When Macdonald left the three men at Brook’s house, he was in a very thoughtful frame of mind. The case he was working on was developing swiftly, but he still could see no way out of the maze, no path which led to a clear conclusion. As in a maze, side turnings presented themselves in every direction, making confusion yet worse confounded.
After his first inquiries into Mrs. Anderby’s disappearance, Macdonald had considered the different factors which might account for it. First, of necessity, came the possibility that she had been overcome by fear and had run away. Coupled to that possibility was the chance that fear had undermined her nerves to such an extent that she had committed suicide rather than face the logical result of her own actions, now that suspicion was focused on her. It seemed plain enough that Major Grendon had let her see, not only that he suspected her, but also that he was doing his best to put his suspicions into a form which would cause the police to make a move. Indeed, it seemed probable that Grendon had grasped certain evidence, or was able to suggest some line which would make a possible police case into a certainty. That supposition seemed to be the only explanation which accounted for Grendon’s own death.
Yet to arrive at a conclusion concerning Grendon’s death was certainly not easy. It was obvious enough that Mrs. Anderby could have walked from her boarding house at midnight to Brook’s house without being observed. By her own wish she had changed her bedroom from one on the second floor to one on the ground floor so that she could leave the house and return to it unobserved and unsuspected. She knew also that Grendon’s room was on the ground floor, and that he slept with his windows open. As a trained nurse, Mrs. Anderby might have relied on her own ability to kill Grendon in a variety of ways. She would have known how to administer chloroform, how to use a hypodermic—and she might well have realized that the gas fire, if she could get at it, coupled to the closing of the windows, would do the job for her with a minimum of risk to herself. She could have done it easily enough—there was no doubt on that point.
It was at this point in the chain of reasoning that other “side walks” began to branch out from the main path in the maze. Certainly Mrs. Anderby could have been responsible for Grendon’s death—but Max Brook could have achieved the same end even more easily. Macdonald had noted certain points in the evidence which did not look too well for Brook. It was the osteopath who had prevented Falkland from talking to Grendon on the afternoon before the latter’s death. Falkland had wanted to go and talk to Grendon but had been refused permission by Brook.
After that followed the incident of the “hypnotic” treatment and the infusion of sedative herbs. Brook had seen to it that Grendon was very fast asleep. True, the osteopath had admitted this fact at the inquest—and admitted it with a brusqueness which seemed to have no fear behind it, but even that admission might be regarded as one with a hidden implication. The question would have arisen, “How could anyone have crossed Grendon’s room and reached a gas fire close by the head of his bed without waking him?” The answer was that Brook could have done it. His capacity to enter a room without waking the occupant was well known.
Yet again another path branched out. Could Brook and Mrs. Anderby have worked in collusion? At first this seemed a wild and unprofitable surmise, but the combination was suggestive. Macdonald (in agreement with Falkland here) could not think out any method by which Mr. Anderby was killed which would have been within “Nurse Pewsey’s” power to bring about. But Brook was an exceedingly clever man, with an exceedingly subtle mind. Conceivably he could have worked out some scheme which would have had the desired results. Brook was a skilled herbalist as well as a brilliant anatomist. Macdonald did not underestimate his capacity. But where was the profit to be found in such a collusion? How could Brook profit? Blackmail seemed an improbable answer to that question, for an accomplice in murder cannot levy blackmail because exposure would result in his own undoing.
Yet once again Brook was involved in the story with this new evidence about the “whispering” telephone messages. Brook, Falkland and Lee Gordon had all received these messages—or said that they had. Falkland was the only one who had anything tangible to show for his story—and Macdonald was exceedingly interested in the slip of paper which Falkland had handed over. The block capitals in which the lettering was done were remarkably neat and regular. Each capital was upright, each well proportioned. Macdonald knew quite well that the average person is exceedingly bad at lettering. He knew the sloping N’s, the squiggly S’s, the dotted I’s, and the minuscule form of U’s which the unskilled form when asked to letter out a sentence in block capitals. Yet here was a sheet of neat, well-proportioned capitals which would not have disgraced a skilled draughtsman. That Mrs. Anderby, or Miss Jane Austin, could have produced such a sheet Macdonald did not believe. He seldom risked generalizations as to the relative capacity of men and of women, but he would have expected that very workmanlike sheet to have been the work of a man, not of a woman—unless the woman had had some training in draughtsmanship. Even in the filling in of a crossword puzzle, a man generally achieves greater legibility and consistency in his capitals than does a woman.
