Who Pays the Piper? (24 page)

“What I can't make up my mind about,” said Inspector Lamb, “is whether to wait for the inquest or not. It's tricky giving him the chance to bolt.”

“He won't,” said Frank Abbott. “No chance of getting away, and a dead certainty that he'd be putting the rope round his neck. He might as well confess as bolt—comes to the same thing with a jury.”

Lamb wagged his head.

“That's all very well for a theory, People don't act on theory when they've done a murder. It's astonishing how often a criminal does the very last thing he ought to do—the very thing that's going to give him away. He's like a cat up a tree with a dog barking at the foot of it. If the cat stayed put it'd be all right. But it doesn't—it gets rattled and jumps. I've seen it dozens of times—jumps right down in front of the dog and gets caught. And that's your criminal to a T—he can't let well alone. He's committed a crime, and he'll commit another to cover the first one up, or he'll lose his nerve and bolt. All things considered, I think we'd better have Carrick under lock and key—I'd be easier in my mind.”

“I'm not easy in mine.”

Lamb looked at him, his large face rosy and expressionless.

“You've got a bee in your bonnet, Frank. Better get rid of it. What's the matter with arresting Carrick?”

Frank Abbott was silent. Lamb drummed with his hand on his knee.

“I asked you a question, my lad.”

He got a cold, respectful stare.

“I beg your pardon, sir.”

“I said, ‘What's the matter with arresting Carrick?'”

“If I knew the answer to that, we'd be getting somewhere.”

“Do you call that an answer?”

“Hardly. But I can't give you a better——” He paused, and said with a complete change of manner, “I thought Carrick was speaking the truth—that's all.”

It was at this moment that Lily Green opened the door and stood hesitating upon the threshold. She was still in her outdoor things, and her face, between the fur collar of a brown winter coat and the small brown felt hat, looked pale and frightened. Actually, she was not so frightened as she looked. Thirty-six hours of fairly close contact had robbed the London police of their terror, and William or no William, if there was any way of getting her photo in the papers, she meant to do it. Something to talk about for the rest of her life —that's what it would be.

She came in a step, and Frank Abbott saw her and said,

“What is it? Do you want anything?”

Lily poured it all out.

“Ever so nice they were to me, Mum,” she told Mrs. Green later on that evening. “I said right away that you'd made me come. And they wanted to know about you, so I said how you obliged Mrs. O'Hara, and you couldn't bear to see Miss Susan the way she was. And of course I said when it was put that way I could see it wasn't hardly right for me to hold my tongue and let Mr. Bill be got into trouble when I'd seen that Miss de Lisle with my own eyes not half a minute after the shot went off. Well, they couldn't have been nicer—made me sit down, and Mr. Abbott, he wrote it all out. He writes beautiful, and very near as quick as if it was shorthand, and every word as plain as print. I had to read it over and sign my name. And they pulled the curtain back and opened the window by Miss Cathy's table same as it was Monday night, and the Inspector he said was I sure I could see enough to recognize anyone running along the side of the house by the light coming from the window. So I spoke right up and said, ‘Well, I didn't recognize her, because I'd never seen her before, but I saw her quite plain, and I could recognize her now'. Mr. Abbott, he took up a newspaper he'd got there with a lot of headlines, and he held it up and kept on walking away from me. And they wanted to know how far off I could see the headlines, and I could see them right away across the room. So then they took me outside, and I was to run along past the window like I'd seen Miss de Lisle whilst they went on to the front drive where William and me were. Well, then I ran past, and they could see my face all right, like I told them I could see hers. And they praised me ever so, only of course they said I did ought to have mentioned it before, so I told them about William being that jealous I didn't like to go against him but you'd made me own up. And they said quite right, and the Inspector said not to take any notice of William, because a girl ought to listen to her mother when she'd got a good one like he could see I had. And he said I've to go to the inquest—half past ten Friday morning at the Magpie. And they both said it'd all be in the papers, and photographs too.”

Mrs. Green gazed admiringly at Lily's pretty, flushed face.

