At twenty minutes past eight next morning Dean, the butler, came out of the north wing and entered first the dining-room and then Miss Fane’s study in order to draw the curtains and admit the slow, cold beginning of the day. It was still so dark that he switched on the dining-room light and left it burning. The actual moment when the black-out regulations allowed of an uncurtained light was 8.24. He considered that summer time extended to the winter was doubtless of use to people in towns who hoped to get home before the nightly air-raids began, but that it was very inconvenient not to be able to open up the house before pretty near half past eight.
Continuing on his way, he came to the hall. He crossed it and opened the door of Miss Lyle’s sitting-room, switching on the light as he did so. The room sprang into view, the wide window facing him and the two other windows which looked towards the front of the house all curtained in pale silvery green. The heavy folds hung straight still. But from somewhere there was a cold wind blowing, and it didn’t take him more than a moment to tell where it was coming from. The door to the octagon room stood in at an angle, and through the half open doorway the wind was blowing.
It was at this moment that Dean became alarmed. Because there oughtn’t to have been anything open in the octagon room. The windows had been closed all day, and the door had been locked when he made his round after Mr. and Mrs. Madison had gone and Mr. Alistair had come in. With the idea of burglars in his mind, he cast an anxious glance about the room, and noticed that the top drawer of Miss Lyle’s bureau had been pulled out. He went over to look at it and saw, tumbled into the corner upon a pile of letters, a small automatic pistol. He considered it to be the pistol which Mr. Hazelton had so carelessly fired off in the hall the other night, breaking a sconce which was going to be very difficult to replace. Drunk, of course, but that wasn’t any excuse for frightening ladies and destroying property. As he had told Mrs. Dean at the time, “If a gentleman can’t behave like a gentleman when he’s drunk, well, to my way of thinking he’s no real gentleman at all.”
He frowned at the pistol and thought Miss Tanis was a bit too casual, leaving firearms about like that. Suppose there’d been a burglar, or one of those German parachutists—well, she was making them a present of it, as you might say.
He left the curtains and went through into the octagon room. The wind met him. The door to the church stood wide. The grey daylight came in, and that cold wind blowing. He stood at the top of the steps and looked down. Something was lying there. The steps ran down to the angle between the house and the west wall. The shadow made it difficult to see—it was still nearly half an hour before sunrise—but something was lying there. No, someone. A woman. He began to feel cold and a little sick.
He went down the steps, going slowly because he was afraid—only going at all because it was his duty, and he had always tried to do his duty.
He came to the floor of the church… Yes, it was a woman. It was Miss Tanis, and he thought she was dead. She was wearing those black pyjamas which had always rather shocked his sense of what was right and befitting in a young lady, and her black dressing-gown over them, and she was lying on her face with her right arm flung out as if she had pitched forward off the steps.
His mind felt stupid and stiff. It went through it to wonder whether she had walked in her sleep, and so fallen. He wondered whether she had broken her neck.
And then he saw the hole. A small round hole in the silk of her coat a little below the left shoulder-blade. Everything inside him seemed to turn over. He went down on his knees because they were giving way, but after a moment he reached for the out-flung hand and lifted it and felt the wrist for the pulse which he knew very well would not be there. As soon as he touched her he knew that it would not be there.
He laid the hand back on the grass and got stiffly to his feet. His duty sustained him. It was his duty to notify the police that Miss Tanis Lyle had been murdered, and when he had done that, to break the news to the household.
He went back up the steps into Tanis Lyle’s sitting-room and rang up the Ledlington police.
The first stunning shock was over. The dreadful routine which waits on murder ran its accustomed course. Police surgeon, fingerprint expert, official photographer played their parts and went away. Finally, all that was left of Tanis Lyle went away too, in an ambulance.
The Superintendent from Ledlington, Randal March, sat in Miss Fane’s study checking over the statements which he and Sergeant Stebbins had been taking. He was a tall, good-looking man in his middle thirties, with a pleasant cultivated voice and a manner in which authority was agreeably veiled. The eyes, the line of the jaw, the set of the head, asserted its presence, but the pleasant veil was there—for as long as he desired it to remain.
Miss Maud Silver, entering the room, was very warmly received. She addressed the Superintendent, to Sergeant Stebbins’s edification, as “My Dear Randal,” and enquired affectionately after his mother and his sisters. In fact compliments were exchanged. Sergeant Stebbins was sent to interview evacuees who might possibly have heard the shot, and Miss Silver took a chair.
