The Garston Murder Case, page 14
“Now you think a lot of it,” Bell said stolidly. “Why?” The maid swallowed and began to speak again. “Take your time. Sort of thing women do say when they’re hysterical. Why should the nurse want her dead?”
“It’s not my place to say, I’m sure.” The maid was less fluent. “I don’t know why Nurse ever came. It wasn’t that Mistress wanted her, nor liked her neither. Never had a quiet hour, she didn’t, after this nurse was about her.”
“What did the nurse do?”
The maid hesitated. “I won’t say anything I don’t know, sir, I’m not that kind. If you ask me, Nurse was always driving her. Always at her.”
And again Bell asked, “Why?”
“It’s not for me to say. I told you, I don’t know why she came. I don’t go prying, I’m sure.” She tossed her head. “But I’ve got my duty to Mistress, poor lady. There’s some things I couldn’t let be hid. I’ll have to tell you, sir, after it happened last night, I went up to Nurse’s room, just to see if she’d have me to help her with anything. She wasn’t there. You never do know where to find her. But she’d been tearing up a letter or something and I couldn’t help but see bits of it. Fair turned my heart over. I kept ’em for you. Here, sir. You look at that.”
Bell read these scraps of Tony’s letter “… reasons about as serious as they can be … after what happened with Croyland I want to see you at once … things to say I can’t write….”
His square face showed no sign of interest. “Is that all you found?” She nodded. “Pity. Anything else to bring out?” She shook her head. “Then you can go away and hold your tongue. Hold it tight, or I shall have to be nasty. See?”
“I’m not one to talk.” The maid tossed her head and strutted out, pleased with herself but not at ease.
Bell looked at Gunn. “This has been a happy home, George.”
“That’s a vixen all right,” Gunn said.
“I believe you. Poor old lady—between that maid and the minx of a nurse and Croyland—my God! Well, let’s get on with it. Perhaps there’s some more jolly folks in the house. But look here. We’ll have to watch out for anyone getting into touch with people outside.”
“Might as well ask Nurse Dean who the chap is that wants to see her about what happened with Croyland.”
“I don’t think so, George,” Bell smiled. “We won’t ask Nurse anything more just yet. Why frighten the poor girl? If she’d like to pop off and meet the bloke, that suits us nicely. Just let your men know that anybody who leaves the house is to be shadowed. We’ll run over the household. Croyland’s secretary—housekeeper—butler. That’ll give us the hang of things.”
So they established themselves in the morning room and sent for Gladys.
The mind of Superintendent Bell catalogued her as a business woman. It is not a type he is capable of admiring, but he respected her. If a man must have a woman secretary, which he deplores, it appeared to him that a man could not do much better than Gladys. She was quick, she was clear, she had no nonsense about her.
Gladys did not affect any emotion at Mrs. Garston’s murder. “Pretty ghastly,” was her phrase for it. She couldn’t herself imagine anybody killing the old lady. “Most harmless old thing you ever saw.”
Gladys had never heard of Mrs. Garston having any trouble with the nurse or the maid. Of course there would be some. She was feeble, and didn’t want to be looked after. Like other old people.
A scene at dinner? Gladys smiled tolerance. Yes, a bit of a fuss. The old lady got weepy and queer and Lord Croyland couldn’t stand it. Nothing to think twice about. “An old woman rather nervy and a busy man—that’s all there was to it.” Lord Croyland was always very decent to her.
The maid? Gladys didn’t know much about the maid. “Genuine antique. Faithful family retainer. That kind of thing.”
“You engaged the nurse yourself, didn’t you?” said Bell.
“Not quite. Lord Croyland told me to look out for one. He wanted a nurse enough of a lady to be a companion. So I got on to Miss Dean and he took to her. I knew her at school. She was trained at St. Hugh’s. She’s had nursing-home experience. Looks a bit young, don’t she? But she’s done very well.”
“Well, what it comes to is, you can’t think how it happened?” said Bell.
“I cannot. Mad, it looks like, if you ask me.”
