Poison In The Pen (13 page)

Miss Silver went downstairs with the Chief Constable. As soon as they had come out upon the landing he said,

“I want to see that girl Florrie. Crisp has taken a statement from her. I want to go over it with her, and I should very much like you to be there. In the case of a young girl I think it is always advisable that another woman should be present. Do you think she would be likely to object?”

Miss Silver made a slight movement of the head.

“I have found her all that is pleasant and helpful. Perhaps you would like me to let her know that you wish to see her. My presence would then be brought about in quite a natural manner.”

He went into the study, and after telling Valentine that Maggie Repton was alone, and that she considered that some light nourishment would now be beneficial, Miss Silver acquainted her with the Chief Constable’s desire to interview Florrie Stokes. The bell was rung. Florrie appeared to answer it, and far from showing any objection to Miss Silver’s presence, evinced a disposition to cling to her. She had been crying and was obviously in a frightened and emotional state, which made March congratulate himself on Miss Silver’s presence. The Inspector, who had encountered her before, responded to her greetings in the briefest and most formal manner.

Colonel Repton’s body had been removed. The room had been aired, but the heavy smell of smoke remained. The broken glass, the decanter, the cup and saucer and plate conveyed to the dead man had been taken away. There was a damp patch on the already much worn and stained green leather of the writing-table. When it dried there would be nothing to show that it had given mute evidence of a violent death. Where Roger Repton had sprawled the Chief Constable now sat with Florrie’s statement in his hand, whilst Crisp on his left kept pencil and notebook ready.

Florrie sat on the couch beside Miss Silver. She was upset, but she was excited too. It was an awful thing to have happened, but it would be something to talk about for the rest of her life. The Chief Constable was ever so goodlooking, and so was Mrs. March. Miss Silver was ever so kind. She was glad she hadn’t got to talk to that Inspector Crisp again. Jumped down your throat something awful, for all the world like one of Joe Blagdon’s terrier dogs when it was after a rat. She didn’t like rats, but she didn’t like to see anything killed.

March took her through her statement, which began with her coming into the hall on the Saturday and hearing Colonel and Mrs. Repton quarrelling on the other side of the study door. The quarrel was about Mr. Gilbert Earle. She had told the story so often that it was like something she had got by heart, and she could repeat it and scarcely vary it by a word. The Colonel had said that Mrs. Repton had been carrying on with Mr. Gilbert—he had had one of those letters about her. They had been meeting at her friend Mrs. Foster’s flat, and he would be able to get evidence about it and divorce her.

March said, “You heard him mention the word divorce?”

“Oh, yes, I did.”

“You are quite sure about that?”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

He went on.

“Now, about these anonymous letters—you say Colonel Repton spoke of them?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He said he had had one?”

“Yes, sir—and so he did, for I took it up to him myself.”

Inspector Crisp lifted his head with a jerk. March said,

“You took it up to him?”

“Oh, yes, sir. There was one for him and one for Miss Valentine.”

“And how did you know what kind of letters they were?”

Florrie was more at her ease every moment. If there was a subject that had been thoroughly discussed in Tilling Green, it was the subject of the anonymous letters—the cheap white paper on which they were written, the flimsy envelopes which matched it, the large awkward writing. Sam Boxer, who was the postman, had given far too particular a description of these points for her to be in any doubt about them, and she had actually seen the one which Mrs. Pratt had had, because she had been there when Mrs. P. came in and showed it to Mum and Dad—a horrid spiteful letter about her Joe having been had up in court over breaking a shop window. And he wasn’t a bad boy really, only a bit wild. But the letter said everyone hoped he would go to prison and he was bound to come to a bad end anyhow. And Mrs. Pratt had taken on something dreadful.

Florrie explained all this with artless confidence.

March turned to Crisp.

“Did the police know about this letter?”

Crisp really did resemble the terrier of Florrie’s fancy. At the moment he was the terrier whose rat has been killed by another dog. He was at his most abrupt as he said,

“No, sir.”

