The Silk Stocking Murders (18 page)

Roger gaped at her. It was just by this same method that he had taken Moresby by surprise, but now that it had been used against himself he was equally taken aback. “What—whatever makes you think that, Miss Manners?” he said; trying to gain time.

“By putting two and two together, of course,” Anne replied tartly. “Besides, there’s a certain amount of gossip, you know, on those lines.”

“Is there?” Roger frowned. “Who told you so?” he asked, brought back to normal by this information.

“That girl, Moira Carruthers, who lived with Janet.”

“Ah! You’ve called there?”

“I’m living there,” Anne returned.

“You are? Good gracious! Why?”

Anne did not reply at once. Her knuckles continued their tattoo for a few moments, while she seemed to be making up her mind on what course to pursue. She drew a little quick breath.

“Look here, Mr. Sheringham,” she said quietly, “you’re not playing fair with me. If anybody has a right to know the truth about my sister’s death, I have; and I intend to discover it. I’ve come up to London and left things at home to Mary, although she’s barely eighteen, for that very purpose. Please don’t fence with me. I’m convinced that Janet was murdered. Was she?”

“Yes,” Roger replied simply. “I’m afraid she must have been.”

The girl’s small oval face whitened for an instant. “Thank you,” she said, biting her lip.

Roger looked away while she recovered herself.

“I was sure of it,” she said after a short pause, “but it’s good of you to be frank with me. Do they know who—who killed her?”

“No, not yet. The police have it in hand, of course. I’ve been helping them as far as I could.”

“Then all those other girls were murdered, too?”

“I’m afraid so. Did you suspect all this before you left home, Miss Manners?”

“Oh, no. But I knew you were right when you said there must be something behind it all, and as I didn’t hear from you I came up to see if I could find out what it was. Then Moira told me what they were saying at the theatre, and I felt I must ask you if it was true.”

“They’re saying that at the theatre, are they?” Roger asked quickly.

“I think they’re saying it everywhere, aren’t they?” Anne replied, with a dreary little smile. “Everywhere except in the newspapers, and some of those have hinted. Of course nobody at the theatre has said anything to me about it, but Moira told me because she thought I ought to know. She was very fond of Janet, in her own queer way, and she’s almost as anxious as I am that the horrible business should be cleared up and the— the murderer (if Janet was murdered) caught.”

“Yes,” Roger murmured, “she’s a good little soul—in her own queer way, as you say. She did her best to help me at the beginning, but nothing seemed to emerge from that line of inquiry.”

“Yes, she told me. And I think the others, or the management at any rate, have a pretty shrewd idea of what I’m after, because they let me join the chorus at once as soon as they heard I was Janet’s sister. Luckily a girl wanted to leave to get married, so there was a vacancy; but she would have stayed on ordinarily till the end of the run. She guessed too, I’m sure.”

“But you’re not in the chorus of
Thumbs Up!
are you?” asked Roger in astonishment and not a little dismay. Of all the girls in this world Anne Manners looked the least fitted to be a show-girl in a not very high-class revue.

Anne nodded. “I’m stepping into Janet’s shoes both on and off the stage, and there I stay till the devil who killed her is caught.”

“But—but why?”

“Because there’s always the possibility that he might try to attack me too, you see; and then I should know who he was. That’s my great hope. I want to catch him
myself.
Oh, Mr. Sheringham, if I only could!” Her normally rather elfin face wore the rapt fierceness of a tigress contemplating the tearing to bits of the hunter who had shot one of her cubs.

Roger respected her lust for vengeance. He had no use for the watery theory that man should not ensure his own revenge. He wanted vengeance on this brute himself, quite impersonally, on behalf of society in general, and he applauded the same sentiment in those who, like Anne and Pleydell, had a closer claim upon it. And both those two, in their own individual ways, seemed determined to achieve it. Well, if he could help them towards it, so much the better.

He spoke on impulse. “Shall I tell you exactly how the case stands at present, so far as I know?”