And the housekeeper and the butler were also without theories. They showed in a genteel way more horror than Gladys, more regret. But their feelings had not inspired them with suspicion of anyone. They were free from animosity as she. It emerged from their discretion that neither had a love for the maid. Towards May they exhibited the cool neutrality proper between higher servants and a trained nurse, but they had no personal grudge against her. As for Croyland, a question about him warmed them into respectful sympathy. “It’s been a dreadful thing for his lordship.” That seemed to be their deepest feeling. Bell dismissed them and blinked at Gunn. “They like him, George,” he said solemnly. “Would you believe it? They like him. After that I want my lunch.”
That morning Mr. Clunk also conducted a small investigation.
He wandered about the ruins till he came upon a gardener, a wooden-faced stalwart, and then exhibited all his charm to induce conversation. The effort was not well received. But Mr. Clunk’s affability ignored the broadest hints that he should take himself off. He tripped among the flowers, chirping about them and the skill of the gardener and the delights of Bradstock Abbey and the good fortune of its owner.
The gardener was pushed beyond the limit of his endurance. He thrust his fork deep in the ground, he straightened his back and scowled at Mr. Clunk. “Here! Ain’t you got no decency?” he inquired.
“Dear me, yes, I hope so,” said Mr. Clunk eagerly. “What can I do for you?”
“Dancing about like a little old midge in the sunshine and buz-buzzing,” the gardener rebuked him. “Think shame of yourself.”
“But why should I, my friend? I’m told visitors may come here freely. Lord Croyland very kindly allows____”
“‘Taint what you be allowed to do. ’Tis what’s decent for ’e. Didn’t you never learn no respect? Us don’t want no trippers coming trapesing about to-day.”
“But I’m very sorry to offend you. My dear friend, I had no thought of doing anything wrong. What has happened to-day?”
“You trippers do never know nothing surely,” the gardener spat. “There’s death in the house, that’s what. Mistress died in the night.” He was gratified by the impression he made.
Mr. Clunk stood very still. His large eyes swelled. “Mrs. Garston,” he said in a whisper. He shuddered. He took off his hat and wiped his brow.
“Ah. My lord’s mother.”
“I didn’t know.” Mr. Clunk’s voice was small and humble. “I hadn’t thought of that. That’s terrible indeed.”
“Ah,” the gardener was pleased with him.
“I didn’t know,” Mr. Clunk repeated. “Was she ill?”
“No, no. ’Tis that makes it so mournful. It come on us terrible sudden. Dr. Eves, he can’t tell how she died. There’s the police from Limbay up to the house now.”
“Dear, dear, this is a dreadful thing for you all,” Clunk murmured. “My good fellow, you must have thought me too heartless.” He inserted a half crown into the gardener’s hand. “Of course you don’t want visitors to-day.” He shook a sad sympathetic head and stole away.
But his sorrow was not all affected for the gardener. His face remained paler than its wont, and still confessed fear. Out of sight of the gardener he stopped and sighed, “The poor forlorn soul!” and bent his head and murmured texts which passed into a hymn:
“Deep waters crossed life’s pathway,
The hedge of thorns was sharp:
Now these all lie behind me—
Oh, for a well-tuned harp!”
Much cheered, but looking dreamy rather than his usual alert self, he wandered to the seat in the niche of the arches of the nave and there sat at his ease. After a while he fumbled in his pocket, found a paper of boiled sweets, selected one and sucked. Under that stimulus his face became again wakeful and confident. He looked about him and his prominent eyes gleamed with that pleasure which seemed to Lewis feline.
He stood up, looked warily all round, and delicately made his way among the shrubs and flowers. A syringa was bent and broken as if someone had blundered into it, a patch of columbines was crushed with a footprint.
Mr. Clunk contemplated these injuries and tapped his teeth. It appeared to him that someone had recently made a short cut from the seat in the niche to the drive. Quite recently. The broken columbines were not faded. He gazed back at the smooth stone seat and returned to examine it. “Well, well, well,” he concluded and tripped away to Lewis and his car.