The message itself interested Macdonald, too, with its insistence on the weir below Oasthampstead. The Chief Inspector had not omitted the possibility of murder to account for Mrs. Anderby’s disappearance. Why anybody should have murdered her he did not know, but the possibility could not be ruled out—and if she had been murdered, Macdonald argued, it was probable that the murder would be contrived to have the appearance of suicide. Suicide is not easy to fake: the self-inflicted gunshot is seldom faked successfully: poison is not always easy to administer—and if either of those methods had been followed the body would surely have come to light fairly soon. A fall over a cliff can be easily engineered—but there were no cliffs or deep quarries within easy reach of Penharden. There remained drowning—and Macdonald had not overlooked the rivers in the district. Truth to tell, he had had his own men co-operating with the local police since the day he took over the case: the sandy wastes of “no man’s land,” that wild stretch of gorse and bramble, of hillock and rabbit warren and tussock, had been very carefully searched, as had the banks of the River Pen. Even the cemetery, with its newly dug graves, had been inspected.
It was not until four days after the search had begun—the same day on which the three men had received their “messages,” that Emma Anderby’s body had come to light. At the very time that Macdonald had called at Brook’s house, he had just come away from the mortuary where her remains lay—if the evidence of clothes and documents and personal possessions were to be trusted. Her body had not been found in the River Pen, but in a backwater of the Avon, ten miles from Penharden.
It was a gamekeeper who had made the discovery—a man named Thomas Lett, whose local knowledge had been enlisted by the police to assist them in their ever-widening search. He had found the body in a deep pool in the backwater, wedged beneath a fallen branch. It was a lonely spot, the haunt of much wild life. Fish, water rats, water fowl, stoats—all these flourished in the quiet backwater, whose bottom was too treacherous and waters too choked with weed and fallen timber to be practicable for boating. The wild creatures had done their part in rendering Emma Anderby’s face unrecognizable, but the clothes were neatly marked—her clothes, undoubtedly. Her handbag, too, still hung over her arm, containing sodden letters, a post office savings bank book, a cheque book, a note case with ten pound notes in it, and a sheet covered with her own writing, still decipherable in parts.
“I feel my life is over. I can’t bear to go on living. . . . All . . . is taken . . . afraid . . .” So ran some of the phrases which were still decipherable.
Emma Anderby had drowned. A very slight examination determined that, for her lungs were full of water. All these facts Macdonald had known when he sat talking to Falkland and Brook and Lee Gordon. While he listened to their stories, he had been trying to decide what was the motive of the message sender. Was it merely to mislead the police? Had the sender of those whispered messages been so simple as to assume that the police, after searching the weir on the River Pen, would give up the search and assume that it was Emma Anderby herself who had sent those messages?
Macdonald had felt a contraction of his own scalp as he pondered. What if that simple explanation was the right one? What if “dear Emma” had indeed risked another desperate move in the hideous quagmire wherein she had plunged?
Was he being fooled by a mind more astute than his own?
There might be motive within motive in this last queer development. Macdonald knew enough about human nature to realize the folly that sensible men are capable of. It would have taken very little more suggestion to have made Falkland go and search beneath the weir—and had he been observed there, the report of his fellow recipients of messages might have made his presence by the river bank look very questionable.
Brook was much too astute to be caught that way—always assuming that he knew no more about those messages than he admitted.
Lee Gordon was obviously frightened. He said that he had believed that it was Mrs. Anderby’s voice which had spoken to him—and the appalling thing was that he might be right.
“Hell’s bells!” said Macdonald. “If I don’t get that body identified I shall be receiving spirit messages myself soon!”
Again he turned to the meagre facts about Mrs. Anderby’s disappearance. At half-past ten on the Saturday morning she had walked out of the garden of The Rowan Tree with a bunch of roses in her hand.
At half-past ten on that same morning, Brook had been working in his garden—but not within sight of Lynch’s futile shadowers. Brook had been working in the coppice at the back of his garden, clearing away dead wood, clipping shrubs, cutting grass—but not in sight! At midday he had reappeared in the front of the garden and come to the gate and spoken sardonically to the watcher. “Asked me what time I made it,” reported “Detective” Smith, “but he didn’t come out by either of the gates, nor use his car, and there’s a tidy hedge at the back there.”
At half-past ten on Saturday morning Falkland had been out in his car, driving leisurely to Ashridge Common. He had designed a house for a client there and had run out to see if the builders were doing their job to his liking. Ashridge was within twelve miles of Penharden—and a little more speeding than he had owned to would have given him plenty of time to include Penharden in his route. Moreover, Falkland owned a very good car, in tip-top condition, capable of doing seventy miles an hour—and somehow he did not look to Macdonald the type to drive at thirty on good roads.
