“Did your walk by any chance bring you out in this direction?”
Giles stared, said “No”, and then suddenly stiffened. The word conveys a little too much. Only very sharp eyes would have noticed that the muscle between cheek and jaw had tautened. Frank Abbott’s eyes were very sharp indeed. He thought, “He’s just tumbled to the fact that he’s made a damaging admission. Good control-his hand didn’t move. I wonder if he did come back.”
Lamb said affably, “Thank you, Major Armitage-we needn’t keep you or Miss Underwood any longer.”
CHAPTER 25
Mrs. Smollett went downstairs in a very glorified state. She met Mr. Willard coming up. He looked as if he had been up all night, and he looked as if he had been drinking-two things so extraordinary in so proper a gentleman that Mrs. Smollett, who had usually no difficulty in believing anything about anyone, really did feel some difficulty about stretching her mind to take them in.
As she passed through the hall, Miss Crane popped out of No. 1 with an alacrity which suggested that she had been on the look-out and had no intention of letting a possible source of information pass her by.
“Oh, Mrs. Smollett, do come in for a minute! Such an unpleasant experience! How did you get on? I thought perhaps a cup of tea-and perhaps a dash of brandy in it just to steady your nerves-”
Mrs. Smollett responded graciously. She wasn’t making herself cheap. She had become an important personage and she knew it. Reporters would question her, her photograph would be in all the papers, but she had no objection to a rehearsal. Miss Crane was an audience. Hot tea and brandy were a lure. She pressed a hand to a massive side and said the spasms were something cruel and she didn’t mind if she did.
Miss Crane was most appreciative. She didn’t know how Mrs. Smollett bore up as well as she did. And as for going into the witness-box and having to take an oath and swear to things, well, she always hoped she would never have to do anything of the sort, for she was quite sure she would never survive it.
“There was a young man here just now wanting to know when any of us saw Miss Roland last, and whether we’d seen Major Armitage. Such a handsome soldierly-looking man. Major Armitage, not the detective, though he was quite a nice-looking young man too. And of course I was able to say that we hadn’t. Such a comfort, because one doesn’t want to get anyone into trouble. But as I told him, none of us actually went outside the flat yesterday except just down to the post in the evening. And then I didn’t see anyone at all except Miss Garside coming up from the basement. And I wondered what she’d been doing there, though of course no business of mine. And as I said to him, I can’t be too thankful, because anything like being dragged into a murder case would have a very bad effect indeed on Mrs. Meredith’s state of health, and that must always be my first consideration. She was quite poorly yesterday-that’s why we didn’t go out. Packer and I were quite anxious. But I’m glad to say she had a good night and is a great deal more like herself this morning.”
Packer, happening to pass through the room at this moment, was called upon to confirm the happy improvement. She was a tall, lanky woman with hard features and a sour expression. There was no softening of either as she jerked head and shoulder in something which might be construed as assent and went out again, shutting the door with what was not quite a bang.
Miss Crane, sighed and said in a deprecating manner,
“That’s the worst of a murder-it’s so very upsetting. Packer is quite upset. Now, Mrs. Smollett, another cup of tea-and a dash, just a dash of brandy-”
Mr. Willard had passed Mrs. Smollett on the landing without seeing her. He used his key to let himself into No. 6 and, crossing the lobby, pushed open the sitting-room door. The curtains were still drawn and the electric light blazing. At any other time this sinful extravagance would have called forth a well-phrased and pertinent rebuke. The state of Mr. Willard’s mind is indicated by the fact that he hardly noticed it. He came just inside the door and stood there staring at his wife.
Mrs. Willard was sitting at the fumed-oak writing-table. She was still in the dress she had worn the night before, an artificial silk patterned in red and green. It looked as clothes look when they have been up all night. Mrs. Willard looked that way too. She had stopped crying hours ago. The handkerchief which had been a soaked rag at midnight lay forgotten in the corner of the couch. It was almost dry. It was nearly ten hours since she had left it there and gone up the last flight of stairs to the top landing, her usually placid mind in a state of conflagration at the thought that Alfred was behind that right hand door, the door of No. 8. It was these flames which had dried her tears. Afterwards she had been too cold to cry. She had come back to her room and sat down upon the couch again, and the time had gone slowly by.
It was not until nine o’clock that she went over to the writing-table and rang up Alfred’s brother. The Ernest Willards lived in Ealing. Ernest was a clerk in the Admiralty. She had come very slowly and stiffly to the conclusion that Alfred might be at The Limes. She dialled the number, and was answered immediately by a click and Ernest’s voice. Very like Alfred’s, but a little lower in tone. The resemblance was strengthened by a note of displeasure.
“Yes, Alfred is here. We are just about to start-in fact we should have started already. You had better ring him at his office.”
Mrs. Willard said in a cold, dull tone,
“I can’t, Ernest. He will have to come home. Something has happened here. Will you tell him that Miss Roland was murdered last night.” She rang off, letting the receiver fall clattering back upon its stand.
After that she didn’t move, just sat there in her crumpled dress, her hair fallen untidily about her neck. The flush which had covered her face changed to a heavy waxen pallor.
Mr. Willard stood and stared at her. For a moment she was someone he had never seen before. And then his own sense of shock and misery blotted that out and she was Amelia again- Amelia who was always kind, Amelia who nursed him when he was ill, Amelia to whom he had been married for twenty years. He came over to her at a stumbling run, dropped down, put his head in her lap, and burst out crying like a child who has lost a glittering toy. His dry precision gone, he found simple phrases, broken by sobs.
“She was-so beautiful. There wasn’t anything-in it, Amelia. It was just-that she was-so beautiful. I didn’t even-kiss her-she wouldn’t let me. She laughed at me-and called me- a funny little man. Perhaps I am-but she was-so beautiful-”
After a moment Amelia Willard put her arms round him. No child had ever called to her in vain. It was the child in Alfred that she loved. For the sake of that child she had for twenty years put up with his tidiness, his fault-finding, his dictatorial ways. When he was tired, when he was unhappy, when he was ill, the child would cling to her. The agony of last night had been the agony of believing that the child was dead.
She held him now, rocking him, and saying foolish, loving things. After a while he lifted a tear-stained face. His glasses were crooked and smudged. He took them off, dried and polished them, wiped his eyes, blew his nose, put the glasses on again, and gazed at Amelia. When he had drawn away from her she had rested her right elbow on the table, lifting the hand to prop her head.
Alfred Willard’s gaze became fixed and horrified. The sleeve which fell away from that lifted hand was stained and dabbed with blood.
CHAPTER 26
Mrs. Underwood sat in the tubular chair. She thought how uncomfortable it was, and tried to remember that she was a Wing Commander’s wife, and that the stout man facing her was, after all, just a plain-clothes policeman, not so very far removed from the constable who stops the traffic for you and helps you on your way in the black-out. She had put on a smart hat and taken pains with her face, but none of these things prevented her from feeling as if more than twenty years had been rolled away and she was Mabel Peabody again, dreadfully frightened and wishing that the ground would open and swallow her up. Old Lamb, country born and bred, was reminded of any scared animal. Fear is fear, and you can’t hide it. Cows in a burning shed- he’d seen that when he was a boy and never forgotten it-a rat in a trap, sheep when a dog has been worrying them, a badly startled horse, and this fine lady in her smart London clothes- frightened creatures, the lot of them. He didn’t wonder what Mrs. Underwood had to be frightened about, because he knew. That is to say, he knew enough to be going on with. There might be more to it. There might even be a great deal more, but this would do for a start.