Patricia Wentworth - The Key

Outside in the road she stood still and wondered what she ought to do. It was all very frightening and very horrid, and she didn’t know what to do. She must tell someone who would know. Miss Silver would know. She must tell Miss Silver.

She ran all the way to the Rectory, to be told by Mabel that Miss Silver had gone to Marbury and she didn’t know when she would be back, and Miss Sophy and Mr Garth were gone up to Prior’s End to have tea with Miss Madoc, but they would be coming back soon, and Miss Janice would be coming back with them.

When Mabel was telling Janice and Garth about it she said Mrs Mottram seemed as if she was upset about something – ‘Not at all in her usual, Mr Garth – looked for all the world as if she was going to cry. I hope she hasn’t had bad news or anything like that, poor thing.’

It was then that Janice said, ‘Oh, I’d better go round and see.’

Ida Mottram went away very much discouraged. She went back to her own house, which was next door to Pennycott, and rang up Mr Everton. She didn’t feel like standing on anyone else’s doorstep and being told they were out. So she rang up, and there, almost at once, was Mr Everton’s kind, cheerful voice saying, ‘Dear lady, what can I do for you?’

‘You’re sure I’m not interrupting?’

She was feeling better already. Men were such a comfort – they always knew what to do. Mr Everton would know. He was being most polite in his kind, old-fashioned way. ‘If all interruptions were as pleasant as this one-’ He would be coming round at once. This was in answer to her ‘I’m so terribly worried about something.’

She hung up the receiver. Then she pulled the catalogue out from under her jumper and unfolded it. The faint brown lettering was just legible and no more. She began to think about what it might mean. Two years in a Swiss finishing school had left her with a fair knowledge of French and German. She slanted the shiny page and stared at the words on it, ‘ Am Widder ’. Widder – the word puzzled her for a moment. And then, like a picture on the screen, there popped into her mind Polly Pain wriggling, and twisting from one foot to another as she recited a list of animals under

Fraülein Lessner’s sardonic eye: – ‘ Der Schaf , the sheep. Die Kuh , the cow. Der Widder , the ram.’

Yes, that was it. Widder was a ram. ‘ Am Widder – at the Ram’. ‘ Montag halb fünf – Monday at half-past four.’ Why did Miss Doncaster have a catalogue with a secret message in it which said, ‘At the Ram, at half-past four’?

Mr Everton came into the room just as she remembered that Miss Doncaster’s old cook and her husband kept the Ram at Marbury, and that Miss Doncaster always had tea there when she went in to shop.

HE NOTICED AT once how pale and disturbed she looked. The blue eyes which he admired had an expression of distress. She was certainly a very pretty woman. And then his eye fell on the catalogue. She was holding it out to him with both hands.

‘Oh, Mr Everton, I’m so glad to see you! I was getting so frightened. It’s so dreadful, and it seems to be getting worse every minute – but you will know what to do.’

‘Dear lady, what is it? I can’t bear to see you like this.’

‘Oh, you are so kind! And it’s such a relief to tell someone, because I don’t know what to do.’ She pushed the catalogue at him and said, ‘Look.’

He took a moment to adjust his glasses.

‘Well, well – now let me see – a list of apple trees. Are you thinking of putting any in?’

‘No-no. Look! Oh – oh, don’t you see, there’s some writing – here – and there!’ She pointed with a scarlet fingernail. ‘It’s fading out, but it was quite clear. It came up when I held it to the fire at Miss Doncaster’s. I wanted something to screen my face, and the writing came up. It’s German. It says, “ Am Widder – Montag halb fünf .’

‘I don’t know any German,’ said Mr Everton. ‘I don’t suppose you do either. Do you?’

‘Oh, yes ! We all learnt it at Miss Braun’s. I was quite good. It means “At the Ram – Monday, at half-past four”. And Miss Doncaster always has tea at the Ram when she goes into Marbury to shop. Isn’t it dreadful !’

Mr Everton gazed at her, kind but bewildered.

‘I’m afraid I really don’t quite take it in. Are you sure there isn’t some mistake? There doesn’t seem to be anything on this page except a very ordinary list of apple trees.’

Ida felt a sudden obstinacy.

‘It was there all right, but it’s faded. If we hold it to the fire, perhaps it will come up again.’

He said in a soothing voice, ‘Well, well, we can always try,’ and she went over and switched on a small electric fire which stood in front of the empty grate.

No one would have guessed what desperate thoughts whispered and clamoured behind that kindly, puzzled air. The millionth chance, and it was going to trip him up – that damned old magpie the Doncaster woman picking up the catalogue and going off with it! He knew when it must have happened – the day she had come into the garden and he had left her to find her own way out through the house. Just for such a small, small slip, to lose everything. She must have gone peering and prying into the study and taken it then. He ought to have destroyed it as soon as he had read the message. Yes, and have the servants wonder why he was burning paper, when everyone had it drummed into them morning noon and night that every scrap must be saved. He could have put it out for salvage. And have someone take it to light the fire with! No – all that he had done had been right and prudent. He had left it lying on his table amongst other catalogues as if it were no matter at all. And it had been the right thing to do – he would always maintain that it was right. Because all the way through, his position, the whole scheme, had depended on everything being just what everyone would expect. The moment there was the least variation from the normal, the least little thing of which anyone could say ‘That’s odd,’ the plan was in danger. No – what he had done was right. It was only the millionth chance that had tripped him up.

These things were in his mind all together, speaking loud, speaking low. And amongst them, wary and poised, his inner self, the will to survive, to pluck safety out of defeat.

He watched the bar of the electric fire grow red. The inner self saw a small bright picture rise – the page held to the fire, curling in the heat, breaking into flame, falling back into harmless ash. He could do that, but it would not save him. Ida Mottram would swear to what she had seen, and the very destruction of the page would damn him.

No deeper than he was damned already. He was in two minds whether to destroy the page or not. It wasn’t the page that had to be destroyed – it was Ida Mottram. If he were to shoot her now, he could put her body in the cupboard under the stairs. That would give him an hour or two to get away. The car laid up in his garage could be on the road in a quarter of an hour. If he could reach Marbury he would have a chance. But he must make Marbury before they found her.

His hand went into his pocket and felt the little pistol wadded in a handkerchief. A tiny, deadly thing, not at all like the cumbersome old weapon he had been clever enough to use for Harsch. It would make very little noise. Nobody in the country turned their heads when they heard a shot. He had gambled on that with Harsch, and it had come off.

There was hardly any interval between the click of the electric switch, the reddening of the bar, and Ida Mottram turning round to say, ‘I think it’s hot enough now.’