I had gloves on my hands. I went to the writing-table and got the pistol out of the drawer where Ross kept it. It was loaded when I was there before, but I opened it again to make sure. And all the time he never moved. He just kept on staring. I came over with the pistol in my hand, and when I was a yard away he put up his head with a jerk and said, ‘Who’s there?’ He took hold of the back of the chair to pull himself up, and I thought, ‘It’s now or never.’ There was something very heavy passing along the Embankment-all the windows rattled with it. I shot him like that, and he fell down on to the floor and never moved. That was the only mistake I made. I was on the left of him, and I fired too soon. I ought to have come round on his right, and then everyone would have believed he had done it himself. But I had to think about the lorry, because that was what I was counting on to cover up the sound of the shot. I put the pistol in his hand quickly and came away. I left the light burning, and the door of the flat ajar. I crept downstairs and opened the street door. I didn’t make a sound. I was afraid to risk shutting the street door in case of waking Mr. Pyne, so I left it just pushed to, and ran down the steps and along the alleyway. It took me half an hour to get back to my room. I got in through the window and went to bed. I didn’t see how anyone could possibly suspect me, and I don’t see now how they did.
I planned to disappear as soon as it was safe. Annie was getting worried, and I didn’t dare leave her alone too long. But I had to wait till after the inquest. I wrote to her to come down and meet me on the Saturday. She was to give up her room, and I sent her a letter for my old landlady at Doncaster to say I was coming back. Annie brought me down a suit-case and my own clothes and a transformation to cover my hair. I was puzzled to know what to do with Mrs. Green’s things, but I made sure I was safe, so I just brought them along. I thought I could get rid of them later on. Annie went back to her home. She’d given out she was away nursing a sister who was ill. She never knew anything-I’m dying and I swear she didn’t. She only thought she was helping me to get my divorce. I’m sorry about Annie, but I’m not sorry about Ross. I’d do it again tomorrow.”
Chapter XXXVIII
Lee let the typewritten pages fall. “It was you who began to suspect her! Oh, Peter-what put it into your head?”
“It was that business about the key. She was listening whilst Ross went for old Rush about his papers being disturbed, and she could tell the Inspector all about the row. But she didn’t say a word about one of the keys of the flat having been pinched. Well, when Rush told me about his row with Ross he laid great stress on this missing key, and said he’d reminded Ross about it then. He said a thing which stuck in my mind. He said, ‘Find the one that pinched that key and you’ll find the one that shot Mr. Ross.’ When I saw old Lamb at Scotland Yard I asked him whether he’d heard anything about this missing key, and he said he hadn’t. He read me the bit out of Mrs. Green’s statement, and she never mentioned it. I began to wonder why. Rush had been flinging it up at Ross, and it was such an obvious thing to take hold of-I didn’t see how she could have missed it. But she never said a single word about that key. When I came to wonder why, I could only find one answer. It was because she had taken it herself.”
“How horrible!” said Lee with a shudder in her voice.
“She very nearly brought it off,” said Peter-“very, very nearly. And it might have been you, or me, or Bobby, or Lucinda, or Mavis, or Rush, or even blameless Bingham who had to face the music. It seems to me they could have made out a pretty good case against any one of us. In fact, my dear, the only thing that saved us was the undoubted fact that we couldn’t all have done it. But Bobby certainly did his best to get the rope round his neck. He and Mavis are a pair.”
“Oh,” said Lee, “Lucy has heard from Mavis.”
“Lucy has what?”
“Heard from Mavis in a letter, quite calm, placid and comfortable.”
“Where is she?”
“In Cornwall. She’s quite casual about it, and she doesn’t seem to have any idea that there’s a warrant out for her arrest. She went out on the Friday morning-”
“As per Aunt Gladys-to get a breath of air?”
“Several breaths. And she met Joyce Lennox-you know, the girl with all that money and a Bentley-so Mavis told her what a fuss there had been about Ross, and how frightful Aunt Gladys and Uncle Ernest were, and what a bore the inquest was. And Joyce said, ‘Well, why go to it? Why not hop in and come along down to Cornwall with me?’-just like that. So she did. And neither of them seem to have thought it mattered in the least.”
“Well, I hope they give her six months for contempt of court or whatever it is.”
Lee got up, wandered to the fireplace, looked back over her shoulder.
“I used to think-I very nearly thought-you liked her-”
“Me? My good girl!”
“She would have liked you to.”
“Ross and Bobby not enough for her?”
Lee shook her head very slightly, was caught by the shoulders, and twisted round.
“Why are we talking about Mavis?” said Peter violently. “I haven’t seen you for twenty-four hours, and first we talk about murders, and then we talk about Mavis. I want to talk about Me.”
Lee looked up at him, and felt her colour rise.
“Only you?”
“Me first. Afterwards, if you are very good, we may devote a few moments to you. We begin with me because I shall burst if I can’t get someone to listen to all the things that are positively seething in me about my wedding, my honeymoon-”
“Peter!”
“I shall get a licence. I’ve always liked the sound of a licence-a sort of off-the-deep-end flavour. I don’t know where you get one, but old Prothero will know. I must ring him up. A licence, and a wedding ring-gold, or platinum? Take your time, because you’ll have to wear it all the rest of your life. Honeymoon-I say, that’s an atrocious word if you like-vulgarity incarnate! Cut it out! We’ll go on a wedding journey instead, like the early Victorians. You can have a poke bonnet, and if you insist, I’ll wear a stock. ‘The bridegroom, Mr. Peter Renshaw, looked excessively handsome in a black satin stock. The bride-’ ”
“Peter, are you mad?”
Peter said, “Yes, darling,” and swung her off her feet.
From the doorway Lucy Craddock viewed the scene with indulgence.
“Oh, my dear boy!” she breathed.
Patricia Wentworth
Born in Mussoorie, India, in 1878, Patricia Wentworth was the daughter of an English general. Educated in England, she returned to India, where she began to write and was first published. She married, but in 1906 was left a widow with four children, and returned again to England where she resumed her writing, this time to earn a living for herself and her family. She married again in 1920 and lived in Surrey until her death in 1961.
Miss Wentworth’s early works were mainly historical fiction, and her first mystery, published in 1923, was The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith. In 1928 she wrote The Case Is Closed and gave birth to her most enduring creation, Miss Maud Silver.
