Miss Silver reproved this levity, and received an apology.
‘All right, I’m back on the trail. Well, we do know for certain that Miss Doncaster was at the Ram. We haven’t any evidence at all that Everton was, and for the moment we’re not considering Bush. Well, that leaves you Miss Doncaster as first murderer, and I quite agree that she would do very well in the part – she’s cram full of envy, malice, and all uncharitableness. But we’re going to want something a little more specific than that. What can you do about it?’
‘Not very much,’ said Miss Silver. ‘She and her sister were at a finishing school in Germany for two years. They came back with a great enthusiasm for everything German. During their father’s lifetime they used to go every year to one of the German spas. This was discontinued on his death in 1912. About 1930 the sisters began their trips abroad again – Switzerland, the Tyrol, Germany. Miss Doncaster developed a violent admiration for Hitler – Miss Sophy says she was really very trying about him. But in 1938 Miss Mary Anne became paralysed and the trips had to be abandoned. Since the war broke out Miss Doncaster appears to have had a complete change of heart. She is by way of being very patriotic, and Hitler is never mentioned. Miss Sophy said it was really the greatest possible relief.’
Frank Abbott whistled.
‘Does she know how to use a revolver?’
‘I believe so. Mr Doncaster was fond of shooting at a mark. Miss Sophy says he made his daughters’ lives a burden to them about it, and it was very noisy and uncomfortable for the neighbours.’
‘None of which is evidence,’ said Frank Abbott gloomily. ‘Let’s see – we checked up on everybody in those houses. What was she doing on Tuesday night?’ He flicked over the leaves of his notebook. ‘Here we are! Pennycott – Doncasters. Maid in kitchen – heard nothing, didn’t go out. Invalid sister upstairs, back room – wireless on – heard nothing. Miss Doncaster – with sister except for five minutes somewhere between half-past nine and ten, when she went to the pillar-box opposite the Rectory and posted a letter – cannot fix time exactly – thinks it was nearly ten o’clock – met nobody, heard nothing. Well, there you are. As far as opportunity goes she had it. What about motive? I suppose she might have had that too. A violent enthusiasm for Hitler might have made her willing to work for the Nazis. It doesn’t seem credible, but she wouldn’t be the only one. I don’t know how it gets them, but it seems to. I suppose there wasn’t anything else – any private feud with Harsch? He hadn’t been treading on her toes?’
‘I have not heard anything. It would not, of course, be at all difficult to offend her.’
Frank burst out laughing.
‘I should call that a masterpiece of understatement!’
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
MRS MOTTRAM RANG the bell of Pennycott. At the Rectory she would have opened the door and yodelled, but the Miss Doncasters were sticklers for what they called the forms of civilised society, and what was the good of putting their backs up? It was so easy, and you did it so often without meaning to, that you couldn’t even get a kick out of it. Besides, poor old things, what a life! Year after year, with nothing happening to you – just withering up and going sour. Her heart, which was as soft as butter, really pitied them, and however rude and disapproving they were, she always turned up again, with an egg, or a cabbage leaf full of raspberries, or one of the bright unsuitable magazines showered upon her by her friends in the Air Force. She had one tucked under her arm now with a colour-print on the cover depicting a damsel in a wisp of scarlet bathing-dress about to take a header into a bright blue sea. Admitted by the elderly maid, she pranced gaily upstairs, pleasantly conscious of being young and very much alive. She found Miss Mary Anne alone in the drab room with its litter of rubbish and its dead, stale air. It was rather a relief only to have one of them to deal with. She shook hands, felt the slack, cold fingers slip away, and saw the pale glance slide disapprovingly over her yellow jumper and her rather bright blue slacks to the scarlet bathing-girl.
‘Lucy Ellen is out,’ said Miss Mary Anne in a grumbling voice. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what she goes out for – morning, noon and night, until you’d think she’d be worn out. And at the end of it I don’t know what she’s done. Shopping is what she says, but what is there to shop in Bourne? Picture postcards at Mrs Bush’s, I suppose. And off to Marbury every week. And what does she do there – that’s what I’d like to know. It’s my belief that she just walks about looking in at the shop windows, and then she has tea at the Ram and comes home again.’ The thick complaining voice was like treacle gone sour.
Ida Mottram thought it all sounded too grim for words. She sat down on the hearth in front of the languishing fire and began to poke at it with a bit of stick.
‘No wonder you’re cold,’ she said. ‘I’ll have this up in no time. I may be a fool about some things, but I’m the world’s smash hit with fires. You just wait and see!’
‘Lucy Ellen doesn’t like anyone to touch the fire but herself.’
‘Well, she can’t do it when she’s out, can she? Look, it’s coming along like anything!’ She pulled one log forward, tilted another, blew upon a brightening ember, and with a rush the flame came up.
Sitting there with the firelight on her face, she began to tell Miss Mary Anne all about Bunty’s encounter with a bumble bee.
‘And she brought it in sitting on her hand and wanted me to stroke it.’
‘How very foolish! I suppose she got stung?’
Ida giggled.
‘Oh, no, she didn’t – it loved her! But I made her put it back on one of the roses. She was so disappointed. She wanted to take it to bed with her., Don’t you think it was rather sweet?’
Miss Mary Anne sniffed. She was not in the least interested in bumble bees or in Bunty Mottram. She wanted passionately to find out whether Garth Albany and Janice Meade were engaged, and to find it out before Lucy Ellen did. Silently and resentfully, this was the game she was always playing against her sister. Tied to her sofa she might be, and Lucy Ellen free to go about and gather up the news – free to go into Marbury and have tea at the Ram – but all the same, once in a way it was she who scored. If she could get in first about Garth and Janice, Lucy Ellen would be properly taken down. Ida Mottram might know something-
She began to ask questions which circled the subject, drawing in gradually, getting nearer and nearer. It was an art in which she excelled, and Ida was no match for her. Having, in fact, nothing to conceal, she was as open as the day. Oh, yes, she thought they liked each other – why shouldn’t they? It would be very nice. Didn’t Miss Mary Anne think it would be very nice? And Miss Sophy would be so pleased – didn’t she thinks so?
‘If his intentions are serious,’ said Miss Mary Anne in her gloomiest tone.
Ida giggled.
‘People don’t have intentions now – it’s not done. They just go off and get married.’
She began to look round for something to screen her face from the fire. It was fairly blazing now, and her skin scorched so easily. She could feel her left cheek burning. She reached out to the small table by Miss Mary Anne’s couch and took a paper at random from a pile which cluttered the lower tier. Turning it over, she saw that it was a garden catalogue with a cover displaying apples, pears, plums, gooseberries, raspberries and blackcurrants, all at least twice as large as life and much more brightly coloured. She was about to say, ‘Oh, are you getting any fruit trees?’ when Miss Mary Anne remarked that young men in the Army were notorious for the way in which they flirted, and that she believed Garth Albany’s mother had been very rapid when she was a girl.