In the days when she was a governess she had been governess to Randal March and his sisters. Her friendship with the family had been maintained. Some three years previously Randal March had had to confess that he owed his life to her skill and acumen in the rather horrible case of the poisoned caterpillars. And they had been very closely associated in the autumn of ’39 over the mysterious Jerningham affair. But in spite of these up-to-date contacts his first sight of Miss Maud Silver invariably carried him back to the days when she was the unquestioned dispenser of law and knowledge to an inky little boy with a marked distaste for acquiring information or for doing what he was told. In spite of this distaste he had learned and he had obeyed. Respect for Miss Silver had entered into his soul. He found it there still.
As she took her seat and extracted some pink knitting from a brightly flowered work-bag, he reflected that the years which had made him a superintendent of police in a country town had apparently left her quite unchanged. She must have been much younger in those old schoolroom days, but she had not seemed any younger to him then than she did now. She had always been terrifyingly intelligent, conscientious, sincere, religious, dowdy, and prim. She retained a pristine passion for knitting, and for the poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and his contemporaries. She was a perfectly kind and just human being and a remarkably good detective.
With a mind hovering between old and well-merited respect and an amusement which in no way detracted from it, he sat back in his chair and responded to enquiries about his family.
“Margaret is in Palestine with her husband. She managed to get out there at the tail end of ’39. The little girl is with my mother.”
Miss Silver nodded.
“She is very like Margaret. Mrs. March kindly sent me some snapshots.”
“And Isobel has joined the A.T.S. In fact you may say that I am the only member of the family who is not in the Army.”
Miss Silver coughed in slight reproof.
“The enforcement of law at home may, I think, be considered quite as important to our war effort as anything that Isobel or Margaret may be able to do,” she remarked. Then, changing the subject briskly, “This is a terrible affair. I am very glad to have an opportunity of talking to you.”
“And I to you. I have most of the statements now, and I should be glad to know how they strike you.”
Miss Silver knitted in silence for a minute. Then she said,
“I was sorry to miss you the other morning when I was in Ledlington. The note I left for you informed you that I was staying at the Priory. I think I must now tell you that I am here professionally.”
“What?”
In that faraway schoolroom Miss Silver would have reproved this unadorned ejaculation. She let it pass.
“This is of course in confidence. Miss Fane would not wish it to be known.”
Randal March looked concerned.
“But I’m afraid I must ask you—”
“Oh, yes—I was about to explain. Lucy Adams is an old schoolfellow of mine. I used to visit here when I was a young girl, but after I had entered the scholastic profession my time was so much occupied, and my interests so very different from Lucy’s, that the acquaintance—it was hardly a friendship—faded away. We had met no more than a dozen times, I suppose, in the last thirty years when I came down to stay with dear Lisle Jerningham and she very kindly asked Lucy to tea. Lucy appeared to be much interested in my change of profession, and later that evening I was rung up by Miss Fane. She asked me to come over and see her, which I did next day—there is quite a convenient bus. She told me that small thefts of money had been taking place in the house, and that suspicion was being cast upon the evacuee families she had taken in. She was extremely anxious that the matter should be cleared up. She asked me whether I would undertake it professionally. I did so.”
Randal March smiled.
“And solved the problem?”
Miss Silver said, “Yes,” in rather a grave tone of voice.
He looked at her shrewdly.
“Not one of the evacuees then?”
She shook her head.
“Oh dear, no.”
He was conscious of a rising interest.
“Are you going to tell me who it was?”
She laid down her knitting for a moment and looked at him.
“I think so, Randal—I think I must. But it is for your information only.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that you are not to make a police court case of it— it is not to be dealt with in that way. If there had not been a murder in the house, I should not have mentioned it, but after what has happened I do not feel justified in withholding any information however remote.”
He said, “You’re quite right. You had better tell me. I won’t use the information unless it bears upon the murder. Who is the thief?”
Miss Silver got up and went to the door. As she opened it, Miss Fane’s maid, Perry, went past, carrying a small tray. The smell of coffee floated in. Randal March saw the tall, stiff figure in grey go by.
Miss Silver closed the door and came back to her seat. In a very much lowered tone she said,
“Perry.”
