LUCIUS BELLINGDON was quite a personage. Even in a crowd he was liable to be remarked. In Miss Silver’s Victorian sitting-room his big frame and massive features, the jutting chin of the photograph, and an eye decidedly competent to threaten and command, might have been considered overpowering. Miss Silver was interested, but she was not overpowered. She remembered fantastic stories about Mr. Bellingdon’s rise to fame and fortune, she remembered that she had listened to them with scepticism. Now, in his presence, she found them less difficult to entertain. He occupied the largest of her walnut chairs, and occupied it as if it were his own. He wore a town suit, but he looked like a man who spent a good deal of time in the open air. His dark skin had a healthy tan and his eyes were bright. He might easily have been credited with ten years less than the fifty-two which the reference-books accorded him. He leaned forward with a hand on his knee, a strong hand admirably kept, and said in a voice not loud but full of resonance,
“Now do you mind just repeating what Miss Paine told you she-well, I don’t know how to put it, but I suppose I had better say-read. I take it you are convinced that she definitely could and did read what was being said from the motion of the lips. It is a point upon which I have felt some doubt.”
Miss Silver was knitting. The needles moved rhythmically above the pale blue wool in her lap. She said,
“I met her first in a crowded drawing-room. I had talked to her for half an hour without experiencing any difficulty before someone informed me that she was completely deaf. When she came to see me here it was just the same. She did not appear to be at a loss for a moment.”
“The police say they have made enquiries and there seems to be no doubt that she really was deaf, and that she had acquired great proficiency in this lip-reading. So I suppose I must accept the fact that she could see what a man was saying thirty or forty feet away?”
Miss Silver inclined her head.
“Yes, I think you must accept that, Mr. Bellingdon. In any art the performance of an expert must seem surprising.”
Lucius Bellingdon laughed.
“You used to teach, didn’t you? When you said that, I felt as if I were back at school again.”
She gave him the warm smile which had so often won her both confidences and hearts, and said,
“Everything seems difficult until you know how to do it, does it not?”
He nodded.
“True enough. Well now, we’ll take it that Miss Paulina Paine really sat in the Masters galleries and watched two men on a seat about thirty-five feet away. One came in after the other, looked at some of the pictures, and then sat down. After a bit he turned his head and spoke. Now this is where you take over. I want you to repeat what Miss Paine told you she had read from his lips, word for word just as she said it.”
Miss Silver rested her hands upon the cloud of blue wool in her lap. In her mind she reverted to the picture of Paulina Paine sitting just there across the hearth from her and speaking. Her own features took on a listening look as she repeated what had come to her in those short jerky sentences.
“These were her words, Mr. Bellingdon- ‘It’s for tomorrow. The secretary leaves the bank with it at twelve noon. Nothing can be done whilst he is on the main road, but as soon as he turns into the lane, that will be the time. It should be quite easy. When I’ve got the stuff I meet you as arranged, and there we are.’ She said he stopped there, and the other man said something. She could see the muscle moving in his cheek, but she couldn’t see his lips. When he stopped, the first one said, ‘I’m not taking any chances of being recognized, and that’s final. Give me a clear stretch of the lane, and no one on it to turn his head at a shot, and leave the rest to me.’ The other man spoke again, and the first one said, ‘I tell you I won’t touch it on any other terms. This way it’s a certainty.’ The other man put up his hand with a catalogue in it and said something, and the first one said, ‘Then there will be two of them for it, that’s all!’ and he laughed and got up and went over to look at one of the pictures.”
Lucius Bellingdon had a retentive memory. Scotland Yard had furnished him with a copy of Miss Silver’s account of her interview with Paulina Paine. He remembered it perfectly. He had just listened to a repetition of this account from her own lips. To the best of his belief and recollection it had not varied by so much as a single word. He said,
“The second man-the one who was turned away from Miss Paine-she didn’t get what he said. If you had to make a guess at filling in those gaps when he was speaking, what sort of guess would you make?”
She was knitting again easily and fast, her eyes not on the work but on his face.
“I suppose that on the occasion when the first man had spoken of a shot we may presume the other to have made some protest or objection. This would fit in with the first one’s reply that he would not touch the affair on any other terms, but that this way it was a certainty.”
