Macdonald set out for Penharden early on the following (Tuesday) morning. It was but a thirty-mile drive northwestwards from London, and he enjoyed the easy run along the Watford by-pass, that pleasantest of exits from London, and one which always appealed to the homing sense in the Scots detective, who was not above a childlike sense of pleasure when he read the terse legend “To the North” at the junction of the by-pass road. Londoner though he was by adoption, “the North” held Macdonald’s imagination.
The approach to Penharden lay over a fine sweep of common, and the little town looked attractive in the June sunshine, with its wide main street bordered by fine old elms, the pavements set back behind broad grass verges after the manner of the old “rope walks.” There were some good Georgian houses, and a spacious “Church Green” with smooth turf lay in front of the old parish church, with its comely stone tower. A nice little town, open and unspoilt by the speculative builder, thought Macdonald, as he turned his car off the wide high street to the narrow road which held the police headquarters.
Inspector Lynch greeted the C.I.D. man formally, with a sort of cautious reticence which was familiar to Macdonald in his dealings with his provincial colleagues. He knew exactly how Lynch was feeling—worried, uncertain, and a little resentful. Lynch was out of his depth in the present case: he had made more than a bit of a mess of it, and knew it, but he was disposed to resent the intrusion of Scotland Yard into his own domain. A short conversation with Macdonald did a lot to decrease his resentment: Lynch found the C.I.D. man sympathetic and friendly, and presently Lynch gave up being on his guard and relieved his feelings by a lengthy grouse, mainly at the cussedness of things in the present case.
“All this flap about Mrs. Anderby having murdered people by the dozen—damned rot it seemed to me—and still does,” he proclaimed indignantly. “Take the business of the Rev. Anderby’s death—heart failure plain and simple, and yet that old ass Grendon got suggesting all the most improbable things. I tell you Mr. Anderby had been examined half a dozen times for heart trouble; he was always having palpitations. I’ve helped him into a taxi myself when he was taken queer in the High Street one day, and precious bad he looked.”
He paused a moment and then added sheepishly, “I know it looks queer Mrs. Anderby having done a bolt like that. I reckon she realized the sort of things that were being said about her and lost her nerve, if you take me. What with the things people were saying—and I tell you they talk enough in these small towns to shrivel the skin off an elephant—and then Grendon’s death coming on top of it—well, it was enough to make any woman get the jitters. Then the folk at the boarding house where she was staying wouldn’t have helped matters. Human nature, you know,” said Lynch profoundly. “If you know anything more inhuman than a jealous spinster of fifty, who runs a boarding house into the bargain, lead me to it!”
“That seems a sidelight which didn’t illuminate the official report,” said Macdonald, his sympathetic grin melting the last resentment from Lynch’s worried mind. “The great thing about having an informal talk like this is that we can consider the oddments which aren’t important enough for a report to C.O. Tell me about the boarding-house lady.”
“The Rev. Anderby and his missis were house hunting,” said Lynch, “and until they found the home, they stayed at The Rowan Tree, a boarding house kept by Miss Driver. Some men are born stupid,” added the inspector in parenthesis. “It was the reverend gentleman who chose The Rowan Tree as a temporary home because Miss Driver had been a shining light as parish worker when he was vicar of Oasthampstead. You can guess the situation for yourself,” he added with a wink. “Other parties in the parish had put their shirt on the probability of Miss D. bringing the thing off and becoming Mrs. Vicar—only it didn’t come off. Then Mr. Anderby marries Nurse Pewsey, whom Miss Driver hated like poison, and brings her to the boarding house which Miss D. had opened when she left Oasthampstead after her ‘disappointment.’ My hat! If Mrs. A. had been poisoned with weed killer in the coffee I could have understood it easily enough. Takes a really saintly man to be as stupid as that.”
Macdonald chuckled. “A certain denseness seems indicated,” he agreed, “but I’m surprised that Mrs. Anderby tolerated staying in such an atmosphere.”
