The Gazebo (12 page)

‘Curious? In what way?’

‘In this way, Frank. The house was not up for sale, yet two would-be purchasers, each introduced by a different agent, had arrived with an order to view and were competing with offers which were proving a serious temptation to Mrs Graham. I gathered that what made this very awkward for Miss Graham was that the house is hers. From what I had seen of Mrs Graham I could imagine that she would find it convenient to forget this or any other fact which did not suit her. I really have very seldom encountered so self-centred a person. Miss Graham was quite restrained in what she said, but I discerned that the situation was weighing upon her. I was therefore not very much surprised when she rang me up and asked if she could come and see me. Now before we go any further, I should like to suggest an inquiry into the antecedents of these would-be purchasers.’

‘My dear ma’am!’

Her look reproved him.

‘I am sure I need not remind you that anything in the least abnormal should be investigated.’

‘Naturally. But I don’t quite see…’

‘The situation as regards the house was abnormal. You have to remember that it was not being offered for sale. Nevertheless two prospective buyers appear. They bid the property up to a price quite beyond its value. Then two things happen. One of them, Mr Worple, suddenly withdraws. Mrs Graham is murdered. The two events may have nothing to do with one another, or there may be some connexion. Even if remote, this would bear looking into. I have made a few notes on what little is known about Mr Blount and Mr Worple. I think that it would be wise to add to it.’

She passed over a neatly written sheet which contained no more about Mr Blount than his address and the fact that he was married to an invalid wife, but furnished particulars of Mr Worple’s previous connexion with Grove Hill and his relationship to Mr Martin of Martin and Steadman, the house-agents, who were, however, sponsoring, not him, but Mr Blount.

Frank put the sheet away in his pocket-book. He was not much interested in Mr Blount or Mr Worple, whose connexion with the case he regarded as hypothetical, and he was very much interested in Nicholas Carey. He said,

‘Suppose we get back to Carey. Mrs Graham described him as an undesirable young man. Any support for this point of view?’

‘I do not think so. He seems to have spent his holidays here with an aunt. Miss Graham had known him since she was a child. They were companions and friends before they fell in love. He is on the staff of the Janitor, and he has comfortable private means. He seems to have made every possible concession to Mrs Graham, even going to the length of suggesting that he and Althea should take over the top floor of this house, an arrangement which would certainly have proved unsatisfactory in the extreme. If Mrs Graham had had anything against his character she would, I feel sure, have produced it for my benefit. She was prepared to use any weapon to prevent her daughter from marrying. In the end the situation became too much for Mr Carey. Miss Graham was afraid to leave her mother. She feared a heart attack which might prove fatal. Mr Carey could no longer bear the strain. He has been abroad for the last five years, travelling in the wilds and supplying the Janitor with articles which have been a good deal talked about.’

‘He’s not “Rolling Stone”!’

‘I believe that is the name under which he writes.’

Frank whistled.

‘His stuff is good, there’s no doubt about that, but – he has certainly been in the wilds. The question is how much of their manners and customs might he have assimilated – enough to make him take an easy step over on to the wrong side of the law and choke an old woman who was standing between him and the girl he wanted? It’s quite a motive, you know.’

Miss Silver shook her head.

‘I do not think such a motive existed. Miss Graham had consented to marry him. The meeting last night was to arrange the details. They were, in fact, to have been married today.’

Frank Abbott’s eyes took on a bleak expression.

‘Were to have been,’ he said. ‘Do you suppose there was any chance that they would have been, after Mrs Graham had walked in on them and their arrangements? If heart attacks were her long suit, do you suppose she hadn’t got all the cards she wanted up her sleeve, or that she would have hesitated to play them? Motive? I should say Carey had a whale of a motive! And quite a lot of inhibitions could have disappeared after five years amongst people who probably hadn’t got any – at least not the sort that would prevent you from bumping off anyone who stood in your way.’

Miss Silver said with the mildness which did not for a moment deceive him,

‘If, my dear Frank, you are asking me to believe that Miss Graham stood by whilst a murderous attack was being made upon her mother, and that she afterwards made a completely false statement and was prepared to swear to it, I feel obliged to tell you that it would be completely out of her character, and that I am unable to entertain the idea for a moment.’

IN EVERY MURDER case there are a number of scattered threads to be picked up and woven together. Some appear to be more important than others, but none can be neglected. Sometimes a chance word or an accidental happening may lead in the direction of an important clue. In the work of the police there must be a continual search for and sorting and arranging of even the slightest and least significant of these threads.

