ARNOLD BRAY was duly interviewed. He had a room in a poor lodging-house and everything shabby about him. If he was engaged in criminal enterprises, he certainly had not succeeded in making them pay. He had a soft voice, a nervous manner, and a strong family resemblance to his sister. Frank Abbott, who had accompanied Inspector Crisp on this domiciliary visit, found himself sharing Lucius Bellingdon’s inability to accept him as the murderer of Arthur Hughes.
“Mr. Bray, you were in Putney last night, in the High Street.”
Crisp’s bark produced a noticeable access of nervousness.
“Any reason why I shouldn’t have been?”
“We would like to know what you were doing there.”
“I had a bit of business to attend to.”
“Mind saying what it was?”
“Yes, I do. It was private.” His eyes flickered away from Crisp’s hard stare.
“You were seen in the High Street with a man whom we should like to interview.”
“Who saw me?”
“That’s neither here nor there, Mr. Bray. You were seen, and the man you were with was seen. What name do you know him by?”
He certainly was very nervous indeed.
“Look here, what’s all this about? I was in Putney on private business of my own. If you want to know, I was looking about for a second-hand bicycle. Someone told me a friend of his had got one he wanted to sell, and I thought I would have a look at it. He must have given me the wrong address or something, because when I got there I couldn’t find the place and nobody seemed to know anything about it—you know how it is. If I was talking to anyone, it would be when I was trying to find out about this chap’s address.”
If he was making it up as he went along, it wasn’t a bad effort. He obviously thought so himself, because his manner became more confident. Frank Abbott said in an easygoing way,
“What was his name, this chap you were looking for?”
Arnold Bray said,
“Robertson—Jack Robertson.”
“And the address?”
“Well, that’s where the whole thing slipped up. The man who told me about it said this chap with the bike was lodging with some people in the Emden Road. He didn’t remember the name, and wasn’t too sure of the number but he thought it was 79 or 97— anyway something with a seven and a nine in it. So that’s what I was doing—asking whether anyone knew this Jack Robertson.”
Crisp went on staring at him.
“Very much of a wild goose chase, wasn’t it? What was the name of the chap who told you about Robertson and this bike he was supposed to be selling?”
Arnold Bray looked almost smug.
“I’m afraid I don’t know, Inspector. It was just a chap I got talking to in the local.”
Crisp went on asking questions, but they got him nowhere. The moment when Arnold Bray could have been scared into a breakdown was over. Taken by surprise, and undoubtedly shaken, he had managed to produce a story which it was difficult to disprove. They mightn’t believe it, but it was the sort of thing that could easily have happened. It was, in fact, the sort of thing that did happen, and nothing in the interview had brought them, or was likely to bring them, a single step nearer to the man whom Paulina Paine had watched in the Masters gallery.
As they walked away, Frank Abbott said,
“He was rattled all right.”
Crisp barked.
“He’s the kind who always would be rattled if a police officer spoke to him.”
“Yet you say he has never been in trouble?”
Crisp frowned.
“He’s been on the edge of it to my certain knowledge. Hangs about there, I’d say. Some day he’ll go over the edge—then we’ll get him.”
After a minute or two Frank Abbott said,
“What about putting a tail on him? If he’s in with this man we want he’s likely enough to communicate with him—ring up, or go and see him. I’ve an idea we did rattle him more than a little. If he’s in this show at all, it’s as a subordinate, and if he’s the sort I take him for and we’ve scared him, then he’s liable to run to his boss about it. I think it’s worth trying.”
Frank Abbott was right about Arnold Bray being scared. When the two police officers had gone he sat down and put his head in his hands. He had got off this time, but they might come sneaking back—the police had a nasty way of doing that. He must try and remember exactly what he had told them. If there was the slightest slip anywhere, they would think that he had made the whole thing up.
