The Brading Collection (15 page)

Next day being Sunday, Miss Silver attended morning service at the little church which stood in the middle of Warne village, very small, crouched, and old, with its graveyard round it. It had stood there for seven hundred years, and some of the headstones were so old that they would have crumbled long ago if moss and lichen had not held them together. Inside, a little girl worked the bellows for the old-fashioned organ, and an older girl stumbled through the chants and hymns under the eyes of a congregation which had seen her grow up and knew that she was substituting for the schoolmistress who was on holiday. The girl was plump, nervous, and not above seventeen. She got hotter and redder every moment. No kindly curtains intervened to prevent any worshipper from being aware of the fact, but on the whole the verdict would be that Doris hadn’t done too bad.

Miss Silver found the service very restful. The simple faith and Norman blood mentioned in a famous poem by her admired Lord Tennyson appeared to be happily conjoined in this archaic edifice. No one in Warne had a voice, but everyone sang heartily. The sermon was delivered in a conversational undertone by an old man who allowed long, dreamy pauses to punctuate his discourse, during which he gazed kindly upon his congregation, not a few of whom had dropped into a gentle Sabbath doze. It was all worlds and worlds away from murder. Yet as everyone came out into the August sunshine the Brading case was there, to be discussed, deplored, and whispered about. “They do say”—“My Annie says”—“There’s a London detective come down”—“I’d nothing against Mr. Brading myself”—“Well, I always did stick to it that Collection of his wasn’t any better than the Chamber of Horrors.”…

Miss Silver’s hearing was very acute. She caught these and similar snatches of talk as she walked down the cobbled pathway to the lych-gate which opened upon the village street. She was in its shadow, when a quick footstep came up behind her and a brisk voice said,

“Are you Charles Forrest’s detective?”

Miss Silver turned with some dignity. She was not tall, but she had an air of authority—she could impress.

She failed to impress Theodosia Dale, who stood under the melting sun in her thick, laced shoes, her iron-grey tweed, her black felt hat, and repeated the question.

“Are you Charles Forrest’s detective?”

“My name is Maud Silver. I am a private enquiry agent.”

Theodosia nodded.

“I thought so. You are staying at Warne House. We can walk up together. I am lunching there.”

They passed out into the street. It was extremely hot, but Miss Dale’s skin showed no sign of moisture. Lewis Brading had been murdered, but she showed no sign of being affected by that either. If there were interested glances turned her way they could detect no change in her. She was Miss Dossie, and she never looked any different winter or summer. She didn’t look any different now. She walked beside Miss Silver and said,

“You are enquiring into Lewis Brading’s death? I should have thought the police could do that. But no matter—I daresay they are very incompetent—men usually are. I hear it wasn’t suicide. No one would ever have got me to believe it was. Lewis wasn’t that sort. If he wanted anything he went on till he got it, and once he got it he held on to it. He would never have taken his own life. What do you think about it all?”

Miss Silver coughed.

“I could not offer any opinion,” she said mildly.

Theodosia nodded.

“The name is Dale—Miss Dale—Theodosia. My friends call me Dossie. I’ve lived here all my life, and I’m a nosey old maid. I could be useful to you, you know. There was a time when Lewis and I were going to be married. Somebody else would tell you if I didn’t myself. It gives me a point of view.”

Miss Silver said, “Yes—” Her tone was a thoughtful one. Miss Dale interested her a good deal. She would certainly know things which might be useful—or confusing. If they were to walk to the club together, it would do no harm to let her talk. It would probably be extremely difficult to prevent her doing so.

It appeared that Miss Dale had very decided opinions.

“I always told Lewis that Collection of his would be the death of him—a nasty morbid idea, and one he ought to have been ashamed of. I had a lucky escape when I had the sense to break off my engagement. Everybody thought I was mad, but I knew what I was doing. Who killed him?”

“Who do you think killed him, Miss Dale? I am sure you have an opinion.”

Theodosia shook her head in an impatient manner.

