Wicked Uncle (4 page)

Miss Maud Silver was choosing wool for a set of infant’s vests. After the khaki and Air Force yarn she had knitted up during the war, to say nothing of useful grey stockings for her niece Ethel’s three boys, it was a real pleasure to handle these soft blush-pink balls—all ready wound, and so much better than you could wind it yourself. Ethel’s eldest brother, who had been abroad for so long, had come home some months ago, and his wife was expecting her first child. Quite an excitement in the family, because they had been married for ten years and the empty nursery had begun to have a discouraging effect upon Dorothy. Miss Silver felt that something rather special in the way of vests would be appropriate. This pale pink wool was a most charming colour, and so soft and light. She paid for her purchase, and stood waiting for her change and the parcel.

The wool was heaped in a profusion of delightful shades upon a large three-tiered stand where four departments met. Straight down the way she was facing there were stockings, gloves, handkerchiefs—behind her a long vista of inexpensive gowns. To the right, past a stand festooned with umbrellas, she had a view of pull-overs and knitwear. Whilst to her left a display of glass flowers, bead chains, and necklets conducted the eye to the millinery department. Miss Silver thought it all looked very bright and pretty. It was nice to see the shops filled up again after the lean years when even the cleverest window-dressing would not make things go round.

Someone else was admiring the chains and necklets. There were little bunches of flowers in glass and bright enamel— violets, daisies, a spray of holly, a spray of mimosa. The girl who was looking at them lingered over the mimosa. She had rather bright golden-brown hair, with eye-lashes of exactly the same colour, and she was wearing a loose coat of honey-coloured tweed. It was rather shabby, but it had been well cut, and it suited her. Miss Silver thought the mimosa spray would look very well on it. The girl evidently thought so too. She looked, and looked again, and then with a regretful sigh prepared to pass on.

It was just at that moment that a number of people began to stream forward from the stocking counter in the direction of Millinery. To do this they had to pass the girl in the tweed coat. She became entangled amongst them. Miss Silver watched with interest and attention. The attention became very alert. She saw the girl in the tweed coat disengage herself and move in the direction of the handkerchief counter. Miss Silver observed a small dark woman in the group emerge upon the other side of it and go up to the assistant behind the counter. She appeared to say something in rather a hurried manner, after which she hastened in the wake of her companions and was lost to view.

Miss Silver turned to receive her parcel and her change. She then hurried in the direction of Handkerchiefs. She was not in time. Dorinda Brown, with an expression of astonishment upon her face, was being shepherded down the aisle by a very imposing shopwalker. As they turned first to the left, and then to the right, and then to the left again, this look changed to one of frowning intensity. She didn’t know what was happening, but she didn’t like it. Why should she be asked to step round to the manager’s office? She didn’t want to see him, and she could think of no possible reason why he should want to sec her.

They arrived at a door of marvellously polished wood, so bright that you could see your face in it, and the next moment Dorinda was walking into a very grand office with a large and quite bald-headed man sitting at a table and looking coldly at her through horn-rimmed glasses, while a voice from behind her said,

“Shoplifting, sir.”

A wave of indignant scarlet rushed right up to the roots of Dorinda’s hair. You may have the sweetest temper in the world, but to be called a thief by a perfectly strange shopwalker is just pure dynamite. The temper went sky-high, and Dorinda stamped her foot and said, “How dare you!”

The manager appeared to be completely unimpressed. He said in what Dorinda considered a very offensive voice, “Will you hand the things over, or will you be searched?” The voice over the top of Dorinda’s head said, “I expect they’ll be in the pockets of her coat.” At this moment Miss Silver walked into the room without knocking—a dowdy little woman who looked as if she might have been somebody’s governess during the early years of the century. She wore a serviceable black cloth coat which had only done two winters, and a little yellow fur tippet of uncertain ancestry. Her hat, which had been new in the autumn, was of the kind which looks the same age for about ten years and then falls to pieces. It was made of black felt with a purple velvet starfish in front and a niggle of black and purple ribbon running all round the crown. Under the hat Miss Silver’s neatly coiled mousy hair preserved the early Edwardian fashion. An Alexandra fringe in a net cage surmounted her neat elderly features and the small greyish hazel eyes which, according to Detective Sergeant Abbott of Scotland Yard, always saw a little more than there was to see.

