RECEIPT FOR MURDER

by

GWENDOLINE BUTLER

GEOFFREY BLESS

52 DOUGHTY STREET, LONDON

HELEN & MICHAEL OPPENHEIMER

RECEIPT FOR MURDER

It was just as well that no photograph existed of the inmates of ’The Argosy’ guest house, for, as Victoria Brent remarked, “There we should stand. All such nice people and one of us a murderer.” Murder was indeed hard to associate with Bella, Edith, Spicy, Aunt Amy or any of the other people who lived at ’The Argosy’, yet their very inoffensiveness took on a sinister note as doubts hardened into suspicions and fears became nightmares of unreasoning terror.

With her first novel, Mrs. Butler has made a distinguished entry into the realms of detective fiction and has given us a story which is as entertaining in the telling as it is dramatic in its denouement.

First published in 1956

This book is fiction and all the characters and incidents in it are entirely imaginary

I

ON my table there is a photograph of us all. We sit in our meek rows, each girl looking hopefully forward into a future open to her enjoyment and limited only by the knowledge that in three years time she would be turned by the college, following a magic and as yet unguessed-at formula, into a fully trained teacher of the domestic sciences. It is clear from our images that many of us were badly in need of a turn of some sort, for there is hardly a good hair-cut or well-pressed skirt or pleasant look among us. And yet some were accounted, at least by our own primitive reckoning, both pretty and attractive. There was no lack of young men about the college to give tacit, and sometimes open support to this belief. But I suppose it would hardly do to study their photographs now, for distance does not always lend enchantment and there were one or two about whom we had doubts at the time. I must ask Bella. In the picture she sits on my right, looking, as always, plump and determined. She is also very lazy, but that does not show in her portrait, mercifully enough, as we pointed out to her, since authority would have been down on her like a cat if it had known of her taste for happy idleness, or the wicked, wicked things she did with her spare time. She sits next to Verena, a thin little Jewess, who left us very soon to manage a cinema in Manchester. Verena telephoned me only the other day.

“So you are going to be married,” she said. “What a terrible man,” she added with a shudder.

“He isn’t so bad,” I replied without conviction. “You used not to be so fussy. Anyway, I have not really made up my mind.”

“After all, you might not do any better,” answered Verena, but I think she smiled. “And how is dear Bella?”

Edith does not sit near Bella and me in the group. Indeed, we hardly knew her at that time or for some months afterwards. Almost alone among us Edith looks normal. There she sits, her quiet, neat self, composed and still. She never changed. I am Victoria Brent and I changed, I hope. At least I have got thinner.

Remember that photograph, for in a way it is important. To complement it there should stand by it a second group: this time a picture of all of us who lived in ’The Argosy’ lodging-house run by Mrs Groat at the time of the murders. When we moved there our landlady had forgotten (a habit with her) why she had given her flats that name. Or almost forgotten.

“I think I had some idea it might be welcoming…travellers, you know, my dear,” she answered vaguely.

Such a group does not stand on my desk, does not, in fact, exist—for which I am heartily thankful. The associations would not be very pleasant. But I can imagine how it would be: I can almost hear the quarrels we should have had while it was being taken and how we should have struggled, each quietly and politely, for the best position, the best light and the best profile forward. There we should stand—Bella, Edith and I side by side (how we got to the house I will explain later but suffice now to say that at the time it looked a good idea). Next to us would be Charles and Spicy, with Leonora looking vaguely embarrassed by their company: Jem I imagine as seated before us, together with David and his wife Sophy, and Mrs Mahady and Mrs Groat completing the team—except for Aunt Amy Fencer, who should perhaps have a photograph to herself.

Somewhere about, too, should appear the faces of Miss Cockrill and Sergeant Helper.

There we should stand. All such nice people, and one of us a murderer.

We moved into Mrs Groat’s house in the early summer. Late in the spring of the year we three—Bella, Edith and myself—had arrived in the pleasant London suburb to take the jobs which we had spent long years training for and often despairing of finding. Bella and I had gladly accepted the first posts offered to us, but Edith, whom we were now beginning to know and like, joined us by choice. She was clever and could have had a school wherever she wished.

“Now to find somewhere to live,” said Bella the countrywoman, easily. “It should be simple, with all those houses…hundreds and hundreds of them, just see.”

She was wrong, of course, for it was far from easy, and in the end I went to an aunt, Edith lived in a hostel, and Bella, unluckiest of all, though also the most undeserving, since she never did a single thing but ask hopelessly of Edith and me, stayed with her headmistress. She complained violently and at length.

“It’s hell,” she said gloomily. “I don’t think I can bear it much longer. She never leaves me alone for a moment. I can’t tell you what it is like.”

Still, she did tell us often, in spite of our lack of sympathy.

“Don’t exaggerate, Bella; it can’t be as bad as you say.”

“You are unfeeling. In fact it is so much worse that I don’t tell you, for fear of upsetting you.”

“I could bear it. No picnic for the woman herself, having you there.”

“That’s just what it is. She’s having the time of her life, loving every minute of it, nagging away at me. I can tell.

“Helping me!” Bella added bitterly. “Helping me, is what she calls it, although I keep saying that I don’t want help. I like things the way I manage.”

In the end it was Edith who found us somewhere to live in three attic rooms at Mrs Groat’s with—what heaven!—their own tiny kitchen.

“The rooms are minute,” said Edith anxiously, “And I suppose they will be hot in summer and cold in winter. Also the rent is as high as their location, but they are clean, empty and ours, if we want them. You will come, won’t you? I said I would let her know today.”

“Oh, love, what a question,” said Bella, “When it had got so that it maddened me if I ever saw a rabbit looking comfortable in its hutch.”

“And how did you find them, Edith?”

“I kept looking; I heard these rooms were empty and went at once.”

Shortly afterwards we moved. The rooms were small, as Edith had remarked, but they were charmingly painted, and the house itself was pleasant. Whatever else Mrs Groat lacked—and there were times when one wondered—she had good taste. “The Argosy” was one of a terrace of large plain Georgian houses, cleanly painted in white, and in immaculate order. We liked it at once, and soon realised that only the smallness of our rooms brought the rent within our reach. On the whole Mrs Groat’s tenants were expensive.

In no time we had a black cat called Dizzy. We named him so not because he was particularly, being a sober-minded animal, but because his face reminded Bella of Lord Beaconsfield in youth. Dizzy was a very apprehensive beast: whenever he was picked up he got worried in case he was the lamb for the slaughter. He spent a lot of time being anxious because Bella loved to nurse her cats. Neither of them ever seemed to learn about the other. It was one of the virtues of Mrs Groat that she did not mind animals in the house. When you looked at some of the people she had there, how could she?

While our rooms were freshly painted and delightfully decorated, their conversion from attics was very recent and there was an air of improvisation about them—for instance, in Bella’s room, where there was a small hole in the floor through which ran a pipe. Beneath the hole was another flat, and the man in the flat was Spicy James, a photographer, a neat, sweet, noisy little man with big blue eyes. I loved him at sight.

“Does he get his name because of his pictures?” asked Bella, but as it turned out he didn’t, for these were harmless architectural studies, and instead he was named after his taste in food. I never knew a man eat so much Worcester sauce. He might equally well have been named for his taste in scents, since the richest odours Paris could produce were his, and all the perfumes of Arabia seemed to hang about his little person. He was married but lived apart from his wife, saying, with what truth I do not know, that she did not care for his company. Aunt Amy Fencer, who professed not to believe this, said that he was not married at all. But I had not been long in the house before I realised that, whatever had become of his wife, the present sun in his world was Leonora, the beauty from the first floor.

It was Mrs Groat, however, whom we got to know best during the first weeks of our tenancy.

I climbed the stairs to our floor one Friday afternoon, glad to be back, and clutching parcels of coffee, salad and cake to my bosom. It was my turn to cook supper, which Bella and I would eat together, being joined by Edith, if she could manage it, as sometimes she could not, since her school seemed to detain her longer than those which Bella and I graced. Bella met me at the top.

“Isn’t it hot? Our little hutches are like ovens. Nice ovens though,” and she looked lovingly round her room. It was thoroughly untidy, but it represented just what Bella liked in a room. She took my parcels.

“Come and have some tea.”

I dropped comfortably on to her bed and took off my shoes. It was one of the virtues of Bella’s way of life that you certainly did not have to worry about keeping up appearances. Edith, now, was house-proud; and even I had a taste for order.

“I have been talking to Mrs Groat,” went on Bella. “Just think! She has not had at all a happy married life. She said so in those very words. Few landladies have, I’ve noticed. Wonder why?”

Edith, just returned and early for once, came into the room and accepted some tea. She stood by Bella’s window and looked out on the trees and roofs while Bella went on talking.

“Of course, one doesn’t know what she meant exactly; it might mean a slight domestic friction, or it might mean something that gets into The News of the World.”

“It depends on what you call having your head knocked in by your husband,” said Edith.

We looked up in surprise.

“Oh, Edith, do go on! Mrs Groat never told all this. What, head knocked in and left on the floor for dead? Oh, how do you know?”

Edith laughed, but looked pink. She never cared to appear a gossip.

“I met Miss Amy Fencer in the garden when I was hunting for Dizzy. She told me. I don’t know why except that she likes to talk.”

“I wish she would talk to me,” said Bella with envy. “She would find me a much better audience than you, with such tales to be told. You know how interested I always am. Where is her room?”

“It must be the long front room,” I answered—“that’s the only room I can’t put a name to by now.”

“Aunt Amy sounds as though she might be worth meeting.”

By degrees we put together more information about Aunt Amy, although we never gathered why she was commonly called Aunt by all who knew her. She was interested in the three of us and wanted to know more about us, and was willing, within limits, to talk about herself in return. We, even Edith, saw a lot of her. She occupied the big front room and paid rent for it like everyone else, but she also helped with the housekeeping. She enjoyed it, she said, and I suspected that she liked a finger in the pie. The rest of her energies were devoted to clothes, about which she knew an extraordinary amount, and on which she spent plenty of money. She certainly cramped her plump little body into some very elegant clothes. She had excellent taste. She was a gay old girl and I liked her.

I remember meeting her, one bright autumn evening, when we had been established some months, walking in the garden. Bella and I had come in search of earth to plant bulbs.

“Let’s go prick the earth,” said Bella irritably, for she hated gardening of any sort and only my persuasions had produced activity now. We were draped in old shawls (Bella’s belonging to her mother and my garment borrowed from a reluctant Edith) of the type which used to be called comforters, and which in our last year at college it had been considered fashionable to wear.

“Not really chic,” commented Aunt Amy critically. “Yours is unusual and valuable, I should think, as it is real Indian. No pattern is ever repeated.” I was about to say, honestly, that it belonged to Edith, not me, when Edith herself screamed at me from the window above that I was wanted on the telephone (we used the one on the floor below), and I rushed indoors. My caller had rung off by the time I got there, but then I was engaged by Edith in a long conversation, so that I never got back to the garden at all. Bella was furious at being left to pot the bulbs alone, and regarded the whole thing as a put-up job.

Clothes were Aunt Amy’s great link with Leonora. Leonora, who had been a fashion model of, not quite, the first rank, ran the dress department in the local big store, and did it very well. She had worked it up until it really had distinction. It still wasn’t haute couture, but was good.

Every so often I passed Leonora on the stairs, and she was always friendly. One early November evening, when we were already beginning to feel that we had lived in the house for ever, she asked us to a party she was planning. I accepted for Bella and myself and tentatively for Edith. I went on up the stairs looking at the letters. Of mine, one was from my mother, and another from a school friend. Bella had a batch of correspondence, as usual. On top—placed there no doubt, by either Miss Amy’s or Mrs Groat’s neat, arranging fingers—was a letter written in a sprawling, indecipherable hand which could really have been addressed to anyone.

I offered her pile to Bella, who was entertaining Aunt Amy and Edith to tea.

“I thought I collected my post,” she said with surprise.

I wondered why there was so little.” As she spoke she was opening the first letter.

There was nothing in it except the photograph of a young man: a stiff young man in a white collar with his hair parted in the middle. It was no one I knew nor, on reflection, was it anyone I wanted to know. I did not care for the face.

“A young hopeful?” asked Bella. “No, clearly it can’t be. Or at any rate he is cheating by sending me a picture taken that long ago: he must be about fifty now.”

She was right, of course. It was a very old photograph in the style of about thirty years ago, as I could see when I looked at it again.

“He might be your father,” said Aunt Amy.

“Not mine,” giggled Bella—“nor Victoria’s, for that matter. They both believe that representations of the human form are lewd and unnecessary.”

“That’s not funny,” said Edith in a cold little voice. “Well, your own father,” she added to explain her outrage at our joke.

“I’m sorry,” said Bella, and peace was restored.

We were puzzled, but decided in the end it was some stupid joke. So we went to get dinner, leaving the photograph, on which I had already spilt tea, on Bella’s table, and forgetting all about it. This was a pity, as the photograph was important, and we never saw it again.

That night we had our first murder. A school-boy was found with his head knocked in on the rough ground behind the shop where Leonora worked. At first it was said he had fallen, for there was a home-made swing hanging from a tree and boys played there often. Then it was pronounced murder, but we heard that although the police believed he had been killed where he lay, yet they did not believe he had been playing there. Alarm spread quickly, people began to talk about madness and the full moon. But it all seemed very far away from us at ’The Argosy

II

EVEN without the murder the first few weeks of our employment were very busy. There was so much to learn and understand. To begin with, I had been dismayed at the sight of the tall, high building on the top floor of which I was expected to organise a domestic science room. On the first day I went sadly round in my white overall, settling my goods and watching the dirt and dust settle on them. Nevertheless I was happy. I was earning and I was free. It was an added pleasure that I was at a school near to Bella’s and even nearer to Edith’s. Two blocks of school buildings stared at each other across a busy main road. In one I was to work, and in the other Edith would be occupied. My headmistress, Miss Dolly Cockrill, was plump but not maternal, sharp but pleasant. She had a wonderful reputation as a head-teacher for fanatical energy and enthusiasm. The head of Edith’s school and Miss Cockrill were friends, and they both knew Bella’s head-teacher, which was disquieting. Everyone in that circle knew everyone else. Most of the teachers regarded us Domestic Science people as highly privileged interlopers (we were not asked to take regular class duties) who did rather less work than they did, for more money (we were paid a little more). Apart from such natural causes for friction, I got on well with the rest of the staff, who were agreeable and efficient, but beginning to be cased in a shell of professionalism. There were four senior mistresses (it was a large school), who were all different when seen separately, but superficially resembled each other so much that I had difficulty in telling them apart. I suppose their professional shells had grown thick enough to obscure their individual characteristics. The younger teachers were more easily recognised. Ella Stack, the more formidable and the cleverest, was two years from college and had already a brisk, commanding way with her. She was fair and plump and pretty. Conveniently, she much admired Miss Cockrill.

“You can’t think how good she is,” said Ella, her blue eyes popping. “If a child wants for anything she will always supply it…sometimes paying herself. I know she sent one on a special holiday. The Education Officer thinks a lot of her.” This would always weigh with Ella. “But she can be fierce,” she concluded, with a sigh.

Adelaide Dixon, her junior and, until my arrival, the youngest in the school, was slight and quiet and dark, but the possessor of a flickering attraction. Sometimes it was on, and then it was off, but while operating it was terrific. It had aroused the attentions of the only eligible bachelor in the two schools. He was called Brown and taught woodwork and carpentry in a centre based in Edith’s school. Adelaide took just enough notice of him to keep him going, but no more. He, too, was quiet and dark, so perhaps he thought they would be well suited to each other. The general opinion of the school was that Adelaide was too good for him, but Edith, who after all was a neighbour and saw more of him than we did, thought that Adelaide was the lucky one.

“Imagine having such a handy husband,” she said. “But seriously I do believe he is nice.”

Edith and I had settled into our jobs comfortably, more so perhaps than Bella, who found the routine tiresome. There was no denying that thirty pupils a day, fifteen in the morning and fifteen in the afternoon, all of varying capacities and interest, was something of a strait-jacket on originality. It was hard work, and the weeks had passed quickly. We had fallen into a certain pattern. School at nine, back to “The Argosy”, then revision and planning of work until supper. After supper, which we took together, we read or worked or talked. Edith often went off on her own for long walks. We might have been in a nunnery.

I had come to know the atmosphere and routine of the school well enough to feel at once when anything was out of the usual. I came into school one morning, having walked to work in an enthusiasm for the bright, clear air, to find a small group talking in the hall. It was composed of Miss Scott, Miss Jones and the headmistress. Their heads were wagging. I watched them for a moment, aware that they could not see me, and wondering what had drawn them into such earnest talk. Miss Scott looked up.

“It’s all very worrying,” Then she added warningly, “We must not let the young things see us gossiping.”

She smiled at me kindly but cautiously.

“It’s a splendid morning, isn’t it?”

I agreed with a smile equally kindly but perhaps less cautious. I wanted to show her that openness was a fine quality.

I entered my own room. It was dark, in spite of the fine morning. No sun was ever strong enough to do more than bruise itself against those small, high windows without succeeding in penetrating and illuminating the many low shelves and cupboards which filled the walls. I had done my best. I had some pride, some improvement had taken place; but perhaps I had not done enough. At any rate I felt an oppressive air in the room this morning. I went to my table, busied myself in preparation, when a shadow fell upon me. It was Miss Cockrill.

“My dear, no assembly this morning,” she said in a worried voice. “Keep the girls here.”

I looked surprised, waiting to be told why, but she departed with an uneasy smile. It was never her way to part with anything freely, even information, although she could be generosity itself to the children. Consumed with curiosity, I turned my attention to my class. There was a murmur going round them this morning, not an elated, gossipy one, as there so often was, but occasional little thrills, half alarmed, half excited. I began to have an idea what was so titillating the whole school. At my first chance I approached Ella Stack—she would know, of course she would know: she knew everything.

“Why no assembly?” I asked.

She goggled her eyes at me in the way she had when wanting to impress.

“Oh, don’t you know?…Well, if Miss Cockrill hasn’t said anything to you, I don’t know if I ought…”

“Come on, Ella…it’s the boy who was murdered, I suppose.”

“You do know.” her voice was disappointed.

“I don’t know enough. He wasn’t a pupil here, was he?”

“No, no, of course not. He was across the road, but these schools are pretty much a group: he would have lots of friends here. Anyway, the police are here.”

I nodded.

“I think they fear there may be other killings.” Her voice dropped. Ella always read the sensational press, although she carried The Times.

“Do you think so?” I asked sceptically.

I was incredulous at that stage, almost completely uninterested in the whole affair. I soon lost that attitude, in fact it was a surprise to me how quickly I became passionately interested and curious. My first movement towards entanglement began when morning school ended and I saw a stranger talking to Miss Cockrill. I observed that he was talking to her and not, as was usually the case, being talked to. Moreover, she was fidgeting with her dress in a nervous manner which I was later to associate with worry. Her visitor was a tall, sandy-haired man with bright blue eyes, his whole appearance one of incredible neatness. He turned his fair-skinned, sharp-featured face towards me as I passed. Something in his acute measured observation satisfied me that he was a policeman. Probably he was already writing a portrait parle of me in his mind. He muttered a word to the headmistress, who slowly brought him over to me. To my annoyance, for I would have preferred to have made my own impact unaided, she made a little explanatory speech about me. He gave me a charming smile. He was called Sergeant Helper. He said he’d like a few words with me.

“Yes, do,” answered Miss Cockrill. “Come along to my room.”

“I think Miss Brent’s own room would be best,” said he, neatly circumventing her plain intention to be present.

Miss Cockrill frowned—she took her duties very seriously.

Once in my room, and seated at my desk, with me standing in front of him (it struck me that the Sergeant had much the same technique for putting one at one’s ease as Miss Cockrill), he appeared at a loss for words. It didn’t seem right for me to help him, so I waited. Finally he said, “Of course, you know about the death of the little boy, Philip Sidney?”

“Was he really called that?” I exclaimed, in spite of my self.

“He was.” The Sergeant’s voice was austere.

I knew myself to be convicted of bad taste.

“There’s no reason to believe that anyone in the school has any information to give us, but since we are, I tell you frankly, combing the hedgerows, we could not neglect this school attended by so many of his friends.”

“It is?” In spite of what Ella had said, I was surprised the boy should have many friends here. Children usually stick to their own school.

“You know he attended here himself for a while. Indeed, this school is the nearest to his own home, but his father disagreed with Miss Cockrill about something, and got him transferred.”

We were both silent for a moment. It was only too clear that we could both see what it was to disagree with Miss Cockrill, and how brave you had to be to show it. He must have been some father to have carried his point so far that the boy moved school.

“The father died soon after,” said the Sergeant, as if by way of explanation. “In an accident.”

He asked me a few routine questions. I had so little to tell him that I wonder he persevered.

“I’ve been here such a short time,” I excused myself. “I wish I did know who his friends were. Can’t Miss Cockrill help?”

“Oh, she has helped—yes, indeed. Well, I won’t worry you any more.”

He collected his papers—in spite of the paucity of my information he had made copious notes, which was disconcerting to me.

“I hope you are happy here,” he said on his way to the door.

“Certainly I am.” I showed my surprise at the comment.

“Of course, Miss Cockrill is a splendid person to begin with.”

“Yes, isn’t she?” I agreed hypocritically.

“I’m a school manager as well as a policeman,” he told me.

But this did not seem to cheer him up or speed him on his way; he hung about my door.

“Do you think the boy knew who murdered him?” I asked suddenly inspired.

“We believe so,” he admitted very reluctantly.

“How horrible!”

“It’s a bad case, and a funny one.”

“The papers say…” I hesitated. “The papers say that he wasn’t killed where he was found.”

“No, probably not. At any rate he hadn’t been playing there. Goodness knows what he had been playing at or where. I don’t mind telling you that we don’t know just where anything took place. The place is full of bombed sites, still derelict, where all the boys play; then there is the park, and the woods; he might have been anywhere. But we shall find out in time, if we have to comb the lot.”

At last the Sergeant departed, leaving behind in my mind the alarming impression that his main aim had been to size me up. I had gathered, however, one piece of information, which I daresay he told me on purpose, for I got the impression he did nothing by chance. He told me that the boy’s jacket had been put on, hurriedly, just before he died, as if he had obeyed an order; under the coat his shirt sleeves were still rolled up beyond the elbow.

“How odd!” I said, when he told me. “I feel as if it ought to mean something. There ought to be something to be learnt from it.”

“If you think of what, let me know,” he commanded with a doubting smile.

But thoughts and speculation about the murder were stopped for us at school by an alarm nearer home. Adelaide was the victim of a nasty accident. A pile of heavy old books at the top of her cupboard had become dislodged, the movement made the rickety old piece of furniture sway forward to pin Adelaide beneath it. At first she was thought to have concussion, but all that materialised definitely was a bad head-ache. She would have to be away several days. Poor Adelaide! it was a bad time for her, as she had already had an argument with Miss Cockrill which had upset her. When someone suggested that she might have been killed, Miss Cockrill was firm.

“It was an accident, an unfortunate accident, but she had only herself to blame,” she added fiercely.

III

IN spite of myself, and Adelaide’s accident, my mind was surging with conjecture as I walked across the playground. Crowds of small boys were swooping around in bands, occupied with nameless games. I noticed more mothers about than usual. Well, I didn’t blame them if they wanted to keep an eye on their children. I walked home slowly, thinking about the way the boy’s coat had been pulled over his rolled-up sleeves. Why had his sleeves been pulled up in that way? It had been a cold winter night. Even in play a boy would not have found bare arms comfortable. Unless it was somehow part of his game. But what bearing this could have on his murder, just supposing I could discover what his game had been, was beyond me. But I thought there was something in it.

In front of me marched a small boy. He was wearing a very large, home-made cowboy outfit—big hat, belt, and great gauntleted gloves. The gloves were enormous—far too big for him—and gave him a lot of trouble; but with that kit, I could understand, they were de rigueur. Little boys early developed a formality about their attire. I remembered doing some reading on it in psychology at college. Back went my thoughts like a plummet…was that why the dead boy’s sleeves were rolled up? Because the game he was playing could only be properly played with sleeves so placed?

I knew I was on to something, but I couldn’t think what. I muttered to myself, as I walked, to the wide-eyed alarm of a woman passing by.

“Bowling, batting…no, not cricket in the winter.

Anyway, you need other boys for that, and I don’t think there were any. This was a secret game.”

I stopped to look in a shop window, while thoughts surged into my mind.

“What could a boy, aged ten and a bit—a clever little boy, and perhaps old for his years—have played at night, and by himself? What game was it that had to be secret and was best played with rolled-up sleeves?”

Answer had I none. Be logical, I told myself. You rolled up your sleeves for hard, dirty work—to cook, to brush, to scrub, to dust, to dig…to dig. Digging, of course.

I had convinced myself at least by my own logic. Philip Sidney had been digging. But not with his bare hands.

Tucking my bag under my arm, I hurried past ’The Argosy’, down to where, behind Leonora’s shop, the body had been found. The policeman at the comer eyed me suspiciously as I scuttled down the dark side street. He did not stop me. He knew, as soon I was to know, that boards and fences and netting had been erected to keep out the curious. I was curious, God knows; but I was looking not for sensation, but for one definite object. I stared about me in the cold gloom, hoping for a glimpse which I could interpret as the thing I wanted to find, the thing I felt sure was there. I stood watchful, unease crawling with chilly paws up my back. I twisted quickly to see who was watching. No one was there. The policeman at the end of the road stood silhouetted against the light. I went back towards him. The search was too big for me, the whole matter too important and urgent. Embarrassed and awkward, I telephoned the Sergeant. He was reluctant and tardy to arrive at the end of the line. When he came my feet were cold and my spirits low. Nevertheless, I played my card as though I believed in it.

“Have you found a spade, or a shovel, anywhere near where the boy was found.”

He gave an exclamation:

“No, no, we haven’t, but it’s an idea. I’ll send out the word.”

He gave me no thanks, and rang off sharply. He didn’t sound in the least pleased with me.

But next day he met me outside the school. He put his hands in his pockets and walked a few steps beside me.

“You were right about the spade. We found one a couple of hundred yards away. Not where he had been digging, of course. We still have to find where that was. It will be found, make no mistake.”

“I’m sure,” I said.

“It was a children’s spade, good quality, newish, no fingerprints except his own. He could have turned a fair amount of earth with a spade that size—hardly a toy at all.”

“I thought there would be one. It seemed so likely he was digging.”

“Funny you should think of it, all the same,” he said, with a sideways glance at me.

I didn’t answer. I was too angry. Talk about biting the hand that fed you.

“We found more than a spade,” he added, just before leaving me at the gate. “There was a torch right beside it. Newish, good, no fingerprints again but the boy’s. What do you think of that?’

I didn’t know what to think, so in the evening I passed the whole thing over to Bella. She certainly was not logical, but she did have bright ideas.

“What do you think?” I ended up.

“I tell you what I do think: that it was a bit of luck for you the spade turning up there. Talk about guessing.”

“I’m not at all sure it was so lucky,” I said, remembering the Sergeant’s innuendo. “It has made him very suspicious of me.”

Bella found this terribly funny.

“I will give you an alibi, dear—that is, if you know when the boy was killed.”

“Not exactly.”

“Then I don’t see how I can help you. Suppose we try to find out how the spade got there—use the spade as clue to follow up.”

“We’d better leave investigation to the police,” I said, remembering the eeriness of my visit to the murder site. “It isn’t a game, and I’m not sure I like what I had had of it.”

Bella frowned.

“I’m not sure if it isn’t one’s duty to help if possible.”

The truth was that the character of Philip Sydney began to fascinate me. He had been no ordinary little boy. Every fresh detail I learnt confirmed me in this idea. He had been clever and in some ways astonishingly adult. Ella Stack said he had left the school before she came there, but Miss Scott remembered him. Miss Scott, pumped in her turn, said that he was a pretty little boy, and a pleasure to teach.

“Of course, Miss Cockrill was very interested in him, and influenced him a lot.”

“Until the quarrel with his father.”

“Mm, yes. Well, perhaps that was what the quarrel was about. I suppose the father may have been jealous. But really, quarrel is too strong a word—it was just a little disagreement. These things do happen; every head-teacher has to face them.”

Miss Scott seemed to think she had said enough. I would like to have gone on. I still did not know, you see, why the child had been digging, and I felt sure I would have to know why before I could ask where? Just as it would have to be where’? before who? Who killed him? It was probable that I would never get so far. All the same I went on thinking about it.

In break I went into the Staff room to look up the address book of the entire school which was pinned to the board there. It was an old book, going back many generations, so I thought it probable I should find where Philip Sidney lived. I told myself that I wanted to know what sort of a home he had come from, what sort of background had produced him. As I wrote down the address—No. 21 Pompey Street—and traced it on the wall-map of the district, my thoughts were running on ahead. What sort of things had he been interested in? What games had he played? What books had he read?

On the whole, I could discover what books he had read. The two schools—Holly Road and Lower Street—worked on the same plan and followed the same syllabus. The chance that the same books were used was high. I worked out that by now he would be in a class parallel with that taken by Ella Stack. Nervously and slyly, I sneaked into her room. Her scheme of work for the term was hung virtuously, for all to see, on her door (mine lived in a drawer to hide the lapses from it). I ran my finger down it. Arithmetic did not interest me nor did Geography from Other Lands; but what Ella called ‘Reading’ did. They were reading an anthology of poems, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The Rose and the Ring. Interesting, but unhelpful from my point of view. Then I saw that over the page was more. History had included the ancient Greeks and the Romans, and…a little book called Digging up the Past. Archaeology. I choked with enthusiasm. This was something. Was it something the police knew? I thought very likely not. For the moment I was absurdly excited, until I saw that it led me nowhere at all. Except perhaps to one place. If it led me anywhere, it led to No. 21 Pompey Street.

After school I set off. I told myself, half honestly, that I meant no more than to get a look at the house. But as I plodded on, and recognised more clearly what I was about, I began to wish I had brought Bella with me.

I passed a toy-shop a few corners away from where I knew Pompey Street must lie. It was a poor sort of place but, situated as it was, it could not fail to be interesting to me. It interested me very much, and I thought it must also have attracted the attention of the police. A rack of spades was displayed in its gas-lit window. I knew that the boy must have purchased his spade here. Children shop locally, if they shop at all. I went in.

Inside, the dark room was a cave of fascination with a richness which belied its shabby exterior. Dolls, cots, prams, bats, balls, pop-guns, and scooters were stacked up everywhere. Paper cut-outs, wooden aeroplanes, and streamers hung from the ceiling. A bran tub with a lucky dip stood beside the counter. A few small boys were prowling happily round, and a girl was nursing a doll. From the back of the shop came a stout old woman with eyes like beads.

“Good afternoon,” I said, wondering how to go on. “Can you show me any paper aeroplanes? For my nephew. He has been ill, and I think they would amuse him,”

The facility of my lies surprised even me. She responded to what I said with a sympathy which made me ashamed.

“Poor child! They do get bored, don’t they? Something to cut out would be just the thing. I suppose he’s old enough to use scissors?”

“Oh, yes,” I assured her. “Over seven.

“What a nice shop you have! I don’t know when I have seen a nicer.” This was true. It was about the only true statement I was to make that afternoon.

“Yes”—her face glowed—” we do our best, and now we can get a proper stock again it comes easier. I did hate to disappoint the little ones. And of course this is the only toy-shop there is for a long way round now. We used not to be, but we are now.”

“I’m sure the other couldn’t have been so nice.”

“Well, it wasn’t, not so much variety (that’s the thing, in this trade), and the old man…I used to wonder sometimes what else he sold besides toys.”

I paid for the aeroplane, then said, disastrously:

“May I look at your spades?”

She froze at once. My face tingled, but I had learnt what I wanted. I bent down to price them.

“Seven shillings and sixpence.”

“You won’t want one of those,” she said firmly. “From a newspaper, are you? I did wonder.”

She opened the door, and I went out. I agreed with what she was thinking of me. It was a bad thing to go about asking questions of such a business. But, although ashamed, I meant to go on. Moreover, there was puzzle added to puzzle. The spades were expensive—more expensive than I should have expected the boy Philip to have afforded. Perhaps his mother had spoilt him, and had given him a lot of pocket money. Yet, with his father dead, I doubted this.

Obstinately I bent my steps towards Pompey Street, now appearing to view as a long, poor, quiet street. No one was about, but I knew that there were faces at windows behind curtains and blinds. I was observed. For a second I stood outside the door, wondering if I dared go further. Just as I had decided that I could not do it, Mrs Sidney hurried down the garden path.

“You’ve come to see me, I expect? From Philip’s school; They said someone would come, and I could see you wondering if you’d come to the right place. It is kind of you to come.”

I muttered something.

“Would you like to see his room?…He isn’t there you know.” She turned aside.

We went in. As in the street outside, here too was a poor plain neatness. She led me upstairs to his room. A white bed with a little rag mat beside it, all carefully tended. I hoped he was not her only child.

“I have a girl,” she said, reading my thoughts. “But he was my boy.”