“Bless you, you’ve got that bit all wrong,” grinned Lynch. “Mrs. A. had a glorious chance of administering pin pricks to Miss Driver by alternately talking about married bliss and complaining about the cooking and querying the weekly accounts! I don’t expect you have to take notice of silly little domestic squabbles when you’re investigating crime on the grand scale—and I tell you I’ve watched some of your cases!—but here, it’s all pettiness. Precious little crime and a lot of back-biting. Anyway, Mrs. Anderby made no bones about staying at The Rowan Tree—and telling other people in confidence that the food was not too good, and the cleaning questionable. You see, in times past, Nurse Pewsey had a maternity case in a previous boarding house of Miss Driver’s, and the latter lady gave the nurse a poor time. Tit for tat’s a sound motto.”
Macdonald nodded. “Yes. I think you’ve got that situation very nicely observed. Meantime, what was Miss Driver’s attitude when questioned after Mrs. Anderby’s disappearance?”
“She was uncommonly careful. Looked volumes and said as little as possible,” replied Lynch. “For one thing, she’s very indignant that her house is being talked about, and the police have been calling on her. Told me to my face that the fact of me being seen on the doorstep meant a definite loss of prestige—profit, to put it plainly. No help from Miss Driver, anyway. She’d got sense enough not to repeat any gossip, and I could get nothing out of her at all. Mrs. Anderby had gone for a walk—that was all Miss Driver knew. She also told me exactly what she herself was doing during the entire morning of the day Mrs. Anderby disappeared, and as she was making strawberry jam in the kitchen with the cook, it’s pretty plain that Miss Driver had nothing to do with the disappearance—so far as practical politics are concerned—but I reckon her tongue may have had quite a lot to do with it.”
“You think, then, that Mrs. Anderby ran away on account of the gossip that was raging about her?”
“That’s it. Lost her nerve and lost her head. After all, she’d had a pretty trying time, losing her husband like that.”
Macdonald nodded. “Quite—but how do you account for Major Grendon’s death?”
Lynch sighed. “The Lord knows,” he said despondently. “Might have been suicide. You never know. He was old and his sciatica had been giving him hell. Damned depressing business, sciatica. He’s raised all this song about Anderby’s death, and he’d been to see Mrs. Anderby. Maybe he got more than he counted on from her. Likely she told him she’d take him into court for criminal slander, and he realized what a fool he’d made of himself. That—and the sudden new attack of sciatica may have been too much for him, and he just destroyed the silly statement he’d written out and turned the gas on. I know it doesn’t sound convincing—but that seems to me to be a likelier thing than to imagine that Mrs. Anderby walked into Grendon’s room at midnight and did the trick. How was she to know that Brook had put Grendon to sleep with his herbs, or his monkey tricks, or both.”
Macdonald studied his companion. “And Brook?” he inquired. “I gather you don’t like him?”
Lynch screwed his face into a grimace. “That’s an understatement,” he said. “I can’t stand the chap. I suspect he’s crooked, and I’m quite willing to believe he finished Grendon off for his own purposes—but I can’t see any motive, and there’s nothing to make a case of. If I were going on with this case—which, thank the Lord, I’m not—I’d concentrate on Brook. I think the whole business about Anderby is just ballyhoo, but Grendon’s death may be a different story. After all, Grendon was a nosy old cuss: if he wasn’t suspecting someone of murder he was suspecting them of thieving, or spying, or treason, or some such rot. He may have found out something inconvenient about Brook. When you come to think of it, the Anderby story made a very convenient cover if anyone did want to get Grendon out of the way—and Brook knew the old idiot had been blethering about Mrs. Anderby and all the rest of it. You go along and see Brook. I’d be interested to know what you make of him. I call him a nasty bit of work myself.”
“Getting back to Mrs. Anderby,” said Macdonald. “According to Grendon’s statement, there was a lot of gossip when Dr. Chenner died. You made some inquiry into that, I gather?”
Lynch shook his head. “No. Nothing of that kind. It’s true there was a lot of gossip, but it never reached us officially. People just talked at their tea parties, or over their knitting, but took care not to let it reach us. It wasn’t Chenner’s death that caused the gossip—it was the fact that he left Nurse Pewsey a spot of money!”
When Macdonald left Lynch, he did not make his way to Brook’s clinic. He drove instead to The Rowan Tree. Miss Driver’s house was a medium-sized modern building, very prettily situated on a road running off the common towards the fertile farm lands beyond. The Rowan Tree was a modern house, standing in its own garden, with a lane at the back which offered a short cut to the town.
