Elizabeth Leigh woke up in the morning after she had talked to Grenville and Rockingham at Furnival’s Court and stretched herself luxuriously in bed, and then wondered why she had awoken with such a sense of disquiet.
Memory awoke, too, and she remembered the grim story of Bruce Attleton’s death, and shivered. Sitting with her hands round her knees, bare-armed, and childish-looking, with her short red curls rumpled up all over her head, she wished that the memory could be relegated to the realm of nightmare.
“What ought I to do?” she asked herself. “I know Sybilla hates me, really, and I hate her, but I can’t just behave as though nothing’s happened. I shall have to go to see her and say I’m sorry, and watch her crying beautifully, when I know she doesn’t care a blue hoot. Oh, how simply horrible!”
As Elizabeth dressed she decided not to telephone. She would just go and do her best to say the right thing. Busy with face-cream, another thought crossed her mind. Now that Bruce Attleton was dead she had no guardian. What was to prevent her marrying Bobbie Grenville straight away? She could never go back to live with Sybilla—and Sybilla wouldn’t want her in any case. The only child of an only child, Elizabeth was very much alone in the world, and she suddenly became aware of her loneliness—one of those odd girls living in clubs—and clubs weren’t very satisfactory once the novelty had worn off. Chambers in the Temple, or Gray’s Inn, as Bobbie had suggested—some nice old panelled room of her own where she could entertain their friends. It might be much nicer than this club business, she meditated.
After breakfast she went round to the club garage and got out her little Morris Saloon named “Dinah.” Elizabeth had taken to driving as a duck takes to water; she had a natural “traffic sense” and drove fearlessly through the London streets, enjoying the complexity of steering, and judging distances, and sliding skilfully into the right traffic lanes in the big roundabouts. But while she managed steering and gear-changing, reversing and parking, with the natural facility of a true child of a mechanised age, she knew next to nothing about the working of the engine which she controlled so gaily. It either went or it didn’t go. In the latter case the nearest garage mechanic was requested to see to things and rouse “Dinah” to complacent mobility again.
On her drive to Park Village South she became aware that the engine was giving off undesirable fumes, and wrinkled up her small nose in disgust. The hand-brake was off (she had once driven for some miles with it on), the radiator bonnet was rolled up in front, all was as it should be.
“Too much oil or too little,” she meditated. “There’s always something in the way of a snag.”
Arrived at the Attletons’ house, she was admitted by Weller. His large pale face looked very melancholy, and she said to him, “Oh, Weller, isn’t it all ghastly? I feel as though it’s all a nightmare.”
“Yes, miss. I woke with that feeling myself,” he replied. “Most distressing, miss, and I’ve never been in a house with the police in and out, so to speak.”
“Beastly!” agreed Elizabeth. “I say, Weller, could you look at Dinah for me? She’s smoking, and I don’t know what’s the matter with her. You’re so good at engines. You always find what’s the matter.”
“I’ll look with pleasure, miss, if I can make an opportunity. Things is a bit difficult, you understand. Mrs. Attleton all on edge, as one might expect. You’ll be wanting to see her, miss?”
“Yes, Weller. I had to come, but it’s awfully difficult to know what to say.”
“It is indeed, miss.” Weller’s answer was heartfelt, and just at that moment Louise, the French maid, came tripping downstairs.
“Is Mrs. Attleton in her room, Louise?”
“Yes, mademoiselle, but Madame does not wish to be disturbed. I will tell her that you are here when I have taken her petit déjeuner. Mademoiselle will wait?”
“Of course I’ll wait, Louise. Don’t be so absurd. I’m not a visitor.”
Elizabeth ran up the right-hand branch of the little stairway and went into the library. It looked forlorn, somehow, like a room in a very good hotel, with everything so neat and no papers or books lying about. Elizabeth felt a sudden disposition to cry. She had not had any affection for Bruce Attleton; had, in fact, resented the whim which had made her father put her into Attleton’s charge, but now she began to remember the way in which he had been kind to her. It was Bruce who had insisted on Elizabeth coming to live with himself and his wife, instead of living in a club or hostel as she had suggested, and he had done his best in many ways to see that she had had a good time, and even done what he could to teach her to read, to appreciate literature and despise trash, to listen to music as well as to jazz, and to speak English instead of schoolgirl slang. Alone in the room which had been peculiarly his, Elizabeth visualised his tall figure and dark head, with the black forelock he tossed back from his high forehead, and was sorry that she had disliked him.
