Mirrie flicked her eyelashes up, and down again. It was an accomplishment to which she had given a good deal of time and attention, but the quiver in her voice was unrehearsed as she said,
“Have you made love to a l-lot of girls, Johnny?”
He grinned cheerfully.
“Dozens darling-starting, if Mama is to be believed, when I was six years old. I came home from a Christmas party and told the family that I was going to marry a little girl with a coral necklace and yellow curls. We swapped sweets and she gave me a chocolate kiss, but I couldn’t remember her name, so it never came to anything.”
Mirrie did the eyelash trick again.
“And you’ve gone on kissing girls ever since?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“And forgetting all about them?”
“Darling, you don’t actually want me to remember them, do you?”
Her brown eyes looked suddenly straight into his.
“If I went away you’d forget me too.”
“You’re not going away, so I won’t have the chance. You see, if I kiss you every day like this-”
They were in the middle of the third or fourth kiss, when Miss Silver opened the door. Mirrie blushed, Johnny laughed, and Miss Silver said in an indulgent voice,
“I am so sorry to interrupt a conversation, but Detective Inspector Abbott is here, and he thinks perhaps Mirrie could help him to verify a point that has arisen.”
Johnny thought, “When the police say they think someone may be able to help them it’s a damned bad sign. I’m not going to have them badgering Mirrie and trying to trip her up.” Aloud he said,
“I thought they’d asked us everything they possibly could already.”
Miss Silver repeated what she had said.
“He thought perhaps Mirrie could help him.”
Johnny thought, “It doesn’t look well to refuse. They might think she’s got something to hide. I hope to goodness she hasn’t.” He said,
“All right, we’ll be along… Oh, yes, I’m coming too. I don’t trust old Frank a yard-not with a girl like Mirrie. You shall be there as chaperone and I’ll be counsel for the defence, and between us we’ll get her off without a stain on her character.”
Frank did not look overpleased when Johnny walked in. He was immediately presented with an ultimatum.
“I don’t know what you want to ask her about, and nor does she, but either I stay, or she doesn’t talk. She isn’t obliged to answer a single thing, and don’t you Gestapo lads forget it!”
Frank looked down his bony nose.
“I am here on duty, and this isn’t a joke. You can stay, but you mustn’t interrupt. I want to ask a few questions about a telephone conversation which Miss Field had on Tuesday evening a few hours before Mr. Field’s death.”
Mirrie said, “Oh-” She sat down in one of the easy chairs and Johnny propped himself on the arm. Frank went on speaking.
“You rang someone up at about a quarter past eight, didn’t you? Mr. Sid Turner, wasn’t it? That conversation was overheard.”
Mirrie began to shake. Johnny, with a hand upon her shoulder, could feel how the tremor began at the mention of Sid’s name. She said, “Oh-” again. It wasn’t really a word but a quickly taken breath. And then the words came out.
“They were all in the drawing-room, and the Stokes and Doris were through the swing-door-”
Frank said,
“I’m sure you took every precaution, but someone listened all the same. Now look here, there’s nothing for you to be worried about. You weren’t doing anything wrong in ringing up. It just links up with other things, and we want to get it straight. The person who listened in has made a statement, and this is what it amounts to. You rang Sid Turner up at a quarter past eight on Tuesday. You were very much pleased and excited because Mr. Field had just come back from London and he had told you that he had made and signed a new will. You said that he was treating you as if you were his daughter, and Sid Turner said that was a bit of all right, and he had a friend at court who had okayed it, or he might have thought it was too good to be true. Now there wasn’t anything wrong in your saying what you did, but, as I said, we are checking up and I would like to know whether you agree that that is a correct account of the conversation.”
Johnny’s mind moved quickly. By the time that Mirrie turned imploring eyes on him it was made up. He slipped his arm about her shoulders in a reassuring manner and said,
“Well, darling, it’s up to you. Is that how it went?”
She turned the gaze on Frank.
“He said not to ring him up, but I was so pleased, and I thought he would be too.”
“This statement about what you said and what he said, is it correct?”
“Oh, yes it is.”
“You rang up Sid Turner in London and told him about the alteration in Mr. Field’s will?”
“He told me not to ring up, but I thought-”
“Yes-you explained how it happened. I am going to ask you if you will just sign a statement about that conversation. We want to be sure that we’ve got it right.”
She looked at Johnny again, and he nodded.
“Better do it.”
She said, not to Frank but to him, “Sid will be angry.”
“That’s just too bad, but you’d better do what Frank says. Nasty fellows to get up against, the police, but they’ll see that Sid doesn’t do anything to annoy you.”
Frank Abbott gave them time for the interlude. If Johnny was prepared to co-operate, his help was worth having. He said,
“What did you understand Sid Turner to mean when he said he had a friend at court who could okay what you told him about Mr. Field’s will?”
Mirrie was feeling more confident now.
“He knew someone in Mr. Maudsley’s office.”
Frank Abbott took her up on that.
“The person who was listening to your conversation says you asked him what he meant by that friend at court business. If you knew he meant this person, why did you do that?”
Her colour rose becomingly.
“He was just bringing her in to vex me, and I thought I’d let him know I didn’t care who he was friends with or what they told him. And if it was that girl in the office who told him about Uncle Jonathan signing his will, then she hadn’t any business to, and if Mr. Maudsley knew about it he would send her away.” Her colour faded and her voice shook. “If she was telling him things, I didn’t want to hear about it! And it was horrid of him to tell me about her!”
In a wide experience it had fallen to Frank Abbott’s lot to receive the confidences of a good many damsels, mostly cousins. But for this he might have considered Mirrie’s line of reasoning to be obscure. As it was, he understood perfectly that Sid Turner had mentioned the girl in Mr. Maudsley’s office with intent to annoy, and that Mirrie had very properly snubbed him.
He considered that this might be the appropriate moment to make a further enquiry, one confidence being apt to lead to another. He said,
“There’s just one thing. You remember on the night of the dance some of us were in here and Mr. Field was telling us about his collection. He got the albums out and told us a yarn about getting a fingerprint from a man who had confessed to a couple of murders. He said he and this man were buried under a bombed building, and that he got the fingerprint by passing him a cigarette-case. Just at the most exciting point of the story Georgina Grey came along and said that people were beginning to arrive for the dance.”
Mirrie was looking at him with sparkling eyes.
“Oh, yes-wasn’t it a shame! It was a most exciting story, and I did so want to hear it properly!”
Frank nodded.
“I think we were all keyed up about it. I should have liked to have heard the rest of it myself. Now later on that evening you slipped out of this glass door to meet Sid Turner. He had rung you up at seven o’clock and told you to come out and meet him. He wanted to tell you about new arrangements for writing to him, and you wanted to show him your new dress, so you slipped out.”