Nothing could appear to have less connexion with Mrs Graham’s death than the fact that Mrs Sharp, the young wife of Detective Inspector Sharp, chose the following afternoon to visit her aunt Miss Agnes Cotton, the Grove Hill district nurse, yet it was to have a definite bearing on the course of events. Miss Cotton had very little interest in the daily press. Foreign affairs were a long way off and there wasn’t anything you could do about them. And so far as domestic problems were concerned she had her hands quite full enough with confinements, accidents and other local emergencies, without wanting to read about them in the papers. What was the good of being told that a woman had had quads in Japan or that a man had stabbed his wife in Marseilles, when her hands were full enough with the Thomas twins and one of them all set to die only she had no intention of allowing it, or when Bill Jones just round the corner from her had knocked Mrs Jones about to such an extent that it didn’t look as if they were going to get out of it without having a police-court case. When she did have time for reading, what she liked was one of the women’s magazines with a nice love story where everything came right in the end, and some good recipes and knitting patterns. Sooner or later she would certainly have heard about a local murder, but she might not have connected it with Mrs Burford’s false alarm and Mr Burford’s call on Tuesday night. Young married people and jumpy, that’s what they were. A first baby took them that way as often as not. Hilda Burford was a nervous little thing, and John one of those long pale lads for all the world like a piece of string dipped in tallow.

Miss Cotton was very pleased to see her niece. It was over the home-made scones and currant cake that Mary Sharp said how busy Ted was, and what a dreadful thing, someone being murdered in her own back garden! Miss Cotton poured a good strong cup of tea for herself, put in three lumps of sugar and about four drops of milk, and inquired who had been murdered.

Mary Sharp had come over quite flushed and excited.

‘That Mrs Graham that’s got the corner house between Hill Rise and Belview Road! They say she caught her daughter in the garden with her boy friend in the middle of the night, and in the morning there she was dead in a sort of summer-house place they’ve got!’

Miss Cotton’s cup was half way to her lips. She set it down again. She was a comfortable rosy person with a smiling look about her, but she didn’t smile as she said,

‘When did it happen?’

Mary stared.

‘Last night, Auntie. Ted is all taken up with it – too busy to know whether I’m out or in, so I thought it would be a good idea to come along to you and cheer myself up. I’m sure he hadn’t a word to say dinner-time, and if I said anything all I got was a “What?” ’

Miss Cotton separated the chaff from the wheat in this pronouncement.

‘Then it wasn’t Ted who told you about the murder?’

Mary tossed her head.

‘Mentioned it, and then not a word more to say, except that he’d be busy on account of somebody coming down from Scotland Yard. No, it was that Mrs Stokes that works for the Grahams. I met her when I was out doing my shopping and – it wasn’t her day with them, they only have her once a week, but she seemed to know all about it. She’s one of those talkers – makes it her business to know everything. And there I was with Ted on the job and I didn’t know the first thing about it except that it had happened. I’m sure I don’t know what she thought – nor what I felt like.’

Miss Cotton administered a lecture. Mary was a good girl, but she was new to being a policeman’s wife. If Ted Sharp didn’t talk about his business it was no more than what was expected of him, and she ought to be proud of him and not go about pulling a long face. Tittle-tattling and talking to gossips like Mrs Stokes wasn’t at all the way to help him to get on – ‘And don’t you forget it, my dear.’

When Mary left, Miss Cotton walked back with her, said good-bye at the corner of the road, and then instead of returning along the way that they had come, she took the bus down into the town and got out at the police station.

TED SHARP AND the Scotland Yard Inspector came knocking at Miss Cotton’s door next day. They had rung up, and she was fitting them in between the Thomas twins and old Mrs French’s back. Her cottage really was a cottage, standing much farther back from the road than the new council houses on either side of it, with a long narrow garden full of autumn flowers in front, and cabbages, Brussels sprouts and artichokes behind. There was a living-room and a kitchen on the ground floor, and two bedrooms above. Between the two wars a bathroom and a lavatory had been built up at the back. The front door opened directly into the living-room, which had a round table in the middle, an easy chair on either side of the fire-place, a corner-cupboard, and four chairs with their backs against the wall. There was a teapot and sugar basin, four cups and saucers and a milk-jug in copper lustre with a bright blue band and a pattern of raised fruits, in the corner-cupboard. And there was a vase with ‘A present from Margate’ on it in the middle of the mantelpiece. It was full of bronze and yellow chrysanthemums, and so was the blue and white ginger jar on the table. The other things on the mantelpiece were a framed photograph of Mary Sharp in her wedding dress balanced on the other side by a snapshot of her at her christening, and at one corner one of those large shells flushed with pink, and at the other the reproduction of a woman’s hand in brass. It was about three inches long, and extremely elegant, with a ring on the third finger, and it was polished to the colour of pale gold. Everything in the room was as neat as a new pin, including Miss Cotton herself in a cheerful blue uniform with a white collar. She had a lot of grey hair, very blue eyes, and a hat worn rather on the back of her head.

