“Don’t apologize for bothering me, Chief Inspector. You don’t bother me at all! I’m quite delighted to see you!”
It was Mrs. Dellaton who spoke, looking at Macdonald with her bright, birdlike glance, her eyes reflecting cheerful pleasure as she motioned him to a seat in her pretty drawing room. It was quite early in the case that Macdonald had found out for himself the source of Falkland’s “information received”—the architect’s source of gossip about Nurse Pewsey in other words. Falkland, with what Macdonald regarded as the native stupidity of many “chivalrous” Englishmen, had endeavoured to keep Mrs. Dellaton “out of the whole unsavoury business.” Mrs. Dellaton herself, however, had had no wish to be kept “out of it.” She was “all agog to be in it,” to use her own phrase, and when Macdonald had called on her early in the case, shortly after his first interview with Falkland, she had talked to him with such cheerful aplomb, and such a total lack of caution, that Macdonald wondered if Robert Falkland’s desire to “keep one’s women folks out of it” had been inspired by something other than the usual convention of protecting a woman from the sordid details of a police inquiry. Certain it was that whatever items of news had ever come Mrs. Dellaton’s way, she was delighted to pass them on.
“It shows my innocence, doesn’t it?” she went on blithely, when Macdonald had seated himself, “no woman with a guilty secret could ever welcome you quite so wholeheartedly as I do!”
Macdonald laughed a little. “There is such a thing as an accomplished actress,” he said, “but I’m not suggesting histrionic ability in your case this time.”
“Bless you, I can’t act a part to save my life,” she retorted. “I once tried to act with the local amateurs, and I was utterly hopeless. I could never learn my lines and I was never anything except myself, utterly and hopelessly myself! You know, I’m quite disappointed about this case, Chief Inspector. I know Robert Falkland would tell me I had a morbid, sordid mind, being so desperately interested in nasty murders and suicides, but I had set my heart on being helpful! You’ve no idea the hours and hours I’ve spent doing research on that amazing old Pewsey for you. I even kidded myself that I might be the means of bringing a notorious criminal to justice, and that you would hand me a bouquet or a small salver with ‘the gratitude of Scotland Yard’ inscribed on it, and now the whole thing’s petered out into a miserable suicide and those dreadful remains under a log in a stream. I suppose you’ve come to tell me it’s all over and done with, and that I needn’t go gadding round the countryside any more, looking up long-forgotten friends to chat Pewsey with them?”
Macdonald drew a deep breath, almost unconsciously—he felt that the speed of Mrs. Dellaton’s conversation was a little breath-taking—and then he replied:
“I wouldn’t say that it was all over and done with: a case is never over until we have docketed every possible item of information, and if your research is able to add any facts to Nurse Pewsey’s history, I shall be only too glad to have them—and to put the thanks of Scotland Yard on record,” he added with a bow.
“Now that’s really nice of you! I told Robert Falkland you were a nice person,” she said. “It would have been so humiliating to be told that my efforts were all wasted. Do tell me, you are quite sure she committed suicide, aren’t you?”
“That’s for the jury to say, not for me,” replied Macdonald, and she went on,
“Oh, splendid! You’re just fencing, and that means you’re not quite sure! I’ve got my own ideas, you know—but I’ll tell you them later on. Now do you want to hear Pewsey’s life story, as reconstructed by me—and I assure you, you could never have got half so much information yourself, because the people who have talked to me just wouldn’t have bleated a word to you. ‘Not to the police, my dear!’ they say.”
“I know,” said Macdonald, a twinkle in his gray eyes. “It takes a really intelligent woman to see the logic of helping a police officer.”
“Thank you, Chief Inspector! I like your methods! Now see, I’ve got it all written down, and I’ve taken such a lot of trouble over it!”
“You certainly have,” said Macdonald, considering the closely written sheets handed to him, “and I’ll pay your work the compliment it deserves by reading it carefully.”