I was not surprised to see the little bookcase crowded His books showed more sophistication than I had expected, He had some Dickens, a few popular science books a stamp album, and a little row of history books and book: on archaeology. His mother pointed them out with pride “Ever so interested in it he was, he used to watch th< television programmes on it at my neighbour’s—we haven’ got a set, of course. He was going to be an archaeologist when he grew up, he said.”

She was very near to tears.

“He saved up for these books. He had a paper round. Some people said I ought to take the money, but I never did. He earned it, and let him keep it, I used to say? I’m glad I did now.”

I took my last look round the room. On the top of the bookcase was a little heap of blue and white beads.

As I walked down the path I knew that although I had learnt much, yet nothing had been cleared up. A paper round was all very well, but it seemed to me that the books and the spade and the torch represented more expenditure than any paper round accounted for. It was a puzzle. I thought it was pretty clear he had been playing at excavation, although goodness know where; and I thought that either someone was subsidising him or he was tapping some other source.

A hand tugged at my skirt. I was confronted by a girl of about eight. She was Philip’s sister.

“You’ve been asking about Philip,” she said. “So have the police.”

I stared at her in silence.

“What was Philip doing with his spade?” I asked suddenly. “Where was he digging?”

She didn’t know that, but she knew something.

“A dig, he called it; he said that was what people said. But I don’t know where. He never would tell. He said you had to be careful, that there often were tomb-robbers.”

“Tomb-robbers!”

“Yes, like in Egypt. And he did think he had been watched.”

“Who watched him?”

“He never saw, not properly, only a glimpse once. But whoever it was could see in the dark. He spoke to Philip once and said, ‘Go away’.”

I shivered.

“But he did think he knew who it was. He was going look out. He thought he would know them again.”

“But how?”

She paused.

“He said they had ears like Bottom—furry asses’ ear he said. I don’t know if he was joking.”

“I think you’d better tell your mother,” I said, an walked on with a cold misery eating into me. I hard] noticed Miss Cockrill and her friend, Philip’s headmistress on their way to pay their visit to Mrs Sidney, until I w; face to face with them. Before their affronted gaze, turned tail and fled.

IV

AFTER this episode I rested on my bedraggled laurels as a detective. I didn’t say anything to the Sergeant of what I had discovered, or thought I had discovered. I was looking out for a man with asses’ ears, but whether he also was I didn’t know. I did my best to put the whole thing out of my mind. Adelaide came back to school with an engagement ring from Mr Brown on her finger (only zircons, said sharp-eyed Edith), and we carried on from there. While pity for the boy and his family occupied our minds, we did not know that the fates were brewing up something on our own account. One day Aunt Amy had read on someone’s face the dreaded answer to the question she had been asking herself. She knew then, as we were to know much later, that the key to the past would have to be turned, and by her hand. Because she was old and frightened, she acted deviously when a straighter path might have saved lives. But perhaps not; if Mrs Mahady is right, there was one life already forfeit.

It was a chill November. Winter seemed to have come early, with cold days, and damp white fog at night. We were very comfortable in our rooms, which we had decorated and furnished to our taste. A benefaction from an aunt had enabled Bella to equip her room just as she liked, although whether the elderly and conservative aunt would have approved the use of her gift is another question. Bella thought she would not, and I must say I agreed with her. The result was startling, but also very comfortable. Bella claimed she found it stimulating. Anything which stimulated Bella was to the good, except that I never discovered to what it stimulated her, as she took as much, or as little exercise, as before. Edith and I could not rival Bella’s prodigal magnificence, so we contented ourselves with less. I had an easy-chair, and Edith, who was parentless, bought herself some folkweave curtains, which Bella called nasty.

I cooked supper for the three of us. Edith was making coffee and Bella an exuberant salad.

“Am I cooking too much?” I asked.

“You just go right on. I could eat a horse.”

“You probably will.” I looked at the steak. “Not too tender.”

“Bang it with a bottle. Here, let me.”

“Better let Edith do it: she has a better eye and a stronger wrist…Oh, Bella, that was a good plate.”

Bella reluctantly handed both bottle and meat to Edith, who was soon skilfully at work, while I balefully swept up the broken china. In no time we were eating quietly, with Bella carelessly tossing pieces of meat towards Dizzy, who was on the window-seat. As Bella’s aim was poor and Dizzy’s interest spasmodic, he did not always retrieve the meat.

“Be careful, Bella; that one missed.”

“Don’t worry, it wasn’t a bit he would mind missing.”

“I wasn’t thinking about Dizzy.”

The next piece went right out, and in a little while there was a tap on the door. Outside stood a fellow tenant. She was an Irishwoman of robust appearance called Mrs Mahady (but surely such a name never was on land or sea?), whose speech was determinedly Irish, although I shall make no attempt to reproduce her boisterous brogue.

“I’ve a question to ask,” she said politely, holding up a piece of meat. “Are you throwing this at me or for me?

’Tis the second piece that has landed on my little window box.”

We were silent.

“If the latter,” she went on, “I thank you, and you must let me throw a little supper for you some time.”

Then she met Dizzy’s anxious eye and burst into laughter.

“Oh well, he’s a lovely cat, I can see, so I forgive you. Bring your coffee down and have some Benedictine with me.”

We demurred, but went. Her room was wonderful, with a tiny iron balcony overlooking the garden. It was decorated with a charming old Chinese-red wall-paper and the carpet was white. Once more we were speechless. The delicate beauty of the room was difficult to associate with the vivid charms of our hostess.

“The debris of a shattered life,” said she, waving a hand around at the graceful furniture.

Well, her life may have been shattered, but someone had certainly stayed around to pick up the pieces with discrimination. On the wall was what looked like a little Canaletto; on a table-top was a splendid small bronze horse; brandy was offered us in fine old glass.

Our conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Charles. He lived below us, in the flat next to Spicy, and he was, if possible, even noisier. We had not been in the house long without knowing a great deal about Charles; we knew his bed-time and his rising hour, we knew how many visitors he had, and how much he drank. On meeting him—and oddly, this was the first time—we understood why he made so much noise. Charles was very large. He was pleased with himself, as if his size was exactly how he wanted it to be, although it would have been a bad joke to have said that his size had gone to his head, since this was on the small side. He was nice once you had accepted that his main interest was himself.

Charles was introduced to us by our hostess in a tired voice.

“Oh, I know all about you,” he said, thirstily draining his brandy. “You poured water down the hole in the floor and nearly drowned poor Spicy. He was well pleased, I can tell you.”

“Please don’t.”

“I saw him an hour afterwards,” persisted Charles, who, as I learned, always went on with the subject that amused him, however reluctant his audience. “He was still cursing. He takes cold so easily, and a cold in the head is no joke. You poured it on his head.”

“Spilt, not poured. It was an accident.”

“Oh, you’ll never get Spicy to believe that story. He’s convinced you did it on purpose.”

“It was an accident.”

“Oh yes, diplomatic accident, eh?”

The episode with Spicy had been an unfortunate one which I would prefer to forget, and although I knew that Charles did not, in fact, believe that I had deliberately flooded the wretched man, and was only having what he called his little joke—still, I was not amused.

Charles stood up and Mrs Mahady rose too.

“Going?” she asked hopefully.

“Oh no, not yet. But I forgot to tell you that Spicy was going to call if it was a Benedictine night, and I said I would give him a shout.”

He gave Spicy a shout, as I wondered what happened on a non-Benedictine night. Spicy appeared so promptly as to encourage the belief that he had been waiting on the stairs.

“Oh, thanks,” he said. “This is most kind of you. I simply can’t manage to drink port, you know; stupid of me.”

Mrs Mahady introduced us, and it appeared that he had forgiven me. He bowed neatly to each in turn, and stroked the delicate red velvet of his smoking-jacket.

“Amour, amour, again today, I notice,” remarked our hostess.

Spicy’s face lit up.

“Good, that means you can smell it.”

And indeed you could, for the well-heated room brought out the scents in Spicy as if he had been a pomander swinging in a warm draught. He seated himself, crossing his legs and looking pleased and contented. I could see that he fascinated Bella. Edith, on the other hand, was inclined to be prim. She would not agree with Spicy that pleasant smells were a necessity to be put before luxuries like food and drink.

“Rubbish!” I heard her say. “I’ve never had the money to spend on such things.”

Spicy was chastened at the reception to his little joke, although I could have told him that a pleasantry of this type would get nowhere with Edith, whose sense of humour, if she had one, was simple.

“If I ever have any money,” she went on, with the determination of the believer, “I shall invest it.”

“Well, I wasn’t thinking in such grand terms,” protested Spicy. “But I’m sure you are right.”

Edith relented at his look and admitted, laughing at herself, that if she ever did have any money, of course she would want extravagances also.

“I love clothes and jewels and scents. Sorry if I sounded priggish.”

“No, you sounded sober, which is what you are, and Charles and I are not,” Leaning over, Spicy poured some Benedictine into her glass. “Let us remedy that at once.”

Charles remarked that he was perfectly sober and did not understand Spicy.

“I don’t understand you, Spicy,” he repeated solemnly. “I never have and I never will.”

“Don’t try, then,” said his friend.

“Take yesterday,” continued Charles. “What did you do? Ah, I saw you, although you supposed I did not. I saw you buying yards of rope. Why were you buying yards of rope.”

“To tie up your tongue,” retorted Spicy sharply.

He got up and left the little group and began to bang idly upon Mrs Mahady’s piano.

“It’s out of tune,” he said crossly. “Why don’t you look after it better?”

There was a perceptible pause before she answered, and then she said:

“No one ever plays it; why should I bother?”

Spicy looked at her curiously without saying anything more. His ill humour forgotten, he went back to the group by the fire. I had a bet with myself that I would be able to count twenty before they started discussing the murder. I lost by fifteen. Charles started right in.

“I think it is one of those cases where the police know the murderer but daren’t arrest him.”

“Rubbish,” said Spicy.

“Anyway, it’s certainly a madman,” said Charles.

“You may be right there,” agreed his friend.

I started to count to myself again, this time to see how long I could go before I burst out with some of my speculations and evidence. I was trembling on the edge of the third beat when Mrs Mahady saved me.

“And what does Dolly Cockrill think of it all? Anyway, she’s never had a murder in her school, whatever else.”

“Goodness! do you know her?”

“Known her for years. We all know her. Ask Miss Amy; but don’t ask her what she thinks of Miss Cockrill, because they can’t stand each other. Dolly calls on me occasionally.”

“Does she, indeed?” The thought appalled me. “She’s being very quiet about the murder. Of course its difficult for her.”

“Nothing is too difficult for Dolly Cockrill,” said Mrs Mahady cryptically.

From where I sat I could see out of the window into the garden. It was already beyond dusk, and the garden was quiet and still. Dampness crept upon the air. I moved closer to the window and looked down. On the gravel path below I could hear soft, careful, slow footsteps. Below me passed Aunt Amy, huddled in a dark coat, walking as if exhausted, with all her gaiety gone. Her shoulders were bent beneath the burden of the box she carried. As the light from the window fell upon it, I saw that it was an old box of toy bricks. A box so dusty and ancient that surely no child would want to play with it any longer?

A noise behind me brought my attention back to the room and away from my romantic wanderings. There was much talk from Bella and Charles, for it could hardly be called conversation when each sustained his or her part simultaneously, only seeking to secure the dominant voice.

Mrs Mahady’s glance at them persuaded me that if her life had been shattered, as she suggested, then her own sharpness had played some part in that explosion. She was too acute, too little deceived, and not apt to pretend to be. Her late husband, whether he was dead, divorced, or simply deserted, might reasonably have found this quality tiresome. Well, she might see through Charles as she pleased, but I felt a desire to protect my dear Bella from her perceptions.

She looked up and saw me watching.

“They like to talk, don’t they?” she asked amiably.

“Bella’s a wonderful conversationalist.”

“And so is Charles. Hark at him.”

We harked, and heard him say:

“No, of course you don’t know anything about music. You haven’t been listening to me. If you had you would have heard me say…”

Mrs Mahady turned to Edith:

“Do you like the village?”

It was, of course, absurd to call it a village, it had hardly been that since 1850, but some mixture of snobbery and conservatism preserved the name as a memory, and the little group of shops and houses running up and down the hill was always so called. Not all the shops were open, for bombs had fallen on many, and a few still lay in disorder behind high fences. We had shopped in the butcher’s, the baker’s, and the grocer’s.

“It’s an interesting old neighbourhood, but I don’t know as much about it as I should. Now, Miss Amy is the person to tell you. She knows all there is to know, for she has lived here all her life and loves it. Quite a lot of the property here is hers, you know. Belonged to her father.”

Edith said quietly that she would certainly ask Miss Amy for information, as it was always wise to know about the place one lived in.

“And sensible, too, in some cases,” added Spicy cryptically. “But are you really sure it would be kind to ask Miss Amy to recount the histories of the district?”

“Why not?” replied Mrs Mahady shortly.

Spicy looked at her as one who would say: if you do not know—and I am aware that you do—it is not for me to tell you. I was bristling with curiosity at the undercurrent which ran between them and looked an inquiry which they choose not to see. Spicy merely said:

“Well, after all, she is getting old, and perhaps her memory is not as good as it once was.”

It was an unconvincing explanation, but he was saved from further questions by the arrival of Leonora, who had come to talk about her party. It turned out that Spicy was just as much interested in it as she was. He explained that it was his idea to have a little cabaret as part of the fun (he called it that), and could we do anything? Sadly we replied that we could not.

“There are three of you,” pointed out Spicy. “Why not do a little dance? I am sure you could make some lovely little costumes from paper. You are all so clever with your fingers.”

“I won’t,” said Edith, outraged.

“Oh, but, girls, it would look so pretty.”

We were resolute in opposition, however, and he was forced to think again. Unluckily his eye fell upon the date. He looked pleased.

“How silly of me to forget that it will be near Guy Fawkes night. Now, why not dress up as Guys and wear lovely masks?”

He knew little of us indeed if he imagined we would so butcher ourselves to make a Roman holiday.

“Oh yes,” said Edith, by now in a temper. “And me in the old pram from the basement to add to the amusement.”

“Mmmmm,” answered Spicy thoughtfully. “That old pram.”

His eyes were pleased.

Bella was the only one who showed the least desire to please him, but even she was not anxious to spoil a good party by dressing up as a Guy. The thought of her party dress made her adamant. I could see that Leonora had little enthusiasm for the cabaret itself, quite apart from any very natural doubts about the value of our contribution. She kept repeating that David and Sophy were going to sing and Charles to recite, which ought to be enough. The insatiable Spicy, seeing he could do nothing with us, bore her off to see David and Sophy. A delicate smell of perfume trailed behind them. We sniffed appreciatively.

“Je reviews,” said Bella. “Lovely! How nice Leonora looked!”

She had worn a plain wool dress of dark blue with a severe Edwardian bodice on a tulip skirt, with, at the waist, a gleam of white. Our hearts went out to it.

“But I’m much too fat,” sighed Bella, following an obvious train of thought.

“Very slimming that line, really.”

It was some time before we discovered that the beastly Dizzy had slipped out with them. We knew he had escaped to the garden, so we tossed up to see who should go to lure him in. I went.

• • •

The garden was unpleasantly still and cold. I hovered miserably at the top of the path which led to the little deserted garden pavilion where I had seen Aunt Amy walking the previous night. It was a dreary little path, not my choice for a walk, especially on a dark November night. I called hoarsely for Dizzy to return, but was not surprised to have him ignore my voice. I turned to look at the house behind me. Many windows were lighted. I guessed that behind the red silk curtains David and Sophy were listening to Spicy’s persuasive voice. On the ground floor I could see Aunt Amy reading…if she was reading. She may just have been gazing into space. From her semi-basement sitting room came the sound of Mrs. Groat’s wireless. Through her uncurtained window she saw my forlorn face. She leant out.

“Lost something?”

“Only the cat. He’s out here somewhere.”

“Not he, on a cold night like this. He came right down and into the basement, as he always does.”

She pointed the way to a half-open door. There, sitting placidly in the gloom, was the missing animal. He had found a comfortable resting-place in the old pram.

“He likes the smell of mice,” explained my landlady, who had followed me in.

“Is the basement always open?”

“Now I know he likes it, I always leave it for him,” said she, with a look as content as Dizzy’s own. “Come and have a drink of cocoa. I was just going to have some, and company is always pleasant.”

Since I was feeling thoroughly chilled, I accepted gladly.

“My, you have got a bad cold coming,” she said by way of encouragement. “I do hope you aren’t finding those rooms too cold? I wasn’t sure at the time that it was a good idea to alter them. But being certain of a good let, as I was, it seemed only sensible.”

“We love them,” I said hastily.

“They are nicely decorated. Of course, I always try to choose the colours and so on that my guests will like, and I do believe that I showed good judgement with yours.”

It was kind of her to imply that the painting of the room had been undertaken entirely with a view to our tastes, but as they had been converted before she had ever heard of our existence (I had Edith’s testimony to this), I was more amused than deceived.

“There, the cocoa is ready; it should always boil for a minute to make it digestible.”

We sat companionably over the fire as we drank. She was inclined to be gloomy about the party. It wasn’t so much the noise, she said, as the mess.

“I am rather looking forward to it,” I admitted.

“Oh, you will enjoy it. Better remember to wear your best dress. All the ladies here are very smart”—she spoke with pride—“And they certainly do their best for a party. You should see Mrs Mahady.”

“Do tell me.”

“Some people might think her cyclamen dress too vivid. In fact I did myself until I saw her in it. But somehow she dominates it.”

I could believe it. Anyway, it was Leonora I was interested in.

“I really cannot predict what she will wear. There she is with the whole run of the shop, and who to say if she borrows a dress for a night?”

There was a decided touch of cynicism in Mrs Groat, perhaps the result of the fabled blow upon the head.

“But you haven’t asked me about the young men,” she said, this streak in her coming markedly to the surface.

I looked in her quiet, sheep-like face, and realised that, in her gentle way, she was mocking me. The blows of her husband appeared more justified than I had at first allowed. So I thanked her for the cocoa, and went upstairs, first retrieving a reluctant cat from his mousy luxuries.

Bella called me from her room as I went past. She was lying on her bed, studying her face in a hand-mirror. She was despondent.

“My nose is the wrong shape, you know.”

I was too tired to be really interested.

“Do you think a peg on the end of it, applied nightly, would do any good? It’s a tip I picked up from ‘Little Women’.”

“Hopeless, I should think. Don’t be a fool, Bella.”

She sat up at once.

“Sorry, Victoria. I was only playing, you know.”

One of the good things about Bella was that she did occasionally notice when she had got on your nerves. Some people never do. I said good night to her, apologetic in my turn, and took myself to bed. But I could not sleep, and I lay there considering the mysteries of character. There was Bella, for instance, the wayward child of a northern rectory. She was lazy, idle, clever, and the possessor of immense charm. Superficially, she had chosen the worst possible profession. To the hasty eye it might appear as if she would go to any lengths to avoid the honest labours of her task. Yet I knew this was not so and that, in fact, no one had a more generous sense of her duties towards her pupils, and that she would have their affections in a way which Edith, a more efficient tutor, would never have. Edith was our dear enigma. Bella and I had gradually come to feel a deep affection for her quiet reserve and determination, without understanding her. In my heart, I wondered what the world held for someone as proud and lonely as she. Bella, now, would always rise to the surface, for she had a kind of toughness and persistency, which gave ballast to her buoyant nature. As for myself, I saw nothing to distinguish me from those others of my sex who liked a comfortable rational existence. In retrospect, as I recall that thought, I ask myself how I would have felt had I known that the next weeks were to subject me to an ordeal of great discomfort, and that my reactions were to be far from rational.

I turned over in bed and watched the moonlight upon my wall. The house was still. In the distance it seemed to me I could hear the voice of Spicy singing sad songs, perhaps to Leonora.

In a little time I was asleep.

V

WITHIN he next few days was held the inquest on Philip Sidney. We did not go, although we read about it in our newspapers. As a ceremony it was an unrevealing formality; the police asked for, and got, an adjournment. The funeral was the next day. The school sent a wreath. A rumour that the murderer was a man with misshapen ears began to go around. No newspapers reported it, but everyone had heard it. Men began to wear hats pulled down on the ears, or even, in some cases, balaclava helmets. I stared so long and hard at Spicy one day (it was true he did have little tufts of black hair on his ears) that he said to me, quite sharply for him:

“No, Victoria, I may have cloven hoofs, but I have not got asses’ ears.”

One day I tried to question Leonora—after all, she worked so close to where the body had been found—but she had nothing to tell. She just said, vaguely, that she didn’t believe in it.

“Why, what do you mean? Not a Christian Scientist, are you?” demanded Charles, who was listening. “It happened, didn’t it?”

Leonora did not say any more. Quite clearly she did believe that if you refused to think about a thing, then it ceased to exist as far as you were concerned. Events were soon to change this happy innocence.

Not the least of our worries at this time was Leonora’s party.

“But you used to go to parties at college, and even give them,” pointed out a puzzled Edith.

“They were trifling affairs,” said Bella.

“Not to you then.”

“Oh, then; that’s the point, then we knew no better. I blush to think of them now.”

She might have blushed at the time, I decided, remembering some of them, but of course I did not say this.

Bella was obsessed with what was, to her, a grave problem. She got her dresses one by one from the cupboard, and looked at them silently and without pleasure. I knew what she was thinking, for misgivings of a similar nature had entered my own head as I surveyed my hard-won and hard-worn collection. They would not do.

She picked up a blue faille dress, enthusiastically trimmed with sequins. In its day this had been the pride of her wardrobe, and generally much admired, or so we had supposed. I still thought it handsome, but my admiration was beginning to be unsure of itself. It could not be that one of my household gods was going to be displaced? But still, by the side of Leonora’s stark elegance it would not appear to the best advantage.

Bella expressed her opinions as forcibly as usual.

“Tatty,” she said.

“What if you took off some of the decorations?”

“Not I.”

She threw it on the bed. Severely Edith took it up, smoothed it, and restored it to its hanger.

“You ought to be grateful to have it.”

“I’ve been grateful too long; that’s just the trouble.”

“It’s a dress I’ve always liked very much.”

“All the years you have known it, I suppose you are going to say?” responded Bella irritably; she was determined not to be cheered.

“What do you suppose I can do with it? I wish I hadn’t spent all Aunt Ba’s present to me. Just when I wanted to look nice, too.”

“You could get it dyed.”

Bella shuddered.

“Well, then, take off the sequins and re-trim it.”

“With sweet little posies of red roses, would you suggest?”

Edith looked at her cautiously, suspecting, but not sure, that she was being guyed.

“I was thinking of some lace, perhaps.”

“Oh yes, and then, if it turned out to be a fancy-dress party, I could go as a dear little tea-cosy.”

Edith flushed.

“I was only trying to help, Bella. Of course, I know I haven’t your clothes sense, but I would love to learn.”

Bella glowed; no compliment ever displeased her.

“You shall, love,” she said handsomely. “Now this is what I shall do. The dress is passé as such, but the skirt is still rather nice, so I shall cut off the bodice and wear it as an evening skirt, with that nice sleeveless black jersey that came from Paris.”

“My jersey,” I said.

“Well, yes, it is; but I shall look nice in it.”

“I was planning to wear it myself.”

“It doesn’t suit you, as you said yourself. At the time you wished your father had brought back a Chinese-red one, because you were too sallow for black.”

“Never mind. If I am going to look plain in anything, as seems only too likely, then at least I want to look plain in my one fashionable piece of clothing, and not in whatever you don’t happen to fancy.”

My friend looked disappointed. Like the good general she was, she speedily changed her ground.

“Very well. In that case you won’t be wanting the wonderful, jet-beaded jacket that your Aunt Mary brought back from New York.”

Bella looked so content, that it crossed my mind that this was what she had always intended to wear. Indeed, the jacket became her round good looks, whereas in it I looked a not very sensible person.

While Bella was trying out some new ideas about eyebrows, I asked Edith what she would wear to the party.

“This green silk dress,” she answered, showing the dress she was sewing.

I sighed, for this dress had never really suited the girl, doing scant justice to her fine fair skin and greenish eyes. But Edith, never one for light frivolity, was giving these days a fine example of a girl with her mind on one subject. She was preoccupied, withdrawn, and almost moody. She was showing less attention to her clothes and her appearance than she had ever done. I hoped her school and her pupils appreciated her efforts, for I supposed it was they which were sucking her energies. I felt like reminding her that there were other things in life. Bella would have jumped in without hesitation, but I felt that the cold stream of Edith’s resentment was something I did not wish to encounter. The next moment I reproved myself for using such terms in thinking of Edith, who would, I felt sure, display more humility under criticism than I would. Yet I knew she was very proud.

Bella came over to us wearing her new eyebrows. I suppose they were an improvement.

“What do you think? Are they good?”

“Depends what you want.”

“They make you look like Leonora, somehow,” said Edith.

Bella showed her pleasure.

“But really, you know,” continued Edith, “I think Sophy is much better looking than she.”

Bella shrugged.

“And her clothes are much prettier.”

“Oh, pretty!” answered Bella, with scorn. “I suppose every woman ought to be allowed one pretty dress in her collection, but to have a wardrobe made up of nothing else shows a deficiency somewhere.”

“They would not suit everyone, I see that.”

I looked at Edith, for it seemed to me that there was a note of irony in her voice. Bella noticed nothing, since she had now turned her energies to Edith’s dress.

“You simply must let me help you with this dress. It’s absolutely no good pinning on those gold flowers. Why did you? Why gold, of all things?”

“Gold is always safe with green.”

“My dear child, this is a party, not a fire. Who wants safety in a dress?”

She took the dress from its owner’s reluctant hands and began stripping it of its foliage. She did not improve it.

“Oh, Edith, why not wear something else? I’m going to need inspiration to deal with this, and I can’t seem to get it tonight.”

“I don’t have anything else.”

“There is your black skirt. Now, black is safe, if you like.”

“Gone to be cleaned.” Edith looked obstinate.

“Or, if it hasn’t gone, it will go now,” I thought to myself, as I watched her.

Bella sighed, and went back to the green dress.

“I shall have to put it on. You might act as if you wanted me to help you.”

She was soon complaining again.

“I’m afraid this dress shrank when you had it cleaned.”

No use to tell Bella that the dress was what it had always been, and that it had never fitted her. Although she knew this, she would never admit it.

“You don’t look too comfortable, certainly.”

Bella faced me.

“I’m devoted to you, Victoria, absolutely; but don’t count on too much. I do feel, sometimes, the strain of the things you say.”

“I still think you should take it off.”

She ignored this, and began to pin up a hem line, talking all the time. I looked around the room with a feeling of pleasure. The white walls reflected the firelight in a most pleasing way, turning it on to the potted plants, all white as well, for Bella was having a white winter.

Edith was watching Bella with an intent air, which was apparently deceptive, because when Bella spoke to her, she did not answer.

“Edith…Edith…Edith Blunt, listen to me. I have asked you twice if you like the hem as it is now.”

“Oh, dear Bella, not very much. It looks so crumpled.”

Silently Bella withdrew herself from the dress and wrapped her cotton housecoat round her. She flicked the dress accurately at Edith.

“Take it, pet. It’s never going to look anything but hell. Still, why should I worry? No, don’t say anything. You think that I am annoyed. So wrong of you; I just couldn’t think it less important.”

Edith’s mouth opened. I imagined all the words she must be wanting to use, and admired her self-restraint when she said nothing, but apologised to Bella for being ungracious.

I was not surprised to see no apology in her eyes. This did not worry Bella, who would expect a man-eating tiger to apologise if it trod on her toe. She accepted the remark and cheered up at once.

“Let’s all have some coffee, and some chocolate cake.”

Darling Bella, would she one day get arsenic in her coffee, as all her friends had been expecting for years, or would someone hit her on the head with a hammer first?

VI

ON the morning of the party I at last contrived to see Mrs Sidney again. I met her, not by chance, but by a good deal of furtive inquiry and observation, outside the grocery store where she shopped. She knew me at once, but would have ignored me when I stopped her.

“You’re from a newspaper, aren’t you? Well, you needn’t have come last week; there was nothing for you to see.”

“You are mistaken. I am not a reporter, although I don’t blame you for thinking me one. I do teach, although I didn’t teach your son.”

“Miss Cockrill didn’t know you. She said so,” was the suspicious answer.

“Then she couldn’t have got a good look at me.” But I knew she had. However, I couldn’t blame her for throwing me overboard. I chose my next words carefully.

“I want you to know that I didn’t come to you out of curiosity. I do believe that there was so much more to Philip’s murder (I must call it that) than a random attack by a lunatic. Somehow it is all connected with his game…his digging. You do know about it?”

“I do now,” she said, her face drawn. “I didn’t then, or I should have talked to him. I thought he’d been out with his friends or at the library.”

“That’s funny in itself,” I said thoughtfully. “That you shouldn’t have known. He never brought anything back that he dug up?”

“No, I would have noticed.”

I thought this was true, although she wasn’t a very observant woman.

“And didn’t he ever look dirty enough to make you suspicious?”

A puzzled look flitted across her face.

“He was never dirty…not even his hands…in fact I thought that he must have spent all his time at the Library reading. I tell you—if he had been digging, then he was washing himself somewhere always before he came home.”

She saw no significance in what she had said.

“I think that may be very important,” I said gravely. “You had better tell Sergeant Helper.”

I was so anxious to follow up what she had told me, so absorbed in this problem of the little boy who had kept the secret of his fascinating game with method and skill, that I could hardly bother to go to the party. Bella persuaded me, and in the end I was glad I went. Bella was very anxious we should not be early, for, she assured us, everyone else would be late.

As it turned out they were not; with the caution of well-tried party-goers, they had determined to see the best of the drinks. In this they did an injustice to Leonora, who had provided handsomely. There was still plenty when we arrived. Bella’s eyes were popping.

“Look at all those bottles! What did I tell you? Nothing in college prepared us for this.”

“How could it?” asked Charles, as he appeared at her side. “Think of the expense, And what would your parents have said?”

It was nice to see someone we knew, because the room was crowded with people we did not. Mrs Mahady waved a hand at us, as we looked, but vainly, for Leonora. She appeared presently, however, and offered us drinks from a tray, which Spicy carried.

“Which do you prefer, red, or this sort of yellow colour?”

“That’s good hock,” said Spicy reproachfully. “I chose it myself. Take it, my dears—much better for you than all this cheap, beg your pardon, Leonora, gin.”

“I shall have gin,” said Charles. “The favourite drink of the aristocracy. Don’t worry about the lime-juice.”

Spicy shuddered, but handed him the glass. Bella, Edith and I took the wine. It was lovely, and I said so to Spicy.

“You have a naturally good palate, my dear.”

“What a nice thing to say! But it really is so good. How nice it would be, too, with a little fruit and ice in it…Oh dear, can I steady the tray?”

“Don’t worry,” said Spicy. “Would you like to try some sugar with the hock? It’s only 1945,” he added bitterly under his breath.

He was cross, but I was able to ignore this, for my hostess had appeared again to greet a commotion at the door. It was David and Sophy. No doubt I should have mentioned these two before, because David was our infant prodigy. At twenty-four (how much older he now was, one did not ask) he had had one play produced and another filmed, which by our standards was fame indeed, and which had brought to him comment and some money. Yes, he was a celebrity.

“Of course, the first play was not precisely a succès d’éstime,” said Leonora, turning her large dark eyes towards him without love.

The room was full now, smoke in the air, perfumes touching the nose, a gramophone playing, voices getting higher, and the lights lower, with every minute. There at the door was David, little, neat, and fair, with his dark plump Sophy by his side. He caught Leonora’s eye and came across.

“You are talking about me, my dear,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders. “I can always tell.”

“Of course I was,” she answered, pulling away. “How sensitive you are!”

“It’s what makes me such a success.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he answered seriously. “I really think I have arrived now!”

“It depends where you planned to go.” This time Leonora was not detaching his arm. “I’m glad you remembered the party.”

“I’m late, I know,” said David with careful concern. “And I promised to be early. Do forgive me. I was seeing people.”

Leonora offered him a drink in silence. I had an uncomfortable feeling that for her, this was one of those moments that are remembered with pain and embarrassment in the small hours, when self-love sinks low. As she moved away I tried to follow, but David stopped me. I suppose he did not care to see any likely victim escape.

“We have met before.”

“On the stairs.”

“You own that elegant cat.” He looked at me with amusement.

“I hope he hasn’t been a nuisance,” I said formally.

“Won’t come near me. Cats never like me. No, neither of us will utter the too obvious remark. It is not really true, anyway, in spite of a very superficial resemblance. I like to be dry. I like to be warm, but there the likeness ends. I don’t like fish, and I stay home at nights.” By now he was laughing. “Come and sit down.”

I refused cautiously. The truth was, that I began to share Leonora’s unexpressed, but clear reaction to him.

He was vain, boastful, and annoying, but tiresomely attractive. His wife Sophy then appeared, and put an arm around his shoulders. It seemed to be a family habit.

“Is David being tiresome? He often is, poor thing! To like him is an acquired taste.”

It was a taste she had, however, for her hand was moving possessively up and down his arm while she spoke. Silence being safer than speech, I smiled and nodded. There was a little hubbub of conversation around us, with people greeting David and Sophy. They seemed to have lots of friends. Bella nudged my elbow. She was excited.