He went over it slowly bit by bit. Someone in the local who had mentioned a bike that was going cheap in Putney. Nothing they could check up on there. And the chap who had the bike to sell… Yes, Robertson. He had hit on the name because of seeing it on a tradesman’s van in Putney. It was the kind of name anyone might have, with a respectable Scotch sound about it. But he had tacked a Christian name on to it. Now what had he got to do that for? Just for a moment he wasn’t sure what the name was. It might have been Jack, or Joe, or Bill, or Jim, or anything.
He sat there and sweated, until all at once it came to him that it was Jack, because what was in his mind was the old tag about “as sure as my name is Jack Robinson”, and at the last minute he had given it a twist and made it Robertson. So that was all right. But he’d have to pass the word that they’d been seen on Friday night. No more Putney for either of them if there was anyone there who could spot them like that and pass the word to the police. And if they weren’t going to meet again in a hurry, then there would have to be some arrangement about the money.
After a bit he went down to the call-box in the station yard. He had to stand and watch whilst a red-faced woman talked at length. A call-box was supposed to be soundproof, but things were not always what they were supposed to be. If the door didn’t quite fit, you might just as well be out in the street.
As he waited for the red-faced woman to finish her conversation he was pleased to observe that he could not hear a word she was saying. When she came out and he took her place it was with a certain sense of confidence that he got through the preliminaries, dropped in the required coins, and pressed button “A”.
The voice that answered was a stranger’s. In response to his “Can I speak to the gentleman who is lodging with you?” it said, “I’ll see”, and faded out.
Waiting there, his nerves got the better of him again. The telephone-box became a trap, shutting him in for everyone to stare at. Why had he got himself into this damned affair at all? It had looked like easy money. Nothing to do but pass on a little information—and look where it had landed him! If he had known, he would never have touched it. It might have been better if he had come clean and told the police what they wanted to know. No, no, he couldn’t do that, but the thought was in his mind. Thirty miles away he heard a man’s step crossing a room and the crackle of the receiver as it was lifted from the table where it had been laid. The voice he was waiting for said, “Hallo!” He heard his own voice shake.
“It’s Arnold.”
“What do you want?”
“We were seen together on Friday night in the High Street. I thought I had better let you know.”
“Who saw us?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who told you we’d been seen?”
“The police. They said I’d been seen talking to someone they wanted to interview.”
There was the beginning of a laugh at the other end.
“Then it was Pegler—I thought I saw him. But he doesn’t know you—I wonder how— Oh, well, I’d better avoid the neighbourhood. I had a chance of rather a good deal, and it ought to have been safe enough after dark. A bit of damned bad luck the old boy happening along. Where are you speaking from?”
“The call-box outside the station.”
“Anybody been tailing you?”
Arnold felt a rush of panic.
“No—no—of course not.”
The other man said, “I wonder—” And then, “What did you tell the police?”
“Nothing—nothing. I swear I didn’t. I said I’d been looking for a man who had a bike to sell and I couldn’t find the address—if I was seen talking to anyone, it would be whilst I was making enquiries.”
“Did they believe you?”
“Why shouldn’t they?”
“Why should they? On the other hand, they can’t prove anything. When they asked you who you were talking to, what did you tell them?”
“I said I didn’t know what they meant—I wasn’t talking to anyone in particular, only asking about this man who had the bike to sell.”
“Well, that’s not too bad. Now you just listen to me! You carry on the way we settled it. Get off this line and stay off it. Don’t write, or ring up, or ask any questions. Just stay put in the bosom of your family, and if you get a chance to do what we planned, get on with it!”
“I don’t know that I can stay put.”
“You’ve got to! You’re no use to me anywhere else!”
“Suppose he won’t have me there—”
“Get Ellen to turn on the water-tap—she’s quite good at it. And now get off!”
Arnold Bray said, “Wait—”
“What is it?”
“The money—”
“What about it?”
“I want my share.”
The voice said lightly, “Oh, you’ll get it,” and the receiver went back with a click.
Arnold Bray hung up at his end. The receiver came wet from his sweating palm. The paths of crime had become very alarming to tread.
