IT was some time after tea that Lucius Bellingdon found himself showing Miss Silver his collection of pictures. He was a little uncertain as to just how this had come about. It had not really been his intention to show the pictures at all, at any rate not at this moment, and not to Miss Silver. Yet as the party at tea broke up he was aware of Miss Silver putting away her knitting in a flowered chintz bag with green plastic handles and looking up at him in a brightly intelligent manner.
“So kind of you, and I shall be most interested to see them,” she was saying. And then, “I have some pictures that I am very fond of myself. Only reproductions of course, but in some cases I have been privileged to see the originals.”
After which there was no doubt that he had in some way committed himself. They went up the stairs and through to the wing which he had restored in order to house his collection. There had been extensive damage by fire at the turn of the century, and the then owner had not been able to meet the expense of re-building.
“He’d let the insurance lapse. Silly thing to do, but I don’t suppose he could find the money. Pity when an old family goes down hill like that, but no sense in hanging on to a place when you can’t afford to keep it up. Takes the heart out of you trying to do something that can’t be done.”
Miss Silver said, “Yes indeed.”
She listened with interest and respect to a disquisition on Dutch painting culminating in the proud display of a very small picture of a girl standing by an open window and putting tulips into a jar. She was a plain young woman, but the way the light came slanting through the window to touch the tulips and her smooth fair hair had an astonishing beauty. It had not occurred to her before that light could be painted, but it occurred to her now. Her comment to that effect certainly pleased Lucius Bellingdon. He went on talking, showed her a flower piece which she admired very much, and then all at once he was being addressed with some gravity.
“Mr. Bellingdon, may I take this opportunity of asking you to add to the information you have already given me?”
He showed some slight surprise, but no more than was natural.
“Why, certainly. What is it you want to know?”
“In the course of conversation Miss Bray mentioned that you had a house-party during this last week-end.”
“Yes, there were people here—there generally are at the week-end.”
“Quite so. But on this occasion, so shortly before the theft of the necklace and the murder of Mr. Hughes, I should be very interested to hear anything that you can tell me about your guests.”
He looked at her sharply.
“I don’t see—”
“I think you must, Mr. Bellingdon. I do not know just when you decided to withdraw your necklace from the County Bank, but I imagine that all the details were already decided upon at the time of this week-end party. You informed me that you had communicated them to the manager in writing, and since Tuesday was the day for the withdrawal it seems probable that your letter would have been posted on the Saturday or Sunday. Therefore any leakage of information on the subject would be likely to have occurred during that time.”
“It was posted on the Sunday.”
His tone was one of displeasure. It was by no means Miss Silver’s first experience of being invited to an investigation which subsequently proved very little to the taste of the person who had invited her. She looked steadily at Lucius Bellingdon and said,
“This is not pleasant for you, is it? Before we go any farther I should like to say that I appreciate your position. It is still for you to choose whether you really wish me to go on with the case. The police have it in hand, and there is no need for you to retain my services. It is still open to me to return to town and relieve you of the embarrassment of having introduced an enquiry agent into your private family circle. But what I must make quite clear to you is this. The course I have proposed is possible now, but it may not be possible tomorrow. It could, in fact, become impossible at any moment.”
He was frowning deeply.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that at present I feel myself at liberty to withdraw, but if I continue on the case I am not, and could not be, prepared to hush anything up. The case is one of murder. Anything that throws light upon the murderer’s identity will be, and must be, at the disposal of the police. I am saying to you what I feel it my duty to say to any client. I cannot go into an investigation with the object of proving anyone guilty or anyone innocent. I can only go into it with the object of discovering the truth and serving the ends of justice.”
He walked a little way from her, looked fixedly at a lowering seascape, and so remained for a slow minute or two. When he came back, she saw that he had made up his mind. He said,
“Well, I like to do business with someone who doesn’t beat about the bush, and you don’t do that. If there has been a leakage, I’m bound to trace it. It could have occurred through nothing worse than a tongue too loosely hung—I suppose you realize that.”
She inclined her head.
“You wish me to remain here?”
He said “Yes—” in a considering tone. Then, more firmly, “Yes, I do. There is such a thing as any sort of certainty being better than not knowing where you are. If there’s a worm in a board I like to know it and have it out before it lets me through and I break my ankle—or my neck. And that being that, what do you want to know about last week-end?”
“Just who were the guests, and something about them.”
“The question is, what did Elaine tell you? She can generally be trusted to talk.”
Miss Silver coughed.
“I should prefer you to assume that Miss Bray did not say anything at all.”
He gave a short laugh.
