Latter End

CHAPTER 31

As Minnie Mercer seated herself in the chair recently occupied by Gladys Marsh, it is probable that each of the other three people present was visited by a sense of contrast. Miss Mercer not only looked ill and strained, but she had an appearance of fragility which rather alarmed the Chief Inspector. Her eyes had a haunting look of distress. She folded her hands in her lap and leaned against the high back of the chair.

Lamb was leaning back too, his pose easy, his manner quiet. He had obviously no desire to alarm Miss Mercer. “Just a few questions,” was what he had said as she came into the room. He waited now until she was settled, and then said,

“You’ve been a long time at Latter End?”

There was an almost inaudible “Yes.”

“Twenty-five years?”

“Yes.”

“Never thought of leaving?”

A still more inaudible “No.”

“But you are leaving now-or shall we say you were leaving at the time of Mrs. Latter’s death?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Her hands took hold of one another.

“Mrs. Latter was making other arrangements.”

“She gave you notice.”

There may have been a purpose behind the bluntness of his speech. It brought a faint colour to her cheeks. There was a gentle dignity in her manner as she answered him.

“It was not quite like that. Mrs. Street and I had been doing the housework between us, owing to the difficulty of getting any staff. It was a temporary arrangement. Mrs. Latter-” her voice caught on the name-“Mrs. Latter had succeeded in finding a butler and two maids.”

He looked at her shrewdly.

“You haven’t answered my question, have you? Let me put it another way. Did Mrs. Latter ask you to leave, or did the suggestion come from you?”

The faint flush was gone. It is always rather horrifying to see a fair skin quite drained of colour. She opened her lips to speak, and shut them again.

“Well, Miss Mercer?”

Her lips parted. This time she had found words.

“My work here was over.”

Lamb said, “Yes-I suppose so. Now, to go back a little- what was your position here before Mr. Latter’s marriage?”

“It is rather difficult to say. I looked after the house. I- until Mrs. Street married and Miss Vane went away to do war work-I-there were two young girls in the house- they needed someone after their mother died-”

“You took Mrs. Vane’s place?”

She said, with warmth in her voice for the first time,

“No one could do that. I did what I could.”

“Would you say that you were on the same footing as a relation would have been, running the house, looking after the two girls?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“But you received a salary?”

Colour in her face again, quickly come, and very quickly gone.

“Yes.”

“Have you any private means?”

“No.”

“Have you another post in view?”

She shook her head.

“What salary did you receive?”

“Sixty pounds-since Mrs. Vane’s death.”

A brief glance from Frank Abbott met his Chief’s. Sixty pounds a year-to cover those wartime years when wages and salaries had soared!

Lamb said bluntly,

“That’s very low. You didn’t think of asking for a rise?”

“Oh, no!”

If anyone had had the leisure to look in Miss Silver’s direction, it would have been observed that she was frowning, and that her lips were pressed together in a manner which suggested distaste. She was, in fact, exercising a considerable degree of restraint upon herself. She had a good deal of respect for the Chief Inspector, but sometimes he lacked the finer shades. Miss Mercer was a gentlewoman. This was no way to speak to a gentlewoman. Like David in the Psalms, she held her tongue, but it was pain and grief to her.

Lamb, unconscious, pursued his enquiry.

“Then I take it you haven’t saved very much?”

“No.”

“You didn’t expect to have to make a change?”

She said in a gentle, tired voice,

“One doesn’t expect changes-but they come.”

Lamb nodded.

“And that brings us back to where we started. I want to know who suggested this particular change. Was it Mrs. Latter, or was it you?”

“It was Mrs. Latter. I was expecting it.”

“I see. But Mr. Latter was under the impression that it was you who wished to make a change. Who told him that? Was it Mrs. Latter?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t undeceive him?”

She shook her head.

“He was distressed at your going-he asked you to stay? You let him think you wanted to go? Why?”

She said very gently,

“It was the best way. I couldn’t stay if she wanted me to go. I didn’t want there to be any trouble over me.”

“I see-you didn’t want to be the cause of a quarrel. Is that it? Did they often quarrel?”

“Oh, no.”

“But you thought they might quarrel about this?”

“I didn’t want to make any trouble.”

He leaned forward.

“Miss Mercer, you know what happened on Monday night-with that girl Gladys Marsh in the house, there’s no one who doesn’t. You know Mrs. Latter went into Mr. Antony Latter’s room, and her husband found her there. I’d like to know when you heard about that, and who told you.”

The knuckles stood out bone-white on her clasped hands. She leaned forward too.

“Mr. Latter told me. I heard people moving about, and I looked out of my room. I saw him come back. I thought something had happened. He turned, and saw me looking out. He told me what had happened.”

“How did he seem?”

She said, “Dazed-” Her voice ceased. After a moment she went on again. “I got him to go into his room, and I went down and made him some tea. I took it in to him and got him to take it.” She looked at him with an earnest, direct gaze. “He wasn’t angry-he was just-heartbroken.”

“How long did you stay?”

“Not very long. I hoped he would go to sleep.”

“Well now, that brings us to Tuesday. Did you have any more conversation with him on the Tuesday?”

“He was out nearly all day.”

“But he came home in the evening. Did you have any talk with him then-at about seven o’clock in the evening, when he came to your room and asked you to give him something to make him sleep?”

Her eyes widened. After a moment she said,

“I gave him some aspirin-two tablets. He hadn’t slept.”

“Yes, we know about that. He came to your room about seven, didn’t he? Will you tell us just what passed between you?”

Into those wide eyes there came a look of remembered pain. She had to force her voice. Even then it made very little sound.

“He came in-he had been out all day. He was a good deal-distressed. He wanted something to make him sleep.”

“Yes?”