He took out his cigarette case and held it out to his companion, who extracted a Players and then said,
“I’m going to put this away as a souvenir in my crime cupboard. ‘Cigarette from the case of the Yard Ace.’ I’ll smoke one of my own instead and demonstrate the impossible—that I’m capable of keeping quiet indefinitely when someone else is concentrating.”
Macdonald studied the sheets presented to him. Certain it was that Mrs. Dellaton had taken a lot of trouble and used method and common sense in putting down her results. She had written the sources of her information beside the facts, her statement beginning,
“Emma Alice Pewsey. Born, July 5th, 1880, at Nottingham. Went to school at Miss Macey’s Academy 1888-96. (Told by Mrs. Bateman, who employed her in 1914.)
“E. A. Pewsey worked as mother’s help in Nottingham 1896-1900. (Employer, Mrs. Walton, now dead.) She entered the Vanstone General Hospital in 1901, for general training, and specialized in maternity work, remaining as sister in charge until 1910. (Told by Mrs. Copley, who knew nurse very well.) From 1910-15 Nurse Pewsey did private maternity work. 1915-19 she worked in Vanstone Military Hospital. In 1919 she joined forces with Nurse Salcombe, and they opened a maternity home, but gave up after a year for lack of funds. From 1920-25 Nurse Pewsey did private maternity work again in Oasthampstead and district. She still worked with Nurse Salcombe and they shared rooms together until 1925, when Nurse Salcombe went to London to work with a charitable society, she being (like Nurse Pewsey) a very religious woman. After 1925, Nurse Pewsey did less maternity work and more general nursing. From 1930 until the year she retired (after Dr. Chenner’s death) she nursed mainly elderly patients.” (Here followed a list of cases, the patients’ names conveying nothing to Macdonald for the most part.) Then was added a sheet headed “general comments,” giving various opinions on Nurse Pewsey’s professional ability and private character. Among a mass of irrelevant detail, most of which Macdonald could have reconstructed himself from previous information, one item interested him. Nurse Pewsey had had an exceedingly bad memory for her patients’ names. She had lived and worked amongst an astonishing variety of persons and she remembered and had related to other patients many details of past cases, but names escaped her after a short period. Like many other professional nurses, she had kept an “address and case book,” but her own memory was very eccentric. Mrs. Dellaton’s statement ended up with a list of pathetic—and sometimes comic—information concerning details of Nurse Pewsey’s cases which had been considered of sufficient interest to retail to other patients—infants still-born, infants born out of wedlock, infants born with abnormalities, such as a child with a club foot, another with a cloven palate and hare lip, another who was born blind. Added to this pathetic list were set down comments (always anonymous) on the behaviour of patients, their exactingness, their parsimoniousness, their eccentricities.
Macdonald looked up from his perusal of the papers and met Mrs. Dellaton’s bright eyes fixed on him.
“Thank you very much for all the trouble you have taken, and congratulations on the efficient way you have set down and docketed the information,” he said. “It is an exceedingly useful document—and it will be quite safe with me,” he added. “In fact, I’m just the safest person you could have handed it over to.”
“Oh, safety!” she laughed. “You’re like my husband—‘but you mustn’t say so, my dear.’ Anyway, all that information is true, so why shouldn’t I write it down? Who was it wrote ‘Discretion is a dull old maid, wooed by incapacity?’ And now, Chief Inspector! A quid for my quo! I’m still certain that man is at the bottom of everything!”
“Which man?” inquired Macdonald, and she retorted,
“Oh, don’t be so densely official! Brook, of course.”
“But why should Mr. Brook have committed several murders and driven Mrs. Anderby to suicide?”
Mrs. Dellaton spread out her hands: “But you must surely have guessed! What’s the use of being a great detective if you can’t see farther than the average idiot? I’m certain Brook did it! I expect he spotted old Pewsey at some of her little games, perhaps he lent a hand and then blackmailed her—and killed her when he realized she was getting frightened and would give him away. I expect if one could only connect up all those odds and ends of evidence I’ve written down there, the answer is clear enough—only I just can’t see it! I’ve been just racking my brains about Pewsey and that man Brook!”