“We had better go and have some lunch, my boy,” he beamed. “Let us go to Bradstock Village.”
Lewis leaned towards him and said confidentially, “Bell’s come on here. And the local. Still inside.”
“So I’m told.” Mr. Glunk got in. “Mrs. Garston is dead, you see. She died mysteriously in the night.”
“I say!” Lewis was shaken from his sardonic composure. “Do you mean murder?”
“Oh yes, certainly, I should think she was murdered.” Mr. Clunk blinked, “Poor soul, I feel quite sure of it.”
“My Lord!” said Lewis with respect. “This case is piling up, sir.”
“A terrible affair, indeed,” Mr. Clunk sighed. “Dear me, I wonder what Superintendent Bell will make of it? But let us be going. I really need my lunch.”
CHAPTER XVII
AFTER LUNCH
May came down to the call of the luncheon gong and found Gladys alone. “Hullo, baby. Let’s go in. The old man’s not having any. Off his feed—and making work. He’s been hanging on the end of the phone all morning. Poor old thing. He’s a terror with a trunk call. I tell you he don’t need a phone when his blood is up. They’d get him with the naked ear in America. Come on. You look about all in, baby.”
“I’m all right, really,” said May, but they went in with Gladys’s arm round her.
“By the way, Jackson,” Gladys turned to the butler, “Lord Croyland wants you to look after the police officers.”
“Thank you, ma’am. It has been attended to.”
Under service which ignored any cause for disturbance, under watchful pressure from Gladys, May found herself eating through a meal which was impossible before it began. But it was a point of honour to be normal, to admit no weakness or dread.
“Good for you, baby,” Gladys laughed, and pushed back her chair. “No use starving the little system, what?” and again encircling May’s waist, took her back into the drawing room. “You’ve got grit, May, I’ll tell the world.” Coffee came. “What about a spot of poison? Benedictine for baby? No? All right, all right. Gasper? No, again. Well, cheerio, old thing.” She lay back luxuriously and blew smoke through her nose. “Did these bright bobbies put you through it?”
“It was rather ghastly,” said May.
Gladys nodded. “Get you on the sore place?”
“Of course they seemed to think it was my fault. I don’t blame them. So it was, in a way.”
“Oh, come off it! You! You couldn’t kill a canary.”
May flushed. “Ah, don’t talk like that. Of course I never hurt her. You know I didn’t, Gladys.”
“I’m saying so, dearie.” Gladys opened her eyes. “Why fuss?”
“She was my patient. I oughtn’t to have let it happen. I ought to have stopped it.”
“As how?” Gladys drawled.
“If I’d been sleeping in her room she wouldn’t have been killed.”
“You never know. She wasn’t killed in her room.”
“That’s what’s so queer. I can’t think what she was doing in that archway.”
“No, that is rum. What do the bobbies think?”
“I don’t know. Of course, she might have been coming to me. They’re bound to think that. Oh, if I’d only been with her.”
“What’s the good of saying that? She wouldn’t have let you. The old girl hadn’t exactly fallen for you, had she?”
“She hated me, I know. Oh, poor thing, it’s too horrible.”
“Did you tell ’em that?”
“That she didn’t like me? Of course I did. That’s part of it.”
“I say, you have been going it, baby.” Gladys lit another cigarette. “Why talk so much?”
“They’ve got to know everything.”
“I should smile. But look here, my child, supposing she was coming to you, who met her on the way?”
“I haven’t an idea. Of course I haven’t.” May wrung her hands. “Gladys, have you?”
“Search me. I can’t half believe she was killed.”
“Oh, she was! She was!” May cried.
“All right. Then somebody went mad. No sense in it. Just temper. What do our bright bobbies think?”
“I don’t know at all.”
“Bit thick in the head, aren’t they? Bone from the mouth up. They’re going to be a damn nuisance, baby. They’ll pinch the lot of us before they’re through.”
“Oh, don’t talk like that!”
“I should worry!” Gladys laughed. “Look here, what about somebody from outside the jolly old place? Have these bright boys thought of that?”