Lee Gordon, like Brook, had been working in his garden at the hour in question, though—again like Brook—he had no corroboration of the fact to offer.
One person’s actions at least were beyond question—the owner of The Rowan Tree had been in her own kitchen, making jam with her assistant cook; she had been seen by tradesmen, charwoman and guests. There was no getting over it. Miss Driver, who (if hatred could be counted as a motive) had a real motive in disposing of Mrs. Anderby, was the one person whose actions were not in question at the time of Mrs. Anderby’s disappearance. Miss Austin had admittedly seen Mrs. Anderby leave the house—and it was Miss Austin who first informed Macdonald that Mrs. Anderby was dead—but violence seemed so far beyond the capacity of the little old lady that Macdonald found it difficult to include her in the general suspicion.
His most immediate problem was to settle the identity of the dead woman found in the River Avon—and that was not going to be so easy as it should have been. The most obvious method was through the medium of fingerprints, but these were not so easy to come by as might have been anticipated. The voles and the fishes had attacked the body as it lay in the water, pinned down by the fallen trunk of a tree, and neither face nor hands were left in any state for identification.
Even if a set of fingerprints could be obtained from the body—which was very doubtful—there was nothing satisfactory to compare them with among Mrs. Anderby’s possessions, a fact which Macdonald considered very curious. Mrs. Anderby had slept in Miss Driver’s room, but after the former had gone out on her Saturday morning walk the room had been very well cleaned—unreasonably well cleaned, Macdonald thought. There were no fingerprints but Miss Driver’s own on the polished surfaces of the furniture, crockery and fingerplates. Mrs. Anderby had not possessed the vanity which induces most modern women to carry a battery of pots and bottles about with them. Face cream was apparently unknown to her, as was face powder and lotions. Her belongings were the eminently sensible possessions of a middle-aged woman, including plenty of woollen underwear, woollen stockings, wraps and cardigans. She was evidently a meticulously neat woman, not given to unnecessary possessions: she either did not believe in keeping letters—or her letters had been destroyed before she left The Rowan Tree. Neither was she a reader—the books left in her bedroom were her husband’s, and the magazines had been through many hands besides her own. Devotional books there were, as Macdonald had expected—but not Mrs. Anderby’s. She had had a prayer book—it had been found in her handbag, a mass of sodden pulp after several days’ immersion. Apparently she had not taken photographs away with her when she had come to stay with her husband in Penharden: her possessions had filled only one suitcase. Improbable though it seemed, there was nothing among them which yielded a good, foolproof set of fingerprints. Even her tooth brush—generally a safe guide for such prints, had been wrapped up in a wet face flannel and thrust inside a sponge bag. No help forthcoming there. Small wonder that Macdonald pondered. He was by no means certain that Miss Driver had not made her own arrangements about Mrs. Anderby’s possessions. That Miss Driver had been through them he was certain—she had examined everything left in the bedroom and had repacked the suitcases, explaining tartly that she did not care to have things left about in her own room. If Mrs. Anderby had chosen to go off like that, there was no sense in leaving her things “cluttering up the place.”
Later, when the police had been called in because Mrs. Anderby did not return or send word, Miss Driver had told Lynch curtly that all the Anderbys’ possessions were there, safely put together in the bedroom—and the sooner they were taken away, the better.
Obviously Macdonald’s next job was to trace Mrs. Anderby back to her last residence. Lynch had done some preliminary work here, but with very negative results. Mrs. Anderby—then Miss Pewsey—had had rooms in a quiet house in a quiet street in Bedford. Number fifteen, Wells Avenue, Lynch had discovered, was let out as “flats for ladies,” each flat self-contained in a small way, with a tiny bathroom and kitchenette. Miss Pewsey was a careful and economical soul. When her marriage was decided on, she had taken the opportunity of subletting her “flat” furnished by the month, and she herself had moved into a private hotel, from whence she was married. All her personal possessions, Lynch was told, had been packed up in trunks and packing cases and had been stored. He asked where they had been stored, but the tenant of her flat was unable to give any information. She simply did not know. Lynch had returned to Miss Driver’s house and sought for further information on the point—but had found none. Mrs. Anderby appeared to have disposed of all personal papers.
