So Many Doors, page 14
“We are police officers,” Bobby said. “We have every right—duty, rather—to call on all good citizens to help us.” He offered her a cigarette. When he saw she was about to refuse it, he said, “Better have it. People here might as well think this is a friendly chat. No reason why it shouldn’t be, for that matter. Or is there?” She did not answer this, but she did take the proffered cigarette, though still with only half-concealed hostility. Bobby continued, “As a matter of fact, we haven’t been following you. It was a great surprise to find you here. We were expecting to see Miss Winlock, not you. Apparently you registered under her name. Why was that?” When she remained silent, he said, “Please, Miss Kerr. It is important we should know.”
“It was the first name that came into my head,” she answered then. “That’s all.”
“Why not your own?”
“I didn’t want,” she answered. “If you must know,” she added, though reluctantly, when she saw that he still waited, “I stayed away from the office that morning after you woke us all up. I felt so upset. Mother would get our doctor in, and he said I had better stay at home, so Mother asked him to ring up the office and say I was too unwell to come, and he did. Then I got Mother to ring up and say it might be two or three days before I was well again, so would that be all right, and they said ‘Yes’, because they have to. If they don’t you may give up altogether and get another job. They don’t want that when they’re so awfully short of staff. And it was quite true. I couldn’t have settled with you keeping my bag and Father saying you had no right. He wanted to see the lawyers, but Mother said, ‘Not yet’, and I thought perhaps if I could find Isobel, it would be all right again.”
“Yes; I see,” said Bobby. “But why use her name?”
“Oh, well,” she answered, “I hadn’t thought of it before, but one of the girls in my section belongs here. It’s her mother who is the manager here, and she writes every week and tells all about the office and the work, and if she said I was away ill, or if she heard I was here when I was too ill to show at the office, I thought there would be a frightful fuss and every one would think I was just slacking. So I used Isobel’s name.”
The superintendent grunted. He didn’t much believe this explanation. Also he very strongly disapproved of such behaviour. Putting it across superiors! What about discipline? In his opinion, if you could do that, you could do a lot worse, and probably had. Bobby was more inclined to accept Maggie’s story. He thought it rather weak and silly, and therefore probably true. Lies are generally clear, simple, straightforward—until tested. He asked next:
“Had you any reason for thinking it was likely Miss Winlock might be in Cornwall?”
“I don’t see why you keep asking me things,” Maggie exclaimed angrily. “Why can’t you leave me alone? You’ve no right to keep on at me like this.”
“I said before,” Bobby reminded her, “that we have every right to ask questions. You have an equal right to refuse to answer. But if you do, we shall have to take a very serious view. You remember where your bag was found? You remember there were bloodstains on it? And, as you know, all trace of Miss Winlock has been lost since that night.”
“You can’t think—you can’t possibly think,” she muttered, and her hand was trembling so violently that she let fall the cigarette she was holding. “Well, do you?” she asked.
“You haven’t told us yet,” Bobby said, “why you thought of Cornwall?”
“She was always saying how much she liked it, and she didn’t know why, when her people had lost all their money there. In tin-mines or something. She made a sort of joke about it. She said they had lost their money there, and if she went often enough perhaps she would find it again. Of course, it wasn’t that at all.”
“What was it, then?”
“She liked talking, that’s all,” Maggie answered, but more reservedly, and Bobby felt she was holding back something.
Then he remembered.
“A coincidence,” he remarked. “Mr Pope’s father also lost a good deal of money in Cornish tin-mines, didn’t he?” Maggie’s flushed cheeks told him he had touched a sensitive spot. He went on: “I expect she used that as a sort of bond between them, a kind of common experience?”
“She made him take her to see one that belonged to his father,” Maggie said. “She said it was the same, and then she said it wasn’t, and he had to take her to another as well.”
“A kind of personally conducted tour,” Bobby remarked; and lapsed into another of his bridge-table ‘trances’, for he thought that this information might prove of value.