“Lovely party. And look what’s just come in.”

I turned towards the door. He was tall and slight, yet not delicate looking, fair but tanned. He was casually dressed in a check shirt over corduroy trousers. He had an air of youth and candour and looked good enough to eat—if you had a sweet tooth. I knew that Bella had, so I did not meet her eye.

“Innocents abroad,” she said with a gasp.

I thought she over-estimated this quality, but I could not say so in front of Leonora, who had appeared bearing more food of the type I adore—cold, spiced, and delicious. I was prepared to let Bella disappear without argument, when faced with such tasty temptation. My eye ran over the tray of chicken savouries, lobster creams, and liver paste, while I chose what I would have next. So engrossed, I failed to see Charles approaching me with another dish of food.

“Have something sweet? Spicy says it is what you like.”

I frowned. It was true, and the little cakes looked appetising, but I did not want to encourage Charles. My worse self won, however, and I took a chocolate cream.

“Oh, take another; take plenty—take two.”

I shook my head, and wiped my hands on my handkerchief.

“You have crumbs round your mouth,” pointed out Charles with satisfaction. He got out a large white handkerchief and prepared to mop me up. I shook myself clear and got a mirror from my bag. In the mirror I observed that Charles had set down his tray, and my heart sank.

“Let us dance, as you have finished eating.”

“I prefer conversation.”

“Doing is better than talking.”

Even at college I had known better than to let the conversation develop on these lines, and I was not flattered that dear Charles should think me so simple-minded. He was puffing and blowing at my shoulder while I applied lipstick, which I was careful to do very neatly, hoping that he would understand I meant it to stay that way. In the distance, across the heads and through the noise, I observed Leonora in the acid-yellow dress which became her so well, Not to my surprise, she had deserted the trays of drink and food to concentrate on David. I thought gloomily that I, too, if asked, could abandon the bacon rolls and spiced ham for him. Instead, I turned to Charles, and agreed to dance. To my surprise and pleasure, he danced well, even if I had to stand on tiptoe to partner him. We moved on our square inch of floor in silence for some time. I was willing for us never to speak.

“I’m glad you girls came to live here. We were so dull before.”

“Oh, surely not, when you number David and Leonora among you.”

“I don’t actually see much of them,” admitted Charles.

You surprise me, I said to myself; and how do they keep out of your way? I must ask them.

Through a crack in his façade. I was keeping my eye on Bella, who was now firmly attached to her young innocent. Her face was flushed and happy while she was getting round the room with unusual energy. Charles saw them, too.

“Jem’s here, I see. Surprising.”

“Doesn’t he come to parties?”

“Says they are unhealthy.”

“So they are.”

“Would you like some fresh air?”

“Not in November,” I said firmly.

It was almost impossible to be angry with so transparent a simpleton, and we went on dancing in harmony. By and by we halted near Miss Amy. She was sitting in a comer, with a small table for food and drink at her elbow. She was talking loudly and happily.

“Of course, none of you young people have to endure chaperones. Now, we were never left alone for a minute.”

“Come, Aunt Amy, don’t tell me that the society of the Whitechapel Road went in for chaperonage,” laughed Jem. It was true that there was a faint Cockney bravado in the old lady’s vitality.

“And who would need it more?” returned Aunt Amy. “We girls used to serve in my father’s greengrocery shop, but at night we were anyone’s equal. We went out a lot.” She paused. “I had such a nice one. His name was Bernard. A man was more use, you see.”

“Yes, I can understand that.”

“He couldn’t have been kinder. He used to say to me: now get out on that dance-floor, and don’t let me see you for the rest of the evening.” She sighed. “I used to think in those days that old people should never interfere in the lives of their young friends. I’m not so sure now. I can see it might be their responsibility to interfere.”

She looked towards Leonora, who came towards her.

“Were you talking about me?”

“Not particularly,” answered the old lady. “We were discussing chaperones. I shouldn’t think the subject would interest you.”

Her barb stuck in Leonora, whose pink cheeks showed the blood ran.

“I think I’ve got a bit old for one,” she said apologetically. “Surely after a certain age one can do as one likes.”

“I don’t think so,” said Aunt Amy sternly. “I may have thought so once, but I don’t know. Trust my experience.”

“Perhaps when I’ve had your experience I will,” said Leonora, turning aside lightly.

“You never will,” said the old lady sharply. Before she could say any more Mrs Mahady seemed to jog her arm, jerking it upward and upsetting her handbag. All its contents were flung upon the ground. We crawled on the floor, giving them back to Aunt Amy, who sat bolt upright, calling out directions.

“I like your collection of beads, darling,” said Spicy, who had gathered most of them. “Red, white, and blue. Have you been rifling a patriotic toyshop?”

The old lady, and now she looked one, took back her goods with dignity. She ignored what Spicy had to say, addressing herself to Edith.

“They are pretty beads, aren’t they? I came across them the other day, but they are old-fashioned, and you have to know where to look. I don’t imagine you have ever seen anything like them before?”

“No, I haven’t,” answered Edith. “Victoria, you are treading on my skirt.”

I could have been treading on hot lava without noticing.

I was too preoccupied with the little red-hot handful I was putting back into Miss Amy’s bag. Edith may never have seen any such before, but I had. I had seen them on Philip Sidney’s bookcase.

The little knot of people around Aunt Amy broke up. Charles swept me back into the dance, where he proceeded to be so tiresome that I made plans to leave. Edith had already left. Bella still had her eye on Jem, but I decided not to worry about this.

“At least she can’t ask him to see her home,” I thought.

I tucked myself into my cold bed with ghosts and speculations for my fellows. Where had the boy Philip gone every night after his dig to wash and clean? Who had welcomed him? Tomorrow I would think about it. And tomorrow I would ask Miss Amy about the beads.

But all the next day I did not see her, and on the next she was dead.

VII

AUNT AMY was dead. But at first no one knew this.

“Away all day, and now not home,” said Mrs Groat. “I don’t like it. Supposing she’s had a stroke or an accident? She might be lying in hospital this minute.”

“Oh dear, don’t say that. Perhaps she has gone for a long walk?”

“In those shoes? She never did.”

“A bus ride, then?”

But Mrs Groat ignored my ill-informed suggestions. Miss Amy, her manner implied, would never behave so stupidly.

“I’m so sure I saw her in the shop today,” said Leonora thoughtfully. “Just the back of her head—it is unmistakable, you know—as she tried on a hat. Do have another look in her room.”

“I tell you she is not there.”

Yet she was, of course, when we looked again. She sat in a chair, relaxed and quiet, with her poor old head broken in, and her long, bright hair cut off and scattered around her. The doctor said she had been dead for some time. Long enough for the first stiffness of death to have worn off and a flat limpness to have returned to the limbs. She must have died soon after I had parted from her the night before.

“She wouldn’t need a hat for a head like that, would she?” cried Leonora, with the idiocy of the hysteric. “And yet, I saw her in the shop this morning, trying to choose one.”

She had said this to me so often already that I was silent. Argument, reproof, frank contradiction had been wrung from me until I was dry of answers. Instead, I poured her coffee, and added brandy. In a little while, if this did not work, I would slap her face.

Bella sat in my arm-chair, her eyes glittering, talking away.

“Just think, poor Aunt Amy, poor Aunt Amy,” she repeated, as lunatic in her way as Leonora.

Edith had been sick on hearing the news.

“Without even time to take off her poor hat,” commented Bella, who had looked after her, and persuaded her to rest. After settling Edith, she had come to sit in my room. Presently, she roused herself to complain that we simply must have some food or we should be quite tipsy with brandy.

“I wish I had known before that you kept so much liquor, Victoria,” she said, as she went out.

Leonora leaned back exhausted, and at last, silent. Even fatigued and sick, she remained a great elegant. Her grey and white jersey dress fitted tightly, its gilt buttons matching the ear-rings curled beneath her ears. Her make-up was smudged, but somehow this made her appear touching and pathetic. I had never admired her more. She swore that she would eat nothing, but, in fact, we all ate hungrily the soup and rolls which Bella, still muttering to herself, brought in to us. Warmth and energy began to return. There was a tap on the door. Spicy and Jem darling stood there side by side.

“We’ve come to take you out to dinner. You too, Leonora—a good meal is what you need.”

“Oh, Spicy, it is. I realise now that food is just what helps me. But my face?”

“Go and do it. Then we will go.”

She and Bella went out together, their spirits rising rapidly at the thought of a meal and company.

“I suppose we may leave the house?” I asked, looking down into the garden, where police and onlookers stood.

Jem nodded.

“We are all to be interviewed, but not yet. Meanwhile, as a concession, we are allowed out to feed. But only to the Italian place across the road, with a policeman at the front. You realise we are all prime suspects?”

Until then I had not realised how we were placed, and it hardly seemed possible even when Jem spoke. The others returned. Silently we filed out of the back door. The house hummed with activity, unseen for the most part, but felt. Over all hung the smell of cooking vinegar from the pickling Mrs Groat had started before her dreadful discovery. It provided the last unbearable, incongruous note. I was glad to leave the house.

In the little restaurant we met Sophy, David, and Charles, waiting for food. The former were silent, but Charles was not. I think he was telling them about the development of trial by jury.

The best food our Italian provided was spaghetti, which was also the cheapest. Food always took a long time getting to you at Luigi’s so that there was plenty of time for conversation. And whereas an hour ago the last thing we had wanted was a discussion of the murder, now we wanted to talk, and talk, and talk.

“The real thing, the great question, is WHY?”

“And not only why, Spicy, but how? My goodness, where was the poor old thing all day? And how did she get back into her room?”

“She didn’t walk, that is certain. The doctor said, dead on Sunday night if not before.” Bella shivered.

“You wouldn’t think anyone would bother to move her once she was dead,” said Leonora. “But it seems terrible to talk about her in this impersonal way.”

Leonora had recovered her sentiments with her poise, but I noticed that she, no more than anyone else, spoke of Aunt Amy yet by name. We were halted by some deep inhibition, some primitive taboo.

Out of the corner of my eye, I observed Charles, smiling at me. I ignored him. Luigi came over to us. He was an Italian by ancestry, but a Londoner by birth and upbringing. His face was pale.

“Terrible, isn’t it? Poor old lady! One of my best customers, too. Still, I mustn’t think of that. Selfish, it would be. I shall miss her.”

“I can’t bear to think of it,” answered Leonora, who had been doing nothing else.

“Awful. You would think she would have been safe by now.”

We stared at him.

“Safe by now? Luigi, what can you mean?”

He looked put out. Perhaps he had said more than he meant, perhaps he had not said what he meant.

“Well, at her age, you would think a death in bed was to be looked for.”

This was evasion, and we knew it, but Luigi bobbed away without satisfying us. His place was taken by Charles, who had decided to join us whether we wanted him or not. Spicy, his little face worried and anxious, was trying to hold his loved one’s hand, but with small success, for Leonora merely murmured that he was a sweet thing, and to take his hand away.

Charles joined in the conversation at once.

“It’s perfectly clear that someone who knew the house got the poor old thing back into it.”

“Not at all,” said Spicy, never one to agree with Charles. “Her room overlooked the garden, the window is on ground level, and always open. I do admit though that whoever did it must have been pretty strong.”

“Don’t know about that. It’s all knack. Look at furniture removers. And I’ve seen butchers single-handed carrying great animal trunks into the market.”

Leonora gave a little cry, and paled. Spicy was furious.

“That’s just the trouble with you, Charles. No imagination at all. You might think about the girls. Indeed I didn’t care for what you said myself. You might remember that some of us are more sensitive than you are.”

Charles (Really, Spicy was quite right, it was impossible to offend him) was delighted with this attack.

“You must face it all, Spicy, talk about it, get it out of your system. And, what’s more, you’ve got to recognise that this murder is one of a series, of which the first was the little boy’s.”

For reasons of my own I was inclined to agree with him. I was sure those beads provided a link somewhere.

“No use hiding from the truth,” went on Charles. “I am prepared to face it, even if it is unpleasant.”

“That’s the only time you ever do see it…In any case that is not what you are doing. You were gilding the lily, or blacking the pot, exaggerating as usual, and making the truth nastier than it need be. I suppose you get a mean sort of pleasure out of it.”

They eyed each other suspiciously, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Charles had the air of one who had nursed a serpent in his bosom. Bella, who had been eating quietly and gazing upon her darling Jem, now looked up and remarked with a flash of acuteness that Charles couldn’t bear the thought of Aunt Amy’s murder any better than we could. For some reason this drew the protagonists together, and in a short while they were telling each other what do do when under strain.

“Sugar, plenty of sugar,” I heard Spicy say, while Jem rushed to put the case for vitamin pills.

Leonora, Bella, and I were left to talk to each other.

“You do smell lovely, Leonora. How do you do it? Wicked of me to consider it now, I suppose.” Bella sighed.

It was clear to me that Bella was in search of glamour. She had been in pursuit of it many times before, and each time the spur, the goad, the goal, had been a young man.

Leonora was vague. She was never very good at explaining how she achieved her fine effects.

“You smell very nicely of Pears soap,” I said kindly. “You really couldn’t go to school reeking of musk and sandal-wood.”

“Wouldn’t I like to, though!”

“It is a help to smell nice,” admitted Leonora. “But only to oneself. Don’t make any mistake about that. It makes not the slightest difference to whether one gets loved, or not.”

This was a hard truth for us to take in. It was difficult to believe that sweet scents and powders and elegant clothes really played so little part in the apparatus of love. We could not quite believe such cynicism on the lips of Leonora, the adept of the cult, the very model of all we wished to be. Only a moment of complete disillusion could have led her to say what she had said. With little effort Bella and I persuaded ourselves that Leonora did not mean it. My confidence restored, I began to feel almost gay. The light, warmth, food, and the accompanying rough red wine, gave me a feeling of detachment from the dreadful thing across the road. So removed was I from the scene, that I gazed for a time at the small figure pushing into the room without taking it in. The small boy with the old pram was almost hidden behind the great roll of washing it contained. He smiled at me, and leaned on the table.

“I’m taking Mum’s washing home from the Baths. Proper washing-machines they’ve got there now. Mum’s washing herself now. No sense in washing one without the other, she says. She give me sixpence.”

“Gave,” I corrected automatically.

“Gave, then. Anyway, I’m going to spend it on an ice cream.”

Luigi was cross.

“I don’t sell ice-cream…not in the winter. Take your Mum’s washing home. She’ll be wanting it.”

“No, she won’t. She stays in the bath till they turns her out. And she’s only just gone in.”

He looked round the room, defying Luigi’s efforts to turn him out, giving us a detailed attention, which revealed his real reason for coming in, and gave the lie to the plea for ice-cream. He turned back to me in disappointment…

“You all look like you always do.”

“What did you expect?” I asked, outraged. “Anyway, you don’t know us.”

“You teach in my school,” he said simply. “And of course, I see all of you most days. I live round here.”

I realised then that his searching, curious stare was the forerunner of many. And he was a nice little boy.

“Go away,” I commanded crossly.

He looked at me reproachfully.

“You shouldn’t say that. I might be able to help.” He leaned towards me. “I want to help.”

He did help. But not in the way he intended, poor fellow.

The energy and false cheerfulness which Luigi’s bright little restaurant had given me faded as I faced the prospect of returning to ’The Argosy’. We went slowly back in a party, with David and Sophy, who had made up their quarrel, accompanying us. The air was cold and foggy. I pulled my thick tweed coat tightly round me, longing to be alone in my little room, and yet afraid to be there, too. Sophy looked at me, as if she read my thoughts.

“I don’t want to be alone, do you?”

“You don’t have to be.”

“Yes, I suppose David is some protection.” But she seemed doubtful. “I shall take a sleeping tablet and go to bed.”

In the hall, still reeking with the smell of vinegar, we met Mrs Mahady.

“I’ve been with Mrs Groat. You can imagine the state she’s in.”

I nodded.

“Come and have some Benedictine? But don’t bring the rest of that gaggle with you.”

I refused, explaining that I must get back to Edith, whom I had left in bed. Bella and Jem trailed up behind me. I did not protest. The idea of a man, presumably strong, and certainly active, on our floor did not displease me. Unless—the disquieting idea occurred to me—unless it had been dear Jem who had knocked Aunt Amy on the head?

VIII

THERE WAS no sleep for anyone yet. A polite young constable followed hard upon our heels with the request that we should come and see his Sergeant. Of course it was Sergeant Helper.

“Just a few questions. Then, if the Inspector wants to see you tomorrow, you won’t have to start from the beginning.”

So, one after the other, we went in. Edith was summoned from her bed, Mrs Groat from her hysterics, and the rest of us from wherever we had taken refuge. One after the other, we told our name, age, and occupation.

“Yes, I had come straight from school. No, I had not seen Miss Amy since Sunday evening. Yes, I had been one of the people who discovered her body.”

Whether one of us knew more than we were telling, or told more than was true, I cannot say. The expression on the Sergeant’s face, although cheerful, never varied as he asked his questions.

“Did you know Miss Amy before you came to live here?”

“No. I never saw her before that time.”

But Spicy, apparently, had not been able, with truth, to give this answer. He was very distressed.

“Well, but I did know her before. So I had to say. Trust the police to find out if I hadn’t said. I am sure he suspects me now.”

“When did you know her?”

“She was the friend of a friend. We met in a park. You know how she loved crowds? She was listening to the band. And then, when I was looking for somewhere to live, she suggested this place. Oh dear, what a pity!”

It was impossible for the rest of us to feel that it was altogether a pity, impossible to repress a decided, if cruel relief, that a scapegoat was preparing himself. Nevertheless, charity and good feeling compelled us to offer Spicy our hypocritical comfort, so that he went off, at last, with his balance restored. Bella, Edith, and I started upstairs again. The telephone rang. It was for me; Verena’s voice travelled softly across the wires.

“What a thing!” she said. “Do tell me all about it.”

“How did you know?”

“Stop press news,” she said calmly. “Now, what can you tell me? Oh, Victoria, what a wicked thing to say! Temper. I only want to help…Very well, if you won’t say anything, Victoria, I can’t make you. I have my own ideas about it.”

I was thoughtful. With Verena, it was wise to recall the phrase about fearing a Greek when he came bearing gifts, for her help was usually directed to her own ends. I could see that Verena was going to be a big, flashing worldly success, but I did not wish to be a rung on her step-ladder. This time what she wanted, as a baby could see, was a detailed story, which she would send, adding no doubt whatever came into her mind, to the daily newspaper of her northern town.

“The harpy,” remarked Bella. “If one of us was near arrest, she’d be arranging for a personal appearance at that cinema of hers, before you could say Jack Ketch.”

“She did say something about coming up to visit her.”

“There you are.”

“You should never take any notice of Verena,” said Edith irritably. “She likes to provoke.”

Edith had recovered from her sickness, but she looked exhausted. A glance in the mirror showed me that so did I. The hour was no later than ten o’clock, but I had experienced so much that time was meaningless. Earlier today I had been living in another time, in another world, one which I should never re-enter.

Bed brought no refreshment, only heavy, restless sleep until the dawn of a dark, wet day. Dizzy was calling to me. He hated crowds, and already people were moving about on the floor below, and there was a steady coming and going on the stairs. It promised to be a dreadful day. A banging ache started in my head, in sensitive response to my sagging feelings. I made some tea, and took a cup in to Bella. We decided that we must each telephone our headmistress, to offer our excuses for our inevitable absence today. I must say now that these much-tried women treated us with real sympathy and kindness through all the terrible days which followed. Edith had left a note in the kitchen to say that she would get back as soon as she could, and not to worry.

“She ought not to have gone. She looked quite ill last night.”

“I wonder the police let her.”

“Don’t suppose they could stop her. You know how strong-willed she is. You might have put milk in this tea, Victoria.”

Gathering up Bella’s dressing-gown, I ran downstairs for the milk. I went down the first flight, down to the big, wide landing from which opened the doors of the main flats in the house. Voices floated up from below, and I could hear feet on the stairs. I looked round, uncertain whether they were coming up or down. There was nothing to be seen. Not anxious to meet a horde of strangers in Bella’s bright-red gown, I leant over the banisters and peered down the deep stair-well. And this is where we come to a Full Stop, for as I leant there was a strong hand on my back, which pushed and lifted me. I screamed, and fell forward into dark, purple darkness.

• • •

Some time later I opened my eyes, and looked at Bella’s and Edith’s anxious faces. Beyond them stood a little group of policemen, headed by a tall, thin man, introduced by the Sergeant, who seemed to have a keen social sense, as Inspector Winter.

“Good,” I heard Bella say under her breath—“good, very suitable. He looks like the retreat from Moscow.”

I was on my own bed, where I lay still for a moment cautiously assessing my injuries. I did not feel any pain, but this might have a most sinister meaning. Perhaps I was beyond pain. However, I could talk.

“Did I fall far?”

“I don’t think you fell at all, Victoria. I heard you scream, rushed down, and found you lying on the stairs. Then everyone came to look. What happened?”

“Someone tried to push me over the banisters.”

Bella looked doubtful.

“I think you tripped. Or perhaps you fainted.”

“Why on earth should I? I never fainted in my life.” I felt my head.

“I have a big bump. Whoever attacked me, hit me as well as pushing.”

“They didn’t push you over, though. Why not?” asked an incredulous Bella.

I cast my thoughts back. I remembered the footsteps on the stairs.

“Because there was someone coming; there was not time.”

Edith agreed with me.

“It’s true, Bella. I was on my way up. I had just come in. And the Sergeant was on the stairs, too.”

The Sergeant admitted that this was the case.

Inspector Winter, who had listened but not spoken, nodded. He looked at me without approval. No doubt he resented the extra complications an attack on me represented. Anyway, he did his best to be sceptical. In my turn, I disliked his nasty little questions, which I answered with ill grace. Of course I had not been looking for, or at, anyone or anything. I had observed nothing; but why should I have done? I had been on my regular morning errand of collecting the milk.

“There was someone there,” I concluded obstinately.

The bump on my head, although it was not as big as he seemed to wish, was allowed to stand as circumstantial evidence of an attack. But I could see that, so far from placing me above his suspicions, it rather centred them upon me. Only a certain natural politeness and the Police Regulations prevented him from saying outright that I had attacked myself. He was the sort of detective never to forget the old maxim that the most likely person to have committed the murder is the person who discovers the body. I had been among the people who had found Aunt Amy’s body, and most pressing in my demands that we look in her room. It was unlikely that Mrs Groat, so earnest a reader of the Sunday newspapers, would have failed to report such significant details. I looked up to meet the kindly but over-sympathetic eyes of the Sergeant. It was too much for me. I burst into tears. In an instant the room was cleared. Only Bella remained. Why hadn’t I thought of the device of tears before?

“Edith is bringing you tea. Then, if your headache is worse, you can have some aspirin. The doctor will be coming.”

“You believe me, don’t you, Bella?”

“Of course I do. So does Edith. After all, we found you. Goodness! I was frightened. So was Edith; she was trembling.”

I sat up to have my tea. Already I felt better, although I wasn’t going to admit it.

“You really saw nothing?” asked Edith.

I shook my head.

“Nothing. I just felt a mighty strong pair of arms. It was horrible.”

After the doctor’s visit, and a short rest, I settled myself on my pillows to receive the visitors I felt sure would come. Bella and Edith had promised to return soon, bringing their work, for they understood that I was frightened to be alone. I lay in bed and looked at the ceiling. As soon as I closed my eyes, I saw again the heavy purple darkness, which had closed upon me as I fell. Why purple? I wondered. It’s the suicide colour, said my ever-ready brain. It’s the colour which depresses, which drives the melancholiac to despair. I looked firmly, eyes wide open, at the nice, white ceiling.

My first caller was Leonora. She had a copy of Vogue —her Old and New Testament—under one arm, and supported a potted plant, a splendid cyclamen, in her hands. Unless she proposed to brain me with the flower-pot, she carried no offensive weapon, so I cautiously permitted her to enter. She closed the door very quietly, which at once aroused my suspicions, but she explained she was thinking of my head.

“It doesn’t ache so much now.”

“I am sorry for you. A horrid experience. Spicy told me about it and took me out to lunch to get over it. Naturally, it had upset me.”

“Naturally.”

“After all, one can’t help thinking…it might have been me.”

I saw then that Leonora’s gifts were a sort of retrospective insurance policy.

“Perhaps it will be next time.”

She opened her big eyes.

“I don’t see why there shouldn’t be a next time. Why stop at me?

“I can assure you that I don’t intend to put myself in the way of a second attack. So whoever feels bloodthirsty can find someone else.”

“You think it is a sort of general malice—the attack on you, I mean? But that means…madness.”

I shuddered.

“You saw Aunt Amy, Leonora. What do you think?”

Leonora put her gifts down on the table with an unsteady hand.

“Do you mind if I go away now and think things out? I believe I would like to be alone for a bit.”

“You won’t get very far with thinking things out. I’ve tried too. Anyway, you can’t go now. That light, ringing laugh on the landing means that David is calling, and I won’t be alone with him…and not for the reason I can see you suspect.”

David had Mrs Mahady with him. They were still laughing. David came forward and took my hand.

“Poor child! We have come to condole.”

“Yes, I heard you.”

“Oh, my dear, we weren’t laughing at you, but at me.

When I heard your scream, I found myself rushing out, yelling, ’Fire, fire’. Would you believe it?”

“I’ll try.”

Mrs Mahady looked at David.

“Your tie is crooked, dear.” She glanced at Leonora, who said nothing, but tightened her lips. I drew my bed-jacket round me—my visitors had brought too many cold cross-currents of air with them.

“Shall I turn the fire up?” asked David. “I think you are in a draught. Let me arrange the curtains…there.”

He settled everything, neatly and delicately, in a much more comfortable way than Bella had managed.

“That really is a lovely red jacket. How clever of you to wear it as a bed-jacket, instead of dull old blue or pink. It suits you.”

“It is nice. I love it dearly, because it represents one of the few bargains I have ever made.”

“Oh, do tell me. That is, if it wouldn’t tire you.”

“By no means; I should enjoy it.”

Leonora interrupted us irritably:

“I really must go. You two can amuse each other.”

“They are amusing me, too,” said Mrs. Mahady.

“Water the cyclamen, Victoria, but not often. It doesn’t drink much.”

“Drink! Lord, I nearly forgot.”

And Mrs Mahady drew a small bottle of brandy from her pocket, just as Bella bustled in.

“Victoria may not have brandy,” she said, taking it swiftly. “But we can. Let’s all have some.”

So Leonora stayed. It might have been better if she had gone, for the next arrival was Sophy, whose waspish mood was not improved by the sight of her rival.

Looking round crossly for something to complain about, she saw my little lamp, with its shade, painted like a merry-go-round, jerking round in the warm air.

“What a nasty thing! Enough to give you headache, spinning and casting shadows like that. Horrid! I don’t like it.”

She had no good to report.

“This is a dreadful business. I’m sorry about you, Victoria, but the solution is in our own hands. We must leave. None of us is safe here. There was someone in my room today. I’m sure there was. I have told Mrs Groat that we shall go as soon as the police allow. It’s a dreadful house. I shall tell the police all I know and go.”

“But poor Mrs Groat will be ruined if we all go,” said Edith quietly from the door. She came in, and sat on my bed.

“So shall we all,” said Leonora soberly. “Imagine my customers’ faces.”

“And what about us? What headmistress will want three Jonahs like us looking after their little ones?”

“We must go. It’s as I said: we must all leave.”

“You can go if you like, Sophy, but I don’t know that I shall accompany you. I’ve always been able to work here. I find it convenient…”

“It’s convenient for Leonora, too, isn’t it? I have always known that, but I must say I never expected you to admit it. A lot of things are convenient for Leonora. It will be a lot freer, with me and Aunt Amy gone. You will be able to do a lot of things you could hardly do with us watching. She knew a great deal about you, didn’t she, Leonora? But so do I.”

She looked wildly round the room.

“I knew a good many of the things she knew, or I can guess them. Remember that I have lived in this neighbourhood for years.”

“You don’t know what you are saying.”

“Don’t I? You look white though, Leonora, so perhaps you do.”

So did I, so did we all, I thought.

The others stayed on in embarrassed silence as Sophy departed in a flurry of temper, nearly knocking over the small figure of Spicy.

“What is the matter, dears?”

“Sophy was in a hurry.”

“Yes, I noticed. But really, you look flustered.”

He turned his big eyes anxiously on Leonora. Then he remembered his manners, and came over to me with a small parcel.

“A little bottle to amuse you. It’s called ‘Deep Summer,’ and it smells, in the most heavenly way, of dark, dark purple lilac.”

David groaned.

“Sophy has some. She’s very possessive about perfume. One more thing she won’t like.”

But I was delighted with my present.

“Oh, Spicy, you angel! If anything can do me good, this will be it.”

He beamed.

“I mustn’t stay. There’s a lot to do. I hope you feel better soon. I should have a good rest.”

They did leave then. Overjoyed with my little bottle, I opened it, and tried some on the back of my hand. Immediately I was engulfed in a dark, purple darkness. My head swimming, I put the bottle back on the table. I had smelt this before. It had clung about the hands which had pushed me. No wonder my darkness had been purple, as unconsciously my mind made the right associations.

Miserably my mind revolved. Sophy? Or nice little Spicy? It seemed I could choose between the two. I lay and thought of all I knew about Spicy. I could hardly believe it of him, and yet…

IX

I HAD rather hoped that I might have mild, or suspected concussion, when I should have been able to stay in bed, safe, protected, and comfortable. However, it was not so.

“Not much trouble about you,” said the doctor unsympathetically. “Hardly a bruise.”

Reluctantly, I returned to school, to find that it was a relief to forget oneself in doings which were familiar, sure, and apart from horror.

The whole district was in a fever as a result of the second murder within its precincts. An experienced Inspector had been called in from Scotland Yard, so the daily papers said. This was no news to us at ’The Argosy’, where Inspector Winter’s presence was constantly felt, if not seen. I wondered how our little Helper liked the Inspector? They didn’t seem exactly birds of a feather. However, I had no doubt that the Sergeant had told his colleague all the dark thoughts he nourished about me.

Because of Aunt Amy’s death, police activities over the first crime had temporarily slackened. I knew as I walked through the streets that the police were no longer combing all the bombed sites and hideouts; instead they were combing ’The Argosy’.

Every time I washed my hands I wondered where Philip Sidney had washed so carefully. What a prudent, careful little boy he had been! I began to wonder if I would have liked him if I had known him.

“Do the Sidneys form a large family clan?” I asked when the conversation in the Staffroom swung, as it always did now, to the murders.

“I don’t think there are any more of them,” answered

Miss Scott. “The father came down from the north at the end of the war. And Mrs Sidney isn’t the sort of woman to make friends easily.”

“Was he?”

“I never saw him. He didn’t make a friend of Miss Cockrill, at all events.”

“What sort of an accident did he have?”

“Fell under a bus, I think.”

Miss Scott had no more information, but from what she had told me I knew I could rule out the possibility that Philip had called upon an old family friend or relation to clean himself up. He might have made a friend on his own account, I suppose, but I could not see it happening. Yet he had washed somewhere—I had his mother’s word for it.

Tearing across the playground I met the small boy who had been so inquisitive in Luigi’s. I seized his arm to ask an inspired question.

“Where in the village would you go if you were very dirty and had to wash quickly but couldn’t go home?”

It took a long time before this novel idea was understood, but then he answered at once. He was no fool, that boy.

“Why, I’d go to the Baths, of course. They stay open nearly all night, and boys can wash there. Not for free, of course—you have to pay. First class and second class.”

“First and second class,” I repeated respectfully, looking at the notices posted up on the imposing façade of the Public Baths. It was a horrible building, shaped like the Colosseum, only faced with red marble, and reeking with the smell of disinfectant and soap. There was a porter in a little box at the entrance, but I doubted very much if he had any information more valuable than today’s winners, so I passed him without a word. Once inside, I wished I had not been so scornful because I could see no one about at all. Hesitation and doubts crowded upon me. I realised that I had rushed down here on the spur of the moment to ask what questions I didn’t quite know, of whom I couldn’t guess. I hovered in front of the swing doors. An attendant came out, and looked at me with wonder for a few seconds, before saying:

“First class over there.”

“Thank you,” I said, vaguely flattered that I looked first class. As I still hesitated, she came over to me, and said in a lower voice:

“If you wanted the Free, that’s only Mondays.”

Galvanised by this kind suggestion, I pushed my way into the first class. If necessary I supposed I could take a bath. Bella would have plunged in without any difficulty, but I still suffered from tiresome inhibitions. Obediently I followed the arrow which said ‘Women and children’. Once right inside there was no emerging without a bath. You went through a turnstile and then you were on a conveyor belt till you were bathed and out. But everything was so splendidly clean and shiny, the water so hot, and the bath-towels so fresh (although curiously thin and flat) that I began to enjoy it. I felt quite sure that Philip had come here, and all I had learnt of him persuaded me that he would have been a first-class bather, and that perhaps I could find someone who remembered him. I wasn’t sure, though, whether he might not have been too old to have come into the women and children department. He certainly was a child, but I doubted whether he thought of himself as one, although he had been small for his age.

