Poison In The Pen (16 page)

Miss Silver regarded him in a manner which recalled his schoolroom days. It suggested a conviction that he could do better than this if he tried. She said firmly,

“Where there is a history of insanity it is possible that there may be a recurrence. The writing of what are commonly called poison-pen letters points to a mind not truly in balance. In the case of a man who has had so serious a breakdown as you described, and who has for years been living the life of a complete recluse, is there not at least the possibility that, deprived of all normal companionship, he might seek this abnormal means of contact with his neighbours? It is generally attributed to some form of frustration, and few lives can have been more painfully frustrated than that of this unfortunate man.”

March’s mind went back with discomfort to the date which had presented itself during his interview with James Barton. He said in a lowered voice,

“When I asked him why he had gone to see Repton in the afternoon instead of waiting as he usually did till after dark, he said, ‘I’d been thinking of things, and they had got to a point where they didn’t bear thinking about, so it came to me that I’d go up and see him.’ And when he said that, it came up in my mind that it was somewhere about the middle of October that he had come home and found his wife with the other man. And I think it was on the thirteenth—in fact I’m pretty sure about that. I read up the case in the file of the Times when I came here, because I had it passed on to me that the chap was living here under the name of Barton. The date stuck, because I remember thinking it had been an unlucky thirteenth for him.”

There was silence between them for a little before he spoke again.

“I suppose you are right, and that he might have done it. If he had been sitting there brooding over the old tragedy, and then came up here to find himself taxed with the writing of those anonymous letters, I suppose he might have gone off the deep end. Only if it was like that—where did he get the cyanide? It’s not the sort of stuff you have knocking about in your pockets. No, if Barton was going to do anyone in, I should expect something more on the lines of the previous affair—a blow, or an attempt to strangle. There is a noticeable tendency amongst the insane to stick to a pattern of murder.”

Miss Silver inclined her head.

“That is very true, Randal. There is also another point in Mr. Barton’s favour. As you say, if it was he who poisoned Colonel Repton, he must have gone there provided with the means of doing so. Florrie’s story must have reached him, and he must therefore have been aware that Colonel Repton had said he knew who had written the letters. But how did the story reach him? He went nowhere, and he saw no one. He did not go to the George, and his door was locked against everyone. It is difficult to see how he can have heard what was common gossip to everyone else in Tilling Green, and unless he knew that he was suspected he would not have gone to the Manor provided with the means of poisoning Colonel Repton. I do not wish you to think that I suspect Mr. Barton of the crime. I only feel that he cannot as a suspect be lightly dismissed from it.”

“Which brings us to Mettie Eccles. And what have you got to say about her? Everyone says she was devoted to Repton.”

“Yes, that is undoubtedly true. She was in an agony of distress after she had found his body, and she immediately accused Mrs. Repton of having killed him. In neither case was she acting a part. But consider for a moment. Jealousy and jealous resentment are amongst the most frequent causes of violent crime. Miss Eccles had always cared deeply for this distant cousin. She undoubtedly hoped to marry him. And then he comes back suddenly with the least suitable wife in the world. There is a complete disparity of age, of breeding, of tastes. The marriage took place two years ago. About a year later the poison-pen letters began. As we have agreed, this sort of thing almost invariably springs from some painful frustration. But in this case Miss Eccles continued to be the centre of all the village activities. She played the organ, she visited the sick, she was active in the Village Institute. She would not seem to have had much time for the morbid brooding which must have preceded the production of those letters. But as to opportunity, it is she who, in both cases, had enough of it and to spare. She could have gone all the way home with Connie Brooke and drugged her cocoa which was waiting for her on the stove. As I told you, I have just a faint impression that I heard them saying good-night, but even if I could swear to it, there would have been nothing to prevent Miss Eccles from appearing to change her mind. It would have been quite easy to catch poor Connie up and say that she would like to see her all the way home. It would be a perfectly natural gesture from an older woman to a girl who had been looking desperately tired and ill. In the case of Roger Repton, we would have to suppose that she had heard Florrie’s story and believed that she might be accused. Consider for a moment what a disaster that accusation would have been. If it had been brought and proved, or if it had only been believed, she would have been utterly and irretrievably ruined. There would have been nothing left for her at all. Is it impossible to believe that she would provide herself with a means of escape? The cyanide could in the last resort have been intended for herself. But she is of a bold and managing temperament. She has the courage to seek an interview with Colonel Repton. The Work Party offers her an opportunity. She knows that he is in the study. She says Florrie told her he was there, which means that she had asked where he was. She goes in, ostensibly to take him his tea. She stops beside Miss Repton and myself to announce that she is doing so. Now suppose that Colonel Repton took advantage of their being alone together to accuse her of having written the letters. He could have done so, and he could have been prepared to go to extremities by making the matter public. She had known him all her life, and she would know whether this was likely to be his course of action, in which case she might have been desperate enough to silence him. She could, no doubt, have found an opportunity of adding the cyanide to the contents of the decanter.”