Anyhow, it explained Maggie’s dislike—or was it more?—of Isobel, who seemed easily and triumphantly to have carried off young Pope under Maggie’s very eyes. Not a pleasant experience for any girl; and how far could it lead one like Maggie Kerr, with her strong though suppressed feelings and with that capacity for sudden, violent action the incident at the bank seemed to show. He put the question aside for the time. Maggie’s voice broke in upon his thoughts.
“Can I go now?” she asked.
“Oh, sorry,” Bobby said, rousing himself. He looked round. The room was nearly empty. “Shall we go and sit in the lounge?” he asked. “You started a train of thought, Miss Kerr. Nothing in it, perhaps. Coincidence. Well, I don’t much believe in coincidence, but sometimes it’s useful. One or two other little points I would like to clear up, if possible. Until we find Miss Winlock and can tell her parents she is safe and well, we shall have to go on worrying a lot of people. You, too, I’m afraid.”
“I don’t see why,” Maggie complained when they had reached the lounge. “I don’t know what you’re worrying about. You can be quite sure she’s all right. She knows how to take care of herself. Whoever gets hurt, it’s not Isobel Winlock. She sees to that.”
“Yes,” agreed Bobby. “Yes, I did rather gather that much, though it’s difficult to get a correct idea of some one you know only at third hand so to speak. A shadowy, illusive figure.”
“Fiddlesticks!” flashed Maggie, suddenly angry again. “There isn’t anything shadowy or illusive about Isobel. She’s—” But then she stopped, either unable or unwilling to express herself more clearly. “She’ll be all right,” she concluded.
“Still,” Bobby remarked, “there’s the old proverb, you know—the pitcher that goes oft to the well gets broken at last.”
“Not Isobel,” repeated Maggie. “It’s others get hurt, not her. Suppose there was some blood on my bag you won’t let me have back? Can’t people cut their fingers or something? When I was a child my nose used to bleed.”
“But you didn’t disappear afterwards,” Bobby pointed out. “About Mr David Pope. You are engaged to him, I think?”
“No, I’m not,” she exclaimed. “I never was. Never!”
“I understood—”
“Well, you understood wrong,” she interrupted. “We never were. We did talk about it,” she admitted reluctantly, “but we never settled anything. I wouldn’t. The nearest we ever got to it was saying what a nice little hotel this was and it would be a lovely place for a honeymoon. And that was only a joke.”
“Did you know Mr Pope had left London?”
“They told me he wasn’t there when I rang up,” she admitted, though with some hesitation.
Bobby lapsed into yet another trance, but one this time of only brief duration. What Maggie had said might prove of the highest importance, but it would need much thinking over. Confirmation, too. Her presence here and her use of Isobel’s name might bear the comparatively simple and innocent, though muddled, explanation she gave. Or it might mean that she suspected her lover and Isobel had gone off together, had thought she might find them here at this little out-of-the-way hotel, and had written Isobel’s name in the hotel register as a gesture of defiance for them to read when and if they arrived. Or it might mean that she and David Pope, who had left London at much the same time, had arranged to meet here and that she was waiting for him? That was the least pleasant theory of all, Bobby thought, for it suggested a grim possibility. Could she, then, have used Isobel’s name in obedience to that dark primeval urge which tells us still that the dead are there, are watching, need to be appeased? And was this use of the name an attempt to placate the dead by, as it were, sharing the living? A far-fetched theory perhaps, but Bobby had known other cases when, under the dreadful stress of the shedding of blood, old strange beliefs, deep rooted in what is now called the unconscious, leapt suddenly into being.
Maggie broke in upon his thoughts by asking once again if that was all or did they want to go on asking a lot more questions when she had long ago told them all she could? Bobby said he was very sorry to have had to trouble her. He hoped it would not be necessary again, but what was necessary—absolutely necessary—was that Miss Isobel Winlock should be found. That had to be done.
“You needn’t worry,” Maggie repeated. “She’ll be all right. She always is. You don’t really think anything has happened to her, do you?” She got to her feet. She said suddenly: “Do you think it was me?”