As I padded up with my towel to the attendant, I had my question ready.

“I don’t suppose you ever have children in here by themselves, do you? I was thinking of sending my small nephew?”

I had started off to say son, but seeing the doubts rising on her face, I had hastily changed my mind.

“Well, not to bathe; it’s not allowed. If they are small enough to come in this side, then they are really too small to bathe by themselves.”

“I see,” I said. “You mean he would have to go over to the Men and Boys?”

I was disappointed. I could see no hope of penetrating there with my questions.

“I had an idea my neighbour’s little boy did come in here for a wash sometimes.”

“Oh, a wash! Well, he might go into the wash-rooms, I suppose—we don’t worry about that, if the boy is under twelve or so—but there aren’t many that do it.”

“He’s got bright red hair.”

She shrugged.

“I might have been off duty. We did have a little dark one in sometimes, but he wasn’t alone.”

“He wasn’t?” I dropped my handbag with surprise. Fortunately she was a stupid woman.

“His mother watched him from outside—or she did once, anyway.”

“She did? What a funny thing to do!” I stood appalled by the picture she conjured up.

“She didn’t need to either, because he washed good, and fast too.”

A scream from her sharp-eyed superior, who had just come from the telephone, summoned her. From their hasty glances at me, I knew my conversation was being reported. I put on my coat and fled, feeling rather weak.

I didn’t like what she had told me. Had Mrs Sidney been lying to me? Or had it been another, unknown, woman who had lurked outside observing the child. Anyway, it made my flesh creep.

Outside I met the Sergeant. He stopped me.

“Well, miss,” he said.” I don’t mind you always following us about, but I would like to know that you are following, and not in front.”

“You never asked Mrs Sidney whether the boy came in clean or not, nor did you ask the attendant here if she’d seen the boy.”

“With us that sort of thing is routine,” he said wearily. “Now go home.”

I walked home brooding over the snub. At one moment I felt cross, at the next I admitted it was justified. In spite of it all, I liked the Sergeant, and I think, in a way, he liked me. I knew more about him now. Not from him, since he retained a proper reserve, but from Mrs Mahady and Mrs Groat in eager duet.

“He’s a local boy. I’ve known him for years. Such a hardworking little thing too. Good luck to him, I say,”

“Good luck for him might be bad luck for us,” I had pointed out.

“He’s got this dear, wooden hut, Victoria,” took up Mrs Mahady, “with C.I.D. written on it in white paint; and whenever there’s a crime he never stops until it is solved. Of course, they are not usually murders, so this time he has Inspector Winter helping him.”

I found myself outside Luigi’s shop. He was shrewd enough to combine the selling of old glass, china, and silver with his other trade. I gazed long at a little group of Staffordshire figures, pretending to myself that I was considering buying it. I heard slow, trudging feet, and looked up to see Bella.

“You thinking of buying anything?”

I indicated the pretty rust-and-blue group.

“It will be expensive. We might go in and ask. I don’t want to go home yet anyway, do you? Why ever did we move to ’The Argosy’?”

“Because Edith found us the rooms and we had nowhere else.”

“Don’t be so literal minded. That was a rhetorical question, needing sympathy, not an analysis.”

She gave a long sigh.

“Oh well, at least I have met Jem. I shouldn’t have done, if I had not come to ’The Argosy’.”

“You could call that a good thing.”

“It’s heaven from my point of view.” Bella smiled reminiscently. “He really is a darling.”

“I think Spicy is more fun.”

“Victoria! You surprise me. He is so little. Besides, he is absolutely besotted about Leonora.”

“You’d noticed, had you? But I think it is wearing off a bit. No, the real drawback to Spicy is that he may have killed Aunt Amy.”

“You can’t mean it!”

After a moment of hesitation, I told her about the smell of lilac, and what I deduced from it.

“I can’t believe it of him. Sophy, now, if you like, might have done it. What a vixen! Besides, if your bottle of perfume was unopened (it was, wasn’t it?), then how could Spicy smell of it?”

“He knew how it smelled, remember. But I would like to feel it was not him.”

Luigi’s doorbell sounded, while we were still absently looking at his display. I had the little Staffordshire group in my hands. Into the shop came a little round-faced woman dressed in black. She looked towards us, then turned aside. But in that one glance, I knew, she had observed much. She had the trained, impersonal gaze of someone used to summing up strangers rapidly.

“Well, we are in the news again, Luigi.”

Luigi nodded sourly.

“I want a packet of your marzipan. I’m making a cake to-night. I know it’s fattening, but I don’t care.”

Luigi might have said that she was already too fat to care. It would have been true; she was a little mountain of a woman.

“There’s a lot of talk at the shop,” she went on. “It won’t do Miss Leonora any good.”

I knew then where she came from. I might have guessed from her manner.

“There’s always a lot of talk, and not all of it accurate. As you and I know, from past experience, Miss Sarson.”

She replied with a shrug.

“You don’t like Miss Leonora, do you?”

“It’s not that at all. I keep an open mind, and don’t believe all I hear. But hysteria, such as she showed, must have some reason.”

Luigi looked sad. He admired Leonora.

“Screaming in the shop, and shouting that she had seen Miss Amy in the millinery on Monday, when it’s well known the old thing was dead by then.”

“Some mistake.”

“But the fuss! And how could she make such a mistake? Miss Amy was unmistakable. Do you remember how striking she used to look, with her red hair and green eyes? You never see anyone like that now.”

“You do sometimes,” said Luigi, with an air of unease.

He walked over to us, flicking his napkin. “You young ladies want anything?”

We took the hint, and went.

Outside, the dark November afternoon had changed to evening. The street-lights shone through a mounting fog. Yet, unpleasant as it was, we were loth to return to the house. The shops were closing as we turned away from the shop and ’The Argosy’, to walk down the gentle hill into the centre of the village. In the distance we could see the big store where Leonora worked.

“We need not go back just yet?”

I answered Bella’s question with a nod, putting my arm through hers. Contact with her solid figure was comforting. I wondered what I should do without the support given me by the friendship of Bella and Edith. I knew that without them I should be lonely, idle, and bored. Many things in common had made it inevitable that, once acquainted, Bella and I should respond to each other. Edith was different. Of the three of us, she was the cleverest, the sharpest, and the most mature. We admired her very much, and took her friendship as a compliment. She had offered us companionship and, flattered, we had taken it. I don’t know whether she ever regretted her overtures to us, but she persevered with us, and we thought of her as one of the closest of our friends.

“Old Edith has her reserves, though,” said Bella, taking me by surprise with the appositeness of her remarks. Her ability to read my thoughts both alarmed and pleased me.

“I respect her for them.”

“Oh, so do I. She works terribly hard at that school of hers. You know, she has got very thin since we came here. I don’t believe she is well. Her hair is quite dull. My mother says that is a sign of bad health.”

And so it would be in you, I thought, looking at her affectionately, admiring her gleaming hair and bright teeth. But not in Edith.

“It’s always been like it. I expect we all look pretty haggard at the moment.”

“It is sad to look dreary, just at a time when I would like to look nice for Jem.”

“Does he notice, do you think? I don’t believe he minds what people look like. He is too busy thinking about their germ content. And himself.” But I added the last to myself. “You attract him because you look so healthy.”

“I don’t believe you and Edith like Jem,” complained Bella.

“I see why you like him. Edith does like him, I should have said.”

“She doesn’t talk to him much.”

“She likes him.”

I looked at Bella with curiosity. Had she really observed and understood so little?

As we walked, I told of my adventure in the Baths. Bella was impressed, which was what I had hoped for.

“You ought to be careful, though,” she said frankly. “Because you might have the murderer after you as well as the Sergeant. After all you did have that fall, and you say you were pushed.”

“I was,” I repeated obstinately. “But what do you think about the woman lurking outside watching the boy? Don’t you think it menacing?”

Then I saw the woman attendant from the baths peering into a window. I was not anxious to meet her again. Before we turned away, I pointed her out to Bella, who gave her a long look.

“Well, I shouldn’t take too much notice of her, my dear,” she said brutally, “for she doesn’t look at all reliable. And what’s more, did you notice her spectacles and the way she was staring? I don’t believe she could see whether it was a woman or old Nick waiting outside for the boy. All she saw was something.”

We walked back past the Post Office, past Leonora’s shop, past where the prosperous row of shops and houses was broken into by a span of wooden fencing in front of a trio of empty, dirty, unrepaired shops. But even these, we thought, made a more pleasant prospect than the night we had before us in ’The Argosy’.

“Oh well,” said Bella, in an effort to be cheerful. “Lightning never strikes in the same place twice.”

Even as she said it I knew it was a mistake, and tempting Providence.

X

MY irresponsible behaviour (one of the Sergeant’s phrases) earned its just reward about this time. The local Council for which we worked was sponsoring a Waste Not—Want Not campaign. I had heard about it for weeks past without taking much interest, because I had not realised how active my part in it was to be. My first intimation came with a stern letter commanding, not beseeching or even requesting, my appearance as demonstrator at a public performance of how to cook without using too much fuel or too much anything. From the glint in Miss Cockrill’s eye as she handed me this letter I had no doubt whatever that she had somehow got me this job, that it was both a punishment for my activities and a hint that I had, literally, other fish to fry.

I was getting a bit scared of Miss Cockrill. She had got over her aversion to Adelaide, perhaps because Adelaide was leaving so soon, and had transferred it to me. Or that was what it felt like. In my case her dislike, I had to admit, was not without justification, but I did not feel happy. She made me creep, and while she was always polite to me, I felt that her temper, if roused, would be terrible. I used to think sometimes, when I looked at her and saw a half smile, that she was amusing herself; it was a game to her, a game of cat and mouse—and I was the mouse.

So when I received my orders I took them silently. Unfortunately, Edith had been named to assist me, and she was furious.

“And they aren’t even paying you,” said Bella later, studying the letter.

“I suppose they think they are paying us,” answered Edith, so reminding us that the suburban Education Authority, for whom we worked, had the reputation for being the meanest south of the Humber.

“I don’t think you should do it,” declared Bella. “It’s not in your contracts.”

“Our contracts are provisional,” I reminded her. “They are only to be made permanent at the end of the year, if we suit. We are on probation.”

“And obviously we won’t suit, if we aren’t obliging,” agreed Edith.

Bella was still very angry.

“It’s illegal, it’s blackmail. This sort of thing may go on happening. One can’t spend the rest of one’s life doing a public turn whenever it suits them.”

“You’ll find it is only the young ones like us who get asked to do it,” said Edith cynically. “Still, I resent it myself. Some pay should have been offered.”

“I mind the awful bore of doing it most. I don’t really care about the pay.”

“Well, I do,” answered Edith shortly.

“I wonder if one could organise some sort of opposition to it,” said Bella, with visions of street marches, and chains, and railings, stirring for once her suffragette blood. Her grandmother had been an ardent and active supporter of women’s rights, speaking, marching, and chaining herself, with the best; but the energy had burnt itself out with her, and none of her descendants had shown much enthusiasm for anything at all.

“No, dear, one couldn’t. Partly because I simply couldn’t bother, partly because the three of us wouldn’t make much of a show—would we?—and partly because, with great prudence, only a few days’ warning have been offered us. No. We must go.”

“What are we meant to do when we get there?”

“They seem to have sent some suggestions,” I said, extracting another typewritten message from my envelope. “We give it in the Town Hall basement. My, what fun! And here is a suggested meal.”

I read it through.

“What a lovely meal! They seem to have overlooked the curious thing about food is that one eats it.”

“I regard it as professionally degrading,” said Edith, rather pompously.

“And I regard it as a damned nuisance.”

“Cheer up. I expect Miss Cockrill will come to help you,” said Bella, who knew what I thought of that woman.

“It would be nice to have a higher opinion of her, but I. can’t. Perhaps she’s kind to animals.”

“But I happen to know that children don’t love her. The older girls, anyway, loathe her.”

“How do you always know all the gossip?”

“It’s my nice kind face. People love to tell me things, especially bad things about their best friends.”

“And about your friends? Come, Bella, tell. What do they say about us?”

“Nothing much about you, Victoria, dear. I suppose you haven’t made enough impression. Oh, how mean to kick me!”

“Harder next time. What about Edith?”

“I don’t want to know,” said the latter hastily.

“They call you ’The Lady’.”

“Well, really.”

“It’s a joke. Don’t puff up like that. Take it as a compliment.”

“And what do they call you?” I asked, guessing that she knew.

Bella was reluctant.

“The Dormouse,” she said finally, with a look of pain on her large, frank, open face, which so belied her nature.

“What a farce it all is,” I said, reverting to my grievance. “Of course, I approve of people not wasting things, but I don’t imagine the average housewife does. Can’t afford to, poor dear.”

“Do you suppose anyone will come?”

“Oh, we shall get the cranks, the bored, and the idle,” I answered bitterly.

This harsh judgement was only too accurate, as a rapid glance at the people before me revealed when the appointed day fell. In addition, we had Mrs Mahady and Mrs Groat in attendance, and of course Miss Cockrill, sitting with a faint, small smile on her face. I understood why my three acquaintances had come—in their various ways they found us amusing—but for the rest, as I met their apathetic, gloomy, and sometimes hostile stares, I concluded that they were filling in time.

“Not a very nice room, is it?” asked one matron of her neighbour.

“No, dear, but it’s not worth going back and lighting the fire now.”

“We could have seen the film round again.”

“No, dear, twice is enough. Besides, didn’t you notice how the usherettes looked at us? Hush, the young lady is going to speak now.”

She was wrong. I was not going to speak: I was speechless.

Edith had been very cross on the way here. She was missing something which would have been a great treat to her (although not for me)—a walk with Jem.

“He said not the cinema, because of the germs, but a walk.”

“Isn’t he cautious?” I said admiringly. “But not very romantic…a brisk walk it would be, too, so as not to take cold.”

“Now Bella will go alone,” grumbled Edith.

“Oh, she was going too, was she?” Jem was cautious, and no mistake.

Edith had not missed so very much, I thought; still, pleasure is in the eye of the beholder. She was very sulky and silent on the ’bus journey down to the Town Hall, nor did she speak as we descended the three flights of stairs to the basement room, too obviously a former air-raid shelter, which we were to use. Only as we were putting on our white coats did she utter:

“Someone has just come in.”

At the sound of our voices he came across, patting his pockets, and stroking his hair in a nasty sort of way, as if he would wish to have been patting and stroking us. He told us that he was the deputy organiser of the campaign, and he pointed out to us the great responsibility that rested upon us.

“We used to be a thrifty nation, Miss Blunt, and it’s my belief we ought to get back to the old ways, Victorian, you will say; but right, I will answer. Waste, that’s what we have got to attack. Now, I am sure you young ladies are going to be splendid. And if you get nervous, remember that I shall be right here watching you.”

I gave him a cold smile.

“Shall we run over what I want you to do?”

This suggestion I treated briskly.

“I am going to give a short talk on economy in the use of a gas, electric, or solid-fuel cooker. I shall demonstrate, as far as I can, with the equipment here.”

I turned a scornful glance upon the antique cooker.

“And then Miss Blunt will explain the proper use of pressure cookers and hayboxes. For this we have brought our own equipment.” Adding under my breath, “And just as well, too.”

“That’s a very fine cooker, left over from the war. Not to be parted with at any price.”

“I can understand that. Have you had any offers from the Victoria and Albert?”

He looked first puzzled, then hostile.

“My Church forbids the theatre,” he said sternly.

Unasked, he informed us he was a Cornish Brother, a member of an extreme, bigoted, and neurotic sect.

“I wish he were a Trappist,” muttered Edith crossly as his words flowed on. “Then we could get on with the job. I don’t see how we are to be ready in time.”

But we were ready—ready and waiting for an audience slow to arrive. In ones and twos, lethargic and bored, they drifted in. A large contingent, which considerably swelled our numbers, came from a home for mentally deficient girls. This roused Edith to anger.

“Poor things, poor things! To bring them here, where they won’t understand or enjoy a thing. Bad enough to live in one institution, without visiting another.”

But I had been giving them a closer look.

“Don’t upset yourself for nothing, Edith; they only look deficient in those hats. I recognise the uniform: they come from the smart girls’ school on the hill.”

The proceedings opened with my performance. Forgetting the two strays from the cinema, the blank girlish faces, our psychopathic organiser, I warmed to my subject. When I had finished there was a scattering of applause—not too enthusiastic, but still applause, and welcome.

Pleased and flattered, I thanked them, and then introduced Edith to the class (for so I thought of them by now). She had assumed a slightly more cheerful appearance, although a close observer would have seen a scowl beneath the smile.

Tersely, and perhaps a shade too quietly, she indicated what she was going to demonstrate.

A small, bald, shabby man pushed his way from the back of the hall into the front seats. He was trailing a girl behind him. There was certainly no need for him to make such a show of needing to be near the speaker, nor was it really necessary to struggle into the centre seat. Edith frowned at him.

“Couldn’t hear you, miss,” he said, with an obliging smile. “Don’t want to miss a word of what you say.”

Edith ignored this and went on as before. She had just got her pressure cooker ready when he got to his feet.

“Pardon, miss, but could you do that again, please, miss? I could see, but my little girl here couldn’t She’s a bit on the short side. Go on up, dear,” he said to his daughter. “Have a good close look. I want her to learn all she can,” he said appealingly to Edith.

With great restraint, and a rapidly rising colour, Edith repeated her procedure. By this time most of the audience were following the child’s example, and pressing near Edith for a closer look. She was surrounded by a chattering, elbowing crowd, amongst which the little man was acting as enthusiastic usher.

“Here’s a place, ma’am,” I heard him say. “Just by my little girl. Move aside, dear, to let the lady in. Don’t worry about me, miss,” he went on, as Edith glared at him. “I shall stay at the back, and see fine.”

Edith continued her demonstration. She was very quiet, almost absent in her manner, but she showed a slight tendency to bang about the dishes, and to stare fiercely at the mild, bald man. I had never seen him before, but a close look at his daughter convinced me that I knew her face. She probably attended Holly Road School. I hoped she was enjoying herself, but if so, her sullen expression belied it. On her father’s face was a maddening expression of sympathetic interest. Edith was allowing herself to be irritated by it. I wondered if he was baiting her deliberately.

“Very interesting, miss, very interesting. I can see you would never waste anything. Are you taking it all in, Betty?”

Betty stared in front of her.

“Well, are you, Betty?” asked Edith sharply.

Betty shook her head, like a cross little animal.

“Speak up,” commanded her loving father.

“Yes,” she muttered, looking at the floor.

“Poor little girl!” said the woman from the cinema, who was wedged next to her, and breathing peppermint down Edith’s neck. “Fancy bringing her here. Come along, Ada; we must be going.”

“They don’t close for another couple of hours,” said the little man, who could smell the peppermint too. He received an outraged, matronly stare as the couple moved past him. Their departure broke Edith’s slight control of her audience, which began to disintegrate rapidly. Her temper was going as well.

“If you could all go back to your seats, I could continue.”

“Oh, is there some more?” asked the little man in surprise. He had been putting on his raincoat.

“I just ask you to leave,” replied Edith coldly. “Or to remain quiet. Your continual and illiterate interruptions have been a great nuisance.”

He got to his feet, buttoning his coat with a hurt expression.

“I don’t think a young lady like you ought to say such things to someone who hasn’t had the benefit of an education like you got.” He was dignified. “Joe Buck is my name, and I don’t care for your remarks. Come along, Betty.”

“All school teacher is tyrants under the skin,” he said audibly as he went out. “Whether they are young and thin, or old and fat.”

I expected the floor to open up and swallow him, or at the very least fire and thunder to dart from Miss Cockrill’s mouth, for his glance at her had been pointed, but nothing shook her faint look of amusement.

Edith finished her demonstration to a handful of people. Fortunately for us, the Cornish Brother had left within a few minutes of our commencement. He did not reappear.

“I don’t think you ought to have said what you did,” I remarked. “He was only trying to help. You hurt his feelings.”

“Little nuisance!”

Her words might have been meant for me or Joe Buck or even poor old Betty. I sighed as I helped with the clearing away. Edith never suffered fools gladly.

XI

AFTER the fiasco of our first public performance, Edith and I were a little cold with each other. I felt that she had behaved badly, whereas she felt, I imagine, that I had been unsympathetic and censorious. No more was said about it by Miss Cockrill, although she had gone out of her way to say good-morning to me very kindly on the next day. The ‘Waste Not—Want Not’ campaign itself raged unabated in the Press and on the hoardings, but I think the public demonstrations had been written off as a failure, even by their organiser, the Cornish Brother. I am glad to think that Edith and I performed that one small service for society. Life with us sank back to what now passed as normal.

When I came back to the house late on a Wednesday afternoon, and saw Leonora wandering about looking like a ghost (a very well-tumed-out ghost, though), I knew that another crisis was upon us. With eyes lowered, I tried to slide past unobserved, but she was too quick for me.

“Well, what is it?”

“Oh, if you are going to be cross…Really, I am in terrific trouble.”

No great despair overtook me, I must confess, since terrible trouble to Leonora was certainly some personal alarm. Even two murders had not altogether convinced her that any misfortunes were worse than her own. It was likely, however, that her difficulties were bound up with the murders, and I wanted no part in them.

“The police have been in and out of the shop the whole week, completely disorganising everything,” grumbled Leonora. “It’s the time for my fashion show, my very first, and I have models down from London, a photographer from Vogue (Spicy introduced him), new scents, and everything. It was going to be a big step forward for me…”

She was almost in tears.

“And now, as if the police were not enough, this has to happen. It’s all their fault.”

“What is?”

“My secretary has left.”

“I didn’t know you had one.”

“She isn’t all the time. She works in the shop, too, but she’s my secretary when I need one.”

“I see.”

“But just when I need her most, she isn’t there. Her mother won’t let her come.”

“Her mother! How old is she?”

“About seventeen. Well, perhaps not quite. She’s almost sixteen, I believe.”

“Rob another nursery for a new secretary.” And I continued my way up the stairs.

“Please, will you help me? You do have a holiday on Saturday.”

I would have answered this with the words which were rising fluently to my tongue, had not Edith come through the door at that moment. She certainly had more colour about her these days, or was it just the walk through the sharp air? But she was still thin and nervous. Leonora turned to her eagerly, while I waited, with inward pleasure to hear Edith’s sharp refusal.

“But I would love to help,” she said, a ring of excitement in her voice. “All those clothes! I was thinking I need some new ones, and it would give me ideas.”

“Expensive ones.”

Edith seemed to notice me for the first time.

“That doesn’t matter. Perhaps an expensive dress would be a good thing.”

“It would be,” answered Leonora, the devil’s disciple. “You must let me help you.”

She smiled at Edith and gave me a triumphant look.

“I daresay I could manage a few hours, after all, Leonora.”

“How kind you are! Of course, the pay won’t be much.”

“No, I never supposed it would be.”

“It’s the prestige…and the pleasure.”

“Exactly.”

The person who was going to be really cross was Bella. Just the job she would have enjoyed, and she had missed it. As I made the tea in the little kitchen, I told her. She opened her eyes wide.

“But I shall come. Yes, of course I shall. If two people are a help, then three will be more.”

“It doesn’t follow.”

“Certainly it does; don’t be unreasonable. I don’t know why you didn’t suggest me at once. It was selfish of you.”

“We are meant to be working,” said Edith gently. “It may be that we shall see nothing of the clothes.”

“I shall.”

It would have been a judgement on Leonora to have let Bella go alone; for concentration on their own interests they were about equal, and neither would have got much help out of the other. I stirred my tea, and decided comfortably that I would steer a course between the two. I would help Leonora, but I would also enjoy myself. I hoped Edith would do the same. She was drinking her tea quickly, and she hurried off to decide what she would wear on the great day. Bella raised her eyebrows.

“The leopard is changing its spots. I wonder why?”

I finished my tea. Bella was no fool, and it was unlikely, by now, that she had not guessed the reason for Edith’s changed moods and enthusiasms. Certainly no one was in a better position to do so than she. I found the diagnosis as easy to make as a case of measles: the symptoms were plain, revealing themselves in the locus classicus. Jem would have a lot to answer for one day. But if Bella chose to appear blind it was her own affair.

There was a restraint between her and Edith when we set off on Saturday morning. I thought that if I had not been there, they would not have spoken. It was a nice bright morning with the remains of a hard frost melting in the sun. I was glad of my thick tweed coat, and envious of Bella’s fur-type garment, which had been a present from her aunt. Edith solemnly wore her best black coat, and looked cold in it. Bella’s eyes flickered over her, and I could see the judgement, “dowdy”, forming unkindly in them. Edith looked at her, but spoke to me. Bella answered in the same fashion.

“I shall buy some clothes this morning, I think.”

“I suppose you realise that a November fashion show will be displaying early summer clothes?”

“That won’t matter. I don’t need them for now. I can manage very well with what I have for the winter. It is exactly the spring and summer I am planning for.”

“You will have time to save up for them, if that is what you mean.”

“It wasn’t, but never mind.”

The long room, which Leonora was using, was crowded. Looking it over, I considered that she had done the thing on the grand scale. Gilt chairs with thin legs stood about in carefully casual groups around small tables; the large mirrors on the walls reflected great bowls of spring flowers; girls from the shop (I recognised several), wearing well fitting black dresses, were moving customers to their seats and offering them weak tea and wafer biscuits. Over all hung the thick, exciting smell of musk and sandalwood, sprayed, no doubt, by Leonora’s lavish and expensive hand. I sniffed happily, appraising the illusion with pleasure, and wondering how she would justify the expense to her managing director. At this point the heroine herself rushed round a pillar and took my arm.

“Thank heaven you have come at last (all three, I see). It’s late, and there’s absolute hell going on at the back in the dressing-room.”

“Oh no!”

“Twelve models down from London, talking and complaining all the time, smoking non-stop, and asking for iced water. Devils!”

We followed Leonora meekly, as she hurled instructions at us—Do this, don’t do that, keep this list, and fill in that one—but all the time we never took our eyes from the fascinating room. It was so full that people were standing at the back. I recognised the cross face of Miss Sarson.

“You have got a lot of people,” I said admiringly to Leonora.

“Yes, the harpies. Don’t imagine they have all come to buy.”

I knew then what she meant. This was the Murder Shop, in Murder Row. Here was Leonora to be looked at and speculated upon. Here anything might happen.

“And what are you and Bella wearing?” she went on, looking at my tweed coat and skirt, and Bella’s plaid dress. “Didn’t I say black? Edith remembered.”

“She didn’t say,” I murmured humbly.

“I suppose it won’t matter, if you keep in the background.”

I didn’t distress myself, for I was used to appearing in the wrong clothes. With my extremely limited wardrobe it was inevitable some of the time, but Bella would be distressed. I made up my mind to have a word with Edith about her lapse of memory.

By now we were in the dressing-room at the back. Here the glamour faded sharply into business-like gloom. The room was small, and each of the twelve girls rather larger than life, although splendidly proportioned, so that there was congestion, which was harassing to them and to Leonora. She was in the weaker position, and had to receive their grumbles with cheerfulness and charm. Her secretary, had she been there (and it seemed to me that I did see a little brown mouse of a child creeping about behind Leonora), would have had a hard day’s work. Leonora found many tasks to keep us busy. We fetched water, we picked up pins, we opened curtains, and we moved chairs. In between, however, when Leonora did not engage us, we watched the clothes. They were even better than we had expected. Starting with light, soft tweeds fashioned into suits of simple elegance, and ending with stiff silks and floating chiffons, it was a summer night’s dream wardrobe.

“It isn’t real though,” complained Bella. “No one could do it. And just think how most of the audience would look.”

“A good many of the models would suit them if altered just a little. Dropping the waistline or changing the position of a tuck would make all the difference. And of course that is just what a good dressmaker would do.”

“I suppose so. I’m just being green with envy.”

Edith was looking at everything with a faint smile. “Which do you think the best so far?” she asked me.

“So difficult to decide. An evening gown would be bliss, but with only a little money to spend a coat and skirt would be a good buy. I think I would choose the black-and-white tweed, because it was so lovely, and because you could wear it in town and country, summer and winter. Well, you saw it for yourself.”

“Yes, I thought of the black and white,” she said hesitantly.

I regarded her with interest. Was she thinking of buying this expensive suit?

“Or one just like it,” she said, as if reading my doubts.

“It will be mass-produced, of course,” I answered. “But perhaps it won’t be so nice.”

We were now working up to the climax of the show, which, like all such functions, was to end with a bride and a grand white gown. In the dressing-room I helped Leonora fit the irritable model with her dress and veil. The dress was white chiffon, with a snowdrift of a skirt piled upon another of heavy satin; the veil was short and white and ingenue. The model, on the other hand, was not; she was over six feet, almost certainly a Eurasian, and far, far from ingenuous. But she looked lovely. We watched her glide gently through the curtains, pause, then descend the steps. Who would guess the wicked words those innocently parted lips had so lately been uttering. We sighed with relief.

“You’d have to look like her to get a wedding gown like that one,” said Bella, upon whom her first fashion show seemed to be having a souring effect.

“It would go with the sort of wedding where the groom paid for the gown—after the wedding, of course.”

“You are coarse,” cried Edith. “I thought it was lovely, lovely.”

Bella shrugged.

“Unwearable.”

“For you, perhaps.”

“The occasion’s the thing.”

Edith flushed, and Bella at once repented.

“Oh, Edith, I am sorry I said that.”

“No, you shouldn’t have said it. But never mind.”

She walked off, leaving us awkwardly staring at each other. It was a relief when Leonora rushed upon us.

“Thank you so much for all your help,” she said, pushing a hand through her hair, but without disordering it. “What would I have done without you?…By the way,” she continued taking me aside, and lowering her voice, “Edith’s ordered all sorts of things. Can she afford them?”

“She will pay for them, if that is what you mean.”

“Not altogether. Goodness, I must tear; look at those men.”

The room was already being cleared. We picked up our coats. At the door we paused and looked back.

“How quickly they are dismantling everything! It looked so glossy, and now already, it looks shabby,” cried Bella. “The chairs are going!”

“Hired, I suppose.”

“And the girls are taking off their dresses and changing into old black ones.”

“Borrowed plumes, you see.”

Only the flowers were left to charm our dismayed eyes. I bent down to smell them.

“Artificial,” I said sadly.

XII

WE were cross with each other after the dress show. My conscience told me that I had no right to have spent so much time on it when I had more than enough other business, official and unofficial, to keep me occupied. I had almost given up my ’unofficial’ work since the meeting with the Sergeant outside the Public Baths. His words had sunk in, and I resolved to stop interfering. Bella said she noticed no change in me.

“I can tell that you have given up detecting and returned to the bosom of your friends,” she said sarcastically. “You even listen to what people are saying.”

‘Do I?” I answered absently.

“Yes, you do,” she replied, giving me a smart kick on the ankle. “Anyway, you do now. What did I tell you just now?”

“You offered me another cup of tea,” I returned promptly.

“Before that?”

“Was it about Jem?” I inquired, moving my ankle away as a precaution.

Bella raised her eyes to the ceiling.

“I asked you if you knew that David and Sophy had had the most tremendous row.”

“How do you know?”

Bella blushed.

“I heard them—well, I nearly heard them. Voices do carry here, you know.”

In fact she had not heard much more than the sound of loud voices, but we could fill in the rest with ease. We knew what the row must have been about, and we looked at each other with knowing eyes.

“Leonora,” said Bella. “She is wicked; but can one blame her?”

“Aunt Amy would have,” I said thoughtfully.

Bella looked horrified. She understood my implication.

“That’s a poor motive for murder, isn’t it? I don’t see Leonora risking her neck for it.”

“I’m afraid I can see her doing almost anything, much as I like her. She’s very selfish. And didn’t you think she showed herself as very ruthless at that dress show?”

“Anyone would have wanted to kill those girls. What surprises me is that she didn’t.”

I passed over this.

“The only thing is that I can’t connect Leonora with the murder of Philip Sidney. I see no possible reason for her to kill him, short of madness. Nothing will convince me Leonora is mad; on the contrary, she is only too shrewd and calculating.”

“The answer is, I suppose, that we don’t know why Philip Sidney was killed. The police may know, but we don’t. I daresay there may have been a good, sound, practical reason why he had to die.”

“Yes, but don’t you see, Bella, if our dear Leonora killed Miss Amy, then her motive can only have been that the old lady in some way came between her and David. Now, Philip Sidney can’t possibly have done that, and he was killed first.”

“Are you convinced that the two deaths are connected?”

I was silent. I was absolutely certain that the two deaths were part of a pattern. I didn’t believe in coincidence, and I did believe in my own eyes. I had seen those blue and white beads on Philip’s book-case; and I had seen some more in Aunt Amy’s handbag. The beads might mean anything or nothing, but to me they were straws in the wind. Besides, I had noticed that the police were acting on the same assumption. There had been a renewal of quick, furtive activity in the streets and side roads, which told me that the search for where Philip Sidney had been killed was on again. But I thought that they were starting at the wrong end. Instead of this mass hunt they would have done better, I thought, to have’ concentrated on the boy. If they could uncover what had been in his mind, then they would soon uncover where he had played. What reasons had led the boy to dig in his mysterious spot? Not chance, not accident had persuaded such a sensible, careful little boy to light upon one spot; he had had sound logical reasons for what he chose, or I had misread his whole character. I pondered the enigma, while Bella asked her question again.