It was at this juncture that Macdonald had been handed the case, and he had lost no time in instituting a search for Nurse Pewsey’s property, by advertisement, and through the usual police channels. He had had his answer that day—the same day on which Mrs. Anderby’s body had been found. She had stored her trunks and cases with a small firm in Oasthampstead. A furniture dealer, from whom she had at one time or another bought various small pieces, had an out-building behind his premises in which he stored goods at a very cheap rate. His shop was old, his “repository” not much better than a wooden shack with a corrugated iron roof. During the week-end in which Mrs. Anderby had disappeared, Brown’s “repository” had been burnt to the ground and his shop premises almost entirely destroyed. Brown was only a small tradesman and the fire, while disastrous for him, had not been an impressive affair. No one lived on the premises, no life was lost—but the trunks and cases which had contained Mrs. Anderby’s private possessions were completely destroyed. Brown had been so much upset by the disaster to his business—he was not adequately covered by insurance—that it was some time before he reported to the police concerning the property they were inquiring about. In any case, the destruction was complete so far as Mrs. Anderby’s belongings were concerned.
Inevitably, Macdonald began inquiries as to the cause of the fire, but he could get very little satisfaction. The so-called “repository” was a very ramshackle shed, with weatherboarding walls on three sides, and window apertures, nominally boarded-up, which would have presented no difficulty to a determined person seeking entrance. The place had been stacked with old furniture and other inflammable rubbish, and since there was no lighting in it, Brown and his assistant carpenter were in the habit of using candles or a lantern when they penetrated its obscure recesses. The fire occurred on the Saturday night, but it might well have been smouldering for hours before it broke out into active flame and was observed. Brown’s premises stood in an old builder’s yard, well away from neighbouring premises. On one side was a garage, open only in the daytime, on the other a monumental mason, who also retired from his working premises at one o’clock on Saturdays. There was no one about to notice any activities in connection with Brown’s premises. Whether the fire were due to arson or to accident it was not possible to prove—though Macdonald himself was in no doubt about the matter. Somebody had wanted to destroy “Nurse Pewsey’s” possessions—and they had been eminently successful.
When he left Brook’s house, Macdonald went to the nearest telephone box and put through an order to one of his own men. He then parked his car and went for a walk on the common, smoking his pipe and thinking hard. He then went to The Rowan Tree. He knew that by this time Miss Driver and her assistant cook would be out—summoned to the police station for the purpose of identifying some of the garments found on the body of the drowned woman. They would be detained there until Macdonald himself arrived.
When he arrived at the boarding house, he went in by the gate in the lane at the back of the house. He hoped—and expected—to see Miss Austin in the private part of the garden outside Miss Driver’s room on the ground floor and he was not disappointed. She was there—endeavouring, as far as Macdonald could determine, to see through the chinks in the drawn curtains. Old she certainly was—but not at all deaf. She was aware of Macdonald’s presence as soon as he entered the gate, and she turned towards him without a sign of embarrassment, a welcoming smile on her wrinkled old face.
“I thought you might come, Mr. Inspector,” she said. “You are probably thinking that inquisitiveness is not becoming to a woman of my age.”
“Not at all,” replied Macdonald cheerfully. “It’s my business in life to ask questions, and if nobody was inquisitive I should be the loser.”
“That’s very nicely put,” she rejoined, smiling back at him serenely, “but I should like to explain a little. I realize that you are investigating very terrible happenings, and I feel that you are working for what is right and just. I should like to help you. I know that you are not a believer in my other world: you do not think that spirit messages are authentic, and you do not believe in the powers which are real to me. I know that matter and spirit influence one another. Because we are in a material world we are influenced by the emanations of matter—if I may put it that way. If I touch something belonging to one who recently passed over I feel that I am nearer to them.”
She looked sadly at the drawn curtains. “Perhaps if I could sit in that room, among Mrs. Anderby’s possessions, I might get into communication with her, and so help you in your quest.”
“Perhaps you could,” rejoined Macdonald gravely, “but spirit messages are not accepted as evidence by my superior officers. I have to produce concrete evidence—but I think that you can help me all the same. Shall we sit down on the seat over there? I do not think we shall be overheard.”
She turned towards the garden seat, saying in her placid, sensible way: “Oh, no, we shall not be overlooked or overheard. There is no one in the house. I expect that you know that Miss Driver and Agnes are out. The parlour maid has her half-day today, and the only ones left in were Mrs. Grace and myself. Poor Mrs. Grace was nervous, and she has gone out to tea with some friends—so I am all alone. I am never nervous. I know that I am safe.”
She smiled again, with an expression so benignant that her old face looked almost other-worldly. She patted Macdonald’s arm as she sat beside him.
“I am an old woman, and age has its privileges. I like you, Mr. Inspector. I know that you are kind. Now what do you want to ask me?”
“I want to know where Mrs. Anderby kept her letters and papers while she was here. Miss Driver said that she did not know.”
