains this ten minute hiatus by saying she went up to top floor with intention of seeing Miss Roland but changed her mind.

8:20 Bell to Hand and Glove. Nightly habit. Punctual to the dot. Sees man going away from house to farther gate. Cannot identify or describe. Car starts up and passes him.

8:35 Miss Garside seen coming up from basement (Miss Crane). Says she went to get Bell to change faulty washer. N. B. Bell’s punctual habits matter of common knowledge. Duplicate keys of flat hang on dresser in old kitchen. Miss Underwood borrowed key of No. 7 earlier in day. Replaced it some time during afternoon, Bell doesn’t know when. Did Miss Garside go down to borrow key of No. 8? She had reason to think Roland was out, having seen her leave with her sister.

9:30 Return of Bell. Keys all present and correct.

12:00 midnight Armitage telephones Miss Underwood to say everything is all right.

8:00 a.m. Mrs. Smollett discovers body.

9:45 Willard returns No. 6. Interviewed by Curtis, he and Mrs. Willard appear to be in considerable distress—Willard had been crying, Mrs. Willard has apparently been up all night.

This leaves the time between 7:40 and 8:30 p.m. for the unknown male visitor who had drinks with Miss Roland. They may have had a row—he may have killed her. He may have been the man Roland was expecting to marry, or he may have been Armitage—he had time to come back. Or he may have been someone we don’t know anything about. On the other hand, Roland may have been killed by Miss Garside, who had procured key of No. 8 and believed flat to be empty. If she had the bright idea of changing her paste ring for Roland’s diamond, and if Roland caught her in the act, she might have snatched up the statuette and struck when Roland’s back was turned, as it might have been if she was going to call up the police. Telephone fixture on table a yard or two to the left of where body was found.

Fingerprints—Miss Garside’s, as the Chief said, pretty well everywhere. Other fingerprints—Mrs. Smollett’s faintish, accounted for by the fact that she works everywhere. Other fingerprints—Mrs. Smollett’s daily at No. 8. Miss Underwood and Armitage one each, accounted for by visits yesterday admitted by them. Prints of unknown man on tumbler but not anywhere else, suggesting that he may have worn gloves when he arrived. No other prints except Miss Roland’s own. No prints from Mrs. Underwood. N. B. She was wearing gloves when she went up in the lift.

Miss Silver studied this time-table and Sergeant Abbott’s notes with the deepest attention. Sometimes she nodded, sometimes she shook her head. Presently she picked up her knitting. The Air Force sock revolved, the needles clicked. Her thoughts were busy.

At the sound of the electric buzzer Miss Silver roused herself and went to the door of the flat. She found Sergeant Abbott on the threshold and invited him in.

He said, “I thought we might have a talk,” and received an approving smile.

Arrived in the sitting-room, he agreed with her that the weather was very cold for the time of year—such a sudden change—and that really a gas fire was a great convenience. When they were both seated and she had resumed her knitting, he said,

“We’ve had Mrs. Smollett up again. She has been working both for Miss Roland and for Miss Garside. She said straight off that the ring was Miss Garside’s. She knew all about the initials in the other one. A nosy female.”

Miss Silver sighed.

“These women are always very inquisitive. They spend their lives in other people’s houses, and it is really only natural that they should take an interest in what goes on there. Their own lives are often sadly drab.” She looked at him across the clicking needles. “I hope the Chief Inspector will not do anything precipitate in the matter of arresting Miss Garside.”

A faint satirical smile appeared for a moment on Sergeant Abbott’s face.

“Do you see him being precipitate about anything?” he murmured.

Miss Silver’s glance reproved him.

“Caution is a virtue when you are dealing with other people’s lives,” she observed. “I feel bound to say that I do not consider the exchange of the rings at all conclusive. It is one of those pieces of evidence which at first sight appear convincing, but which can often be explained in quite a natural manner. It is, of course, quite possible that Miss Garside procured the key of Miss Roland’s flat and entered it for the purpose of exchanging the rings, that she was surprised, and that she struck Miss Roland with the statuette in order to prevent her calling in the police. It is also possible that she paid Miss Roland an ordinary visit, in the course of which some occasion for washing her hands may have arisen. Miss Roland’s rings were found beside the wash-basin. The exchange may have been quite accidental. This would at any rate be a possible line of defence. Of one thing I am tolerably certain, whoever washed the statuette and put it back on the sofa, it was not Miss Garside.”