“Are you sure the two are connected?”

I said I was sure.

“Then, Victoria, if Aunt Amy stood in Leonora’s way, may not the boy have done also? You are always talking about this game of his. Could he not have played where he could see things he should not have seen?”

She was right. He could have been killed for what he knew. I thought also that such a situation provided the answer to the problem of the money which had worried me. Extra money had been coming into his hands from somewhere, and why not from a nervous Leonora. Bribery—followed by murder. It was an unpleasing thought. Was Leonora capable of such vicious behaviour? I sighed.

“It all comes back to the beginning again. One must find where he dug.”

“Find it, then,” said Bella, with simple faith.

I looked out of the window. The long Sunday was darkening into a misty dusk. Bella’s room was overheated and untidy, but very comfortable. I went back to the chair by the bookcase. Use your mind, I told myself sternly.

On the bottom shelf of Bella’s bookcase was a row of guide-books and maps.

“Have you got the Ordnance Survey map for this district?” I asked. “The big scale one?”

“Here you are. I bought it when we were house-hunting.”

I looked at her with admiration.

“Yes, you would do it that way. The arm-chair hunter!”

I spread the map full length on her carpet, and went over it slowly and carefully. Presently I sat back on my heels. Yes, it certainly gave me ideas. I ringed three places in pencil. One, two, three. I felt better already. I hummed to myself. Bella was interested.

“Getting on well?” she asked.

“Feel like a walk?” I answered, rising to my feet.

“Not really. But I can see that I’m going to take one.”

We put on thick tweed coats. Into my pocket I put a torch, while Bella stared, fascinated. When I added my thick walking-stick, I thought she paled.

“Just to poke with,” I assured her.

“What are we looking for? Graves?”

“More or less.”

“I’d enjoy this more if you could just tell me where we were going and why.”

“Guess as we go along,” I answered, my spirits rising with my steps. I had my little guide to the district in one hand, and the map in my other. We can both read maps, and if Bella had studied the map, then she ought to know as much as I did.

“We are being tourists,” I announced.

“In November? We must look mad.”

After a few minutes’ brisk walk we were very near the little open park and close to the river. I halted us in front of a large house.

“I wish we had brought a camera. We ought to photograph this house. It’s called a Palladian house, designed by Vanbrugh.”

“I think you must be wrong there,” said Bella doubtfully. “Not both, surely?”

I looked at my book again.

“Yes, I am. We passed the house designed by Vanbrugh on the way. This is the Palladian gem.”

“Well, if you say so. Do we go in?”

“No, we go on. Into the park.”’

Within a few minutes we had reached my first real objective. In silence we gazed at three humpy hills.

“What do you call these?” inquired Bella.

“The map says they are Iron Age fortifications.”

“And I say they have been untouched since Bessemer invented steel.”

I agreed with her. We wheeled round to plough across acres of muddy parkland to the next site marked on my map. From behind palings a little group of deer regarded us with pale dislike. We, too, were hostile, especially Bella, who had fallen over twice.

“Are you sure you haven’t lost us?”

“No. No, we are about right. Of course it is always difficult to locate these places accurately, but we must be on the spot.”

I handed the map to her. She studied it angrily.

“I see, we are on a battle-ground. What battle?”

“The guide-book thinks it must be Anglo-Saxon.”

“Makes me feel very Norman,” said Bella, prodding sourly with the walking-stick at the rough turf. She was resenting the loss of her new mesh nylons. “However, some person has been digging here.”

She pointed. On our knees we examined the little patch of disturbed earth. But it was very difficult to make much of it.

“Might be a dog,” we said cautiously to each other.

Standing there in the open air, with the light fading, as mist, crawled up from the river, I despaired of ever finding anything. I was at a dead end.

We jogged back through the park.

“The last place I marked is hopeless,” I said, “because it’s on the main street. I’m afraid we shall be wasting our time.”

Bella looked at the ring I had drawn on the map. Then she handed it back to me.

“Sometimes I think you are very stupid, Victoria. That would be just about in one of the three bombed houses. Why didn’t we go there first?”

Once again we walked pass the Post Office to the row of bombed and burnt shops. They were dusty, baked, and old. Imagination turned them into unpleasant caves. Above one window ran faint lettering. “Dolls’ Hospital and Toyshop,” it said. It was nobody’s shop, nobody claimed it, and nobody would rescue it. We peered through the battered shutters into the sinister ruin behind. Everything lay as it had fallen, as it had burnt, all those years ago.

“Nasty, isn’t it?” said Bella, with a slight unsteadiness in her voice. “Funny sort of toyshop it must have been even in its prime. Can’t quite imagine the toddlers enjoying going in there, can you?”

I shook my head. A submerged memory floated to the surface of my mind, dragging another with it. I knew I should never dare venture inside.

It was very near to the place where Leonora worked.

“Enjoying the view?”

We were greeted by Sophy. No longer trim, she looked dusty, haggard, and tired. She reminded me of things I wished to forget, and the sight of her disorders made me uneasy. I wondered how unbalanced she was. I wondered if this was the way a murderer looked? Had it been she, gaily decorated with flower perfume, who had attacked me and killed the others?

“You girls look very healthy and outdoor.”

“We have been for a walk…must get some exercise, you know.”

“And you ended up here admiring the architecture?”

“Well, it must have been nice once.”

But Sophy was not looking at me. I doubted if she had even heard me.

“This place has always fascinated me. And yet I don’t like it. It is the oldest house here, and it must have been so beautiful once when it was lived in, as it was meant to be, by dignified, decent people. But it went down in the world. I wonder how? or when? Until it became the nastiest shop here. Once it was an apothecary’s shop, and put to evil ends, then it was a toyshop…I don’t wonder it is not used.”

“Why is it so disagreeable?”

“The owner of it was killed, when it burned. There is that, to begin with.”

“And what is there to continue?”

She ignored me, and went back to the house.

“Yet, in its day it was a splendid house. A Prime Minister lived here when it was new. Even now there is a handsome fireplace left on the ground floor.”

“But should you have gone in? It looks very dangerous.”

“Yes, it is dangerous. It is very dangerous to go there. Still, I went.”

She came with us as we turned and walked back to the house. I regarded her cautiously, feeding my suspicions. No word was said between the three of us as we walked. The house itself was quiet, except for Spicy’s sad music. The smell of Leonora’s perfume hung about the hall. I moved irritably towards the stairs; the scents and odours of this house were becoming oppressive to me.

“I hate that smell,” said Sophy suddenly. “It is her smell. I think I hate her, too. I love David more than anything else in the world. I’m younger, prettier, cleverer than she. She quarrels with him, scratches him, despises him, but she never leaves him alone. I wish it was she that was dead, and not Aunt Amy. Perhaps she will be soon.”

I walked on up the stairs, pretending to myself that I had heard nothing, but she ran after me, gripping my arm.

“You think she is splendid, don’t you? But I can tell you that her background is just a little bit shabbier than you know…Why wasn’t she killed, why?

“But she wasn’t killed. And do you know why? Because she did it. You know she did. She had good reason. Miss Amy would have stopped her having David. She knew how to do it.”

“She loved Leonora,” I said sadly.

“She would have stopped them. So Leonora killed her. In that dark, damp place.”

She ran up the stairs, sobbing hysterically. Bella put her arm round me and helped me to my room, where kindly, and for once without talk, she settled me on the bed.

“Feel better?”

“I don’t feel so sick.”

“You aren’t properly over the bang on the head. God! I feel queasy myself.”

“Did you believe what she said?”

“Not because she said it. You couldn’t call her unprejudiced.”

We were silent. In a little while I pulled myself together, to take up the usual evening tasks. Edith was with us, having been told of all that had happened. Work swallowed up thought until bed-time, when I remembered what Sophy had said.

I ran into the room where Bella and Edith still sat.

“Did Sophy say that it was a dark, damp place where Aunt Amy was killed?”

Bella nodded.

“I did wonder if you had noticed.”

“Then…how did she know?”

“It may not be true.”

But there had been a ring of conviction in Sophy’s voice. Somehow she had known. I leaned back against the wall, breathless and miserable.

“What should we do?”

“Nothing now,” decided Edith. “Except to lock our doors…She might remember what she has let drop.”

I returned to my room, and heard one by one the keys turn in the locks.

But we need not have locked our doors against Sophy.

XIII

WHEN I awoke, our fears seemed groundless and night-inspired. I recalled that I liked Sophy, and that, in a casual way, she had been kind to us, if not to poor Dizzy. No doubt there was an explanation for everything in her behaviour that puzzled me. Indeed, the situation in which she lived was an explanation in itself. For reasons which I did not care to discuss with myself, I felt a deep resentment and anger towards David. As my thoughts cleared, so did my deep fears and anxiety about Leonora increase.

I understood that I must, if possible, confirm my speculations of yesterday. I had resolved to take no practical steps about inspecting the old house. If, logically, I became convinced that this was where the boy had been digging, then I would tell the Sergeant. It was my plain duty. And no doubt he would reply that he knew anyway.

I doubted that the boy could have known enough about the archaeology of the district to have discovered for himself that a Roman villa was sited along the main street. I doubted if he had studied the ordnance survey map. Someone or something had drawn his attention to the villa. I did not think it was his class teacher, a dreary young woman named Alice Spokes. She could claim credit for being the first inspirer of his activities, but I could not believe that she had helped the boy find a site for his excavation. To begin with, she did not know of it herself, as tactful probing brought out. Archaeology was a closed book to her. She had given a series of lessons on the subject, it did not really interest her (what did? I asked myself), and that was that. She had no more to say on the subject. I was not pleased with her for her lack of information when I had devoted my lunch hour to tracking her down. She did not even seem to care that the boy was dead, except if it should prejudice the Education Officer against her. I thought her a fit friend for Ella Stack.

“Do you know Ella Stack?” I asked.

Her face lit up.

“What, old Ella? Rather! We were at college together. I do admire her, and I wish I saw more of her. She is so stimulating. But we haven’t met since we took our two classes to the Public Library.”

“What did you go there for?”

“Oh, to let them see how it worked, and to encourage them to use it. It’s so important to make them read at that age. We went with Miss Cockrill, so while she and the children went round the Exhibition, Ella and I had a good old chat. It was kind of Miss Cockrill to let us.”

“What exhibition?” My question was automatic. By now I always asked why? or when? or who? about anything. As Bella said, it was one of the more tiresome habits I had developed.

“Local history,” answered the amazing Miss Spokes. “My, I must fly. Love to Ella.”

I looked at my watch. I had just fifteen minutes. If I was quick I could bicycle to the Public Library and find out about the Exhibition. It might still be on.

It was. And when I saw the little glass case of pottery fragments dug up from the foundations of No. 52 the High Street when a new sewer was laid in 1901, I knew I was at the end of a long trail.

I knew it also by the painful grip of the Sergeant’s fingers.

“You do follow me around,” I complained peevishly.

“On the contrary,” he pointed out pleasantly.

“Well, I was here first.”

“People keep ringing me up to tell me about a strange young woman who is prowling about and asking odd questions.” He sounded cruelly amused.

I shrugged.

“My idea is that you’d better look in No. 52 High Street.”

He did not answer. I could not tell by his expression whether he had already done so or whether he intended it.

“My idea is that you are making things very difficult for yourself,” he answered. “I’m having great trouble persuading the Inspector you don’t know the reason why, when you are constantly so ready with helpful suggestions.”

“Accurate ones,” I said.

“That’s what worries him.”

I was looking forward to telling Bella all about it. I did not believe the Sergeant’s words about telephone calls, but I needed some soothing advice from her. Unfortunately a quiet evening was out, because she informed me as soon as I got in that she was entertaining Jem.

“I’ve had to ask Edith,” she said with a frown; “as it was her idea in the first place. Will you come, too? It would make it easier.”

“I might even ask Charles,” I said with a feeling that three women and one man (and that one Jem) was not the best arrangement.

“Oh do. I am sure he would love to come…Only will it seem too much like a party? We ought not to be too gay, with Aunt Amy still…well, you know.”

“Don’t worry; the addition of Charles won’t make it either gay, or a party.”

When Jem arrived, Edith came with him. She looked prettier than I had ever seen her.

“Have a drink,” said she to Jem, smiling. With a sinking heart I saw that this shy overture was the equivalent of Bella’s more boisterous pursuit. Jem was dividing his attentions pretty equally between them.

“Charles is expecting you,” he said to me.

I trotted down to Charles, who did, indeed, seem to be awaiting me. He looked solemn, as he shut his door behind him.

“I’m glad you came alone. Have you noticed any activity downstairs? Well, there is quite a lot. Listen…”

He opened his window. From the garden and from the floor below floated the mutter of voices, in question and answer.

“Something has happened, I’m afraid. Either…”

“They have found the murderer, or…” I, too, paused uneasily.

“Or there has been another one.”

“Charles, what a horrible thought.”

“Whom have you seen today?”

“Nearly everyone, I think. Let me see. Bella and Edith, of course, and Jem is in the kitchen now.”

“Yes, I’ve seen him myself.”

“And Mrs Groat, and Mrs Mahady, on the stairs,” I went on.

“Did they all seem normal?”

“Certainly,” I answered, adding to myself, except for love’s excitements.

“That only leaves Spicy, Leonora, David, and Sophy. We shall have to wait and see. If anything has happened, we shall be called upon.”

So we went up to the top floor, without knowing what it was that the police had discovered.

Bella greeted us in excellent spirits.

“Don’t be deadly, love,” she said, when she saw me looking soberly at her. “It’s no good brooding, and I won’t do it. Anyway, the whole dreadful business can have nothing to do with us.”

“We live here, don’t we?”

Bella had done her best to promote cheerfulness by providing three bottles of white wine. But somehow we could not be stirred to enjoyment. Dizzy circulated uneasily round us, refusing to settle, and looking miserable. Jem lay on the floor with his head in Edith’s lap, which was tactless of him. The rest of us were sitting moodily about, hardly talking, when a tap on the door heralded the arrival of Mrs Mahady.

“Laugh, and the world laughs with you, sigh and you sigh alone,” she said firmly, after looking us over.

“Oh, don’t be witty.”

“Others have their troubles as well as you, Jem.” She sounded aggrieved. I saw that she was only waiting to pour them out to us. She had small hope of an audience from our little egocentric group. We were simple people and only wanted to talk about ourselves. We offered her a drink as a substitute for sympathy, and it seemed to work well, for she cheered up. I think that she guessed then what only the police knew. I looked from her to Charles. Taking this for an invitation where none was given, he sat down beside me, placing an arm round my waist.

Jem rolled an eye at him.

“Vicky won’t play, didn’t you know?”

“Drat you, Jem. That’s not funny. You have made Victoria angry.”

I was angrier than the remark deserved, although it was a shame to take it out on Charles. I was beginning to understand that what I wanted above all was to play and play and play. But not with Charles. It was a great nuisance.

“Spicy and Leonora wall be coming, you will find,” murmured Mrs Mahady, proving herself a true prophet.

Leonora looked pale and wan, uncomforted by the way Spicy was tenderly nursing her arm. They produced a shuffling sort of excuse for their arrival, saying that they had been invited by Charles, who looked at them with indignant denial. I saw in their eyes that they knew something of what was going on downstairs.

Charles went over and spoke to Spicy while Bella was pouring the hock. When he came back, he whispered:

“There are police at the door. Spicy says they are with Mrs. Groat.”

By this time we were all conscious of strange movements in the house—except perhaps Bella and Edith, who seemed unaware—but we were reluctant to quicken our fears by naming them.

Edith went to the window and stared out.

“I thought I heard something,” she said uneasily.

I turned to see Dizzy backing distractedly away from Spicy with his poor little tail lashing madly. I stroked his spine while my gaze met Spicy’s bright, sharp eyes.

“Dizzy doesn’t like me, you see. I’m afraid I have taken too many birds away from him.”

I nodded silently. No need to tell him that my pedestrian Dizzy never would, and never could catch a bird…if Spicy wanted to tell a lie, it wasn’t for me to correct him. I drew the cat closer to me and stroked his fur.

Edith and Jem had left the room to make some coffee. Bella, after teetering uncertainly near the door, followed them. Leonora was sitting on the bed next to Spicy. It struck me that in spite of her protestations, she took some pleasure in the competition for her favours. In spite of constantly rebuffing him, she never let Spicy go without some gleam of hope to bring him back. At first I had sympathised with her, since she seemed willing to sacrifice a good deal for David. Now, in a more cynical mood, I felt that all she was willing to sacrifice was Sophy. David was an eligible man, whose future it would be pleasant to share.

I remembered the misery in Aunt Amy’s eyes when she had looked at Leonora, as she had protested to her. Had she protested too much, so that it had been Leonora’s hand which had struck her down? I looked at those small, slim, painted hands. She saw me, and smiled, the old, gentle, Leonora smile. How could I believe ill of her?

“Do you like this nail-colour? I think it very pretty.”

The coffee-makers returned, not in noticeably good spirits now, rather less pleased with each other than when they had left. Conversation was dangerous, for it circled nervously around the rock which could wreck it. Unease, like an iceberg, was two-thirds submerged beneath the surface.

“I’m so glad you make the coffee good and strong.”

“I always do. The only thing worse than weak coffee is cold.”

“How right you are,” said Spicy. “Cold coffee is as horrid as cold feet, or a cold bed.”

Mrs Mahady nodded. “Coffin, coffin, coffee, I mean, ought to be black and strong.”

Bella shivered and turned up the gas-fire. Spicy went to stand with his back towards it.

“You have made your room look nice, Bella,” he said.

“It is nice to live on the top floor. I like to see the tops of trees.”

“And quiet too, without the noise of people on the stairs. Or usually it is quiet, I suppose?”

“Oh yes, it’s as quiet as the…that is, unless we are making a lot of noise, as we are tonight. I can’t hear anything from outside, can you?”

“No one has come to this landing since Leonora and Spicy,” interrupted Mrs Mahady.

“Are you sure? Have you good ears?”

“When I listen.”

“Is that someone at the door?” asked Edith sharply.

But nobody was there. We stayed together, waiting unhappily for the summons from below, waiting to be told what was wrong.

I murmured to Charles:

“Can we be mistaken? Can nothing have happened?”

He frowned and shrugged. Finally the party broke up, as a superficial calm lay upon the house.

Not until morning were we to know the facts. That Sophy was dead, and that the police had discovered her body at the back of the toyshop…where I had sent them.

Next morning I ran down the stairs straight into the arms of the Sergeant. He stood before me looking white and worried. I wondered what he was going to say to me. I knew something bad had happened to make him look like that.

“You can’t go out, Miss, I’m afraid. Up you go again. I’ll see you later.”

Charles and Spicy were on the landing talking together, and beyond them, from the door of Sophy and David’s flat, could be heard the low murmur of voices. A uniformed constable came out, followed by the Inspector, who looked at us silently and suspiciously.

“What’s the matter?” I asked Spicy, seizing his arm. “Why are they there?”

He shook his head.

“You know as much as I do.”

“I’m afraid it’s something bad…again.”

The Inspector walked over to us then, and asked if we would return to our rooms. Bella was sitting in mine, making up her face with my lipstick.

“I don’t know why you are doing that, although I could guess, but in any case it will be wasted, as we are not to leave our rooms.”

I recounted all I knew to her. She listened in silence, then turned back to the mirror and finished her task. I watched her throw scent at herself.

“Don’t you want to know what happened?”

“I know what has happened. It’s as plain as it could be. Either the murderer has been caught, and that I don’t for a minute believe, or someone else has been killed. And I am afraid that there is only one person who has been acting in a way to make it likely.”

“Who?”

“Sophy, of course,” she answered, regarding me sombrely.

Her voice carried conviction. Thus it was that we listened, wordlessly, but already prepared, when at last the Sergeant told us the story.

He told us how Sophy had been found, her head broken, lying across the seat of the run-down old merry-go-round at the back of the bombed toyshop. She hadn’t been wrong, poor thing, to dislike the roundabout which swung on my lampshade. The Sergeant told us very little, but the spareness of the details carried a horrifying conviction. He might almost have been there himself, he knew so well how it had happened. The first savage felling blow with a brick, or a piece of fallen masonry, then the furious rain of mutilating, but pointless strokes—pointless, because Sophy was already dead. Broken and dead, with the dust in her hair, and wet with rain and fog.

“She had some beads, cheap glass ones, clutched in her hand. She must have grabbed them as she died. Have you ever seen any like them? Did she own some?”

The fastidious, spoilt Sophy had never owned such coarse bright baubles in her life, but I had seen something similar before I told the Sergeant, but he made no comment.

“What could he say?” asked Bella later, when, sick and shaken, we sat together, talking to Edith. “Perhaps they mean nothing at all.”

“It is dreadful to me that I thought Sophy herself guilty of killing Aunt Amy. I feel almost as if I had offered her some show of violence.”

Bella put her arm round me in a comforting hug.

“Don’t be silly. Anyone else would have thought as you did. I agreed at the time, so did Edith. And it did seem as if she knew something.”

“I suppose that is why she died,” said Edith. “She was a threat.”

During the whole of this horrible time we sought each other’s company continually, perpetually brewing tea or coffee, anxiously swallowing aspirins and powders for the headaches and indigestions which beset us. It was like a bad illness, in which each morning brought high temperatures and each night sent fevered dreams. It was certainly as much a physical as an emotional experience. But the most dreadful part was yet to come. Only slowly and reluctantly did we admit that the murderer, the double murderer, was one of us. Sophy’s death made wilful blindness impossible. We did not avoid each other, as might have been expected, instead we sought companions to talk and talk over the crimes. We never came to any positive conclusions. We had started with ten suspects. We now had nine. Of these, whatever the police might say about money being the best motive, I, at least, did not suspect Mrs Groat, for all that she had inherited what was left of Miss Amy’s fortune.

“And the house was really hers, my dears,” she said tearfully, when she told us. “But I loved her, I did.”

For the rest of us, it was not so easy to decide. Jem had been under observation, almost continually, since the time of the first murder, by Bella and his fellow-scientists. The rest of us had been here, there, and everywhere. It might be that the police had narrowed things down further, as they knew more exactly when Aunt Amy had been killed, but they had not passed on their information, and we had only guess-work. Guessing, it looked as though both murders had taken place at night, in which case who would have an alibi?

But, as Bella pointed out:

“We do know, within limits anyway, when Aunt Amy’s body was moved here from wherever she was killed. So we can, at least, work out which of us had the opportunity to do it.”

“That’s very true,” said Mrs Mahady, nodding her head.

After a little discussion, and a few questions, we settled that Charles had been in his office (proved by a telephone call, made and admitted to by Jem—how much we wanted to know its subject); Jem surrounded by his gregarious scientists; and Mrs Groat occupied with paying the baker, checking the laundry, and making chutney. Spicy, David, and Mrs Mahady had apparently no witnesses to their behaviour in the late afternoon of a foggy day, although they variously claimed to have been working, resting, and drinking tea. We three were in the strongest position of all. We had been at school, so we could presumably call upon thirty or forty sharp young witnesses. I knew this to be true of myself.

“And I was taking the senior girls through their Christmas cakes. I even stayed late to see them baked,” said Edith wearily.

I sighed.

“It’s too much for me. It’s not only the murders, but how was Aunt Amy moved, and from where, and why? All this is just as puzzling as who did it. Not to mention who attacked me, which still worries me, even if everyone else, including the police, can ignore it.”

“I suppose Aunt Amy may have been moved because she was killed in a place dangerous to the murderer,” said Mrs. Mahady thoughtfully. “Either because the place suggested the murderer’s identity, or because the murderer dare not risk the police turning out the place. Perhaps there was something there he must protect.”

We thought she was right, but we could not fill in the blank spaces. Sophy may have guessed, and the police may have known, but if so they were not saying. I don’t blame them, because, so speedily was information passed between us, to tell one was to tell all. Nor did we know very much about Sophy’s death. The news gradually trickled round that she had been missing all the morning and afternoon of the day on which her body had been discovered, and that she had died as we had guessed, in the small hours of that day.

“If she and Miss Amy were killed in the same place,” said Mrs Mahady, “Then it seems as if…”

I nodded—the same thought had struck me.

“The reason which forced the murderer to move the first body no longer operates.”

“He may have enjoyed moving it,” I said, remembering the hair cut from Miss Amy’s head.

“I think there is a rational cause for the move. Either the murder site, for some reason, can no longer point to the murderer, or there is no longer need to protect it from police investigations.”

To our pain and distress at this time was added a long series of interviews with Inspector Winter, which were observed, and sometimes interrupted, by a dark, quiet stranger, accounted by us as a mental specialist. He was no more inclined than the Inspector to let us guess what, if anything, he had noticed. He may have noticed nothing, for no action was taken. Or he may, as we pointed out to each other, have noticed too much.

“After all,” commented Spicy, “each one of us here has a screw or two loose.”

It was only too true. Every one of us had a little madness. A well-nourished little neurosis might mask a more profound disturbance. Take Spicy himself, for instance. Were his passions for Leonora and perfume, which sometimes seemed interchangeable, completely normal? David’s attractions and will-o’-the-wisp charm sprang from a deep egotism which was hardly the basis of a stable character. Mrs Mahady, now, was as mad as a hatter, but I couldn’t see her as a murderer. Leonora remained in this, as in other respects, difficult to assess. About Bella and Edith an outsider might have worried about Bella’s fetish of cosmetics and Edith’s tendency, when overworked, to nurse a grievance, as well as to believe that everyone was against her. In my own make-up I could discern elements of all the madness's enjoyed by each of my stable companions: there, but for the grace of God, went I. But at least I knew myself to be neither a murderer nor a scribbler on walls. Unless I had moments of amnesia. I had, it struck me, forgotten one thing.

This memory came to me during one of my interviews with the short-tempered Inspector, and his sinister ally. Absently I expressed it aloud.

“I wonder if I ought to have mentioned the photograph.”

“What photograph?”

“Oh, the one that was sent to us,” I answered, still trance-like.

“Please explain.”

I did so, but not very lucidly, ending up:

“And I never gave it a thought till just now. Nor did Bella.”

“Start thinking about it now, please. Was it anyone you knew? Did it remind you of anyone? Would you know it again?”

I could say yes to the last question, but I was shamefully vague about the other two, although I had a feeling some memory stirred in me. All this I was reluctant to admit in front of the dark man, who was, or so I felt, giving me special attention. Someone ought to remind them that I had got myself banged on the head, and, contrary to what the Inspector clearly imagined, I had not done this to myself. I still had vivid memories of the hands clutching at my waist. Before they acted so superior, I would like them to feel as frightened as I suddenly felt.

When they turned me out of the room, I wandered desolately down to the hall. Up till now, although bitter and resentful about the blow, I had accepted it as something in the past for me. Now I began to ask myself if other attacks might not follow? Was I not, for some reason, in a specially dangerous position? I would have clung to the Inspector, but for his business-like detachment. Instead I went in search of the Sergeant. He was kind and soothing, and advised me not to worry, but to have a cup of tea.

“A nice cup of tea, and an aspirin,” he advised.

“I’ve already given myself tannin poisoning, and developed aspirin resistance.”

But he ushered me firmly through the door.

“Try some nice fresh air, then.”

A gust of his nice fresh air licked sharply at my face as I went out. I hadn’t the spirit even to go back for my coat. I hurried for the nearest shelter, which was Luigi’s shop, where I opened negotiations for the piece of Staffordshire, which I began to think I would have to buy. If I did so, it would make Luigi’s day, and me the biggest fool this side of the Thames, for I swear it was a fake. While I examined it, removing it firmly closer to the light, Luigi pottered about doing his usual aimless and unnecessary dusting of his shop.

“Terrible business,” he said. “It’s all right. You don’t have to tell me anything…the news is all over the place. I daresay I know more than you do.”

“It wouldn’t be difficult.”

“I never did like that toyshop. It was a nasty gloryhole, even before it was bombed. Beats me why the kids loved it. One of those horrid fascinations, I suppose. And there was the old roundabout he kept at the back…that was a ruin when he bought it or he wouldn’t have had it…old skinflint.”

“Mean and nasty,” agreed a voice. Miss Sarson had crept into the shop unobserved. She looked pale and shaken, so it was to be supposed she, too, knew what had happened. I had to keep reminding myself that it was the story of Sophy’s death that was still new to these people, and that they were ignorant, nor likely to learn, of what seemed to me even more horrible.

“I’ve had the police,” she said with gloomy satisfaction. “The millinery overlooks the bombed houses. Not that any of us had seen anything, but that did not stop them asking. What had I seen? How often was I near the window? Would I have noticed anything out of the way? Lord, the questions. And I never noticed a thing, anyway.”

“Who could, with that high fencing round? Beats me why the whole ruin was not pulled down years ago.”

“The village would be a better place for its going. Nasty atmosphere it makes.”

“Always did do.”

“You are right there. He was a clever chap, I always said, but for sharp, sly selfishness there was no equal…it was enough to make you sick.”

“He was a bad neighbour to me,” said Luigi solemnly. “I never thought I’d live to be pleased to see a man who’d lived by me for thirty years…”

“Longer.”

“Longer—I never thought I’d be glad to see a neighbour blown up; but so I was, when I heard that bomb come. I thought, well, he’s gone at last…there’ll be a judgement for him.”

“You wouldn’t be the only one thinking it.”

“No, indeed.”

They exchanged significant looks.

“And what’s more,” went on Miss Sarson, “he was up to something more before he died. We would have heard of something if it hadn’t been for the bomb…He never wanted for a dishonest penny, or for a friend to help him to it.”

The memory which had once struggled to the surface of my mind only to sink again now stirred again. I recalled the old lady in the other toyshop—the shop where Philip Sidney had bought his spade—and I remembered her words.

“What is there about this shop?” I asked vigorously of Luigi and Miss Sarson. “Tell me.”

But with blank and evasive faces they turned aside my questions.

XIV

WHERE I was weak and faltering, Bella was resolute.

“How silly you were not to ask them more; really I despair of you, Victoria. I would have made them tell me all.”

I doubted it.

“They shut up like clams,” I said.

“What are clams, anyway?” she replied peevishly.

“Anyway, the police will know all about it. Why should I worry?”

But Bella only tapped irritably on the table with a pencil.

“There’s nothing for it but the academic method. Let the police do all the field work—they will, in any case. We shall get our knowledge from books.”

“What do you mean?”

“We won’t ask our little Helper, but we can go through the files of the local newspaper until we discover all. Bound to be there.”

“But we haven’t the faintest idea what to look for, or when it happened. I don’t want to emerge from my researches looking like Rip Van Winkle.”

She was scornful.

“Of course we know where to begin. We know the end came about 1941…we can work back from there. All these hints at some scandal before he died, that’s what you must look for.”

I did not fail to notice her significant change of pronoun.

“We,” I said firmly.

“Of course I’ll be there.”

“I suppose that I could go and see the woman in the first toyshop. I think she knew something, but I don’t know that she’d tell me.”

“I’m sure of it. That’s the trouble with you, Victoria—once you’ve been round asking questions people never want to see you again. No, the newspaper it is.”

“How do we get hold of it?”

Bella smiled.

“We go to the Public Library, of course. You didn’t do anything too frightful when you were there before? Good!…Then you can go for the first part of the evening, and I will come on later. No sense in us both going. Try not to get arrested before I come.”

I could see that to Bella it was still something of a game. She hadn’t spoken to Mrs Sidney, and seen Aunt Amy as I had. I was in dead earnest.

The library was crowded when I arrived in the late afternoon. It was dripping wet outside, and I put my umbrella in the stand with care, anxious to make a good impression. I was taken to see the head assistant, who said he would have to see the Librarian with my request to inspect the files of the local weekly.

“They live in the stack underneath here, you see,” he explained. “Of course we keep them, but they are not easy to get at, and I don’t remember anyone wanting to see them before. May I ask why you want to use them?”

“A little research in local history,” I said.

This satisfied him. I must remember the magic word research.

“You are a student?”

“Well, I teach.”

Once again he was satisfied. I sounded so respectable. Obviously he had never met Sergeant Helper, or his opinion of me would have been different.

Doors were unlocked, and I was helped down a narrow, dusty iron staircase to the basement, where rows and rows of metal bookcases confronted me. Next to The Times were stacked the files of the newspaper I wanted. They were sheathed in heavy, cumbersome black covers; they were very dirty. I looked at them in despair.

The doors closed behind me. I was quite alone. Bella would never find me here, I would never get out, but would stay a secret prisoner for ever. For a moment I contemplated the scene when another applicant for the back files of our Argus, Bella, was led up to the Librarian. What a pity I would not be there to see his face. Even his infinite charity with research might grow a little thin.

I worked steadily but backwards through the files. My first strike came surprisingly soon. Underneath a date early in 1941 I found the headline:

“Toyshop Gutted in Last Week’s Raid.”

A few short sentences described how the owner of the shop, Mr Edward Alexander, had been killed. He had been resident in the district all his life. No other comment.