“How foolish of her,” said Miss Austin placidly. “Surely she must remember. Mrs. Anderby had a leather attaché case—a very nice one, fitted with writing materials. Her dear husband gave it to her, with a fountain pen and a gold pencil and a little travelling ink pot. So practical and useful. I quite envied it. Mrs. Anderby always kept it locked up: she was a very tidy, methodical woman. I often saw her writing her letters, and she always used the blotting pad in that case, and always locked the case up when she had finished her correspondence. She used to put the case underneath the eiderdown at the foot of her bed when she was not in her room, and at night she put it on the bedside table.”
“Had she got the case with her when she left the house?”
“Indeed not. She had her handbag on her arm—rather a bulky one, which she always carried. Her husband gave her that, too. A very nice bag, of excellent quality leather.”
“When Mrs. Anderby went out that morning, how long after was it that you went out?” inquired Macdonald.
“About a quarter of an hour. I walked into the town and went to Woolworth’s to buy some writing paper. A wonderful place, Woolworth’s! I always feel that a visit to Woolworth’s is rich in human experience—and so economical to the pocket. I have only a very small income and I have to practice economies in every way. I think that Mr. Woolworth is a real benefactor to the owner of a slender purse.”
“I quite agree with you,” said Macdonald cheerfully, omitting to say that his last visit to Woolworth’s (in Oxford Street) had been when he was following a notorious jewel thief: the recollection of that expert gazing in a fascinated way at Woolworth jewellery still made Macdonald smile.
“Can you remember who was left in the house that morning?” he went on.
“Certainly. Miss Driver and Agnes were making jam. Her jam is so delicious! Mary was busy with the silver—or should I say plate? I think silver sounds more courteous. Mrs. Briggs, the charwoman, was doing the passages and the stairs with the Hoover—an excellent invention, but so very noisy. I always go out on Saturday morning when the Hoover is operating. Mrs. Grace was doing the flowers in church with Mrs. Rose and Miss Summers: they do the flowers for every second Sunday, and they polish the lectern and the brass jug by the font, and that tiresome pulpit rail. Vine leaves. I advise you, never choose brass with vine leaves if you undertake to help in church work. So fiddling. I did it myself at one time and found it most irritating. So you see there was nobody left in the house but the domestic staff that morning. Our other residents, Miss Fellows, Miss Brace, Miss Dance, Mrs. Paine and Miss Deeley are all ‘working women,’ as they say nowadays. They return for luncheon at half-past one to two on Saturdays. It makes it very late for the midday meal, and I always fall back on a cup of Oxo and a biscuit at half-past twelve. Woolworth’s cheese biscuits. So savoury!”
The gentle voice ceased at last and Miss Austin smiled at Macdonald, her blue eyes as confiding as a child’s.
“So any one could have got into the house, what with the Hoover, and the silver in Mary’s pantry, and the jam-making in the kitchen, could they not?” she ended up.
“I’m afraid they could,” rejoined Macdonald, his voice as courteous and even as ever, as he got up and said good-bye, after thanking Miss Austin for her assistance.
Some ten minutes after leaving The Rowan Tree, Macdonald arrived again at the mortuary. Here, by arrangement, he met Miss Driver, who had been conducted thither by Inspector Lynch. Macdonald explained to her, with all the considerateness at his command, that it was necessary for her to view Mrs. Anderby’s body with the intention of identifying it. He admitted that it would be a grim, unhappy experience, but asked Miss Driver to do her best to assist the law. She looked at him resentfully.
“Why hit on me?” she demanded. “Can’t you get her next of kin to do it?”
“If you know who her next of kin are, I should be very glad if you would tell me,” replied Macdonald. “We have not succeeded in finding any of Mrs. Anderby’s relatives. Apparently she was alone in the world—so far as kith and kin are concerned. Neither had she any intimate friends in Bedford, where she lived previous to her marriage.”
Miss Driver’s expression was eloquent, though she made no comment—but Macdonald knew what was the thought behind that bitter expression.
“Friends? A woman like that has no friends.”
When the sheet was turned back from the tragic remnant of mortality on the mortuary slab, Miss Driver stared down with a set face, a little grayer now—the thin lips drawn into a hard line—but she did not flinch or protest. After a long steady stare, she turned away and made her way to the door and drew in a long breath when she was clear of the ghastly atmosphere of disinfectants which could not quite overcome the sickening odour of mortality.
She turned to Macdonald angrily: “I don’t know. How could anyone know? It’s horrible . . . It might be any old woman . . . I don’t know. Let me get outside before I’m sick.”
What she said was true enough. How could anyone know? It seemed stalemate.
When Macdonald got back to headquarters, he found his other behest had been faithfully carried out. The river banks below Oasthampstead weir had been searched, and Mrs. Anderby’s writing case had been recovered from the stream—apparently after some days’ immersion.