“If you will, please,” said Anne, quietly, as if it was her right to know—as indeed, Roger thought, it was; hers and Pleydell’s and anybody else’s who was wearing mourning on account of it at the present moment. He had no qualms in telling her. By their own action the police had as good as absolved him from loyalty to them; he was going to work this case as a free-lance now, enlisting such recruits to help him as he, and he alone, considered suitable. He had already enlisted Pleydell; now he would enlist Anne Manners.

He gave her a brief account of the state of affairs to date and of the hopes, official and otherwise, for the future. She only interrupted once, when he came to mention the original three suspects whose names had been on both her own and Pleydell’s lists. “I know Mr. Dunning, and Mr. Newsome very slightly,” she said. “It couldn’t be either of them. And I’ve met Mr. Beverley once or twice too; he’s certainly not the man. No, it’s none of those three.”

“Exactly what I said; we were on the wrong lines if the possibilities had been narrowed down to those three; they could none of them be the fellow, I’m convinced,” Roger agreed, and went on with his outline.

Anne sat for a few moments considering, when he had finished, her chin on her hands. Apparently there had been little in Roger’s narrative that was unexpected to her, but she wished to assimilate the facts she had heard before relating them to her own course of action.

“My idea, when I joined Moira and secured Janet’s place at the theatre,” she said slowly at last, “was to set myself up as a kind of decoy. I wanted to make myself as like as possible to the sort of girl who seems to attract him. I shall go on with that idea.”

“But look here, Miss Manners,” Roger was beginning, “you might be running into real danger. I don’t see——”

“Except that now,” Anne continued, as if he had not spoken at all, “I shall place myself at your disposal as well. Under your orders, if you like. I quite agree that Scotland Yard, tied as they are, are quite likely to fail in this case; but I think that a combination of you, Mr. Pleydell and myself, not tied in any way, might have a chance of success. And any rate, it’s worth trying.”

“But,” began Roger again.

“You’ll be in charge, of course, as you’ve done this sort of thing before; Mr. Pleydell will certainly agree to that. And I shall be on hand when required. There may be something in this idea about an actor, you see, and if you two are able to narrow your suspicions down to a few people, then you’ll be able to make use of me for the final weeding-out.”

“But Miss Manners—hang it all—Anne!—I can’t allow——”

“What I mean is that we must advertise the information, in an unobtrusive way, to all the people we suspect, that at certain times of the day (the late mornings and the afternoons, say) I shall be alone in our flat. Moira will go out ostentatiously every day. Then I shall simply sit in my parlour and wait for the fly. He won’t be able to take me by surprise, you see, which must be his usual method, so it’s no good talking to me about danger; there won’t be any. And even if there, were, what on earth does that matter? In any case, there won’t.”

“But the responsibility——”

“You’ll be somewhere within call, you see. We can arrange a code of signals, or something like that. Well, now, Mr. Sheringham, can you suggest a better plan than that? And do you agree to make use of me? Because if you don’t, I shall simply do it on my own, and that will be much more dangerous.”

“You put me in a very difficult position, Anne,” said Roger, with some feeling.

“I mean to,” replied Anne serenely. “Well, is it a bargain, and do I join your combination?”

“You jolly well do!” Roger cried, casting all scruples to the winds. “Between the three of us we’ll take a leaf out of the French notebooks and teach Scotland Yard a thing or two they never knew.”

B
EFORE
leaving her, Roger had arranged with Anne to meet again at teatime when he would try to get hold of Pleydell so that the two lieutenants of the combination could be introduced; but fate, in the curious way it so often has on such occasions, forestalled him. Walking down Piccadilly soon after lunch with Pleydell, and having just that minute told him of this new development and ensured his presence at tea, Roger ran into Anne and Miss Carruthers coming straight towards them, and introduced Pleydell to the former then and there. And because Miss Carruthers was present, he could do no less than introduce Pleydell to her too.

“So pleased to meet you,” languished Miss Carruthers, with all the respectful deference due from a chorus-girl to an extremely rich young bachelor. “So you’re Mr. Pleydell. Well, fancy that!”

“And you’re Miss Carruthers,” responded Pleydell gallantly. “I should have recognised you at once.”

“I say, would you really?” simpered Miss Carruthers, looking incredibly young and innocent.

“Hullo, do you two know each other already?” Roger asked.