March had a moment of exasperation. How could you help people if they wouldn’t help themselves? They would talk endlessly to each other, but when it came to reporting anything to the police a tomblike silence engulfed them. Sam Boxer having already stated that the Colonel, Miss Valentine, and the Vicar had each received a letter answering to the description of the poison-pen letters, he himself having delivered them with the first post on Thursday morning, March decided that Florrie’s evidence could be considered to establish the fact that the letter addressed to Roger had certainly reached him, though he had not seen fit to admit that it had. Since it appeared to have dealt with the subject of his wife’s unfaithfulness, this was not surprising.

Florrie maintained that the Colonel had not only talked about the letter, but that he and Mrs. Repton had quarrelled very bitterly about it, and that in the course of this quarrel the Colonel had said that he knew who had written the letters. And had gone on to say that perhaps it was Mrs. Repton herself.

“You are sure he said that?”

She repeated the words in her statement.

“Mrs. Repton said it was all lies, and the Colonel said it was a filthy letter about a filthy thing, and he knew who wrote it. And Mrs. Repton said, who was it then? And the Colonel said wouldn’t she like to know, and perhaps she done it herself, because that would be one way of breaking off Miss Valentine’s marriage, wouldn’t it, and one way of getting out of her own. And what did she and her friends care about divorce, he said. Only she had better make sure that Mr. Gilbert would marry her before she walked out.”

She might almost have had the statement in front of her as she tripped through the quarrel which had taken place in this very room. Both March and Miss Silver received a clear impression of how it had gone—suspicion turned suddenly to certainty and blazing up into an anger which defied control, followed by what the Chief Constable, but not perhaps Miss Maud Silver, would have described as a slanging-match. And then a certain cooling down, so that what had begun with a demand that Scilla Repton should get out and leave his house then and there seemed to have concluded with a realization of the scandal which such a course must provoke, and a desire to keep on the right side of public opinion.

As March said later on when they were alone, “He just blazed off at her, and then, I fancy, he realized what he would be letting himself in for if he turned her out neck and crop. I gather that he was supposed to be out, but he had forgotten a letter he wanted to post. He came back for it, found her having a pretty compromising conversation with Earle. Not unnaturally, he went in off the deep end, and then had to get back to a more dignified position. But from what Miss Maggie says, after two days to think it over he was still all set to divorce her, and was only waiting for Connie Brooke’s funeral to be over to insist on her leaving the house.”

Miss Silver agreed.

“Do you suppose that he was serious when he suggested that Mrs. Repton might herself have written the letter which accused her?”

“It is difficult to believe that he was. He was furious with her, and I should say at a guess that he wouldn’t be too particular about what weapon he was using. They are talking about the letter he had received, or rather shouting at each other about it, and he snatches at something that he thinks will frighten her.”

“You think, then, that he did not really know who had written the letter?”

He lifted a hand and let it fall again.

“He said that he knew. Florrie is quite definite about that, and she strikes me as a truthful witness.”

“Truthful and accurate.”

He nodded.

“So he said that he knew. The event rather bears that out, doesn’t it? Connie Brooke said she knew who had written the letters, and she is dead. Roger Repton said the same thing, and he has gone the same way. It rather looks as if somebody had believed what they said.”

But all this was afterwards. At the time, there was Florrie, rather pleased with herself, and thinking what a story she would have to tell them at home. She would have to tell it at the inquest too—a daunting but at the same time an uplifting thought.

Miss Silver’s voice broke in upon it. She was addressing the Chief Constable.

“I wonder whether you will object to my asking Florrie a question.”

Inspector Crisp had his quick frown for that. He had been on a case with Miss Silver before, and he considered that she took liberties, and had been allowed to take them. He did not doubt that she would be allowed to take this one. And sure enough there was the Chief Constable giving way to her.

“Oh, certainly, Miss Silver. What is it?”

