He had gone so far in a frowning silence. He broke in now upon his own train of thought.
‘Miss Page says she saw this woman go into the house. You say you believe her evidence. Do you believe that?’
Miss Silver said composedly,
‘I think she was speaking the truth.’
‘Your reasons?’
‘She was in such a state of shock and agitation as to preclude any design in what she said. And when she repeated it to you she did not vary it. I feel sure that if it had not been securely based on fact there would have been discrepancies.’
‘She wants to help Geoffrey Ford.’
‘She believes him to be innocent. If she did not, she would recoil from him in horror.’
He said,
‘Well, well – about this woman. She ought to be Mrs Trent, but if you believe that she went into Ford House, why in heaven’s name should Mrs Trent do that? If she had just killed Meriel she would have every incentive to get back to the Lodge and make out that she had never left it. She could have had no possible motive for going into Ford House.’
‘I think as you do, Superintendent. The woman who entered Ford House was returning to it.’
‘Then it wasn’t Mrs Trent. And that leaves us with the six women who are known to have been in the house that night – Adriana Ford, Meeson, Mrs Geoffrey Ford, Miss Johnstone, Mrs Simmons, and yourself. I think perhaps we may exclude the last three.’
He smiled slightly, but Miss Silver remained grave.
‘Yes, I think so.’
They were in the study at the Vicarage where he had interviewed Ellie Page, now handed over to Mary Lenton’s care. He sat a little drawn back from the table at which John Lenton was in the habit of writing his sermons. On the right of the blotter lay a Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. Since to Miss Silver all law and justice drew its authority from these two books, the association did not seem incongruous. That the police force was upheld by what she called Providence in exactly the same way as the ministry of the Church she regarded as axiomatic.
Martin was frowning.
‘Well, to start at the beginning, there’s Adriana Ford herself. There doesn’t seem to be any motive for her to kill her old friend – but there are old grudges as well as old friendships. Granting the first crime, she would have the same motive as anyone else for the second. She knew Meriel Ford had been down at the pool, and she was afraid of what she might have seen.’
Miss Silver shook her head.
‘She is a very tall woman, and she has a limp. It becomes especially noticeable by the end of the day. The woman seen by Ellie Page was not tall, and there was no mention of a limp.’
The Superintendent said, ‘Meeson-’ in a meditative voice. ‘Now what would Meeson’s motive have been? As regards the first crime, some provision under Miss Ford’s will, I suppose. Do you happen to know if it was considerable?’
‘I believe that she is handsomely provided for.’
‘And she doesn’t like living in the country. Somebody told me that – I believe it was Meriel Ford. Anyhow she’s a regular Londoner – it sticks out all over her.’
‘She has been forty years with Miss Ford. She is devoted to her.’
He nodded.
‘Sometimes people have been too long together, they get on one another’s nerves – you’d be surprised. Well, the other possible is Mrs Geoffrey Ford. Either she or Meeson would do as far as height is concerned, and so would Mrs Trent if one could think of any reason for her going in through that study window. You don’t think it was a put-up thing between her and Geoffrey Ford? Say it was like the Macbeth business – “Infirm of purpose, give me the daggers!” He hadn’t the nerve to pull it off, and she had.’
Miss Silver observed him with interest.
‘You are a student of Shakespeare?’
‘Well, I am. He knows a lot about the way people go on, doesn’t he? You don’t think Mrs Trent might have come into the house to tell him she’d done the job? I don’t mind saying she is the one I would pick out for it. Not many scruples, I should think.’
Miss Silver gave her slight cough.
‘No, Superintendent,’ she said. ‘But not one to rely upon another, or to risk anything for Geoffrey Ford. If she had committed the crime she would, I feel sure, have returned at once to the Lodge as you yourself opined.’
Sitting at an angle to the writing-table, she looked down the study to where Mary Lenton’s dahlias bloomed brightly in the sun. She saw Edna Ford walk up to the front door.
Chapter Forty
Mary Lenton came through the hall to let her in. Nothing could possibly have been more inconvenient, but then Edna was one of those people who always did time her visits at the most inconvenient moment. She had a shopping-bag on her arm and was extracting from it three small account-books which she held out in a complaining manner.
‘I really ought not to have undertaken anything to do with accounts. I remember I told you so at the time. I have no head for figures.’
‘But you offered-’
‘I am too kind-hearted,’ said Edna in a fretful voice. ‘When I heard that Miss Smithson was ill, I know I said that I would carry on, but I really can’t make head or tail of her writing. So I thought I would come down and tell you it’s no use. Unless, of course, we can just go through them together-’
Mary Lenton struggled with an acute feeling of irritation. She never had been able to like Edna Ford, though she had sometimes felt sorry for her. And to come at this moment, with Superintendent Martin in the house, Ellie upstairs looking as if she was going to faint again, and lunch to see to! Now she came to look at her, Edna didn’t seem any too well herself. Such a bad colour – and that dreadful old black coat and skirt! It ought to have been on the scrap-heap years ago. She really oughtn’t to go about looking like that. And that steel buckle would be off her shoe any minute now. She said,