“We’ll have to see if they can pick this girl out.”
“It won’t be necessary, sir. I’ve had her in alone, and she owned up. She’s only about sixteen, and she’s all of a doodah. Said she didn’t know she was doing anything wrong. Mr. Felix told her to put on her coat and see where Lady Jocelyn went, and he gave her half-a-crown when she got back. And when I said, ‘You mean M. Dupont, Madame’s husband?’ she said, ‘Oh, no, it wasn’t him-it was the other gentleman.’ ”
The wire vibrated with the Chief Inspector’s “What!”
“Yes, sir. Continuing our interesting conversation-I elicited the following facts. M. Félix did come down occasionally. He was a very clever hairdresser, and he only saw special clients, but he was often too ill to come at all. Mr. Felix also saw special clients. He came in by a back way, never through the shop. They had to take messages for him and make appointments. If Madame was in she answered the telephone herself. If she was out, they had to write the message down, and she would attend to it later. Now comes the pièce de résistance-”
The Chief Inspector was heard to thump his office table.
“If you don’t know enough English to speak your own language you’d better go back to school and learn how!”
“Sorry, Chief-my mistake-I should have said titbit. Anyhow, here it is. None of the girls ever saw Mr. Felix. He came and went by the back way, and he never set foot in the shop. M. Félix Dupont used the shop entrance-they all saw him whenever he came. But nobody ever saw Mr. Felix except Madame and the ladies who came by appointment.”
“What about his sending her after Lady Jocelyn?”
“Yes, I asked her that, and she said it was Madame who told her that Mr. Felix would like her to go after Lady Jocelyn, and it was Madame who gave her the half-crown and told her not to talk about it, because, she said, it wouldn’t sound very nice, but he had given her a very special treatment, and he wanted to know whether she did what he told her and went straight home. He said it wouldn’t be good for her if she didn’t.”
“Think she swallowed that?”
“I don’t suppose she bothered. All in the day’s work, so to speak. You know how it is with a girl like that-customers are just work. What really matters is who is going to take them to the pictures, or part with some coupons so that they can get another pair of alleged silk stockings.”
Chief Inspector Lamb was heard to thank God that his girls had been differently brought up to that.
“Yes, sir-they would be. But I think this kid is all right. Too scared, and talking too freely to be in on any games they’ve been up to here. I think we ought to pull Madame in. And then I thought I’ll go along and see her interesting invalid.”
CHAPTER 36
The time went very slowly by. Lyndall found, as innumerable women have found before her, that she could do nothing to hasten it. She couldn’t read, or sew, or listen to the wireless, because to do any of these things you must be in control of your own thoughts, and she was not in control of hers. Whilst she was talking to Miss Silver and Sergeant Abbott, whilst the constable had talked about his family, there had been a varying degree of constraint upon her mind, and in a varying degree it had responded. But as soon as she was alone it turned again to the point from which she now found herself unable to deflect it. There are things which are so shocking that they are believed at once, the very force of the shock pressing in past all the normal barriers. There are things so shocking that they cannot be believed at all, but you can’t forget them, you can’t get them out of your mind. Lyndall could not have said that she was in either of these two states. There had been so great an initial shock as to render her incapable of either belief or judgment, but now as time went slowly by she found herself believing something which chilled her body almost as much as it froze her mind.
She got up once and went to the telephone, but after standing for a long half-minute with her finger on the first number she would have to dial, she turned away and went back to the chair from which she had risen. She couldn’t do it. Perhaps tomorrow when her mind didn’t feel so sore and stiff and she could think again. Not tonight-not now. Once you have said a thing you can never take it back.
When about five minutes later the telephone bell rang she went to answer it with shuddering reluctance. Philip’s voice said her name.
“Lyn-is that you?”
“Yes-” The word wouldn’t sound the first time. She had to try it again.
“Are you alone? I want to see you-very badly. I’ll come straight round.”
He hung up on that, but she stayed where she was until it came to her that Philip would be arriving and she must be ready to let him in. As she passed through the hall she stopped at the half-open kitchen door to say, “My cousin is coming round to see me-Sir Philip Jocelyn.”
It was hardly said before the door bell rang. She opened it with a finger on her lips and a gesture in the direction of that half-open door.
Philip looked surprised. He took off his coat and hung it up. Then when they were in the living-room he asked,
“What was all that for? Who’s here?”
“A policeman in the kitchen.”
“Why?”
“Because I overheard something, and they don’t know if she-if Anne-”
He said, interrupting her, “She wasn’t Anne-that’s certain now. She was Annie Joyce.” Then, after a curious pause, “I’ve found Anne’s diary.”
“Her diary?”
“Yes. Of course I knew she kept one-I suppose you did too. What I didn’t know until a couple of days ago was that she put down everything-” He broke off. “Lyn, it’s quite incredible! I didn’t want to read it-I don’t intend to read it. What I’ve had to do is to see whether the things she told me-the things which convinced me against every instinct I’ve got-whether they were there. And they are. What I said when I asked her to marry me-things that happened on our honeymoon-things it seemed impossible that anybody else should know-she had written them all down. And Annie Joyce had got them by heart.”
Lyndall looked at him in a bewildered rush of feeling. The stranger who had stood between them had gone and she had never been Anne. Presently she would be able to go back to remembering that she had loved Anne very much. Just now she could only listen.
Philip was telling her about finding the diary.
“I made sure she would have it with her. However carefully she had learned it all up she would be bound to keep it handy. Well, I found it-two volumes sewn into the mattress on her bed-good long stitches so that it wouldn’t have taken a minute to rip them out if she wanted it. That’s what caught my eye-when I’d looked everywhere else. That settled the matter as far as I was concerned. She never convinced anything except my brain, and the diary lets that out. Anne’s been dead for three and a half years. You’ve got to believe that, Lyn.”
She wanted to with all her heart. But she couldn’t find words. She didn’t even know that she could find thoughts to answer him. Her mind swung back on the fixed point to which it had been held. She heard him say,
“Lyn, that’s what I meant when I came here this morning. Annie Joyce was a spy, you know-planted on me. It wasn’t just an ordinary impersonation. It was all very carefully planned. She was an enemy agent with a very definite job. She drugged me last night and went through my papers.”
“Philip!”
“They were spoof papers, and an old code-book. We’d been doing a bit of planning too. My guess is that she was working under orders, and someone came along to collect. Whoever it was knew enough to realize she’d been had. That meant she was for it from us, if not from them. At the best, she wouldn’t be of any more use-at the worst, we might get something out of her. They are quite ruthless over that sort of thing, and I think that whoever it was just shot her out of hand-possibly with my revolver, or possibly not. Anyhow it probably seemed a good idea to remove mine and hope the police would think I’d shot her-which they do.”