“Women always do,” said Bell with a twinkle in his eye.
Mr. Barker heaved a reminiscent sigh.
“ Ada ’s very like her,” he said.
At half past nine Bell took his way back to Vandeleur House. At ten he shut the outside door and adjourned to the basement, where he had a final look round before going to bed. Everything was neat and clean, everything was in order. On the old kitchen dresser eight keys hung in a row, each from its own brass hook. They were all there. Miss Underwood had brought back Mrs. Spooner’s key. She must have come down with it whilst he was out. All the keys were there. Bell went to bed, and slept until his alarm-clock went off at half past six on Thursday morning.
In due course all except three of the inhabitants of Vandeleur House went to bed, and some of them slept. Those who did not go to bed were Miss Carola Roland, Mrs. Willard, and Miss Garside. Mr. Willard did not go to bed either-at least not to his own bed in his own flat. But, as it turned out afterwards, he was not in Vandeleur House at all, which is one of the reasons why Mrs. Willard sat up all night.
Meade Underwood went to bed and to sleep. She went to bed because she wanted to be alone, and she slept because she was too exhausted to stay awake. It was a troubled sleep, vexed by dreams which cast a shadow on her thoughts but never came to sight.
She woke suddenly to the sound of the telephone bell. It rang again before she could lift the receiver. Giles’ voice came urgently to her ear.
“Meade-Meade-is that you?”
She said, “Yes,” and as she said it, the pink enamel clock on the mantelpiece began to strike twelve.
Giles said, “What’s that?” and she said, “It’s only the clock striking.” And then he said, “Never mind about the clock. It’s all right, darling. I can’t tell you about it now, but it’s all right- she won’t bother us any more. I can’t tell you over the telephone, but there won’t be any more trouble. I’ll be round in the morning.”
The line went dead. The clock had finished striking. Meade lay awake a long time, but her waking thoughts were happier than her sleeping ones had been.
The first thing she heard in the morning was that Carola Roland had been found dead in her flat.
CHAPTER 21
It was Mrs. Smollett who found her. Eight o’clock was her time for going up to No. 8, and she was punctual to the minute. Afterwards she produced a dramatic version in which as soon as she took the key from its hook she had a kind of sinking in her inside-“Felt cold in my hand that key did-not like it ought to have done-cold and kind of heavy, if you take my meaning. And all the way up those stairs-which is enough to break any woman’s heart, but I wouldn’t get in that lift, not if you paid me-all the way up I kept thinking to myself, ‘There’s something wrong. I don’t feel like this, for nothing.’ And when I saw the door was on the jar, well-”
Actually, Mrs. Smollett had felt nothing at all except the stairs, which were an old story and a standing grievance. She came out on the top landing, turned to face the door of No. 8, and found that she would not need to use her key. Even then it did not occur to her that there was anything wrong. She thought Miss Roland must be up and had unlatched the door for her. She put the key in her apron pocket and walked in. The light was on in the hall, but there was nothing remarkable about that, these entrances being lighted only by way of glass transoms over the doors which opened upon them. If the curtains were still drawn in these rooms, there would be no light at all. She went into the kitchenette, took down the black-out curtains, drew up the blind, and put on a kettle. Then she opened the sitting-room door.
Under the shaded light of an ornamental bowl which hung from the ceiling she saw Carola Roland lying face downwards on the pale blue carpet. She was still in her white dress. Her face was hidden, but she lay as the living do not lie. Here Mrs. Smollett’s version coincides with the facts. It never occurred to her for a moment to doubt that Miss Roland was dead. The light showed a horrible dark stain on the carpet and on that bright synthetic hair. The colour of the stain was a reddish brown.
Mrs. Smollett backed away from the door with her hand at her side-backed right out of the flat and across the landing, and ran helter-skelter down the stairs for Bell.
Old Jimmy Bell behaved with great presence of mind. He told Mrs. Smollett to stay where she was and went up in the lift. Outer and inner doors of No. 8 stood wide. There was no need to touch them, and he took care not to do so. Well, it was murder and no mistake about it. Little Carrie Jackson that he had seen going to school with her hair in a plait-old Mr. Jackson’s little Carrie that he’d been mortal proud of until she broke his heart. Spoiled, that’s what she was-spoiled. Spare the rod and spoil the child. Not that he held with beatings and suchlike for children, but they did ought to be checked. Carrie had never been checked. His crumpled cheeks lost their rosy apple-colour as he stood looking down at her. He had served through the last war and seen plenty of dead men in his day, but you got out of the way of it, and a girl was different. This was murder-a girl murdered in one of his flats.
He went over to the telephone and called up the police. It was while he was waiting for them that he noticed the tray set out with drinks. It stood on a low stool between two armchairs in front of the electric fire. Both bars of the fire were on. He started to turn them off, but stopped himself in time. Of course nothing must be touched until the police came.
The tray was of scarlet lacquer with a gilt pattern round the edge, and the glasses very fine and showy with gold rims. There was a bottle of whisky, a syphon of soda, some red wine in a cut-glass decanter, and a plate of sweet biscuits. Both the glasses had been used, one for the whisky, and the other, a much smaller glass, for the wine. He could smell the whisky.
The tray was the first thing he noticed. It wasn’t until just before the police arrived that something else struck him. The mantelpiece-there was something queer about the mantelpiece. Well, what was it? Difficult to say, but something queer. That there photograph for one thing-photograph of Major Armitage with his name written across it. That was queer if you like. But it wasn’t the photograph, it was something else. And then it came to him. It was that gimcrack statue of a dancing girl doing a high kick with next to nothing on, and none too decent by his way of thinking. That was it-the statue was gone from the mantelpiece.
And then he saw it, thrown down on the couch. He went over and looked at it. Because the queerness didn’t end with its being there, it only began that way. The dancer lay where she had fallen from somebody’s hand. The pointed silver toe was sharp and bright-almost as sharp as a dagger, almost as bright as steel. The whole poised figure was silver-bright and clean, but just where it had fallen there was an ugly stain on the blue and grey brocade, and the colour of the stain was the same as the colour of the stain on the pale blue carpet.
With the tramping of boots and the sound of voices the police arrived. Bell turned away from the couch and went to meet them.
CHAPTER 22
Chief Inspector Lamb sat at a table in what had been Carola Roland’s sitting-room. It was the most solid of the tables in the flat, but his mind condemned it as gimcrack. He himself was on the massive side, a stout man with a small, shrewd eye and a heavy jowl. His hair was thin on the top, but even his promotion had brought no grey to it-very strong black hair.
The routine which waits on murder had run its course. The photographer and the fingerprint man had done their jobs. The body had been removed and the blue carpet rolled up. The figure of the dancing girl had been carefully packed up and taken away for examination.