Patricia Wentworth - The Key

Miss Silver observed him with attention.

‘Your points are very well taken. Now, Mr Madoc, you say that you did not recognise the first person who left the churchyard. But what about the man who ran – did you recognise him?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Who was it?’

‘An old poacher called Ezra Pincott. I saw him quite distinctly. The police had better get hold of him. He probably knows who he was after.’

Miss Silver regarded him steadily.

‘I am afraid that is impossible, Mr Madoc. Ezra Pincott was murdered on Tuesday night.’

IN THE GOVERNOR’S office Evan Madoc wrote a fierce black signature at the foot of his statement.

‘There you are!’ he said without any respect at all. ‘And now, I suppose, you will do your best to hang me!’

Miss Silver gave a faint hortatory cough. She rose to her feet with the air of a teacher dismissing a class. A spark of angry humour came and went in Madoc’s eyes. She smiled at him as she came over and gave him her hand.

‘I hope I shall see you again very soon,’ she said, and felt the long nervous fingers twitch.

She went out, and was presently followed by Sergeant Abbott, who tucked a hand inside her arm and took her out to lunch at the Royal George, which is the gloomiest and most respectable hotel in Marbury. It has a Regency front, a rabbit warren of older rooms with low ceilings and uneven floors on all different levels at the back, whilst its interior decoration perpetuates the taste of the great Victorian age. In the immense dining-room, where before the war Hunt Suppers were wont to be served, only some half dozen tables were occupied. Established by one of the heavily curtained windows, and served with watery soup in tepid plates, they were as free from being overheard or overlooked as if they had been in the middle of the Sahara.

Miss Silver undid her jacket, disclosing the fact that she was wearing a bog-oak brooch in the form of a rose with a pearl in the heart of it. Sergeant Abbott gazed at her with rapture.

‘Maudie, you’re marvellous!’

The neat, prim features endeavoured to preserve a proper severity. They failed. With the smile which she would have bestowed on a favourite nephew, Miss Silver attempted reproof.

‘My dear Frank, when did I give you permission to use my Christian name?’

‘Never. But if I don’t do it sometimes I shall develop an ingrowing, inverted enthusiasm – an inhibition, or a complex, or one of those things you get when you are thwarted. I’ve always felt that it was particularly bad for me to be thwarted.’

‘You talk a great deal of nonsense,’ said Miss Silver indulgently.

Aware that young men do not talk nonsense to their elders unless they are fond of them, her tone did nothing to discourage him. He therefore continued to talk nonsense until the waiter removed their soup plates and furnished them each with a small portion of limp white fish partially concealed by a sprig of parsley and a teaspoonful of unnaturally pink sauce. It all tasted even worse than it looked. Frank apologised.

‘They have much better food at the Ram, but we couldn’t very well go there in the circumstances. The local Superintendent tells me their Mrs Simpkins can make you believe that Hitler had never been born, and that you are really eating prewar food. Simpkins is the proprietor.’

Miss Silver inclined her head.

‘Yes. Miss Fell informs me that Mrs Simpkins used to be old Mr Doncaster’s cook. They were very well off in those days, but when he died they found that his income was largely derived from an annuity.’

Frank looked at her sharply.

‘You’ve been concealing things – you always do.’

Miss Silver coughed.

‘I did not wish to prejudice your enquiries at the Ram. Pray tell me if they have had any result.’

He leaned forward.

‘Well, I think so. But whether we’re any forrader, or what we’re heading for, I don’t pretend to say. Everybody there could pick out Bush. They know all about him. They know his sister Mrs Grey, and they say he always comes in for a drink if he’s in Marbury. Nobody is prepared to swear that he did come in on the Monday in question, but they all say he’d have been sure to if he was over at the Greys’. Then there’s Miss Doncaster. They all recognised her and could name her – said she always came in for tea when she’d been shopping.’

‘Yes – Miss Fell told me that. They give very good teas even now. All the food at the Ram is good, though it is such a shabby-looking place.’

Frank shook his head at her.

‘Well, well – don’t let us dwell upon it – all is over for today. Let us continue – we were doing Miss Doncaster. They are sure she was in on that Monday, because she kept Mrs Simpkins talking until she missed a bus, and Mrs Simpkins wasn’t at all pleased. She was going out to see a sister at Marfield, and she told me it was just like Miss Doncaster, and that she was a good deal put about. And now we come to Mr Everton – and that’s where we don’t get anywhere at all. He might have been in, or he mightn’t. They didn’t know him. He wasn’t a customer, and, as the porter remarked, “One gentleman looks very much like another in our hall”. And that’s the truth – it’s narrow, it’s dingy, and it’s dark. He said there was always a coming and going about tea-time. Gentlemen generally had it in the Coffee Room, especially if they wanted something substantial. Mrs Simpkins would fix them up a sausage and fried vegetables or something like that. But as to who was in on what day at the beginning of last week, he couldn’t say. In fact none of them could. When I asked whether Mrs Simpkins having gone off that afternoon to see her sister was any help, they brightened up a bit and remembered a gentleman who might have been a commercial traveller. And the new kitchenmaid had done him a scrambled egg on toast, and Mrs Simpkins had put it across her when she came home, because she said those dried eggs want handling, and the Ram had got its name to keep up. But though I pressed like mad, no one seemed to be able to reconstruct the gentleman, or to remember who else had been in, and nobody picked Mr Everton out of any of the photographs. The whole affair is exactly like this revolting sausage – pale, profitless, and imponderable.’

Miss Silver was pleased to be encouraging.

‘I think you did very well.’

Frank Abbott shook his head.

‘There are just two points – I’ve saved them up to the end. If nobody remembers Everton at the Ram, nobody remembers Harsch either, yet we know that Harsch went in and came out. Even at midday that hall is like a tomb. But – and this is the second point – as soon as you open the Coffee Room door bright light streams out. There are two good windows there, and they face that door. Suppose Harsch came up to the Coffee Room door and saw it open, he would be facing the light – facing whoever was coming out – facing anyone who was still in the room. But what would he see himself? I tried it out with the porter. The light hits you suddenly. Anyone coming out of the room in the ordinary way appears as a silhouette, but with some light striking the right side of the face and figure. If the opening door of which Harsch spoke to Janice Meade was a real door opening in the Ram, then that’s what he would have seen – a silhouette, light striking at an angle on the side of the head, the cheek, the jaw, the shoulder. Not very much to go on, you know – nothing to take to the police – but enough to give you a horrid shock if it was what you had seen before, perhaps many times, when you were in your cell in the dark in a concentration camp and the door opened from the lighted corridor to let one of your tormentors in.’ He broke off with a slightly conscious look. ‘You know, you’ll ruin my career. You’re not safe – you’re contagious. You start me off enthusing and romancing till I’m not sure whether I’m a policeman or someone in a propaganda film. And what the Chief would say if he heard me just now, I only hope and trust I shall never know. I think we’ll switch over to Madoc. What about Harsch’s notes and papers – did you get anything out of him?’