Patricia Wentworth - The Blind Side

There followed a jaunty, shabby young man with bow legs and a loud cloth cap. He hooked a ticket out of his waistcoat pocket, thrust it at the collector with a cheerful “Evening, George,” and swaggered off, whistling as he went.

After him a woman with a shopping-bag full of brown paper parcels. She had a bent, discouraged look. Her hat had drifted to one side of her head. Her hair was in wisps. Her washed-out cotton dress sagged unevenly at the hem. She might have been Mrs. Green some dozen or so years ago. Peter looked at her with a sort of horror in his mind, because if this was the woman they were hunting, she seemed a most wretched and helpless prey. She sighed with utter weariness as she set down her bag and began a slow, ineffectual search for the ticket which she appeared to have mislaid. She had two pockets, a shabby handbag, and a purse. The ticket was in the purse, which was the last place in which she thought of looking for it. By the time she had given it up there was a little crowd of people waiting behind her, and Peter was quite sure that she was not Mrs. Green. Her eyes were the wrong colour. The light shone right down upon her as she looked up at the collector. It showed them hazel with faint brownish flecks. He remembered that Mrs. Green’s eyes were of a washed-out bluey grey. You can’t change the colour of your eyes. He looked across at the Inspector with a slight shake of the head, and, sighing heavily, the weary creature passed between them and went her way.

There was no one else who could possibly have been Mrs. Green.

The slow train came in ten minutes later, and they took up their places again, standing one on either side of the ticket-collector, but beyond him so that they were not seen by the passengers as they approached.

Only some half dozen people got out when the train stopped, and four of these were men. Of the two women one was both tall and bulky, with great cushioned shoulders, enormous hips, and a heavy rolling walk. Her large red face shone with perspiration. Her strong black hair curled vigorously under a flat fly-away hat profusely trimmed with poppies, cornflowers, and white marguerite daisies. Her expression was one of complete satisfaction with herself and with the world in general.

Last of the six came a woman in a neat dark coat and skirt and a close black hat. Copper curls rolling up from under the brim, an eye-veil standing out stiffly like an inverted halo, tinted cheeks, and a bright scarlet mouth-those things held Peter’s eye. A picture of Mrs. Green, wispy, bedraggled and down at heel, rose to the surface of his mind. The woman who was coming towards them along the platform wore thin silk stockings, and shoes with flashy buckles and heels like stilts. He saw Mrs. Green’s foot in a bulging shoe with a burst seam. He looked at the woman in black, and still saw Mrs. Green. It was like an effect in a film-one picture superimposed upon another, both pictures there together, flickering, combining, separating again. He felt horror, and the keenest excitement he had ever known. For no reason that he could have named he was quite sure that this was, not Mrs. Green who had served her turn and was no more, but Aggie Crouch-Rosalie La Fay -Ross Craddock’s wife. No, Ross Craddock’s widow-she had most efficiently seen to that.

He looked across at Inspector Lamb. His eyes gave a scarcely perceptible signal as the woman came up ticket in hand. The two of them stepped forward together and blocked her way.

The shock was absolute. It caught her on the peak of her success and knocked her spinning. The risks had all been run, the price had all been paid. She was secure, triumphant, utterly unprepared. And then, right in her path, the Inspector whom she had tricked, and Peter Renshaw whom she had left to bear the blame. She stopped, and froze before their eyes. Her chin dropped. The colour stood out ghastly on cheeks turned suddenly grey.

The Inspector’s hand came down on her shoulder. He began to say his piece. “Agnes Craddock, alias La Fay, alias Green, I arrest you-” But he got no farther than that. She wrenched from under his hand, whirled round, and darted back across the platform through the first open carriage door and, banging it behind her, out on the other side.

Peter stood where he was. He had identified her, but he would do no more. He saw the Inspector snatch at the carriage door and climb in. The air was suddenly full of loud commotion and noise-the shriek of a whistle, the roar of an oncoming train. Porters ran, the ticket-collector joined them, passengers who had just given up their tickets came streaming back. He saw them run, he heard them shout, and he heard the grinding and clanging of the train which came to rest against the far platform.

The ticket-collector came hurrying back, a fair-haired man with a face like a damp dish-cloth.

“It got her!” he said, and leaned against the wall. “Ran right in front of it she did, and it caught her and knocked her flying. I dunno if she’s dead or not, but I’m to ring up for the ambulance.” He wiped his face with his sleeve and stumbled through into the ticket office.

Peter Renshaw came back to Craddock House on the Sunday afternoon. He thought, “Well, it’s all over now. Bobby’s safe, and I don’t give a damn whether Mavis is safe or not. No need to either, Mavis being very well able to look out for Mavis Grey.” He thought, “Lee and I can get married. I can take her right away out of this, and I hope to heaven we never see Craddock House again.”

He rang the bell of Lucy Craddock’s flat, and when Lee opened the door he picked her up and held her close, and didn’t say a word.

When they were in the sitting-room he said in an odd, unsteady voice, “Where’s Lucinda?” and Lee said,

“She’s lying down. I think she’s asleep.”

They stood looking at each other. Lee’s lips trembled.

She said, “Why don’t you tell me what has happened?” And Peter said,

“It’s all over-she’s dead. It’s a good thing-better than being hanged. When she saw old Lamb and me she lost her nerve and bolted-right under a train. Horrid business. They got her to a hospital, and she was able to make a statement. Old Lamb says she was as clear as a bell. She dictated a confession. I’ve got a copy of it here. Come and sit down.”

He took out a number of folded type-written sheets and gave them to her. She sat down on the sofa. Peter sat beside her. They read the confession together.

“My name is Agnes Sophia Crouch. My stage name is Rosalie La Fay. I married Ross Craddock at the Marylebone register office on August 25th 1917 when he was over from France on ten days’ leave. That was the only time we lived together. When he came home after the Armistice he’d had enough of me. He said so. Said he’d been a fool to marry me. Said I was older than him. And if I was, I was his wife just the same. He couldn’t get away from that, could he? I’d got my lines.

His father didn’t like it, but he played up. There wasn’t anything against me, and so I told the lawyer. And old Mr. Craddock made me an allowance. It was three hundred a year to start with, but when the depression came he cut it down. And then he cut it again, and when he died Ross brought it down to twenty-five, and then this last year he stopped it altogether. Well, I wasn’t going to stand for that. How could I? I wasn’t getting any younger, and jobs weren’t getting any easier to find. Besides I wasn’t going to put up with it. No one’s ever scored me off without my getting my own back in the end. If he had treated me decently, I’d have let him alone, but he didn’t know how to treat anyone, and I wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

I thought I’d come up to London and smell round a bit, and I thought I’d manage it so that no one would know. I left my room in Doncaster, and I got my sister Annie-she’s Mrs. Love, and a widow-to take a room in Birmingham and call herself Miss La Fay. There ’s enough likeness for a description of one of us to fit the other. But first and last, all Annie knew was that I’d got business in London and didn’t want anyone to know I was there. She thought I was getting a divorce, and she sent my letters on to me care of the post office. She didn’t know anything more than that.