Macdonald glanced down at the sheets he held.
“Perhaps the answer is there—only it’s no use trying guesswork to fill in the place of evidence. If you use your intelligence, Mrs. Dellaton—and you’ve got plenty of that quality, you must realize that mere guesswork and assumption could fabricate a case against anybody who has had any contact with the victims. Blackmail—and subsequent murder. It’s a vague accusation in general terms: it could be used against other people besides Max Brook. There has to be definite evidence to back it up before guesswork is of any profit to a detective.”
She looked him straight in the face. “Meaning that anyone could say, just offhand, ‘Oh, it was Robert Falkland . . . she blackmailed him’ . . . or ‘it was that ghastly Dellaton woman who has been busy-bodying about Nurse Pewsey all this time.’ Oh, I know!—and Robert would be furious with me if he knew I was talking like this, but it’s no use saying that Brook isn’t tied up in all this! What did he make friends with that old Miss Austin for? Did you know he deliberately bumped into her one day outside Woolworth’s and picked up her parcels and scraped an acquaintance with her? And that he took her to tea at the Gorse Bush Café and talked spiritualism to her, and that he went to a séance held at that queer house in Grove Place? And then what about the ghost on the lawn at White Gables? Do you believe in ghosts? Of course you don’t! Couldn’t it have been Brook masquerading as a ghost to frighten poor Mr. Lee Gordon out of his life?”
“As a matter of fact, I do know something about some of the facts you have mentioned,” said Macdonald mildly. “After all, the police must do something to earn their pay, and we do keep our eyes open to some extent. In order to be quite fair, I should like to state that it’s a proven fact that Mr. Brook was in his own garden on the evening and at the time that a ‘ghost’ was seen by Mr. Lee Gordon and his caretaker. The latter has been talking rather unwisely, but I can assure you of this. If anyone played at ghosts at White Gables that evening it was not Mr. Brook, and it was not Mr. Lee Gordon, neither was it Miss Austin—so it may be said that the ‘ghost’ was some other man or woman connected with the case. Perhaps they were fabricating evidence for their own purposes, and I have not been intelligent enough to read that purpose aright.”
“Oh, dear!” said Mrs. Dellaton ruefully. “Now you’ll be suggesting that it was Robert Falkland—or myself! But why on earth you should think that I played at ghosts, I just can’t imagine!”
“I didn’t say that I did think so,” replied Macdonald, “but working on your method, as applied to Mr. Brook, anyone might guess at anybody playing the part—and rationalize their guess with motives based on blackmail. Believe me, assumptions of that kind are dangerous to utter—they have a boomerang quality.”
“Well, when you have arrested Brook, perhaps you’ll come back and say, ‘How right you were’!” she responded cheerfully. “Anyway, you must admit that Brook’s behaving a bit oddly, making up to Miss Austin—obviously with the motive of insinuating himself into Miss Driver’s house and removing some evidence which he and Nurse Pewsey overlooked!”
“Once again, I caution you against making rash statements,” said Macdonald, but she replied quite irrepressibly,
“And anything I say may be taken down in writing and used as evidence against me! Shades of my sainted husband! But I have put my evidence in writing, haven’t I?” she went on, pointing to the sheets which Macdonald was folding to put into his pocket, and he nodded:
“You have—and once again, many thanks for the trouble you have taken for me. I hope that next time we meet this whole problem may be solved.”