What I had to look for after this was anyone’s guess. Luigi and Miss Sarson had hinted at a scandal, the old lady of the rival toyshop had implied nameless things. Whether they had anything to go on, I couldn’t say. Nor could I be sure that I should find any evidence of what lay behind their insinuations in the Argus. Nothing of it may ever have been reported. What I decided to look for was traces of any crimes, involving large sums of money, which had taken place in the few months before Alexander died.

Very soon before his death there had been a big forgery case. I copied down all the details, but I was not hopeful. There seemed no mystery about it, and the culprit had been caught. I suppose he could have been innocent and old Alexander the guilty one, but I didn’t believe so. The condemned man sounded thoroughly suitable for his ultimate destination.

At about the same time there had taken place a big bank embezzlement, and although in this case the criminal had escaped, yet I didn’t believe it had anything to do with my man; the bank manager, who was missing, looked like the obvious man.

The next big case was a baby-snatching, and of this I inwardly declared Mr Alexander not guilty. All I knew about him implied that he was a man who went for straight profits. Besides, I had no reason to believe him guilty of murder (the baby had died)…not then.

In the edition for November 1940 I found more interesting matter. The dark winter night and the blackout had been made use of for a raid on the Post Office. Large bundles of £1 notes had been skilfully removed. A careful crime, an insolent one, and a profitable one. It was just what I was looking for. I don’t mind adding that what attracted me to it as much as anything were the photographs of two old friends. I saw with interest the thin, bony, younger-looking face of Sergeant Helper, then tackling his first big case, and unsuccessfully, too, for the criminal had never been caught. But what I enjoyed even more was a baleful portrait of Miss Cockrill, who had been walking down the street at the time of the robbery and whom the Sergeant hoped would have useful information. I sat down to make a précis of what had happened. Stated in bald fact it was a simple crime. The manager had been attacked in his own room, at a time when it was safe to reckon he would be alone, and the money removed from the big safe. There was a strong implication in the report that the deed was the work of a local man, and that the police could put a name to him. What they wanted was proof, and apparently they went on wanting it, for no later editions of the paper recorded an arrest. After a bit the paper carried no more reports. Poor old Sergeant Helper had had his first failure.

My first satisfaction soon faded. I might, or I might not, have discovered what Luigi and Miss Sarson had been hinting at; what they were hinting at may, or may not, have been true, but how much nearer discovering the murderer of Philip Sidney and Miss Amy was I for all my cleverness?

Once again it struck me as odd that Mr Alexander had got no obituary. He seemed to have been a local figure of some importance, he had lived in his house all his life, and yet no one appeared to have wept for this Alexander. Perhaps they were ashamed of him? Now I thought about it, I saw that Luigi and Miss Sarson seemed to have more against him than a putative crime.

I went back to the issue of the Argus which recorded his death,, and went right throught it, even the advertisements. I found nothing until I read the gossip column ‘Argus Eyes’, it was called which told me that Edward Alexander had been a “leading figure in the Alexander trial of the late nineteen twenties”. I gathered he had been found not guilty, which explained all the reticence.

I nearly fell over in my anxiety to get out the earlier volumes. I went smartly through 1929,1928, finding nothing until I got back to the year 1927.

It had been a cause célèbre indeed. I stared at a row of photographs I recognised. Mrs Alexander had been poisoned. Her sister and her husband had stood trial for her murder, and both had been acquitted. It was clear that public feeling had agreed about the sister, and condemned the man. There had been boos and hisses as he left court.

There was Mrs Alexander, in a blurred photograph, carrying an unidentifiable infant in her arms. There was Mr Alexander, a prim, thin-lipped young man. I knew his face; I had seen his photograph before…a copy of it had been sent to us. It was my first real indication that I was on the track of something.

But the most painful act of recognition was yet to come. A third picture was on the page—the portrait of a youngish woman with large, anxious eyes and a plump face. However changed, I recognised Miss Amy.

So this had been the secret of Aunt Amy’s life, this had lain behind her moods and depressions, and caused her odd grasping at friendships. I did not believe that she had helped to murder her sister for the sake of her thin-lipped brother-in law, or for the small fortune which her sister had left her.

After all this, I was not surprised to see over the page a photograph of the young Constable Helper, who gave evidence at the trial.

I went through the whole sordid story. I made a precis of the complete trial from the first witness, and the medical evidence, down to the speech for the defence, I even included the shouts from the body of the court, and the scene when a young woman ’of educated appearance’ had to be helped from the room.

From this terrible scene Mr Alexander had returned to his home, and he stayed there until he died. Not a nice character.

• • •

I sat a long time in the basement of the Library. I understood the importance of what I had read, but I did not know how to interpret it. Some guesses I could make. I guessed that Edward Alexander had hidden the money he had so successfully stolen, and that its hiding-place, where it had lain since he died, had become known to at least one person—the murderer.

I drew a circle on the paper before me. Now I understood what the little beads meant. Philip Sidney had brought some home, Miss Amy had kept some more in her handbag, and Sophy had clutched some in her hand. The beads and the money lay in the same place. Or had done, because I thought the murderer had it now.

I saw the significance now, as Mrs Mahady had done, of the fact that Sophy had been allowed to rest where she was killed, when the other two had been so carefully moved. The money was gone.

I wondered how the murderer had known of the money. The child and Sophy had discovered by chance in one case, and curious, prying observation in the other; to the boy the money had been fairy gold, a treasure trove to be enjoyed, to Sophy it had been a discovery to hold over someone’s head (I dared not name Leonora in this context even to myself), whereas to Aunt Amy the knowledge had been, what? The fruit, I supposed, of what she had known of her brother-in-law; the rumours which must have gone round the village would have been no secret to Miss Amy. She had heard them and believed them. Perhaps Alexander had boasted to her, perhaps she knew him well enough to believe them anyway, and to be able to guess where he would hide his gains.

I drew another circle on my paper. Miss Amy had known of the money, and had associated it with the murder of the boy as early as Leonora’s party. When the beads fell from her bag to the floor, the murderer had seen them.

So I was back after all to the circle of people around Aunt Amy, back to Leonora. No longer did jealous possession seem her only motive. She was so close to Aunt Amy, she could have learnt from the old lady herself of the money. Or from her high workroom window overlooking the toyshop she could have seen the boy himself digging.

So I spun my speculations, so close to the truth, and yet so far away.

I came out of the Library into the darkened streets. It was much later than I had grasped.

I looked up to meet the basilisk gaze of Miss Cockrill.

“Working late?” she asked pleasantly.

I nodded. She bowed a good-bye, setting the long, ridiculously long, yellow ears of corn on her brown felt hat a-bobbing.

XV

BELLA was asleep when I got home. I saw that she had never meant to come down to the Library, that she was already bored with the game. Sulkily I put myself to bed also. I pretended I was angry with her, and that as a punishment I would tell her nothing. But in fact I was relieved. I knew that I didn’t want to talk either about what I now knew of Miss Amy, or about what I suspected of Leonora. I kept very quiet about the whole thing. Nor did Bella ask me much, and she was easily put off with the remark that I had failed to find anything which would interest her. She was in low spirits herself.

“Spicy and Charles will be dropping in later this evening, I expect,” she said morosely.

“And Jem?”

“I doubt it.”

She looked gloomy. I could see that doubt had attacked and destroyed the confidence of her first enthusiasm for Jem. He had not called upon her yesterday evening, which I think she had expected, and, left alone to her thoughts, she had evidently let them take depressing paths.

Nevertheless, I would not have been surprised to see the brazen youth appear. Since all the disasters had come upon her household Mrs Groat’s cooking, usually excellent, had fallen away sharply. Those she fed were showing a wistful hunger when we met them, and were apt to appear silent but obstinate, around meal-times. I thought we had seen enough of them lately. Charles and Spicy came together, underlining the friendship which now flourished between them. Charles was subdued; Spicy quiet but cheerful. At last he seemed able to live without Leonora, and only once came near to mentioning her, although offered several opportunities. He sat by the fire, gossiping away, looking contented and happy. It would be very easy to grow fond of Spicy.

“You look pale, Victoria,” he said.

“Only lack of exercise. I shall take some.”

“Want me to come with you?”

“Dear Spicy, no.” I regarded him affectionately, as he half, but only half, rose from his seat. “You know you hate walking and loathe the cold. Stay where you are.”

“Well, if you are sure…?” He sank back relieved, into his chimney comer.

I wanted to walk by myself, and I saw the advantage of taking exercise while I could leave Edith and Bella with someone to separate them. True, they were ostensibly on friendly terms, but I was not sure how deep this went. Perhaps one or the other of them was losing interest in Jem but I saw no sign of it. More likely, Bella, who was a realist, had weighed up the situation and decided to make the best of it. I had no very comfortable feeling about the future. Jem was incalculable. Did he care for either? Did they even interest him?

Leaving all my puzzles, I went out into the misty afternoon to walk across the park. It was too cold to walk far, and before the red November sun had sunk, I turned back. Ahead of me, up the short curving drive to ’The Argosy’, walked a desolate figure, hands in pockets, head down. It was David.

For the first time pity mingled with the other emotions he roused in me. After all, he had loved Sophy, and loved her deeply enough to be altered by her death. There were depths in him beyond what I had suspected.

He waited for me outside his door.

“Come in and have a glass of sherry, will you? I’m not very good at making tea, although I prefer it at this hour.”

“I could make some for you.”

David hesitated.

“Please do. It would be very pleasant.”

He searched awkwardly in the cupboard.

“Here is some matte tea; you wouldn’t care for that—it isn’t very nice—but Sophy always would have it. I think there is some China tea.”

I arranged Sophy’s dark-blue cups on the white table, and filled the shining teapot. I don’t much like China tea, but I suppose David did, for he drank the first cup quickly, and asked for more. He had lit the small white lamp on his dark mahogany worktable, but the rest of the room was in shadow except for where light from the fire touched the pale carpet and chairs with pink. The room was orderly and precise, as always, only David himself looked a little tattered and worn.

I studied him thoughtfully. I believed that he was innocent of the deaths of his wife and Aunt Amy; I knew that his was not the mad hand which had scribbled on the walls, or the strong hand, smelling of sweet perfume, which had struck me down on the stairs; these things apart, I held him responsible for much of the tragedy. I blamed him so much more than Leonora.

“You are my first visitor for…for some time,” he said with a half smile, holding out his hand.

Doubtfully, I sat down on the long white sofa, holding my cup of tea in my lap. I stirred it with unnecessary energy so that I need not look at David. He was lying back gazing dreamily into the fire.

“I must leave here sometime,” he said. “As soon as I can.”

“Will that be very soon?”

“How can I tell? It depends, frankly, it depends on the police.”

“Only on the police?”

The words words were out before I could stop them. They dropped, like a dark, hard stone, into the small pool of our intimacy. David knew what I meant. At least he was always honest.

“I don’t think of Leonora now, I can assure you.”

“Of course, I understand that.”

“I hope you do. I know now who is important to me, and who is not.”

I nodded, words taken from me.

“Do you think I cannot tell the difference between your offers of help and Leonora’s?”

“She did offer?”

“Oh, she offered. But what did it amount to, her offer? There is some irony in it. Sophy would be alive now, if it were not for her.”

“I don’t believe Leonora killed your wife. Nor Aunt Amy; she was fond of Aunt Amy.”

“She is fondest of all of herself. I see that now. She could have done it. Someone was in Sophy’s room before she died. Things were moved, a bottle of perfume upset. Sophy knew who it was. You heard her accuse Leonora.”

“She was hysterical.”

“Leonora had driven her hysterical. My poor Sophy. What shall I do without her? Oh, Victoria, what shall I do?”

He dropped his head into my lap. I sat still and stiff for one long moment, then, with a clumsy movement, I placed my cup and saucer on the table. David raised his head quickly.

“You haven’t spilt tea on the carpet?”

“No, there is no tea on the carpet.”

“Sorry, I’m so jumpy these days.”

Now that I was free to move, I went to stand by the red-hearted fire. David was still talking.

“I’ve done no work for days. I can’t settle to anything. How could I? Sophy managed things so that I always had a quiet morning. I need quiet so, Victoria. Leonora does not understand at all. You would understand. Do you know, she asked me to go to her fashion show? Of course I couldn’t go.”

“No, indeed.”

“What would people have said? And then the waste of time. But that’s the thing with Leonora: she’s so terribly selfish and thoughtless.”

He went on:

“And you know, she could have helped me. I need help. Look at me. I look like a tramp. Sophy was so neat fingered. She did everything.”

David leant forward, and a button popped from the sleeve of his jacket. He picked it up as he watched me.

“I’ll lend you some thread, David. I expect you can find a needle. I’ll just go up and get it now.”

So I left him behind, with his button, and his thoughts, together with part of my youth.

On the floor above every light was burning, and there was a great noise of voices. Bella’s after-lunch guests had got themselves invited to tea. The room was hot and bright and full of cigarette smoke; there was nothing tidy, nothing orderly, nothing polished, but all was comforting and reassuring to me. Irritating and tiresome I might often find my friends, but still, I understood them and trusted them. Even Charles and Spicy were embraced by this feeling: impossible to believe harm of either of them. Charles’ greatest fault was to be a bore, while Spicy’s susceptibility must be judged a weakness; but what excellent and even generous faults these now appeared.

Spicy handed me a cup of good strong Indian tea.

“You do look tired,” he said with sympathy. “You overdid it taking such a long walk.”

“I wasn’t walking all the time.”

“Tell you what, come out to dinner with me?”

“Oh Spicy, I would so like it. What about the others?”

“Leave them. Do Charles good. He acts as if you were his property.”

As I sat back to drink my tea. I remembered that I had brought more away from David’s than disillusion. He had reminded me that before Sophy’s death there had been a searcher in her room. I knew that the searcher and the person who had hit me on the head were the same. The. searcher had knocked over a bottle of Sophy’s scent, and my attacker had smelt of purple lilac. I had been hit because I would have turned round to recognise who had been in Sophy’s room. As it was, I had seen nothing, heard only the tread of feet on the stairs, and known only the sweet but deadly perfume. It had not mattered whether I had died or not, provided only I could identify nothing. But Sophy had known too much. She had known enough to die.

XVI

“YOU can borrow my fur coat, if you like,” said Bella, as she lay on my bed watching me get ready. She added gloomily, “I don’t expect to be going out.”

“Cheer up.”

“I wonder you care to go with Spicy, though. You said yourself that he might be a murderer.”

“I don’t believe it any longer. Dear little thing.”

“He is little, I grant you that.”

“It’s a reason for trusting him. No one small did all the things that have happened here.”

Bella shivered.

“Have you noticed that we have hardly seen the police lately? I wonder how they are getting on? I liked it better when they were about. It was more comforting, somehow. Still, we have faced everything now. Nothing worse can happen.”

But this was no comfort, and, as it turned out, not true either.

“And I’m not going to think about it now. This is going to be an evening when I enjoy myself with Spicy. I won’t borrow your fur coat.”

Leonora came in just before I left. She had a large white shawl of cashmere wrapped round her shoulders, and this I would have borrowed, but it was not offered.

“Going out?”

I explained, not without pleasure, that I was dining with Spicy.

She frowned, hugging her shawl closer about her.

“Poor Spicy! I must be nicer to him. He is probably lonely. What a fool I was about David! I quite understood him. I thought there was much more to him than there really is. He’s quite selfish and self-centred.”

“You surprise me. Well, good-bye.”

I tripped down the stairs, keeping close to the wall, and half looking behind me, as I always did now. Spicy was a long time answering my knock; then he came to the door with Mrs Mahady, who gave me a suspicious look, and turned to Spicy.

“Remember what I said. And look after this one here.”

I raised my eyebrows in expectation of Spicy’s comment on this cheering and enigmatic remark. He was going to pass it over, but I dragged him to the point.

“Oh, she thinks she knows more than the police.”

“She knows the murderer?”

“According to her, so do we all. She didn’t explain much.”

“But why is she telling this to you, and not to the police?”

Spicy was silent as he brushed his coat.

“She might have a very good reason for not doing,” he said at last in a reluctant voice.

“And she might not. Someone ought to tell them. I shall”

“How can you tell them what you don’t know? Leave it alone, Victoria; you must, I tell you. No. Stop it. No more questions. This is going to be a good evening.” He pushed me through the door.

It was a long journey to Spicy’s favourite restaurant, so we went economically by ’bus, followed by a walk through the Soho streets. We were greeted by the proprietor, who might have been Luigi’s brother, and was, no doubt, beneath the skin. He had a genuine Italian accent, however, which Luigi had not; but, then, he had also a genuine Italian cook, which Luigi, I saw by comparison, had not either. Spicy was furthering my education by bringing me here; I hoped he might be persuaded to. continue it. He was ordering a lavish meal, when I turned from my survey of the room (none of Luigi’s red check cloths here, but stiff white napery) to look at him again. The size of the meal pleased me, but more doubtfully did I hear the order for wine, which seemed a reckless amount for two people, and unlike my host, who drank little as a rule. We ate a delicious chicken mess, whose ingredients puzzled me. One of the games I play with myself is to detect the elements making up a new dish, but beyond the taste of thyme, garlic, and red wine, this concoction puzzled me. Spicy was shocked at me.

“What a dreadful way to eat! I brought you out to enjoy yourself, not to have a busman’s holiday. Eat up, and stop thinking.”

I had taught myself that through this meal I must not mention Leonora’s name, but I was not forearmed against Spicy reminding us of it. He poured another glass of wine and leaned forward.

“Now, what do you make of Leonora? It would interest me to know.”

I had had enough of Leonora, and I suddenly realised what my judgement of her was. The impulse to express it was too strong for me.

“The thing is, Spicy, that she’s such a bore.”

“A bore?” He was surprised. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Of course not. No one wants to believe that the person they love is a bore: it’s such a reflection on oneself.”

“Do I love Leonora?”

“I thought so.”

“Dear me. Do you suppose she thinks so too?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Ah well,” he said, shifting his ground again. “There’s something to be said for Leonora. She’s a very good hostess, and I’m an ambitious man.”

I agreed, crossly, that Leonora was what he said.

“And then…I’ve never really liked David. So amusing to have something he fancies.”

“You want to be sure he still does before you persevere,” I advised sharply.

“David’s cooling off, is he? Interesting.”

Oh, poor Leonora, what had I done? And just when she was turning to Spicy to have her broken heart mended! But I did not feel very repentant.

Spicy was surprising me. I noticed that the waitress treated him with care and caution. His presence caused a little stir there. It had never occurred to us to treat Spicy with this kind of respect, and I suppose he saw the amazement on my face.

“Oh, I’m really Lord Tom Noddy,” he said, his bright eyes amused.

No one had told me that Spicy was famous in his way, famous and rather fierce. I watched him changing, or so it seemed, before my eyes. Perhaps it was the wine, or perhaps I was for the first time seeing the real Spicy, but he was no longer a quiet, soft-tempered, gentle little thing, and I was no longer sure that he loved Leonora. He might have been pretending all the time. But goodness! he could be charming. Why had it never struck me before that he could charm a bird off a tree? In no time I had forgotten my irritation.

“You are not wearing the scent I gave you,” he said reproachfully.

“No.” And I explained to him how I had come to have something of a prejudice against it. He listened without comment until I had done.

“Yes, I think you are probably right. The person who attacked you had been rummaging in Sophy’s room. It may not have been the murderer. Do you remember anything beyond the smell?”

“No,” I searched my memory. “Just the sound of the footsteps and then…“I shrugged away the next part of my experience.

“Edith and the Sergeant were on their way upstairs, of course. Do you think you ought to tell the police.”

“Or Mrs Mahady, who seems to know more than they do?”

“Or Mrs Mahady,” he agreed seriously. “But no. On consideration, let us keep it to ourselves.”

“Just what you say, Spicy,” said I, little bird, jumping from my tree.

“What a treasury of remembered knowledge you have tucked away,” he said admiringly.” Any more?”

“Nothing, except the photograph,” I answered with a vague feeling that I must bring out everything to show him. Once again he listened quietly to my tale.

“I wonder what the police made of it. How did they act?”

“Annoyed.” I still had a vivid impression of the Inspector’s cross face.

“It was a pity you lost it.”

“You’re telling me.”

“And even more a pity you lost the envelope. The way it was addressed would have told us a lot.”

“The handwriting and so on, you mean?”

“And so on, yes.” And Spicy was thoughtful.

So far, my evening had been a mixture, of which I had enjoyed some, and not the rest. But it was up and down all the time. When I had settled to be frivolous, Spicy would tip us back again into something serious. And so now, when all seemed set for a discussion on murder and its motives, which I was not above enjoying, bang, back we went again to frivolity, accompanied by another bottle of wine.

“I don’t think I will have any more to drink, thank you, Spicy.”

“Of course you will. And so will I.”

There was no more talk of murder, and in a little time (astonishingly so considering the amount of wine left to be drunk) we were on our far from sober way home. Our return was quicker and more expensive than our setting out. We travelled in a taxi. I began to feel even fonder of Spicy, which was perhaps what he intended. We stopped the car at the bottom of the hill, and walked, cheerfully, affectionately but unsteadily towards ’The Argosy’. I was by now quite besotted with Spicy, which again was perhaps what he planned. From the shadows around the gate came a small figure. I recognised the boy with the pram, whose mother washed her laundry but not him. He took an uncertain step towards me, as if doubtful of his reception. Furiously, I glared at him and told him to go away.

“Miss,” he said hoarsely. “Miss, the police…”

“Go away. You can’t be delivering papers now, and you ought to be in bed. I’ll see you in the morning.”

I turned on my heel, and left him there. Never in my life again, I trust, will I do a wickeder thing.

“Who was that?” inquired Spicy.

“A nuisance,” I said, and left it at that.

There was a telephone call for me when I got upstairs. I had a feeling it was from Verena. Then I remembered that other telephone call early in my stay at ’The Argosy’, when the caller had rung off before I got to it. How strange I should have had one at all, when none except my family knew my address. As I listened to her voice, making the usual routine inquiries, demanding all the news, I was thinking of this telephone call.

“Verena, did you call me in October?”

“No. Why should I have done? I had no reason to call you in October.”

“Funny.”

“What are you talking about? My dear, how funny you ill looked at the inquest!”

“Verena, you were not there?” I was shocked.

“Certainly, I was there. Don’t underrate me.”

She laughed.

“Ask little Miss Make-Believe why she looked so pale.”

“I don’t know whom you mean.”

“You don’t? Really, Victoria, now you shock me.” And the provoking creature rang off.

Verena was no sedative, so what with her, Spicy, and the vine, I spent a long sleepless night. But the one thing which should have worried me never came into my mind again.

XVII

NEXT day I had a headache and a fit of amnesia. Some people would have called it a hangover. Whatever I suffered from was unpleasant, and I found that I really could not remember much about my evening with Spicy except that I had talked a lot, and he had listened.

At school it was an unpleasant day, a dark sky and driving rain without, and within a succession of ill-mannered and ill-managed classes. As I hurried down the stone stairs at the end of the morning I saw, through a window, Miss Cockrill accompanying a weeping mother across the playground. Some mothers weep anyway on visiting the headmistress, and even case-hardened parents had been known to cry after a long session with Miss Cockrill, so I did not disturb myself unduly, but since, on the other hand, life at ’The Argosy’ had surfeited me with emotion, I hurried away before any more should engulf me.

After lunch in the Staffroom I wandered back to my own room, followed by Ella Stack.

“Nice things you make here,” she said, looking at some cakes.

“Yes, those were cooked this morning.”

“How do you find the girls? Polite? Easy to manage?”

“Usually Cookery is popular and they want to come to it. They have been little bores today though.”

“Children always know when something is up, and take advantage of it. Children and animals are the same, I’ve noticed.”

“What is wrong?”

She ignored me, and went on.

“My lot have been wretches as well. How do you like them?”

“I don’t have them, do I? They are advanced cookery and go across to Edith Blunt. She likes them well enough, I think.”

“She won’t like them much longer, complaining little beasts. Oh well, I expect they will tell her all about it. Goodbye; fancy you meeting old Alice Spokes; is she still as fat as ever?”

Unrefreshed, I returned to the labours of afternoon school.

“They are making rather a noise,” commented Miss Cockrill wearily on entering my room.

“Washing up gives so many opportunities.”

“I know, my dear; I haven’t had cookery classes going on in my school for twenty years without finding it out. However, that is not what I wanted to say. There is to be a general assembly of all classes before school ends. I will dismiss the children from the hall.”

“Is anything wrong?”

“I hope not. I do hope not. But Jimmy Stone—you probably don’t know him—is missing.”

“I know him.”

“His mother—not a very bright woman, I’m afraid, although clean and hard-working—says he has not been home since Sunday.”

“I see.”

“She really is so far from intelligent that I think we may find it a mare’s nest. But of course, I must speak to the children about it: they always know more than you think, and have certainly observed more.”

“They don’t observe much at school.”

“Because it does not always interest them as much as their own life. About their own society, its customs, and any departure from them you will find children astonishingly sharp and acute observers, even the dullest of them. In fact, the duller they seem at school, the more likely it is that they have their minds on what is going on outside. Which makes it our fault, really.”

She gave me a charming smile, and I knew that I had been punished for letting my class get out of hand.

“However, I expect Jimmy will turn up, but we must do our best to find him. So, in the hall at four, please.”

At the appointed hour we filed into the dark, long, lofty hall, whose floor gave off the odours of oil and disinfectant. Today I was preoccupied in settling my class, who were taking every opportunity to be tiresome. When the whole school was assembled we were so crowded that it was necessary for me to sit in the middle of my little group, jammed in, unable to move. This made it impossible for me to get close to the experienced offenders, who had stationed themselves as far away from me as possible. I glared at them helplessly from a distance.

A sudden hush announced the arrival of Miss Cockrill, accompanied by a neat, blue-suited figure. A crop of sandy red hair crowned his anxious face. Of course, it was the Sergeant. There was no reason why he should not take a day off from our murder case, and no doubt a policeman must do many jobs at once, but it surprised me to see him there. It also brought home to me that, as Miss Cockrill had very well known, there was more to Jimmy’s disappearance than an hysterical mother. I could also see that this assembly was the Sergeant’s idea. Miss Cockrill, an orthodox and careful head-teacher, would not otherwise have allowed it to be a subject for public discussion among the children. Once gathered, however, her treatment of them was masterly.

“Good afternoon, everybody. I expect you have been wondering why you are sitting here now.”

She paused in an unbroken hush; no one ever interrupted Miss Cockrill.

“Yesterday afternoon, which was Sunday, Jimmy Stone went off to Sunday School and did not come back. He has not yet come back. We think Jimmy may have planned a little adventure…not understanding that we should be worried if he did not reappear. If he said anything to anyone of you about it, you should tell us now. Stand up any child who thinks that he, or she, can tell us anything about it.”

For a moment there was quiet, no one moved. Then one child stood up, to be followed by another, and another, until about twenty were on their feet. Either Jimmy had scattered his confidences prodigally, or some vivid imaginations were at work. Anyone could have told the Sergeant that this would happen, but he had to learn the hard way. The first little boy thought that Jimmy might have gone to see his Aunty by the sea. (But he hasn’t got one, murmured Miss Cockrill, to the Sergeant.) The second suggested that Jimmy might have gone to see the boats on the river, as he had talked about them. The Sergeant wrote this down, but Miss Cockrill shrugged. The next informant, a little girl, was incomprehensible. She understood what she wanted to say, but no one else did. Miss Cockrill was gentle with her. And so it went on. But imbedded among them, as their headmistress had known, was some solid information. The last juror stood up, and muttered that Jimmy had talked a lot about the old lady with the big hat, pushing the pram, and had added that “he was going to tell teacher”. He swivelled round to gaze accusingly at me. Memory came flooding back, sweeping away the block’ in my mind. I recalled suddenly that Jimmy had come to see me. I got up, like the others, and cleared my throat nervously.

“Yes, he did come to see me. I’d forgotten.”

Miss Cockrill dismissed the children, while I told the Sergeant all I had to tell, which was miserably little. Told soberly and coldly it was not a good story.

“Although it was so late, you did nothing for the child but send him away?”

“I was cross he should come near the house. I had no idea it was important. I still have no idea.”

“What did he say?”

“I can’t remember. Not clearly.”

“Repeat what you can recall.”

“Nothing…I was…drunk, I suppose.”

I looked despairingly into the Sergeant’s cold, cold eyes, and my head ached more than it had done all day.

• • •

When I got home I remembered something I had once seen, and the memory brought the picture of another happening with it. I telephoned the Sergeant.

“So you had better come over,” I said weakly.

“Don’t worry,” he said grimly, “Don’t worry. I was coming anyway.” His voice sounded heavy and far away.

“And afterwards?” inquired Mrs Mahady, when we met some hours later, and when she was trying to extract my dreadful story from me. “And afterwards, after you had telephoned the Sergeant, what then? Why did you go down into the basement?” She gave me a slight shake.

So many questions, so much to answer. In my chair by the fire, I shivered so that my shaking hand spilt the hot coffee she offered me. Once again it was my turn to be comforted by Bella and Mrs Mahady, my rough, nervous, but sympathetic nurses.

“First of all I waited for the Sergeant in the hall. He was so long, that I had time to think.”

In fact there had been nothing else to do while sitting in the cold, white-painted hall of ’The Argosy’.

“What did you think about?” Mrs Mahady would like to have given me another shake.

“Need you ask? Then I saw Dizzy. He was covered with coal-dust—I could smell it as well as see it—so I knew he had been in the basement.”

“Is there one?” said Bella wonderingly. “I’ve never thought of there being one.”

“All houses like this have one. Here it is large and dry, so Mrs Groat uses if for storage. She lives down there too.”

“You are clever.”

“Not very,” I answered sadly. “But I have known about the cellar ever since we have been here (you never notice anything, Bella), and about the pram for almost as long. Other people have known as well.” I added under my breath.

“What pram?”

I plunged into my story.

“Do you remember the night Spicy and Leonora called to tell us about the party?”

“Of course!” exclaimed Bella.

“That night when Dizzy would not come home I went down into the basement, where Mrs Groat showed me how he had a hiding-place there. He had made himself a bed in a little old pram.”

They began to see what I meant.

“We have all wondered how it could have been that Aunt Amy was brought back here. You know how often we have discussed it.”

Mrs Mahady nodded grimly.

“I saw how useful a pram could have been.”

I closed my eyes only to open them again, as my imagination called up a vivid picture of what I had not seen, but could visualise.

“If Aunt Amy was moved in a pram—and that is what you mean, I suppose—why was she not seen?”

“It was a foggy November day, remember, Bella; even at noon it was dark.”

“Not that dark.”

“Perhaps not, but of course the body was covered up.”

I felt sick as I thought of the manner in which Miss Amy had made her last journey home.

“You remember that Jimmy Stone was pushing home his mother’s laundry, all neatly rolled into a long white bundle? This was one such bundle more.”

“Could it be so?”

“No difficulty about it. And it’s a short distance.”

“A short distance”—my voice was echoing Mrs Groat’s. She had appeared at the door of her room, as I went slowly down the stairs. Suspicion was written plainly on her face.

“Where are you going?”

“Down to the basement?”

“I guessed that. Don’t think I imagined you were calling on me.”

“I thought I saw Dizzy,” I said lamely.

“He went up this minute. I wonder you did not see him. What is happening? It’s a short distance down these stairs, but none of my lodgers” (a mark of her distraction that, she usually said guests) “ever came down them much before. Now there are two of you, on successive nights. Was it you last night?”

“No.”

“It was a heavier tread.”

The time had come for confidences; Mrs Groat was not my choice, but the fates had appointed her.

“This afternoon I heard a story of someone seeing an old woman pushing a pram.”

“There’s a lot do that from the laundry in the village. You want to ask this person when he saw it, and where, before turning out my basement.”

She made no attempt to mask her understanding.

“The person, the boy who told this story has disappeared…and I wondered…”

“What a little innocent you are, asking yourself so many questions,” said Mrs Groat, giving me a hard look. She herself, I realised, had never been an innocent. I had sympathy for the husband who had found violence his answer to her. But she was agitated.

I persevered.

“So I am going down to the basement.”

She came with me for a few steps, after carefully shutting her door behind me. Soon she paused.

“We are wrong to do this. It’s for the police. Tell them.”

“They are coming, anyway, so I shall not much forestall them.”

I told her what had happened in Bella’s room.

“Again,” was her comment, “I’m not surprised.”

Her omniscience, real or assumed, stung me.

“There’s as much method as madness in this murder.

The murderer is only mad nor’ nor’ west.”

“I never could understand Shakespeare,” she replied placidly. “I suppose you mean the money?”

“You knew about the money?”

“Of course; me and Miss Amy used often to talk about it. I was here, you see, when the Post Office was robbed. She knew who had a hand in it. He might have boasted of it to her. He was wicked enough. We wondered if the money was hidden—well, where we thought it was.”

“In the bombed toyshop?”

“You seem well informed yourself.” Her voice was critical. “After she was killed, I did wonder if the money had anything to do with it.”

“And yet you never told the police?”

“Who said so? As a matter of fact, I did. What you mean is that I never said anything to you and your friends.”

She was a maddening old woman. I looked into her long, narrow, obstinate face.

“Yes, I told the Sergeant, and so let us leave the rest of this to him. We won’t go any further; come back with me.”

