IT WAS BY good management and not by mere good fortune that Miss Silver penetrated the defences of 5 Lenister Street in the late afternoon of the following day. As a result of her cases she had acquired a number of useful social contacts. With the information supplied to her by Scotland Yard and a judicious employment of the telephone she arrived at a friend of a friend of Mrs Dugdale’s. A little kindly pressure, some expressions of regard and gratitude, and the desired introduction had been achieved.
Miss Silver rang the bell, was admitted by a middle-aged maid of a most sedate and respectable appearance, and was by her conducted to a first-floor drawing-room where a single shaded lamp diffused a wan green light. Very depressing—very depressing indeed. And the temperature must be at least seventy. No wonder Mrs Dugdale was troubled with nerves.
The well-trained maid had murmured her name and vanished. The room being crowded with small gimcrack tables and spidery chairs, there was some danger of being tripped up. Miss Silver’s advance towards a distant sofa was therefore a cautious one.
Arrived, she touched a faint extended hand, and was aware of a smothered growling note from beneath the embroidered coverlet.
‘No, Chang!’ said Mrs Dugdale in an exhausted voice. ‘Do please sit down, Miss Silver. Mother’s Boy is a very, very naughty boy. No, Chang—no!’
The coverlet heaved, the growl passed into a snarl, and the snarl into a furious bark. Mother’s Boy emerged—a tough, belligerent Pekinese with a tawny coat and a black mask from which there glowered a pair of vindictive eyes. Mrs Dugdale pressed the small electric bell which lay to her hand upon one of the spidery gimcrack tables. Two long rings and a short one produced, not the maid who had admitted Miss Silver, but a severe-looking female whom Miss Silver was able at once to identify as the prison wardress of Thomasina Elliot’s description. Mrs Dugdale addressed her in a voice which she had perforce to raise in order to compete with Chang, who continued to bark.
‘Oh, Postlethwaite, please take him away! My poor Head! No, Mother’s Boy! Naughty—naughty! He dislikes strangers so very much.’
Watching the reluctant removal of Chang, Miss Silver reflected that the feeling was probably mutual.
‘And oh, Postlethwaite—my smelling-salts. I had them just now, but I don’t seem to see. … Oh, thank you—how very kind!’ This to Miss Silver who had detected and restored the missing bottle.
But the maid had barely reached the door again when Mrs Dugdale discovered that her handkerchief had gone astray. There was a search during which Chang made so much noise that even Miss Silver felt inclined to put her hands to her ears. When the door finally closed upon his protests she experienced a good deal of relief. Accustomed by this time to the green twilight, she was able to give her whole attention to Mrs Dugdale, now lying back in a swooning attitude amongst a great many cushions. She saw a small fair person who had probably been extremely pretty some thirty years ago. There was still a profusion of light hair which had not been allowed to go grey, a pair of rolling blue eyes, and features which might still have been pleasing if it had not been for their fretful expression.
‘He is so high-spirited,’ said Mrs Dugdale in a sighing voice. ‘And so devoted. He will hardly leave me.’
‘I believe they are very intelligent.’
‘Human, said Mrs Dugdale—‘positively human. And so handsome—like a little lion. And of course they are as brave as lions too. You have no idea how venturesome he is.’
Miss Silver not only permitted but encouraged several anecdotes in illustration of the charm, the courage, and the fidelity of Chang. Mrs Dugdale became quite animated as she narrated them, finishing up with,
‘And he came in all covered with blood where that horrible cat had scratched him. But his spirit was as high as ever. You could tell when he was thinking about the cat, because his tail curled up and he growled, and he actually bit Postlethwaite when she was washing off the blood. She is devoted to him of course, but she really didn’t quite like it.’
Miss Silver considered that the time had come to introduce the name of Ball. She did so firmly.
‘Was Miss Ball attached to him? She was with you for a short time, I believe.’