Frank Abbott displayed a lively interest.

“And how do you arrive at that?”

Miss Silver regarded him with an indulgent eye. He was of about the same age as her nephew Howard, at present somewhere in the Middle East. Howard was of course a great deal better looking.

“Mrs. Smollett has given me a very good idea of Miss Garside’s character. Like so many single women who live alone, she is neat and orderly in the highest degree. Mrs. Smollett is not, I think, a very neat person herself. She complains of Miss Garside being so particular about everything being put back in exactly the right place, contrasting her unfavourably with Mrs. Willard who, she says, will have everything clean but doesn’t care where it goes.”

Frank Abbott gave a low whistle.

“So that’s it!”

Miss Silver coughed.

“I feel sure that anyone so particular as Miss Garside is said to be would have replaced the statuette upon the mantelpiece after washing it.”

“But Mrs. Willard doesn’t care where anything goes, though she likes things clean?”

Miss Silver’s needles clicked.

“According to Mrs. Smollett,” she said.

Frank Abbott lay back in his chair and looked at her, a spark of malice in his light blue eyes.

“May I ask when you received these interesting confidences?”

He got a smile which he had done nothing to deserve.

“When I was helping her with the washing-up after lunch at Mrs. Underwood’s.”

He smiled back at her.

“That’s where you take the bread out of the poor policeman’s mouth. I can’t very well drop in and help with the washing-up. Did she tell you anything else?”

“Yes, a great deal, but not all of it pertinent. I must tell you that Miss Garside is believed to be in great financial straits. She has been doing without any household help for some time. She has sold her furniture, and Mrs. Smollett declares that she had bought no food for a week until this morning, when she came back with a full shopping-basket.”

“So that’s why she was having breakfast after she came back from the town. Curtis found her out the first time he went, and when he did get her she was just going to have breakfast. He thought it odd at the time. I wonder if she had been selling the ring. The Chief’s going to see her when he gets back. He’s gone off to interview the man Carola Roland was going to marry— thought he’d like to get that cleared up straight away. If those were his fingerprints on the tumbler, and he was having drinks with the girl within an hour of the murder, he was probably the last person to see her alive—or the last but one if someone else killed her. If the Chief counts him out he’ll go for Miss Garside. Unless anything else turns up. Have you really got anything about Mrs. Willard, or was that just a red herring?”

Miss Silver put a shade of reproof into her cough.

“It would be in Mrs. Willard’s character as described by Mrs. Smollett to wash the statuette and then leave it lying about. Mrs. Smollett had been in the Willards’ flat this morning. It was her regular day. Mr. Willard admitted her, and told her she could not go into the bedroom as Mrs. Willard was asleep. He appeared a good deal distressed, and when she spoke of Miss Roland’s death he said, ‘Don’t talk of it!’ and went out of the flat. She found the dress which Mrs. Willard was wearing yesterday in a wet heap inside the bathroom cupboard. She said, ‘It was a new dress and quite clean—why did she want to wash it?’ She also said Mr. Willard was running after Miss Roland. She is of course a gossip, and will make the most of any material she has picked up.”

Frank Abbott whistled again.

“How many more people may have killed the girl, do you suppose? At the moment we have Armitage, Mrs. Underwood, an opulent City gent, Miss Garside, and Mrs. Willard. Embarras de richesse. I suppose they didn’t all have a stab at it?”