Walking about restlessly, she lighted a cigarette and then put it out, because the aroma of the Turkish tobacco Bruce had always smoked reminded her of him too strongly. Her thoughts turned to Robert Grenville, and she decided to go and telephone to him and ask him to meet her later in the day.
Going to the telephone cabinet, she dialled Grenville’s number and waited impatiently while she listened to the steady brr-brr of the bell at his end. At last a woman’s voice answered—the worried, complaining voice of Grenville’s landlady.
“He’s not here. He’s had an accident and been taken to hospital, so the police say. I don’t know, I’m sure. I don’t know what to think. They say he’s in hospital, but you’ll have to ask them yourself.”
Before Elizabeth could formulate another question, she heard a crash and a shout, then a thud which seemed to shake the walls of the little cabinet, followed by a woman’s scream. Slamming down the receiver, Elizabeth dashed out on to the landing of the staircase, and then ran down to the service stairway which was approached by a door at one end of the odd-shaped hall. It was from below that a woman’s voice was screaming for help. The electric light was burning on the service stairway, as it always had to be on that dark, steep, awkward flight. At the bottom, past the nasty angle which made the carrying of trays such a tiresome business, Weller was half-sitting, half-lying, in a hunched-up heap, the remains of a heavy cut-glass jug scattered about him. Mrs. Hillman, the cook, was wailing above him, wringing her hands, with blood staining her white apron, and Elizabeth saw, with a qualm of horror, that blood was gushing out from a cut on the butler’s wrist—not merely flowing, but pumping out in an ominous scarlet gush.
Elizabeth knew little about first-aid, but she knew enough to realise that bleeding of such a nature must mean a severed artery. If she had little skill, she had plenty of courage. Tearing off the silk scarf round her neck, she ran downstairs crying out, “Telephone for a doctor, quickly, and leave off making that idiotic row, Hillman. Amy,” (this to the parlour-maid) “go outside, and get a policeman or somebody. Policemen always know what to do.”
Bending over the butler, whose tallowy, frightened face was lolling on his shoulders, she wound her scarf round his wrist and pulled it tight with all her strength. While she struggled, she glanced up and saw Sybilla Attleton at the head of the stairs, her face white and set.
“Oh, do come and help!” cried Elizabeth. “He’ll die if you don’t do something. I can’t stop it. Sybilla, how do you put on a tourniquet?”
A moment later, when Elizabeth, sickened and despairing, was thinking that she could never staunch that dreadful flow, a man came running in from the lower entrance ahead of Amy, the parlour-maid.
“All right, miss, I’ll see to him. You go and find some strips for bandaging—anything strong—and find me a skewer, or something like that to twist the bandage with. Have you rung for a doctor?”
Elizabeth dashed to the kitchen, and with the help of Amy, tore some clean linen cloths into strips and returned with them and a bunch of metal skewers to her unknown helper. Apparently he knew all about tourniquets. He had bound a small metal tube above the cut, and with the assistance of the skewers he twisted the bandage tighter and tighter until the flow of blood ceased. Then, with remarkable strength and dexterity he lifted the large, unwieldy form of the butler down on to the floor of the passage, and laid him flat.
“That was a nasty go, and no mistake,” he observed. “Got on to the doctor, ma’am?” (This to the stout and trembling cook.) “That’s right. Now we shall want to know how all this happened, so don’t go having high strikes. If you take my advice you’ll go and change that apron, and make yourself a nice cup of tea.”
Elizabeth had sat down on the stairs. She felt sick and giddy, and put her head between her knees, as she had been taught to do at school when she felt faint. Mrs. Hillman broke out into a flow of excited speech.