‘Oh, no!’ said Mrs Dugdale. ‘Attached! She was quite callous! A most unfeeling girl. When she trod on him and he bit her, she was much more upset about the hole in her stocking and the mark of his poor little teeth than about anything else. Why, as I said to her, she might have lamed him for life, my precious boy—treading on his poor little foot with her great clumping one! And she was most rude, most offensive. I had one of my worst headaches after it, and my nerves were upset for days.’
Miss Silver coughed.
‘A most trying experience.’
‘I was thankful when she left. Postlethwaite can tell you how thankful I was. She came to me from my cousin, Lilla Dartrey. Most inconsiderate of her to recommend such an unsuitable person. I only kept her a month, and you would think once she was gone I might be allowed to have a little peace. But no—would you believe it, the police—the police have come here wanting to know about her!’
‘It must have upset you very much.’
Mrs Dugdale had opened her smelling bottle. The atmosphere became tinged with aromatic vinegar. She sniffed.
‘I was prostrated. My nerves are not strong enough for that sort of thing. I told Sergeant Hobson so. “It is no use your asking me,” I said, “I cannot help you at all. She was only here for a month, and she went away without leaving any address. I found her a most unsympathetic character, and I was thankful to see the last of her. I cannot help you in any way, and I really must decline to be mixed up in her affairs.” Don’t you think I was right?’
‘The police are so very pertinaceous,’ said Miss Silver in tones of regret. ‘I fear they may trouble you again.’
‘I shall refuse to see them.’
Miss Silver let that go. She said,
‘It seems strange in these days when there are so many undesirable people about that anyone should be willing to employ a young woman without taking up her reference. Miss Ball had not, I suppose, the temerity to ask you for one, though I believe you would be legally obliged to pass on the reference you had with her if she did not stay with you for longer than a month.’
Mrs Dugdale became quite animated.
‘Nothing could be more unfair, and so I told the person who rang me up. I had a very good reference from my cousin, and how she could bring herself to deceive me as she did, I really do not know. I couldn’t have done it! I told the person who rang me up that Miss Ball had been with a cousin of mine for a year or two—in Germany.’ She pronounced the words as if they indicated a highly suspicious background. ‘I said that I had not found her congenial and could not recommend her personally, but I had no reason to suppose that she was not honest and respectable. I do not see that I could have said any more.’
Miss Silver said,
‘The police could take no exception to that.’
A little colour had come into Mrs Dugdale’s face.
‘Oh, I didn’t tell the police. It had nothing to do with them one way or the other.’
‘So inquisitive—’ sighed Miss Silver. ‘I wonder how long a girl such as you describe would satisfy any employer. This person who rang up—what did you say the name was?’
Mrs Dugdale had recourse to the smelling-salts.
‘I never can remember names—I find it a strain upon the nerves.’ She paused, sniffed, and added in a doubtful tone, ‘It wasn’t Cadbury?’
There appeared to be no reason why it should have been Cadbury.
Mrs Dugdale continued in a musing tone,
‘Or Bostock—or Cadell—or Carrington. … Such a curious voice too—very deep. Really, I thought it was a man speaking, but what she wanted was a nursery governess for her children. There were three of them, and I felt it my duty to tell her of Miss Ball’s callous behaviour to my precious boy, but she said her children could look after themselves, so my conscience is clear.’
‘And the name was?’
‘Chelmsford—or Ruddock—or Radford—I really cannot say which,’ said Mrs Dugdale in a drifting voice.
Miss Silver had produced pencil and paper from a shabby black handbag. She added these names to those which she had already written down.
‘I have a young friend who is anxious to find Miss Ball. It appears that she left a trunk in her keeping, and she does not know what to do about it.’
Mrs Dugdale sniffed at her aromatic vinegar.
‘Most inconsiderate,’ she said, ‘but only what one would expect from Anna Ball. I remember my husband’s sister doing the same to me—a box of clothes, taking up room and collecting moth. But he was deplorably weak where his family was concerned.’
