Miss Silver’s features expressed a mild firmness. She said,
“He may have done so. Yet he was still afraid of being recognized and was prepared to shoot the secretary to avoid any risk of it. In my opinion this may be a valuable clue. Such a strong apprehension that he might be recognized does to my mind suggest that the murderer was someone in Mr. Bellingdon’s immediate circle. He certainly had inside knowledge of just how and when the necklace would be transferred from the bank.”
“Well, Ledshire have asked us to come in on the job, and Frank will be going down to Merefields. By the way, Mr. Bellingdon will be in town this afternoon. He wants to call and see you. He’ll be coming here first. Would four o’clock suit? He wants to have all that lip-reading business first-hand from yourself. I think he finds it a bit difficult to swallow.”
His tone informed her that the interview was at an end. She rose to her feet.
“Four o’clock will be quite convenient, Chief Inspector.”
Chapter 9
LUCIUS BELLINGDON was quite a personage. Even in a crowd he was liable to be remarked. In Miss Silver’s Victorian sitting-room his big frame and massive features, the jutting chin of the photograph, and an eye decidedly competent to threaten and command, might have been considered overpowering. Miss Silver was interested, but she was not overpowered. She remembered fantastic stories about Mr. Bellingdon’s rise to fame and fortune, she remembered that she had listened to them with scepticism. Now, in his presence, she found them less difficult to entertain. He occupied the largest of her walnut chairs, and occupied it as if it were his own. He wore a town suit, but he looked like a man who spent a good deal of time in the open air. His dark skin had a healthy tan and his eyes were bright. He might easily have been credited with ten years less than the fifty-two which the reference-books accorded him. He leaned forward with a hand on his knee, a strong hand admirably kept, and said in a voice not loud but full of resonance,
“Now do you mind just repeating what Miss Paine told you she-well, I don’t know how to put it, but I suppose I had better say-read. I take it you are convinced that she definitely could and did read what was being said from the motion of the lips. It is a point upon which I have felt some doubt.”
Miss Silver was knitting. The needles moved rhythmically above the pale blue wool in her lap. She said,
“I met her first in a crowded drawing-room. I had talked to her for half an hour without experiencing any difficulty before someone informed me that she was completely deaf. When she came to see me here it was just the same. She did not appear to be at a loss for a moment.”
“The police say they have made enquiries and there seems to be no doubt that she really was deaf, and that she had acquired great proficiency in this lip-reading. So I suppose I must accept the fact that she could see what a man was saying thirty or forty feet away?”
Miss Silver inclined her head.
“Yes, I think you must accept that, Mr. Bellingdon. In any art the performance of an expert must seem surprising.”
Lucius Bellingdon laughed.
“You used to teach, didn’t you? When you said that, I felt as if I were back at school again.”
She gave him the warm smile which had so often won her both confidences and hearts, and said,
“Everything seems difficult until you know how to do it, does it not?”
He nodded.
“True enough. Well now, we’ll take it that Miss Paulina Paine really sat in the Masters galleries and watched two men on a seat about thirty-five feet away. One came in after the other, looked at some of the pictures, and then sat down. After a bit he turned his head and spoke. Now this is where you take over. I want you to repeat what Miss Paine told you she had read from his lips, word for word just as she said it.”
Miss Silver rested her hands upon the cloud of blue wool in her lap. In her mind she reverted to the picture of Paulina Paine sitting just there across the hearth from her and speaking. Her own features took on a listening look as she repeated what had come to her in those short jerky sentences.
“These were her words, Mr. Bellingdon- ‘It’s for tomorrow. The secretary leaves the bank with it at twelve noon. Nothing can be done whilst he is on the main road, but as soon as he turns into the lane, that will be the time. It should be quite easy. When I’ve got the stuff I meet you as arranged, and there we are.’ She said he stopped there, and the other man said something. She could see the muscle moving in his cheek, but she couldn’t see his lips. When he stopped, the first one said, ‘I’m not taking any chances of being recognized, and that’s final. Give me a clear stretch of the lane, and no one on it to turn his head at a shot, and leave the rest to me.’ The other man spoke again, and the first one said, ‘I tell you I won’t touch it on any other terms. This way it’s a certainty.’ The other man put up his hand with a catalogue in it and said something, and the first one said, ‘Then there will be two of them for it, that’s all!’ and he laughed and got up and went over to look at one of the pictures.”
Lucius Bellingdon had a retentive memory. Scotland Yard had furnished him with a copy of Miss Silver’s account of her interview with Paulina Paine. He remembered it perfectly. He had just listened to a repetition of this account from her own lips. To the best of his belief and recollection it had not varied by so much as a single word. He said,
“The second man-the one who was turned away from Miss Paine-she didn’t get what he said. If you had to make a guess at filling in those gaps when he was speaking, what sort of guess would you make?”
She was knitting again easily and fast, her eyes not on the work but on his face.
“I suppose that on the occasion when the first man had spoken of a shot we may presume the other to have made some protest or objection. This would fit in with the first one’s reply that he would not touch the affair on any other terms, but that this way it was a certainty.”
“He said certainty-not cert?”
“The Chief Inspector raised that point. I agree that it is an important one and might afford a possible clue to the man’s identity. I can only say that the word as repeated by Miss Paine was certainty.”
Bellingdon nodded.
“And the other gap-how would you fill that? The one which the first man came in on with his ‘Then there will be two of them for it, that’s all!’ What do you make of that?”
Miss Silver said soberly,
“I think there can be no doubt that the other man had raised the question as to what was to be done should there be a second person in the car. It is, I think, the only explanation which would fit in with the callous response. Had there been such a second person, there would no doubt have been a second murder.”
“Not much doubt about that, I should say. Now about this poor woman. Did she run into an accident, or was she murdered too? Just go over all that about her thinking she might have been followed, will you? They showed me your statement at the Yard, but what a thing looks like in cold black and white, and what it sounds like when you hear it, are two different things. Which is why I wanted to see you for myself.”
Miss Silver said,
“I can repeat Miss Paine’s words, and I can undertake to be accurate in repeating them. What I cannot do is to reproduce her voice, her manner, her expression. I can only endeavour to convey the impression that they left on me.”
Lucius Bellingdon was becoming increasingly aware of the impression that Miss Silver herself was making. Scrupulous accuracy, a temperate judgment, considerable powers of observation-of these she was giving him proof. But above and beyond these qualities he was aware of a poised and keen intelligence. It was a thing which he respected above everything else, and he had seldom been more instantly aware of it.