“I have-that is, I had-a small medicine-cupboard in my room-the Inspector took it away-”

“Yes, that’s all right.”

“Everyone comes to me if they want anything. That’s why Mr. Latter came. I gave him two aspirins.”

Lamb said,

“That wasn’t quite all that happened, was it?” He looked round at Frank Abbott. “Could you run through Mrs. Marsh’s evidence from your shorthand notes?”

“Yes, sir.”

Minnie Mercer took a faint gasping breath.

Frank Abbott began to read in an agreeable expressionless voice. She listened because she had to listen. There was no way of stopping her ears. She had to know that what she and Jimmy had said had been overheard, and by Gladys Marsh. There was no way in which she could close her mind or shelter Jimmy. It was like being stripped naked. The room filled with a light wavering mist. Sergeant Abbott’s voice seemed to come from a long way off. Then it stopped.

The Chief Inspector said, “Is that a correct account of what took place between you and Mr. Latter?”

“I think so-”

Until she heard the words she wasn’t sure that she had spoken.

“It is substantially correct? He went to the cupboard and took out a bottle of morphia tablets, and you said, ‘Oh, no- that’s morphia! You mustn’t have that-it’s dangerous’?”

“Yes.”

“And he said, ‘As long as I sleep, I don’t care if I never wake up again’?”

“Yes.”

“Now, Miss Mercer-what did you do with that bottle?”

“I put it back in the cupboard.”

“Was it in its right place when Mr. Latter took it out?”

“He turned round from the cupboard with the bottle in his hand.”

“Mrs. Marsh says you said something about the bottle not being in its right place.”

She looked blankly at him for a moment. Then,

“I don’t remember what I said. I think he took it from the front of the shelf. It oughtn’t to have been there.”

“How did you come by it?”

“My father had it-he was a doctor. When I came here I brought the medicine-cupboard with me. The bottle of morphia tablets was in it.”

“You knew that they were strong enough to be dangerous?”

“Yes.”

“Yet you kept them in an unlocked cupboard where anyone could lay hands on them?”

She said, “No. I kept it locked.”

“It wasn’t locked when Mr. Latter went to it?”

“No. I’d been getting some cold cream out for Mrs. Street.”

“But as a rule you kept that cupboard locked?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Where did you keep the key?”

“It was on my bunch.”

“And where did you keep your bunch?”

“Inside my handkerchief case, in the dressing-table drawer.”

Lamb grunted.

“And I suppose everyone in the house knew where you kept it.”

She said in quite a firm voice,

“There is no one in the house who would go to my drawer and take my keys.”

“Well, we don’t know about that. And you don’t know where the morphia bottle was when Mr. Latter found it. But I suppose you know where it ought to have been.”

“Yes. There’s a cardboard box at the back of the shelf. It should have been inside the box.”

“Sure about that?”

“Oh, yes, quite sure.”

“Is that where you put it when you returned it to the cupboard?”

“No-not then.”

“Will you explain that?”

She hesitated, but not painfully. It was more as if she was uncertain.

“I think-I wanted to give Mr. Latter-something quickly. I thought I would look at the bottle afterwards when he was gone. I left it on the front of the shelf.”

“Why did you want to look at it?”

“I thought-I had an idea-” She stopped.

“Go on.”

She gave him a wide, piteous look.

“I can’t be sure about it.”

“You mean you had an impression, but you were not sure that it was correct. Is that it?”

She relaxed and said, “Yes.”

“Well, suppose you tell us about this impression. What was it?”

“I thought the bottle wasn’t full enough.”

Lamb pursed up his lips as if he were going to whistle.

“Thought it wasn’t full enough? How could you tell?”

She said, “I did look afterwards-and I can’t be sure. I’ve never used any of those tablets since my father died. With anything like that-anything that was dangerous-he wrote the number of tablets in the bottle on a strip of paper pasted down the back. Every time he took a tablet out he crossed the old number out and wrote a new one, so he always knew just how many tablets there were left in the bottle. I was going to count the tablets and see whether they were right, but when I came to look for the number on the strip of paper it was too smudged to read.”

“What did you do with the bottle after that?”

“I put it back in the cardboard box.”

“Did you lock the cupboard and put away your keys?”

“Yes, I did.”

He leaned forward.

“Miss Mercer-could Mr. Latter have removed any of those tablets without your seeing him?”

She was as startled as if he had struck her. It wasn’t only her voice that said “No!”, it was her whole body.

“No-no! Oh, no!” And then, “There wasn’t time. He went to the cupboard and I followed him. I saw his hand come back from the shelf with the bottle in it. Oh, no-there wasn’t any time at all!”

He let her go.

When the door had shut behind her he said,

“I wonder whether she thought that up for herself, or whether Mr. Jimmy Latter put it into her head.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“You refer, I suppose, to Miss Mercer’s implication that some of the tablets might already have been removed when she and Mr. Latter handled the bottle on Tuesday evening?”

Lamb gave a short laugh.

“You might call it an implication, and I might call it a try-on. I don’t know that I do, but I might. Whichever way you look at it, it’s clever. What I’d like to know is, who is being clever? You wouldn’t think to look at them that either Mr. Latter or Miss Mercer were what you’d call sharp enough to cut themselves or anyone else. Of course it’s easy to see she’d do anything she could to get him off-that’s as plain as a pikestaff. I only wish a few other things were half so plain. But unless she’s a lot deeper than she looks she wouldn’t have thought up that line about some of those tablets being missing. It’s clever, and she put it over cleverly too-didn’t overdo it. You know, I’ve had an idea all along that there was a clever brain behind all this. If Miss Mercer didn’t think that up for herself, I’d like to know who did.”

Miss Silver coughed in a deprecating manner.

“You would not be inclined to consider the possibility that she may have been telling the truth, Chief Inspector?”