He was regarding her with a kind of quizzical respect.

“Do tell me how you would distract the attention of a man whom you were going to poison.”

Miss Silver turned her knitting and measured the sleeve against her hand.

“I think I should say I saw a strange dog in the garden. The cyanide would, of course, be dissolved and contained in some small bottle which would go easily into a handbag or a pocket.”

“I see you have it all worked out. How fortunate for society that you do not devote your abilities to crime!”

The gravity of her look reproved him. He hastened to say,

“I suppose it could have happened like that. How long was Mettie Eccles away from the tearoom?”

“It was quite a long time.”

“You noticed her return?”

“Yes.”

“Was there any change in her appearance?”

“Yes, Randal, there was. She was, she had been, agitated. There were signs of tears. Her face was freshly powdered. It is, of course, quite possible that Colonel Repton had been informing her that he intended to divorce his wife. He had already told his sister and Mr. Barton of his intention. If Miss Eccles was not the person he had in mind as the author of the anonymous letters, he might very easily have taken the opportunity of confiding in so old a friend.”

He shook his head.

“You are building houses with a pack of cards. Very ingenious houses, I’ll give you that, but you no sooner set one up than you proceed to knock it down again. As a plain man, I don’t mind telling you I’d give all your ingenious suppositions for a ha’p’orth of real evidence. And it is only in the case of Scilla Repton that there is really any evidence at all. Plainly, she had a motive. Even if she knew that Repton had altered his will—and she may not have known that he had already done so—his death would save her settlement, her reputation, and any chance she might have of marrying Gilbert Earle. She had knowledge of the presence of cyanide in the gardener’s shed, and she had easy access to it. She had an angry interview with him within an hour of his death, and could have introduced the cyanide into the decanter either then or at some previous time. The interview closed with the damning words overheard by Florrie as Mrs. Repton left the study—‘You’d be a lot more good to me dead than alive.’ This constitutes a strong case.”

“Undoubtedly. But it does not link up with the anonymous letters, or with the death of Connie Brooke.”

He let that go.

“To return for a moment to Mettie Eccles. Your last remark about her was to the effect that if she were not the author of the letters and Repton had therefore no accusation to bring against her, the agitation which you noticed might have been due to his having told her that he intended to divorce his wife. Don’t you think this possibility derives a good deal of support from the fact that she immediately and directly accused Scilla Repton of having killed him? Such an accusation might very well have sprung from a belief that, driven by her infidelity, Colonel Repton had taken his own life. It certainly seems to me to be the most natural explanation.”

“What does Miss Eccles herself say about her interview with Colonel Repton?”

“Nothing that amounts to anything. She just says she took him in his tea, and that he was sitting at his table and appeared to be as usual. She says that she didn’t stay, and that she went up to Miss Maggie’s room to tidy herself before going back to the others. I can press her, of course, as to whether Repton said anything about his wife. But look here— do you seriously suspect her?”

Miss Silver was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Suspicions are not evidence, as you have pointed out. But I believe that somewhere there is the evidence which would convict the person who is responsible for at least a double murder. It occurs to me that this evidence may lie farther back in the case than has been supposed. I feel quite sure that the question of the anonymous letters is fundamental. I would like, therefore, to go back to the letters received by Doris Pell, the girl who was found drowned in the Manor Lake. She lived with an aunt, who was formerly maid to Mrs. Grey, and they did dressmaking. I suppose the aunt was interviewed by the police?”

“Oh, yes, Crisp saw her. There had been more than one letter, but she was only able to produce the last one. It was the usual disgusting type of thing, full of what seem to have been completely unfounded suggestions of immorality.”

“And what did Miss Pell have to say to Inspector Crisp?”

