“I can’t bear another policeman,” said Lee-“I really can’t-not even the Pet Lamb.”
It wasn’t a policeman. It was Rush in his Sunday suit, and the black tie he had worn for the funeral. He was clothed in dignity and gloom, and had in his hand a small brass tray entirely covered with keys. The minute the door was fairly open he began upon a speech which bore every sign of having been rehearsed.
“Seeing as you’re master here now, Mr. Peter, and the police cleared out, thank ’eavens, I should like to know what about me and what about the keys. All here present and correct except Miss Lemoine’s that she’s took away with her, number four, and the Miss Holdsworths, number three, and Mrs. and Miss Tatterley, number two. They’ve taken theirs, though I’ve always said and always tells them that it’s not safe. Suppose there was a fire. Suppose there was these cat-burglars. ’Elpless-that’s what we should be. But all the others is here. Lady Trent, number six-I’ll say that for her, she always ’ands hers in and no bones about it. And Potters, ten and eleven, and Connells, number five-they left theirs with Mrs. Green for her to clean up after them. And that’s another thing that didn’t ought to be done, and I’d like to get that straight with you here and now, Mr. Peter-keys is my responsibility, and any of these daily women that’s got any cleaning to do, they can come to me for the key and ’and it back at the end of the day. But Mrs. Green, she got these keys direct, Potters’ and Connells’-had them for days and made fuss enough about giving them up. But I would have them, and when I told her I’d mention it to the police she give in. And give me her notice too, and won’t be no loss.”
“Hadn’t you better come in?” said Peter. “And what do you expect me to do with all these keys? I always lose my own.”
Rush came as far as the threshold.
“And when you speak about losing keys,” he said in his severest voice, “there’s a matter that I’ll mention. Mr. Ross, he lost one of the keys of his flat a matter of ten days ago. There’s three keys to every flat, all Yales, and Mr. Ross, he lost one of his.”
“How? I do wish you’d come in, Rush.”
“I won’t come no farther. In my opinion Mr. Ross left that key sticking in his door and someone pinched it. I’ve found it there before now myself and got sworn at for my pains.”
Peter took him by the arm, pulled him in, and shut the door.
“Look here, Rush, that might be important. Did you tell the police?”
“What’s the good of them? No, I didn’t tell them, but I’m telling you. And when Mr. Ross forgot himself and as good as said I’d been meddling with his papers, I said to him then, ‘Mr. Ross,’ I said, ‘what about that key you left sticking in the door? Someone took that key, and someone took it because they was a-going to use it’-that’s what I said. But now I’ve got something else to say. You find the one that took that key, and you’ll find the one that shot Mr. Ross.”
Peter made a queer sort of a face.
“A bit drastic, Rush. How do you make that out?”
“I don’t have to make it out. It’s as plain as the nose on your face, Mr. Peter. If I find the cat in the larder lapping up the milk, and come another day there’s the fish missing, well, I don’t have to make it out that it was the cat took both. You find who wanted a key to Mr. Ross’s flat and why they wanted it, and you’ll find out who shot him all right.”
Peter looked hard at him.
“Ross made a row with you about his papers. What exactly did he say?”
There was a momentary sparkle under the bushy eyebrows.
“Better not to say exactly, in case of Miss Lucy or Miss Lee being about.”
“Language?”
“Plenty. But what it come to was that someone had been turning over the papers in his despatch-box. I’d Peterson’s key whilst he had a day off. Mr. Ross was out all day, and he’d left his own bunch of keys lying on the writing-table. Mortal careless he was. And next day he had me in and said I’d been at his despatch-box-said his papers had been all turned over. And I reminded him then about the key as he’d lost, but he was past listening to reason, so I just turned my back and walked out. And there was that snivelling hen of a Mrs. Green a-listening on the landing, and I’ll go bail it was she as told the police I’d been given the sack. And that’s what I’d like to know about, Mr. Peter. Thirty years I’ve been here barring the war, and I’m not taking no notice from no one, but if I’m not going to be trusted I’ll be giving you my notice now, and I’ll not be responsible for the keys any more.”
“Good Lord, Rush!” said Peter. “What do you expect me to do with your keys, or your notice either? Why, I remember you putting me across your knee and giving me half a dozen of the best when I broke Miss Lucy’s window with my catapult.”
Rush relaxed grimly.
“A proper young snip, you was! And it wasn’t the window altogether-you’d got me on the side of the head if I remember rightly, and if it had been my eye, where should I have been?”
Peter clapped him on the shoulder.
“Where you are now-porter at Craddock House, I expect. Get along on with you, and take your keys with you!”
Chapter XXXI
When he had shut the door behind Rush Peter turned round, began to cross the hall, and then suddenly stood still. A couple of minutes went by before he said just under his breath, “I wonder-” And then, “well, we’ll have a look-see.”
Next moment he was pulling Lee up out of her chair.
“Shake off dull sloth and come along with me! I want to go through Ross’s despatch-case, and it’s just as well to have a witness.”
“I thought the police had been through everything.”
“They have, my child, and made neat lists. I don’t think I’m going to find another will, or a confession that he was going to commit suicide with his left hand, or anything like that, but Rush has got a yarn about a missing key and Ross having taken it into his head that he had been routing round amongst his papers. Just imagine how he went through the roof. And now he’s quite sure that the person who pinched the key and messed up the papers is the person who shot Ross. So I rather thought I would go through the despatch-case and see whether there was anything there which might-well, I don’t see what it might do.”
“If there was anything there, the police would have found it.”
“It might be something which didn’t mean anything to the police.”
They went into the flat and lifted the despatch-case on to the table.
“You know,” said Lee, “I can’t think what you expect to find. If someone did take Ross’s key and come in here to look for some paper or other, well, they’d have taken it away, wouldn’t they?”
“If they found it,” said Peter, trying keys.
He found the right one and threw up the lid, disclosing a tray with some odds and ends of jewellery, a gold pencil-case, an old-fashioned fob and seals, a small ivory snuffbox, and a thin bundle of letters in a rubber band. Peter took them out.
“Two notes from Mavis. I wonder how fond he was of her-there’s no accounting for tastes.”
“Peter, don’t read them.”
“I wasn’t going to. But as a matter of fact anybody could. They’re only answers to invitations-nothing to them at all-a couple of lines, and her name scrawled all across the page. You know, that does look as if he’d rather gone off the deep end about her. You don’t keep the ordinary social note locked away like that unless you’ve got it pretty badly.”
Lee stood by the table frowning.
“I don’t like it,” she said “-other people’s letters. Peter, don’t!”
He said very seriously, “I think I will, Lee. I’ve got to clear this thing up in my own mind.”