Miss Silver allowed herself to be told all about Miss Mary Dugdale. It was a theme upon which her sister-in-law became quite animated.
‘Such a domineering person, and really terribly fatiguing. Breezy, her friends called it—“Mary is so breezy!”’ She shuddered. ‘I really don’t think my nerves have ever quite got over it. She stayed for three months, and always opened a window whenever she came into the room.’
The atmosphere was so oppressive, so heavily impregnated with aromatic vinegar, a strongly-scented face-powder, and an occasional whiff of moth-ball that Miss Silver could not help feeling some sympathy with the breezy Miss Dugdale. Not that she had any partiality for draughts—on the contrary—but an invalid’s room should be regularly aired.
When the last drop of self-pity had been distilled, and not till then, did a slight cough reintroduce the subject of Anna Ball’s employer.
‘I felt sure that you would sympathize with my young friend’s predicament. Perhaps your maid—what is her name—ah, yes, Postlethwaite—perhaps she can help us.’
Mrs Dugdale’s animation ceased. She closed her eyes and said she doubted it. But after a little tactful persuasion Miss Silver was allowed to ring the bell.
‘Two long and one short. And I am really afraid that I must not talk very much more. It has been very pleasant, but I shall pay for it. My head—’
A description of the expected symptoms was still not complete when it was interrupted by the appearance of Postlethwaite, more like a wardress than ever, but mercifully not accompanied by Mother’s Boy. Even Miss Silver’s tact failed to penetrate the armour-plating. Postlethwaite made it perfectly plain that she had no intention of either remembering or attempting to remember anything to do with Miss Ball. As far as she was concerned, Anna Ball no longer existed.
Mrs Dugdale’s attitude was hardly a helpful one.
‘We don’t know Miss Ball’s address—do we, Postlethwaite?’
‘No, madam.’
‘Or where she has gone?’
‘No, madam.’
Mrs Dugdale closed her eyes.
‘Then I am afraid I must not talk any more.’
The interview was plainly at an end. It was disappointing—very disappointing indeed. Miss Silver had perforce to take her leave.
A faint hope arose at the discovery that it was no part of Postlethwaite’s duties to speed the departing guest. A single long trill of the electric bell summoned the middle-aged parlour-maid to discharge this task, and it was whilst discoursing to Agnes with bright amiability on her young friend’s predicament with regard to Miss Ball’s trunk that Miss Silver produced a five-pound note from her shabby bag. Telling Mrs Harrison the cook about it afterwards, Agnes could hardly get the words out fast enough.
‘Well, I thought, it only just shows what I’ve always said, you never can tell. Mind you, I know a lady when I see one, and a lady she was. But old-fashioned—well, I ask you! One of those black cloth coats that don’t look as if they’d ever been anything else, and the sort of fur tie you’d expect to see in a second-hand clothes shop. Black wool stockings, and a hat the very moral of the one we saw in that film—now what was it called? You know, the one where the girl has that awful governess that wants to poison her.’
Mrs Harrison opined that governesses were always a trouble in the house, but there weren’t so many of them nowadays, and a good thing too.
‘Well, that’s what she looked like—one of those old-fashioned governesses, and when she took a five-pound note out of her bag you could have knocked me down with a feather. “My young friend,” she says—that’s the one she’d been telling me about all the way down the stairs, not mentioning any names but just “My young friend,” like that—“well she’s very anxious to get rid of this trunk Miss Ball left with her, so she wants to know where she is, and if you or the cook can give her any help, there’s a reward offered, and another note like this to come.” Well, she puts it into my hand and stands there looking at me very pleasant. So what I thought was, it wasn’t anything to do with Miss Postlethwaite, and I said we’d be very pleased to help, and I’d talk it over with you, and would she leave her address, which she wrote it down on a piece of paper, and here it is.’
The five-pound note and the piece of paper lay side by side on the kitchen table. Mrs Harrison stared at them and said,
‘Well, I never!’