The Blind Side

Chapter XXIII

The Rushes’ basement room had a fair sized window through the top of which Mrs. Rush could see the railings which guarded the area and the legs and feet of the passers-by. She didn’t complain, but she sometimes felt that it would be pleasant to see a whole person for a change. For one thing, she never knew what sort of hats were being worn, and she took a particular interest in hats. It was no good asking Rush, because the vain adornment of their heads by young females was one of the subjects upon which it was better not to set him off.

Everything in the room was as bright and neat and clean as a new pin. Mrs. Rush wore a white flannelette nightgown, and her bed had a brightly printed coverlet. She had finished her baby socks and was starting a little vest for Ellen’s baby. On the newly distempered wall opposite her bed hung photographic enlargements of her five children, all taken at about the same age, so that a stranger might have been misled into thinking her the mother of quintuplets. There was Stanley who had been killed on the Somme; Ethel, dead thirty years ago come Michaelmas; Ernie that was in Australia and only wrote at Christmas; Daisy-well Daisy didn’t bear thinking about; and Ellen, her youngest and her darling. There they hung, the little boys in sailor suits and the little girls in starched white muslin dresses, and Mrs. Rush looked at them all day long. She had fought the one terrible battle of her married life when Rush wanted to take Daisy’s picture down, and she had fought it to a finish and won. “She hadn’t done nothing wrong when that was took. That’s how I see her, and that’s how I’m a-going to see her, and you can’t get me from it.”

Rush looked surprised and not at all pleased when he saw the Inspector. Mrs. Rush on the other hand was pleasurably excited. It was pain and grief to her to be out of things, and here after all was Inspector Lamb and a pleasanter spoken man you couldn’t hope to find. Asking how long she’d been ill, when most people had forgotten that there had ever been a time when she was up and about. Quite a little colour came into her cheeks as she talked to him. And he noticed the children’s pictures too, and said he was a family man himself. And no manner of good for Rush to stand there grumbling to himself. Right down bad manners, and he needn’t think he wouldn’t hear about it when the Inspector was gone.

“Well now, Mrs. Rush, I just want a word with your husband here, and I hope I’m not disturbing you coming in like this, but to tell you the truth I’m right down sick of that room upstairs, and I thought I’d like to make your acquaintance.”

He crossed to the foot of the bed and turned to Rush.

“There’s a matter that came up just now, and I’d like to know what you’ve got to say about it. I’ve been told that you and Mr. Craddock had words on Tuesday afternoon-something about his papers having been disturbed.”

“Who said so?” said Rush with a growl.

“Someone who heard what passed. Come, sergeant, tell me about it yourself if you don’t want me to take someone else’s story.”

“Albert-” said Mrs. Rush in a pleading voice.

“There’s nothing to tell!” said Rush angrily. “Mr. Ross, he forgot himself. Thirty years I been in this job, and the first time anyone ever said or thought but what I did my duty! Mr. Ross, he forgot himself, and now that he’s dead I’ve no wish to bring it up.”

There was a rough dignity about his squared shoulders and the set of his head. “If he isn’t an innocent man, he’s a very good actor,” thought the Inspector. He said,

“That does you credit. But I’ve got my duty too, you know, and I’ll have to ask you what took place between you.”

Mrs. Rush looked up from her knitting.

“Now don’t you be so disobliging, Father.”

Rush scowled at her. A completely meaningless mannerism as far as she was concerned, it having quite ceased to intimidate her after the first month of their marriage.

“A lot of busybodying going on over this business, it seems to me.” The Inspector was getting the scowl now. “First and last of it was, Mr. Ross called me into his room and said someone had been mucking about with his papers. Then he forgot himself and said it was me-said there was papers missing, and something about blackmail. And I told him he’d forgot himself and I come away.”

“Why should he think it was you? You haven’t got a key to the flat, have you? Why didn’t he suspect Peterson?”

“No, I haven’t got a key-and if I had a hundred I wouldn’t touch his papers. But Sunday Peterson had the day off and I had his key. And seems Mr. Ross forgot his bunch of keys that day-left them lying on his table. He’s uncommon careless with them. And I told him straight I saw them, and I never touched them nor I never touched his papers, and if anyone says so, alive or dead, he’s a liar!”

“Did he threaten you with dismissal?” said the Inspector.

Rush glared at him.

“No, he didn’t.”

“Sure of that?”

“What are you getting at?”

The Inspector was watching him closely.

“When a murder has taken place, anyone who has had a serious quarrel with the murdered man is bound to come under suspicion.”

A deep flush ran up to the roots of Rush’s thick grey hair. He breathed heavily. Then he said,

“You’re suspecting me?”

Mrs. Rush said, “Oh, sir!” She let her knitting fall and clasped her hands. “Oh, sir! Oh, Albert! Oh, sir-he never did! Oh, Albert-you’ve got to tell him now. It’s not right-not if they’re going to think it’s you. And if he’s innocent it won’t hurt him, and if he’s done it it’s not for us to stand in the way of the law-”

“Here,” said Rush, “you’re upsetting her-that’s what you’re doing. And I won’t have it! Come into the kitchen!”

Mrs. Rush began to tremble very much.

“Not a step!” she said. “Albert, you come right over here and let me get a hold of you!”

“All right, all right-nothing to put yourself about like that, my girl.”

She leaned back against her pillows.

“Give him the case, Albert,” she said.

“Have it your own way,” said Rush.

He opened a drawer, took out a silver cigarette-case, and landed it to the Inspector.

“I was going to give it back to him on the quiet,” he said. “Found it laying by the side of the stairs Wednesday morning when I come to do the hall. Didn’t think anything about it at first, no more than what he’d dropped it, and I put it away to give it back to him or to Miss Mavis.”

The Inspector looked at the case-an ordinary engine-turned affair with a medallion for initials. The initials were R. F. He pressed the catch and the case fell open on his palm. There were cigarettes on one side, but on the other side there was a photograph of Miss Mavis Grey.

The Inspector pursed his lips as if he were going to whistle. Then he said,

“And who were you going to give it back to?”

The porter and his wife spoke together. Rush said, “Mr. Bobby Foster,” and Mrs. Rush said, “Miss Mavis’s young man.”