“And if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a dozen times, that those stairs’d be the death of somebody. Not fit for ’uman beings to carry things on, and that’s a fact, and I hope they’ll be satisfied now, half killing a good man like Mr. Weller and him so devoted to his duty as I never saw, and that hard-faced wretch upstairs never moving a finger to save him. Chivvy you from morning to night she would…”
“Hold your tongue, Hillman, and go into the kitchen and get on with your work. Amy, go and get a pail and cloth and swab the stairs up,” said Elizabeth sharply.
“Beg pardon, miss, but I’d think you’d better leave things as they are until we see how the accident happened.”
The voice of the first-aid expert was pleasant and respectful, but Elizabeth turned on him in some surprise.
“It’s obvious how it happened,” she replied. “There’s a slit in the matting at the top of the stairs. He must have caught his foot while he’d got the jug in his hand.” She looked at the unknown assistant and added, “I’m awfully grateful to you for helping. Won’t you tell me your name?”
“That’s all right, miss. I’m in the police—plain-clothes branch. I’ll just wait here until the doctor comes, and then make a report. Very nasty accident, it was. I’ve got to keep an eye on the patient—mustn’t stop his circulation altogether.”
The doctor appeared before Elizabeth had had time to wonder why a plain-clothes policeman should have been at hand so conveniently, and the girl went straight upstairs to Sybilla’s room, and entered, after drumming on the door, without waiting for an answer.
“Really, Sybilla, I think you’re the absolute limit, going away like that and not helping at all. The man might have died.”
Mrs. Attleton was sitting before her dressing-table. At the sight of Elizabeth’s blood-stained clothes she shuddered and closed her eyes.
“Get Miss Leigh one of my skirts and a coat, Louise,” she said to the maid, who was standing beside her, and then turned back to Elizabeth.
“I can’t stand the sight of blood—you know that. It sickens me. I don’t know what you’ve come for, Elizabeth, but I don’t want you here. Please go away. You can change in the bathroom.”
“Really, Sybilla!”
“Go away! I’ve got quite enough to distract me without having you here, too.”
Elizabeth caught up the coat and skirt which the maid was holding out to her and said:
“Very well. I came to say I was sorry—about everything. If you feel like that, I’ll go at once.”
She changed her things in Sybilla’s bathroom, and ran downstairs again. The doctor and the plain-clothes man were talking in the conservatory, and Elizabeth addressed the latter.
“I am leaving here now. My name is Elizabeth Leigh, and my address is the Junior Minerva Club in Grosvenor Street, if you want to find me. I don’t know anything about Weller’s accident. I was in the telephone cabinet when I heard him fall.” Then an idea struck her, and she asked, “Can you tell me where I can find Chief Inspector Macdonald? I want to speak to him.”
“You can try the Yard, miss. They’ll tell you when he’ll be in.”
“Thanks. I’ll go there now,” said Elizabeth. The doctor looked at her with an amusement which he felt but did not show—anything looking less like a visitor for Scotland Yard than Elizabeth Leigh he had never seen. He murmured a few words congratulating her on her efforts to tie up Weller, added that he was sending an ambulance as the butler was in a very shaky state from haemorrhage and shock, and retired back into the hall, leaving Elizabeth by the front door with the friendly-faced policeman.
“If you’d just answer a question or two before you go, miss, it’ll save you being bothered later. When you came out of the cabinet did you see any one about on the landing, or in here, or in the hall?”
“No. I saw nobody—I ran straight down to the service stairs when I heard Hillman yelling.”
“Did you see Mrs. Attleton later?”
“Yes. I saw her at the head of the stairs, and called to her to come and help. She wouldn’t, she hates blood. Then you came. I suppose Amy fetched you?”
“The maid? Yes, miss. I was just nearby. When you spoke to the butler when you came in, did he say anything to suggest there had been trouble of any kind? Words with his mistress, so to speak?”
Elizabeth’s round eyes stared.
“No. Nothing at all.”
“Very good, miss.”