“He said certainty-not cert?”
“The Chief Inspector raised that point. I agree that it is an important one and might afford a possible clue to the man’s identity. I can only say that the word as repeated by Miss Paine was certainty.”
Bellingdon nodded.
“And the other gap-how would you fill that? The one which the first man came in on with his ‘Then there will be two of them for it, that’s all!’ What do you make of that?”
Miss Silver said soberly,
“I think there can be no doubt that the other man had raised the question as to what was to be done should there be a second person in the car. It is, I think, the only explanation which would fit in with the callous response. Had there been such a second person, there would no doubt have been a second murder.”
“Not much doubt about that, I should say. Now about this poor woman. Did she run into an accident, or was she murdered too? Just go over all that about her thinking she might have been followed, will you? They showed me your statement at the Yard, but what a thing looks like in cold black and white, and what it sounds like when you hear it, are two different things. Which is why I wanted to see you for myself.”
Miss Silver said,
“I can repeat Miss Paine’s words, and I can undertake to be accurate in repeating them. What I cannot do is to reproduce her voice, her manner, her expression. I can only endeavour to convey the impression that they left on me.”
Lucius Bellingdon was becoming increasingly aware of the impression that Miss Silver herself was making. Scrupulous accuracy, a temperate judgment, considerable powers of observation-of these she was giving him proof. But above and beyond these qualities he was aware of a poised and keen intelligence. It was a thing which he respected above everything else, and he had seldom been more instantly aware of it.
He said, “Just give me as much as you can,” and listened attentively to the repetition of Paulina Paine’s story about a taxi which had waited just beyond the Square and been lost sight of in the traffic.
“She was sufficiently alarmed to go back into the house and take a taxi herself instead of walking as she had intended. She left no doubt in my mind that her experience in the gallery had been a very severe shock. She undoubtedly believed that she had become cognizant of a plot which involved robbery and murder, and the fact that one of the persons concerned in this plot had subsequently become aware of her deafness and her proficiency in lip-reading could not fail to intensify that shock. She began to fear that she might be traced and followed. Such a course would have been perfectly possible if this man had really believed her to be in possession of the highly incriminating remarks which he had made in the gallery. Do you suppose he would have hesitated over silencing her or lost any time in doing so?”
“I don’t suppose he would.”
Miss Silver continued to knit and to speak.
“When Miss Paine came to see me she was a badly shaken woman, but she was, I believe, of a very courageous and resolute disposition and she possessed a strong vein of common sense. As soon as she had relieved her mind by telling me of her experience she returned to her normal condition. She was able to dismiss the fear that she might have been followed, and to consider the impulse which had brought her to me as a trick of the nerves. She would not allow me to send for a taxi, and I am sure that when she left this room she had no idea of the possibility that her life might be in danger.”
“And you think it was?”
She gave him a very direct look.
“What do you think yourself, Mr. Bellingdon?”
He lifted a hand and let it fall again.
“No proof-probably never will be. One has one’s own ideas-” Then, with a change of manner, “And now to business.”
She was loosening some strands of the pale blue wool. Her “Yes?” held a question.
With the change in his manner there had come also a change of position. He sat up straight and said,
“I am informed that you undertake private enquiries, and that you are extremely efficient and discreet. Chief Inspector Lamb tells me that you have often been of considerable help to the police.”
He received an impression that the distance between them had somehow been increased. She gave a slight formal cough and said,
“The Chief Inspector is very kind.”
In the midst of his serious preoccupation Bellingdon experienced a twinge of amusement. He had not got where he was without certain powers of discernment. He was aware that he had been tactless, and that the Chief Inspector was considered to have presumed. He allowed his voice to become a little warmer than it would have been over an ordinary business deal.
“I should think myself very fortunate if I could persuade you to give me your professional help in this matter. You see, there are aspects to which I do not really wish to invite the attention of the police. There are, in fact, points which they couldn’t possibly handle.”
Miss Silver said primly, “I could not undertake to keep anything from the police in a case of so much gravity.”