When Macdonald came face to face with Miss Driver, he guessed that he was up against a difficult job. She was a tall, thin, gray-haired woman, dressed in a well-tailored suit, and her face had a mouth which seemed to justify the old description of “rat trap.” Thin lips met in a hard uncurving line, and her light gray eyes held a merciless look. Macdonald had never seen a harder or more uncompromising face.
Having introduced himself and apologized for troubling her again—a preamble on which she made no comment—he continued by saying that he hoped Miss Driver might be willing to help by answering a few further questions. She looked him straight in the face with an unwavering stare.
“I have already answered all the questions which the police put to me to the best of my ability,” she retorted, “and I have signed a statement which embodies all the information I had to give. I have nothing to add and nothing to withdraw.”
“I have read your statement and thought it admirably clear,” replied Macdonald, and she cut in tartly,
“Then why waste your time asking further questions when I have told you that I have no other information? I am not a fool, nor a gossip—and I have no intention of inventing further information, or of denying the facts I previously stated. I have been put to inconvenience enough already.”
“I quite realize that,” said Macdonald quietly. “Sudden deaths—and disappearances—do inconvenience people, but they have to be investigated. Apart from facts, I should be grateful for your opinion on certain matters: for instance, do you consider that Mrs. Anderby was aware that there was a lot of gossip concerning her, and that she was worried on that account?”
“I am the owner of a boarding house, Chief Inspector, not a general confidante. I make a habit of not gossiping with my clients. I do not know whether Mrs. Anderby was aware that her affairs had given rise to gossip, and I do not know if she was worried about it.”
Miss Driver spoke with hardly a movement of her thin lips, and she held her head very erect, her bony hands hanging clenched at her sides.
“I gather that you must have had some conversation with her regarding her husband’s death?” asked Macdonald, and she replied,
“I condoled with her to the best of my ability—a Christian could not well do less. I also made the most suitable arrangements I could, though it would have been more suitable had Mr. Anderby’s body been taken to the mortuary chapel. I have other residents to consider, and it is useless to deny that the visits of undertakers and the movements of their men are disturbing. Mrs. Anderby’s loss was a very sad one—but people do not wish to have tragedies inflicted on them unnecessarily. It did not help Mrs. Anderby—and it caused a great deal of disturbance here.”
“Yes. As I have said before, death is inconvenient—but it is an inconvenience we are all bound to inflict on our fellows sometime,” replied Macdonald. “However—I see your point quite clearly.”
“You don’t,” she suddenly broke in tartly. “You see your own. Have you any further questions to ask?”
“I should like to see Mrs. Anderby’s room—the one she was occupying after her husband’s death. I have the keys from the inspector.”
For answer, Miss Driver led the way to the door, and they crossed a wide, sunny hall to a small passage where she indicated a doorway at the farther end.
“Since you have the key, I can leave you to make any further investigations you think fit,” she said, and Macdonald replied,
“Thank you. Just one more question. Did Mrs. Anderby move into this room immediately after her husband’s death?”
“No. I gave her a small bedroom upstairs, but she complained that she could hear someone snoring in the adjoining bedroom. Since this was the only other room available, I offered it to her—and have much regretted it. I used this room as my own sitting room, and it seems that I am to be deprived of it indefinitely.”
“Not indefinitely,” replied Macdonald placidly. “I will see that you have possession of it again shortly.”
He moved forward towards the locked door and heard Miss Driver walk in the other direction, her footsteps quick and very light. He pondered over her a little as he examined and removed the seal which the punctilious Lynch had fastened across the door. Miss Driver had hated Mrs. Anderby—Lynch was right there—but she was much too wise to admit it.
Opening the door, Macdonald crossed the little room and pulled back the curtains which covered the windows—French windows, opening onto a little square of lawn shut in with rose pergolas. It was a charming little room, gay in the sunshine which streamed in now the curtains had been pulled back—cream walls, brown carpet, dark oak furniture, and a divan bed covered with golden taffeta and piled with cushions. There were some good etchings on the walls, and books in built-in shelves: with the privacy of the small rose garden beyond, it was as pleasant a sitting room as anyone could have wished for.
Two large suitcases and a hat box were piled up beside the divan, and numerous small personal properties lay on them—knitting, a hot-water bottle, a pipe and a man’s walking stick, a handkerchief and some books and magazines, and a copy of the Church Times—evidently Miss Driver had collected all the small possessions left by the Anderbys and put them together.