HE’S not feeling at all well,” said Elaine.
Lucius Bellingdon threw her a look tinged with a certain grim humour.
“We have a National Health Service,” he said.
“Oh, Lucius—”
“Surgery twice daily. And I forget whether you have to pay anything for a prescription at the moment or not, but he ought to have enough left out of what I gave him to pay for that.”
Miss Bray got out a crumpled pocket-handkerchief and pressed it to her eyes.
“He wants care,” she said. “He has never been strong, and there are only the two of us left. I remember my poor mother used to say she had always been afraid that she wouldn’t rear him. He only weighed five pounds when he was born, and the doctor said—”
Lucius Bellingdon broke in upon these reminiscences.
“Well, whatever it was, he was wrong, and getting on for fifty years out of date. What is the matter with Arnold anyhow?”
Miss Bray removed the handkerchief from her brimming eyes and repeated her previous remark.
“He needs care.” Then, with rapid inconsequence, “I could put him in poor Arthur’s room. His things have all been cleared out of it, and it wouldn’t take long to air the bed—a couple of hot water bottles and a fire. And you really needn’t see him except at meals.”
She had the kind of clinging pertinacity which is more exasperating than heated opposition. Lily had been like that too. He said,
“Oh, he’ll be well enough to come down to meals, will he?”
The tears began to run down Elaine’s face. When she cried like that she brought Lily back to him with painful clarity. Lily had always cried when he wouldn’t do something she wanted him to do. She hadn’t wanted him to go out to the States, and she had cried almost without ceasing until the moment of his departure. And when he came back and he found that she had taken upon herself to acquire a strange baby in his absence, she had cried again and gone on crying until he had given way and said that Moira could be kept. It was all very much as if she had been a puppy or a kitten, but because Lily had done the thing behind his back, and because he had given way against his will and his judgment, a cold deep resentment had put paid to what remained of their relationship. He did not like to be reminded of these things. When Elaine cried he was reminded of them. There was no real likeness to Lily, it was just that they cried in the same way. Against all reason it made him feel that he was being a brute. He bent a portentous frown upon Lily’s cousin and said,
“For any sake stop crying! If Arnold really isn’t well he can come here for a bit, but it’s no use either of you thinking he can make a habit of it.”
The flow of tears stopped abruptly. There were sniffings, there were dabbings, there was a gush of sentiment.
“So kind—I’m sure I don’t know what we should all do without you. He will be so grateful. I’m sure if you were our own relation instead of just dear Lily’s husband we couldn’t be more grateful. In fact very few people’s relations are so generous and so kind.”
He removed himself, and she was presently talking to Arnold Bray ringing up from the station call-box. In reply to his “Is it all right?” she gave twittering assurances that it was.
“Only I think perhaps you had better keep out of his way as much as you can. He thinks you ought to have made the money go farther… Oh, you’ve got some of it left? I must tell him that. I wish I had known… Oh, you don’t want me to? Really, Arnold, I can’t see why, when it would please him… Oh, I see. But I don’t think there’s much chance of your getting any more… Oh, Arnold, I don’t think you ought to say that! I wouldn’t call him mean—I wouldn’t really. If he hadn’t been careful about money, I don’t suppose he’d have had such a lot of it. Anyhow he says you can come, and I’m putting you in Arthur’s room… Why? Because we’re really full. These week-end people seem to be staying on. David Moray is going to do a portrait of Moira, and Sally Foster has got a holiday—at least it’s not really a holiday, but the woman she works for rang her up and said she was going over to Paris for a week and Sally could have the time off. I don’t suppose she’d have said anything about it, only she was taking the call in the hall and Lucius heard her say, ‘Then you won’t be wanting me for a week,’ and he asked her to stay on. So you see, I don’t know how many of the rooms will go on being full, or for how long. And it’s all very well, but one has to consider things like sheets and towels, because there’s nothing wears them out like constant use—only men never think of things like that, and Lucius is worse than most of them through being a widower for so long.” It was at this point that Arnold Bray stopped trying to get a word in edgeways and rang off.