The man stood aside, and Elizabeth opened the door and ran down to her car. She had made up her mind that she was going to see the Chief Inspector and find out what had happened to Robert Grenville. Driving round the Outer Circle, to avoid the traffic of the Marylebone Road, she became aware that “Dinah” was smoking more badly than ever. Impatiently she thrust down the accelerator, and then realised in a flash that the fumes were thickening, and a smell of burning was growing stronger. She pulled up with a jerk, and saw a tiny tongue of flame licking round the clutch, and made a grab at the door handle beside her. It stuck. For a few seconds she wrestled with it in a panic, and then had the presence of mind to get clear of the wheel and try the other door, and tumbled out on to the pavement with smoke pouring out after her.
Her eyes streaming and heart pounding, Elizabeth saw another car draw up behind her, and a tall man running with a fire extinguisher in his hand towards the unhappy Dinah. In a trice a crowd had collected—errand boys, a few startled pedestrians, an amiable looking parson, and a peculiar gentleman in singlet and shorts, who had been taking his morning run. Before Elizabeth had had time to collect her scattered wits, a taximan (with another fire extinguisher) and a policeman had appeared. There was a lot of excitement and questions. Dinah, still smoking, had apparently decided not to burst into flames, and the assistants with the fire extinguishers had opened her bonnet and were giving expert opinions.
“It was the flex from the horn—fused, you know, and the rubber insulating caught fire,” declared the gentleman first on the scene, while the constable got his note-book out, and Elizabeth Leigh gave her name and address for the second time that morning, and assured the constable that nothing would induce her to get inside Dinah again, and that there Dinah could stay until the garage people removed her.
“And if you summons me I can’t help it,” she retorted. “I’d rather be summonsed than frizzled. It was simply beastly, you know!” she assured him. “I couldn’t get out. The door stuck.”
She extricated herself at last, and was seen into a taxi by the friendly constable, who undertook to keep an eye on “Dinah” until she was salvaged.
When Elizabeth directed the taxi-driver to go to Scotland Yard he fairly goggled at her, and the constable took out his note-book again.
“I meant what I said,” snapped Elizabeth. “Get on—and step on it!”
Arrived at Scotland Yard, feeling very conspicuous and more than a bit of a fool, Elizabeth asked the uniformed man at the entrance how she should set about finding Chief Inspector Macdonald, and was surprised to find herself led, without further question, through corridors and up stairs in a building which reminded her of a tax-collector’s office which had got confused with the County Hall. Nothing sensational, she decided, and policemen without their lids looked rather like lambs. She had not a notion what “that reptile Macdonald” would look like, picturing something stout and red haired in a flat-topped cap. Characteristically she tried to hitch her skirt straight (Sybilla, though slim, was broader in the beam than herself), went through a door after a pleasant smile from the “lamb,” and found herself facing a tall man with grey eyes, in a well-cut blue suit and dark tie.
“I wanted Chief Inspector Macdonald,” she began, and the tall man smiled.
“All right, Miss Leigh—you’ve found him,” he replied. “I was expecting you. I’m afraid you’ve had rather a morning of it.”
He drew forward a chair for her, and she sat down in it gratefully.
“Woof! I should say I had!” she replied. “Dinah caught fire—my car, you know, and the door stuck, and I thought I should grill, oh, and then poor Weller—”
“I’ve heard about poor Weller,” he replied, “and I’ve also heard that you did some very valuable first aid. Tell me about Dinah.”
Elizabeth found him easy to talk to, and she poured out a flood of information, finally ending up, “but what I came here for was to ask you about Mr. Grenville. Is it really true he’s had an accident?”
“I’m afraid it is,” said Macdonald, “and a pretty nasty one, but he’s in good hands. They’ll do all that can be done at St. Joseph’s. He has got a special nurse, and they are taking every possible care of him.”
Looking at her, he saw her round eyes—as candid as a child’s—fill with tears.
“But he won’t die? It’s not as bad as that?”
“I hope not,” said Macdonald quietly. “Now listen. You have had a bad time of it this morning. I’m going to send for some coffee for you, and then I hope you’ll answer a lot of other questions. It’s too bad for you to be mixed up with all these troubles. How old are you?”