“Oh, nothing at all. The poor woman just went on crying and saying what a good girl Doris was, and how no one had ever had a word to say against her or against anyone in their family. They were Chapel people and very religious, and Doris just couldn’t bear the shame of it.”

Miss Silver was casting off. As the last stitch fell from the needles, she looked across them at the Chief Constable and said,

“Would you have any objection to my going to see Miss Pell, Randal?”

Miss Pell lived three houses beyond the post office. Now that she was alone there, the house was too big for her and she was thinking of taking a lodger. Only of course she would have to be very particular about the sort of person she would take. A man was not to be thought of, and a female lodger must neither be so young as to have the slightest inclination towards flightiness, nor so aged as to be a possible liability in the way of attendance or nursing, a thing which Miss Pell was careful to explain you undertook for your own family— and she would be the last to shirk her duty to a relative— but she couldn’t, no she really couldn’t consider it in the case of a stranger. Doris’s room was therefore still unoccupied.

The house was one of a row of cottages all joined together, so Miss Pell had no need to be nervous. If she were to knock upon the wall on the right as you looked to the front, old Mrs. Rennick would knock back and call out to know what she wanted. If she knocked on the left-hand wall, young Mrs. Masters would do the same. There were, of course, drawbacks to this state of things, because Mrs. Rennick disagreed a good deal with her daughter-in-law. They carried on long arguments from one room to another. And though the Masters baby was very good on the whole, it did sometimes cry.

But then, as Miss Pell had often said, when you sit and sew all day it’s nice to hear what’s going on next door.

Miss Silver paid the visit, to which Randal March had raised no objection, at about half past three. Miss Pell admitted her to a narrow passage with a stair going up on one side and a half open door on the other. Everything was very clean, but the house had the peculiar smell inseparable from the profession of dressmaking. The room into which she was ushered had a goodsized bay window. It seemed improbable that it was ever opened.

Seen in the light, Miss Pell appeared to be about fifty years of age. She had sparse greyish hair brushed back from the forehead and pinned into a tight plait at the back. Her features were thin and sharp, her complexion sallow, and her eyelids reddened. She began to speak at once.

“If it’s about some more work for Miss Renie, I’m afraid I couldn’t undertake it—not at present. You are the lady who is staying with her, aren’t you—Miss Silver?”

Miss Silver said, “Yes,” adding with a friendly smile, “And you are too busy to take any more work?”

“I couldn’t manage it—not for a long time,” said Miss Pell. She spoke in a curious faltering way, running two words together, pausing as if she was short of breath, and then going on with a rush. She went on now. “I haven’t really caught up, not since my poor niece—staying with Miss Renie, you will have heard about her, I daresay. And apart from missing her as I do, I was left with all the work the two of us had in hand, and I don’t seem to be able to get it straightened out.”

Miss Silver knew trouble when she saw it, and she saw it now. The reddened eyelids spoke of lack of sleep. She said in her kindest voice,

“I know that everyone has felt the deepest sympathy with you in your loss.”

Miss Pell’s lips trembled.

“Everyone has been very kind,” she said. “But it doesn’t bring her back. If it hadn’t been for those letters—”

She didn’t know what made her speak of the letters. She had been asked about them at the inquest, but ever since she had tried to keep them out of her mind. Wicked, that’s what they were, and not fit language for a Christian woman to call to mind. And Doris always such a good girl. She felt her way to a chair and sat down because her legs were shaking. Her thought found its way into words.

“She was always such a good girl. None of the things in the letters were true. She was a good Christian girl.”

Miss Silver had sat down too.

“I am sure she was, Miss Pell. If the person who wrote those letters could be found, it might save some other poor girl the same experience.”

Miss Pell stared at her.

“Anyone that was wicked enough to write those letters would be wicked enough to know how to hide themselves.”

“Do you think that your niece had any idea who had written them?”

Miss Pell’s hands, which were lying in her lap, jerked and closed down, the right hand over the left.

“There wasn’t anything to say who wrote them.”

“If she had had any idea, in whom would she have been most likely to confide?”

“She hadn’t any secrets from me.”

“Sometimes a girl will talk to another girl. Had your niece any special friend? Was she, for instance, friendly with Connie Brooke?”

Miss Pell looked down at her own clasped hands.