The manager’s horn-rimmed glasses were turned upon her in a petrifying stare.

Miss Silver showed no sign of being petrified. With a slight introductory cough she advanced to the edge of the table.

“Good-morning.”

“Madam, this is my private office.”

Miss Silver inclined her head with so much dignity that an awful doubt entered the managerial mind. Dowdiness did not always imply poverty or a lowly status. Sometimes the very wealthy or the very celebrated affected it. There was a dowager duchess of dreadfully formidable character—

Miss Silver was saying, “If you will allow me—”

He stopped trying to place her and in quite a polite tone enquired her business.

Miss Silver coughed again, graciously this time. No words had passed, but there had been an apology. She accepted it. In the days, now happily left behind, when she had been a governess, she had maintained a firm but gentle discipline among her pupils. The habit persisted. The authority was in her voice as she said,

“My name is Maud Silver. I was completing the purchase of some pink wool, when I happened to witness the incident which has, I think, resulted in this lady being requested to come to your office.”

“Indeed, madam?”

Dorinda turned her eyes upon the little woman in black. They burned with indignation. Her colour burned too. She said in a young, clear voice,

“You couldn’t possibly have seen anything—there wasn’t anything to see!”

Miss Silver met the indignant gaze with a steady one.

“If you will put your hands in your pockets you will, I think, see reason to change your mind.”

Without an instant’s hesitation Dorinda drove both hands into the pockets of her tweed coat. They were deep and capacious. They should have been empty. They were not empty. The fact struck her a blow which was as hard as it was unexpected. She felt as if she had missed a step and come down in the dark. Her eyes widened, her colour rose brightly. Her hands came up out of the pockets with a scatteration of stockings, handkerchiefs, and ribbon.

The shopwalker said something, but it didn’t reach Dorinda. She stood looking at the silk stockings, the handkerchiefs, the trailing ribbons, whilst the bright angry colour in her cheeks drained away until it was all gone. Then she stepped forward and put all the things down on the table and felt again in the pockets of her coat. There was one more pair of stockings, and the mimosa spray which she had thought would look so nice on the lapel of her coat. She put it down with the other things and said steadily,

“I don’t know how these things got into my pockets.”

The manager looked at her in a way that made her Scottish blood boil.

“Oh, you don’t, don’t you? Well, I think we can make a pretty good guess. We shall charge you with shoplifting. And if this lady will kindly give us her address, we can call her as a witness. Perhaps you won’t mind saying what you saw, madam.”

Miss Silver drew herself up.

“I have come here to do so. After completing a purchase I was waiting for my parcel and the change, when I saw this lady standing looking at the display of glass flowers and necklets at the corner leading to the millinery department. She seemed to be admiring that little bunch of mimosa, and I thought perhaps she was going to buy it. It would certainly have looked very well upon her coat. She was just about to turn away, when a number of people came from the direction of the stocking counter. I do not know whether they were all in one party. By the time they reached her this lady had moved away from the place where she had been. I should like to state quite definitely that the mimosa spray was still in its place when she had moved at least a yard away from it and was heading in the opposite direction. There were two young women in the party from the stocking counter. They closed up on either side of this lady. By this time there were quite a number of people coming and going between the departments. Sometimes they were between me and the two young women, and sometimes they were not. I am prepared to swear that this lady never turned back, and that she could not possibly have taken the mimosa spray. I was interested in her, and there was never a time when I could not see at least the top of her head. She could not have reached the mimosa spray from where she was, and she did not turn back. That is the first point. The second one is this. As the people moved on, there were naturally gaps between them. Through one such gap I saw one of the two young women I have mentioned in the act of withdrawing her hand from this lady’s coat pocket. At this moment the attendant at the wool stall offered me my parcel and the change I had been waiting for. I saw the young woman say something to an assistant behind the counter and hurry away. By the time I had taken my parcel there were a good many people between us. When I arrived at the counter both young women had disappeared and the assistant was making a somewhat agitated communication to the shopwalker. I noticed that the mimosa spray was gone. When I saw the shopwalker address this lady, who was by then approaching the handkerchief counter, I realized that my evidence would be required and decided to follow them.”