“Well, not to say
know
, exactly,” murmured Miss Carruthers in ladylike accents. “But I’ve often seen Mr. Pleydell in front when we were rehearsing.”

Pleydell nodded. “I told you I’d got theatrical interests,” he said to Roger. “
Thumbs Up!
is one of them. But, for heaven’s sake, don’t mention it beyond our four selves,” he added, smiling, “or my reputation as a business-man would be exploded for ever. No really good business-man ever touches the theatre, you know.”

“Well, I never knew you were
the
Mr. Pleydell, and that’s a fact,” fluttered Miss Carruthers.

“Nor does the stage-doorkeeper, nor the box-office manager, nor even the producer himself,” Pleydell laughed. “I’m strictly incognito as soon as I step into a theatre, I can tell you. So now you see what a weighty secret you have in your keeping. If the newspapers got hold of the fact that I’d put money into a revue, I should be ruined in twenty-four hours.”

“Well, I never!” said Miss Carruthers, much impressed.

Roger had been confirming the tea-appointment with Anne during this exchange, and the four now split into two again and resumed their respective ways.

“And now,” said Pleydell, when they were safely out of earshot, “you can see why Miss Anne stepped so easily into
Thumbs Up!
But I’m quite serious about keeping my theatrical interests a close secret, so don’t mention it to anybody, even by way of joke, there’s a good fellow.”

“Certainly not,” Roger acquiesced promptly. “Yes, I must admit I’d wondered how that came about. It sounded curious when she told me. And you’d gathered that she’d come up with that plan in mind?”

“Oh, dear, no; it never occurred to me. But I remembered your mentioning that the family were a bit hard up, and I thought this girl might have come up to relieve the pressure at home, or even contribute her mite to it; so when I heard that a sister of Unity Ransome’s had been asking for a job, I told them she was to have one. That’s all.”

“Your word goes, so far as
Thumbs Up!
is concerned, then?”

“I’ve got a controlling interest in the rotten thing,” said Pleydell carelessly.

Roger, no less than Miss Carruthers, was impressed. If he himself had possessed a controlling interest in a London revue, even a minor one, he would certainly not have mentioned the fact with such unstudied carelessness. He bought Pleydell a drink in token of his respect. The respectful poor are always ready to buy the drinks of the careless rich.

But money has other uses beyond saving its possessor from having to buy his own drinks. Some of them were in evidence at the tea-table conference that same afternoon.

Seated round a secluded table in the most exclusive, and therefore the most expensive hotel in London, the three discussed in low tones their plan of campaign, “just like real conspirators,” as Anne observed, with one of her unusual smiles. Roger had put forward for Pleydell’s opinion the suggestions Anne had made regarding the part to be played by herself in the partnership together with his own qualms as to the wisdom of it, and after careful consideration Pleydell had pronounced favourably upon the proposal.

“I’m bound to say that I think it most unlikely to lead to any results,” he said, “but if it did they would be so valuable as to justify our risking the waste of time involved. And I don’t think that, if the proper precautions are taken, there is any real danger to Miss Manners.”

“None whatever,” Anne said briefly. “I’m not an idiot.” She did not add that even if the danger were great she would not be in the least deterred, because that savoured of bragging; and bragging and braggarts constituted one of Anne’s particular aversions.

“And of course,” Pleydell added in natural tones, “I shall consider myself responsible for the precautions we do take; financially, I mean. Let us have that understood from the beginning, by the way; all matters of finance are my pigeons. Goodness knows it’s small enough, but I feel that’s going to be my chief use to you.”

Roger nodded, and Anne made no demur. She saw rightly that Pleydell’s wealth was an inestimable asset to the combination, and that through it things became possible which to anyone else in their position, rashly challenging the official police, would have been out of the question. Besides, as she told Roger later, it seemed almost a kindness to let Pleydell spend as much money as he could on the pursuit of his fiancée’s murderer; schooled and apparently unperturbed as he was, she could see something of the forces that were tearing him to bits inside and knew that he was on tenter hooks to do something, no matter what, that would achieve his end; and the spending of money is always a safety-valve, even to the very rich.