Miss Silver Comes To Stay

CHAPTER 23

Randal March looked up from the typewritten sheets which he had just been reading. He went through them without comment until he came to the end. When he let the last page fall Superintendent Drake said,

“Well, sir, there you have it. There’s no denying there’s quite a serious case against Miss Cray.”

March smiled.

“My dear man, it’s absurd. I’ve known Miss Cray since she was a child. She is quite incapable of hitting anyone over the head with a poker.”

Drake stiffened. So that was going to be the way of it. Class-consciousness rose in him, bitter as brine. He had known her since she was a child-so she couldn’t do murder! All these people hung together! His thin nose had a pinched look as he said,

“That’s what somebody always says until it’s proved. A murderer is just like anyone else until you get him on the end of a rope.”

Randal March had the pleasant, even temper which goes with a good physique, good health, and a good conscience, but at this moment a jag of pure rage went through him. It surprised him a good deal. He found it uncomfortably revealing. He was, fortunately, able to control any outward manifestation and merely repeat his former assertion.

“Miss Cray is quite incapable of murdering anyone.”

That pinched look extended to the rest of Drake’s features. One might have said a hungry fox.

“What we have to look at is the evidence, sir. If you will just cast your eye over those statements again you will see that Miss Cray has quite a strong motive. She was engaged to this Mr. Lessiter a matter of twenty years ago or more. She says she broke off the engagement herself, but she declines to say why, and the local opinion is that he treated her badly. I don’t say there’s actual evidence that she bore him any grudge, but she might have done. On the top of that he comes back here twenty years later full of money. Then we come to the events of last night. Mr. Carr Robertson refuses to make any statement. That, to my mind, is a very suspicious circumstance. I wouldn’t think so much of it if he was older. It’s more natural for a middle-aged person to be cautious, but it isn’t natural for a young man of twenty-eight. It’s highly suspicious. He knows something, and he’s afraid it’s going to look bad, either for himself or for Miss Cray, so he’s holding his tongue. But look at Miss Bell’s statement. She makes it perfectly clear that Mr. Robertson went banging out of the house because he had just seen a photo of Mr. Lessiter in a picture-paper with the name underneath. I find they had never met or seen each other, but the minute Mr. Robertson sees this photo with the name under it he recognizes it and rushes off out. Now the local talk is that Mr. Robertson’s wife ran off to France while Mr. Robertson was in Germany. Nobody knew who it was she’d run off with. Then Mr. Robertson is demobbed and comes home. Presently his wife turns up ill. The man she went away with has left her flat. Mr. Robertson takes her in and nurses her, and she dies-a matter of two years ago. The talk is he’s set himself to find out who was responsible. Mrs. Fallow that works for Miss Cray, she’s got some story about a photo-says she heard Mr. Robertson tell his aunt he’d know the man if he saw him because Marjory-that’s his wife-had a photo. Well, that’s just local talk, but it fits in. Now come back to Miss Bell’s statement and you’ll see that no sooner has Mr. Robertson gone out by the front than Miss Cray goes out by the back. She picks up the first coat she comes to-it happens to be her nephew’s-and she goes off up to Melling House, where Mrs. Mayhew hears Mr. Lesiter tell her about the will he made when they were engaged-‘Everything to Henrietta Cray,’ etc. And she hears him say, ‘If young Carr was to murder me tonight, you’d come in for quite a tidy fortune.’ ” Drake paused, pleased with what he felt to be an efficient and convincing exposition.

Randal March said, “Well?”

“Well, sir, does that leave any doubt in your mind that Miss Cray’s reason for hurrying up to Melling House was to warn Mr. Lessiter that he might apprehend some act of violence on the part of Mr. Carr Robertson?”

Randal March smiled a little more pleasantly.

“If she took the trouble to go and warn him, then she didn’t murder him. You’re trying to have it both ways, Drake. I’m afraid you can’t do that.”

Drake’s eyes narrowed between the red lashes.

“Wait a minute, sir-I don’t think you’ve got the point. When she came up to warn him she didn’t know about that will. They say he’s worth the best part of half a million. You might come up to warn a man, and change your mind about it if it was going to mean half a million in your pocket.”

Randal March had himself very well in hand. He maintained the exact shade of attention due to an efficient subordinate with whose conclusions it is impossible to agree. He had the air of giving due weight to the supposition that a hypothetical half million might have inspired Rietta Cray to hammer out a man’s brains with a poker. Attention having been given to this theory, he shook his head.

“Not in character, I’m afraid.”

Superintendent Drake pursued the theme.

“There’s evidence which is going to take a lot of explaining away, if you don’t mind my saying so. After refusing to explain why she was in such a hurry, Miss Cray says in her statement that she picked up the first coat she came to-they hang in the passage, and she went out by the back door. The coat she did take was an old one of Mr. Robertson’s. It has a plaid lining with a yellow stripe in it. Mrs. Mayhew’s statement refers to this. When she went back to the study the second time and opened the door this coat was hanging over a chair. A bit of the lining showed, and she describes it. One of the sleeves was hanging down, and she says the cuff was all over blood. Miss Cray explains this by saying she scratched her wrist coming up through the wood. But mark this, sir-all the right side of that coat had been sponged down. It was hanging in among the others in the passage, and all one side of it still wet. I sent it right away to see what a test could make of it, and this is what I’ve got. I was on the phone to them, the last thing before coming out, and they say there are traces of human blood over the whole damp area. The right cuff must have been fairly drenched-there’s quite a lot left along the stitched seam and where the lining is doubled over. There’s no doubt at all that the staining was very extensive, and a great deal more than could be accounted for by a surface scratch. Miss Cray showed me her wrist, and the scratch theory just won’t wash.”

March turned over the sheets in front of him and picked one up.

Drake went on speaking.

“The only thing that would account for the condition of the coat is that it was worn by the murderer.”

March looked up from the sheet he was holding.

“Mrs. Mayhew particularly says in her statement that she heard no sound in the room on this second occasion. That would point to Miss Cray having left. There is no proof that she was wearing the coat when it became so deeply stained. If she scratched her wrist as she says, there might have been enough superficial staining to attract Mrs. Mayhew’s attention. And the murderer’s. Somebody else’s coat with somebody else’s blood on it would be a bit of luck, not to be counted on, but certainly not to be overlooked.”

“You are putting forward the theory that Miss Cray went home without her coat-it was a very cold night-and that someone else put it on to murder Mr. Lessiter. If that is so, how do you account for the fact that the coat was hanging up in her hall and had been washed? There is, of course, just one thing that would account for it-I’ve thought of that myself. If Mr. Carr Robertson came up to Melling House after Miss Cray had left he could have slipped on the coat-it was an old one of his own, you remember-and when he had done the murder he would only have to walk back to the cottage and make the best job he could of cleaning up the mess he had got it into. There’s no doubt where that job was done. There’s a little wash-place at the end of the passage. We found a smear on the underside of the basin, and a couple of splashes of blood on the floor-there’s a dark linoleum and they didn’t show. The coat must have been reeking wet when it was taken in there. I suppose they thought they had cleaned up, but there’s usually something gets overlooked.”

Randal March sat appalled. This was evidence which couldn’t be dismissed with a shake of the head. Not evidence against Rietta-there reason continued to block the way-but the possibility of a strong case against Carr Robertson. If last night he had really identified James Lessiter with the seducer of his wife, it might prove to be a damnably strong case.

And Carr wasn’t making any statement.