“How can I tell?” May cried. “You mean somebody breaking in? But what for? A sort of burglary? Nothing’s gone, is there?”
“Bless you, no. Not a sign of a burglar. Of course there wasn’t one. That’s why I wondered if these bobbies might go and look for him.”
“They didn’t say anything to me like that.” May pushed back her hair. “It couldn’t be—” She stopped suddenly. “No, it couldn’t.”
“Sure thing.” Gladys looked at her with interest. “Not a chance. Only wanted to know you’d got that right. Won’t do starting false scents. You have to watch your step now, baby. Well, be good.” She slid out.
May was left with her mind in a tumult. She had not been able to think calmly of the murder as a problem. The thought that Croyland had killed his mother was with her from the first as a ghastly probability, yet too horrible for belief. Suspicions of the maid had risen in her, been banished as the ugly fancies of dislike and risen again, but not admitted as possible. She told herself that both had loved the poor woman and her unreasonable heart accepted it. For she was so made that her unconscious desire was not to discover the guilty and punish but to find everyone innocent. A purpose outside reason: she had no doubt that the death was murder and the cowardly cruelty of it a wrong which she was bound to fight against with all her strength, a wrong for which there could be no mercy in earth or heaven.
The cool cross-questioning of Gladys set thought and feeling in a whirl. Gladys was always hard, of course, and rather vulgar—but she had never been so horrid. It was all ghastly before but she made it uglier, taking it in that cold way, as a mess to get rid of. And she thought she was being kind, she meant to be kind, with her warnings about what the police would suspect and taking care to say nothing! Oh, but how vile it was!
May was sure that the police suspected her already. They must, of course. They ought to. She couldn’t do anything but just face it and tell everything.
Everything! That boy Tony Wisberry! When Gladys talked about somebody getting into the house, did she mean it might have been? Was that a warning to know nothing? Had they found a trace of someone getting in?
Oh, but it was mad! That boy never hurt anyone. And why should he come into the house? He said he wouldn’t ever again. He said Lord Croyland had treated him so badly he couldn’t come. What did he say?
She ran upstairs to her room. The fragments of the letter were gone. The waste-paper basket was empty. Of course it would have been cleared. But if somebody had looked at the. letter, if the police knew he had had a quarrel with Lord Croyland!
Well, but a quarrel with Croyland was no reason for breaking into the house. Why should he? He wouldn’t, of course. One only had to look at him to know that. Such a boy! But the police might think so. If Croyland had papers he wanted and wouldn’t give them up—he talked as if there was something like that. Then the police would think he broke in to get them— and Mrs. Garston heard him—and then——
May pulled on her hat and hurried out. He might be on the road where he said—it was a day late—but he might be—he was the sort of man who would come again—or he might be still in the village. She must see him, she must talk to him—ask him——
In the morning room Superintendent Bell pushed away his plate with a sigh of satisfaction.
“They’ve done us very well, I will say,” Inspector Gunn agreed. “That pigeon pie was prime.”
Bell took an easy chair and lit his pipe. “Were you going to tell me what you think of things, George?” he inquired. “I’d like to get it in order, myself.”
“That’s right,” Gunn nodded. “It is all sorts of a muddle. Well, you know, what keeps sticking in my gizzard is they’re a nasty lot of people. Croyland— the nurse—the maid—that smart secretary. I wouldn’t like any of ’em to mind my baby.”
“No, George,” Bell smiled. “But that’s confusing to me. Let’s take it another way, do you mind? Begin from the murder. Leaving out the chance of dope, the woman was killed by throttling. That means a bit o’ strength, though she was old. I should say neither the nurse nor the maid is up to it. The secretary, p’r’aps— she’s a hefty wench. But it’s more a man’s way of killing than a woman’s.”
“I thought of that too. Points Croyland’s way, don’t it? And the nurse said she was calling out a man’s name.”
“Said she thought so,” Bell corrected. “Also said, it wasn’t Henry, which is Croyland’s name. It might have been some pet name his mother used.”
