Джорджетт Хейер - Duplicate Death

"Oh, I wouldn't say that!" responded Hemingway, jotting down another note in his pocket-book.

"Why the girl wanted me to come and hold her hand I shall never know!" remarked Timothy. "A good witness, Chief Inspector: I wouldn't have the slightest hesitation in putting her in the box."

Beulah smiled faintly. Hemingway said: "One more question, Miss Birtley. You might prefer me to put it to you without this legal adviser of yours standing around. He can go and talk to Mr.. Kane in the dining-room. You'd only have to scream, and I don't doubt he'd come bursting in to your rescue."

"What, more hideous revelations?" said Timothy.

Beulah shook her head. "No; I - I think probably I'd better not have any more secrets from Mr.. Harte," she said. "What is it?"

"What did you quarrel with Mrs. Haddington about this morning?"

She blushed. "Oh - !"

"Well, I did warn you!" Hemingway pointed out.

"Apparently you already know what I quarrelled about! I've no doubt Thrimby was listening to the whole affair. All right, I don't care! Mrs. Haddington had found out that I dined with Mr.. Harte last night, and - she was furious."

"Yes?" Hemingway prompted her.

She swallowed. "She - threatened to tell him - about me." She raised her eyes. "Well, more than that: she said she would tell him."

"And what did youu say to that?"

"Oh, why ask me? You know exactly what I said!"

"No, he doesn't," interposed Timothy. "All he knows is what Thrimby says you said, so you give him your version! I'll leave the room, if you like!"

"It isn't that! Only you're telling me to put a rope round my own neck!"

"God bless the girl!" ejaculated Timothy. "After that crack, my love, don't waste a moment in disclosing to the Chief Inspector exactly what you did say! It can't possibly be as damaging as the ideas you've put into his head!"

"I said I was going to marry you, and I'd go to any lengths to do it, or something like that! I don't really remember my precise words, because I was in a rage. I said I wouldn't let her stop me. I think I said there wasn't much I wouldn't do if she tried to interfere. But I didn't mean I'd kill her!"

"No?" said Hemingway. "Suppose you were to tell me just what it was that you did mean, Miss Birtley?"

She appeared a trifle discomposed. "Nothing! One says silly things like that - not thinking!"

"Think now!" recommended Hemingway. "It might be important. You uttered a threat: you've admitted that. If you didn't mean violence, what did you mean? What harm could you do Mrs. Haddington?"

Timothy, who had been watching him, turned his head. "I should answer this one," he said. "Did you know something she didn't want disclosed?"

"I - I had certain suspicions, but - Look here, I wasn't serious! I said it to frighten her! I wouldn't really blackmail even Mrs. Haddington!"

"What were your suspicions, Miss Birtley?"

"I'd rather not say. I've no proof, and - she's dead!"

"Yes, and I'm trying to find out who killed her," said Hemingway.

She stared at him for a moment. "I know you are," she replied slowly. "And if anything I said - caused you to discover her murderer -" She paused, and then added defiantly: "I should be sorry!"

"Never mind that!" said Timothy. "Your private sympathies don't come into it. I can guess what you suspected, and so, I fancy, can Hemingway. Had she any sort of a hold over Lady Nest Poulton?"

She regarded her clenched hands. "Yes. I think so. I once overheard something that was said. I couldn't help it: they were both standing in the back drawing-room, and I came into the front half of the room. They stopped as soon as they realised I was there, of course."

"What was said?" asked Hemingway.

She answered reluctantly: "Lady Nest said, I'm damned if I will! and Mrs. Haddington gave that hateful laugh of hers, and replied, I thinkyou'll do exactly what I askyou to do, dear Nest, because you'll certainly be damned ifyou don't!"

"Thank you," said Hemingway.

"It mightn't have meant what I thought it meant!" she said quickly.

"Never mind what it meant! That's my headache! Now, when you were sent to the late Seaton-Carew, you were sent by someone who didn't believe you'd been shopped, weren't you? Someone who thought you belonged to the criminal classes?"

"I suppose so," she said, rather drearily. "I thought she believed what I told her."

"Highly unlikely. But when he saw you, Seaton-Carew found you weren't the sort of girl he was after. That's what you told me, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Did you get any idea of the sort of job he did want a young lady like you for?"

"Not then. Only when I thought it over afterwards, and remembered the questions he'd asked me - not that there was anything in them, taken by themselves - I began to wonder if I was to have been a sort of informant."

Hemingway nodded. "Any reason to think he and Mrs. Haddington were in partnership?"

"I can't answer that. I honestly don't know. They were very intimate, that's all I can say."

He shut his notebook, and restored it to his pocket. "All right; I shan't keep you any longer tonight, Miss Birtley. I'm going to hand you over to your legal adviser, and I won't conceal from you that while he's giving you a bite of supper, I'm going to send one of my men to check up on your story. That's routine, as Mr.. Harte will tell you. I've got to be certain those accounts are where you say they are. I've no wish to start a lot of talk, so if you like to write a note to your landlady, authorising her to let the bearer take the books and the bills out of your bureau, he won't have to show her his card."

She got up, and went to the desk. "Thank you. Decent of you! I'll do that, only I can't leave this house before Miss Pickhill gets here. Cynthia Haddington might come in at any moment, and somebody ought to be here, besides the servants. Miss Pickhill has to come from Putney, you see."

The telephone-bell sounded as she picked up a pen. She made as if to lift the receiver, and then checked herself, looking enquiringly at Hemingway.

"Don't worry about that!" he said. "One of my chaps will deal with it."

She began to write. She was slipping the folded note into an envelope when a man in plain clothes came quietly in, and handed the Chief Inspector a scrap of paper torn from a notebook. He read it, and said: "All right, I'll take it in here, Snettisham. I want you to go to this address -" He handed the Sergeant Beulah's letter -"and give this to the landlady. No need to say you're a police-officer. She's to take you into Miss Birtley's room, and allow you to bring away with you a pile of bills and household books, in Mrs. Haddington's name, which you'll find in the bureau. It isn't locked, Miss Birtley?"

"No. The key is in it. He'll see the bills as soon as he opens the front. Could he - would he mind turning out the gas-fire? I left it on, and as I put a shilling in only this morning it'll still be burning."

"And turn out the fire!" said Hemingway. "I want you to go by the tube - Green Park station, and to come back the same way. Time it! That's all." He nodded dismissal, and turned to Beulah, "Do they have to switch the telephone through to this room, or can I get straight on?"

"Straight on. If Miss Pickhill arrives - can I go, or must I wait till that man gets back?"

"No, I'll trust Mr.. Harte to keep an eye on you," he replied, opening the door.

She lingered for a moment. "Thanks! I - I'm sorry I was rude to you before!"

"That's all right," he said. "You've been quite helpful."

He shut both her and Timothy out, and went to sit down at the desk, picking up the telephone. "Hallo?"

"Is it yourself, sir?" asked the voice of Inspector Grant.

"It is. Where are you speaking from?"

"From your office, sir. Mr.. Poulton was driven from Charles Street straight to Northolt Aerodrome, and has left for Paris."