“That’s a pretty tall order, but I’ll do my best! To begin with you have to understand that there are very few week-ends when we don’t have people here. Moira is young and she asks anyone she likes. I have people down on the sort of business that goes better when it isn’t done in an office. Well, last week-end there was this young chap Wilfrid Gaunt who is coming down tonight—he’s by way of fluttering round Moira. And another young chap called Masterson. And some people for me of the name of Rennick—Americans, a very nice couple. And Elaine’s brother Arnold Bray. And that’s the lot.”
She asked him questions eliciting very much the same information as had been imparted by Miss Bray. Clay Masterson was a clever chap, keen to get on, but there wouldn’t be a lot of money in running round the country looking for antiques—not at this time of the day.
“Everything worth having must have been pretty well combed out by now, and you have got to have all your wits about you not to be taken in. He’s a friend of Moira’s too. But she isn’t serious about any of them. That’s the worst of all this running about together—it’s all very nice and easy, but it doesn’t get a girl anywhere. What Moira wants is a home of her own, but all she does is to play around. It’s ‘Darling’ here and ‘Darling’ there, but I wish I thought she cared a snap of her fingers for any of them.”
“You would like your daughter to marry again?”
“I’d like to see her settled.”
It was said with emphasis. Miss Silver did not pursue the subject. She turned instead to Mr. Arnold Bray.
“He is Miss Bray’s brother?”
“He is. Didn’t she mention him?”
“Only in passing.”
He gave a short angry laugh.
“Well, one wouldn’t feel tempted to dwell on Arnold! To be honest, he’s a liability. I suppose most families have something of the sort knocking about. He comes when he’s short of money, and he goes when he’s got enough to make it worth his while. I can only stand him for just so long, and he trades on it. But if you are thinking of him for your murderer you’ll have to think again. He simply hasn’t got the guts.”
Miss Silver asked a practical question.
“What does he do?”
Lucius Bellingdon was at his most overpowering as he replied,
“As little as he can help.”
Observing the jut of his chin, the formidable curve of his nose, the characteristic air of command, it occurred to her that it might be possible that he had undervalued Arnold Bray in respect of what he had rather coarsely referred to as “guts”. The expression offended her, but she did not allow herself to dwell upon that. What presented itself with some force was the fact that it would certainly require courage of some sort to obtrude oneself upon Mr. Bellingdon as an uninvited and unwanted guest, to say nothing of dunning him for money which he was under no obligation to supply.
Lucius said,
“If you asked him, I suppose he would describe himself as a commission agent. Goes round trying to get people to buy things they don’t want and could get much better in a shop.”
Miss Silver considered that Arnold Bray sounded very much like the sort of person who might pass on any information he had the good fortune to pick up. With Elaine Bray aware that the necklace was to be fetched from the bank on Tuesday and her brother Arnold in the house for the week-end, she did not feel that the source of the leakage was very far to seek. She gave a slight preliminary cough and said,
“I do not wish to impute any wrong motive to Miss Bray, but she talks a good deal, and usually about the people round her and the things that are happening to them from day to day. Do you find it difficult to suppose that she may have mentioned your arrangements about the necklace to her brother, and that he may have repeated what she had told him? It could in either case have been done through inadvertence.”
He was at his most abrupt as he said,
“That’s out. She didn’t know what my arrangements were. She knew I was getting the necklace. I suppose she knew that I was getting it on the Tuesday. She didn’t know the time, or who would be fetching it.”
“Who did know those things?”
“The bank manager because I wrote to him, Hubert Garratt who was supposed to be fetching the necklace, and later, but not until the Tuesday morning, Arthur Hughes who had to take Hubert’s place.”
Miss Silver looked up at him.
“When you came to see me in town and I asked you how many people knew of your arrangements for withdrawing the necklace your reply included the bank manager, Mr. Garratt and Mr. Hughes, your daughter, and Miss Bray and Mrs. Scott.”
He said with impatience,
“They knew I was getting it out of the bank. I told Moira that Hubert would fetch it on Tuesday.”
“Did she regard it as a confidential communication, or as one which it would be natural to speak of amongst her friends and relations?”
He gave her a chagrined glance.
“Oh, well, I don’t suppose she considered that it was a top-level secret. I suppose she may have spoken of it here in the house. I can’t blame her if she did. One doesn’t exactly go about expecting people to be murdered.”
“When did you tell her?”
“I believe it was on the Sunday.”
“Mr. Arnold Bray was still here?”
He shrugged his big shoulders.
“And Clay Masterson, and the Rennicks, and Wilfrid Gaunt.”
“And Mrs. Scott?”
