Death Comes to Cambers (8 page)

‘They had a fair old set-to last Wednesday,' the girl answered at once. ‘You could have heard them half over the house. Regular going for each other, they were. We all thought Amy would get the sack after that – wages in lieu of notice, and no reference either. But it all blew over – or seemed to.'

‘You don't know what it was all about?' Lawson asked.

‘You couldn't hear nothing to make out plain,' Miss Robins answered, with what was in her case, also, an evidently sincere regret. ‘But they were going for each other, hammer and tongs. I got so scared I went and told Mr. Farman, I thought they would be pulling each other's hair out next. You could have knocked us all down with a feather when everything went on just the same.'

‘Amy didn't explain what the trouble had been about?'

‘No. I did ask her. I said: “What's up, Amy?” Her eyes were that red and swollen you could see how she had been crying. She never said a word – just walked away. Even when cook herself said to her: “Why, Amy, whatever have you been crying about like that?” All my lady said was: “My own affairs,” and not another word. Very uppish she's always been, not what I call friendly and open.'

A few more questions were asked, from which no more was gathered than that Amy Emmers had got the name of being a ‘favourite', that this favouritism had been specially marked since the breach between Lady Cambers and her husband, and that as a result of this favour shown to her by her mistress Amy had very definitely lost any she had previously enjoyed with the other servants.

‘Like having two mistresses in the house,' Miss Robins complained, ‘as Mr. Farman said himself, what with her giving the orders and all.'

Miss Robins was warmly thanked, told that presently she would be asked to sign the statement she had made when it had been written out, and Bobby proceeded to find Amy Emmers, with whom he returned.

‘A bad business this,' he remarked to her, as they came through the hall together. ‘You must be feeling it dreadfully.'

Amy said nothing, and Bobby was aware of an impression that she was a young person with a quite unusual capacity for saying nothing – and that is as rare a gift as any. She was a tall girl, nearly a head taller than the other women of the household, and she was well made, with a quick graceful bearing. Bobby thought her very good-looking too, with her almost perfectly oval face and well-shaped, regular features, though both mouth and chin were a little on the large side, with the teeth also a little large and slightly irregular. But the eyes were magnificent – soft and bright, and veiled behind long drooping lashes that seemed to lend to them a dark mysterious melancholy. A striking young woman, Bobby decided, and one of many possibilities, not likely to occupy for long the humble and subordinate position of a maid, even a personal and favourite maid.

Colonel Lawson, too, and his superintendent, Moulland, were both visibly impressed by the girl's looks and personality, and the chief constable, generally exceedingly conscious of the great gulf that marked him off from his social or official inferiors, began to put his questions to her in a tone that was at first almost deferential. She gave her name and age – this last with a slight haughty lifting of the eyebrows as if she did not see the relevance of the question but would pass it over this once – and explained that she had been brought up by her uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Dene, who kept the village grocery-shop and were the parents of Eddy Dene, who was their assistant in the shop and archaeologist in his spare time. As there was hardly enough business in the shop to keep her occupied, and as she had no taste for the work, she had left it to enter Lady Cambers's service. She had been with Lady Cambers, as her personal maid, for about a year, and it was partly through her that her mistress's interest had been aroused in Eddy, and in certain theories and beliefs of his.

She answered all the questions put to her quite freely and with apparent frankness, and yet there still remained about her a curious air of reticence, as though there were many things on many subjects that she would never tell. One had the impression that her inner life was a secret she guarded well, and Bobby, beginning now to remember something he had heard vaguely in talk by Lady Cambers and paid no attention to at the time, took advantage of an interval in the questioning to tear a page from the notebook he was using, and write on it a few words which he passed to Colonel Lawson. The chief constable read it, crumpled it up, and remarked: ‘Oh, by the way, I believe you are engaged to young Dene, aren't you?'

For the first time Amy hesitated before answering, and for the first time seemed to become aware of the presence of Bobby as an actual personality. Her glance swept over him, disapproved of him, found him impertinent, forgot him, and Bobby decided that for some reason this reference to her engagement was unwelcome. She said, in her quiet way: ‘It has always been the wish of my uncle and aunt.'

