Patricia Wentworth - She Came Back

“The extension is in his room. The bed hasn’t been made.”

“Bed?”

“Single. She was along here, next to the drawing-room. Her room has been done-bed made, everything tidy.”

Lamb gave the grunt which meant that he was thinking.

“Looks as if it had happened first thing. He goes about half-past eight, I take it. Looks as if she’d done her room but hadn’t had time to do his-he said they had no help. I wonder what about breakfast.”

They went together into the small, brightly painted kitchen.

On a clean checked table-cloth stood the remains of a meal- cups which had held coffee, coffee-pot and milk-jug, rolls and butter untouched and uncut.

“Looks as if nobody had had much appetite for breakfast. Coffee-what’s the good of that to start the day on? Give me a rasher and a good strong cup of tea!”

“Who’s going to give you a rasher, sir?”

“I know, I know-there’s a war on. But I take my bacon ration out at breakfast and try to forget about it. Well, the boys will be here soon. Something queer about it to my mind-breakfasting on a cup of coffee.”

“Well, he’d been drugged, and she-well, whoever she was, she’d been living in France, and a cup of coffee and perhaps a roll would be what she was used to.”

Chief Inspector Lamb looked heavily disapproving.

“Then you don’t want to look much farther for why France came out of the war. Coffee! How do you expect men to fight on coffee?” Then, as the telephone bell rang sharply, “Who’s that, I wonder. Go on and see!”

Frank Abbott lifted the pale blue receiver. A distressed voice said, “Who is that? Philip, is that you?”

Frank said, “No,” and waited.

It was a very charming voice, soft, and young, and distressed. After a moment’s hesitation it resumed.

“I am speaking to No. 3 Tenterden Court Mansions?”

“Oh, yes. Who is speaking?”

“Mrs. Perry Jocelyn. Is Lady Jocelyn there? Can I speak to her?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Oh!” The distress deepened. “Oh, please-has anything happened?”

“What makes you think so, Mrs. Jocelyn?”

“Philip said-” Her voice trailed away. “Oh, it isn’t true, is it? She isn’t dead?”

“Did Sir Philip tell you that Lady Jocelyn was dead?”

“Oh, yes, he did. At least he didn’t exactly tell me. He opened the door, and he only saw Lyn-my cousin, Miss Armitage-and he said, ‘Anne’s dead.’ And when I called out he went away again, so we couldn’t ask him about it. And I couldn’t really believe it, so I thought I had better ring up.”

“When was this, Mrs. Jocelyn?”

“It was a quarter to one. But please tell me who you are. Are you the doctor? Won’t you tell me what has happened? Was it an accident? Is she really dead?”

“I’m afraid she is.”

He hung up the receiver and turned to find Lamb just behind him, his face heavy and frowning.

“That’s odd, sir. Could you hear what she said? That was Mrs. Perry Jocelyn, and she says Philip Jocelyn walked in on them a quarter of an hour ago and said his wife was dead. How did he know?”

Philip Jocelyn came out into the open air with the unpleasant sense that he had made a fool of himself. Whatever he had had in his coffee last night had left him with a swimming head. He must have been crazy to walk into Lilla’s room and say a thing like that without so much as waiting to make sure that he and Lyndall were alone before he blurted it out.

“Anne’s dead.” He hadn’t meant to say it. He hadn’t even meant to go there. He had just found himself so near that it had seemed all at once an imperative necessity to see her. He had planned nothing. The drug and his disordered thoughts had betrayed him.

As he walked away he had no idea where he was going. Not back to the flat. Not yet-not before he must. Let them get on with it. He became aware that he had had no food all day. A meal would probably stop his head going round. He turned out of a side road into a busy street full of shops and entered the first restaurant he came to.

Half an hour later he walked in at his own front door, and was met by Chief Inspector Lamb.

“This is a bad business, Sir Philip.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I shouldn’t have asked you if I did. She hasn’t gone?”

Lamb looked at him out of an expressionless face.

“That’s one way of putting it.”

Philip’s head was steady now. He said rather sharply,

“What has happened?”

Lamb said, “This,” and moved away from the study door.

Philip came forward a step or two and stood there looking in. There were three men in the room. One of them had a camera. Annie Joyce still lay where she had fallen. Philip thought of her like that-Annie Joyce-not Anne Jocelyn- not his wife. They hadn’t moved her yet. He looked at her lying there, and knew that she was dead. He had a brief stab of compunction. Then his face hardened. He stepped back and said in a controlled voice,

“Shot herself? Before you came-or afterwards?”

Lamb shook his head.

“Neither. She didn’t shoot herself-someone shot her. There’s no weapon.”

“Someone shot her?”

“Undoubtedly. We’d better come in here.” The Chief Inspector led the way to the living-room; “They’re just going to take her away, and I should be glad of a word with you. This is Sergeant Abbott. If you don’t mind, he’ll take a few notes. We shall want your statement. I suppose you have no objection to making one.”

Frank Abbott shut the door and got out his notebook. The sun had left the room. It was cold. They sat down. Lamb said,

“We have been instructed that this is a very confidential affair-a matter of attempting to obtain information for the enemy. But it seems to have turned into a murder case.”

Philip said, “Are you sure it isn’t suicide?”

“No question about it. Position of the wound-absence of any weapon. Somebody shot her. Now I’m going to ask you straight out-was she alive when you left the flat this morning?”

Philip Jocelyn’s eyebrows went up.

“Of course she was!”

Lamb went on in his solid, serious voice, his eyes bulging a little but shrewd, his gaze fixed and unwinking. Not a twitch of the eyelids, not a change of expression in all the big florid face. Above it, the stiff black hair stood up round a bald patch. He had taken off his overcoat, but even without it he filled his chair, sitting rather stiffly upright with a big capable hand on either knee.

“The police surgeon says she’s been dead a matter of hours. What time did you leave this morning?”

“Twenty to nine.”

Lamb nodded.

“Have any breakfast?”

Philip was as laconic as he.

“Coffee.”

Lamb grunted.

“Something about your being drugged last night, wasn’t there?” His tone conceded that as a medicament coffee might have its uses.

Philip said, “Yes.”

“And whilst you were asleep the case which you had brought back with you from the War Office was opened with your own key and the contents tampered with?”

“Yes.”

“Lady Jocelyn’s fingerprints-”

Philip interrupted sharply.

“She was neither Lady Jocelyn nor my wife. She was an enemy agent called Annie Joyce.”

“But she had been passing as Lady Jocelyn?”

“Yes.”

“Her fingerprints were found on your keys and upon the papers inside the case?”

“Yes.”

“Were these papers of a secret nature?”

“They appeared to be. They were not actually so. There was a code-book, but the code it contained has been superseded. There was nothing which could be of any value to the enemy.”