She put a thin hand on my arm.

Fright mounted and tightened in my throat, for there was more force in her grasp than I had expected. Fear reminded me that she had inherited much of Miss Amy’s small fortune, in addition to what was perhaps more important to her, ’The Argosy’. Reluctantly, I retreated a few steps with her.

“Nevertheless, you did go down with her,” interrupted Bella at this point in my story. “How brave of you!”

“Not really, because I suddenly saw…”

“That she couldn’t be the murderer,” supposed Mrs Mahady dryly.

“Exactly. She’d been home all the day Miss Amy was killed, cooking pickles and making chutney. Remember how the house smelt when we got in that night? Some things—a rich fruit cake—you could go away and leave, but not chutney. Vinegar smells so frightful when it burns that the whole house would have known if she’d neglected it for a moment.”

“Now that is clever of you.”

“I didn’t have to work it out. It dawned on me when I saw that she was as frightened of me as I was of her.”

Mrs Groat proved docile when I was firm. Together we descended the stairs to the basement, to which there was access both from the house and the garden. Outside the white door we paused.

“The switch is outside the door,” said Mrs Groat.

I pulled it down and opened the door: the room was dark and still and smelt of earth.

“The bulb has gone.”

“Come with me while I get another.”

Eventually we fumbled our way into the centre of the room, which, characteristically of Mrs Groat, was neat, to adjust the lamp. A bright light shone over the collection of disused objects kept there. Light was absorbed and not reflected by the old coal-scuttles, the disused tins and empty boxes; it was drunk in by the packing-cases, the battered furniture and the broken trunks. In a comer, moved a little from where it had always stood, was the old pram. So easy had it proved to wheel it and its burden up the drive and in through the garden window, so simple to deposit the load and move the pram away, that the murderer had used it again. The pram was not empty.

“We heard Mrs Groat scream up here,” said Bella. “It was frightful.”

“The Sergeant heard her too, as he came down the drive.

I heard him run in and down the stairs.”

His footsteps were quick and light. We welcomed him hysterically.

Neither of us was allowed to leave the room, but we were allowed to sit down on two boxes. I watched while Mrs Groat covered her eyes. The Sergeant drew back the old dark army blanket with slow care from the small body. Our eyes met.

“Is he dead?” I asked, hoping to be contradicted.

The Sergeant did not answer as he replaced the blanket, except to say:

“You must come with me.”

He led us away, closing and locking the door behind him. We were left to wait in Mrs Groat’s room.

“I suppose his iron self-control faltered once?” asked Bella with bitterness.

“It did so once,” I answered slowly, “when he came back, when he told us what lay beneath Jimmy Stone’s body.”

First there had been a brick. It had struck him and probably the others also. But that wasn’t it. Underneath all, hidden in the little compartment, where children put their feet when they are bigger, and which is covered with a leather cushion, was a pile of money in pound notes. Aunt Amy had hidden it there herself in its old box, with the beading on it. I recalled that I had seen her.

I was silent for a few minutes after the Sergeant stopped talking. I wondered why he had told me; he seemed strangely excited—not like a policeman at all.

“So the murderer got none,” I said thoughtfully.

“Only about half of it was there.” His eyes were on my face.

“Then he got half…”

“No.” The word was ground out of him. “The other half was found by us underneath Mrs Norton’s body, on the evening you sent us to look.”

His blue eyes regarded me coldly. I didn’t like pale blue eyes.

XVIII

JIMMY was not dead. He lived, but remembered nothing of what he had gone through. His doctors said that the whole of the last few weeks was effaced from his mind. I suppose it was just as well, but it meant a reprieve for the murderer, and for the rest of us it brought a prolonging of the tension. The cloud of our disaster settled down upon ’The Argosy’. We, on the top floor, were to a certain extent isolated, while conscious of all that went on below. In our little kitchen, with its scarlet curtains, potted plants, and half-painted shelves (should we ever finish them now?), we brewed coffee and made tea at intervals throughout the day, feeding ourselves and our frequent visitors. Mrs Groat had giving up cooking for the double pleasure of weeping and reminiscence. She was also staying in bed, where Mrs Mahady was attendant upon her, crackling with temper as she worked. The little basement room, normally kept bright and overheated, had its windows opened and lights turned off. The invalid leaned from her bed rescuing her treasures from the blowing winds.

“My ferns, and oh, Mrs Mahady, the cyclamen; they shouldn’t be in a draught!”

Meanwhile her tenants got on as best they could. A polite but unyielding Inspector Winter had requested all to remain at home, so that Jem and Spicy and Charles were free to roam restlessly up and down stairs. Leonora remained locked in her room, and no one knew where David was.

“He’s in the house,” supposed Mrs Mahady, pausing in her work of charity and interference. “He must be, because the police would not let him go about; he’s still prime suspect.”

“He is?” I was surprised, having cleared David in my own mind long ago.

“Certainly. Husbands always are.”

Mrs Groat nodded in solemn assent to this. I remembered that she had the best of reasons for agreeing.

Mrs Mahady took from my hand the steaming pot of coffee.

“Come on, dear, drink the coffee Victoria has made. It’s not worse for you than us.”

“Yes, it is,” replied Mrs Groat, who, having given up the struggle to appear normal, was not prepared to be denied any of her privileges. “You haven’t known Miss Amy since she was a young girl.

“No,” she continued, her voice rising, “nor knew the old horror who was the start of it all.”

“He can’t have been such a horror,” said her nurse. “He must have had some attractions to collect all those women’s affections. I daresay you had a weakness for him yourself.”

“Never, the lawless, sinful man. I’m chapel, and know how to judge people. He was good-looking, I admit. I’ll show you the photograph. In there.”

And the moralist pointed to a drawer.

“Is this it?” I asked, as if I didn’t know.

“That’s it. As a matter of fact it belonged to Aunt Amy, although how she had the heart to keep it, I don’t know.”

Then I knew that Miss Amy had sent the photograph to us herself. On the back was the stain where I had spilt tea on it. Yet, why, or to what purpose she had sent it, I still had no idea, any more than I knew whether she had removed the photograph herself, or whether some other hand had stolen it. Looking back to the scene, I thought it probable that, for some reason, she had herself taken it.

I felt some reluctance to tell Bella what I had learnt about the photograph. It came to me strongly that I would prefer not to know whether Bella could guess why we had received it. Of course I trusted Bella, but still, it was odd. Aware of unpleasing thoughts, I set myself the task of writing my reports for the term. Clearing my worktable of its frivolous sediment of flower-pots, china dogs, magazines, and make-up, I got out my books and papers. The clock ticked by, I worked on, placid at last, without measuring the time. Engrossed in an analysis of my pupils, an Olympian detachment descended upon me, reducing all my problems, or so it seemed, to their right proportions. I leaned back in my chair and mentally surveyed the girls I taught. On the whole they were a good lot, who worked well. They enjoyed their work and showed it. Looking over my projects for the term, it was clear that in spite of all my upsets, we were well in advance of our work. The recipe and method for the baking of a rich fruit cake had still to be done, but it was the custom to leave this task until near Christmas, if the syllabus allowed. My bookshelves offered me a tempting array of cook-books, from which to choose a good, yet original recipe, but I decided to stick to the traditional mixture. Later on, as the girls got more practised, they could be choosier and more sophisticated about their ingredients. Absorbed and momentarily happy, I did not hear the click of my door until it banged behind the arrival. Then my heart bumped, and my throat felt tight. Leonora stood before me frowning and smoothing on her loose brown gloves. Why hadn’t I locked the door?

“I thought you might be alone.”

“Yes, I am,” I agreed idiotically.

“Would you care to come for a walk?” asked the spider to the fly.

“Oh, we can’t go out. The Inspector will not allow it.” I could hear myself panting.

“Yes, we may,” insisted Leonora. “If we go in two’s. Its safer that way.” And she gave me a sideways smile.

It didn’t seem in the least safe to me, but contrary to what I had been taught, fear was not sharpening my wits. I could think of no device to get rid of her.

“A walk will do you good,” persevered Leonora grimly. “And I want you to come.”

I could see she did, but it didn’t cheer me at all.

“You have been avoiding me for the last few days.”

“Have I?” My conversational powers were still at a very low ebb.

“You have indeed,” she replied irritably. “And don’t keep repeating me in that moronic way.”

“Shall we ask Bella and Edith to come?” If two were safe, then four, I felt, would be doubly safe.

Leonora shrugged.

“You can, if you like; but they just went down to visit Jem.”

She knew as well as I did that it would take dynamite to shift them. Suddenly, for no reason, the mists cleared, my terror departed, I was even amused.

“I will come, Leonora. You are quite right—a walk will do me good.”

We walked out of ’The Argosy’, with the Sergeant ticking us off on a list, like convicts out for the afternoon, which is about what we felt.

“Back when?” he asked.

Leonora ignored him, staring straight forward, leaving me to answer him, which I did, saying, with a look at my companion, that we should be gone about half an hour.

In the last few weeks we had all lost weight, Leonora most of all, but her near emaciation only heightened her gentle elegance. Huddled in a dark, soft, beaver coat with a bright cap of pink wool on her head, she looked frail but delicious. She smelt of expensive lotions. Unhappily, this reminded me of my dark lilac scent, and of Sophy’s bottle, in which a murderer had dabbled. If this kept up there would soon be no subject which did not give me a twinge. Leonora was watching me out of the corner of her eye, while pretending not to see me. Again, I wondered why she had sought me out to take me for this walk. In those days the obvious answer, the simple solution, such as, in this case, that she wanted my company, occurred to me only to be passed over, while I searched for the hidden motive, the concealed design. This was the occupational disease of the amateur detective, the perpetually pricking thumb.

We walked quickly and without talking through the village. Although so abstracted, Leonora seemed to know where she was going, for there was an absent-minded purpose in the direction she led me. A white mist was rising, and thickening the view. Anxiety began to nudge my nerves again.

“Where are we going?”

“Oh, are we going anywhere? I was just walking.” Leonora looked up in surprise.

“Liar,” I said to myself.

The village was behind us on the high ground, for the streets had been continually descending towards the river. Our neighbourhood was low and mean. The tall old houses, once fashionable, were decayed and broken-faced. Road and gutter and pavement looked as if come giant housemaid had forgotten to do her dusting. She had left uncleared the papers, boxes, tins, and debris, had not removed the dustbins and old car-tyres from the street comers, where they lingered to provide the children with dirty, noisy toys. From the river came the nervous calls of ships moving through the foggy dust. Over us floated the smell of burning fat from the soap factory beyond. My unease mounted.

“I don’t like this place, Leonora.”

“Not nice, is it? It’s quite safe, though. No need to keep hopping about like that. The children won’t hurt you.”

“They stare.”

“Do you blame them? We are something out of the way.

I used to stare myself, when I lived here.”

“You?” It was my turn to stare, but I heard Miss Amy’s voice again: “A background just a little bit shabbier.”

“You don’t sound so very surprised.” Her voice was amused. “Is my veneer so thin?”

She walked a little way along the street.

“It was about here, in the middle, somewhere by the lamp-post. We moved to this house from a few doors along, I remember, because it was cheaper and, of course, nastier.”

She looked at it critically.

“I must say that it looks better now than it did then.

The attentions of the local council, I suppose.”

She waved her hand down the street.

“And there, I suppose, I was born. Or was I? I may have been born in the gutter, as I was born to it; my poor mother was so inefficient.”

I was young enough to be shocked by the bitterness in her voice.

“But you loved her all the same?”

“Yes, I did,” she answered more gently. “And I was happy too, until she died, and my brother and I came under the care of Big Sister.”

She sighed.

“She didn’t last long, poor girl. It would have been nice to know what did happen to her. My father knew, I dare say, but speech, at least to us, was not his habit.”

We were walking back now.

“And I should have gone the same way, no doubt, always supposing that was the way she went.” Her voice was ironical now. “But Aunt Amy saved me.”

She interrupted herself to point out a large, dark block of school buildings.

“And that is where I went to school. Not glossy, is it? The headmistress was what I should now call a sadist, but then, the streets having taught me a harsh tongue, I had a cruder name for her. Miss Amy saved me from that, too.”

“How did you meet her?”

“Meet is hardly the word. I was removing her purse from her pocket. I wasn’t very skilled. No practice, and neither had Spicy.”

“Spicy!”

“Yes, he was there. We have all our past in common, you see, Victoria, if nothing else.”

“I didn’t know.”

“And it is all past now. Whatever happens, I won’t go back. Nothing could ever make me go back. I’m a different person. Aunt Amy made me.”

“Did David live here as well?”

“Not David, ‘Where did you come from David, dear. Out of the nowhere into here?’ Goodness knows where he came from, but somewhere a little pleasanter then Bremer Street.”

“Why did you bring me here, Leonora?” But in my heart, I knew the answer, the double answer.

“I wanted to show you that I could never have killed Aunt Amy. She took me from here, she took Spicy. She gave us a start. I would have killed myself first.”

I had to believe her. No longer could I tell myself that Leonora or Spicy had murdered Aunt Amy.

We both knew that Leonora was concerned with more than the show of her innocence. She was warning me off Spicy.

But as to that, we would see.

XIX

I CONTINUED to blame myself very much for my stupidity over Jimmy Stone, but as he recovered my self-reproaches became less bitter. I had not the temperament to stay out of humour with myself for very long. I began to recover my self-respect, and with it my looks, which, as Bella pointed out, had suffered badly.

“No one could say it suited you to look tired and wan,” she said frankly. “You just go a pale yellow colour.”

“I feel better now.”

I did not add that I found Spicy a tonic. Into the upward surge of my emotions, affection for Spicy precisely fitted, completing the pattern.

Bella nodded wisely at me.

“Having once begun, one can’t live without a romantic association of some kind. It would be like living in a vacuum or like parting with one of the senses. After David, naturally you had to look around for someone else.”

“Was it so obvious about David?” I asked, blushing.

“To the discerning eye; and to the undiscerning, for that matter,” she added reflectively. “Spicy knew (wouldn’t call him undiscerning actually), Jem knew, and even Charles had noticed.”

“You mean you talked about it?” I was appalled.

“Does that sting you? No, we didn’t. We had a name for it though. ‘Love in the Mist’ we called it. Spicy gave it.”

Anger momentarily curdled my love for Spicy.

“Oh, did he?”

Bella went on:

“Besides, I could see that David liked you too.”

“A little perhaps, not much. And he had no business liking me. He liked too many people as it was.”

“I’m telling you what was, not what ought to be. Don’t be a puritan. And he did like you. Remember how gentle he was when you were ill.”

I knew she was right. David had been genuinely kind, understanding, and sympathetic.

“I don’t believe Sophy was the right sort of wife for him,” went on Bella. “She subordinated herself, and it was bad for him. It would be for anyone.”

“Leonora didn’t subordinate anything.”

“No, but let’s face it: Leonora found him attractive all right, but she was out for what she could get.”

“Why this sudden sympathy for David?”

Bella was cautious, she almost refused to answer.

“He looks ill,” was all she would say. “You haven’t seen him lately.”

Nor did I wish to. Like the seasick traveller, having passed through my rough waters, I had no desire to voyage them again, but longed instead for the tranquillity of a trip with Spicy. I lay back in my chair, and considered my future. It looked good to me.

Bella roused me.

“Did you have a good day at School?”

I brought my thoughts to order, backing them rapidly from the future, through the present, to the immediate past.

“No. It was wretched. Miss Cockrill was kind, but I feel as if the children look at me like a leper.”

“Imagination.”

“I don’t know. They do gossip. Even the youngest knows a good story. I wouldn’t be surprised if they may have not told their parents that I attacked the boy myself.”

“What about the staff?”

“Tolerable and tolerant. Miss Scott even went out of her way to be nice, which probably means that she said a few sharp things behind my back. Ella treats me with her usual efficient contempt; she thought me incapable before, so I behaved as she expected. Adelaide is wrapped in wedding clouds, of course. She and Mr Brown don’t see anything very much.”

“Did you ever think that Edith liked Mr Brown?”

“I suppose she likes him, in a way. So do I, nothing special; why?”

Bella shrugged.

“I hoped there was something to take her mind off Jem.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“What I mean,” she elaborated, “is that Jem doesn’t see me any more. Edith fascinates him. And I thought he liked healthy outdoor women.”

She was bitter, having given herself considerable trouble, and used up a lot of what now seemed unnecessary energy. She shook her head sadly.

“What is there about Edith? She never says much, or does much, yet you can’t ignore her. She’s getting prettier, too.”

In the miniature breakdown of civilisation which was going on in ’The Argosy’, one of the first casualties, it had to be admitted, was our relationship with Edith. We were farther removed from her now than when we had come here. Crisis had revealed the deep incompatibility between Bella and me and Edith. Yet affection remained. Having once called it up in us, Edith continued to evoke it. Therefore this discussion, with its undertones of criticism, made us feel uneasy and disloyal. Bella herself changed the subject.

“When this is over I’m going to ask to be transferred to a school in another district.”

“I think you are right, I’ll probably do the same.”

“You’ll probably get married,” responded Bella, mocking my intonation.

“I’m not so sure.” But I wasn’t being honest, and her amused look told me she understood, although I felt there was more in her mirth than I grasped.

“I’ll be glad to be gone. Apart from anything else, this place is so hard on the clothes.”

I knew she was recalling the stocking she had ruined on our walk through the park, and her dressing-gown which I had torn in my fall downstairs. Bella always remembered that sort of thing.

“What I would like to know, Victoria, is whether we did any good that day. Other than helping to get Sophy done in.”

I blanched.

“You can’t blame us for that.”

“Sophy saw we were interested in the place—you know what she was like—she probably went back. She wouldn’t rest till she found out why we were looking. Well, she’s resting now,” she added sombrely.

“Do you suppose the police have any idea who did it?” I considered. Conviction came to me, and I nodded.

“I believe they know, or guess. You see, they have so many sources of information, they must know all about each of us by now. And I believe there is something in the past life of the murderer which marks him out. What I want to say is this: that I am sure the murderer is someone connected with all the past history of Miss Amy; he must be.”

Silently I considered the two candidates I had in mind.

In some ways both seemed incredibly unlikely, but both, to my mind, possessed the vital qualifications for the role of murderer. But I said nothing to Bella—not then.

“You see, it need not be someone living in the house; you know yourself that anyone could get in here—the door is never locked.”

“In that case it could be anyone in the whole district.” Bella’s voice rose.

“Well, wouldn’t that be a relief?” I asked soothingly. Wait until she knew who I had in mind, and then we would see if she was relieved or not! I decided to keep quiet a while longer.

“I don’t really like to think of an unknown maniac wandering round the district,” Bella said peevishly.

“You’d rather it was someone you knew, wandering around this house, would you, then?”

“According to you this unknown can do that, too,” she pointed out.

“Only he isn’t unknown,” I thought to myself.

“Still, I suppose we shall know him by his ears,” went on Bella. “If all we hear is true.”

I frowned. Philip’s description of his attacker was not easy to fit into my picture. What had the boy really meant? Were we all mistaken in interpreting it literally? I made up my mind to re-read A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Pensively, I stroked Dizzy’s silk coat. In my heart, I was frightened at the way my suspicions were shaping themselves.

Dizzy’s limp, soft warmth was comforting. What a pity Dizzy so disliked Spicy. I should have to let Bella keep him while we got another. As if in answer to my thought, Spicy knocked on the door. He bowed in a pretty, formal sort of way, just as he used, so I knew that we had the old Spicy back again, and not the disconcerting new one I had lately got acquainted with. I found to my alarm that I experienced a little gentle embarrassment. He was wearing his old tweed suit and smelt delicious. Dizzy got up and backed away anxiously.

“Purple Lilac,” I said, identifying the smell with surprise.

“Yes, I do seem to have it on, although I can’t think how.” He sniffed his arm. “I don’t like it.”

“No more do I,” said I, suspiciously now.

“But how did I come by it? Do stop looking at me like that, Victoria; I certainly didn’t bang you on the head. Let me think.”

After a minute, his brow cleared, to be followed by an air of embarrassment.

“This smell must remain from the day I bought the bottle, oh, months ago. I tried it on my wrist, and of course it’s very strong smell.”

“It isn’t months since you gave me the perfume.”

“Well, actually, I bought it…that is, I’d had it by me for some time.”

“I see,” I replied coldly, not caring to be given what his late love didn’t want. “But it doesn’t explain why Dizzy should hate it so.”

“I haven’t been giving him kicks on the sly, as a variant amusement to banging you on the head, and committing a few murders, as you so clearly think.”

“It’s very odd, that I should have smelt it so strongly just that once, and yet never again, except on you…No, Spicy, don’t get angry. I didn’t mean that remark the way it sounds.”

“You have lost your usual happy gift for phrase this evening, my dear, but I see what you mean. I daresay the murderer will have burnt whatever smelt, or washed it off, or cut it up, giving a sly kick to the cat in the process.”

“I don’t believe anything has been burnt, or the police would have known, nor cut up…Well, of course, I wouldn’t know, but I don’t believe…”

“Thank you,” said Bella indignantly. “I wondered when you would get that out.” Her cheeks were flushed.

“So, if you are right, Spicy, the scent must have been washed off, although only from some smooth substance like rubber or plastic could the smell be totally removed by washing.”

“He must have been wearing a raincoat. Now stop it, Victoria; I won’t talk about it any more.”

But there was one more question I just had to ask.

“Spicy, why were you buying string, that day Charles saw you?”

He looked exceedingly cross.

“I like rope. With some people it’s rubber bands or bits of string, but with me it’s rope.”

“Rope,” exclaimed Bella, much diverted. “Rope and scent. My, Spicy, you do need a psychologist. Your subconscious must be practically boiling over with nasty thoughts.”

“And so is my conscious mind. Are you coming, Victoria?”

I consented to go to say good night to Spicy, but I felt jumpy and dismal.

“You aren’t giving your mind to this,” complained Spicy mildly.

“I keep remembering that except for those who are already dead, I am the only person whom the murderer has attacked. Supposing he should try again?”

Spicy sighed.

“I shall have to tell you, I suppose, as you don’t seem to have thought it out for yourself. My love, when you were attacked, you may well have been on the point of observing the murderer leaving Sophy’s room, and so merited violence on your own account, but, just in case you think there was a more personal element as well, may I remind you that you had your back to the man, and were wearing, as you told me, poor Bella’s dressing-gown. She’s the one you want to worry over.”

XX

BY the first day of December we were out of purdah and back into the world again. For the police, hard work and application had filled the days which we had found empty except for apprehension. The result of their labours was the feeling that the whole house had been dissected, and analysed in their laboratories, and put together again, but not quite in the right way. There was no doubt that they were working to some definite plan, although it was difficult to see it. I think now the murderer knew, but could hardly believe, the way they were going. The rest of us were completely outside the investigations, except that our alibis for each murder, only we hardly had any, were gone over again and again. The police seemed to agree with our conclusion that the crucial time was the afternoon when Miss Amy’s body was found.

“I believe they know who it is, but have no proof,” said Jem, as he poured sherry into our glasses.

“Pretty slow of them. The murderer must be very clever,” said Charles, eagerly receiving his drink.

“Or lucky. Better to be lucky than clever, don’t you think, Charles?”

Charles scowled into his drink, and ignored the innuendo.

“This is a new sort of sherry.”

“Sherry!” Jem’s voice rose. “Nonsense. It’s mead, and much better for you. How could you suppose I would offer you what I regard as poison?”

“It was trusting of me,” said Charles sourly. “But, you see, sherry is not poison to me, whereas I rather think this is. No offence, you know.”

Jem did not usually give entertainment of any kind, being of an economical, as well as hypochondriacal mind, I loved him less than Bella and Edith, hardly at all in fact, which allowed me a deeper insight into his character than they either possessed or desired, since both clearly believed that love is blind. Bella wondered what Jem saw in Edith, but I wondered what either of them saw in him. He was mad, and not particularly nice. His greatest asset, and how well he knew it, was a certain fresh healthiness, a good little-boy charm; only he was not a little boy, but rather an old spinster. My wonder at his party was dispelled when I learnt that the whole thing was of Edith’s arranging. In my opinion, her little proprietary ways with him were a mistake. Jem gave several indications of finding the current running too fast for him. For instance, he never, in any of his wanderings round the room, sat next to Edith, although she offered him every opportunity, even going to sit near him herself, whereupon he at once stood up. Equally, he never spoke to her directly unless forced, which, for a man who liked an audience, was a marked decline in their relationship. He did once ask her to fetch an ashtray, but then he might have asked me or Dizzy to do such an errand if we had been willing. She, on the other hand, could not take her eyes off him, and dragged him into every sentence. I hardly believed it was Edith I was watching. Her little face was painted, animated, older.

The mead was stimulating Charles, without pleasing his palate—an unfortunate combination.

“You are getting fat, Jem,” he said, surveying his friend critically. “Now, thats’ a thing I should not have expected these health foods of yours to do—fatten you up, I mean.”

No one wants to be told what is true, which was especially the case with Jem, whose vanity was real and tender. He ignored Charles.

“Better go on a diet—another diet, old boy,” roared the tactless creature.

“How anyone could get fatter these last few weeks, I can’t imagine,” was Bella’s delicate contribution. “Like a vampire.”

Jem’s glance at her was a farewell, and not a loving one, to the last of her attraction for him.

“But of course, everyone looks fatter in tweeds,” said Edith in his defence.

Her reward was an unfriendly look. No help was wanted from that quarter. The gathering was degenerating so rapidly into a brawl, that I began to look for excuses to take me away. What unpleasant people we were turning into now! Or was it the stress of the last few weeks, which had brought out the nastier characteristics, which we normally kept controlled?

“No doubt it’s drinking so much of this stuff,” went on Charles, gulping his drink. “Honey and God knows what, isn’t it? Bound to put weight on you.”

“In fact, I don’t drink much of it,” replied Jem primly.

“I can understand that. Nor would I unless invited.”

“I didn’t invite you,” said Jem, with a nasty emphasis.

It was difficult to assess whom this remark made most miserable. Charles (even he had his limits) looked uncomfortable, Bella and I shuffled in discomfort, and Edith went white.

“Well, I shall have to go,” announced Charles.

Bella and I stood up with him, thanking Jem for the entertainment in bitter-sweet voices, then sidling rapidly for the door. Outside Bella took a deep breath.

“What hell that was! Charles, come and have a proper drink with us. Bring David, too, will you?”

She strode up the stairs in dignified silence.

“I don’t know about David,” I said doubtfully, standing outside my door. “I think I won’t stay.”

“Oh, give the man a chance,” exploded Bella irritably. “He won’t bite you. You haven’t seen him lately, have you? Well, wait, then.”

If David was exercising his wiles on Bella, then I did not approve. She read my thoughts.

“Nonsense! I just like the man. I’m sorry for him. At least he is better than Jem. Lord! what did I see in him?”

“What do you ever?”

“How frightful he was tonight!”

“Charles was pretty rude to him.”

“Oh, he was doing that for me. I’ve seen a lot of him lately.”

I stared in surprise, but Bella at once became preoccupied with her task as hostess. She poured out four large glasses of sherry. I raised mine to my lips, and lifted my eyes- cautiously above the rim to take a secret look at David. He had neither spoken nor looked at me since entering the room. As Bella had informed me, he had changed. He looked thin, haggard, shrunken, and exhausted; infinitely older, and with the bounce knocked out of him. What remained was a quiet, gentle shell. Charles, showing a nicer side than I had seen before, looked after him in an unobtrusive way. Tom between a desire to see- more of this new David, and a great worry over Edith, I did not enjoy my sherry. The other three were drinking and smoking at ease and content with each other. They scarcely bothered to get up when, hearing Edith’s tread, I went out to her.

She was in the kitchen staring out of the window into the dark night sky. I had meant to say something light and gay to her, but her expression, chill and dead, froze the words on my lips. She had something to say to me.

“Jem likes money; did you know? Terribly.”

“I had noticed.”

“At first I didn’t understand how much. It was silly of me.”

“Not silly at all, Edith dear.”

“Yes, really, it was stupid not to understand what he meant…I suppose because I never had any myself…I thought with a few hundreds one would be quite rich.”

“Most people would be.”

“But it isn’t so; at least, not with him.”

“Dear Edith!”

She cared no more for my endearments than for my restraining hand. They meant nothing to her as she wrenched herself out of my grasp. I heard her door lock. For a moment I stood outside listening. No sound. From Bella’s room emerged the trio, bound out for dinner.

“Do come,” said Bella.

Charles looked indifferent, and David stared at the floor. Given such meagre encouragement, I refused, and let her depart with her two cavaliers. I had a melancholy supper, wishing that Spicy would visit me. He had hardly been with me at all lately. I thought I would go in search of him. It would be undignified, but human. Industriously, I cleaned my face, repainted it, straightened my stockings, and ran downstairs. Timidly, I knocked on the door. No answer. No Spicy. In great disappointment, I pulled a coat over my shoulders and went out for a walk. Observing a dark blue figure lurking by the gate, I concluded that we were still being watched by the police. The street light showed up the red poll of the Sergeant.

“Good evening,” I said briskly, as I walked off.

I did not go far. The evening was too cold, soon chilling my irritable temper, and driving me home. As I turned in the drive, I heard the Sergeant speaking in a calm, hard tone, which I had not thought him capable of producing, especially to a woman, for the shrill pipe answering was Mrs Groat. Gladly would I have listened to their conversation, but they gave me no chance. Within a second the Sergeant had swung out from the shadows, nodding at me as he went, to be followed by Mrs Groat. Even in the half-light, I could see that she was trembling.

“Oh, Mrs Groat, what is the matter?”

She wiped her trembling lips.

“Nothing, dear, nothing…Policemen are always a bit frightening, aren’t they?”

Unsteadily, she disappeared into her basement. I began to dislike the hard-eyed Sergeant, who had driven terror into her heart.

With aching legs, and cold, cold all through, I climbed the stairs. On the first landing I came to a halt. Sitting on the stairs, arms round each other, undignified, and uncaring, were Spicy and Leonora. They looked up, and smiled wordlessly, then, completely unembarrassed, they moved aside to let me pass.

Furious, I stumped on. There was no trusting either of them for more than two minutes.

Bella was waiting for me at the head of the stairs. She was hanging up her coat on the little rack Mrs Groat had installed there for our use, although it was made use of by everybody when it suited them.

“I came back early.”

“So I see.” My voice was sharp. No need for her to feel sorry for me. Then I gave her another look. “What have you got there?”

She twirled the little circle of fur on her finger, and regarded me in surprise.

“It’s my little cap. I don’t wear it much now, because you said the earpads on it made me look like a telephonist.”

“They do,” I said, looking at the black fur. “Where has it been all this time?”

“Oh about, I suppose. As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen it for some time. I think I shall take it up again; it’s so warm, and everyone is wearing them.”

She fitted the black fur circle over her head, pulled the pads well down over her ears, and looked at herself complacently in the mirror.

“Put it away, Bella,” I commanded harshly. Couldn’t she see what she looked like?

Concern written all over her face, Bella turned on me.

“You are jumpy.”

She paused, then added doubtfully:

“I suppose you’ve heard about Spicy and Leonora?”

“They are going to be married, no doubt.”

“My dear, they’ve been married all the time.”

“They’re welcome to each other, then. Heaven help them both, I say.”

Bella lit my fire and fussed around, anxious to give me attentions. I had difficulty in stopping her tucking me into bed. Foiled, she sat down on it instead.

“You might be a bit nicer to David, I think” she advised. “You haven’t been at all nice to him.”

“Perhaps not.”

“When he calls on you (he will call, you will find), try to spare the rod and spoil the child. You are a bit of a puritan, you know.”

“When he calls I’ll see what I can do.”

Bella enjoyed her moment of triumph, for she knew, and I knew, that it was. Then she sighed.

“But it would be nice to have all this business over, and not always to be wondering…”

“You can stop wondering,” I said slowly. “I’m certain I know the murderer. I suppose I had better tell you.”

“Not darling Spicy again, I hope?”

“You won’t believe me.”

“I’ve believed you every time before, even when you keep changing your mind.”

“I won’t change it this time. First, you must understand that I think that only someone close to the whole chain of crimes from the very start could have known about the money and where it was hidden.”

“If you say so.”

“Not Leonora, not Spicy, then…they are not old enough.”

“Mrs Groat and Mrs Mahady, then? Don’t say it!”

“Well, I haven’t exactly crossed them off my list yet. I don’t trust Mrs Groat—she’s so queer, but…”

“Who, then?” asked Bella simply.

I went back in my mind to all the things which had persuaded me. The photographs in the faded, yellow copies of the Argus, a small boy’s voice croaking at me from the shadows, a note I had heard in an older voice, a look I had seen in steely eyes, the smell of purple lilac—all these mounted to conviction in my mind. Above all, the person I named in my mind had had opportunity, and in a way impossible to all the other suspects.

I drew my breath to tell Bella. But would she believe me? Would anyone ever believe me?