“Quite so. Perhaps you will let me explain what is in my mind. I think you are too acute an observer not to have been struck by the stress which the murderer placed upon the danger of his being recognized. He said he wasn’t taking any chances of it, and he was prepared to do murder rather than run any risk in that direction. Well, nobody wants to be recognized when he is committing an armed robbery, but a turned-up collar and a turned-down hat with a muffler over the lower part of the fact would mess up any casual description. Now did Miss Paine describe him to you?”
“She did. But I am afraid there is not very much to be made of the description. She was a plain, downright person, and her mind was taken up with the shock she had received and the knowledge which she believed herself to have acquired. In these circumstances, her description did not go beyond the fact that the man wore a drab raincoat, that he was somewhere about thirty, and that he was of average height and complexion. The caretaker at the gallery does not seem able to add anything to this, though he appears to have had some conversation with him-and, significantly enough, upon the subject of Miss Paine’s portrait, which I understand you have purchased. He recognized it, and most unfortunately the caretaker mentioned both her deafness and her proficiency in lip-reading.”
“He recognized Miss Paine?”
“As the woman who had been looking in his direction when he made what he must have remembered as some highly compromising remarks. They could not have been overheard at the distance, but Miss Paine’s lip-reading must have suggested a dangerous possibility. We do not know, and can only surmise, the lengths to which such a conclusion might have carried him. Inspector Abbott did go round to the gallery to see whether anything could be added to Miss Paine’s description of the man she had watched.”
Bellingdon said,
“Yes, I believe he did. As a matter of fact, I went round myself. Pegler is a nice old boy. I had met him, and I thought I’d like a word or two with him direct. He remembers seeing two men on the seat, and he didn’t think they had anything to do with one another-says they came separately and left separately. That is all he does seem to have noticed about the one in the dark raincoat, but he remembers the other one stopping and talking about Miss Paine’s portrait. By the way, Pegler says she came back afterwards and he told her how interested this man had been about her picture and her being deaf, and the lip-reading. And he said she looked as if he had said something that upset her, and he hoped she didn’t think he had taken a liberty.”
Miss Silver said, “She had reason to be upset.”
Bellingdon nodded.
“Well, to get back to this man and his description. I don’t think Pegler is any help. He said he was quite a pleasant gentleman- and that was about all there was to it. Height? ‘A bit taller than me, sir. At least that is what I should say.’ Fair or dark? ‘Nothing that you would notice either way.’ Colour of his eyes? ‘Well, I couldn’t really say, sir.’ And when you put all that together you’ve got something that would fit any man that wasn’t extra tall or extra short, or that hadn’t got red hair, or a beard, or a moustache, or something that stuck out so that you couldn’t miss it.”
Miss Silver agreed. Bellingdon went on.
“So we get back to the murderer. Why was he so much afraid of being identified that he must do murder? As the Chief Inspector has suggested, a motor-cyclist’s cap and goggles would flummox anyone who wasn’t an intimate. There you have it, Miss Silver-he wouldn’t trust any disguise to shield him from the man he was going to rob. Perhaps it was his voice that would have given him away-voices are very individual. I don’t know, but there must have been some reason why he preferred what he called a certainty and was perfectly prepared to shoot two people if there had been two in the car. There is another reason why I am forced to believe him to have been in close touch with my family circle. It was only in that circle that anyone knew when the bank would be handing over the necklace. I suppose you have heard about the necklace?”
She turned the soft mass of wool upon her lap. The delicate fern pattern displayed its fronds for a moment and then fell lightly together again.
“Yes, Mr. Bellingdon, I have read about the necklace. An interesting and well-written account of a beautiful and valuable piece.”
He gave a short grim laugh.
“A paste copy would be as beautiful, and no one would do murder for it. I say that to myself, and I’ve said it to my daughter, but all the time there’s something in me that won’t tolerate a fake.”
Miss Silver looked up brightly.
“That is because it carries with it the suggestion of fraud. But if you call it a copy or let it stand on its own merits of design and craftsmanship, the stigma vanishes.”
He shook his head.
