Miss Silver said with the mildness which did not for a moment deceive him,
‘If, my dear Frank, you are asking me to believe that Miss Graham stood by whilst a murderous attack was being made upon her mother, and that she afterwards made a completely false statement and was prepared to swear to it, I feel obliged to tell you that it would be completely out of her character, and that I am unable to entertain the idea for a moment.’
NINETEEN
IN EVERY MURDER case there are a number of scattered threads to be picked up and woven together. Some appear to be more important than others, but none can be neglected. Sometimes a chance word or an accidental happening may lead in the direction of an important clue. In the work of the police there must be a continual search for and sorting and arranging of even the slightest and least significant of these threads.
Nothing could appear to have less connexion with Mrs Graham’s death than the fact that Mrs Sharp, the young wife of Detective Inspector Sharp, chose the following afternoon to visit her aunt Miss Agnes Cotton, the Grove Hill district nurse, yet it was to have a definite bearing on the course of events. Miss Cotton had very little interest in the daily press. Foreign affairs were a long way off and there wasn’t anything you could do about them. And so far as domestic problems were concerned she had her hands quite full enough with confinements, accidents and other local emergencies, without wanting to read about them in the papers. What was the good of being told that a woman had had quads in Japan or that a man had stabbed his wife in Marseilles, when her hands were full enough with the Thomas twins and one of them all set to die only she had no intention of allowing it, or when Bill Jones just round the corner from her had knocked Mrs Jones about to such an extent that it didn’t look as if they were going to get out of it without having a police-court case. When she did have time for reading, what she liked was one of the women’s magazines with a nice love story where everything came right in the end, and some good recipes and knitting patterns. Sooner or later she would certainly have heard about a local murder, but she might not have connected it with Mrs Burford’s false alarm and Mr Burford’s call on Tuesday night. Young married people and jumpy, that’s what they were. A first baby took them that way as often as not. Hilda Burford was a nervous little thing, and John one of those long pale lads for all the world like a piece of string dipped in tallow.
Miss Cotton was very pleased to see her niece. It was over the home-made scones and currant cake that Mary Sharp said how busy Ted was, and what a dreadful thing, someone being murdered in her own back garden! Miss Cotton poured a good strong cup of tea for herself, put in three lumps of sugar and about four drops of milk, and inquired who had been murdered.
Mary Sharp had come over quite flushed and excited.
‘That Mrs Graham that’s got the corner house between Hill Rise and Belview Road! They say she caught her daughter in the garden with her boy friend in the middle of the night, and in the morning there she was dead in a sort of summer-house place they’ve got!’
Miss Cotton’s cup was half way to her lips. She set it down again. She was a comfortable rosy person with a smiling look about her, but she didn’t smile as she said,
‘When did it happen?’
Mary stared.
‘Last night, Auntie. Ted is all taken up with it – too busy to know whether I’m out or in, so I thought it would be a good idea to come along to you and cheer myself up. I’m sure he hadn’t a word to say dinner-time, and if I said anything all I got was a “What?” ’
Miss Cotton separated the chaff from the wheat in this pronouncement.
‘Then it wasn’t Ted who told you about the murder?’
Mary tossed her head.
‘Mentioned it, and then not a word more to say, except that he’d be busy on account of somebody coming down from Scotland Yard. No, it was that Mrs Stokes that works for the Grahams. I met her when I was out doing my shopping and – it wasn’t her day with them, they only have her once a week, but she seemed to know all about it. She’s one of those talkers – makes it her business to know everything. And there I was with Ted on the job and I didn’t know the first thing about it except that it had happened. I’m sure I don’t know what she thought – nor what I felt like.’
Miss Cotton administered a lecture. Mary was a good girl, but she was new to being a policeman’s wife. If Ted Sharp didn’t talk about his business it was no more than what was expected of him, and she ought to be proud of him and not go about pulling a long face. Tittle-tattling and talking to gossips like Mrs Stokes wasn’t at all the way to help him to get on – ‘And don’t you forget it, my dear.’
When Mary left, Miss Cotton walked back with her, said good-bye at the corner of the road, and then instead of returning along the way that they had come, she took the bus down into the town and got out at the police station.
TWENTY
TED SHARP AND the Scotland Yard Inspector came knocking at Miss Cotton’s door next day. They had rung up, and she was fitting them in between the Thomas twins and old Mrs French’s back. Her cottage really was a cottage, standing much farther back from the road than the new council houses on either side of it, with a long narrow garden full of autumn flowers in front, and cabbages, Brussels sprouts and artichokes behind. There was a living-room and a kitchen on the ground floor, and two bedrooms above. Between the two wars a bathroom and a lavatory had been built up at the back. The front door opened directly into the living-room, which had a round table in the middle, an easy chair on either side of the fire-place, a corner-cupboard, and four chairs with their backs against the wall. There was a teapot and sugar basin, four cups and saucers and a milk-jug in copper lustre with a bright blue band and a pattern of raised fruits, in the corner-cupboard. And there was a vase with ‘A present from Margate ’ on it in the middle of the mantelpiece. It was full of bronze and yellow chrysanthemums, and so was the blue and white ginger jar on the table. The other things on the mantelpiece were a framed photograph of Mary Sharp in her wedding dress balanced on the other side by a snapshot of her at her christening, and at one corner one of those large shells flushed with pink, and at the other the reproduction of a woman’s hand in brass. It was about three inches long, and extremely elegant, with a ring on the third finger, and it was polished to the colour of pale gold. Everything in the room was as neat as a new pin, including Miss Cotton herself in a cheerful blue uniform with a white collar. She had a lot of grey hair, very blue eyes, and a hat worn rather on the back of her head.
She received them with composure, told them she was fitting them in, and came straight to the point with,
‘You’ve come about a statement I made last night.’
Ted Sharp said yes, they had. After which he said, ‘This is Detective Inspector Abbott from the Yard,’ and left it to him.
They sat round the table. Frank Abbott took out the paper which was Miss Cotton’s signed statement and laid it down in front of him. Then he said in his leisurely cultured voice,
‘I believe you made this statement last night, Miss Cotton.’
She sat there very composed with her grey hair, her blue eyes, and her cheeks like rosy apples. She said,
‘My niece was here to tea with me. She told me Mrs Graham had been murdered in the night at No. 1 Belview Road and I thought it was my duty to call in at the station and say what I knew about it.’ Then, as the colour came flooding up under Ted Sharp’s brown skin, she made haste to add, ‘My niece is Mrs Sharp, as I suppose Ted here has told you, but it wasn’t from him that she got anything she could tell me about the murder, it was from that Mrs Stokes that works at the Grahams’. And a real busy talker she is!’