Patricia Wentworth - She Came Back

“You said that?”

“Yes, Frank. When I had done so, she began to talk in quite an excited manner. I am afraid, poor thing, that she was gratified and flattered at the idea that she was the repository of an important secret.”

“What did she say?”

“I will give you her own words as accurately as I can. She said, ‘That’s as good as what I told him. You couldn’t take me in, I said, not if it was ever so.’ Then she said the gentleman laughed very pleasantly and told her she was very positive, and she said of course she was, but she didn’t tell him why. But she said to me that when you had had a child from five years old, and washed it and dressed it and done everything, well, it stood to reason you would know anything there was to know. I do not know how much more she would have said, because just then the train stopped and a crowd of people got in. We had no further conversation of a private nature, but she turned back on the platform and asked me to come and see her next time I was in Blackheath, and I gave her my name and address.”

Frank Abbott was watching her keenly.

“Yes-why did you do that?”

Miss Silver rested her hands upon her knitting.

“I thought that she had been indiscreet. I feared she might have conveyed a false impression. I considered it possible that she might find herself in a difficulty. I did not think that she knew anyone of whom she would willingly seek counsel-I thought it possible that she might be in need of it. Something like that, Frank, but perhaps not quite so definite. It is difficult to avoid being wise when the event has declared itself.”

He was silent for quite a time. Then he said,

“It comes to this-Nellie Collins had, or pretended to have, some special information about Annie Joyce. If Annie Joyce is dead, this information wouldn’t be of the slightest interest to anyone-unless the Jocelyns had any lingering doubts as to whether it really was Lady Jocelyn who survived, in which case they would be very glad of corroborative evidence, and grateful to Nellie. There’s no possible motive for murder there. On the other hand, if it was Annie Joyce who survived, and Lady Jocelyn had been dead for three and a half years as her tombstone says, then the woman who took her place would have a motive-wouldn’t she? She would have been playing for a pretty big stake-she would think that she had brought it off. And then up bobs Nellie Collins with her, ‘I washed her and I dressed her, and if there was anything to know about her, I’d know it, wouldn’t I?’ You don’t want a much stronger motive than that.”

Miss Silver said, “No.”

“But it was a man who telephoned to make the appointment-”

“Yes-for Lady Jocelyn.”

“You are quite sure Nellie Collins said that?”

“Quite sure, Frank.”

He pushed back his chair and got up.

“Then it’s a million to one that Lady Jocelyn has a completely unbreakable alibi!”

Anne Jocelyn opened the door of her flat. She looked with surprise at the two men who had been waiting for her to do so. She saw a ponderous middle-aged man who might have been a chapel pillar, and an elegant young one who might have been more at home in a drawing-room.

Introducing himself as Chief Detective Inspector Lamb, the older man crossed the threshold, briefly indicated his companion as Detective Sergeant Abbott, and remarked in a voice which had not quite lost its original country accent,

“Perhaps you would let us have a word with you, Lady Jocelyn.”

There was a moment before she moved. The landing from which they came was almost dark, the hall of the flat lighted only from the half-open sitting-room door. If she turned round she would have to face the light. But she must turn round, or they would know that she was frightened. Frightened-how did any word express that sensation of everything having come to an end? She wrenched at her will, setting it to command her body, and it obeyed. There was really only the least possible pause before she led the way towards that half-open door.

They came into a pleasant room. Light shining from the ceiling through a Lalique bowl. Another in very heavy glass with a design of birds pecking at fruit held a sheaf of tawny chrysanthemums. The drawn curtains were of honey-coloured brocade. They gave the light in the room a faintly golden tinge. All the colouring was in the range of shades between honey and russet.

Lady Jocelyn wore a blue dress and two rows of noticeable pearls. She said,

“You wanted to see me-” then broke off.

It was no good pretending. Anyone who wasn’t a complete fool could see that she was frightened, and neither of these men were fools, not even the old one, with his heavy policeman’s figure and his stolid face. She made a disarming little gesture which old Lamb stigmatized as foreign.

“You will think me very stupid-but you frightened me so much. You know, I have been in France for more than three years under the Occupation, and when for three years the police have meant the Gestapo, it’s not always easy-” She broke off again, and said with a smile, “My nerves played me a trick. What can I do for you? Won’t you sit down?”

They sat. The light shone down on them. Frank Abbott’s eye ran over her. Pretty woman-strung up-very quick off the mark with a cover-up, but might be quite genuine. Ars est celare artem-but if it was art, he took off his hat to it. There might, of course, be nothing to conceal. That the Gestapo could get on a girl’s nerves in an occupied country needed no stressing.

Lamb had allowed the silence to settle. Now he said,

“I am sorry we startled you. I have reason to believe that you may be able to give us some assistance with regard to a case which we are investigating.”

“A case? I-of course anything I can-but I don’t know-”

Chief Detective Inspector Lamb proceeded as if she had not spoken. His eyes, which reminded his irreverent Sergeant so forcibly of bull’s-eyes, were fixed upon her very much as if she had been a chair or a sofa. They showed no appreciation of the fact that she was young, charming, pretty, and Lady Jocelyn. He just looked at her. She might have been an old scrub-woman, a doorpost, or a cat. He said in that robust country voice,

“The case was reported to us as a road death. The deceased has been identified by her lodger as Miss Nellie Collins of the Lady’s Workbox, Blackheath Vale. Did you know her?”

Frank Abbott saw the natural colour sink away from the surface skin of Lady Jocelyn’s face. It left two islands of rouge, and the scarlet shape of a mouth painted on in lipstick. Before this happened the tinting had been so skilfully done that it was hard to say where nature ended and art began. Now not even art was left. The remaining colour stood up on the blanched skin like crude daubs upon a linen mask. With this evidence of shock before his eyes, he saw the throat muscles tighten. They held her voice steady for the single word she needed.

“No.”

“You did not know Miss Collins?”

“No.”

“Never heard of her?”

Frank Abbott looked quickly down at the hands in Anne Jocelyn’s lap. Hands were the biggest giveaway of the lot. He had seen so many women’s hands tell what the face withheld. But Anne Jocelyn’s hands told nothing at all. They neither clung the one to the other, nor were clenched each upon itself. They lay at ease in her lap-at ease, or under perfect control. They did not move at all till she said,

“Yes-she wrote to me.”

Chief Inspector Lamb sat there like an image, with a hand on either knee. He had put down his bowler hat on a chest in the hall, but had merely unbuttoned his overcoat without removing it. His eyes never left her face, but remained expressionless. He might have been having his photograph taken- one of those stolid photographs in which the father of the family stares at the camera with a blank eye and a vacant mind. He said,