Patricia Wentworth - The Key

‘There isn’t any more. I found the key. There was some broken glass there, as you said. I suppose I must have brought a bit in. I naturally didn’t imagine that anyone would be spying on me.’

There was just a spark of temper there. Lamb took no notice of it.

He said gravely, ‘Where did you find the key?’ and at once she was relaxed again. The answer came readily.

‘It was lying up against the wall under a dandelion plant.’

‘Which side of the door?’

‘On the right. It was close up against the wall.’

Lamb got up, went to the window, and stood there looking out. He could see the wall, and the shape of the door breaking it. Without turning round he said, ‘The handle’s on the left. Those doors open inwards, don’t they?’

‘Yes.’

He came back to his seat. Miss Brown went on speaking.

‘The key must have fallen out of my hand when the man startled me. It was right up against the wall, quite close to the jamb. The moon happened to shine on it, or I might not have seen it.’

‘And did Mr Madoc come there to help you look for your key?’

She drew back. The effect was that she flinched.,

‘How could he help me? He wasn’t there. Nobody helped me.’

‘You deny that you met Mr Madoc in the lane on Thursday night?’

‘Of course I deny it. He wasn’t there. I went out, and found the key, and put it back in the bureau drawer.’

Lamb took a frowning glance at the paper he had handled before, and then looked up and asked with an effect of suddenness, ‘Just how well did you know Mr Harsch?’

Miss Brown was not at all discomposed.

‘I knew him – we were on friendly terms. Miss Fell is fond of music – she often invited him.’

‘You were friendly?’

‘Yes.’

‘Were you more than friendly?’

She lifted her eyebrows and said coldly, ‘Certainly not.’

‘And Mr Madoc?’

There was a pause before she said, ‘I don’t know – what you mean.’

Her tone was very nearly the same, but not quite. It was still cold, but Frank Abbott thought that it had changed. He thought she was afraid.

Lamb said, ‘I am asking you how well you know Mr Madoc?’

This time her answer came quickly in a tumble of words.

‘I know him – we all know each other here – it’s a small place. Is there anything wrong about that?’

‘Does he call you by your Christian name?’

‘Certainly not! Why should he?’

‘That is not for me to say, Miss Brown.’

The Chief Inspector pushed back his chair and got up.

WHEN MISS BROWN had left the room Frank Abbott met his inspector’s eye and smiled faintly.

Lamb said, ‘Well?’

‘Oh, she’s lying – quite strenuously, I think, but not all the time. Some of it came easy, and some of it came hard. There’s an eel under the stone, as they say in France.’

Lamb looked suspicious.

‘This isn’t France, and you’d do better to keep your mind on your job. Or if you want to play at proverbs, here’s a good old English one – “Fine words butter no parsnips”. We’ll be getting along to Prior’s End to see what Madoc’s got to say. Of course they may have fixed up their tale so that it will hang together, but there’s quite a chance they haven’t. What with the inquest going off as smooth as butter, and the verdict what it was, they wouldn’t risk meeting or telephoning till it had blown over a bit.’

‘How are you going to stop her telephoning now?’

Lamb chuckled.

‘Mr Madoc’s line is going to be out of order, just in case anyone wants to ring him up before we get there. I doubt if she’d risk it though. It’s one of those party lines, they tell me, where anyone can take a turn at listening in. Anyhow, she won’t get the chance. But the girl at the Exchange will let us know if she has a try at it.’

Frank Abbott slipped an elastic band round his notebook and put it in his pocket. His gloom had departed, his pale blue eyes were alert.

‘She’s a clever woman,’ he said. ‘It was pretty good, the way she pulled herself together. A bit of a knockout blow, our coming in with that evidence just as she must have been thinking they’d got away with it.’

Lamb nodded.

‘She didn’t put up a bad story. Counsel for the defence could make quite a good thing of it, if it ever comes to that. By the way, just check up on that cook next door. Ask one of the maids here – they’ll know. I’ll have a word with Major Albany, and then we’ll be going.’

He had his word, and was out by the gate, when Frank came after him.

‘The name is Doris, sir. What you might call a near miss. Bright of her to think of it though.’

Lamb grunted.

‘Well, we’d better be getting off.’

It was close on twelve o’clock when they came up the track to Prior’s End. Mrs Williams opened the door, elderly and neat, with her grey hair in a bun and her hands damp and steaming.

‘As sure as you’ve got your hands in the flour or the water, there’ll be someone come to the door,’ she told Janice a minute or two later. ‘Two strangers, and wanting Mr Madoc, so I told them he wasn’t to be disturbed, and I showed them in on Miss Madoc.’

Miss Madoc had been very much surprised. She was engaged in the homely occupation of darning socks, and what with her size, her loose untidy dress – serge of the colour of boiled spinach, with dibs and dabs of embroidery here and there – and a green scarf that belonged to the dress, and a rust-coloured one she had put on in a fit of absentmindedness, and her mending-basket, and a scatteration of socks, she pretty well filled the old-fashioned sofa. When she got up, first removing the glasses she wore for needlework, she managed to upset the basket, and was evidently in two minds whether to retrieve it or to greet her unexpected guests. On being informed that they were police officers from Scotland Yard she sat down again rather heavily and forgot everything else.

‘Oh, then it will be about poor Mr Harsch. But I am afraid you can’t see my brother – we never disturb him when he is working. He is doing very important work for the Government – at least everyone says it is very important. But I don’t think I shall like it at all if it comes to living on tabloids, but he says that we all eat a great deal too much, and-’

Lamb interrupted her in his most solid voice.

‘I’m afraid that we shall have to see Mr Madoc. Will you kindly let him know that we are here.’

Frank Abbott was thinking that never in his fondest dreams had he expected to meet anyone so exactly like the White Queen. The greyish sandy hair in a confused tangle on her neck, the crumpled pallor of her face, the vague protruberant eyes, the general air of not knowing quite where anything was or what to do about it – you had only to put her into a crinoline and clap a crown on her head, and she could wander through to the far side of the looking-glass and be more at home there than she had ever been or ever could be on this side of it.

She was shaking her head at Lamb and saying, ‘Oh, dear – I don’t really see – I don’t know – he is so very easily put out – if there is anything that I can do-’

Lamb said heartily, ‘Well, that’s an idea!’ He took a chair and sat down. ‘We shall have to see your brother presently, but I daresay there are things that you can tell us just as well as he can.’

Besides the scarves, she wore a very large mosaic brooch depicting the Coliseum at Rome, and three strings of beads, a short one of blue and silver Venetian glass, and two, much longer, of coral and little round gold pierced beads respectively. Every time she moved the coral rubbed the glass and the gold beads clinked.