“I wish I had, but I haven’t. I can tell you who didn’t—Charles Forrest.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Not his line of country. I’ve known Charles ever since he was born. He’s got a good disposition. And something else. He’s clannish—strong sense of family. He didn’t like Lewis, but he’d a family feeling for him. He’d have gone to any amount of trouble to rally round in an emergency. Same with Lilias Grey. Extraordinarily tiresome woman, but because his mother adopted her Charles will go on giving her a flat and seeing that she’s got an income exactly as if she was his sister—and that’s more than a great many brothers would do. Take that depressed secretary of Lewis’s—nobody would have bothered about him or treated him as a human being if it hadn’t been for Charles. See what I mean—that sort of person doesn’t turn killer. But I shouldn’t wonder if that odious Ledlington Inspector didn’t try and cook up a case against him. I wouldn’t put it past him. He and Charles had words about a speed limit. Charles was run in and fined. Too bad. Crisp is a regular jack-in-office. Look here, there’s a thing you can tell me—about the revolver. Lewis was shot with a revolver, wasn’t he? Do you know if it was the one Charles gave him?”

“I believe so.”

“Well, they can make quite sure about that, you know. That’s one of the things I wanted to say to you. They needn’t think they can drag Charles into it on account of the revolver being his, because he had a pair, and when he gave one of them to Lewis about six months ago he scratched his initials on it—L. B. Lewis showed them to me—I can swear to that. So, you see, they can’t drag Charles in over the revolver.”

Miss Silver said,

“Thank you, Miss Dale. That is very interesting.”

They turned in at the gate of Warne House.

It appeared that Miss Dale was lunching with Myra Constantine and her daughters. In her character of a private gentlewoman Miss Silver would certainly not have consented to being included in the party by someone who was herself only a guest, but as a detective she made no resistance when Theodosia introduced her to Myra, to Lady Minstrell, to Hester Constantine, following up these introductions with a downright, “Ask her to come and sit with us for lunch, Myra. Too depressing, eating alone after what has happened.”

Miss Silver found herself placed between Mrs. Constantine, vast in a dress brightly flowered with poppies and cornflowers, and a pale, reluctant Hester, who gave her the sort of glance a nervous horse gives when he is about to shy, and then looked down at her plate.

James Moberly sat alone, as he always did, at the small table by the door. He and Hester never looked at one another. Each felt the drag of the other’s misery, the other’s fear. The room was almost empty. Mr. and Mrs. Brown had left in a hurry. The golfing men had gone off for the day. Guests who had been coming for the week-end had cancelled their bookings.

Miss Silver accepted cold salmon, and found herself engaged in conversation by Myra Constantine.

“Shocking thing this, and I hope you’ll find out who’s done it before it wrecks the club. Lewis had a share in it, you know, and so have I. Ridiculous, people giving it the cold shoulder. It’s not even as if it had happened in the club. I always did tell Lewis that Collection of his ought to be in a museum, but he wasn’t one to listen—” She broke off to call the waiter. “André—some of that mayonnaise sauce!”

“Madame—”

A silver sauce-boat was proffered. Myra went on talking.

“Stingy with it, aren’t you? And everybody ought to know better by now. What’s the good of salmon if you don’t have plenty of sauce?” She helped herself lavishly and turned back to Miss Silver. “That goes for everything, doesn’t it? Salmon, or life, it’s all the same—it’s the sauce that counts, and I like plenty.” She called across the table. “Now, Miss Mainwaring, you’ll just take a proper help and eat it! No poking it away under your fork. I don’t want Charles to say we got you down here and starved you. No one’s going to make anything better by going off their food, and what I said to Miss Mainwaring—oh, bother, I can’t go on Missing you, my dear, it’ll have to be Stacy and be done with it. What I said to you goes for Hester too—she doesn’t eat enough to keep a fly. And what good it’s going to do anyone starving and making yourself ill passes me. No matter what happens, we’ve got to eat, and if you don’t fancy fish, Het, there’s cold ham and salad, but one or the other you’ll take, and no nonsense about it! André—get Miss Constantine some ham!”

Hester Constantine said nothing at all. A little dull colour came up in her face and went away again. When the ham was brought she cut it up into very small bits and pushed them under the salad.

Miss Silver observed in a conversational voice that many people had very little appetite on such a very hot day. Myra speared a slice of cucumber, added lettuce, potato, and watercress, imposed the whole on a good-sized piece of salmon, and conveyed it skilfully to her mouth.

“Thank God, I’ve always been able to take my food,” she said. “Makes a lot of difference, you know. I didn’t have enough when I was a growing girl. You wouldn’t believe how hungry I used to be, and have to see the other girls go off to supper with their young men. Nobody’d look at me—I was too ugly. And then—” she lifted a glass of shandygaff and drank hugely—“well, then I went on being ugly, but they started looking, and I went out to supper with the best.”

Lady Minstrell broke off her conversation with Theodosia Dale to say, “Mama dear!”

Myra chuckled.