She received them with composure, told them she was fitting them in, and came straight to the point with,

‘You’ve come about a statement I made last night.’

Ted Sharp said yes, they had. After which he said, ‘This is Detective Inspector Abbott from the Yard,’ and left it to him.

They sat round the table. Frank Abbott took out the paper which was Miss Cotton’s signed statement and laid it down in front of him. Then he said in his leisurely cultured voice,

‘I believe you made this statement last night, Miss Cotton.’

She sat there very composed with her grey hair, her blue eyes, and her cheeks like rosy apples. She said,

‘My niece was here to tea with me. She told me Mrs Graham had been murdered in the night at No. 1 Belview Road and I thought it was my duty to call in at the station and say what I knew about it.’ Then, as the colour came flooding up under Ted Sharp’s brown skin, she made haste to add, ‘My niece is Mrs Sharp, as I suppose Ted here has told you, but it wasn’t from him that she got anything she could tell me about the murder, it was from that Mrs Stokes that works at the Grahams’. And a real busy talker she is!’

Ted Sharp’s colour subsided. He didn’t look at her, but he was grateful in his heart. If he had ever thought that Mary ran round too much to her Auntie Ag, he took it back.

Frank Abbott went on.

‘Well, Miss Cotton, we are grateful to you. Now will you just forget about this statement and tell me the whole thing all over again in your own words?’

She gave him a quick appreciative nod.

‘They change things a bit when they write them down, don’t they? I told the young man that was writing it, and he didn’t like me saying what I did – said I needn’t sign it if I didn’t want to. But there wasn’t anything exactly wrong if you know what I mean, only it wasn’t just the way I’d have put it myself, so I signed it and came away.’

His smile had a humanizing effect upon the inherited features.

‘I know. Well now, suppose we have it just the way it comes.’

‘It began with Mr Burford calling me up. It’s a first baby and I thought it would be a false alarm, but of course you never can tell. I wasn’t undressed, which was a bit of luck, so I just had to get into my out-of-door shoes and put on my coat and hat and come away. I got my bicycle out of the shed and rode it until I came to the steep part of Hill Rise. It’s not worth riding to the top – takes more out of you than it saves you – so I got off and walked. Being a stranger, I don’t know if you know how the roads go, but Hill Rise runs into Belview Road just beyond the top of the hill, and No. 1 Belview Road is the corner house. The garden runs back along Hill Rise right to the top, and that’s where I was just going to get on to my bicycle again, when someone called out on the other side of the hedge.’

‘Man, or woman?’

‘It was Miss Graham. She called out, “Mother!” ’

‘How do you know it was Miss Graham?’

Miss Cotton maintained her composure.

‘Oh, I’ve nursed there more than once when Mrs Graham took a notion that she was going to die and they couldn’t get anyone else.’

‘All right, go on.’

‘There’s a sort of summerhouse at the top of the garden not so far from the hedge, and that’s where they were. There was a man’s voice that said, “Mrs Graham…” and I could hear her catching her breath. There’s quite a slope on that garden, and she never would walk up it, so I wondered what she was doing there. She got her breath and called out, “How dare you, Nicholas Carey – how dare you!” Miss Graham was trying to quiet her down.

She told her she would make herself ill, and Mrs Graham called out, “You wouldn’t care if I died! You wouldn’t care if you killed me! You only think about yourself!” Mr Carey said he was sorry but she wouldn’t let him come to the house, and he had to see Miss Graham. He called her Allie – her name is Althea, you know. He said he would go away and come back and talk to her in the morning. Mrs Graham was properly worked up, crying and carrying on. She said he mustn’t come and she wouldn’t see him if he did. She told Miss Graham to send him away – said she couldn’t stand it – “He’ll kill me – send him away!” ’ She paused and said with a shade of embarrassment, ‘It doesn’t sound very good me standing and listening like that, but it all seemed to happen so quickly, and if she had worked herself into an attack they might have been glad of my help. I didn’t feel I could just ride on and leave them.’

‘No, of course not, Miss Cotton. Please go on.’