Macdonald opened the suitcases and glanced through them, had a look at the books, then opened the French window and went outside onto the little lawn. He observed that there was a concealed archway in the rose pergola, carefully screened, which gave access to a path running between hedges towards the lane at the back of the house—an ideally easy exit for anyone who did not want to be observed. As he glanced towards the archway he saw a woman’s figure beyond—not Miss Driver in her severe tailored suit, but a shorter stouter figure in a cheerful shade of blue. He advanced a step, saying pleasantly,
“Please don’t let me disturb you. You were admiring the roses, perhaps?”
The figure came into view from behind the ramblers—a stout, cheerful-looking old lady with benevolent blue eyes. She smiled cheerfully at Macdonald.
“Yes. I have a great affection for roses. You are a detective, are you not? Are you looking for Mrs. Anderby? You won’t find her here, you know. She has passed over.”
Macdonald smiled at the apple-faced old lady, noting her many necklaces and the charms which hung from them. Before he had time to reply she went on:
“She spoke to me last night. I felt her presence quite close. She was trying to tell me about something she wanted done. I wonder if you could help?”
“If you will tell me about it, I will do my best,” replied Macdonald gravely, and the old lady went on,
“It was about her husband’s Bible. She wanted it to be given to his sister. It was a very special Bible, a most beautiful one. Dear Mr. Anderby showed it to me once. Some of his parish workers presented it to him when he retired. His eyesight was failing a little, and the Bible was chosen for its beautiful print. It had a red cover.”
Macdonald considered the gentle old face upturned to his own: neither face nor speech was that of a weak-minded person, despite the eccentricity of what she said, and he decided to continue the conversation—more especially because, on looking through the Anderbys’ possessions, he had noticed the Bible which he might have expected to find was not there. He replied,
“Perhaps Mrs. Anderby had already given the Bible to her husband’s sister.”
“Oh, no!” The reply was most emphatic. “His sister is an invalid—bedridden, poor soul! She lives in a London nursing home. She was not even able to come to the funeral. Only Mr. Anderby’s solicitor and a few of his oldest friends came. Besides, I know that Mrs. Anderby would not have parted from the Bible during her lifetime.”
“But how can you be sure that she is no longer alive?” queried Macdonald, and the confiding blue eyes looked up at him candidly.
“I told you. She spoke to me—in a dream. It was so clear, not distressful at all. She is happy. She told me so.” With her hands clasped before her, the old lady went on,
“People are so wilfully misunderstanding. There is nothing to fear in death. I know. I have often heard their spirits speak to me. I do not always speak to other people about these things—but you look kind and I thought you might help.”
“Perhaps you could help me, too,” replied Macdonald. “I want to know where Mrs. Anderby went when she left this house—if she did leave it.”
“Oh, dear me, yes. She left here. She went for a walk . . . I saw her go—with the bunch of roses. Such beautiful flowers. They were sent to her by post that morning. Now surely you can tell where she went—with a bunch of beautiful roses, sent in memory of her husband?”
“You mean that she would have gone to the cemetery to put the flowers on her husband’s grave?” asked Macdonald, and the blue eyes beamed at him.
“Of course. I knew you would understand. She loved her husband although she was a hard woman in some ways, but then she had had a hard life. She was conventionally minded, too. She would not have thought it in keeping for a newly widowed woman like herself to go out shopping, or on some trivial errand, the day after her husband had been buried. She would have taken the roses to his grave.”
Macdonald looked down at the cheerful old face and decided that it was a sensible face: spiritualist or not, his companion showed a certain shrewdness in what she had said. He glanced round the garden and then at the open window of Miss Driver’s sitting room.
“I’m very much interested in what you say,” he replied. “Shall we go inside the house? We should be able to talk more easily there.”
She beamed at him. “And without fear of eavesdroppers. Let us go inside. There are so many of us old women in this house and we are all inquisitive. Don’t be too hard on us. Our life’s work is over and we are but onlookers. We live on the interests of others because we have so little interest in our own lives.”
Macdonald stood by the window as his companion entered the room and seated herself sedately on a straight-backed chair.
“My name is Macdonald,” he said, and she bowed.