“What about William?” she said.

“I just don't care,” said Lily Green.

In the study the two men looked at one another. Lily, pleased and excited, got to her feet.

“You'll have to swear to all this at the inquest,” said Inspector Lamb.

“Oh, yes, sir.”

Frank Abbott turned from the table and went over to the alcove. The wind blew in through the open window. He passed Cathy's table, pulled the casement to, and drew the wine-coloured curtain across it. The room settled back into its air of rich security.

And then, just as he turned, he caught the faintest of faint sounds. He thought it was the click of a latch. He thought the click came from the door on the far side of the room. It took him a moment to come round the table and cross to it. When he reached the door and opened it there was no one there.

The straight passage ran through to the hall, with the second study door opening upon it to the right. The stair to the bedroom floor ran up a dozen feet away, light, and bare, and empty. There was a door to the left and a door beyond the stair, one shut, the other ajar. He opened first one and then the other—a cold, small room like a waiting-room—the main hall of the house. No one in either place—no one at all.

As he stood looking into the hall, Raby crossed from a room on the other side. He had not met anyone or seen anyone—he had been making up the dining-room fire, he said.

Frank Abbott's light eyes went over him. He said,

“Isn't that Robert's work?”

With a vaguely nervous gesture Raby said, “Yes.” And then, rather haltingly, “Robert—Robert has just stepped out to the post.”

CHAPTER XXXV

Cora de Lisle was packing. She had been packing, or trying to pack, for the best part of an hour, ever since the front gate had creaked and clanged to behind Mrs. Clancy. Not that there was such a dreadful hurry. Mrs. Clancy had gone to the pictures, and it would be three hours good before she was back again. As long as Cora was gone by then, everything would be all right. But she ought to have gone yesterday. She ought to have gone right away on the Tuesday morning. She'd have had to change the fifty-pound note anyhow. But that was all right. She'd got Lucas Dale's signature to show, and they'd made no trouble about it. Of course they hadn't heard about Lucas being dead then, but her going there and changing the note and showing what Lucas had written—well, that was all to the good, because it looked as if she didn't know anything either. And whatever it looked like, she had to have the money. But when she'd got it—that's where she'd made her mistake. She ought to have been out of Ledlington and off back to London just as quick as the train could take her. Nowhere in the world so easy as London if you wanted to be out of the way for a bit, and with fifty pounds she could have stayed quiet till everything had blown over.

Her hands shook as she tried to fold the orange negligée. She ought to have gone right away, but the feel of the money, that's what had done her down—the feel of it, and the thought of what it would buy. Not the brandy, but what the brandy would do for her. She just hadn't been able to resist it, though she'd known at the time that she ought to be getting away.

The orange negligée dropped from her shaking hands. She picked it up, crammed it in anyhow, and threw the tinsel shoes in after it. She ought to have gone yesterday before the detective came. She would have gone too if she'd been herself, but with that awful cold shaking in her, how was she going to pack, and get to the train, and start looking for somewhere to hide at the other end? No, not
hide
—somewhere where she could be quiet and make the fifty pounds last a good long time. Things blow over, and out of sight is out of mind. She wondered if old Mrs. Isaacs would take her in.…

Stupid to go on shaking like this—not like her either, but her nerves weren't what they used to be. Some would say it was the brandy—but you'd got to have something, hadn't you? Where she'd made her mistake was going back. She'd got away with fifty pounds, and she ought to have let it go at that. It was when she was having that last drink in the Crown and Magpie that it had come over her what a fool she was to let Lucas off with fifty pounds when she might just as well have had a hundred out of him, or a hundred and fifty. It wasn't as if she hadn't seen the other notes. He had had the four of them out, and she had been fool enough to let herself be fobbed off with one. By the time she had finished the brandy she had made up her mind to go back. It would be worth more than a hundred pounds to Lucas if he could stop her mouth. There were things she could tell Miss Susan Lenox that he wouldn't want her to hear.

