House in Charlton Crescent (3 page)

“Difficult,” Bruce Cardyn assented, “but not impossible. And, in a case of this kind, we cannot afford to rule out any possibilities, Lady Anne. But, now, is this all you have to go upon?”

“I am sorry to say it is not.” Lady Anne's pale blue eyes were mechanically watching the flickering of the leaves on a branch of the creeper that had strayed over her window. “I have had several curious accidents, but the most serious of them all, to my mind, is this. To begin with, it is my custom to take a glass of hot milk the last thing at night. For some time I have not been feeling very well—indigestion, I thought it to be—and took my usual simple remedies without success.

“I am not over fond of doctors, but was beginning to think I should have to consult my old friend, Dr. Spencer, when, one night as I was drinking my milk, I became conscious of a very curious taste. It set me thinking. I put the glass down, meaning to make inquiries, and went on with my reading. Half an hour later, when the milk had got cold, my pet Persian cat, climbing about as she does sometimes, got on the table by my side and lapped up some of it before I noticed what she was doing. A very short time afterwards she was violently sick and lay writhing about in awful pain. I thought at first that she was going to die, but in the end got her round again. Since then I have taken no more hot milk. It goes down the drain, and I feel better. My indigestion is a thing of the past.”

“And that is all?” Bruce Cardyn questioned.

“Is it not enough?” Lady Anne parried.

“It ought to be,” Cardyn assented. “But, Lady Anne, have you no idea who is your would-be assassin?”

Lady Anne shook her head.

“None! Of course I do not say that my fancy has not strayed from one to another, and have said to myself—‘it could not be so-and-so, it could not be so-and-so,' but of real knowledge, or even suspicion, I have none.”

“I see.”

There was a long pause. Cardyn sat with his eyes apparently studying the pattern of the carpet. At last he raised them and gave Lady Anne one long, penetrating look.

“Has anyone in the house any motive for desiring your death?”

“Every one of them,” Lady Anne said slowly, a momentary moisture clouding her glasses. “Every servant in my employ comes in for a legacy at my death, small or large according to their time of service. This is well known and one which might have provided a motive.”

“Exactly,” Cardyn acquiesced. “And if the motive seems inadequate, one must remember for what exceedingly small sums murders have been committed in the past. Now will you tell me exactly of whom your household consists? First the servants?” He took out his note-book and waited.

Lady Anne's pale eyes gave him one swift look and then glanced obliquely away.

“To begin with there are Soames, the butler, and my maid, Pirnie. Both of them have been with me—with us—for many years. Pirnie came as quite a young girl, soon after my marriage. Then there are two housemaids, a kitchen-maid, and the cook-housekeeper, who has been here some years, a young footman under Soames, and a boy. That is all the indoor staff except that both the girls have maids—Miss Fyvert and Miss Balmaine, I mean. Outside we have a head gardener with a couple of men under him, and a chauffeur. But those, as I say, are out of count.”

“I cannot at present put anyone out of count,” Bruce Cardyn dissented, as he wrote a few lines rapidly in his note-book. “Now the members of your family, Lady Anne, please.”

“They are soon told.”

For a moment the detective fancied that Lady Anne's stern lips quivered; then he told himself that he must be mistaken as she went on in the same clear voice:

“There are my two nieces, Dorothy and Maureen Fyvert. They have made their home with me for the most part since their mother's death two years ago. Maureen is a child of twelve, usually at a boarding-school at Torquay, but at present at home on account of an outbreak of measles. Dorothy is twenty, and a very good girl. Then there is Margaret Balmaine, my husband's granddaughter.”

She was not looking at the detective now or she would have seen his interested expression change to one of utter amazement.

“Miss Margaret Balmaine!” he repeated, but even as he spoke the veil of inscrutability dropped over his features once more, and he became again the impassive-looking detective.

“Has Miss Balmaine, too, been here for some time?”

“No, she is a comparatively recent comer,” Lady Anne said quietly. “She has not been here quite three months as a matter of fact.”

Cardyn was writing quickly now. “You said your husband's granddaughter?” he questioned.

