Death of a Beauty Queen (9 page)

‘I take it you mean you realized at once you had lost your chance of winning the competition through this trick Miss Mears played you?'

Lily did not answer. She was feeling oddly frightened now, and the anger that had flamed for a moment in her eyes had changed into a puzzled and bewildered terror. Mitchell was looking not at her, but at the polished surface of the table before him. On it his fingers were now not beating a tattoo, but pressed heavily, as if to hold it down. He thought to himself:

‘Well, they would find my finger-prints there all right.' He looked up, and asked:

‘Did you say anything when you understood?'

She shook her head, and Mitchell turned over some notes that were lying before him.

‘There is no need to answer if you would prefer not to,' he said, ‘but I think you ought to know my information is that you were heard to say: “I could kill her”.'

‘Oh, she didn't. You never did, did you, Lily?' Mrs Francis cried.

But the girl still made no answer, and then at last, when she had moistened lips that had become suddenly dry, she almost whispered:

‘Yes... I remember now... I had forgotten.'

‘She didn't mean it,' Mrs Francis almost shouted at Mitchell. ‘Why, everyone says things like that. I often say I could kill the baker, he will come so late; and I'm sure when people come banging at the door the way they do–'

‘If you please,' Mitchell interposed, holding up one hand. He went on: ‘My information is, Miss Ellis, that, after you said that, you went hurriedly, running indeed – “at a run,” is the expression used – towards Miss Mears's room.'

Mrs Francis tried to speak again, but this time it was Lily who checked her.

‘Please, aunt,' she said, and then continued to Mitchell: ‘I suppose that's true, I was so – so furious. I didn't seem able to think anything or feel anything except how angry I was. Everything seemed to go all funny and red, and I remember running down a long, long passage, and thinking I would just tell Carrie how beastly it was of her to do a thing like that.'

‘Do you care to say anything more?' Mitchell asked. ‘It is entirely for you to decide.'

‘Yes. Everything,' Lily answered. ‘Carrie had a room all to herself. I knew where it was, because a girl showed it me, and said it showed who was the favourite. The door was shut, and I rattled the handle, but it wouldn't open, and then I seemed to come to myself, and I remember thinking: “What's the good of saying anything? It's all over now.”'

‘A good thing you didn't go in,' interposed Mrs. Francis, loudly and defiantly. ‘It's just as well as it's turned out you went away again without going in.'

The hint was plain, but Lily did not speak. She gave a little gasp, and was still silent. Mitchell, with his eyes not on her, but on his notes on the table, was silent, too. Bobby had understood now, and a kind of horror-stricken wonder was showing in his eyes. He thought:

‘Mitchell thinks she did it, does he? Oh, he can't... a girl like her... Why not?... A pretty face proves nothing.' Mitchell looked up from his notes again. He said, in the dry hard note that had come into his voice:

‘I think I ought to tell you, Miss Ellis, that a finger-print that seems to be yours has been found on the blade of the knife used in the attack on Miss Mears.'

After he had said this, there was silence for some moments. Mrs Francis had become very pale; not even all the powder and lipstick and rouge so unskilfully distributed on her features could hide the stress and rigidity of terror they displayed. Lily was very pale, too; her eyes half closed; her clasped hands trembling, even though she held them pressed together so closely; her breath rapid and uneven. Mitchell got to his feet, and went over and stood by Bobby, as if to look at his notebook, and then came back to his seat at the table.'

‘Miss Ellis,' he said. ‘Murder has been done here to-night, or what seems like murder. It is our duty, and we must do it, to discover the actual truth of what happened. It is quite likely you would prefer to say no more now. You would be wise to take the advice of–'

But she interrupted with a sudden, startled cry, as if this were a new idea to her and one more terrifying than any other.

‘No, no,' she exclaimed. ‘I'm quite ready to tell exactly everything – just as it was. I did stop at the door, because the handle stuck, and I couldn't get it open at first, and I thought it was all over and no good saying anything, but then remembering that made me get all angry again, and I thought anyhow I would tell Carrie I knew what she had done, and it was because she was afraid the judges would like me best. I was still pulling at the door, and it came open and I went in.'

