Miss Silver shook her head.
“I am very much afraid that she will not go.”
CHAPTER 27
Fred Flaxman was talking big in the local. He had been in foreign parts, not just as so many of them had, under the tedium and discipline of army life, but in a kind of glorious splashing freedom.
“When I was valet to the Honourable John de Bent-” he would begin, and before you knew where you were you were in the midst of most thrilling adventures-lovely women, dark secrets, night-clubs more astonishing than could be imagined, murder, mystery, and what have you.
“Cross my heart, chaps, he said good-night to us with no more than fifty yards to go-up one street and round the corner-and no one never saw him again!”
Or it might be, “Nobody hadn’t seen her come in. No noise, no sound of the door-nothing. And there she was, staring at us out of those big eyes and holding her cloak tight up under her chin. Till all of a sudden she drops down dead with a great stab wound in her side, and no one to say how she come by it!”
This was a side of Flaxman’s character which would have greatly surprised his present employer. On the whole, it went down well in the Falcon. Some of the men laughed at him behind his back, but they found him good company and were willing to be entertained. It was only Tom Humphreys who kept his shoulder turned and stared moodily down at his beer while the tales went on. He was old Humphreys’ second son and the father of the handsome Nellie.
There had certainly been stories about Nellie in the past. She had a roving eye, and no disposition to keep anyone’s house but her father’s. She had always been perfectly frank about it. “Marry, and you have half a dozen kids under your feet before you can turn round! It’s no thank you for me! Look at poor Milly-up nights with that baby teething and looking fit to drop, and another one on the way! You’d never think she used to be better looking than me-now would you? Well, she was, and see where it’s landed her! I’m not walking into anything like that, thank you!” Tom Humphreys was said to be afraid of her. At any rate he knew when he was well off. His house was spotless and his food well cooked. He worked at some big nursery gardens at Wraydon, and he could be relied on to drink his couple of pints most nights and make them last till closing-time.
It wasn’t much after nine o’clock when Flaxman looked at his watch, finished his beer, and said he must be off. He went out with a laughing “Good-night, all!” and the darkness swallowed him up. He had not been gone for more than ten minutes, when Tom Humphreys muttered something to which nobody could put words and went lurching out after him. There was a loose joke or two, and then no more about it.
But Fred Flaxman didn’t come home that night. Mrs. Flaxman sat waiting, seething with jealous anger until round about three in the morning the anger died in her and she was cold. He wouldn’t stay out all night, not with Nellie Humphreys-he darsn’t! Everyone knew Tom Humphreys went home as soon as the pubs were shut. Ten o’clock. Even if he’d stayed in Wraydon and gone to the Rose or the Gardener’s Arms he’d be home by the half hour or the quarter to. And Nellie wouldn’t dare keep a man in her room if her father was home. Or would she? Would she? She fell into uncertainty again. Her code was a very simple one of black and white. There were good women and bad women. Good women were good, and bad women were bad. The bad woman was the enemy from the beginning. She would take a man from his duty, she would take him from his wife and children, she would spend his money. There was nothing bad she would not do. She was badness itself. She had to be fought. But the good woman had no weapon. If she spoke her mind, the man only ran the more eagerly to the woman who spoke him fair. She began to be sure that Nellie had kept Fred there in the dark cottage, with her father asleep and deceived under the selfsame roof.
At four o’clock she left the back door unlocked and went heavily upstairs to bed, where she fell into a dreary sleep, and waked with a start to the sound of the alarm clock. It was half past six, and Fred Flaxman had not come home.
CHAPTER 28
Come nine o’clock there was a ring of the front door bell. When Florrie went to answer it she found a tall policeman there. She knew more about him than he did about her. His name was Ben Sales, and he was new at Wraydon. All the girls had seen him on point duty, and they thought he was lovely. She wondered what he had come for. If it was tickets for the police dance, perhaps Mr. Trent would give them all one like he did last year. She put on her best smile as she took him to the study, and tripped away to tell Geoffrey Trent that there was a policeman to see him.
Geoffrey had not yet sat down to his breakfast. He was warming himself at the dining-room fire. He said in a tone of annoyance,
“What an hour to come bothering one! What on earth can he want?”
Out of the abundance of the mouth the heart speaketh. Florrie looked at him with eyes like saucers.
“Please, sir, I thought it might be about the police dance.”
Geoffrey went out frowning. When he had shut the study door on himself and the good-looking young man who towered between him and the light, any opening he had intended was quashed by the enquiry,
“You have a butler of the name of Frederick Flaxman?”
“Certainly.”
“Are you aware that he did not return to your house last night?”
Geoffrey’s “No!” was sharp. “What on earth-”
Constable Sales said,
“I’m afraid you must be prepared for a shock, sir. The man was found dead this morning on the piece of waste ground at the end of Marsham Lane.”
“Dead! You don’t say so! He never complained of any illness!”
“He didn’t die of any illness, sir. He had received a charge of shot about the head and shoulders, but it would not have proved fatal. The cause of his death was a stab wound.”
When Mrs. Flaxman was told she did not cry. She just sat in a kind of heavy daze and thought of all the times that Fred had run after women. And now it was a woman who had brought him to his death-because there was nobody doubted but that Tom Humphreys had let his temper get the better of him and done murder on the man that was making his daughter the talk of the place.
Tom was arrested at the nurseries where he worked. Mrs. Larkin who had the next cottage could testify to hearing high words the night before. The time would be round about half past nine. The voices were so loud she came out on to the front door step to listen. “There was Tom Humphreys carrying on something shocking, Nellie crying, and Mr. Flaxman standing off out in the road trying to smooth it all down, saying things like, ‘No harm done,’ and ‘Couldn’t anyone drop in for a friendly chat?’ And Mr. Humphreys says, ‘Not in a single woman’s bedroom he can’t! And not in my house he don’t!’ ”
Mrs. Larkin was more than willing to repeat her statement to all and sundry.
“And with that he goes in, and comes out again with his gun, and, ‘You be off,’ he says, ‘or you’ll get a peppering! And if I ever catch you here again, you’ll get something worse!’ Mr. Flaxman he calls out something and he turns to go. I couldn’t hear rightly what he said, but it must have aggravated Mr. Humphreys, for he let fly with his gun. Nellie she lets out a screech, and Mr. Humphreys takes her by the shoulder and pushes her into the house. Then he goes in himself and locks the door. Mr. Flaxman he stands there shaking himself and swearing. But when I called out to him was he all right, and was there anything I could do, he said I could mind my own business. Real nasty of him, I thought it was, so I went in and shut my door and went to bed.”