She saw an angry colour come up into his face, but he did not speak. After a moment she went on.
“Mrs. Herne could have mentioned the matter to any of these people. She could have mentioned it in the hearing of any of your staff. And any of these people could have mentioned it again. And all without evil intent. The ripples spread quickly in a pool. There were so many people in the house, some partially and some more accurately informed, and one of the latter a girl surrounded by her friends and with no particular reason to suppose that she would be doing wrong if she mentioned what was going to be a very important adjunct to her costume for the ball that you were giving. Is it difficult to see how this information could have passed rapidly from one to another until it reached someone who was prepared to turn it to his own advantage? At present we have only one clue to help us in searching for this person. It is the fact that the murderer could so little afford to be recognized that he was prepared to go to any length to avoid it. That is the point to which I find myself recurring. This man was someone who would not trust any disguise to protect him from being recognized by Mr. Garratt.”
“By Hubert?” The words came slowly.
“It was Mr. Garratt who was to collect the necklace.”
“It was Arthur Hughes who was murdered.”
“I have given some attention to that point. It could mean that Mr. Hughes was equally dangerous, or that having made up his mind to shoot, the criminal’s intention held in spite of the fact that it was no longer Mr. Garratt who would be the victim.”
Lucius Bellingdon moved abruptly.
“I don’t see that it gets us any forarder either way.”
AFTER leaving Lucius Bellingdon Miss Silver retired to her room, where an extremely comfortable easy chair offered an opportunity for rest and thought. For once her hands were unoccupied. Her knitting-bag lay on a stool beside her. She leaned back against the cushion, which admirably repeated the predominant colours in the very charming flowered chintz with which the chair was covered, and reviewed what she had gathered during the late interview. As she went over it in her mind, it was clear to her that anyone in the house could have known of and repeated the information which had made it possible for the necklace to be stolen. Mr. Bellingdon, having averred that Miss Bray did not know what were his arrangements about the necklace, went on to say that he supposed she knew that he was getting it out on the Tuesday, but stated that she did not know the time or who would be the messenger. Pressed as to who did know these things, he said the bank manager, Hubert Garratt, and at the last moment Arthur Hughes. But to further questioning he admitted that his daughter knew that the necklace was to be fetched on Tuesday. Miss Silver found herself perfectly convinced that what was known to Miss Bray and to Moira Herne would be no secret from the rest of the house-party. If it was generally known, it would be generally and freely discussed. In which case the Hiltons, Mrs. Stubbs, Mrs. Donald the gardener’s wife, and the dailies from the village could also have been in possession of the facts and could have passed them on just by way of gossip and without any criminal intent. She considered sedately that really men had very little idea of what went on in a house. It was the women who worked there, and especially those who went to and fro from their work to a neighbouring village, who had an unerring instinct for anything out of the way and an unflagging interest in retailing it. Lucius Bellingdon might flatter himself that no one knew anything which he had not himself imparted, but she had no doubt that he was mistaken. As to his point about the time being unknown to anyone except himself and Hubert Garratt, Mr. Garratt might not have considered himself bound to secrecy. He might, for instance, have mentioned the matter to Mrs. Herne.
She had reached this point, when there came a gentle tapping on the door. Mrs. Scott made a graceful entrance.
“I do hope I am not disturbing you. I really did want to have a little talk if you can spare the time.”
Her smile was charming. Her whole manner was charming. It said, “I want to be friends. I do hope you will let me.” There was just a touch of diffidence which, like the quality of her voice, made her seem younger than she was.
Miss Silver responding, Annabel pulled up a second and rather smaller chair and sat down. All her movements were easy and pleasant to watch. She leaned forward now, an elbow on the arm of the chair, and said,
“I do hope you won’t mind, but I know why you are here.”
Whilst she was settling herself Miss Silver had reached for her knitting-bag. Taking out the almost completed shawl, she disposed its pale blue fluffiness upon her lap and began to knit. In reply to Annabel Scott’s “I know why you are here” she looked at her with grave enquiry and said,
“Mr. Bellingdon has told you?”
There was a half shake of the head with its smooth dark hair. A half laugh was immediately checked, and Annabel was saying,
“Well, he did. But I knew already.”
“Did you?”
Annabel smiled and nodded.
“Well, yes, I did. You see, I know Stacy Forrest [see The Brading Collection.] —in fact she’s a kind of distant cousin. She did a miniature of me in the autumn. I wanted to give it to Lucius for Christmas, and he was quite terribly pleased with it. She does paint beautifully, doesn’t she?”
