Giles nodded.
“Yes-she did.”
“To substantiate a claim that she was your wife?”
“Not quite that.” He reached over to touch Meade on the arm and say, “It’s all right, darling-don’t look like that.”
Lamb was frowning over the letter.
“Is this your writing?”
“Certainly it is. I wrote the letter, and as you will have read for yourself, I offered Carola an allowance on condition that she dropped the name of Armitage to which she had a legal right. The letter is more than a year old. To the best of my recollection it was written in August ’40.”
“The thirteenth of August.”
“Yes, that would be it. If I hadn’t been suffering from loss of memory I could have explained the whole thing right away.” He gave a short laugh. “In point of fact, if it hadn’t been for that, the thing would never have come up at all. It was a pure try-on. She wanted to score me off, and she took a chance that I wouldn’t remember.”
Meade was looking at him now. They were all looking at him. Lamb said quietly,
“And can you remember, Major Armitage?”
He gave a most emphatic nod.
“Yes, I can. It would have saved a lot of trouble if I could have done it before, but I suppose it was really the shock of this business that brought my memory back. They all said a shock might do it, and by gum it did. Not at the time, you know, but afterwards. I went to bed and I went to sleep, and I woke up just short of midnight with everything as clear as daylight. I rang Miss Underwood up then and told her not to worry.”
Colour came to Meade’s cheeks. She said,
“Oh, yes-he did!”
Frank Abbott cocked a quizzical, cold eye. What was the chap handing them? The shock-what shock? The shock of murdering Carola Roland?
Lamb put the question in his slow, heavy voice.
“What shock do you refer to, Major Armitage? Miss Roland’s death?”
The fair brows drew together with a jerk. They were oddly light against the brown skin. The blue eyes brightened, angrily, warily.
“No, of course not! I didn’t know she was dead.”
“What shock were you referring to then?”
Giles gave that short laugh again.
“The shock of having a perfectly strange young woman trying to make me believe I’d married her in a fit of temporary insanity or something. And now perhaps you’ll let me explain who she was, and how I came to write that letter.”
Frank Abbott bent to his notes. Well, well, well!’ Nice chap- impetuous chap. Wonder if he came back and did her in before he remembered whatever it was he did remember. She was getting between him and his girl. Murders have been done for less than that. And he’d had a crump on the head… He heard Giles Armitage say in a quiet, level voice,
“She was my brother’s widow.”
Meade said, “Oh!” Everything in her relaxed-the tight straining muscles, the tight straining thoughts. A kind of happy weakness came over her. She leaned back as far as she could against the chromium tubes and shut her eyes. Warm drops welled up behind her lashes and rolled down slowly one by one until her face was wet. She let them fall. It didn’t matter at all-nothing mattered. She heard Lamb say something, but the words didn’t reach her. Then Giles again:
“Yes, my brother Jack’s widow. He was killed at Dunkirk. He had married her in the previous March-March 17th 1940, at the Marylebone register office. But I didn’t know anything about it till after he was killed-no one did. I was at Dunkirk myself, but I was lucky. After I got home Carola came to see me. She plonked her marriage certificate down in front of me and said what was I going to do about it. Jack hadn’t left her a sou-he hadn’t anything to leave. He was only twenty-one when he was killed, and all he’d ever had was an allowance from me. It was a good allowance, because I always thought it was unfair that I should have all the money. Jack was eight years younger, and I inherited from my father under an old will made before my brother was born. He must have meant to alter it, but he crashed in the hunting-field when Jack was only six months old. I always meant to square things up, but I wasn’t prepared to hand over to Carola. That’s where I piled up the grudge she was trying to pay off. Finally I wrote the letter you’ve got there, and she agreed to my terms.”
“May I ask why you wanted her to drop the name of Armitage?”
There was no answer for a moment. Then Giles said,
“I had my reasons. It’s nothing to do with this case.”
“I’m sorry, Major Armitage, but it might be. You must see that Miss Roland’s character might have quite a lot to do with her being murdered.”
He got a shrug of the shoulders.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to find that out for yourself. I can’t help you.”
There was a pause. Then Lamb said pleasantly,
“Well, Major Armitage, I won’t press you. But I’m sure you will want to give us any help you can. You were here for about twenty minutes, and you have said that there was nothing that you could call a quarrel. Did you have a drink with Miss Roland?”
Giles stared.
“Certainly not.”
“Were there drinks in the room?”
“I didn’t notice any.”
Lamb turned in his chair. He indicated a stool set before the hearth between two chairs in blue and grey brocade, a spindly thing with twisted chromium legs and a silver leather top.
“If there had been a tray on that stool, you would have noticed it?”
“I might have-yes, as a matter of fact I should. I went over to the mantelpiece and picked up that photograph. If the stool had been where it is now it would have been in the way. It wasn’t there.”
“You went over to the mantelpiece to look at the photograph. Did you touch it?”
“Yes, I picked it up. It must be the one I gave my brother. I certainly never gave one to Carola.”
“Did you notice anything else on the mantelpiece-anything that isn’t there now?”
Giles looked. Except for his photograph the silver shelf was empty. His eyes narrowed for an instant. Then he said,
“There was some kind of a statuette-a girl dancing. It isn’t there now.”
Lamb said drily,
“No, it isn’t there now. Did you take it in your hand or touch it at all?”
Giles looked surprised.
“Oh, no.”
The Inspector turned back to the table.
“I suppose you will have no objection to letting us have your fingerprints? Just routine procedure. We would like to eliminate the prints of anyone whom we know to have been in this room.”
Giles gave that slight grim smile. He got up, came over to the table, and held out his hands.
“Here you are! A little crude though, isn’t it? I thought one was handed a letter to look at after cross-examination had produced the right degree of clamminess.”
Lamb allowed himself to smile. He had good teeth.
“Thank you, Major Armitage, we haven’t always time to go round about when there’s a short, straight way. And now, just to finish up. You left Miss Underwood at about ten minutes to seven. Do you mind telling me what you did after that?”
“Not at all. I went back to my rooms in Jermyn Street and tried to get a line on my solicitor, who was out of town. I got an address, but when I got on to it he had left. They said he’d be in office by ten o’clock this morning, so I decided to see him then. I went over to the club to have something to eat, and then I went out for a walk.”
There was a flicker behind Frank Abbott’s light eyelashes. The chap was either a damned fool, or else he was innocent. He didn’t look like a fool, but of course you never could tell. He didn’t look like a murderer either-but then murderers didn’t- not unless they were crazy. This chap wasn’t crazy-just impetuous, and mortal fond of that little white-faced girl. Well, he’d just made them a present of a nice long walk in the dark which might very well have brought him back to Putney in time to do Carola Roland in. He made a note of this, and Lamb put the question.