The manager was leaning back in his chair. He said in a sceptical voice,

“You say you saw a young woman put her hand into this girl’s pocket?”

Miss Silver coughed in a hortatory manner.

“I stated that I saw her in the act of withdrawing her hand from this lady’s pocket. I am perfectly prepared to swear to what I saw.”

The manager raised his eyebrows.

“Very convenient for the young woman, I am sure. Quite a good idea, if you’re going shoplifting, to have someone handy to swear you couldn’t have done it.”

Miss Silver turned upon him the look before which the hardiest of her pupils had been wont to quail. It was a look which had daunted the evil-doer on many an occasion. Since then Chief Detective Inspector Lamb himself had been halted by it and brought to unwilling apology. It went straight through the manager’s self-esteem and stripped him to his bare bones. He found them chilly and uncertain of their footing. When you have been kept together by conventions and clothed with observances, it is very disintegrating to be left without them.

“I beg your pardon,” said Miss Maud Silver.

The manager found himself apologizing. She had spoken quite quietly, and he knew now that she was neither an eccentric duchess nor any lesser member of the aristocracy. But the authority behind that quiet tone had him rattled. He paused in his not very well chosen phrases and discovered that he was being addressed. He had the quite unwarranted feeling that he was being addressed from a platform. He had the unusual feeling of being something rather lowly in the scale of creation.

Miss Silver treated this frame of mind with firmness.

“You would, perhaps, care tor me to furnish you with proofs of my credibility as a witness. This is my business card.”

From the shabby black bag which depended from her left wrist she produced and laid before him a small, neat pasteboard rectangle. It displayed her name in the middle—Miss Maud Silver, with, in the left-hand bottom corner, an address, 15 Montague Mansions, S.W., and in the corresponding right-hand corner, the words, Private Enquiries.

As he absorbed this information, Miss Silver continued to address him.

“If you will be so good as to ring up Scotland Yard, Chief Detective Inspector Lamb will tell you that he knows me well, and. that I am a person to be believed. Detective Sergeant Abbott, or in fact any of the officers on the detective side, will be able to assure you that I have the confidence of the police. If, of course, you are prepared to admit that a mistake has been made, and to offer to this young lady an unqualified apology, we need not trouble Scotland Yard.”

The manager, thus baited, turned with ferocity upon the shopwalker. His diminished ego obtained some helpful support from having a subordinate at hand to bully.

“Mr. Sopeley!”

“Sir?”

“On what evidence did you act? This lady says that one of the assistants came up and spoke to you. Who was it, and what did she say?”

Mr. Sopeley began to see before him the unenviable role of the scapegoat. An elderly survivor of the war period, his tenure was not so secure that he could afford to have it shaken. With a feeling that his collar had suddenly become too tight for him, he stumbled into speech.

“It—it was Miss Anderson. She said a lady had whispered to her that this—” he paused and swallowed—“this young lady was filling her pockets, and she thought she ought to mention it.”

“Then why is she not here as a witness?”

“She said she had a train to catch,” said Mr. Sopeley in an ebbing voice.

The manager’s bald head became suffused with an angry flush.

“Miss Anderson should have detained her.”

Perceiving a possible ram in a thicket, Mr. Sopeley agreed that Miss Anderson had been very remiss, though just how she could have detained a determined customer in full flight to catch a train, neither he nor the manager was prepared to say. In a tone of virtuous indignation he remarked,

“I spoke to her quite severely on that point, sir.”