‘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.’
NINETEEN
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?’