‘Were all the lights on?'

‘Yes, I think so. Yes, they must have been.'

‘Was she alone?'

‘Oh, yes. She was standing near a big desk. She laughed when she saw me, and said, “Hullo, Lily.” I said: “Carrie, you pig.” That was all, just that: “You pig.” She knew what I meant, and she said: “My dear girl, it was just a joke; no one could ever have thought you would take it seriously. If you're such a fool, it's not my fault.” That made me angrier still. I could have slapped her or anything only the table and the desk were between us and I couldn't reach. I put my hand on the table. I don't think I really meant to throw anything at her – oh, I don't, not really.' Her voice rose; then instantly died down again. ‘I think what I really wanted was to do something to make her stop laughing at me. It was horrid to see her laughing at what she had done. I felt I was touching something hard and cold, and when I looked I saw it was a knife. Then I went away. That's all.

‘Thank you,' Mitchell said. ‘I won't ask you any more questions at present, except one. Did you see anyone else near the room when you left it?'

‘No – no one, I don't think so – no one.'

‘Thank you,' Mitchell said again. ‘What you have told us will be written out, and to-morrow, after you've had time to think it over, you will be asked to read it again, and sign it if you find it accurate. It is not for me to give you any further advice. Your solicitor will be able to do that better than I can.'

‘Can I go now?' Lily asked, almost whispering.

‘Certainly,' Mitchell answered, rising again to open the door for her.

Mrs Francis put her arm round her niece and helped her to her feet, and then, quite suddenly, kissed her. Mrs Francis's hat was dreadful, and her badly put on make-up she had felt due to the occasion was in ruins, and the last dab of powder she had meant for her nose had landed somewhere under her left eye, and she was fat and stumpy and altogether without dignity, but a splendour was about her as she said, very loudly and clearly:

‘Well, Lily didn't do it; and, what's more, I don't care a damn if she did.'

‘And that,' said Mitchell thoughtfully, when the door had closed behind Mrs Francis and her niece, ‘is probably the old lady's very first swear word – quite a good one, too.'

He went back slowly to his seat, and then, catching sight of Bobby's face, smiled a little sadly.

‘You don't think a young attractive girl could possibly commit a murder?' he asked. ‘Remember the Thompson-Bywaters case? Oh, a pretty, pleasing face can hide thoughts neither the one nor the other.'

‘But you don't really think, sir, that Miss Ellis–?' began Bobby, and then stopped. ‘I can't believe' he began again, and then paused once more.

‘Our job is to follow where the evidence leads,' Mitchell said, with that grim look of the hunter on his face that Bobby was coming to know so well. ‘I think the girl's story is true, as far as it goes,' he continued, ‘but does it go far enough? She told her tale frankly, but then we had found her fingerprint on the knife, and that had to be accounted for somehow. The thing is, does the story stop where she stopped, or is there a continuation? From her own account she was very excited – “everything went red,” you remember – and she admits she had a shock when she felt her hand touching the knife on the table. Well, what happened, then? Is that “all,” as she says? Or did she pick the thing up – and throw it at the other girl?'

‘I suppose,' Bobby admitted gloomily, ‘if it was like that – I mean if the knife was thrown from a distance, either by Miss Ellis or by someone else – then that would account for the apparent absence of bloodstains from clothing and so on?'

Mitchell was beginning again that drumming of his finger-tips on any convenient surface that always betrayed a mood of profound unease. He resumed presently:

‘She admits an impulse to hit the Mears girl in her anger at the trick played her. We know' – the story had already reached Mitchell's ears, recounted, as it had been, to Inspector Ferris by one of Lily's more intimate friends – ‘that there's some evidence of a violence of temper in her, if it's true she once took a dinner-knife and chased a couple of boys down the street. It is possible she flung the knife in a temper, as the first thing she put her hand on, without meaning murder at all – just as a gesture of disapproval, so to say, as she might have flung an inkpot or a book. Nine times out of ten, it would have missed; nine times out of ten, if it had hit, it would have done no harm. This time it happened to hit – to hit with the point forward, and to hit a fatal spot, just at the base of the throat. It's possible, even, that, after she had picked up the knife and thrown it, she just turned round and rushed away and didn't even know what she had done.' ‘

‘If it was that,' Bobby observed, ‘then it would be manslaughter, I suppose, and not murder at all?'

