“Yes,” said Lucy Craddock in a flustered voice-“oh, yes, a sister-but I don’t remember her name.”
Peter nodded.
“Probably the sister then. Anyhow somebody she could trust to hold her tongue and do what she was told. Then Aggie gets her opportunity. She finds Ross’s key sticking in the door of his flat. She pinches it, and when Ross and Peterson are both out of the way for the day she goes in and has a good worry around. It was easy enough to dodge old Rush, because he’s got his settled times for everything, and she’d know what they were by then. Well, we know that Ross left his own bunch of keys lying about that day. That’s what he had the row with Rush about. He saw his papers had been meddled with and he accused Rush-‘Clean forgot himself Mr. Ross did,’ as the old boy put it to me. But it was Aggie. It must have been Aggie. And the first thing she saw when she opened that despatch-case was old Prothero’s letter urging Ross to make a will, and saying that the unsettled property amounted to a very considerable fortune and he ought to provide against any possibility of an intestacy. Mrs. Green mightn’t have made much of that letter, but you can bet your life that Aggie sucked it dry. If she was in any doubt she had only got to get the sister in Birmingham to go and ask the nearest solicitor. She could have copied the letter without names, or with different names, and have asked what the position of a widow would be if the husband died leaving a lot of unsettled property and no will. And I expect it was right there that she began to think of being Ross’s widow in desperate earnest. I don’t know how she brought it off all the same. She went home, and she went to bed drunk at half past nine. But I suppose she probably wasn’t really drunk at all, and allowing for that-”
Lee caught him suddenly by the arm.
“The Connells’ flat!” she said in a breathless voice.
All this time Lucy Craddock’s eyes had been round and fixed. They did not leave Peter’s face, but they did not really appear to be seeing him or anything else. She blinked rapidly now, and said in a small, obstinate voice,
“Oh, no, my dear, the Connells were away. And in any case-”
“Not the Connells,” said Lee-“their flat. Mrs. Green-she had their key. She said so when she was going off on the Tuesday night. She said she had just finished cleaning up after them, and Rush was furious because she didn’t give him the key before she went. You know she had one of her bad turns, but I suppose it was just acting really. I am sure she just went home and pretended to be drunk so that the other people in the house would leave her alone, but I think she slipped back here-Rush doesn’t lock up till eleven-and hid in the Connells’ flat. It-it’s just underneath Ross’s, and she would be able to listen and make sure that everything was quiet before she came out.”
“You think she shot Ross?” said Lucy Craddock in horrified accents.
“What do you think, Lucinda?” said Peter drily.
Chapter XXXVI
What Inspector Lamb thought was that it wasn’t going to be at all an easy job and he’d better get busy with a timetable.
“The bother is, we don’t know where she may be making for. Just get on to Mr. Prothero at his private house, Mr. Renshaw, and ask whether he hasn’t had any word about a change of address from the woman in Birmingham. Mrs. Green won’t go to the place where her confederate has been staying, so I’ll lay they’ve got a move planned, and when it’s over it’ll be Mrs. Green who has taken on being Miss La Fay, and the other will have gone back to her own name or else gone off the map altogether.”
He immersed himself in the timetable. Presently Peter came back, and he looked up alertly.
“Well, what did you get, Mr. Renshaw?”
“He’s on his dignity. Doesn’t keep clients’ addresses at his private house. Doesn’t expect to be rung up on a Saturday evening. But I did drag one thing out of him. All this chopping and changing of addresses falls into the last three months, and before that Mrs. Ross Craddock was living at Doncaster under the name of Miss La Fay. You see, I thought she might go back to wherever she was living before she started being Mrs. Green.”
“Did he give you the Doncaster address?”
“No, he didn’t. I haven’t rung off. Would you like to deal with him?”
The Inspector heaved himself out of his chair. He could be heard coping with Mr. Prothero in a highly official voice, after which he returned and addressed himself to the timetable again.
“He’ll get the address and let the Doncaster police have it. Now about these trains? Let’s see what she could catch-” He flicked pages, made notes, used the telephone, and turned a considering eye upon Peter. “The trouble is she isn’t going to look like Mrs. Green by the time she gets anywhere at all. If she goes to this Doncaster address she goes there as Miss La Fay, and of course we can question her. But it’s not going to be so easy to prove that she ever was Mrs. Green unless she’s got the clothes with her. She mayn’t have been able to get rid of them, or she mayn’t have thought it necessary. If it hadn’t been for the photographs, no one would ever have connected her with Mrs. Green. She could have gone ahead and claimed all that money, and no one would ever have dreamed of suspecting her. Mind you, we’re very far from having a case against her as things stand. The best hope is that she’ll give herself away. Now, Mr. Renshaw, I’m going to Doncaster, and if you like you can come along too. I’m sending Abbott to Birmingham. I make it this way. I don’t suppose for a moment that the woman was really ringing up from Charing Cross -much more likely King’s Cross. And she’d get the first train she could. Well, the first train’s a slow one, and she had twenty minutes to catch it. She may have got out of Mrs. Green’s clothes and taken the mark off her face before she rang me up, or she may have still had it to do. I should think she would have done it already, because she wouldn’t want to attract attention by being seen at King’s Cross looking like Mrs. Green, and twenty minutes wouldn’t give her too much time for what she would have to do. She wouldn’t want to hang about the station waiting for a fast train either-she’d want to get clear away out of London, because she knew she’d started a hue and cry. Now this is where we come in. There’s an express thirty-five minutes from now, and it reaches Doncaster ten minutes before that slow train. If she didn’t take that, she’ll be taking this. So either we get to Doncaster ten minutes before she does, or we all get there together, and I’ll be very glad of your assistance to identify the lady.” He paused, turned a hard, solemn gaze upon Peter, and added, “Always supposing she’s going to Doncaster, which I don’t feel at all sure about myself.”
“I’m with you,” said Peter. “Lucinda, lend me a pound. One needs a margin on a wild goose chase. Better make it two, or even three. She may have gone to Jericho. What happens then, Inspector? Do we charter an aeroplane? What-a whole fiver? Lucinda-how prodigal! By the way, you’d better make Lee go to bed-she’s all in.” He kissed them both and ran to catch up the Inspector, who had already begun to descend the stairs.