“If I can’t have a Rembrandt I don’t want a copy. Not rational, but there are plenty of us all in the same boat. Which is why the price of the real thing keeps on going up, and why murder was done for my necklace in Cranberry Lane a couple of days ago. Well, we’ve run off the rails. I was saying there had got to be a contact with my family circle, so I had better tell you something more about it. To start with, I am a widower, and I have a daughter-twenty-four last birthday-married a couple of years ago, not exactly against my will, but certainly against my wish. Nothing much against him-nothing much to him. Rackety young fellow whose idea of amusing himself was to drive as near a hundred miles an hour as his car would let him, and when he wasn’t doing that to spend as much money as possible in the shortest possible time. He finished up by crashing over a precipice in the Austrian Tyrol and leaving Moira a widow just about the time she was beginning to think she’d have done better to take my advice. Well, there she is-Moira Herne.”
Miss Silver said, “Excuse me, Mr. Bellingdon-” She went over to the writing-table, took from a drawer a bright blue exercise-book and a neatly pointed pencil, and came back to her chair. Her knitting laid aside for the moment, she headed a page with the words The Bellingdon Necklace, placed Moira Herne’s name on the left-hand side of the next line, and entered the particulars which Mr. Bellingdon had just imparted. When this had been done she said “Yes?” in an interrogative manner and waited for him to go on.
He said abruptly, “I have a service flat in town, but my home is at Merefields near Ledlington. Cranberry Lane is a short cut to it from the London road. It is a comfortable old-fashioned house, and I am lucky in having a good staff. The butler and cook have been with me for twenty years. They are husband and wife. The name is Hilton.”
Miss Silver wrote it down.
“Then there’s my secretary, Hubert Garratt. He has been in my employment for ten years, but I have actually known him for a great deal longer than that.”
Miss Silver held her pencil suspended.
“His death will have been a personal loss?”
“He is not dead.”
“The shot was not a fatal one?”
“Oh, yes, it was fatal all right. The person who was shot was not Hubert Garratt.”
“The papers-”
“The papers had got hold of the wrong end of the stick. What information they had was correct, but it didn’t go far enough-and don’t bother about my mixing my metaphors, because I’ve never been able to worry about that. I was earning my living when I was fourteen, and the books I bothered with were the ones that were going to help me to earn it. But to come back to Hubert Garratt. I wrote and told the bank he’d be fetching the necklace at twelve noon on Tuesday. Now the people who knew that were myself and the bank, Hubert Garratt, my daughter, and two other people. Early on Tuesday morning I was told that Garratt was ill. Since the war he has a tendency to asthma. I went to see him, and found him quite disabled, and told him he wasn’t to attempt to go for the necklace. I rang up the bank, spoke to the manager, and told him there was a change and I was sending Garratt’s assistant, a young fellow called Arthur Hughes. The manager took the precaution of ringing off and then ringing me back, and I gave him Arthur’s description and said he would show a letter from me naming him as Garratt’s substitute. Well, that all went off without a hitch. Arthur left the bank with the necklace, but he was shot dead in Cranberry Lane.”
Miss Silver confided these details to the blue exercise book. Bellingdon watched her with an odd look upon his face. The pale blue knitting and the bright blue book, the pencil, the hair-net, the brooch which fastened the front of her olive-green cashmere, a rose carved out of a black bog-oak with an Irish pearl at its heart, all combined to make as unlikely a picture of a private detective as he could well imagine. He thought he could transplant her to Merefields without there being the slightest risk of her being taken for one. When she had finished writing she looked up.
“And the other two people who were aware that the necklace was being fetched-was Mr. Hughes one of them?”
“Well, no, he wasn’t. As far as I know, he knew nothing about the plan until I called him in and told him he would have to go to the bank for me instead of Garratt.”
“You say as far as you know, Mr. Bellingdon.”
“Oh, that? It meant nothing. Garratt said he didn’t mention it, and no one else would.”
“And the other two people were?”
He made a mental note that she could be pertinacious.
“One of them is a guest in the house, and the other-there could be no possible connection.”
Miss Silver gave a gentle cough.
“If I am to help you, Mr. Bellingdon, it would be better that I should have all the facts. As Lord Tennyson so wisely says, ‘So trust me not at all or all in all.’ ”
“Does he? Well, it might do with some people, but I wouldn’t like to say it would answer in every case. Anyhow there isn’t any question about trusting here. The two people are my late wife’s cousin, Elaine Bray-Miss Bray, who is kind enough to run Merefields for me-and Mrs. Scott who is a guest in the house.”