IT being Sunday morning, Miss Silver attended the village church. She was gratified by the company of Mr. Bellingdon and Mrs. Scott, and discovered Annabel to be the possessor of a particularly sweet singing voice. She had an affection for these small village churches with their air of having grown up with the place and their mementoes of its past history. This one contained quite an elaborate memorial of the Merefield family, now extinct, in the form of a wall sculpture of Sir Lucas de Merefield and his wife Philippa. They kneeled facing each other in stone, he in armour, and she in robe and wimple with five daughters behind her puppet-small, and five boys behind him, all with bent heads and folded hands. It seemed strange that so prolific a family should have died out, but Miss Silver had remarked the same phenomenon in her own time—the overlarge family of one generation becoming diminished or even extinguished in the next. Of course, in the case of the Merefields a great many generations had passed since Lucas and Philippa had produced their family of ten. She remembered to have heard that the last Merefield, another Philippa, had died in extreme old age at about the time of the first world war. Dismissing these thoughts as unsuitable to the occasion, she turned her mind to higher things.
A middle-aged woman in a hat which resembled Miss Silver’s own wrestled with a voluntary beyond her skill. Glimpses of her profile crimsoned with exertion were afforded by a curtain which must always have been skimpy and had recently lost a hook. The music stopped, Annabel Scott relaxed, and an old man with a kind voice began the Order of Morning Prayer:
“When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive.”
It came into Miss Silver’s mind that there is always a place for returning and repentance.
The rest of the party did not go to church. Sally had meant to, but when it came to the point it was beyond her. There was something about the way Moira looked at her and said, “I suppose you’ll go to church,” that made her say, “Oh, no”—just like that. She hadn’t meant to say it, but once it was said she wasn’t going to go back on it. And in the end she might as well have gone, because Moira disappeared and David disappeared, and Wilfrid trailed about after her behaving more like a gadfly than you would think any human creature could. She told him so, and felt that she couldn’t have pleased him more. Nothing happened for the rest of the day except acres of exasperation and dullness. She hadn’t been pleased with herself to start with, and by the evening she never wanted to see herself again. David remained absent, Moira remained absent. Miss Bray looked as if she had been crying. Her brother Arnold arrived just before lunch on a bicycle with a suit-case. From the brief contact which Sally had had with him it seemed unlikely that he would have an enlivening effect upon his surroundings. One Miss Bray was enough for any house, and Arnold was quite distressingly like his sister—the same fair indeterminate colouring, the same trickle of talk which seemed to have neither starting-point nor stopping-place. There were differences of course. To do Elaine justice, she didn’t look shifty, and Arnold did. Fortunately, he retired to his room almost at once, and Elaine said he was resting.
Sally was at a loose end. Miss Silver conversed with Elaine. Lucius and Annabel had gone out in his car and had driven away into the blue. Wilfrid continued to cling, and she could have murdered him. If he had been silent it wouldn’t have been so bad. But Wilfrid was never silent.
“Let us mingle our tears, darling. You are cut out, and so am I—you with David, and I with Moira. All my hopes of twenty thousand a year or whatever it’s likely to be gone down the drain! Let us weep on one another’s shoulders.”
Sally was imprudent enough to answer him.
“You may want to weep, but I don’t know why you should think that I do.”
“Ah, that is my sensitive nature. The slightest pang of the beloved object and I feel it as my own.”
“I thought it was Moira who was the beloved object.”
“Darling, I never said so. The pang one feels on losing twenty thousand a year is of a different and a more earthy nature. Have I ever disguised from you that I have an earthy side?”
“No, you haven’t. It would be too difficult.”
He blew her a languid kiss.
“You don’t know what I can do if I try.”
Sally said in a tone of rage,
“I shall have a telephone call and catch the first train tomorrow! I can’t think why I said I would stay on!”