“They had known each other from children,” she said. “Miss Renie will have told you I was maid to Miss Valentine’s mother, Mrs. Grey—and a sweet lady she was if ever there was one. When my brother died and I had to take Doris, Mrs. Grey let me bring her to the Manor. And just about then Mrs. Brooke and her little Connie came to Tilling Green, so there were two little girls very much of an age, and Miss Valentine was the baby.”

“And they went on being friendly?”

“Really fond of each other, that’s what they were. The very last bit of work Doris did was to alter a dress for Miss Connie. And she must have been one of the last people she spoke to too, because that was one of the things she went out for that afternoon, to go along to the school and let Miss Connie have her dress.”

Miss Silver looked at her gravely.

“Miss Pell, you knew, did you not, that Connie Brooke was believed to have told Mr. Martin that she knew who had written those letters?”

“It wasn’t Mr. Martin who said so.”

“No, it was his housekeeper. It was all over the village that Connie Brooke knew about the letters, and that Mr. Martin had told her that it might be her duty to go to the police. Do you not think it would have been her duty?”

“I couldn’t say.”

Miss Silver waited for a moment. Then she said,

“Connie died next day, as suddenly as your niece did. If she had told Mr. Martin what she knew, I believe that she would be alive to-day. It was all over the village on Saturday that Colonel Repton had been heard to say that he knew who had written the letters. On Monday afternoon he was dead too. If he had told the police what he knew, he would not have died. Now, Miss Pell, I think that you know something, and I think it is of the first importance that you should tell what you know.”

A little colour came up into the sallow face. The eyelids came down for a moment over the faded eyes, and then were raised again. In a changed voice Miss Pell said,

“It is the third sign—”

“Yes, Miss Pell?”

“Once by a dream,” said Miss Pell, looking fixedly at her, “and once by the Bible text, and once by your mouth. If there was a third sign, I said that I would know what I had to do.”

If the words were strange, her manner was perfectly composed. Her hands now held each other lightly and without straining. Miss Silver said,

“There is something you know and that you think you ought to tell?”

The answer she received was an indirect one.

“I will tell you about the signs. You won’t understand unless I tell you about them. Because when Doris came home that day I promised her that I wouldn’t speak of what she told me, and it isn’t right to break a promise to the dead— not unless there is a sign, and I’ve had three. She said to me, ‘You’ll never tell, Aunt Emily, now will you?’ And I said, ‘Of course I won’t.’ Nor I wouldn’t ever, if it hadn’t been for the signs.”

“What were they, Miss Pell?”

“The first was a dream that I had in the night. Last night it was, and as clear as if I was waking. I was here in this room and sewing on something black, and I was crying over the work, and I remember thinking that it would be spoiled, because nothing spots quicker than black. And then the door opened and Doris and Connie came in together, holding hands like they would when they were little girls. They had a big bunch of flowers between them, holding it—lilies, and roses, and all sorts. And there was a light all round them, so that they shone. Doris was on the right and Connie on the left. In my dream they came right up to me, and Doris said not to cry any more, because there was no need, and not to trouble about the promise I’d made, because it didn’t matter. And I woke up in my bed upstairs with the alarm clock going.”

Miss Silver said very kindly indeed,

“It was a comforting dream.”

Miss Pell’s eyes were full of tears.

“It ought to have been, but it wasn’t. I’d heard about Colonel Repton, and I kept troubling in my mind about whether the dream meant that I was to break my promise and go to the police, and whether it was a sign, or whether it had just come up out of my troubling about what I had said to the police. I hadn’t told any lies—I wouldn’t do that—but when they asked me if I had told them all I knew, I just put my handkerchief up to my face and cried, and they thought that I had.”

“I see.”

“So I thought what I could do to make sure about the sign. And what I did, I took my Bible and I shut my eyes and opened it just where it fared to open and put my finger on a verse. And when I opened my eyes it was the sixteenth verse of the eighth chapter of Zechariah, and it said—‘These are the things that ye shall do; Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbour; execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates.’ So I thought, ‘If that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is.’ And then it come over me that I’d never broke a promise in my life, and that I’d got to be sure. And I thought, ‘If the Lord wants me to speak, he can send me a third sign just as well as the other two, and if there is a third sign, I shall know that it’s from the Lord and I shall know what I’ve got to do.’ And then you come knocking at the door, a stranger, and the very words of the sign in your mouth, telling me that there was something I knew, and that I should tell it.”