Miss Silver remained in an attentive attitude. Without so much as a word or a look it was conveyed to Lucius Bellingdon that something further was expected. There are times when silence can be more particular than speech. Since the last thing he desired was any particularity in either of these two cases, he yielded the point with a trace of stubborn amusement.
“Miss Bray took charge of my daughter and of the management of the house when my wife died. She had been living with us for some years as my wife was not strong. I owe her a good deal. Mrs. Scott-” he tried, with what success he was not certain, to keep his voice and manner as indifferent as might be- “Mrs. Scott is, as I said, a guest and a close personal friend.”
Miss Silver wrote these things down. She also made a mental note that Mr. Bellingdon felt himself to be under an obligation to his late wife’s cousin, and that it was something of a burden to him. In the case of Mrs. Scott she had no difficulty in discerning a warmer feeling and the fact that he did not desire this feeling to appear. She wrote in her book, and heard him say with a note of relief in his voice,
“Well, I think that is all. There is a gardener and his wife-she helps in the house -and there is a woman and a couple of girls who come in by the day from the village, but they could have had no knowledge of how or when I should be getting the diamonds out of the bank.”
Miss Silver reflected that this was what was invariably said whenever an important leakage of information occurred. No matter how completely the event would prove him wrong, the person concerned invariably expressed entire confidence in those surrounding him and was prepared to dogmatize on the question of there being no possible way in which a leakage could have taken place. She picked up her knitting, drew on the blue wool, and said,
“Mr. Bellingdon, impossibilities do not occur. You will not ask me to believe that they do. This robbery and the resultant murder was no chance affair. It was very carefully planned, and every detail of the proposed transfer of the necklace was known to the people who planned it some nineteen hours before the crime took place. This is not in dispute. If the leakage did not occur in your own immediate circle, then it must have occurred at the bank. When you first notified them that you would be withdrawing the necklace, did you write, or did you telephone?”
“I wrote to the manager. You are thinking that a telephone conversation might have been overheard?”
“It had occurred to me.”
He shook his head.
“There was no telephone communication until the Tuesday morning, when I rang up to say that Garratt was ill and that Arthur Hughes would be acting for him. The leakage had already occurred-at least on the previous day.”
Miss Silver’s needles clicked.
“That would not preclude a leakage from the bank. To whom did the manager either pass your letter or speak of the matter?”
“I took that up with him personally, and of course the police have done so too. He says nobody saw the letter except himself, and he locked it away carefully and only gave the necessary instructions when young Hughes arrived at the bank with my second letter next day. He is quite definite on these points.”
Miss Silver observed a meditative silence. There was nothing to be gained by continuing to dot i’s which had already been dotted, or to cross t’s already sufficiently provided in that respect.
Lucius Bellingdon regarded her with a certain frowning intensity. It was the kind of look which was apt to make people nervous-it had, in fact, very seldom failed to do so. It failed now. Miss Silver went on knitting in a perfectly placid manner.
He leaned forward suddenly and said,
“When will you come down to Merefields?”
She did not appear to be at all taken aback.
“In what capacity, Mr. Bellingdon?”
“Well, I’ve got to find out who has been talking.”
“You do not, I suppose, desire to advertise that fact. My usefulness would be very much impaired if it were known.”
“My idea was that you should replace young Hughes as assistant secretary.”
She appeared to consider this before saying,
“I am not versed in typing and shorthand. Nor do I really feel that I could sustain the part.”
He said,
“I get a great many begging letters and appeals of all sorts. I should think they might be quite in your line. Hughes was no good at them at all. They have to be weeded out. I don’t read a tenth of them myself, the rest go straight into the waste-paper basket. Then there’s a good deal of social correspondence. My daughter ought to do it, but she can’t be bothered. I noticed that you write a very clear hand. Garratt will deal with anything that needs typing. What about it?”
The busy needles stopped. She laid down her hands upon the pale blue wool.
“Have you said anything about replacing Mr. Hughes?”
“Yes, I have. All I need do now is to ring up Miss Bray and tell her you have been recommended to me by a friend, and that I am bringing you down with me tomorrow.”