Macdonald left Mrs. Dellaton’s house in a very thoughtful frame of mind. There was a lot left to account for in this eccentric and ambiguous case he was working on. Macdonald’s organization for observing “contacts” in the case was as thorough as he could make it, though not uniformly successful. The Chief Inspector knew that Mr. Lee Gordon was being harassed by “spirit” messages—that gentleman’s conversations with his nephew had been overheard by one of the “service staff” (put in by Macdonald at his chambers), and it was exceedingly difficult to arrive at any conclusions about these communications. Lee Gordon tended more and more to convince himself that he had heard Mrs. Anderby’s own voice speaking to him, and Macdonald had to admit that there was a remote possibility that Lee Gordon was right—but the thing did not make sense. Granted that Mrs. Anderby were alive, it had to be taken into consideration that she had gone to incredible lengths to make it appear that she was dead, and it was her body which had been discovered in the Avon. Why then haunt the locality most dangerous to her in order to send messages to Lee Gordon? Again, there was the problem of the “apparition” at White Gables. A black-robed woman had been seen by the caretaker there—seen more than once, and Macdonald had not been able to decide who was playing tricks. Since White Gables had been kept under supervision, the “apparition” had not obliged by putting in an appearance, but on neither occasion could it have been Brook playing tricks, because Brook’s whereabouts at the times were known. Macdonald was very much interested in the osteopath and his behaviour. Detective Reeves had been detailed to keep Brook “under observation” and Reeves was one of Macdonald’s ablest men. Walters, who relieved Reeves, was also an exceedingly competent shadower, but both men had been outwitted by the osteopath several times since their watch began. Brook had an almost uncanny capacity for eluding a follower, and for getting in and out of his own house unobserved and unheard. More than once Reeves and Walters had despondently reported that their man “had cut and run—beaten them hollow,” but Brook always came back. Had he wanted to have escaped and taken to hiding, he could have done so—but apparently he did not so want. Macdonald wondered whether it was sheer cussedness that inspired Brook’s erratic behaviour: that he resented the police supervision, of which he was fully aware, and was intent on making fools of the police—but Macdonald did not class Brook as a man with a trivial or unreasonable mind: he was clever, and he was desperately serious, but matters were too involved to treat him with any degree of confidence. Macdonald took “the judge’s rules” and the ethics of his own calling seriously. He would not question a man whom it was conceivable he might arrest without cautioning him—and either to caution or to detain Brook seemed to Macdonald likely to defeat its own end. To Macdonald’s mind, events were moving, and he would rather see them move than have a case of checkmate.
Again he went over in his mind any possible connections between his different “contacts.” With Mrs. Dellaton’s useful statement—culled from casual gossip with those who had known Nurse Pewsey years ago—Macdonald had a fairly clear notion of the possibilities of when the threads of different careers might have crossed. He went back over their different careers, considering their ages. Brook was 41, Falkland 50, Lee Gordon 60, Mrs. Anderby 60, Mr. Anderby 70 years of age. Of this group Mr. and Mrs. Anderby had spent all their lives in England, apart from a few holidays. Falkland had practised in England all his life, though he had travelled extensively at intervals. Brook had been in the States from the age of 23 until a few years ago. Lee Gordon had been out of England nearly all his life, with occasional visits to the “old country.” Macdonald reckoned that there was only one period when all those concerned had been in England simultaneously. Twenty-one years ago Brook was still an English medical student: Falkland was still a member of the architect firm to which he had been articled. Lee Gordon was a poor man, who had come to England after the crash of one of his financial ventures in the States. Mr. Anderby was vicar of Oasthampstead, and Nurse Pewsey had been running a maternity home with Anne Salcombe. Macdonald pondered. Twenty-one years. A long time ago. More than ever he wished that he could hasten the slow, patient work of tracing Anne Salcombe. A lot depended on her—if she could be found—but because he felt that a lot did depend on her, he had to be cautious in his methods of seeking her. To advertise his purpose was the last thing he wanted to do.
While Macdonald had been talking to Mrs. Dellaton, and seeking to argue his way through the maze of trivial facts which he had amassed, many activities set in motion by the Chief Inspector were going forward. Inspector Jenkins had come down to Penharden again and was making an intensive, if unobtrusive, study of a lady whose acquaintance he hoped to make—also unobtrusively. It had been easy to get to know Miss Jane Austin by sight, and very easy to observe her comings and goings from The Rowan Tree.