‘But not yours, perhaps?' suggested Colonel Lawson.

Amy let the question pass unanswered. She had the air of not having heard it, and Colonel Lawson found himself flushing slightly. It was quite ridiculously as if he had been put in his place – a chief constable by a lady's maid! Possibly the question was not quite relevant to the inquiry, and at any rate she plainly considered it an intrusion into her private affairs she did not intend to encourage. Lawson left the point, and went on to question her about the alleged dispute or quarrel with her mistress.

‘Oh, yes,' she said at once, ‘I remember – Lady Cambers was dreadfully angry. You see, it was most awfully stupid of me, but I had put all her stockings away without mending them. I can't think how it happened. Every time she got a pair out to change, there was a hole in them. She nearly threw them at me, and the more I tried to say how sorry I was, the angrier she got. I just ran straight upstairs and had a good cry.'

It was the longest answer she had given yet, the most fluent, the most apparently candid. Colonel Lawson and Superintendent Moulland looked at each other. Bobby sucked the end of his pencil, and looked at her. She sat quiet and still and unconcerned, her dark mysterious eyes fixed upon the wall opposite as though there she saw and communed with secret things.

Of course, the explanation she offered was a quite reasonable one.

‘Your voices were so loud you were heard in the hall, apparently,' the chief constable remarked.

‘Yes, sir,' Amy agreed. ‘It's surprising how far voices can be heard – if you're listening.'

There was the faintest, least, tiniest emphasis on that last word, and again Lawson flushed a little. Was the wretched girl presuming once more? Was she actually wishing to remind him that eavesdropping is – well, eavesdropping?'

‘I'm told it sounded as if you were shouting at each other,' he said.

Miss Emmers removed the dark mystery of her eyes from the wall-paper and fastened it upon the chief constable.

‘Lady Cambers never shouted,' she assured him, gently rebuking such an idea. ‘And I'm sure I never shouted at her – her ladyship would never have permitted it.'

‘She was very angry, though?' Lawson asked.

‘Oh, yes,' Amy admitted, as frankly as before. ‘So annoying to find holes in all your stockings. Most uncomfortable if there's a hole and one of your toes comes right through. They were all such big holes, too,' she added pensively.

The chief constable gave it up, and began to ask if she had heard anything in the night. She had not. She had gone to bed at the usual time. One of the other maids had knocked at her door to borrow some binding. A little after eleven. She had given it her. After getting into bed she had fallen asleep at once, and only wakened when the tweeny brought her her early cup of tea – signal for her to get up and prepare, in her turn, one for Lady Cambers. It had been a great shock to find Lady Cambers was not in her room. She could not understand it, or account for it at all. She remembered perfectly the tray, glass, and plate Farman had mentioned. She had not thought much about it. Why should she? There was no reason why Lady Cambers should not have a little refreshment last thing at night if she wished to. No, it was not usual, perhaps, but it had not struck her as in any way remarkable. It was quite true that Lady Cambers very seldom took wine or spirits, except for a glass of sherry or claret at dinner. If Mr. Farman said there had been brandy in the glass, no doubt he was right, but she had not noticed it herself. She believed Mr. Miller, the chauffeur, had made the same remark, but Mr. Farman was wrong in saying Lady Cambers would have had to go to his pantry to get any brandy. There was a flask of brandy in her bedroom, in one of the drawers. Lady Cambers always took brandy with her when going on a sea voyage. At this the flask was duly sent for and produced, and proved to be about a quarter full, but Amy was quite unable to say whether any of the contents had been taken recently. It was always kept in the drawer where it had been found, but she had never troubled to notice whether it was full or empty. Lady Cambers had great faith in brandy as a medicine. No, she had made no complaint of feeling unwell recently, and certainly there was no reason that Amy knew of why she should have taken any last night. Of course, all this upset about Sir Albert had disturbed Lady Cambers terribly. She had never been really well since.

‘I'm told you washed up the plate and glass,' the chief constable asked next. ‘Why did you do that?'