She said with formal politeness,

“Thank you very much, Mr. March. When we were having tea in the dining-room I was sitting near the door with Miss Repton, who had been feeling faint, when Miss Eccles came by with the cup and plate which were afterwards found on the desk in the study. She said that Florrie had told her Colonel Repton was there, and she was taking him a cup of tea. I thought I would like to ask Florrie how she knew that Colonel Repton was in the study—whether she had actually seen him there, and when, and whether he was alone at the time.”

March said, “Well, Florrie?”

Her colour came up.

“There wasn’t anything wrong about my telling Miss Eccles?”

He gave her his pleasant smile.

“Oh, no, nothing like that. You are being a great help, you know.”

Thus encouraged, she relaxed again.

“Well, he’d been there ever since lunch. Miss Maggie, she was there with him just before the Work Party ladies came. She come out when I went through to answer the door. What with them coming in by twos and threes, I was backwards and forwards to the door for the best part of half an hour. One time I went past the study there was Colonel Repton talking, and another man.”

“Another man!”

Florrie nodded.

“I hadn’t let him in, and I was ever so puzzled until I thought, ‘Well, it’ll only be Mr. Barton, and he must have gone round the house and knocked on the window for the Colonel to let him in.’ The study door was on the jar the way Miss Maggie would have left it. She always gives the handle a little turn so that it springs open again. So I went up close, and sure enough it was him.”

“Did you say Mr. Barton?”

“Oh, yes—with the rent, sir. And I thought he couldn’t have known about the Work Party, or wild horses wouldn’t have dragged him, the way he is about ladies.”

“Mr. Barton was in the habit of coming up here and paying his rent?”

“Oh, yes, sir—once a month he’d come. And some funny sort of rent too. He’d come round mostly after dark, and sometimes he’d ring the bell, and sometimes he’d just go round to the study window.”

“You said something about the rent being a funny one. What did you mean by that?”

Florrie let off a faint giggle.

“Well, sir, it was what the Colonel was saying when I come up to the door. He said, ‘Come to pay your peppercorn rent, James?’ and something about always being pleased to see him. And then he said, ‘Break through your rule for once and have a drink.’ And Mr. Barton said, ‘If you don’t know by now that it’s a waste of time to ask me, you won’t ever. It’s wicked stuff,’ he said, ‘and you’d be better without it yourself.’ ”

March’s eyebrows rose.

“Oh, they were on those sort of terms, were they?”

Florrie looked demure.

“Yes, sir—it was all very friendly when Mr. Barton came.”

“And was it all very friendly this afternoon?”

“So far as I know, sir. I just heard what I said.”

“You’re sure about it being Mr. Barton?”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because of what the Colonel said, and Mr. Barton’s voice. He’s got ever such a deep voice, and sort of gaspy. My Dad says he was gassed in the war—the first war, that was, not the one my Dad was in.”

“Then as far as you know, Mr. Barton was the last person who saw Colonel Repton before Miss Eccles took him his tea?”

“Oh, no, sir.”

“Well, who else was there?”

Florrie had run on easily enough, but now she wasn’t easy any more. She wouldn’t have let anyone say she was frightened—there wasn’t anything to be frightened about. It was just that the Colonel being dead and the police in the house, it didn’t seem right to say what she had heard, but of course she would have to say it. She opened her mouth and shut it again. March said,

“Come—who was it?”

She was astonished to hear how small her own voice sounded.

“It was only Mrs. Repton.”

“I see. And you were passing the study door?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Perhaps you heard what was being said.”

“Well, sir—”

It all came back to her with a rush and she couldn’t go on—the door flying open like it had, and Mrs. Repton turning on the threshold. It had shaken her at the time, and it shook her now, the way Mrs. Repton had looked and the thing she said. Florrie had been brought up to go to church and Sunday school. She thanked God very fervently that Mrs. Repton hadn’t seen her.

Miss Silver laid a hand upon the arm that had begun to shake.

“There is nothing to be afraid of, Florrie.”

Florrie blinked.

“Oh, miss, you didn’t see her.”

March said, “You saw Mrs. Repton?”

She gulped and nodded.

“Just tell us what happened.”

The words came tumbling out. It did her good to get rid of them.