“Darling, you wanted to keep an eye on David—it’s quite simple. By the way, I suppose you know he has gone up to town to get his painting tackle.”
It hadn’t occurred to her. She said,
“Has he?”
Wilfrid nodded.
“So as to start painting Medusa bright and early tomorrow morning. I gather Moira’s idea is to have the sittings in the North Lodge, all nice and private. It’s been empty for donkey’s years, but it used to be let to a man called Hodges who was quite a good artist, and Lucius let him build on a studio with a north light. So you see, there’s some cheese in the mousetrap.” A malicious glance flicked over her.
Sally said another thing which she hadn’t meant to say.
“Is it a mousetrap?”
The words just came and there they were.
Wilfrid raised his eyebrows.
“Darling, be your age!”
Sally gave him a look and ran out of the room.
Another thing that she oughtn’t to have done. She had lived for twenty-two years with Sally Foster. They had had their ups and downs, but on the whole they had got on very well. Now, for the first time in her life, she hadn’t a good word to say for her. No proper pride, no stiff upper lip. Not even a decent try at keeping her end up. She just couldn’t have given herself away more lavishly had she set out to do it. And to Wilfrid! And the last, worst dreg of the whole thing was that she didn’t really care. If David was going to have a wretched sordid affair with Moira, what she ought to be feeling was “Well, that’s their look-out, and a good riddance to both of them!”
She couldn’t do it, she didn’t even want to do it. Moira was poison and David was going to get hurt. Poison hurt you—it could hurt you dreadfully. She couldn’t bear David to be hurt. She stared out of the window of her room and saw that it was getting dark. There were low black clouds, very low and very black. She tied a handkerchief over her head. She wanted to get out of the house into the air, and if it poured with rain and soaked her she didn’t mind, and if there was a thunderstorm or a cloud-burst she didn’t mind. All she cared about was getting out of the house without anyone seeing her. She went out by a side door, achieved a path through a shrubbery, and experienced a slight lift of the spirits. There is something about escaping which has this effect.
She emerged from the shrubbery on to a drive. It wasn’t the drive you went down to get to the village. Well, so much the better—she might have met anyone there. Something said, “This is the drive which goes to the North Lodge.” She countered with “I don’t know it’s the north drive, do I?” And the thing that talked came back with a “Well, you hope it is.”
The drive, wherever it led to, showed signs of being less in use than the other one. The trees on either side of it leaned together, and the shrubberies were overgrown. Before the war there had been five gardeners at Merefields. Now there was Donald, an old man who pottered in the greenhouses, and two lads who were waiting to be called up for their military service. The drive grew narrower and the bushes thicker, and then there was the gate in front of her, and to the right of it, almost hidden by shrubs and trees, was the lodge. What she didn’t know was that it was the North Lodge. Only she was sure that it was. She pushed a little creaking gate and went up a path that was slimy with moss to a hooded door. There was a window on either side of it and the blinds were down. There was a step that felt slimy too. If the place had stood empty for donkey’s years as Wilfrid had said, it probably hadn’t been cleaned since before the war. It was dark here under the trees and getting darker. She put out a hand and touched a rusty knocker.
And then quite suddenly there was a brilliant flash and the thunder and the rain broke together. She stood in close to the door while a curtain of water fell between her and the way she had come. The hood over the door wasn’t going to keep her from being soaked to the skin. She pressed herself as close to the door as she could and felt it give. It swung in, and everything was dark in the house. If it was empty, there wouldn’t be anyone there to make a light. If it was the North Lodge it had been empty for years. There was another flash of lightning, very bright. It showed her a narrow passage with a door on either side and one at the far end. There was some scuffed linoleum on the floor. All the doors were shut. She stepped into the passage and it was dark again.
If this was the North Lodge it was empty, and if it was empty, why was the door left open like this? She thought about calling out to see if there was anyone there, and it wasn’t a thought she liked. It was still in her mind, when there was a third flash and the door at the end of the passage began to open.