THE next morning Roger, fully dressed, sought Alec’s bedroom before breakfast, while its occupant was still in process of shaving himself. ‘Alec,’ he said without preamble, ‘I’ve decided what we must do first of all today.’
‘Oh?’ said Alec through soap. ‘Well, it must be pretty urgent if it’s got you up and dressed by this time.’
‘It is. We must go and make the acquaintance of Mrs Allen. I ought to have done it before, but I haven’t had time.’
‘Yes, and talking of Mrs Allen,’ Alec chimed in, lifting his chin to an acute angle, ‘it occurred to me after I went to bed last night that this news of yours puts another person on our list of suspects.’
‘Yes, it does,’ Roger agreed instantly. ‘Allen, you mean. I’ve been thinking about that too. He could just as easily have given that packet to Bentley and stuffed him up with a fool yarn about it being some wonderful secret medicine as anybody else.’
‘Better,’ said Alec laconically.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well—dam’ fishy, isn’t it? I mean, he’s in love with Mrs Bentley, and Mrs Bentley’s in love with him.’
‘Exactly. That’s just the conclusion I’ve been arriving at. It never seems to have struck anybody before, but the motive imputed to Mrs Bentley (wanting to get rid of her husband) applies just as strongly to Allen. The husband’s got to be got rid of somehow if these two are to come together, and one might have done it just as much as the other. Taking the case on its bare bones I should say that the chances in these circumstances are decidedly in favour of the man taking the law into his hands in this way, not the woman. You can bet that Mrs Bentley had told him all about the sort of life she led with him and what a little blighter he was, and how he knocked her down and gave her a black eye. That’s enough to make any man see red when he’s fond of a woman.’
‘But what about Mrs Allen?’
‘Oh, yes, I’m not losing sight of her. But then there are bound to be all sorts of details that we don’t know anything about. Absolutely bound to be! For instance, I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Bentley had refused to let his wife have a divorce. In a case like this, that’s simply asking to be murdered.’
‘But if he’d been carrying on with Mary Blower?’
‘But did Mrs Bentley know that? And in any case she couldn’t divorce him without his consent, because of her affair with Allen.’
‘But did Bentley know about that?’
Roger laughed. ‘Goodness only knows! As I said, we’re groping entirely in the dark. We don’t know what they knew about each other, and we don’t know all the little details of all these people’s connections with each other. Mrs Saunderson, for instance. How do we know that she hadn’t got some cause for furiously hating Mrs Bentley? She talks as if she hated her; but is that mere cattishness, or is there any deeper reason? And we don’t know what other amours friend Bentley may have been indulging in. If a man plays about with his own servant, you can bet your last sixpence that he’s had dozens of other affairs before he came down to that. You see the trouble is that we’re outsiders. We haven’t the intimate knowledge of these people that a personal acquaintance would give us, like we had at Layton Court; and we haven’t got the authority to dig into their histories and cross-question them that the police have. For us, the whole thing is simply an exercise in deduction from fact to inference; we’ve hardly got an ounce of psychology to work on.’
‘All the more credit to you if you get to the bottom of it then, Mr Sheringham,’ said Alec, sponging his face vigorously.
‘True, Alexander. And that’s why I’m so jolly keen to do so.’
Alec emerged from his basin and buried his face in a towel.
‘I say,’ he said suddenly, coming to the surface for a moment. ‘Going back to the motives that we were discussing just now, what’s the good of either Mrs Bentley or Allen going to this extreme to get rid of the fellow, when there’s Mrs Allen still in the background? At that rate they’d have to polish her off too.’
‘By no means, Alexander Grierson,’ Roger objected. ‘For one thing Mrs Allen might have been willing to divorce her husband. For another, a wife is in a very different category in those circumstances from a husband. A husband can pack up and leave his wife and it doesn’t interfere with his livelihood in the least. A wife can’t pack up and leave her husband without sacrificing her livelihood.’