The coffee came and the “reptile” offered her a cigarette, and told her, very gently, how Robert Grenville had been knocked down in the city and lain out in the snow, and contracted pneumonia so that he could not answer questions for the time being.
Elizabeth goggled. “Not that beastly wharf place he promised not to go to?” she demanded.
A very short while put Macdonald in possession of all that she could tell about Debrette’s letter, and her cry, “oh, that beastly man!” led him on to another question. She had seen Debrette? “I saw the man with the white streak in his beard,” she replied. “Only once, but I’m never likely to forget him somehow. He was queer.”
“I am very sorry to have to involve you in all this grim business, Miss Leigh,” said Macdonald, “but now Grenville is knocked out—temporarily—the only people who seem able to identify the bearded man who approached Mr. Attleton are yourself and Mr. Rockingham. Debrette is dead. I am afraid I shall have to ask you to see his face and tell us if he is the man whom you saw in Park Village South. I know it will be pretty horrible for you, but it would help us a great deal. We have got to find out who killed Mr. Attleton.”
Elizabeth looked at him with horror in her eyes.
“Must I? If I’ve got to, I will, but I shall hate it.”
“I know you will. I wouldn’t ask you if it weren’t necessary. I dislike the necessity almost as much as you do. You’re much too young to have such a request made to you—but it’s very difficult. I want to know who knocked Mr. Grenville down, too.”
“So do I!” said Elizabeth trenchantly. “He was a goop! Fancy going to the beastly place!”
“He certainly was a goop,” agreed Macdonald, and then went on to ask her about the Attleton household and all that she knew of Sybilla and Mr. Burroughs and Mr. Rockingham, phrasing all his questions so neatly that Elizabeth talked on in her own idiom, quite unembarrassed, and with a sense of relief at unloading her mind to any one so sensible. Macdonald, listening to her spontaneous speech, liked her. She seemed a jolly, healthy-minded youngster, and the report he had received by telephone from the man on duty outside the Attletons’ house had told him of the pluck and energy she had displayed over Weller’s accident—which made him regret the fact that in this case he could not afford to look at anybody without suspicion. Every event could be interpreted in more ways than one. Weller might have fallen downstairs with a cut-glass jug in his hands, or he might have been the victim of some trick. As Macdonald knew from experience, a cord stretched ankle-high along a staircase can send a man flying headlong, to break his neck, perhaps, in the fall. Elizabeth Leigh had been in the house when the accident occurred, and might have brought it about as easily as any one else. On the other hand, she herself might have been the intended victim of a very dastardly scheme; a burning car and a door which would not open could easily have put an end to her admittedly charming self—and Weller had opened the bonnet of her car and looked inside the tonneau shortly after Elizabeth had entered the house.
Nevertheless, Macdonald felt something of an ogre when he took her to the mortuary, and led her into the grim, bare apartment where Debrette’s body lay. Uncovering the face he stood beside her, and felt her small cold hand suddenly thrust into his own—the action of a frightened child. The dead face had the nobility of a sculptured mask, the lines smoothed out, the closed lids resting on sunken cheeks, a half smile, mysterious and peaceful, seeming to invest the worn features with an expression of content.
Looking down at the girl beside him, Macdonald saw her shake her head. “I can’t tell,” she whispered. “He didn’t look like that—except for the beard. He was much darker. I mean his skin was dark. This poor thing looks so peaceful and happy, and the other was fierce, somehow. I don’t know. It might be. He’s like and yet he isn’t.”
With that Macdonald had to be content, and indeed he might have been more dissatisfied if Elizabeth Leigh had immediately identified that peaceful face. Death is a great alchemist, purging away the grossness which disfigures many a living face, sapping the colour, smoothing the contours. Was it likely that a young girl could look unmoved on that pale mask, and say, “This was he” of a man whom she had only glimpsed once?
After Elizabeth Leigh had left, Rockingham went in his turn to look at Debrette’s inscrutable visage.
For a long time he studied the face, his own frowning and uncertain, but at last he turned to Macdonald and nodded.
