CHAPTER XIX

Miles went back to his hotel and got down to sorting things out. He took a block and a fountain pen, and wrote:

Mrs Syme:—

Was Mrs Agnes Smith, in whose house the Macintyre baby was born, July 1914.

Says Mrs Macintyre’s sister paid all expenses and removed baby, also all Mrs Macintyre’s belongings.

Says she has no idea where she went or what she did with them.

N.B. There is no sister.

Further, Mrs Syme says Flossie Palmer isn’t her niece. Says Flo Palmer adopted her.

Declines to say any more.

Very disagreeable person.

Mrs Palmer:—

Serious, formidable person. Conscientious. Fond of Flossie.

Very angry with Mrs Syme for letting out that Flossie is an adopted child. Flossie doesn’t know.

Flo Palmer got Flossie from a Mrs Moore in July 1915. She had just lost her husband and a baby aged six months. Flossie was about a year old.

Kay:—

Says her aunt, Rhoda Moore, spoke about Flo Palmer when she was dying. Actual words, in semi-conscious state: “Tell Flo Palmer.” Then, after rousing; “What did I say just now?” and, “Flo’s dead. I don’t know what’s happened to the child. It doesn’t matter—I’ve got you” (Meaning Kay)

N.B. Ask Kay if she knows anything about her aunt having charge of any other child or children. Also her exact relationship to Mrs Moore.

He stopped and read the notes through.

Well, he had here four different women—Mrs Syme, formerly Agnes Smith; her sister, Flo Palmer; Flo’s sister-in-law, Mrs Palmer; and Kay’s aunt, Rhoda Moore. Flo Palmer linked the other three together. She kept turning up. That was the thing that struck him very forcibly—the way Flo Palmer kept on cropping up. He wondered whether the sister-in-law had told him all she knew. He didn’t think so. He had come away from her, as he had come away from Mrs Syme, with the feeling that a door had been shut in his face. Behind Mrs Syme’s door there might be some criminal knowledge. He wasn’t sure. She might have invented Mrs Macintyre’s sister, disposed of the jewels, and farmed the baby out. Flo Palmer might have aided and abetted, and after the loss of her own child she might have adopted the baby, in which case Flossie was the Macintyre heiress. The thought tickled him a good deal. But it was the purest supposition. Flo Palmer was dead, and Rhoda Moore was dead—the woman who had adopted the child, and the woman from whom it had been adopted. That meant that the two middle links in the chain were gone. There remained at the one end of it Mrs Syme, and at the other Mrs Palmer. Mrs Syme would not incriminate herself, and Mrs Palmer struck him as being the sort of person whose motto would be “Least said, soonest mended.” He had certainly got Mrs Moore’s name out of her. But then she couldn’t possibly have supposed that it would mean anything to him.

He went to bed, and dreamed that he was cast on a desert island with Mrs Syme. It was one of the most unpleasant dreams he had ever had.…

Kay came in at the area door rosy and breathless with the kitten on her shoulder. It arched its back, flaunted three inches of tail, and purred a small but resonant purr.

Mrs Green stared and exclaimed, “Well, I never! What do you call that, I should like to know.”

“Oh, Mrs Green, it’s the kitten—the one the milkman told us about. It came to me at once. You said you’d keep it.”

Mrs Green laughed.

“What’s the good of a little bit of a thing like that? It won’t catch no mice—though they do say the smell of a cat’ll drive ’em away. Here, what are you doing with my milk?”

“Only a little drop—please, Mrs Green. It’s so hungry—aren’t you, Kitty?”

The kitten lapped vigorously. Mrs Green chuckled.

“If you want a cat to catch mice, you’ve got to keep it hungry. They’d a sight rather have someone to cook for ’em. And I’m not cooking for no cats, Kay, so don’t you fret yourself. If that there kitten’s going to stay here, it’s got to work for its living same as you and me. Down to the cellar it goes nights, and it’s welcome to what it can find there.”

“Oh, Mrs Green, you can’t! Poor little thing!”

“Poor little nothing!” said Mrs Green firmly. “I’m not going to have my kitchen messed up, and that’s all there is about it!”

The kitten crouched close over the saucer which Kay had set for it. Its little pink tongue lapped eagerly. Mrs Green let it finish its meal. Then she picked it up by the scruff of the neck and waddled into the scullery.

There was a door which went out into the back yard, and there was a second door, rather low, set in a piece of bulging wall which rounded one of the inner corners of the room. It looked as if it might be the oven door in the story of Hansel and Gretel, for it was cross-barred with old rusty iron, and the irregular bulge into which it was set had something of the shape of a primitive stove or cooking-place. Mrs Green lifted the latch, pulled the low door towards her, and disclosed a flight of stone steps going down into unknown mouldy depths. She leaned over, dropped the kitten, banged the door, and fastened the latch again.

Kay’s colour was flaming and her eyes were wet.

“Oh, Mrs Green!”

“Oh, fiddlesticks!” said Mrs Green. “I tell you I’m not going to have my kitchen messed up! And for gracious mercy’s sake don’t look at me like that! There’s plenty of dry straw down there, and if it can’t make itself a bed, it’ll have to do without. I’m not going to tuck no cats up, nor yet sing ’em to sleep! And if you don’t want to be late with that there Benger’s, you’d better get a move on, Kay my girl. And don’t you go letting that there kitten out, or you and me’ll have words, which is a thing I don’t want nor won’t put up with, and if it comes to one of us having to go, I can tell you right away now which of us it’ll be.”

“Is there really straw, Mrs Green?”

Mrs Green tossed her head. All her chins quivered like jellies.

“Haven’t I said so? There’s enough for a hundred cats, let alone one little misery like that. Now just you hurry along!”

Kay hurried. She took up the Benger as the clock struck half past ten. Nurse Long opened the bedroom door and took in the tray. She did not say thank you, and she did not say good night. She just took the tray and shut the door again.

Kay went downstairs, and presently to bed. She was very sad about the kitten. She would have liked so much to have had it to sleep with her, but Mrs Green had been dreadfully out of temper when she suggested it. Any cat she had in her kitchen would go into the cellar for the night unless it went into the yard. Kay could take her choice. It would be one or the other.

Curled up in bed, Kay cried a little about the kitten. It was so small, and it had rubbed its head against her cheek and purred. And perhaps there were rats in the cellar. She did hope not, but suppose there were. Supposing it was very, very frightened.… Even Mrs Green was frightened of rats.… The kitten was so very small. Supposing a rat were to bite it … She cried herself to sleep.