Miss Silver repeated the words.

“Yes, I think you should tell it.”

Miss Pell brought out an old-fashioned linen handkerchief neatly folded and touched her eyes with it.

“It was that last day before Doris was drowned. She went out in the afternoon, and she’d got a mauve silk blouse she was taking to Miss Maggie at the Manor, and a dress she’d made for Miss Wayne, a blue wool that she had, coming out of mourning for her sister, and she said it was a little tight under the arms though I couldn’t see it myself, so Doris had been letting it out. Quite a round she had, what with leaving the blouse, and the dress, and looking in to settle the pattern of a couple of nightdresses for Miss Eccles and finishing up with Miss Connie. She left the dress she had been altering for her to the end because of the children not coming out of school until four. Well, she went there, and she was properly upset, the same as she was when she came back home. And at first she wouldn’t tell me anything at all, only that there was something not quite right about the neck of Miss Maggie’s blouse and she’d promised to alter it quick and run up with it in the evening. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you’re not letting yourself get upset about that, are you?’ And she said, ‘No, Aunt Emily, it isn’t the blouse,’ and she burst out crying. So then I went on at her to tell me what it was, and she said if she did, would I promise faithfully never to breathe it to a living soul—and I promised. So then she told me.”

“What did she tell you?”

“She said it had come to her who had written those dreadful letters, and she said it was this way. There were the four houses she’d been in that day—up at the Manor with Miss Maggie’s blouse, and at Willow Cottage with Miss Wayne’s blue wool, and into Holly Cottage about Miss Mettie’s nightgown. And last of all in at the Croft with Miss Connie. That’s the only four houses she was in. And in one of them—and she didn’t tell me which—she picked up a little bit of paper that was on the floor. You know how it is, if you see something lying about like that, it just comes natural to stoop down and pick it up. Well, that’s what Doris did, and when she’d got it in her hand she could see it was a torn-off piece of one of the letters she’d had. A bottom left-hand piece it was, with the Til of Tilling on it. Torn right in half the word was on the letter when she got it, where it said everyone in Tilling Green knew that Doris went with men on the sly. Well, there was this piece and she’d picked it up, and she came over faint and had to sit down.”

Miss Silver said quickly, “Which house was it?”

Miss Pell took a long sighing breath.

“She never told me. I told her she would have to, and she said she didn’t think she ought, and perhaps it would be better to tell the person she knew and make them promise solemn that they’d never do it again. I asked her if she’d told Connie, and she said, ‘No more than I’ve told you, and she’s promised the same as you have.’ ”

Miss Silver said slowly, “But Connie said that she knew who it was.”

“There may have been something that she thought about afterwards. She came here to me on the Monday—that would be a couple of days before she died—and she said had Doris told me about the bit of paper? And I said whatever Doris told me, I’d promised I wouldn’t say a word. So she said, ‘Well, you don’t need to, because I know what you know, and a bit more too.’ I asked her what she meant, and she said it was something Doris had said that she remembered. ‘Doris picked up a bit of paper, Miss Pell,’ she said, ‘and she didn’t say where she picked it up, but she said how white it showed up against the carpet, and she said what colour the carpet was.’ Connie said she didn’t think about it at first, but it had come back to her, and now she couldn’t get away from it because she knew the house that had a carpet that colour, and that would be the house where Doris had picked the paper up.”

“She really did say that?”

Miss Pell put up her hand to her head for a moment.

“Oh, yes, she said it just like I’m telling you. I’ve wished she hadn’t ever since, but once a thing’s said it’s said, and you can’t take it back any more than you can forget it when it’s been said to you.”

“And Connie said the paper showed up white against this carpet, but she didn’t tell you what the colour of the carpet was?”

Miss Pell shook her head.

“No, she didn’t, nor what house it was in, nor anything more than what I’ve told you. She sat just there where you are sitting now, and she told me about the bit of paper, and she said, ‘I wish Doris hadn’t told me, for I don’t know what I ought to do. You see, Miss Pell,’ she said, ‘if I tell, it will get round to the police, and even if it doesn’t it’s going to cause the most dreadful talk and the most dreadful trouble, and perhaps a case in court, and me having to go into the witness box and tell about someone that is a neighbour and would never get over it if I did. And what good will it do now Doris is dead? It won’t bring her back again.’ And I said, ‘No it won’t bring Doris back.’ ”