“And mine is Austin. Jane Austin. A conceit of my dear parents. About Mrs. Anderby, however. I must not waste your time. She set out for the cemetery—but she never reached it.”
“How can you be sure of that?”
“The roses, Mr. Macdonald, the roses. They were very fine blooms—I saw them in her hands. There were six white ones—the old Frau Karl Druschki—and six red ones, Queen Elizabeth—a newer variety. It was shown at Chelsea last year. In addition, there was a cluster of Irish Elegance—the single rose, copper-coloured in bud, faint pink when in full bloom. I went to the cemetery on the evening after Mrs. Anderby had left us. I looked at the flowers on her husband’s grave. There were bunches of roses lying there—poor withered things!—like some withered lives, dried up and sad. But the roses which Mrs. Anderby had taken out with her were not among them. I think I knew the truth then. She had passed over. She was no longer on our plane.”
“I don’t think that you can be certain of that,” said Macdonald gently, but she replied,
“It is natural that you should be skeptical: you work on material evidence, do you not? I have spiritual evidence, and it is as real to me as your fingerprints are to you.” She smiled across at him, tranquil and undisturbed. “I must not argue—that would be foolish—but I see your eyes studying the roses outside. There are Frau Karl Druschkis and Irish Elegance and Queen Elizabeth, but I do not think that Mrs. Anderby’s roses were cut from this garden—but it is difficult to be sure. I do not generally trespass into this part of the garden.” She paused and then added, “It was quite certain—it could be counted upon—that Mrs. Anderby would take those roses to the cemetery. I fear, I very much fear—that someone did count upon it.” She sighed, and Macdonald asked.
“Are you quite sure that you are not concealing something, Miss Austin?”
She looked at him with that intent smiling gaze, perfectly happy and self-possessed.
“I have nothing to conceal. I have talked to you very candidly because you have a friendly face. I like you. If you talk to other people in this house about me they will tell you I am a little mad. Quite harmless—senile perhaps.”
She smiled quite happily and then added briskly, “Now you must find that Bible. It is bound in red morocco—an unusual and beautiful binding, and there is a flap inside the cover—a little compartment for holding letters. It had a sheet in it with the signatures of the subscribers on it.”
She got up to go and Macdonald rose and held out his hand: he was quite sure that her mind was sound, and that there was plenty of shrewd common sense among the whimsies in her mind. She took his hand in her own, and Macdonald was surprised at the touch of her fingers. They were cool and silken smooth, having a vitality and elasticity in their softness unlike the hands of old age. Again she smiled at him.
“I have a young spirit. My earthly years do not count,” she said. “You also have a young spirit. I wish you well.”
After a moment or two, Macdonald went out into the passage, found his way to the hall and rang a bell. Miss Driver appeared from a doorway at the back.
“Can you tell me if Mrs. Anderby had any parcel sent to her on the last morning she was here?” he asked, and Miss Driver nodded brusquely.
“Yes. A parcel came by the post.”
“Could I have the wrapping paper it came in—and the box.”
“I have no idea where the wrapping paper is. Destroyed, possibly. I do not hoard such things.”
“Could I ask the maid who did the room if she remembers it?”
“I did the room myself. It is my room—and I remember nothing about wrapping paper or a box.”
Macdonald paused: then, still in the same conversational tone, he said, “And would you let me have Mr. Anderby’s presentation Bible—the one bound in red morocco?”
That question got home. A dull red suffused the thin, colourless face, a flush which Miss Driver could not conceal. Her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides, and she looked at Macdonald with hatred in her eyes. Before she answered, he spoke again, still quite gently.
“I think that you should let me have it. I expect that you took it to safeguard it.”
Without a word, she turned and went upstairs and presently returned with a paper-covered book. This she thrust into Macdonald’s hands and turned quickly away, but not before he had seen the tears running down her face.
Macdonald took the Bible back into the little sitting room. Removing the paper which covered it, he found that it was bound in beautiful rose-coloured morocco, as Miss Austin had said.
There was a flap inside the cover, but inside the flap was no list of subscribers’ signatures. There was a folded piece of paper—it was an invalid’s temperature chart, carefully filled in. The name “Dr. Chenner” was written clearly upon it, and the date—December 29th, 193-. A word was written across the chart in clear block capitals. The word was HYOSCINE.