Miss Crane had her foolish smile.
“Now who could have told you that?”
“She used to talk about the Pantiles and the Toad Rock when she first came here, did she not-and about her house on Mount Pleasant? To anyone who has ever been in Tunbridge Wells-”
Miss Crane laughed her giggling laugh.
“Oh dear-how clever you are! I should never have thought of that!”
“No,” said Miss Silver. “You were not with Mrs. Meredith then, I think? You have not in fact been with her for very long, have you?”
Miss Crane stopped laughing. She looked puzzled and concerned.
“I don’t understand. No, really. There is no secret about it all. Oh, none at all. A very dear cousin of mine was with Mrs. Meredith for many, many years. When she died I was only too pleased to take her place. I am sure I have tried to make up for her loss in every way. You will not ask me to neglect her now, will you? I really must be going.”
She began to move towards the door. She still had the large white handkerchief in her hand. Giles Armitage, who had risen when she did, walked beside her. She lifted the handkerchief to her eyes for a moment, and then, still holding it, her hand went down into the pocket of the drab raincoat and there remained, gripped and held by Giles.
In a flash she twisted to free herself, and with such a sudden trick of the muscles that she was almost out of his grip.
It was Miss Silver who caught the other wrist and held on to it till Frank Abbott got there. There were some horrible moments. Meade sickened and shut her eyes. A woman struggling with men-three of them trying to hold her. Horrible!
Fierce panting breath. The men’s feet scuffing on Carola’s blue carpet. And then the sound of a shot.
Meade opened terrified eyes, got to her feet, and felt the floor tilt under them. Giles-the shot-Giles! And then what had been a swaying, struggling group resolved itself, and she saw him. He was still holding Miss Crane by the wrist, but she was falling back, limp and pale, between Sergeant Abbott and the Chief Inspector. A small automatic pistol lay where it had fallen at Giles’ feet. As Meade looked, he hooked it dexterously and kicked it away. Mrs. Underwood screamed on a high, shrill note, but whether this came first or next, Meade never was quite sure, because at the time everything seemed to happen together- Mr. Willard saying in a horrified voice, “She has shot herself”; Miss Crane sagging against the two men, her head hanging, her eyes fixed, her pale mouth horribly open; Mabel Underwood’s scream; and then Miss Crane suddenly, galvanically in action again. There was a yelp from Lamb as the hand which was holding her was bitten almost to the bone. With a violent twist she was free and with a single spring had reached the open window.
Giles and Sergeant Abbott reached it too, but not in time. Desperate haste had taken her over the sill to the ledge beneath, and from there on to the fire-escape. They could see her a yard or two below, going down at a speed which spoke of practice. As Giles threw a leg over the sill to follow her, Frank Abbott caught his arm.
“No need,” he said. “They’re waiting for her down there.”
They watched her drop the last few feet and turn to find herself surrounded.
This time there was no break-away.
CHAPTER 49
Miss Silver gave a tea-party a few days later. She was back in her own flat with Bubbles, The Soul’s Awakening, The Black Brunswicker, and The Monarch of the Glen gazing from their maple frames upon the scene. Bubbles and the damsel in The Soul’s Awakening could not truthfully be said to enjoy a view of anything but the ceiling, but that was the fault of the upturned gaze with which the artist had endowed them. The Black Brunswicker’s lady and the Monarch had been more kindly treated. They looked down upon Nicholas and Agnes Drake, Meade Underwood and Giles Armitage, and upon Frank Abbott, off duty and very much at his ease.
Miss Silver’s tea was of the excellent blend and making dreamed of but seldom achieved. There was enough milk, there was real sugar, there was even a little cream in a small antique silver jug. There were scones and buns of the valuable Emma’s best. There was raspberry jam. It was like the pleasantest kind of schoolroom tea.
Miss Silver beamed kindly upon her guests. She was delighted at the happiness which radiated from the Drakes, and delighted to hear that Meade and Giles were to be married without delay. She received with pleasure the admiring attentions of Sergeant Abbott. Altogether a very pleasant party.