“You mean that that was Perry who went by? Miss Fane’s maid, isn’t she?”
“No, I don’t mean that at all, Randal. I mean that Perry is the thief.”
“What! I thought she’d been here for donkey’s years.”
Miss Silver took up her knitting again.
“Oh, yes—forty-one years of devoted service. She worships Agnes Fane.”
“And pilfers from her!” He looked and sounded incredulous.
Miss Silver coughed.
“It is not quite so simple as that. She does not like having the evacuees here. The thefts were planned to lay them under suspicion and to bring about their removal.”
“What a mind! Are you sure?”
“Oh, yes. But I have not told Miss Fane. I should have done so today, because, having accepted the engagement, I should have felt it to be my duty. But I had no expectation that she would believe me. She has an extremely rigid type of mind.”
Randal frowned.
“I haven’t seen her yet, or Miss Adams. I suppose you have. How are they taking it? They were devoted to the poor girl, weren’t they?”
The term struck Miss Silver as incongruous. With time at her disposal she could have moralized upon the theme— Tanis Lyle with the ball at her foot come down to that pitying “poor girl.”
She gave a faint dry cough. “I have not seen Lucy—I believe that she is quite prostrated—but I have just come from Agnes Fane. Shall I tell you how I found her?”
He said, “Yes,” in a voice which showed a trace of astonishment.
She paused briefly to take up a stitch, and then continued.
“She was writing a letter to her solicitor.”
“To her solicitor?”
Miss Silver nodded.
“He is a Mr. Metcalfe, an old friend of the family. But she was not writing to him as a friend. Her letter pressed him to push forward without delay the negotiations which he is carrying on with Miss Laura Fane for the purchase of this property.”
Randal March was really startled. He said, “My dear Miss Silver!” and there for the moment words forsook him. She nodded, and went on knitting.
After a short pause he said, “Well, you’ve answered my question. Devoted!” He gave a short laugh. “It hardly seems to be the right word—does it? I suppose it’s about three hours since she heard of her niece’s death!”
Miss Silver raised her eyes to his face.
“You must not misunderstand me, Randal. It would be perfectly true to say that Agnes and Lucy were devoted to Tanis Lyle. They built their hopes on her. She meant everything to them that they had missed themselves. Especially to Agnes. To her, I think, she also represented a weapon.”
“What do you mean?”
Miss Silver paused for a moment. Then she said,
“How much do you know about Agnes Fane?”
“I suppose what everyone in the county knows—that she was jilted by her cousin—that she rode her horse over Blackneck quarry and has been a cripple ever since. It’s too dramatic a story to be forgotten, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It has never been forgotten. Agnes has never forgotten it.”
“It must have been a long time ago.”
“Twenty-two years. I was staying in the neighbourhood at the time. I knew Mr. Oliver Fane and the girl he eloped with— a Miss Ferrers. She was a cousin also. They were very charming people. It made a terrible split in the family. From that time I believe that Agnes has had but one idea—to acquire the property which would have been hers if she had married Oliver Fane, and to divert it from his daughter to Tanis Lyle.”
“The daughter being Laura Fane, the girl who is staying here now?”
“Yes. She is just of age, and she has not seemed very much inclined to sell. Agnes asked her down here in the belief that she would be able to influence her. She is a woman of strong will and inflexible purpose.”
Randal March made a sudden movement.
“Now, just why are you telling me all this?”
“My dear Randal!”
Miss Silver’s tone expressed reproof, but he shook his head.
“You have an ulterior motive. What is it?”
Her needles clicked.
“It is a very simple one. A violent crime has been committed. As I am familiar with the background against which the motives and actions of everyone in this house must be viewed, I thought it my duty to give you some impression of it.”
He said, “I see—” And then, “Miss Fane is still set on purchasing the property? Why?”
“To divert it from Laura Fane. You know that Tanis Lyle had been married? There is a child, a little boy of six. If she could buy the Priory, Agnes would adopt him and bring him up to succeed her.”
Randal March looked at her meditatively.
“Surprising thing human nature—isn’t it? Yes, I knew of the marriage. The husband is, of course, this Hazelton fellow who figures in the shooting affair of the previous night. I’ve got five statements about that—Desborough, two Maxwells, Laura Fane, and the butler, Dean. Now what have you got to say about it?”