“It isn’t any good, Manny.”
Mrs. Maniple tossed her head.
“Nor never will be if you go looking at it the way you’re looking at me! I always did say you’d the heartrenderingest way of looking I ever did see, right from a child in arms. And I’ll thank you not to, Miss Julia, for there’s quite enough to do in the house without your turning the milk and making my pudding go sad.”
She was scooping it into the buttered tin as she spoke. When she had finished she went over and put it in the oven. Then she went through to the scullery, ran the cold tap over her hands and arms, and dried them on the roller towel behind the door.
Julia stood where she was and waited till she came back.
“It isn’t any good, Manny. I’ve come to talk to you.”
Mrs. Maniple’s round, apple-red cheeks took on a deeper shade.
“And what was it you was going to say, Miss Julia?”
“I think you know.”
“And what I think is you’d better say it straight out and be done with it. If there’s a thing I can’t abide, it’s hinting, which wasn’t never my way nor it usen’t to be yours. So if you’ve anything to say, you come out with it and let’s have done!”
Julia said, “Very well then, I will. The police have got to be told about those sick attacks that Lois had. They’ve got to be told you gave her ipecacuanha.”
Mrs. Maniple’s colour had deepened to plum. Her bright black eyes looked steadily at Julia.
“And who’s going to tell them?”
Julia wouldn’t look away. She didn’t know how white she was. She wouldn’t look away. She said,
“They’ve got to know.”
Mrs. Maniple came up to the table and put the lid on the flour-bin with a steady hand.
“Then you can tell them-if you don’t think there’s trouble enough in the house already. What I give her didn’t have no more to do with what she died of than the turkey we had for Christmas, and well you know it-a drop of ipecac that wouldn’t have harmed a child-and the last she had going on for a week before she died! Go and tell them, my dear- the sooner the better! I’m not asking you not to.”
Julia said in a different voice,
“They think Jimmy did it-”
Mrs. Maniple dropped a spoon. It fell clattering into the mixing-bowl, but she took no notice.
“They darsn’t!”
“They think it was Jimmy. You know they had quarrelled.”
“No chance of anyone not knowing that with Gladys Marsh in the house-telling everyone what I wouldn’t repeat, though you know it as well as what I do! Like mistress like maid, and not as much shame between them as would lie on a threepenny bit!”
Julia said steadily, “They know about what happened the night Antony was here. They think it gave Jimmy what they call a motive. They’ll think he had another motive too. He got a copy of Lois’ will from her lawyer this morning. She has left him a lot of money. He didn’t know anything about it, but they won’t believe that. Manny, it’s very, very dangerous-they really may believe he did it.”
Mrs. Maniple said, “More fools they!” in a loud, brisk voice. Then she began to roll down her sleeves and fasten the hooks and eyes at the wrists. “And if I’m took, you’ll have to see to the lunch. There’s the cold meat can go into a stew, and Polly can do the vegetables. That’s a slow oven I’ve put the pudding in and you don’t want to touch it. And when the baker comes, tell Polly to take two fresh and one stale.”
“Manny-”
“What’s wrong now? I’m doing what you wanted, aren’t I? Seems to me about time someone up and told those policemen not to make more fools of themselves than they can help. Mr. Jimmy indeed! Why, he’d have laid down on red-hot coals and let her walk over him if she’d wanted to, more’s the pity!” She put a firm hand on Julia’s shoulder. “Don’t you take on, my dear, for I’ll never believe Mr. Jimmy’ll be let come to harm for what wasn’t much better than a common bad woman with no more heart in her than what you’d find in a rotten nut. You make yourself a nice cup of tea and don’t take on. And don’t let that Gladys Marsh into my larder. As likely as not she’ll try it on so soon as my back’s turned- and I won’t have it, and that’s flat!”
CHAPTER 25
In the study Chief Inspector Lamb sat in Jimmy Latter’s writing-chair with a hand on either knee, looking sometimes across the table at Frank Abbott, and sometimes to his right where Miss Silver, a little detached from the proceedings, was knitting. She was halfway through one of the useful grey stockings destined for her niece Ethel’s second boy, Derek. The needles clicked busily. A portrait in oils of the late Mr. Francis Latter looked down from over the mantelpiece and gloomed upon the scene. Considered by all who knew him to be a depressingly accurate likeness, it raised the question as to how near-relations could have so little in common. No one could have supposed him to be Jimmy Latter’s father. Francis Latter stood there, tall, dark, and haggard. There was a hint of his nephew Antony, but Antony had not the tragic look which was, however, very appropriate to the present occasion.
Lamb was speaking.
“It looks pretty black for him-you’ll admit that?”
Miss Silver coughed.
“I am not prepared to contradict you, but I would ask you to bear in mind some of Lord Tennyson’s wisest words. He observes that-
Lamb’s eyes bulged visibly.
“Well, I don’t know about meads and buds and blooms, but when I see a man that’s got every reason to think his wife isn’t any better than she ought to be, and when that man has to admit she’d made a will leaving him a fortune, I don’t have to ask Lord Tennyson’s leave to suspect Mr. Jimmy Latter of having two very good motives for poisoning Mrs. Latter.”
Miss Silver’s needles clicked.
“Two motives may be one too many, Chief Inspector.”
Frank Abbott’s look sharpened to interest.
“Meaning that if he was knocked off his balance by jealousy he wouldn’t be thinking about the money, and if he was all out for the money he wouldn’t have been knocked endways by that scene in Antony Latter’s room?”
Lamb thumped his knee.
“That’s just where you’re wrong then! That’s where you young chaps can make a big mistake. People aren’t all that simple-they’re all mixed up. You’d be surprised if you knew how many different things a man can have in his mind at the same time, first one thing coming up on top and then another. Say a man’s jealous about his wife, but not jealous enough to kill her-he has a quarrel with her about something else. He begins to see that she means to take her way about everything and leave him to take his. He remembers that she holds the purse strings, and that gets his goat. There are sharper and sharper differences about family affairs-he wants to keep the family together, and she wants to split them up. He’s pretty hard up-it’s doubtful if he can run the place without her money-it’s an old place that’s been in the family a long time. That pulls at him. The way she’s carrying on pulls at him-she wants to break up the family, and she’s setting her cap at his cousin. They’re heading for a breach, and if there’s a breach, perhaps he won’t be able to carry on. Then overnight the breach becomes inevitable-he finds her in his cousin’s room. Don’t you see how it all works in together? If it weren’t for the money, he could let her go. If she hadn’t gone too far for him to overlook it, the money by itself mightn’t have got him to the point of murdering her. I say there are two motives here, both of them strong in themselves, and the way they come to bear on this case each of them strengthens the other.”