‘So as to put them away, sir,' answered Amy, mildly surprised at the question.

‘Was it your work?' demanded Lawson.

Amy considered the point.

‘I suppose not,' she conceded. ‘But I do try not to be too silly about that. Some of the others haven't quite liked it because Lady Cambers got to leave a lot to me, especially since Sir Albert went away. So I've made rather a point of doing any little odd job no one else seemed to be looking after.'

‘Wasn't this a little odd job that could quite well have waited?'

‘Oh, yes, sir,' agreed Amy cheerfully, ‘ever so easily, but with such dreadful things happening, and everyone so excited, you can't tell what a comfort it seemed to have just an ordinary everyday little thing to do. If you understand what I mean, sir, it made everything seem – well, less like a horrible nightmare.'

The dark mystery of her eyes seemed now to melt into a limpid frankness. Simple, natural, candid, they sought out Lawson as in mutual appeal, they confided in Moulland, they swept to Bobby – and swept away again, somewhat hurriedly, for he, indeed, was staring at her with a fixity, an intentness, a questioning deep intentness that seemed to demand of her whether what she had said was the truth and all the truth.

He was thinking to himself that women are good liars – especially good women. The better the woman, the better the liar.

Those stockings with the holes in the toes, for instance. Was not that explanation just a little too simple, a little too natural? And her explanation of her action in washing up the plate and glass? Almost too unchallengeable, too reasonable.

Colonel Lawson said abruptly: ‘What can you tell us about Lady Cambers's jewellery? Where did she keep it, and where did she keep her keys?'

To these questions Amy's answer was prompt: ‘The jewellery is in the safe in the corner there. Lady Cambers kept her keys in her bag. She was always very careful with them.'

Colonel Lawson and Moulland exchanged whispered comments. Bobby ventured to make a suggestion, and Lawson, adopting it, turned back to Amy and continued: ‘No doubt sometimes the keys would be put in a drawer, either here or upstairs – at night, for instance?'

‘Oh, no,' Amy answered promptly. ‘At night she always had her bag on the table near the bed, and I've never known her put the keys anywhere but in her bag.'

Lawson consulted the other two again. Amy seemed to become once more lost in her own distant thoughts. Lawson said sharply: ‘You are sure about that?'

Amy seemed to be considering, not whether she was sure, but what possible reason these people could have for asking her if she were sure of a statement when once she had made it. Finally, as if by way of a concession, she said: ‘Oh, yes. If you like to ask the others, they will all tell you the same.'

‘What about the combination number?' Lawson asked. ‘Of the lock of the safe, I mean? The butler tells us it was forgotten once and the makers had to be sent for.'

‘That was a long time ago,' Amy answered slowly. ‘I forget how long exactly. Afterwards, when the lock was set to a fresh number, Lady Cambers generally told me what it was. She thought we wouldn't both forget. But I used to make a note of it, in case.'

‘Where?'

‘On a piece of paper,' Amy answered patiently, very much in the manner of one answering the persistent questions of a troublesome child one does not, however, wish to discourage.

Colonel Lawson was looking all he felt. Moulland was looking even more so. Bobby contented himself with looking at Amy, who on her part appeared again to have forgotten their existence and once more to be fixing her far-off gaze upon the wall-paper above their heads as though there alone was anything to interest her.

‘And, pray,' demanded Colonel Lawson with an immense irony and a still more immense self-control, ‘what did you do with the piece of paper?'

‘I think generally I put it in my purse,' Amy answered; ‘or somewhere safe,' she added; and the chief constable snorted indignantly at this last word. ‘Sometimes Lady Cambers didn't tell me if she didn't think of it or I wasn't there. Then she generally made a note herself.'

‘Where? On a piece of paper, I suppose?'

‘Yes. Or in her blotting-book. I remember she told me to look there once for the right number when the key wouldn't turn.' 

‘What it comes to,' observed the chief constable, ‘is that the number of the combination might be lying about on any bit of paper, or in the blotting-book where anyone could see it.'