“No-I can’t keep it now. I thought for a long time after Pelham had gone away, and then I rang up Janice and asked her about you. She said you would be fair, and kind, and she said I could trust you-I’m going to trust you. This is what happened. It was before Philip and Anne came up to town. I think it was on the twelfth-yes, Wednesday the twelfth. Someone said there was a shop that had enamelled saucepans, so I went to see, for Lilla, but they hadn’t got any. When I was coming back I saw Anne-at least I thought it was Anne. She had her back to me, and she was just going into a shop-a hairdresser’s shop called Félise.”
Miss Silver said brightly, “In Charlotte Street?”
Colour ran up into Lyndall’s face.
“How did you know?”
Miss Silver coughed.
“Pray proceed, Miss Armitage. I am most interested.”
Lyndall thought, “She really does know everything.”
Oddly enough, this did not frighten her. It provided a sense of support. If she made a mistake, Miss Silver would be able to put it right. She went on with less effort.
“I wasn’t sure that it was Anne. I wasn’t sure if she had seen me. I didn’t want her to think-I followed her into the shop. She wasn’t there. The girl behind the counter was busy-she didn’t see me. I went through to see if Anne was in one of the cubicles, and she wasn’t. There was a door at the end-a looking-glass door. I opened it, and there was a dark passage, quite small, and a stair going up, and a door at the end. The door wasn’t quite shut-there was a little line of light all down the edge. And I heard Anne say, ‘You might as well let me write to Nellie Collins. She’s quite harmless.’ And a man said-a man said-”
“Go on, my dear.”
Lyndall stared back at her, her eyes fixed blindly upon a face she could no longer see. Her lips only just moved.
“He said, ‘That is not for you to say.’ ”
“And then?”
“I ran away.” She gave a deep sigh and seemed to come awake again. “I was frightened-I don’t think I’ve ever been so frightened in my life. It was stupid-”
Miss Silver coughed.
“I do not think so.”
There was a silence. Lyndall leaned back and closed her eyes. She felt as if she had been climbing a long, steep hill. Now that she was come to the top, there was no breath in her. And she was afraid to look over the edge and see what lay beyond.
Miss Silver’s voice broke in upon her thoughts.
“You told Lady Jocelyn what you had overheard. When did you do so?”
She opened her eyes.
“When I saw about Miss Collins in the papers.”
“Will you tell me just what she said?”
Lyndall told her, speaking only just above her breath, with the picture in her mind of Anne pouring out tea, Anne kneeling by the fire, Anne asking her not to hurt Philip.
“She said I’d made a mistake. She said it might hurt Philip, so I promised.”
“I see. Miss Armitage, how well did you know Lady Jocelyn? I do not mean since her return, but before she went to France.”
She was startled by the change of subject. She sat up.
“We were at Jocelyn’s Holt together when she came there to stay after her mother died. None of us knew her till then. She was grown up, and I wasn’t. She was marvellous to me. I loved her-terribly. When she and Philip got engaged I thought it was wonderful. I was one of her bridesmaids.”
“If you were girls together in the same house you would have been in and out of each other’s rooms, dressed and undressed together. Can you tell me whether Lady Jocelyn had any mark by which she could have been identified?”
“Oh, no, she hadn’t. All the relations asked me that when she came back. There wasn’t anything.”
She met a very penetrating gaze.
“If she had had a brown mole the size of a sixpence just above her left knee, you would have noticed it?”
“Of course. But she hadn’t anything like that.”
“You are quite sure? It is very important.”
“Yes, I am quite, quite, sure.”
“You would be able to swear to it? You will, I think, be called upon to do so.”
Lyndall pressed her hands together in her lap. She said,
“Yes.” And then, slowly, “I don’t understand. Will you please tell me?”
Miss Silver said gravely,
“The woman who died today had a mole such as I have described. I think Miss Collins knew that Annie Joyce had such a mole. I think Lady Jocelyn died more than three years ago.”
CHAPTER 34
I want police protection for her,” said Miss Silver firmly.
The Chief Inspector, at the other end of the telephone, drew out a handkerchief and blew his nose with an exasperated sound.
“Now, Miss Silver-”
She coughed and proceeded.
“I consider it most desirable. I will give you the address of the hairdressing establishment. It is Félise, Charlotte Street… I beg your pardon?” An exclamation of surprise had reached her along the wire. “Is the name familiar to you?”
“I don’t know about familiar. Sir Philip says his wife had an appointment there to have her hair done yesterday afternoon. We were asking him about her movements on the previous day, and he mentioned having heard her make this appointment. Says he heard the name as he was letting himself into the flat, and she explained it was her hairdresser. Quite a good cover-up.”
“It is a genuine hairdressing establishment. It stands three doors from the corner where Emma Meadows lost sight of the girl who had been following Lady Jocelyn-or, as I think we may now call her, Annie Joyce.”
The Chief Inspector blew his nose, meditatively this time.
“Well, you’d better keep Miss Armitage. I’ll send Frank round. Just leave him to form his own conclusions, will you? He’s a bit too much inclined to take all you say for gospel, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
Deprecation of his tone was evident as Miss Silver replied,
“I do not consider that Sergeant Abbott is so easily influenced-except, as we should all be, by the facts of a case.” The stress laid upon the word “facts” accentuated the reproof.
Lamb turned it off with a laugh.
“Well, we won’t quarrel about that. If Frank is satisfied, the people at the shop will be put through it. I’ll get someone on to finding out about them straight away.”
Sergeant Abbott, arriving at Montague Mansions, was duly acquainted with Miss Lyndall Armitage’s story.
“Where is she, Miss Silver?”
Miss Silver, well on the way to completing Johnny’s second pair of stockings, replied that Miss Armitage was lying down-“in my bedroom next door. She is far from strong, and it has shaken her a good deal.”
Frank regarded her with admiration.
“Tucked up under an eiderdown with a hot-water bottle, I don’t mind betting. Will you be angry if I quote Wordsworth instead of Tennyson?
‘The perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, or command.’ ”
Miss Silver smiled indulgently. If she detected a faint sardonic flavour in tone and look she gave no sign of resenting it, but said soberly,
“We have not time just now to discuss the poets, my dear Frank. I have kept Miss Armitage here because I do not feel justified in allowing her to return to her flat without protection. She tells me that her cousin, Mrs. Perry Jocelyn, is unlikely to be home much before eleven, and that they have a daily maid who leaves at three o’clock. I think, in the circumstances, that it would be extremely dangerous to leave her alone and unprotected.”
“What makes you think she is in danger?”
“My dear Frank! The day before yesterday at tea-time she acquainted Annie Joyce with the fact that she had overheard part of a conversation between her and the man from whom she was taking her orders. Only two sentences, it is true, but could anything be more compromising?-‘You might as well let me write to Nellie Collins. She is quite harmless,’ and, ‘That is not for you to say.’ They supply clear evidence of a connection with Miss Collins, they imply that Annie Joyce was not permitted herself to answer the letter she had received from her, and they make it clear that she was not a principal, but an agent acting under the orders of this man whom she had come to see. Annie Joyce could have been under no illusion as to the importance of what Miss Armitage had overheard. She did, in fact, do all she could to ensure her silence. She assured her that the whole thing was a mistake, that she must have imagined having overheard the name of Nellie Collins, and she appealed to her affection and family feeling not to repeat anything which might revive the publicity from which they, and especially Sir Philip, had already suffered so much.”