But the dark background against which they had played their parts so short a time before could hardly be ignored. Behind the happiness and the agreeable talk it was still there, like a shadow which has been left behind but cannot be forgotten. At first they did not speak of it at all. The Drakes were leaving Vandeleur House. The lease of his flat was up, and they were looking for something in the country.
“It doesn’t really matter where I live, you know,” said Nicholas Drake.
Frank Abbott, with his lazy, impudent smile, now put the question which everyone wanted to ask.
“Are you really a pork butcher?”
“Selwood’s Celebrated Sausages,” said Mr. Drake, looking more romantic than ever.
“Lucrative?” said Frank.
“Oh, very. I’ll tell you about it if you like. I was going to the other day, but the roof fell in. I’d like to, because it’s a story about some very nice people and some very good friends. I was reading for the Bar when the last war started. I hadn’t any near relations, and I had quite a reasonable income. By the time I got out of the army in 1919 I hadn’t any income at all. My gratuity went west, and by 1921 I hadn’t the price of a meal. Then I bumped into Mrs. Selwood. She’d been our cook, and she married Selwood from our house when he had a little shop in a little country town. By the time I met her he had three shops, and the sausages were beginning to take on. She made me go home with her, and they gave me a job. After three years they made me manager of one of the shops. Business boomed-the three shops increased and multiplied many times-the sausages became celebrated. When Selwood died two years ago I was stupefied to find he’d left the whole concern to me. He said I’d been like a son to them, and Mrs. Selwood wouldn’t want to be bothered with the business. He’d settled enough to make her comfortable, and he knew I’d look after her.”
Miss Silver smiled her kindest smile.
“That is a very nice story, Mr. Drake. It is indeed pleasant to realise how many kind and generous people there are in the world. It is particularly salutary when one has been brought into unwilling contact with crime.”
Frank Abbott looked at her with a malicious gleam in his pale blue eyes.
“It was our duty and we did,” he murmured. “Now you’re going to reward us, aren’t you-let us ask questions and tell us all the answers?”
He received an indulgent smile.
“I think, Mr. Abbott, you know the answers already.”
He murmured, “Call me Frank,” and went on a thought hastily, “I’d love to hear them again. And I don’t know them all-least I don’t suppose I do. Everyone else is perishing with curiosity, and what they all want to know is, how did you do it?”
Miss Silver coughed.
“It is really extremely simple-”
Frank Abbott broke in reproachfully.
“When you say that, you know, you put all the rest of us into a sort of C iii category below the infant class. It would save our pride a lot if you’d just set up as a superwoman and have done with it.”
Miss Silver looked quite shocked.
“My dear Frank-pray! This talk of supermen and superwomen always seems to me to be rather impious. We are endowed with certain faculties by our Creator, and it is our duty to make good use of them. I have a retentive memory, I am naturally observant, and I was trained in habits of industry. When I came into contact with this case I was immediately struck with the fact that blackmail was at the bottom of it. The two people who were being blackmailed were both in a position to furnish the blackmailer with something more important than money. Ship construction, aeroplane construction-information about these two key industries was what had been aimed at. The money payments were in each case only intended to compromise the persons who were being blackmailed, and to render it impossible for them to break away. In the Mayfair blackmail case last spring there was a strong hint of the same procedure. But my memory took me back a great deal farther than that. The most dangerous organisation of this kind was that of which the Vulture was the head. This was smashed in 1928, but some years later it revived under a pupil of his, a woman known under the names of Deane, Simpson, and Mannister-the latter being her legal designation. I have taken some interest in her career, and have had the opportunity of talking it over with Colonel Garrett, the head of the Foreign Office Intelligence Service. He told me that in his opinion Mrs. Simpson was the most dangerous criminal he had ever come across. She was arrested three years ago for the murder of a woman who had been her cook, and who had had the misfortune to recognise her. I refer, of course, to the Spedding case. She shot this poor woman dead in cold blood, and attempted to murder two other people. After her arrest she managed to escape, and knowing her to be at large, the possibility that she might be involved in these cases of blackmail presented itself to my mind. There were other possibilities, but amongst them I considered this one.