Miss Silver acquiesced but did not enlarge upon the theme. She did not really imagine that Mrs. Scott had come here to talk about Stacy Forrest, who had been Stacy Mainwaring.
Annabel went on talking about her.
“Lucius is so critical, but he was delighted. She told me all about that affair of the Brading Collection and how marvellous you were, and when you came down here you were exactly the way she had described you, and of course I knew why you had come—I simply couldn’t help it! So then I taxed Lucius with getting you down here professionally, and he had to own up. You won’t be cross with him, will you?”
Miss Silver said, “No—” in a meditative tone, to which she presently added, “And how many people have you told about your discovery, Mrs. Scott?”
Annabel laughed.
“Now you’re cross with me! I did so hope you wouldn’t be, because I really want to talk to you. And I haven’t, I really haven’t, breathed a word to anyone. I promised Lucius I wouldn’t. And of course you don’t know me enough to trust me, but I don’t break promises.”
Miss Silver smiled. There was something very attractive about Annabel Scott, a warmth in the dark eyes, a natural charm. She pulled on her ball of pale blue wool and said,
“What did you want to talk to me about, Mrs. Scott?”
It was as if something had passed over a bright landscape, the glow and the brightness were less bright, less glowing. Annabel said,
“Well, I don’t want to make too much of it, and I don’t want to say anything to Lucius. And of course it may not have anything to do with it, but just in case it has I thought somebody ought to know.“ She paused, bit her lip, and then said in a hurry, ”That Hughes boy was only twenty-two!”
Miss Silver said, “Yes,” and waited for more.
Annabel went on.
“I didn’t know him very well, I didn’t even like him very much, but there he was, just a boy, and one minute he was all right, and the next someone had shot him dead for the sake of that wretched necklace!”
Miss Silver stopped knitting for a moment and made a quotation which she considered to be apposite.
“ ‘The lust of gain in the spirit of Cain,’ as Lord Tennyson so aptly puts it.”
If Annabel was taken aback she did not show it. She murmured, “Oh, yes,” and Miss Silver turned the blue shawl and began to knit again. She said,
“Murder is indeed a terrible crime. If you know of anything which could throw any light upon the theft of the necklace and the death of Mr. Hughes you certainly should not keep it to yourself.”
“That is what I thought. Of course, as I said, it may not have anything to do with Arthur Hughes being shot, but I can’t seem to get it off my mind, so I thought if you would let me tell you about the snuffbox—”
“The snuffbox?”
“It’s supposed to have belonged to Louis XVI—a really beautiful piece of enamel. Lucius was showing it to us last week-end. He bought it at a sale in Paris about a month ago, so it’s still something new to show people, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Well, he opened it to show the inside of the lid, and there it was, half full of snuff. Someone made a joke about the King’s snuff, and Mr. Rennick was explaining that of course if it was, it wouldn’t have any flavour left in it, and just as he was saying that Mrs. Rennick and I began to sneeze. Honestly, it was fierce! I can’t imagine how anyone can touch the stuff, but of course everyone used it in those days. As a matter of fact, I believe lots of people do now. Too silly, isn’t it?”
“A foolish habit.”
“It must have made a horrid mess of all those silks and satins they used to wear, but if everybody did it, I suppose nobody minded. Anyhow the minute we began to sneeze Hubert Garratt absolutely covered his face with his handkerchief and made a bee line for the door, and Lucius shut up the snuffbox and said he ought to have remembered about Hubert getting asthma, and he hoped he hadn’t been near enough for the snuff to have reached him. I was still sneezing, but someone asked would it do him any harm, and someone else—I think it was Clay Masterson—laughed and said, ‘Well, he seems to think so, the way he bolted!’ And Lucius put the box away and said it had better be cleaned out some time.” She paused, and added, “It doesn’t seem very much when you tell it.”
Miss Silver was looking at her in a brightly interrogative manner.
“That is not all?”
“No—” her voice had a reluctant sound— “not quite. Something made me look inside the box last night. It’s in that big cabinet between the windows. I was alone in the drawing-room before the others came down, and I took it out and opened it—”
“Yes, Mrs. Scott?”
Annabel’s bright colouring was one of her charms. The pure deep carnation was heightened momentarily. She said,
“Nearly all the snuff was gone.”
Miss Silver said, “Dear me!”
Annabel nodded.
“That’s what I thought. And I remembered something—” She paused with the half startled look of someone who has taken a step not fully realized or intended.
“Yes, Mrs. Scott?”
Annabel shook her head. Then, with a burst of confidence, “Oh, I don’t know—I must tell someone. Perhaps it isn’t anything at all! It keeps coming niggling into my mind in a stupid kind of a whisper. You know the way things do—when you listen and try and make sense of them they aren’t there any more, and when you say, ‘Oh, well,’ and get on with what you were doing, there they are again!”