“I’m not suggesting that any of them killed her, Mr. Abbott. I think that both Miss Garside and Mrs. Willard should be questioned, and that this dress, which seems to have been somewhat unaccountably washed, should be examined for bloodstains. If the washing were not extremely thorough, there might be some traces left. Also, I think, it would be as well to look into the antecedents of all the tenants of these flats. The Lemmings and Miss Garside have been here some time. The Willards have been here for two years. So has Mr. Drake, but nothing seems to be known about him. He is considered to be something of a mystery. The Spooners are recent tenants, but they are away. Other recent tenants are Mrs. Underwood and the old lady on the ground floor, Mrs. Meredith. As regards Mrs. Underwood, I met her at the house of friends of my own who are well acquainted with her and her husband, Wing Commander Underwood. As regards Major Armitage, the War Office can be referred to, and I would suggest an enquiry as to Mrs. Meredith’s previous address and the length of time she has had her staff. I imagine that the Chief Inspector will have all this in hand. He is extremely thorough.”

“In fact,” said Frank Abbott in his most casual voice, “we can’t at the moment see the wood for the trees. And I’d very much like to know what sort of wood you think it is. Not officially of course, but just between outselves—unter vier Augen, as the Hun has it. Very illustrative idiom, don’t you think—under four eyes. Suggests two patient professors at the microscope being distressingly thorough about a new germ. But to get back to the point. You called me Mr. Abbott just now. Well, I’m not—I’m Sergeant Abbott. But if you could go on forgetting that for a bit, I should be interested to know what you do think about that wood—as between two private individuals gossiping over a gas fire.”

Miss Silver primmed her mouth, but her eyes were kind. This was undoubtedly an impudent young man, but like most elderly spinsters she had a soft corner for the impudent and young. After a short pause she said,

“Well, Mr. Abbott, there is the gas fire. As for the gossip, I am not so sure. I have, perhaps, already repeated more to you than I should have done. In order to arrive at a just conclusion we need the whole of the evidence. It is made up of an indefinite number of words and actions which act and react upon each other, combining, separating, and joining up again. Gossip picks out some of these words and actions, focusses a strong light on them, and puts them under the microscope, with the result that the balance is destroyed and a distorted picture obtained. This is undoubtedly what Lord Tennyson had in mind when he wrote that ‘A lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright, But a lie which is part of truth is a harder matter to fight.’” She turned the Air Force sock and gazed mildly across it.

Frank Abbott smiled. If there was a faint flavour of satire in his appreciation, it was nevertheless perfectly sincere. He said,

“You know, you haven’t answered my question. I suppose you didn’t mean to, or perhaps it just slipped out of your mind.

I did say that we couldn’t see the wood for the trees, and I did ask you what sort of wood you thought it was. In other words, is there anything behind all this, and if so, what? Is this just a casual murder which happened because someone was jealous or didn’t keep his temper, or is there something behind it— something that makes the murder just a symptom?”

Miss Silver looked up.

“Do you feel that, Mr. Abbott?”

He met the look, his light eyes narrowed and intent.

“I think I do.”

She nodded gravely.

“Yes.”

“Are you going to tell me what you think it is?”

She nodded again.

“I think it is blackmail, Mr. Abbott.”

Mrs. Smollett dropped in at No. 1 at about the same time that Sergeant Abbott was pressing the bell at No. 7. Ostensibly she came to enquire whether Miss Crane had ordered the primrose soap, “because if not, I could just as easy drop in and get it on my way home and bring it along in the morning,” but actually she was bursting with importance at having been called in a second time by the Chief Inspector and she wanted to talk about it.

Miss Crane, with her old lady resting for the afternoon, was all ears and attention.

“And of course they told me not to talk. The p’lice always do, and I wonder what they think you are—mummies in a museum or what? After all, yuman beings are yuman beings, and if they’ve got tongues I suppose they were meant to use them. Not to say nothing to nobody was what the Inspector says— and of course I wouldn’t, not to anyone that matters—I’m not one to talk, as you know.”

“Oh, no,” Miss Crane agreed. “And of course I shouldn’t dream of letting it go any farther.”

Mrs. Smollett nodded,

“I know that. Well, between you and me it’s Miss Garside they’ve got their eye on, and I’ll tell you why. You know that ring she wears—the one with the big diamond?”

Miss Crane looked disappointed.