‘That would be for the jury to say,' remarked Mitchell. ‘And, besides, was it like that? But the first thing to do is to find out where the knife came from. How did it happen to be lying there at that particular moment? A knife like that isn't usually lying about in business offices. We must see if Mr Sargent can tell us anything about it. We had better ask him now, as Penfold seems so long turning up with Mr Irwin. Find Sargent, will you, and ask him if I can see him for a few moments? Oh, and ask the door-keeper if he has any record of phone calls to-night, and if he received one from Maddox. Better confirm every detail of what everyone says, as far as we can.'

Bobby left the room on his errand, and was soon back.

‘Mr Sargent is coming immediately,' he said. ‘I spoke to the door-keeper. He is supposed to keep a record of phone calls, but there's been a lot of confusion and excitement all to-night, from the very first. Since it happened, he says the phone has never stopped ringing. There's no chance of identifying any one call.'

‘Pity. I always like things confirmed when possible,' Mitchell observed.

‘He told me one thing,' Bobby went on. ‘He says a rough-looking man was asking, earlier in the evening, for a Miss Quin he said was one of the competitors. There's no such name on the list, but while Wood was looking for it this man pushed by. I told Wood – the door-keeper, I mean, Wood's his name – I thought you would like to hear about that.'

‘We'll have him in next,' Mitchell said. ‘That is, if Penfold hasn't got back with Mr Irwin by then. Looks as if he had got lost – he's been gone long enough. Ah, come in, Mr Sargent,' he added, as the door opened and the cinema proprietor appeared. ‘There are just one or two things I want to ask about.'

‘Anything I can do to help, of course,' Sargent said. He looked pale and worried. ‘A terrible business,' he said. ‘It's going to do us a lot of harm.'

Privately Mitchell was not of that opinion. He was inclined to believe that from the business point of view this night's tragedy would be more likely to mean a great increase of business. But he did not pursue the point. Instead he began by asking a few unimportant questions, while at the same time observing Sargent closely, with that careful intent gaze of his that seemed to absorb, as it were, every possible detail. He saw a short, sturdily built, middle-aged personage, with the sharp, alert little eyes that suggest the keen business man, a loose sensual mouth that seemed to proclaim instead the man of pleasure; large, prominent, well-shaped nose that hinted at the man of action and a good forehead to speak of intellectual capacity. An interesting face, Mitchell decided – one of possibilities; one in which all would depend on which of those four conflicting tendencies prevailed. But then, too, it might well be that they cancelled out and left little behind.

Before long Mitchell came to the question of the knife. Sargent's reply was short and decided. He had already seen the knife. He had no knowledge of it whatever. He had never before seen one like it anywhere in the building. He was quite sure none resembling it had ever been in his office. Nor could he conceive how it had got there.

‘Whoever murdered poor Carrie Mears must have brought it,' he declared.

‘That would mean premeditation,' Mitchell mused. ‘By the way, is that yours?'

‘Mine? No!' answered Sargent, looking at the broad-brimmed felt hat Mitchell had brought with him. ‘It looks like Mr Irwin's. Where did it come from?'

‘It was in your office – on a chair, close to the body,' Mitchell answered.

Sargent looked very puzzled. He picked the hat up, looked at it, and then put it down again.'

‘It's Mr Irwin's all right,' he said, ‘but I don't know what it could be doing there.'

‘Did Mr Irwin know which was Miss Mears's room?'

‘Yes, he did. He came behind with me. He wanted to speak to his son, Leslie Irwin. As it happened, we saw Leslie coming out of the room, and he was rather upset about it.'

‘Ah, yes.' Mitchell's voice was flat; it showed no sign that he found this statement of any special interest. ‘Why was that?'