“What was you?”
“Oh, you know,” she answered. “Or David?” she asked.
Bobby did not answer. He went towards the door to open it for her. She followed, and at the door she paused and looked at him.
“I suppose you’ll never give up?” she said.
“No,” he answered.
She went out quickly. He went back to join the superintendent, who said it was getting late, and he must be off.
“Make anything of all that?” he asked.
“Got to think it over,” Bobby replied.
“Cautious bloke, aren’t you?” the superintendent said. “One thing. She kept saying the Isobel girl was all right, but it didn’t sound as if she was so sure as all that.”
“No, not by what she said last,” Bobby agreed.
“Perhaps she knows it’s the other way,” suggested the superintendent. “You going to stop here to-night?”
“I thought of going back to Redruth and getting a room where Monk is staying,” Bobby answered. “I want a chat with him.”
“Give you a lift that far if you like,” said the superintendent.
Before Bobby could answer Maggie appeared again. Standing there at the door, she said:
“Vea Burden is here. She has been in my room. What does she want?”
CHAPTER XVIII
“WHEN GLAMOUR MEETS GLAMOUR . . . ?”
Maggie remained standing there, quite still, her hands pressed closely together, her eyes full of fear and disquiet. It was as though she were appealing for help and protection, and it was evident that she was very deeply disturbed. The one or two other occupants of the room stared at her, wondering what it all meant. Bobby went quickly across to where she stood by the door.
“Do you mean Miss Burden is staying here?” he asked. “Where is she?”
“She’s gone,” Maggie said, and repeated: “What does she want?” Then she said again: “Now she’s gone.”
“Had she a car?” Bobby asked. “Did you see?”
“I don’t know,” Maggie answered. “I didn’t see her. She’s been in my room. She was looking in my suit case and drawers and everywhere. What for?”
“How do you know it was her if you didn’t see her?” Bobby asked next.
Maggie held out a handkerchief, one she had been clasping in a tightly closed hand.
“It’s hers,” she said. “There’s her initials. There’s blood on it. That’s when she coughs sometimes. Look. It was on the bed. For me to see. She wanted me to see. To warn me.”
“You say you didn’t see her?”
“No. As soon as I went in I knew some one had been. I asked the maid. She hadn’t seen any one, but she had heard some one coughing, only she thought it was me. Then I saw her handkerchief, and I knew she had left it there for me to see. With the blood on it.”
Bobby did not quite know what this meant, but he did not wait to ask. He hurried away to question the hotel staff. None of them knew anything. No one had noticed any stranger either in the hotel or near it. Of course, various people had passed up and down the road on their way to or from neighbouring houses. Any of these might have slipped across the hotel garden and so into the hotel itself. But none of the staff would admit that this was very likely. Some of them were openly incredulous. They suggested that the young lady had been letting her imagination run away with her. They shrugged their shoulders at the handkerchief, material evidence though it was. Anyhow, if nothing was missing, it didn’t matter very much, did it? But that was a point on which Bobby was not so sure. He thought it might matter a good deal. However, he agreed there was nothing much to be done. If Vea had been there, she had come and gone unperceived, and was by now far out of reach of any immediate pursuit.
Bobby went back to the lounge, where Maggie was still waiting, as if she felt safer there. He told her he had asked the management to see that a sharp look-out was kept. If Vea returned, he was to be informed immediately. He did not think there was any reason for Maggie to be alarmed.
“Can you suggest what she wanted or why she came?” he asked. “Or why she should want you to see her handkerchief?”
“There was blood on it,” Maggie said in a low voice.
“You mean she wanted to remind you there was blood on the supper-table at Bexley House and that you had been there?” Maggie did not answer, but her eyes and the pallor of her cheeks showed that that indeed was what was in her mind. Bobby went on: “Miss Winlock had been there, too, and Mark Monk.” Maggie, sitting there, pale and tortured, still did not speak. “Do you know in what relation Vea Burden stood to Mr Monk?”
