Rose Pollard opened the door. At first glance Rose looked like a round, soft, primrose-haired doll to go with the toy house, but this illusion lasted only for the fraction of a second it took her large, inquiring eyes to recognise Hewitt. The round face, as delicately- coloured as a nursery-rhyme dairy-maid’s, nevertheless had some form and character when it sharpened into awareness; and there was nothing doll-like about the small, bright flares of fear that sprang up in her eyes. Hewitt was known to everyone, as surely as he knew everyone. But why should she be frightened at the very sight of him? Or, wondered George ruefully, was it occupational naivety on his part even to ask such a question?
She mastered her face, and rather nervously invited them in. The front door gave directly into the tiny living-room, which was as neat and frilly as the exterior of the house suggested it would be. The mind behind that pretty, plaintive face was probably itself furnished in the same innocent fashion; not much style, and no sophistication, but shining with cleanness and prettied up with pouffes, scatter cushions and net curtains. Not a very clever girl, but meant to be gay and bright; and certainly not meant to habit with things or people or thoughts that could frighten her.
“Sorry to butt in on you at dinner, Jim,” said Hewitt placidly, looking over her shoulder at the young man who rose from the table as they entered. “Just a few things I ought to ask you and Rose, if you’ve got a minute or two to give me.”
“That’s all right,” said Jim Pollard, uncoiling his tall young person awkwardly. “We’re finished, Mr. Hewitt. I was late coming in, or we’d have been all cleared away. Is there something the matter?”
He was a brown, freckled boy in a loose sweater and faded dungarees, with a face that must normally have been pleasant, good-natured and candid, but at this moment was clouded with the slight blankness and uncertainty consequent upon being visited by the police. It happens to the most law-abiding, it need mean nothing; but the barrier is instantly there, and the trouble is that there’s never any telling what’s behind it.
“Well, there’s just this matter of Mr. Trethuan’s movements,” said Hewitt with nicely calculated vagueness. “Have you seen him to-day?”
Rose said: “No!” She moved nearer to her husband, and the small, wary lights in her eyes burned paler and taller. The boy said: “No,” too, but in a mystified, patient tone, ready to wait for enlightenment. His steady frown never changed.
“Or yesterday? Well, when did you last see him, Mrs. Pollard?”
“Wednesday morning,” she said, “when I went in to clean. I usually go in Wednesdays and Saturdays and give the house a going-over. He was finishing his breakfast when I went. I only saw him for a few minutes, then he went off to work.”
“And you haven’t seen him since? You don’t know whether he came home that night?”
“Why should she?” said Jim Pollard evenly. “He’s capable, he can look after himself. Often we don’t see him for days on end.”
“Even though he only lives just round the corner in Fore Street?”
“Maybe he does, but it is round the corner, we don’t run into one another going in and out of the back doors. Thank God!” said Jim with deliberation, eyeing Hewitt darkly from under his corrugated brow.
“Now, Jim!” said Rose in a faint murmur of protest.
“Never mind: Now, Jim! Mr. Hewitt knows as well as you do there’s no love lost between your old man and me. Less I see of him, the better. I might as well say so.”
“So you might, lad,” agreed Hewitt placatingly. “Then I take it you don’t know anything about him since your missus saw him Wednesday morning?”
“No, I don’t, Mr. Hewitt. I haven’t set eyes on him since last Sunday in church. What’s he done to interest you?”
Rose shrank under her husband’s hand, and turned her head to shoot him a look of panic entreaty, but all his attention was on Hewitt, and whatever his own disquiet, he seemed to feel nothing of the urgency of hers.
“It isn’t what he’s done,” said Hewitt heavily. “I’m afraid this is going to be a bit of a shock to you, Rose, my girl. Your father was found this morning by Mr. Towne and the others, when they went to open the Treverra vault—”
Her soft, round face lost its colour in one gasp, blanched to a dull, livid pallor. Her eyes stared, enormous and sick. Her lips moved soundlessly, saying: “In the vault—?” Then her mouth shook, and she crammed half her right fist into it, like a child, and swallowed a muted cry.
“Yes, in the vault. He’s dead, Rose. I’m sorry!”
Her knees gave way under her, and Jim caught her in his arms and held her, turning her to him gently. “Now, love, don’t! Come on, now, Rose, hold up!”
She clung to him and wept, but they were not tears of any particularly poignant grief, only of excitement, and nervous tension, and—was it possible?—relief. She cried easily, freely, with no convulsive physical struggle. Even fear was submerged, or so it seemed, until Hewitt added rather woodenly: “It looks like foul play. We shall have a lot of work to do on the case before we have full information. We’ll be in close touch with you. And if you can think of anything that may help to fill in his movements in the last days, we shall be glad to have it.”
“Are you trying to tell us,” demanded Jim Pollard, scowling over his wife’s blonde head, “that old Zeb’s been murdered?”
“Yes,” said Hewitt mildly, “that’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you.”
Then they were both absolutely still; and perceptibly, even while they stood motionless, they withdrew into themselves, and very carefully and gently closed the doors to shut the world and Hewitt out. Jim tightened his hold on his wife, and that was the only reaction there was to be seen in him. Rose—and how much more significant that was!—Rose drew a long, slow, infinitely cautious breath, and stopped crying on the instant. She needed her powers now for more urgent purposes.
“Well,” said Hewitt, turning the car uphill again at the corner of Fore Street, “what do you make of them?”
“Rose is frightened,” said George. “Very frightened. Her husband, as far as I can see, is merely normally cagey. When the police come around asking about one of the family, nobody’s at his most expansive. But what’s more interesting is that she was frightened before you even asked a question. And most frightened of all when you mentioned the Treverra vault, before—I think—she realised you meant he was dead.”
“Ah!” said Hewitt cryptically, but with every appearance of satisfaction with his own thoughts. “You do notice things, don’t you? I just wanted to know. Then you can’t very well have missed the broom-marks.”
“Broom-marks?” said George carefully.
“On the steps of the vault. And the floor, too. Mr. Towne didn’t have a broom down there, but somebody did. Very delicately done, but still it showed. Take another look at the corners, where none of you stepped to-day. Somebody had moved around that room, and then carefully swept it, and dusted a layer of sand over it again to wipe out the prints. Almost impossible to do it as smoothly as time and the wind do it.”
He slanted a knowing look along his shoulder at George’s wooden face.
“Ah, come off it! I’m not in the excise. It’s a murderer I’m after. I’m not interested in what a whole bunch of people were doing in there just ahead of the researchers. Murder is a solitary crime, Mr. Felse. No easy-going muddle of local brandy-runners put Trethuan in Jan Treverra’s coffin, that I’ll bet my life on. But what I am interested in—”