Well then, she had gone back——

She stood there fumbling with the half-packed clothes. It wouldn't be so bad if she didn't keep on hearing the shot. And Lucas lying there—just his hand and his arm—that was all you could see from the window. But it was Lucas all right. When you've been married to a man you don't forget even if you've come to hate him. Lucas Dale's hand—with the ring on it which she'd seen when he took out the notes—there hadn't been any money for rings in the old days. Lucas Dale's hand and arm, and Lucas lying dead—and as like as not they'd try and make out she'd done it. And she'd lost her head, run on to the terrace, and then back again the way she'd come, all along by the side of the house and almost into someone there at the corner. That's what frightened her. There'd been someone there, and it might have been the one that shot Lucas, or it mightn't. She couldn't tell whether it was man or woman—and hadn't wanted to then. Hadn't wanted anything except to get away.

She turned from the shabby, half-filled suit-case, poured out a stiff tot of brandy, and gulped it down. There wasn't much left. She could put the rest into the empty eau-de-Cologne bottle and have it in her handbag so that she could have a nip in the train. She wouldn't be getting any more until she was safe in Mrs. Isaac's back room. Then she could have all she wanted—enough to stop the fear and the horrible cold shaking. She tilted the two bottles together, heard them rattle with the shaking of her hands, and saw half the brandy spill and waste itself, running down in a yellow trickle over the edge of the chest of drawers and dripping on to the littered floor. Her lipstick had dropped. She couldn't be bothered to pick it up. Very little of the brandy went where it had been meant to go, but she screwed down what there was and slipped the eau-de-Cologne bottle inside a battered handbag. For the moment she felt better. The spirits she had swallowed gave her warmth and confidence, but she had been nipping all day, and with each return to the brandy bottle she became less able to co-ordinate her thoughts or to fix them upon what she had to do. Yet at the back of everything there was a fear which drove her.

The suit-case filled slowly. If she put in a shoe she would forget its fellow, spend muddled time looking for it, and come upon it by chance already stuffed in under a huddle of torn underclothes. Once she found that she had packed the skirt which she must wear to travel in. Tugging to get it out, she spilled half the contents of the case. She put the skirt on without noticing that she was wearing one already.

It was while she was struggling to fasten the belt that she heard a motor-bicycle come chugging up the street. She heard it stop, and after that the squeak and clang of the gate. Oh, well, if it was anyone for Mrs. Clancy, she was out and there was an end of it. Curiously enough, she did not think that it might be anyone for herself. The brandy swam in her head, and it never crossed her fuddled mind that it might be the police.

The man who had ridden the motor-bicycle knocked on the front door. He wore a leather cap and goggles, and a loose waterproof coat. He looked through the goggles and observed that the parlour was in darkness—the room above it too. Well, people who lived in Gladstone Villas would be more apt to be found at the back of the house.

He went round to the back and found all dark below, but a lighted window overhead. He tried the door and found it locked. He kicked his foot against the mat and, feeling underneath it, came upon a key. He used it, wiped it, and put it back again. There was a glove on his hand as he turned the handle and went in with the faint beam of an electric torch to show him the way.

When he had come soft-foot up the stair to where a thread of light showed beneath a closed door he switched off the torch and put it in his pocket. Then he opened the door and went in.

Miss de Lisle was on her knees in the corner beyond the fireplace. The recess had been fitted with pegs and screened by a dingy curtain. She was stretching forward to reach a forgotten pair of shoes, when she heard footsteps behind her. It was the last thing she heard. There was no time to turn. Her drugged mind moved slowly. There was no time to be afraid. She did not even cry out.

The man laid the poker back upon the hearth and went quickly and noiselessly down the stair and out of the house Nobody saw him come or go. The motor-bicycle chugged and receded. There was no sound in the house.

CHAPTER XXXVI

The car turned in to Gladstone Villas and stopped at No. 17. Inspector Lamb got out. Frank Abbott, who had been driving, followed him. The gate creaked and the door-knocker sounded, the silence of the house was jarred by the shrill tinkle of an electric bell.