“There was a story they were married,” Maggie answered now.
“It’s an odd thing,” Bobby mused aloud, partly for the sake of giving Maggie more time to recover from what had clearly been a considerable shock, “that marriage—just a few words mumbled in a church never otherwise entered, or gabbled over in a registry office—does make a sort of tie-up nothing ever quite breaks. Our intellectuals don’t understand that. I suppose it’s outside intellect. Doesn’t apply to a mistress—but, then, there aren’t any nowadays, only unofficial wives, just as there are no more criminal lunatics, only Broadmoor patients. The smell of the rose depends to-day on what you call it. One in the eye for Shakespeare. Oh, well.” He saw that though Maggie had hardly been listening, his flow of words had in some way helped to calm her. He went on: “If she is really his wife, do you think she is afraid of what may have happened to him?”
“Or to Bella,” Maggie answered, using for the first time the familiar abbreviation by which most of Miss Winlock’s friends knew her.
“Yes, I suppose there’s that,” Bobby agreed. “Does she think it may have been you?”
“I don’t know,” Maggie said.
“Or does she think it might have been David Pope?” And this time, though Maggie did not answer, he was sure that that was what she had been thinking. “Do you think so, too?” he asked.
“No, of course not; it’s wicked, wicked—” she exclaimed, but did not finish the sentence, stammering a little as if she could not find the words.
Bobby thought it better not to press her further on that point. He was afraid she might break down altogether, and, besides, all this had given him much to think about. He hoped, too, that what he had said might help to make her realize her position and that of others more clearly, and even possibly make her more willing to speak. For he thought it certain there was much she was holding back. But, then, that, he knew, was true of all of them. True, for that matter, of all witnesses, of whom it is invariably the case that half won’t say all they know, and the other half say a great deal more. He offered her a cigarette, and when she shook her head he lighted one for himself. He hoped this would help again to break the tension. Then he said:
“Do you know if there was any particular reason why Miss Vea Burden was supposed to be really Mrs Mark Monk?”
“I think it was only talk,” Maggie answered, more readily this time, and as if a little relieved by the change of subject. “I thought at first she was just frightened of him. She looked like death if he came near, and slipped off at once. But she didn’t keep away, and if he even crooked a finger at her, she almost ran to him. Almost like a dog. And then sometimes they would start quarrelling again, and she would rush away. But he laughed. It was rather horrid the way he laughed; and yet, somehow, you couldn’t help . . .”
“Couldn’t help what?” Bobby asked, but when Maggie was again silent he did not press that point either. For he thought he knew, and he did not much suppose that she could put it into words. He said: “I take it she didn’t much like seeing him paying too much attention to other women?”
“She hated it,” Maggie said. “She couldn’t bear it. Only it was funny about that, too. If you danced with him too much, she would look at you as if she wanted to kill you, and then she would look ever so different, as if she were only sorry for you. I know she told one girl she had better keep away from him. But, of course, they only thought that was jealousy. So did Bella. Jealousy, I mean.”
“Did you often dance with him?”
“I never wanted to,” Maggie declared. “Only somehow—you can’t be rude, can you? and he never would listen. You couldn’t help. Of course, he was a lovely dancer.” She paused and added abruptly: “Lots of the girls hated it. I did. Only—”
Bobby thought that that ‘only’ was significant. It seemed to symbolize the partly fearful, partly resentful, wholly powerful attraction the man appeared to be able to exercise at will. After a pause, he asked:
“Did Mr Pope ever say anything about your dancing with him?”
“It hadn’t anything to do with David,” Maggie declared with spirit. “I never did any more than I could help.”
“Is it possible,” Bobby asked, “that as you and Mr Monk both left London about the same time, Vea may think that you and he have arranged to meet here?”
“Oh, she couldn’t,” Maggie exclaimed. “I never thought. . . . Besides, I haven’t. It couldn’t be that, I’m sure it couldn’t.”