“No—I don’t think so—”

They were in the kitchenette, Mrs. Smollett leaning against the dresser, the kettle just beginning to sing on the stove, and Miss Crane fussing with the teacups.

“Well, you wouldn’t,” said Mrs. Smollett indulgently. “She’s one of the particular ones, Miss Garside—always puts on her gloves before she comes out of the flat and doesn’t take them off again until she gets back. Well, this ring has got just the one diamond in it, a big one, and she wears it all the time. First thing I noticed when Miss Roland come she’d got just such another, and so I told her when I was doing her room. “Funny thing, isn’t it,” I says, “you and Miss Garside having these two rings as like as two peas?” And about a week later she told me she had seen Miss Garside’s ring and I was quite right. It was the time Miss Garside’s furniture was took away, and she was out on the landing and Miss Roland come past and seen the ring on her hand. Well, the Inspector, he has me in, and he hands me a ring and says, ‘Ever seen that before, Mrs. Smollett?’And I say’s, ‘Every day of my life.’ And then he says, ‘Whose ring is it?’ and I tell him it’s Miss Garside’s. Well, he says how do I know that, and I tell him, well, I ought to, seeing I’ve had it under my nose every day for a good five years. And he asks if I know Miss Roland’s got one like it, and I says of course. And, ‘Would you know them apart?’ he says, and I tells him, ‘Of course! Many’s the time I’ve had Miss Roland’s ring in my hand, and it’s got initials in it—an M and a B. Some kind of a family ring, she told me it was.’ And then he said I could go, and not to talk about it.”

Miss Crane had been listening with her hands clasped and her mouth open.

“Oh!” she breathed. “Oh, Mrs. Smollett—what do you think it means—about the rings? It seems so strange—”

Mrs. Smollett tossed her head.

“Don’t ask me to say what it means, Miss Crane. Least said soonest mended to my way of thinking. I’m not saying anything nor suspecting anyone, but if it was my ring that was in a murdered person’s flat instead of the one that ought by rights to be there, well, I wouldn’t be feeling too comfortable in my inside. And there’s something I can tell you, Miss Crane, only don’t you let it go any further. When Miss Garside come in with her shopping-basket this morning, there was Mrs. Lemming coming out of her flat. You know they’re a bit friendly, her and Miss Garside, so they stopped and talked and I could hear what was said. And Mrs. Lemming, she asks Miss Garside, ‘What was you doing last night?’ she says. ‘Three times I tried to get you on the telephone between half past eight and nine, and no reply,’ she says. And Miss Garside—well, I thought she looked funny, and she said she’d been down to see Bell about a washer. And Mrs. Lemming laughs—and not what I’d call a very pleasant laugh neither—and she says, ‘You’d have to go a bit further than the basement to find Bell if it was after half past eight. Down at that pub of his, that’s where you’d have to go to find him anywhere between half past eight and half past nine. And unless that’s what you did, it wouldn’t take you the best part of half an hour, my dear.’ And Miss Garside says quick, ‘Half an hour? What do you mean?’ And Mrs. Lemming says, ‘Well, I rang you at five-and-twenty to nine, and at twenty to, and soon after the quarter, and I couldn’t get any answer.’ And Miss Garside she says the bell couldn’t have rung, and off up the stairs without waiting for the lift. Funny, wasn’t it? Tisn’t as if she might have run down to the post either, because everyone knows she wouldn’t put her foot outside in the black-out, not if it was ever so. But there—it doesn’t do to go saying things, does it, Miss Crane?”

“No, indeed.” Miss Crane was earnest in agreement.

“And I haven’t mentioned it to anyone but you, if it wasn’t for the little governess person that’s staying with Mrs. Underwood. Very friendly kind of person she is—give me a hand with the washing-up after lunch and we got talking. And she says just what you and me’s been saying—you’ve to be careful how you talk with the police about. But you can’t help what you think—can you?”

Miss Crane looked distressed.

“Appearances are often so misleading—”

“Let’s us ’ope so,” said Mrs. Smollett, and departed.

It being Packer’s afternoon out, Miss Crane went on making tea for her old lady.