‘But Mrs Bentley was twice on the point of packing up and going,’ Alec objected.
‘She was on the point of packing up, yes. But did she really intend to go? And in any case, that was in the heat of the moment. She may have reconsidered. Lastly, if she was really intending to trot back to Paris, then that’s the strongest possible argument in favour of her innocence. So now I’m going down to breakfast. Hurry up; we mustn’t be late in starting out. I want to catch the lady before she goes into the town for her morning’s shopping. These provincial dames always spend their mornings grinning like dogs and running about the city, don’t they?’
‘Do you want me to come with you, then?’
‘Certainly I do. You look so blatantly honest. I emerge this morning as special correspondent for the Courier. You will be my cameraman.’
‘But I haven’t got a camera,’ objected the practical Alec.
‘Alec,’ said Roger severely, ‘you make me moan. For a detective, you’ve got about as much resource as a Welsh rarebit. How does a person without a camera provide himself with a camera?’
‘All right,’ Alec grinned. ‘I asked for it.’
‘Yes,’ said Roger gently, as he closed the door. ‘And you’ll pay for it, too.’
So punctually at half-past ten the new correspondent of the Courier presented himself at the front-door of Winsless Lodge, St Reginald’s Road, accompanied by his cameraman, and demanded to see Mrs Allen.
‘Are you a reporter, sir?’ asked the maid immediately.
‘Certainly not,’ said Roger with dignity. ‘I am a special correspondent to the Daily Courier.’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Allen isn’t seeing any more reporters, sir,’ said the maid, and promptly closed the door.
‘Bother, drat and blow!’ said Roger thoughtfully. ‘We will now dismiss the special correspondent of the Courier and summon Mr Roger Sheringham to our aid.’ And he rang the bell again.
On seeing the same couple, the servant made as if to shut the door in their faces without further conversation, but Roger deftly inserted a foot and blocked its passage. ‘Will you kindly give Mrs Allen this card,’ he said importantly. ‘Perhaps I misled you just now. Mrs Allen knows my name.’
He did not add that Mrs Allen didn’t know him, but fortunately the maid pursued no inquiries regarding this distinction. ‘If you would wait a minute, I’ll see Mrs Allen,’ she said, and left them.
‘You can’t keep a good man down,’ observed Roger to his cameraman. ‘If Mrs Allen won’t see me now I’ll disguise myself as Santa Claus and plunge down the chimney at her.’
Luckily this course was unnecessary. The maid returned the next moment saying that Mrs Allen would see them and would they kindly come this way. They came, and were shown into a large, airy drawing-room, furnished with taste and restraint in a colour-scheme of light grey and mauve, with a fire burning brightly in the hearth.
Roger looked round him with interest. ‘If this room was devised by its mistress,’ he remarked, ‘and not by a hireling from a furniture shop, the lady is one whom we shall not regret meeting. In fact, I shouldn’t be at all surprised, Alexander, if the difference between Mrs Allen and black lingerie in an overheated boudoir or little brogue shoes on an open moor is that of rustling silk on a ballroom floor.’
At that moment the lady in question entered the room, and Roger wheeled round to estimate his prognosis; for an instant he was so delighted with its accuracy that he quite forgot to burst into voluble and reassuring speech. Mrs Allen was between thirty-five and forty years old, tall and willowy, and with a charming dignity of presence from which even the little black morning frock she was wearing could not detract; her features were classical in their regularity, and her intensely blue eyes looked at Roger with a somewhat puzzled expression.
‘Mr Sheringham?’ she said. ‘I don’t think—’
‘Oh, no,’ said Roger quickly, ‘I haven’t the pleasure of knowing you personally, Mrs Allen. But I thought if I sent my card in you might be good enough to look on any book of mine you may have read (always providing that you have read one; it’s surprising how many people haven’t!) in the light of a formal introduction.’
Mrs Allen smiled very faintly, rather as if fulfilling her social duty to mere politeness than as if she found anything humorous in Roger’s words. ‘You are Mr Sheringham the novelist?’ she asked in even tones.