On this particular afternoon Jenkins had seen her set off for a walk on the common and had followed her at a discreet distance. He had had an unexpected reward for his walk for Miss Austin had gone to the Gorse Bush Café—a pleasant tea garden on the common, and there she had met Max Brook for tea. Jenkins did his best to get within hearing distance of the table at which the pair sat, but he did not want to make himself noticeable to them and contented himself by a seat in a corner, where he could observe them both, himself screened behind the sheets of The Times—a journal whose size commended itself to him, though Jenkins often told Macdonald that the news in The Times had no “human appeal.” If the latter quality were lacking in the august journal in his hands, Jenkins felt there was no lack of it in the pair of human beings he was covertly studying. An odd pair, certainly. Miss Austin, with her beaming blue eyes and serene rosy-cheeked old face, made an odd contrast with the osteopath, whose thin saturnine face, dark eyes and sallow skin made Jenkins think him a morose and unpersonable fellow—but there was strength and personality in the dark face. Seeing Brook lean across the table to talk to Miss Austin in that low, uncarrying voice of his, Jenkins was reminded, he knew not how, of a rabbit hypnotized by a stoat. Miss Austin was a little like a nice Angora rabbit and she watched Brook so intently, her eyes never leaving his. Although Brook’s voice was inaudible, Miss Austin’s clearer tones occasionally reached Jenkins’s straining ears. She was talking to Brook about spiritualism, endeavouring to persuade him apparently of the validity of her own supra-normal experiences. Jenkins sighed. He liked the look of Miss Austin, but spiritualism as a subject of conversation or of research, was repugnant to him: also, he was a kindly man. He felt a little ashamed of listening to Miss Austin’s gentle exposition. A glance at Brook brought the detective back to earth again. Here, if he was any judge, was a suitable subject for detection.
“I wonder if there’s anything in this hypnotizing business,” Jenkins asked himself. “This chap’s an adept at it Query, how much ice does it cut . . . ?”
His own line of thought was brought to an abrupt conclusion by a few words uttered in Miss Austin’s fluty tones.
“. . . Nurse Pewsey . . . I only just knew her. Of course Dr. Chenner . . .” The wind blew the words away. A waitress came with his tea and Jenkins said that he thought a table in the sun might be pleasanter and moved up a little closer to the pair who interested him, keeping well behind Brook’s back. The conversation was now a medley of Nurse Pewsey and spirit messages. Jenkins was still unable to hear Brook’s irritatingly low voice, but he gathered quite a lot from Miss Austin’s clearer tones. It seemed that Brook was urging her to recall all that she had ever known of Mrs. Anderby during her unmarried life, and of Dr. Chenner, for whom Miss Austin had had a great admiration. Jenkins heard one sentence tinged with much enthusiasm.
“Indeed, he was a guide, philosopher and friend to all, as the old saying has it,” declared Miss Austin. “Everybody told the dear doctor their troubles and even their secrets! He was so absolutely trustworthy and so safe. Indeed, I always felt better for even talking to him. Not that I have ever needed a doctor’s skill except in small matters—or only once, to be quite truthful, and Dr. Chenner was a tower of strength on that occasion.”
Again came the low murmur of Brook’s voice, and when she spoke again Miss Austin’s voice was pitched in a much lower key. A few moments later Jenkins gathered that she was making some request of Brook. He again caught the word “messages” and, he thought, the word “séance.” Before they rose from the table he heard Brook say quite clearly:
“I think it should be most interesting. I will see if it can be arranged.”