“Yes,” Lady Anne said, with another quick glance at the detective's sleek, bent head. “My husband had been married and lost his wife before he met me. He had one daughter who ran away and nearly broke her father's heart. She died many years ago in Australia, and we had no idea that she had left any children until this girl turned up a few months ago and introduced herself to me.”

“She had, I presume, the necessary credentials?”

“Oh, yes. Quite so. Quite so!” Lady Anne assented. “My lawyer saw to that, naturally. And, as a matter of course, the girl is making her home with me while she remains in England. Then, running up and down so often that, though he is not a member of my household, he might almost be reckoned as such, is John Daventry, my husband's nephew, who succeeded to the estate on the death of his—cousins.”

There was a momentary break in the firm voice at the allusion to her dead sons, then she went on: “He is half engaged to my elder niece, Dorothy Fyvert. At least for some years it has been a sort of family arrangement about them. Just of late, however, I have begun to wonder whether it will ever come to anything. They seem to regard one another as cousins and Mr. Daventry certainly admires Miss Balmaine. This is being very confidential, Mr. Cardyn, but I wish you to be thoroughly
au courant
with everything in the house.”

“I quite understand that,” Cardyn said quietly. “But you said just now that every member of the household had a motive. I presume these young people are included?”

Lady Anne bent her head and for a moment pressed her dainty handkerchief to her lips.

“Every one in the house has some motive, as I said. By my husband's will, his private fortune— a very large one—is divided at my death between John Daventry and the heirs of my husband's daughter, Marjorie—Miss Balmaine, in other words. Should Mr. Daventry predecease me his share passes on with my estate. Oh, I was forgetting! Until last Saturday my house had another inmate—my secretary, David Branksome. Now, Mr. Cardyn, as I told you, I am looking for a new secretary, and it occurred to me that the post might be occupied by one of your employees who, while ostensibly working with me, might be really watching over my safety.”

“A very good idea,” Cardyn assented. “With your permission I will take the post myself. I suppose there are no special qualifications needed.”

Lady Anne looked a little doubtful.

“I have a collection of wonderful old miniatures, which I am having catalogued and described. Do you know anything of them? Of course I could help you.”

“I think I should be able to manage.” Cardyn made an entry in his book. Then he looked at her, tapping his lips with his pencil as he waited. “May I ask why Mr. Branksome left?”

Lady Anne hesitated.

“I had some reason to be displeased with him,” she said stiffly. “But that does not enter into this matter at all.”

Bruce Cardyn frowned.

“Pardon me, I think it does. In that very cause for your displeasure may lie the clue to the mystery we are trying to solve. You must be perfectly frank with me, Lady Anne.”

Lady Anne's indecision was apparent, but at last common-sense prevailed. 

“Well, I do not see how it can have the slightest connection,” she surrendered. “But, though David Branksome was in some respects a good enough secretary, I did not care for him; he took too much upon himself—I hardly know how to describe it— and I seriously objected to his manner with Miss Balmaine. She, of course, coming from Australia, where I suppose all men are equal, apparently saw no harm in it. She assured me that she had no thought of anything serious and begged me not to dismiss him, but I felt it best to keep to my resolution. But I think this is begging the question, Mr. Cardyn. David Branksome alone of my household was not mentioned in my will. He was only a recent acquisition called in to help me in cataloguing my collection of miniatures, and the old editions in the library downstairs. Thus he had no motive. And, moreover, he had left me before I discovered the eighth pill. No, he had certainly no motive.”

“H'm! No. Nevertheless, I think I will look Mr. Branksome up a bit. There is no certainty, as far as can see, when the extra pill was added. Was he with you before Miss Balmaine came, Lady Anne?”

“Oh, yes. A couple of months, should think.” Lady Anne wrinkled up her brows. “I can give you the exact dates by looking up my diary.” 

She drew the book at her side towards her and turned over the pages rapidly.

“Here it is! Branksome came to me on the 12th of September last year; Miss Balmaine reached us on the 29th of October.”