‘Miss Graham said something about getting her back to the house. I didn’t catch it all, but I think she was asking Mr Carey to help her, because Mrs Graham called out, “No – no! Don’t dare to touch me – don’t dare!” After that I could just hear Miss Graham’s voice, but I couldn’t hear what she said, only at the end there was something about getting her mother to bed and making her comfortable. And that was all, except that I heard them going off down the garden together, and Miss Graham was having her work cut out.’

‘In what way?’

‘Oh, every way. Mrs Graham was crying and catching her breath, and by the sound of it I should say Miss Graham was three parts carrying her. So I waited to see if she could get her into the house, and when I heard the door shut I got on my bicycle and went on to the Burford’s, and it was a false alarm, just as I thought it would be, so I made her a cup of tea and had one myself and came along home.’

Frank Abbott was reflecting a little sardonically upon the difference between the living spoken word and the stiff dead stuff to which the average police statement reduced it. There was no actual discrepancy between what Miss Cotton had just been saying and what she had signed at the police station last night, but there was exactly the same difference between them as there is between a living person and a corpse. The paper lay on the table before him. His eye picked out a sentence – ‘As I was proceeding along Hill Rise upon my bicycle…’ He was prepared to bet that Miss Cotton had never proceeded anywhere in her life. He said,

‘Did you come back the same way as you went?’

‘Well, I did.’

‘You passed along the garden of No. 1 Belview Road – were you bicycling or walking?’

‘I got off my bicycle and walked. There’s quite a bit of a rise there.’

‘See anything – hear anything?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Any lights on in the house?’

‘Not that I could see. There would be one on the upstair landing – they used to keep it on all night.’

There was a pause. Then he said,

‘I take it you know that Mrs Graham was found dead in that summerhouse you spoke of, and that she had been strangled.’

‘That was what I heard.’

‘Miss Graham found her, but not until something after seven in the morning. She says she left her comfortably in bed, and that she had no idea she had gone out again. She searched the house, and when she found that her mother’s outdoor coat and shoes were missing she searched the garden. She discovered her mother’s body in the summerhouse and rang up Dr Barrington. That is her story. Now what I want to know is this – what sort of terms was Mrs Graham on with her daughter?’

Miss Cotton looked at him out of those very blue eyes.

‘Miss Graham did everything she could for her.’

‘Mrs Graham was trying?’

Miss Cotton nodded.

‘She was just about the most selfish person I’ve ever known. It was Thea do this and Thea do that, from the first thing in the morning till the last thing at night. I don’t know how the poor girl stood it, I’m sure. And it was common talk that Mrs Graham had got her engagement broken off.’

‘To Mr Nicholas Carey?’

‘That’s right – and a real shame too. Always about together from the time they were in school, and fond of each other – well, it stuck out all over them.’

‘So you would say that Miss Graham was a good daughter. Was she fond of her mother?’

‘It was a miracle if she was.’

‘Oh, well, miracles happen. The question is, was she?’

‘She did everything she could for her.’

‘I see. Now tell me – you say you heard Mrs Graham say a number of things like “You wouldn’t care if I died – you wouldn’t care if you killed me!” That was talking to her daughter. Did you hear Miss Graham say anything to account for that?’

‘No, I didn’t. She was telling her mother that she would make herself ill.’

‘It wasn’t said in any threatening way?’

‘Of course it wasn’t! She was doing her best to soothe her down like she always did.’

‘She always tried to soothe her mother?’

‘Yes, she did. Anyone will tell you that.’

‘I just wanted to know. Now with regard to Mr Carey. Speaking of him to her daughter, she said, “He’ll kill me – send him away!” And, speaking to him, “Don’t dare to touch me – don’t dare!” Did you hear him say anything that would account for her speaking to him like that?’

‘No, I didn’t. Mr Carey is a gentleman and he spoke like one – kept his temper and said he was sorry but she wouldn’t let him come to the house and he had to see Allie, meaning Miss Graham, and he would come back and talk to her tomorrow. There wasn’t anything to make Mrs Graham say what she did. She was right down hysterical, that’s all.’

‘And you are sure that Miss Graham took her mother back to the house?’

‘I heard them all the way down the garden, and I heard them go in and shut the door. When I got to the corner I looked down Belview Road and I saw the light go on in Mrs Graham’s bedroom.’

‘Then it seems as if Mrs Graham must have gone back to the summerhouse later on. Are you quite sure you didn’t see or hear anything on your return journey when you walked the length of the garden as far as the crest of the hill?’

‘I didn’t see anything or hear anything.’

‘And there was no light on in the house?’

She stopped for a moment before she answered that – looking back – trying to remember. Then she said,

‘If the landing light was on, I wouldn’t see it – there’s a thick curtain there. The house looked dark.’