‘Yes.’
‘I have read one or two of your books, of course. What is it you wish to see me about, Mr Sheringham?’ She had not seated herself nor had she invited her two guests to do so. Her cool composure showed Roger clearly that he was going to have considerable difficulty in keeping the reins of the interview in his own hands.
‘Well, as a matter of fact, you may think that I’ve gained an entrance here under false pretences,’ he began with his most charming smile. ‘The truth is that the Daily Courier has been good enough to ask me to act as their special correspondent for a few days down here in regard to this Bentley case and I want to ask you if you will be so good as to answer a few questions. Of course I wouldn’t—’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Sheringham,’ Mrs Allen interrupted frostily, a touch of hardness that was in curious contrast with the essential repose of her bearing making its appearance in her voice. ‘From the very beginning I have refused to grant an interview and I am afraid I cannot make an exception even in your case.’ Without further beating about the bush she crossed to the fire-place and rang the bell.
‘A charming day, isn’t it?’ said Mrs Allen tranquilly. ‘I always think that some of these days in early autumn are really as delightful as anything else that the rest of the year can give us.’
‘Yes, the evenings are drawing in now!’ mumbled Roger with mechanical platitudinism.
Two minutes later Roger and Alec were walking down the short drive towards the road. The unnatural restraint of their manner suggested two small boys not yet out of range of the schoolmistress’s eye. It appeared that something like this had occurred to Roger himself.
‘That excellent lady made me feel exactly three years old,’ he said with unwilling admiration. Roger was always fair; anybody who could make him feel three years old deserved admiration, and the highest admiration at that. Roger did not grudge it.
‘She made me feel a blithering idiot,’ observed the cameraman shortly.
‘Not one of our successful interviews. Though I’d sooner have her than that ghastly little Saunderson woman any day of the year, even one of these early autumn ones. That really is one of the very few types of ladies to whom I remove my hat. What a nerve! Poor old Roger Sheringham didn’t cut much ice there. She got rid of us like a couple of rotten apples. I only wonder she didn’t have us thrown in the dustbin.’
Alec gave vent to a sudden explosive sound. ‘I like seeing you get it in the neck occasionally, I must say, Roger,’ he observed with candour.
‘You’re a low and vengeful hound, Alexander,’ said Roger mildly. ‘You should try and curb your naughty passions.’
They passed in silence through the front-gate and turned automatically to the right.
‘Was the interview a failure though?’ Roger said suddenly. ‘After all what went we out for to seek? A voice crying in the wilderness? Nay. A voice crying in Mrs Allen’s drawing-room. And that’s precisely what we heard. In other words, the great thing is not that we saw her for so short a time, but that we did see her at all. All we set out to do was to try and get a personal impression of the lady, wasn’t it? Well, I’m jolly sure that I’ve got a personal impression all right, haven’t you?’
‘Two minutes was ample,’ Alec agreed. ‘What do you make of her?’
Roger considered. ‘That Mrs Allen,’ he said with some care, ‘is a woman of singularly strong character and resolution. In my humble opinion, given enough provocation she would be capable de tout. I put that into French,’ he added, ‘because it sounds so much more refined than to say straight out that she would be capable of committing murder if the need arose—a thing I should simply hate to put into plain words.’
‘I’m dashed if I can see a woman like that committing murder,’ Alec disagreed.
‘That,’ Roger replied gently, ‘is because you will continue to look only upon charming outside coverings and disregard entirely hidden and seething interiors. For purely routine work, Constable Grierson, you may be excellent at discovering who stole the bath-bun from the station waiting-room, but among us greater detectives of the higher psychology you’re a washout!’
‘Humph!’ said Constable Grierson briefly.
‘And now,’ confided Roger, turning in at a gateway on the left of the road, ‘for Miss Mary Blower. Let’s hope for better luck in that quarter.’