“I see.” Bruce Cardyn put the elastic band round his pocket-book. “Lady Anne, your new secretary would like to come in at once.”

“To-day?” Lady Anne questioned.

“In an hour's time,” Cardyn acquiesced. “I have to go back to the office to make a few arrangements. For, with your permission, I am going to set a watch on the house outside!”

“Outside?” Lady Anne raised her eyebrows. “Really, I do not think that is necessary, Mr. Cardyn. The outside staff have no possible means of access—”

“It is not so much the outside staff that I am thinking of, though I shall give them a little attention, too, but I want any communication that the people inside the house have with outsiders carefully watched. In some cases, too, there will be probably shadowing to be done. But you have given me carte blanche, Lady Anne, though I will not trouble you with the details of my precautions, I want you to feel that you are perfectly safe. For a few days I am going to ask you to eat only at meal-times, when there can be no certainty beforehand who will partake of the food. Eschew all odd cups of milk, even your morning tea, until the assassin is found. I will get your prescription made up at the chemist's myself, if you will permit, and give the medicines into your own hands. While you will, I hope, keep them all locked up and allow no one to have access to them.”

“I dare say I can manage it,” Lady Anne said doubtfully. “But I am afraid Pirnie will be offended. She is my confidential maid, you understand, and the most faithful, the most honest creature in the world. For me even to say that she is entirely beyond suspicion is absurd.”

Bruce Cardyn coughed.

“Nevertheless, even the most confidential of maids must be suspect until we have discovered the guilty person. I must ask you to adhere strictly to this rule, please, Lady Anne.”

 “Well, well, leave it in your hands,” Lady Anne conceded. “Only make me safe, though I dare say you are thinking it is an unnecessary bother to make about an old woman.”

The detective got up.

“I will safeguard your life as I would have done my own mother's, Lady Anne.”

He took a few steps up the room looking grave and preoccupied.

“Of course it is my duty to tell you that it is my opinion that the only way to make you absolutely safe is for you to leave this house, letting no one know where you go or how long you will be away, taking no one with you, and of course not returning until we have discovered the identity of the would-be assassin.”

“Oh, I couldn't do that,” Lady Anne said in her most positive tone. “My good man, I have long since given up going away for change of air, as they call it. I can get all the change of air that I want in London, and an invalid is best by her own fireside. So, if you cannot make me safe here—” Her gesture was expressive.

“I feel no doubt but that we shall be able to do so,” Bruce Cardyn said quickly, “only I was bound to lay the other possibility before you.”

Something like a grim smile passed over Lady Anne's countenance.

“Well, you have put it before me and I refuse to have anything to do with it; therefore the responsibility is off your, shoulders. In an hour, then, I shall expect you, Mr. Cardyn. By the way, under what name shall you pass as my secretary?”

“Oh, Cardyn, please,” the detective said at once. “Of course, in any mention of our work officially, we are called by the name of the firm, and even that is not as well-known to the criminal classes as I should like it to be.” 

“As you wish.” Lady Anne touched the bell and the footman appeared to show Cardyn out.

The detective glanced at him keenly. “A young man from the country,” he decided.

Soames, the butler, was hovering about in the hall, a benevolent-looking, elderly man, whose bland face and dignified, stately manner might have been those of a Bishop or a Minister of State.

Cardyn took a taxi back to his office. As he let himself in with a key his partner looked out of the adjoining room—a keen-faced, clean-shaven man, a few years older than Cardyn.

“Well!”

“Well!” Cardyn responded in a non-committal voice.

The other laughed.

“Is it to be you or me?”

“Me, I think!” Cardyn's voice was firm. “For the reason I told you I wish to undertake the work.”

“Monsieur Melange is with her ladyship, sir.”

“Monsieur Melange!” Bruce Cardyn repeated with a doubtful glance at Soames's placid face.

“The French gentleman to see the miniatures, sir,” the butler went on, his manner as gravely respectful to the secretary as though the young man had been Squire Daventry himself. Soames's manners were always perfect. Somehow he conveyed the impression that they were something demanded by his self-respect, and quite irrespective of the person whom he was addressing.