“You go on with your talk, Milly, my dear, ever so nice and refined, and I’ll go on with mine. I’m not refined, and never shall be. Never went in for it, or I daresay I’d have got there just as well as Lottie Loring that’s so high-toned and classy now that she wouldn’t walk the same side of the road with what she was when she got her first kick-off. André—more shandy!”

She turned back to Miss Silver.

“If you’re made one way, you get some kind of a nasty twist if you start turning yourself round to look like something else—does something to you—like those contortionists. I know, because I had a go at it. Poor Sid now—that was my husband—he was refined. Didn’t want to fall in love with me, but couldn’t help it, if you know what I mean, and once we were married, the way I dropped my aitches, well it fairly shook him. So I had a go at it. When Milly was born he wanted a nice refined name, so we took Millicent—nice and easy to say, and Milly handy when you weren’t feeling grand. And then there was Hester, and he wanted an aitch to her name so I’d have plenty of practice. It was his idea, you see, that if I’d got to say a name with an aitch in it every few minutes all round the clock, it’d break me in properly. So I sat down and thought. Hermione was what he wanted, but I said, ‘No you don’t, Sid Constantine—not if I know it, you don’t! I’m not going to be made a holy show of every time I call my own kid, so you needn’t think it! If you want an aitch, you can have an aitch, but I’m choosing one I can dodge with. The name’s Hester, and if the aitch slips off any time I’m not thinking, well, Ester’s a good name too—in the Bible and all, and you can’t say different.’” She gave her deep laugh. “He was vexed, but he hadn’t a word to say—I saw to that. And it was good practice for me. I got my aitches that steady I was able to start calling her Het before she was two years old, only by that time poor Sid was gone, so it didn’t really matter.” She took an enormous helping of trifle and called across the table to Stacy,

“Charles coming over this afternoon?”

Stacy said, “I don’t know.” She was not pleased to feel her colour rise under the eye of Theodosia Dale.

“Well, he and that Major Constable have got to get their lunch somewhere, I suppose. They might just as well have come here and all among friends—unless they’re lunching up at Saltings with Lilias. Or with Mrs. Robinson. I don’t suppose she wants to be left on her own any more than most of us do when things go wrong. Funny idea that, leaving people alone because they’re in trouble.”

Miss Silver coughed mildly.

“Some people really prefer it, Mrs. Constantine.”

Myra shook her head.

“Can’t understand it myself. When things go wrong you want your friends. And that’s where you find out just what friends you’ve got. When poor Sid died and I was left with two kids and not enough money to give him a proper funeral, do you suppose I didn’t want my friends? Or find out which was the real thing, and which wasn’t? There was a man I hadn’t thought anything about—one of the la-di-da up-stage kind—twenty pounds he sent me, and didn’t want anything for it either, which is more than you can say for some.”

It was a little after this that Miss Silver was called to the telephone. Randal March’s voice came to her.

“I’m sorry to trouble you—”

“It is no trouble, Randal.”

“That’s very nice of you. Is Forrest in the club?”

“I believe not.”

There was a vexed sound from the other end of the line, and then,

“I rather want to see him. He’s not at Saltings.”

“I believe he does not take his meals there. There are no facilities. He may not have wished to meet everyone here today. It is rather like a big family party.”

“Quite.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“He will, I think, be coming in. He happened to mention that he would be busy with Mr. Brading’s papers.”

March said, “Thank you. I’ll look in on the chance. There’s just a small point I’d like to ask him about.” He rang off.

Charles Forrest came into the club at about three o’clock. He went straight to the study and sat down at the writing-table.

He had not been there for more than five minutes, when Miss Silver came in, prim and cool in her grey artificial silk with its pattern of black dots and small mauve flowers. She wore her bog-oak brooch in the form of a rose, and the matching string of small carved black beads. Since the weather was so warm, her stockings were of black lisle thread instead of wool. Her shoes were a new pair of glacé kid with flat Petersham bows.

“I hope, Major Forrest, that I do not intrude.”

Charles said, “Oh, no,” in the tone which means, “Oh, yes.”

“I will not keep you.”

He had risen to his feet politely, and now saw to his dismay that she proposed to sit down. When she had done so he did not resume his own chair, but remained half sitting, half leaning against the table. It is the kind of attitude which suggests that no prolonged conversation is expected. Miss Silver’s knitting-bag was upon her arm. He derived some encouragement from the fact that it remained there. No knitting-needles appeared, no pink wool. She said,

“I merely looked in to inform you that the Chief Constable rang me up shortly after lunch. He wanted to know if you were in the club. When I told him that you would be here later he said that he would come round on the chance of seeing you.”