Miss Silver said in her temperate voice,
“If you would like to tell me what is troubling you—”
Annabel sat up straight.
“Yes, I’m going to. I meant to all along, but you know how it is when it comes to taking the plunge.”
She received an encouraging smile.
“It is something to do with the snuffbox?”
“Well, it is and it isn’t. I mean, it looks as if it might be, but I don’t know whether it is. I expect Lucius has told you all about Tuesday?”
Miss Silver released some strands of wool from her pale blue ball.
“It would be better if you were to assume that I know nothing except what was in the papers.”
Annabel gave a quick laugh.
“Well, I don’t know what was in the papers and what wasn’t—it’s all mixed up. But you know Lucius was getting the necklace out of the bank. Hubert Garratt was driving over—he was to be there at twelve. And then when it came to Tuesday morning, he hadn’t come over to breakfast. Mrs. Croft who comes up from the village looks after the East Lodge. She goes in on her way to the house, and as a rule Hubert is up and she can do his room, but when Lucius asked her if he was all right she said oh, no, he wasn’t, he’d got a bad attack of his asthma. So Lucius went off to see him, and he really was bad. It didn’t seem as if it was going to be possible for him to drive in to Ledlington and get the necklace. Lucius gave it as long as he could, and then he rang up the bank and said Arthur Hughes would go instead. But before that I took a thermos and coffee and went down to the East Lodge to see how Hubert was getting on. I didn’t suppose he’d want to see me or anyone else, but it seemed so brutal just to leave him on his own, and I thought he might like the coffee. Well, actually, he was pretty bad, and he was quite grateful. I put his bed straight and shook up the pillows and all that. He’d got everything into the most frightful mess—men do, don’t they? And when he had had some of the coffee he staggered along to the bathroom for a wash. That’s when I did the bed, and it was whilst I was doing it—” She stopped, leaned nearer, and dropped her voice. “It dropped off the pillows—he’d got them all piled up. I didn’t know what it was at first, not until I picked up some of the grains and began to sneeze—” She broke off again, and then came out with, “You’re not believing me—I can’t see why you should. I couldn’t believe it myself—not at first.”
Miss Silver went on knitting.
“I have not said that I do not believe you, Mrs. Scott. Pray continue.”
The dark eyes were not laughing now, they were wide and horrified.
“It was snuff—it really was—just the same as in the snuffbox! And it was there amongst his pillows! I picked up all the grains I could find and screwed them up in my handkerchief, and then I shook the pillows out of the window and beat them up and put them back on the bed. Well, it seems silly, but I hadn’t any opportunity of comparing the grains I had got with the stuff in the snuffbox. There was all the business about Arthur Hughes being shot and the necklace stolen, and it really did go out of my head. Only, yesterday I had put on the same suit, and there was my handkerchief with the corner knotted up, and it all came back. So I changed early and got down before anyone else and looked inside the snuffbox. And most of the snuff was gone, but there was enough left for me to compare it with the grains in my handkerchief, and there wasn’t any doubt about it at all, they were the same.”
Miss Silver said, “Yes—” in a meditative voice.
Annabel Scott watched the rhythmic movement of her hands. Knitting-needles, pale blue wool, and a baby’s shawl—they seemed such a long, long way from the thoughts that she had not wanted to think but which would not leave her alone. She said in a whispering voice,
“The snuffbox was nearly empty. Hubert went out of the room when it was open because he was nervous about the snuff. But there were grains of it amongst his pillows, and he had an attack of asthma. If he hadn’t had it, he would have been the one to go and fetch the necklace from the bank, and he would have been the one who was shot. It’s the sort of thing that sticks in your mind once you’ve thought about it. I can’t get it out of mine.”
Miss Silver said in her even voice,
“You have kept the handkerchief in which you knotted up the grains you found amongst Mr. Garratt’s pillows?”
“Yes, I’ve got it.”
“There are, of course, two possibilities, both of which imply a guilty knowledge of the plan to steal the necklace, either on the part of Mr. Garratt himself, or on the part of some other person. If it was he himself who possessed this knowledge, nothing would have been easier than for him to bring on his asthma by inhaling snuff. He would thus avoid being in charge of the necklace at the time of the theft. If, on the other hand, it was some other person who induced the attack, then that person’s motive must have been either to protect Mr. Garratt or to involve Mr. Hughes, since it would not have been difficult to guess that he would be a probable substitute should Mr. Garratt be incapacitated.”