“Yes, it’s the same man I saw, undoubtedly. He’s immensely changed. Now he looks more suitable for a stained glass window than for a hangman’s rope, but I’ve seen enough of death to make allowances for a good deal of the change. I’m certain on this account. I noticed that one eyebrow was higher than another—in life it gave his face a grotesque look. It shows quite plainly still.”
Macdonald nodded. “Yes. I noticed it. He’s had a knock above the eye sometime and the scar still shows. You’re satisfied—in spite of the fact that he looks ready for a halo—and a niche?”
Rockingham frowned and drew back.
“You have a nasty tongue. Niches—what a devil the man must have been! Well, that’s my opinion. Let’s get out of this.”
Once outside, Rockingham asked:
“How’s Grenville? Any real hope?”
“Plenty of it, thanks be!” replied Macdonald. “He’s over the worst. A day or two will make it possible to interrogate him—and then we ought to be able to tidy up what I regard as a very unsatisfactory case, so far as my department is concerned, anyway. Grenville gave us the slip, you know, but that house he lives in has more doors than any house ought to have, and Furnival’s Court is about as easy as a rabbit burrow to watch.”
Rockingham looked at Macdonald with troubled eyes.
“To watch?” he queried. “Then you thought that Grenville was involved in all this?”
“He touched the case at every point,” replied Macdonald. “You, who have followed it from the beginning, must have realised that. What induced you to come to us in the first case?”
“The fact that Grenville found Attleton’s suitcase at the Belfry,” rejoined Rockingham soberly, “but if there’s any truth in what you suspect, wouldn’t it be better if he didn’t recover?”
“That’s not a question I can ever ask myself,” replied Macdonald, “but in this case it doesn’t arise. He’s going to get better, and then a few questions which I can’t answer for myself are going to be answered. At present, our case is based on surmise—logical reconstruction if you prefer the term. Every one seems to be satisfied with the effort except myself, and I’m told that my natural name is Thomas. Before you go, there’s one other question I wanted to ask you. I’ve been looking at Attleton’s passport. I see it was issued last December. Can you tell me if he ever lost his passport, and applied for a new one?”
Rockingham pondered for some time.
“Not to my knowledge,” he replied at length. “If he had done so—of recent years—he would probably have told me so. He went abroad fairly frequently. Could the passport office tell you?”
“I expect they could,” replied Macdonald.
Rockingham seemed preoccupied with some other point and did not ask Macdonald for the reason of his odd question. He went on after a moment.
“You asked me—quite rightly—what time I left Grenville yesterday evening. I told you a few minutes after six. If you were having the place watched, you knew what time I left.”
“Yes,” agreed Macdonald. “Our man agreed with you. Six five he made it. After which you mounted a number thirteen bus in the Strand, which got held up when the Fascisti tried to demonstrate in Trafalgar Square at six thirty-five. You arrived home at seven three. The moral of which seems to be that it is quicker to walk than to go by bus in London during the rush hours.”
The frown cleared from Rockingham’s face.
“Then you were having me shadowed. I suspected it but was never certain. Well, I never expected to be trailed by Scotland Yard, still less to be grateful for the kind attention.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” said Macdonald, “but you were not being trailed on our account.”
“Then how the deuce can you be certain that I did get on a thirteen bus and stick in the Strand to let the Fascisti pass?”
“I can’t,” replied Macdonald cheerfully. “I merely note your own statement of your movements, and compare it with known facts.”
“Bearing in mind the possibility that I might have knocked Grenville over the head, and thrown Debrette into the Thames, and still have got back to The Small House by seven o’clock?”
“Exactly,” replied Macdonald. “There’s a lot to bear in mind in this case.”
Rockingham laughed aloud, and then sobered down again.
“Thank the Lord that Grenville’s getting better,” he replied. “It’s one of the few good points in an otherwise ghastly mess-up. What about friend Thomas Burroughs?”
“An exceedingly dark horse, apparently of no traceable pedigree,” replied Macdonald. “I can’t make up my mind if his brain is a very subtle instrument, or a minus quantity.”
“Judging by his bank balance, I should say the former,” rejoined Rockingham.