Charles frowned.

“What does he want?”

“He said some small point had arisen. He had tried to get you at Saltings.”

The frown deepened.

“I took Jack Constable over to Ledbury. It’s a rotten weekend for him, poor chap. Oh, well—” His voice implied, “Is that all?”

Miss Silver answered the implication.

“There is something which I should just like to mention. I walked up from church with a Miss Dale—Theodosia Dale.”

“Our Dossie! Then I don’t suppose there’s anything left for me to tell you. She knows all the answers.”

Miss Silver permitted herself to smile.

“She was quite informative, and, I think, a good friend of yours. She gave me a number of reasons why it would be absurd that any suspicion should be attached to you.”

His eyelids came down, narrowing the iris and pupil until they were just a dark glint between the lashes.

“Does it have to be such a very good friend to believe that I didn’t murder Lewis?”

Miss Silver coughed.

“That is a very imprudent way to talk. I think Miss Dale is really a good friend. The fact that she is also extremely indiscreet is largely discounted by her friends being so accustomed to her way of talking that they no longer attach much importance to what she says.”

Charles relaxed into an ironic smile.

“What a hope! She’s practically the local yellow press. If she goes round telling everyone I didn’t shoot Lewis, in twenty-four hours there won’t be a soul who doesn’t believe I did. Is that all she says?”

“By no means. She made a statement about the weapon. Or perhaps I should say she asked me a question about it.”

“Yes?”

“She wanted to know whether the revolver found by Mr. Brading’s body was the one which you had given him.”

“It was. I told you that—I told Crisp—I told the Chief Constable. You, I presume, told Dossie. And Dossie can go and tell the world!”

Miss Silver gave a faintly reproving cough.

“Miss Dale appeared to think that this might involve you in some suspicion. She said she could bear witness that you had given him the revolver, and that there was a still further proof in the fact that when you did so you scratched upon it the initials, L.B.”

Charles nodded.

“And what is that supposed to prove? Everyone knows I gave him the revolver—everyone knows he kept it in that drawer. When I found him the drawer was open and the revolver lying on the floor beside him. I don’t see what my having given it to him over six months before is supposed to prove.”

Miss Silver said,

“I do not think that Miss Dale is a very clear thinker.”

As she spoke, the door opened and Randal March came in. He said,

“How do you do, Miss Silver?” And then, “Hullo, Forrest! I’ve been chasing you. I hope I’m not disturbing anything.”

Charles said, “Oh, no.” He had risen to his feet. When March had seated himself he returned to his former careless attitude, half on, half off the table.

The window stood wide to the outside air, but no breeze entered. The book-lined walls darkened the room in a manner not unpleasant on so hot a day. They gave out a faint aroma of old paper, old leather, quite perceptible when you first came in, but soon ceasing to attract attention. It passed through March’s mind that Brading had been addicted to singularly gloomy surroundings. He himself liked plenty of light and air. He looked directly at Charles and said,

“There’s a point that’s come up about the revolver—I don’t know if you can help us at all. You say you gave it to him. Do you happen to know whether he had a licence for it?”

Charles lifted a shoulder and let it drop again.

“I haven’t an idea. Your guess is as good as mine. But if you want me to guess, I should say it was most unlikely.”

“Can you tell me why?”

“Just the way his mind worked. Some people are sticklers over what you might call the minor points of the law. Lewis was just the opposite. Regulations annoyed him—he liked dodging them. My guess is he’d have argued that he’d a perfect right to keep a private revolver on his private premises to protect his private property.”

“In fact you don’t think there was a licence?”

“Oh, I don’t get as far as an opinion.”

“Well, we can’t trace one. If there had been a licence, we could, of course, have identified the weapon positively. Can you tell me if it had any distinguishing marks?”

Miss Silver was sitting with her hands quietly folded in her lap. She had not opened her knitting-bag. She watched the faces of both men closely. Randal had not come here on a Sunday afternoon to ask Charles Forrest whether his cousin had taken out a licence for his revolver. She concluded that she was not the only person to whom Miss Dale had talked. She thought that Charles stiffened a little as he said,

“What do you mean by distinguishing marks?”

“Just what I said. For instance, initials.”

Charles said carelessly,

“Oh, yes.”

“What initials?”

“Oh, his own—L.B.”

“Engraved?”

“No. I scratched them on the butt when I gave him the revolver.”