“You will, will you,” said Jenkins to himself. He got up and paid for his tea and walked out quite openly, stopping to chat to the waitress. He had his own notions of “shadowing,” and to efface his very solid person was not easy. He preferred to be obvious when he could. He made some inquiries of the waitress about “hotel accommodation,” and then went and waited round a nearby corner. He did not wish to lose sight of Miss Austin while Brook was with her—and he hoped that he or Macdonald would be at hand when the “interesting” idea was put into practice, but Brook was not Jenkins’s “pigeon” at present. That was Reeves’s job, and Reeves was undoubtedly somewhere close at hand.
Miss Austin parted from Brook at the door of the tea gardens and walked on alone, Jenkins following at a suitable distance. He had made up his mind to inquire about accommodation at The Rowan Tree, and decided that a little later on he could safely ask Miss Austin for its whereabouts.
Brook, meanwhile, turned in the other direction and set out across the common. It was a beautiful midsummer day. Overhead banks of white cumulus piled up in silvery glory. The sun was hot and the gorse on the common gave out its fragrance of honey and almonds. Brook walked slowly over the sun-baked grass, breathing in the scent of gorse and the cloying sweetness of scented bedstraw, his senses very alert to the scent of flowers, the song of larks overhead, and the boom and drone of the bees above the flowers. He was alert also to something else. He had not turned round, but he knew that somewhere, not very far away, a slim neatly built young fellow was on his tracks. It was useless to turn round and look for that very accomplished shadower had a faculty for melting into the landscape—but he was there. Brook was sure of it.
Pausing awhile in his walk, the osteopath looked overhead at the massing cumulus. A fine, hot summer’s afternoon—but there was a storm not very far away. Brook sometimes said that he could smell thunder in the air. He smelt it now and a sardonic smile twisted his lips. A good afternoon for a walk—and if thunder came, so much the better. There was humour in the thought.
He began to walk at a good swinging pace, first over the parched grass of the common, along paths between the banks of gorse, then across the fairway of the golf course. A little later he left the turf and took a quiet road which ran in the direction of Oasthampstead. He followed this for three miles, never looking back, walking at a good pace along the pleasant road, shaded by elm and sweet chestnut, some gnarled holly trees and ancient hawthorn. He noticed that the clouds had crept towards the southwest, and that the sun was no longer shining. A little later he left the road for a lane which ran downhill towards the River Pen, and he gained the valley and chose a path by the river where the watercress beds lay. Half a mile farther on he reached the weir, and here he paused and looked down into the foaming waters for awhile.
The sky was overcast now and the faintest rumble of distant thunder reached his ears. Turning away from the river, he took a path which led across the fields to the sterile tract known as “No Man’s Land.” Local lore had it that the abbots of Oasthampstead and of Pen had quarreled over the boundaries of their manors and that the feud had been settled by leaving a neutral tract of valueless land between the monastic holdings. Thus had “No Man’s Land” earned its name. It was a sandy waste, with many little hills and hollows, the latter often filled with a tangle of brambles and other rough shrubs. Brook knew it well. He plunged along a sandy gulley and bent his head a little as the storm broke. Thunder rolled merrily overhead; lightning flashed blindingly, and the rain came down with the wild fury of a midsummer storm. The osteopath chuckled to himself as he pursued his eccentric course between the hummocks. Somebody else was getting soaked as well as himself, and he felt that he was repaying some of the minor irritations he had suffered at the hands of his shadower. A few minutes later, bent almost double as he crawled along a little gulley, he found a spot he had noticed on a previous occasion. It was a tunnel beneath a dense thicket of bramble and stunted hawthorn. The thick matted branches held a mass of dead leaves and stems and they were supported by an old post which was rammed well into the sandy soil. Creeping below the matted branches, Brook found a dry spot up against a sandy burrow to one side, and here he lay, chuckling silently to himself. He knew exactly where his pursuer was—quite a distance from the secret tunnel beneath the brambles, probably lost among the sand hills of “No Man’s Land.” Brook felt quite secure. He was in no hurry, and he had for once a feeling of comfortable superiority in having outwitted an exceedingly astute hound of the law.