XXI

NEXT day I knew what I had to do at school, and having settled my work, I made my way into Ella Stack’s room to start operations; since I had no desire for her to guess anything, information had to be extracted from her in the course of a little gentle conversation. She was surprised to see me in the middle of morning school, but she had come to expect anything of me. Ostensibly I had visited her to borrow a piece of yellow chalk, ostentatiously I stayed in admiration of the peace, order, and efficiency of her class, which went like a well-greased machine, built for its teacher’s comfort. The one blot on Ella as an instructor of the young was that she did tend to think the children were there to provide her with food, drink, and entertainment, and must be trained to do so with as little inconvenience to herself as possible. Any obligations Ella felt were to the Education Authorities rather than to education or the children, or their immortal souls.

“You don’t want to let them bother you,” she said, speaking from the heart.

Praise made her talkative.

“Jimmy Stone now, was he intelligent?”

Her brow clouded.

“Yes, poor child, one of my very brightest. Such a help with the advanced group. I’m going to miss him a lot. But it’s always the same…as soon as you get a good pupil, and put a lot of energy into bringing them along, they are whisked off…it’s the only thing I find to criticise in Miss Cockrill.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to say that they were not usually whisked off in such a way, but instead, I asked,

“Had he got a good memory for a face? Would he recognise anyone easily?”

She seemed to find nothing odd in my questions, and I thanked my stars she was an unreflective soul.

“Oh, certainly. He had sharp eyes. But of course, his powers of recognition would be limited the way any child’s would be. Having once seen someone, he would always know them again in any circumstances, but before the first introduction he would not know if he had seen them before, if you understand me.”

“Yes, that’s what I thought. In other words, once he’d seen someone in familiar surroundings he would know them in unfamiliar ones. But his memory did not necessarily work the other way, and he would not particularly remember if he’d seen a new face elsewhere.”

I changed the subject.

“Have the police been in lately?”

“No, Miss Cockrill says they are investigating outside.”

“I suppose, as you have always lived here, you know the Sergeant quite well?”

“My acquaintance didn’t run in police circles, but he did come into the school last year to give a talk…on careers…meant only for the older ones, of course, but practically every boy in the school, and some girls, packed in to listen.”

I went out with my yellow crayon. She had told me what I wanted. I was satisfied that Jimmy Stone had recognised the murderer. He had known, in spite of an attempt at disguise, who it was pushing the pram with Aunt Amy in it. I knew that Jimmy and his would-be murderer had moved in the same surroundings. Jimmy had been trying to tell me this the evening he had been attacked. But all he had got out, before I had interrupted him, had been one word.

And I thought that one word was enough; I understood him. My new hypothesis explained what Jimmy Stone had been trying to say, it explained the police slowness, it explained almost everything. What it did not illuminate, such as Leonora’s strange vision in the shop and Verena’s cryptic remarks on the telephone, seemed to me unimportant.

I returned to my room to consider my next move. Ella had helped me, but I had still to take a decisive step. I had no opportunity, however, for quiet thought. My class were repaying me for my inattention to their interests by being exceedingly noisy and ill behaved. Unconsciously they perceived my thoughts were not with them, and took advantage of it. From the uproar, one complaint emerged.

“When are we going to make our Christmas cakes?”

“Soon,” I replied evasively, preoccupied with my thoughts.

The grievance took definite shape.

“Miss Stack’s class have already done their cake with the other teacher.”

This, I gathered, was damaging to their prestige. I explained to them sharply that if this week’s effort on their part was not more successful than anything they had achieved so far, then their chances of ever getting to do a rich fruit cake were small.

For a moment they were silenced, but not for long enough, and to my fury Ella Stack arrived in time for the uproar of clearing away. To my shame, they were quelled by her indignant glance.

“Just be firm with them,” she advised, as she turned to me. “I came to tell you that we are trying to decide what to give Adelaide for a wedding present. You do want to subscribe? Yes, well, we thought something nice and comfortable, like an electric blanket.”

“Oh, surely not.”

“Don’t you like the idea? Miss Scott suggested it (she feels the cold so much), and it seemed so sensible.”

I hoped they would not give me such a present, if and when I married. It would be difficult explaining it to an amused ‘Argosy’.

I realised then that I probably shouldn’t be living there much longer, that the whole group would be split up, and that one of the people I had come to know, if not to like, would be a condemned murderer. Now that I faced the decision, I knew that I did not want to move. In spite of everything, I liked my little room, and what I had made of it. Perhaps, after all, we need not go. I must speak to David; so much would depend on him. Pleasant thoughts invaded my mind, and on them I would like to have dwelt, but I knew that I must not, for some time in the course of the day I must screw my courage to the sticking point and tell either Miss Cockrill, or the Inspector, or the Sergeant, what were my suspicions. I had to decide which one to tell. Miss Cockrill did not frighten me, as much as she had, but I thought she probably would not believe me. The Inspector frightened me a good deal, but he might be forced to admit my story. I could go to the Sergeant, and he, I thought, would have to believe me, but of him I was terrified. I knew too much. I knew who had hit me on the stairs. I had heard his footsteps, and smelt the scent reeking on him, that scent which had been so speedily washed away from the nice, blue official raincoat, worn as protection against the dark wet day.

XXII

IN the Staffroom lunch-time passed happily for everyone but me in the discussion of Adelaide’s wedding and the present, which Ella and Miss Scott had nipped out (their own expression) during the morning to purchase. As I thought, the advice asked of me had been rhetorical only, for they had long since ordered an electric blanket. They were both going to the wedding. I did not blame them. Any wedding, even someone else’s, was better than none. The problem which now exercised them was what to do about a photograph. At first, since I was not listening very carefully, I thought they were discussing whether to have a copy of the wedding group itself.

“Common politeness will probably demand that you order one,” I replied, when they appealed to me.

“Well, that’s just what I would have said common politeness did not do,” said one of the younger and sharper teachers. “Will Addy want a photograph of us dogging the rest of her married life?”

It then appeared that one of them, no doubt Ella, had suggested that a portrait of the whole teaching staff should be sent with the blanket.

“It would be a nice personal touch,” said Miss Scott wistfully, obviously longing to have her likeness taken.

The discussion tore the teaching staff in two. Some thought the idea appalling—this included me—and others agreed with Miss Scott. There were also some who thought good taste demanded they spurn the plan, but who found the idea of a photograph attractive.

I could take very little interest in the discussion, because dust and ashes were drying my mouth as I debated within myself whether I should go with my story to Miss Cockrill, the Inspector, or the Sergeant.

“What would you do?” I said absently, half to myself and half to Miss Scott.

“Well, you know I want the group taken,” said she, who was absorbed in only one subject.

“No, no. I mean…what would you do with something dangerous?”

“Get rid of it as quickly as I could.”

“I will then.”

I had come to my decision. I would tell Miss Cockrill, who, as headmistress, was on the spot, and accessible. Ignoring Miss Scott’s following voice, I departed in search of Miss Cockrill. Wisely preferring to ignore our presence as much as possible, she lunched alone in her own room, eating, so we all suspected, rather better than we did, but leaving us free to get our own nourishment without interruption. It was a humane arrangement from every point of view. There was still half an hour before school began, but children were already milling about the playground, and a few had arrived upstairs, and were squatting in the hall outside her door. Pushing between them, forcing them to give reluctant ground, I knocked on her door.

“Come in, dear,” replied a friendly voice, which toughened slightly but noticeably, when she saw, not a child, but an adult, and a teacher at that. Her staff understood that there was only one adult more irritating to Miss Cockrill than a teacher, and that was a parent. From bitter experience, she knew both to be partial, prejudiced, and unreliable. Still, she knew her duty.

“Sit down, dear, and tell me what you want.”

In the lion’s den, composure fled, while I sought for credible words to clothe my incredible speech.

“It’s about this murder,” I began.

“One moment dear, yes…that is a knock…such a little sound; it must be one of the times. I must attend to it.

She gave me a beaming smile, opening the door to allow in a surge of infants clutching coins. Having delivered them of their pence, patted one or two heads, and wiped one or two noses, she sent them away.

“I do beg your pardon, my dear, but of course, they must come first. Now, you were saying?”

As she recalled what I had been saying, the smile chilled.

“It’s about the murder,” I said, leaning forward.

“Yes?”

“I simply must talk to you about it. I thought you would be the best person to tell.”

There was another knock on the door, a real bang, not a tiny this time, then; but Miss Cockrill hurried, all the same, to give her suppliants the undivided, loving attention which she never allowed to anyone else. She was long occupied, and when she returned I refused to start again, but sat there waiting for her to pick up the ball. Nothing had been said, when the door-knocker, which didn’t take the form of a little hammer for nothing, sounded again, in a fusillade of bangs. Rising to her feet, she addressed me severely.

“If it’s about the murder, Miss Brent, I’m afraid I cannot discuss it, or listen to anything. The Inspector particularly asked me not to do so. You must go to him.”

Sullen and desperate, I picked my way through the crowded hall, through the swarming playground, to a public telephone box. If my watch was right, then hell and damnation would now be raging in my room, where some fifteen pupils awaited me.

“I want,” I said over the telephone, trying to keep my voice level—“I want to speak to the Inspector: to Inspector Winter.”

A distant voice regretted that the Inspector was out at lunch.

“Where does he lunch? Please can I have the telephone number?”

The voice wanted to know what my business with him was.

“I’d rather not explain that now. In general, it is about the murders.”

No need to name the murders: in all London there were only these. But the voice did not gain in sympathy, enthusiasm, or helpfulness. Too many cranks, it implied, wanted a talk with Inspector Winter on this subject. If what I had to say was important, perhaps I would write a letter?

“I am speaking from Holly Road School,” I lied in desperation, “Something has happened. He should hear what I have to say.”

This produced an effect. There were sounds of alarm and discussion. Distantly, I heard the Inspector’s voice. Naturally, he had been there all the time. He spoke to me.

“Well, what do you want?”

“I think I know the murderer.”

“So do I,” he replied without emotion. “And I should be surprised if you didn’t by now. You have had enough opportunity to find out. Is that all you have to tell me?”

Taken aback by this reaction, I did not know what to say. I was still convinced that I knew the murderer, and that the Inspector did not.

“The Sergeant,” I croaked, about to begin on a long explanation.

“Well, if you’ve nothing more to say, I’m a busy man.” He rang off.

Startled and disconcerted by his reaction, I put down the receiver. Could I be wrong in the name I had attached to the murderer? The Inspector seemed so certain that he, too, could name the man, and yet I knew that if our thoughts had fallen upon the same person he could not have spoken to me in the way he had done.

I turned my steps towards Pompey Street, not far away. Mrs Sidney was at home. She received me without a welcome, but without a repulse. She even managed a weak sort of cheerfulness.

“Have you come to say good-bye? The girl and me are off to the sea tomorrow. It’s a funny time to go to the seaside, but he said Brighton was like London, really—always something to do, and bracing, too. The Sergeant, you know,” she added, seeing the look of inquiry upon my face. “He’s been so kind.”

“Somehow I thought you meant the Sergeant.” I passed my tongue over my dry lips. “You will be better out of the way. I suppose you know the Sergeant well?”

She nodded.

“We’ve known him ever since we came here. He always took an interest in Philip?”

“Like Miss Cockrill?”

Mrs Sidney looked disconcerted.

“No, no; not like Miss Cockrill. She did take an interest in Philip, of course.”

She was silent.

“I suppose that was what all the trouble was about. I never really understood. Mr Sidney didn’t like it. Favouritism, he called it, and unhealthy; but I think she meant well.”

We talked a little longer. I think she was puzzled to see me, and relieved when I went.

There was nothing for it but to meet the Sergeant.

I travelled back to school to pacify my class, before setting out on my travels again, which, like Charles II, I did not look forward to. Over the school hung an ominous silence, indicating to my guilty conscience that Miss Cockrill was on the prowl. I pushed open my door; the room was empty. I went into the hall: once more was silent space. Alarmed and mystified, I knocked on Ella’s door. Her room was also void, but she was to be found in the Staffroom, marking papers and smoking. She was talking rapidly.

“Bad-tempered little things: always complain, complain, complain. Why do they think they come to school? I’m not here to listen to your complaints, I told them; get on with your work and stop worrying me. I had the registers to mark and the month’s totals to average, and I let them know it. They really must learn when I am busy I am not to be interrupted. First things first, I told them, and remember to call yourself second.”

“What were they complaining about?”

“Oh, it’s you, Victoria. Why, they were grumbling about those wretched Christmas cakes. Notes, visits, and nagging have I endured ever since they were made. How I wish they never had been. Of course, I blame Miss Cockrill…”

“What cakes were they?”

“My girls made them weeks ago with Miss Blunt. I’m sure she teaches them splendidly, and I do agree that she’s a very nice girl. We all know that she came with a wonderful college record, better than…well, very good, anyway, but I do think in practice you understand the girls better. Anyway, these cakes went wrong.”

“It can’t be blamed on Edith,” I said indignantly.

“Of course, I don’t think for a moment it was her fault. In my experience, when anything goes wrong it’s always the children’s fault. But she cooked them. However, the real trouble is that Betty Buck and her father (have you met him?) have a running quarrel with Miss Cockrill, and any stick will do to beat the dog. It’s certainly Betty Buck who keeps stirring the others up; they would forget, of course, if left to themselves. What a nuisance she is, little wretch! And her father, too.”

“I remember him,” I said with feeling.

“He keeps calling on Miss Cockrill. You should have seen her face when he came up this morning! Set, my dear, like a piece of concrete. She’s about at the end of her tether, you know, what with one thing and another. Of course, she’s wonderful with the kids—some kids—but she does overdo it. And then there’s no denying that she does take more than a fancy to some. The parents don’t like it. Mr. Buck doesn’t; not that it’s a fancy she has for Betty—rather the other way about. Now I don’t take to Betty myself, but of course Miss C. does take it out of her.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“You wouldn’t, if you don’t mind my saying so. One of the things I admire about you, Victoria, is that you always see the best in people.”

I looked at her to see if she was being sarcastic. She wasn’t.

“But that silly little man,” she went on,” he’ll be the next one to get himself pushed…”

She clapped her hand to her mouth.

“Oh dear! I shouldn’t have said that, should I?”

I came to my senses.

“Where is the girl, Betty? Where are all the children?” Ella looked surprised.

“Didn’t you know? There is a double school assembly—Holly Road, and Parker’s Lane, from across the way—in the top hall, the one with the screen. A cinema show on Safety First. The Sergeant is taking it.”

Fool, fool! I wanted to scream at her. Don’t you know that a Sergeant of the Criminal Investigation Department never undertakes that sort of duty! It’s something else he is after, but not safety, not safety!

XXIII

UP the quiet, deserted staircase, I started, conscious that I must hurry. Dark, empty rooms met my eyes, for the children were in the high east hall, sitting in expectant rows, looking towards the lighted screen. I searched the rows for familiar faces; many of the teachers I knew, and some of the children, but nowhere could I see the faces I looked for. The thin figure of the Sergeant was absent, but I recognised in a commanding position, instead, the plump shape of Miss Cockrill. She was in charge, as of course the Sergeant was not. He had made use of her and the school, as I suspected he had done before, to serve his own ends. With the school emptied, the teachers preoccupied and off their guard, he had a splendid opportunity for what he wanted to do. I thought I knew what his task was. In the last few days I had suspected first this person, and now that; but at last, sadly, I knew I was right.

On the screen, a policeman rode a bicycle, without using his handlebars or using his brakes. He took absurd risks and generally misused the road. At one moment he was almost underneath a car, missing a lorry in the next minute by inches, and finally avoiding, with what seemed luck rather than skill, an incautious pedestrian. And all, as the children very well knew, to show them how not to use a bicycle. They laughed in delighted censure. What bliss—you could read their minds—to see a grown-up making a proper fool of himself. This they enjoyed without caring for any lesson to be learnt from the screen. The cyclist was succeeded by an absent-minded walker, behaving as badly as his predecessor. They liked this pretty well, too, but perhaps not in the spirit the filmmakers had intended. It would have delighted the children above anything to have seen next a motorist ill-treating the rules of the road. They were audibly looking forward to this bonne bouche and were as audibly disappointed, but as none of them were likely to own a car for years, if ever, the makers of the film had seen no reason to develop this aspect of their homily. Their trouble was that they were taking the film too seriously, whereas their audience was not.

Even through the gloom, I could sense Miss Cockrill’s annoyance at the mocking murmurs rising from the floor (only the teachers had seats in this cinema), where one or two lively souls were offering suggestions to the film producer. As far as I was concerned, the more noise the better.

My first task was to identify Ella Stack’s class, for amongst them should be sitting the girl I wanted to see. The cake business had to be cleared up before I spoke to the Sergeant.

Peering forward into darkness, I provisionally located what looked like Ella’s group sitting, such was my bad fortune, well to the front, near Miss Cockrill. There was nothing for it but to edge my way very gently forward. Luckily the teachers were lined up on one side, with Miss Cockrill, who was certainly observing me, right up at the front, with the whole of two schools barring her approach to me. If I was quick, I was safe. She might, and almost certainly would, disapprove of what I did, but she could not get at me to interfere. In every loud spell—and laughs were coming thick and fast as policemen fell off and under all kinds of vehicles—I pushed a few rows nearer my objective. I was exhausted when I reached it, and so was Miss Cock-rill’s temper. Out of the corner of my eye I could see her summon a messenger. I had to act fast. In the dark I put out a hand, grabbed a child, pulled it towards me. An indignant boy glared at me.

“Sorry,” I muttered. “Wrong sort. Go back.”

Now any girl would have to do. She would know what I wanted. My next dip was a better one, and I retreated hurriedly up the aisle, dragging the child with me, only just managing to shut the door triumphantly in the face of the headmistress’s errand girl.

Unluckily I had picked a moron, and my more complicated questionnaire had to be abandoned in favour of a few basic demands.

“Where is Betty Buck?”

Dazed, resentful, her moon face stared at me.

“She’s gone with teacher.”

I shook her.

“Which teacher?”

“The other one.”

“Which other?”

“We only has one other…when we go to cookery, only she says I’m not to go any more; she won’t have me…Miss Blunt.”

“And the Sergeant? Did you see him? Did he go, too?”

I gave her another shake as a stimulant to memory.

“Oh, hurry up.”

“Yes, miss; he went too.”

I pushed her from me, back into the safety of the hall, and ran for the stairs.

I was thinking of Edith as I ran—poor Edith, abandoned to the fell Sergeant. Halfway down the stairs, I heard the solemn plod of heavy feet. With my heart in my mouth I stayed to listen. Could I hear one pair of feet, or were there two upon the stairs? Was Miss Cockrill following?

In my panic, I turned aside into her room. As I had known, it was empty, but in its emptiness there was a quality I did not expect—a neat, quiet, deserted bareness. I looked at the shelves—they were without books; I looked at the cupboards—with them only impersonal remains; 1 turned to the desk—its surface was tidy and clear. In the hearth there was burnt paper, in the waste-paper basket torn letters, at the door stood a suitcase. On the peg hung a thick tweed coat, and a brown hat with ridiculous yellow ears of corn.

All these things spoke of one thing, and one thing only.

“I don’t believe it,” I said to myself, half aloud; “I can’t believe it.”

In my handbag was the bundle of notes I had made from the newspapers. I sat down at her empty desk and read them through, looking for the sentence I half remembered. When I found it, I was still undecided. It might mean anything, and it might mean nothing.

I decided it meant something, which meant that I must do—nothing. Nothing, for there was no time. Already I heard feet outside the door.

I stood up to receive the arrival.

The Sergeant pushed round the door. His face was white.

At last we were face to face. He put out a skinny, detaining hand.

“I heard you were looking for me.”

“Yes, yes; I was, in a way.”

“Here I am. What do you want?”

The very last words I wanted to say to him came rushing to my lips.

“I thought…you might be the murderer,” I whispered. “Thought? Does that mean you no longer think so?”

“I don’t know…but I am frightened.”

“So am I,” he said ponderously. “We are all frightened. It’s a world to be frightened of.

“There is such a thing as judicial murder,” he continued, going slow, watching me all the time. “I suppose I am guilty of that: if there is guilt in killing people who deserve to be killed, bringing the evil to judgement.”

Looking into his blue eyes, I wondered how I had ever thought them kind. In this moment of revelation I recognised them for the eyes of the fanatic. So that was why he had joined the police force. I should find no mercy in him.

“Have you no pity?” I asked.

“Very little.” His tone was final. “None. Go back into the hall, and let me get on with my job.”

“Yes, go on looking,” I said bitterly.

“I’m not looking for anything, although you will never believe me. No need; everything is clear. I was merely making an opportunity to do clearly what must be done. I have that much pity.”

“Poor Miss Cockrill!” I said.

“You could call her that,” he answered. “But others have suffered more, much more.”

“Until a few minutes ago, I had no idea she was the one. Perhaps that is not quite true…she was so strange sometimes, and there were things that worried me, but I never really thought…you see, I believed it was you. You knew about Aunt Amy, you knew about the money, you were such a friend of the Sidneys and of everyone who mattered. And it could have been you who hit me on the head, and then wiped that horrible perfume, together with the blood (was there any blood?), off the sleeve of your shiny mackintosh. I still don’t see how Miss Cockrill did that—knocked me on the head, I mean—but she could have, couldn’t she? She could always get in the house; anyone could.”

In my wildness I was talking at random but Sergeant Helper was very silent and still.

“She wanted the money, I suppose; and I know she did good things with her money—helping children and such—but it was like Mr Sidney said: it wasn’t healthy; and I suppose she gradually got to need more and more, and thought the end justified the means. But murder!…I knew it was her when I saw this room; she knows she’s got to go. Then I remembered that dreadful hat of hers; Philip saw her in that when she watched him and made a joke about it. Do you suppose the attendant at the Baths could identify it, or her? But I suppose you’ve done all that. And she knew old Alexander, didn’t she? She went to his trial. Was she the educated woman who had to be carried out? Did she love him, too? Oh, don’t answer, then. But I was right when I said it was someone whose roots here ran right back to the time when Edward Alexander lived here.- You know that, don’t you? You do know she is guilty?”

“She is guilty,” he answered slowly.” She has been a stupid unwise woman; she has been guilty of many things; she will have to go…in fact, she is going, but she is not guilty of murder.”

He took a step towards me, while I regarded him with horror.

XXIV

I STARED at him in horror, trying to absorb the implications of what he had said.

“But then…it must be you. I knew it as soon as I saw those photographs in the papers. I knew that one of them was the photograph of a murderer.”

A slight smile lifted the corners of his mouth.

“No, miss; no, really. Now you are just being perverse. You don’t believe it yourself, although I’m prepared to think you once did. You are saying it because you begin to suspect the alternative.”

My mind began to check over those alternatives.

“But you are right in one thing,” he announced. “In one of the photographs you studied is the face of the murderer.”

Miss Amy, Mrs Alexander, her husband, Miss Cockrill, the Sergeant—I ran over them all.

“But they are all dead,” I cried—“except for you two.”

He shook his head sadly.

“There is one other face in the pictures. You saw it without noticing it. Now you have forgotten.”

I put my hand to my lips to still their trembling.

“I see you begin to remember. Yes, the child. Mrs Alexander had a child in her arms.”

Our eyes met in unspeakable thoughts. Then I remembered.

“Sergeant, where is the child Betty Buck? Is she with you?”

“With me? You can see she isn’t.”

I told him of my inquisition of the children in the hall, which he answered savagely:

“Of course she is not with me, nor ever has been. The girl was only repeating, to oblige you, the words you put into her mouth. You of all people should have known.”

He turned and ran down the stairs. Seized with his alarm, I ran after him. We ran across the playground, and out into the main road.

Two people, an adult and a small girl, were coming through the narrow iron gateway of the old school opposite. Hand in hand, they turned down the road towards the river. Between us ran a broad, fast-flowing stream of traffic. As they passed us, where we stood helplessly at the kerb, they looked across.

Even at a distance I was frozen by the pale Gorgon stare from Edith’s mad, wild eyes.

XXV

“SHE did not recognise you,” said the Sergeant, hours later, in an attempt to offer me comfort, his blue eyes kind again. “By that time she was beyond recognising anyone; something blew up in her when she understood that her alibi, such as it was, for the time when Miss Amy’s body was moved, had gone. Up till then she had kept a precarious balance, although her hold on sanity weakened daily. I don’t believe that she ever knew anyone again after the moment when she understood how the child, Betty Buck, could destroy her. She didn’t realise, of course, that we knew everything, anyway.”

I nodded.

“Fruit cakes can be left to cook by themselves, but even they suffer if too much neglected, and that batch showed every sign of having had no watchful eye upon them, as I should have realised earlier.”

“It made no difference: from the beginning, the Inspector and I have known the murderer.”

“I can understand that. Poor Edith!”

“You would hardly know her now,” he said, almost sadly.

“Yet you were so unrelenting earlier.”

“I was sick with worry; there is always the danger, when they get to that stage, when all is finished, that they will take anyone with them who is near, and I didn’t want any more deaths. You were a danger to me and yourself, fussing round. And then there was the child.”

“Does she understand what might have happened to her?”

“No idea, fortunately, and never will have, I hope, of how close she was to a nice long bath in the river. Chattering and laughing, quite happy; she’s a tough customer.”

His voice was disapproving.

“How did you know it was Edith you were after?”

He smiled at me kindly.

“In the very obvious way, chasing backward through your records. It wasn’t very hard to trace her past, although she obviously thought the idea would never occur to us. In some ways she was very stupid. We traced her back through her college days to the large orphanage where she had been brought up. The fact that she had changed her name did not impede us.”

‘I suppose if I’d been abandoned to an institution, and known I had an aunt living in comparative comfort, and known the secret of how I could get hold of some money, I would have been as bitter as Edith.”

There, but for the grace of God, go I, I thought.

The Inspector shrugged. He was cynical.

“The institution educated her pretty well. And it was her own father who ushered her in to it, I don’t think Miss Amy knew she was still alive—the old devil let her believe the girl had died while she was in prison. But he kept in touch with the child, found her foster-parents and paid for her until he was killed, when of course she did move to the Orphanage home. He told her about the money somehow before he died. I expect he knew his own daughter well enough to know that it wasn’t a secret she would treat lightly. After all, she was growing up by then.”

“She was older than she looked, of course…Even now I can hardly believe in the whole thing. If I hadn’t seen her face myself…”

The Sergeant looked grave.

“She had a bad record before the murders. There were one or two episodes when she was still at school…bad blood. All this told us where to look. I’ve felt for some time that she was getting to the stage where self-control vanishes. It terrified me.”

“Why did you do nothing?”

“We did quite a lot,” he said reproachfully. “We kept a pretty sharp eye on you all, while we were trying to get our case together. You can’t hang a dog in England for having a bad name, and for a time that’s about all we had to go on.”

“I believe Mrs Mahady knew,” I said thoughtfully.

“One or two knew. Your friend Spicy guessed, and so did Mr Jem Grey…He looks out for himself, that one.”

“I know.”

“May I be told why you did me the honour of thinking me the murderer?”

I flushed.

“Mad of me—I see that now; but we have all been mad the last few weeks, not only poor Edith. You see, I had settled that the murderer was someone who had watched the whole history from the beginning. You knew everyone, you were about the right age (I had no idea Edith was as much older as she was), and then I heard you threatening Mrs Groat.”

“I was telling her which of her lodgers was probably a murderer,” interrupted the Sergeant reproachfully.

“But what really decided me was what I remembered of the time when I was hit on the head.”

I went through my theory of how the perfume had been washed from the tainted garment, and how I had identified this with his coat, without recalling that Edith had also been on the staircase, wearing her new plastic mackintosh.

“I would not have had to hit you on the head, if it had been me coming out of the room,” explained the Sergeant, as if to a child. “What could be more open and respectable than a policeman getting on with his job, which is what it would have looked like? It proved the opposite from what you imagined. She was after the money, of course, she knew there was only about half of what there should be in the box, and she guessed Miss Amy had tucked it away somewhere. Then you helped us to pick up what she had got, before she could clear it away. It was quite a problem for her, you know, wondering where to keep the spoils, and before she had solved it, the cash was in our hands. If she wasn’t mad before, she was after that.”

“She hated Miss Amy, didn’t she? I suppose that’s why she cut off the hair. It was the symbol of her dislike and jealousy for the woman she believed had deprived her of her home and injured her father, whom she adored. Perhaps, after all, her greatest sin was jealousy, and all the rest derived from it.”

So at last he sent me away, home to the house where the news had already arrived. Bella, white and nervous, met me at the door. Mrs Mahady was with her. I could see the flick of Mrs Groat’s curtain at her basement window. She was with us in the spirit.

“There’s one comfort,” said Mrs Mahady grimly. “It won’t come to a trial…unfit to plead, you will find.”

“It makes it easier to bear if one can think of her as mad,” said Bella.

“She was her father’s daughter,” said Mrs Mahady portentously. “She wanted the money and the fun, just as he had done. Perhaps she was not mad until after the first murder: the very act of violence may have driven her over the edge, so that she was impelled to give expression to her hatred of everyone she envied.”

“I don’t believe any of this would have happened,” I said, remembering Edith’s desperate voice, “if she had not met and admired Jem. How I do dislike him! He is to blame for a good deal.”

“Oh my dear, consider; do you think it was chance that brought her here to live, with you as companions to shield and mask her? She knew very well what she was about.”

“I don’t know…it hadn’t occurred to me. I supposed she just saw the rooms and took the opportunity.”

Mrs Groat’s gentle, complaining voice broke in.

“She persuaded me to let the rooms to her…No one had ever lived there before. I used to wonder, afterwards, when I remembered.”

“And yet you never said!”

“Yes, I did, dear: I told you I redecorated the rooms with you in mind.”

Perhaps she had said something of the sort. How like her to have known a good deal, and to have said nothing! No wonder she had been nervous and apprehensive: she was altogether too well informed for her own safety.

Mrs Mahady had more to say.

“I daresay originally she did not intend to do more than find the money, which she knew was hidden somewhere, and go away. All her life she must have planned to get it.”

“All her life? How sad!”

“Don’t pity her too much.”

“It’s not so easy to see what could have made Aunt Amy suspicious of her in the beginning.”

“Her looks, or she may have recognised the old shawl, the only thing Edith had of her mother’s, but which was too valuable for her prudent mind to throw away. Mrs Groat thought she recognised it.”

I nodded, remembering an autumn evening in the garden .

“I suppose that explains the letter and photograph,” said Bella. “You can’t think the suffering that caused me. It was a bait, a trap, I suppose, to see which of us recognised it. And my old fur cap, she wore that, too, when the boy saw her? Yes, I saw the way you looked at it, Victoria. Thought it was me, didn’t you?”

“Not really.”

“And it was Edith whom Leonora saw, that afternoon trying on a hat?” went on Bella, who was pursuing her own thoughts. “I suppose they did have a resemblance to each other, being aunt and niece.”

The omniscient Mrs Mahady nodded.

“Why didn’t Miss Amy talk to Edith and say she had recognised her? Try to help her?”

“I expect she knew her Edith,” answered Mrs Mahady grimly. “And had a pretty good idea of what the girl wanted, and how much gentleness she was likely to encounter in return.”

I sighed. Edith had been my friend.

“And poor Sophy, what did she do? Had she discovered something in the old toy-shop which made her dangerous?”

Mrs Mahady was silent. I thought I could work out why Sophy had died—poor, inquisitive Sophy! Suddenly pity for Edith overwhelmed me.

“Poor Edith!” I said. “It’s odd that we drew a picture of the murderer, or I did anyway, and never realised how like Edith it was. Poor girl! she never had a chance.”

Mrs Mahady was cold.

“She planned and calculated very well; she used you two as tools. You want to be thankful you got off so lightly. She had it in for you two in the end. I could see it in her face.”

“How changed everything is!” I said, a sense of desolation sweeping over me.

“No,” said Mrs Mahady, “no, we haven’t changed: you have. You have seen us with different eyes because you have been altering yourself. At first you liked us all without question, then when you began to question us you were a harsh judge; now you begin to understand that you could not afford to throw stones. That is all, Victoria; we have not changed.”

“David has changed.”

“Has he? Ask yourself if it is really so, and whether it is not that you admit excuses for him.”

Now that we were alone I began to perceive she had more to tell me.

“Are you altogether satisfied about Sophy’s death, Victoria? Do you really believe that Edith killed her? I don’t think the police do, and I know I don’t. She killed the others because of her money, but why should she kill Sophy? Sophy hadn’t seen her there, didn’t connect her with murder; Sophy didn’t threaten Edith. But she threatened someone—someone who took advantage of the whole chain of events to get rid of a bore and a nuisance. Edith would never have left the body near the money she could not move; but David, who did not know of its existence, might have done. He was only too glad to leave Sophy where he had come upon her prowling round—poor silly girl!”

“You are very cruel. I don’t believe you.”

“Someone had to say it to you. You are another Sophy, I tell you, and he has the wit to recognise it; to see that you are eager to help, affectionate, and docile.”

The telephone rang, and I heard Verena’s voice.

“Well, I was right,” she said.

“I can’t think how you knew.”

“I never liked her. An excellent reason, don’t you think?”

“So you are going to be married,” she went on. “What a terrible man.”

“He isn’t so bad,” I replied without conviction. “You used not to be so fussy. Anyway, I have not really made up my mind.”

Verena went on talking, but in the distance I could hear David calling me.

“Goodbye, Verena,” I said. “I must go. I am wanted.”