Miss Silver Comes To Stay

CHAPTER 16

Mr. Stokes started his milk round at seven in the morning. He reached Melling House at twenty past, and found what he afterwards described as a very horrid state of things. The back door stood open. Nothing unusual about that. All in the day’s work that he should take the milk through to the kitchen and say “I don’t mind if I do” when Mrs. Mayhew offered him a cup of tea. But this morning there wasn’t any tea-only Mrs. Mayhew sitting up straight in a kitchen chair with her hands gripping the seat on either side. Looked as if she was afraid she’d fall off if she was to let go. She sat up straight, and looked at Mr. Stokes, but he wouldn’t like to say she saw him-face all white like wet curds, and her eyes set in her head. Mr. Stokes didn’t know when he’d had such a turn.

“Why, Mrs. Mayhew-what’s up?” he said, and didn’t get a word or anything except that stare. He put down the milk on the dresser and looked round for Mayhew, because for certain sure there was something wrong, and he couldn’t go away and leave her like that.

He went across the kitchen to the door on the far side and opened it. There was a darkish bit of passage, and the door of the butler’s pantry standing wide. He could see Mayhew’s shoulder and right arm, and his hand holding the telephone receiver. The hand shook, the arm and shoulder shook. When his head came into the picture it shook too-not as if Mayhew was shaking it, but as if the whole of him was quivering like one of his wife’s jellies. His teeth chattered. Mr. Stokes was of the opinion that nobody couldn’t make head nor tail of what he was trying to say. He was probably right, because it became obvious that he was being adjured to speak up, and to speak distinctly. He said, “I’ll try,” and shook all over again and said, “It’s the shock-I found him-he’s a dreadful sight-oh dear!”

Mr. Stokes had a well founded local reputation as a nosy parker. He could contain himself no longer. It was obvious to the meanest intelligence that Something had Happened. Mr. Stokes did not think at all meanly of his intelligence. It immediately suggested that the Something, if not Murder, was at the very least of it Sudden Death. In a friendly and sociable manner he came up to the shaking Mr. Mayhew and laid an arm across his shoulders.

“What’s up, chum? Who are you talking to-the police? Here, have a drink of water and see what that’ll do.”

Having filled a cup at the tap, he removed the receiver from Mr. Mayhew’s nerveless hand, pressed it to his own ear, and stooped to the mouthpiece.

“ ’Ullo! This is Stokes speaking-milk roundsman. Are you police?”

The sort of voice which suggests a large policeman said it was. It also asked what Mr. Stokes was doing on the line.

“Just happened to come in with the milk, and seeing Mr. Mayhew wasn’t in shape for what you might call making a statement, I’ve given him a drink of water and told him I’ll hold the line. Lenton police station, is it?”

The voice said it was. It also said it wanted Mayhew back on the line.

“Easy does it,” said Mr. Stokes. “Bit of dirty work been going on, if you ask me-Mrs. Mayhew next door to a faint in the kitchen, and this pore chap looking as if someone had got him up to be shot at dawn. He’s spilling half the water I give him instead of getting it down. Here, hold on a jiff and I’ll see if I can get out of him what it’s all about.”

Constable Whitcombe waited impatiently. A number of disconnected and extremely irritating sounds reached him. There was some gasping, some choking, and, superimposed on these, an impression of Mr. Stokes administering a mixture of soothing syrup and encouragement. Then, very distinct and sharp, Mr. Stokes saying, “Gosh!” and then a pause which went on for so long that Constable Whitcombe flashed the exchange and wanted to know why he had been cut off. Exchange said he hadn’t, and was rather crisp about it. After that there were one or two gasps, and then the sound of running feet. Mr. Stokes was back on the line, his voice risen in key and all detachment gone.

“It’s Mr. Lessiter,” he said-“murdered-in his own study! Bin hit over the head with the poker something crool! That’s what Mr. Mayhew was trying to tell you, only he couldn’t get it out, and no wonder. It fair turned me up! I’ve just been along to have a look… No, of course I haven’t touched anything! What d’you take me for? Children five year old know enough not to disturb nothing on the scene of the crime… No, I didn’t touch the door, and didn’t need to. Standing wide open it was, the way Mr. Mayhew left it after he looked in and seen the horrid sight. Couldn’t get back to his pantry fast enough, and I don’t blame him. And if you ask me, the sooner you get someone out here the better… All right, all right, all right, I didn’t say you did! No need to take me up like that-I’m only trying to be helpful.”

Everyone got their milk very late that morning. There was not only the delay caused by the interlude at Melling House, but it was obviously impossible for Mr. Stokes to call anywhere else without making the most of the dramatic fact that he had practically been on the spot when the murder was discovered. By the time he reached Mrs. Voycey’s on the other side of the Green he was not only word-perfect, but he was also in a position to retail some first-hand observations on the manner in which the news had been received.

“Mrs. Welby, she put her head out of the window to ask for another half pint, and when I told her, she must have sat down sudden, because there she was one minute and there she wasn’t the next, so I thought maybe she’d gone off in a faint with the shock. I called up to the window and asked if she was all right, and she looks out again as white as death and says, ‘Are you sure?’ And when I told her I seen him with my own eyes she says, ‘Oh, my God-what a horrible thing!’ ”

Variants of this remark seem to have been made at every house. To his own regret, and to that of all his listeners, he had no knowledge of how the White Cottage had reacted, since he had most unfortunately delivered the milk at Miss Rietta Cray’s before going up to Melling House.

Cecilia Voycey’s stout, elderly housekeeper listened with the same amiable interest which she had accorded during the past year to the birth of twins in the Stokes family and the decease of an uncle of Mrs. Stokes who had married for the fourth time in his eighty-ninth year and left his house and a nice little sum in the bank to the designing widow. “Yellow hair, and makes out she’s under thirty!” had been Mr. Stokes’s embittered conclusion. Upon all these items of news Mrs. Crook had had the same comment to make-a slow “Fancy that!” followed by “Who’d ha thought it!” The murder of James Lessiter provoked her to no higher flights, but having absorbed all that Mr. Stokes could tell her and shut the back door after him, she went through into the dining-room where Mrs. Voycey and Miss Silver were partaking of breakfast. With slow and lumbering accuracy she repeated her garnered news.

“Mr. Stokes, he waited till the police came. He don’t know if there’s anything missing, but the grate was fair choked with burned paper, and the poor gentleman sitting there with his head smashed in, and the poker on the hearthrug. Mr. Stokes was able to leave us two pints this morning, but he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to keep it up.”

Miss Silver said, “Dear me!”

Mrs. Voycey waved away the milk.

“Good gracious, Bessie-don’t talk about food! Have the police got any clue?”

“Not that they told Mr. Stokes. There was a Constable, and an Inspector, and a Superintendent, taking photographs and fingerprints and all sorts when he come away. He did say it looked like someone had tried to burn the poor gentleman’s will. All scorched down one side it was.”

“His will!” exclaimed Mrs. Voycey in what was almost a scream.

Mrs. Crook gazed at her in a ruminative manner and said placidly,

“They do say that everything was left to Miss Rietta Cray.”