Patricia Wentworth - Ladies’ Bane

At Marbury there was an exodus. She was left alone except for an elderly lady who appeared to be deep in a woman’s magazine. The train would not stop again until they were near London. As it gained speed, she slipped her hand inside her blouse and brought out the folded sheets. When she had read them through she went back to the beginning and read them again. She had arrived with a kind of horrified amazement at the last scrawled line, when the elderly lady addressed her.

“If I do not interrupt you-you seem so very much interested-but I was wondering whether you would object to having the window very slightly open at the top.”

Ione gazed at her rather blankly. She had not really seen her before. There had been just an impression of someone drab in the corner. She now saw a long nose, a tight mouth, and a pair of very inquisitive eyes. She made haste to say,

“Oh, the window-no, of course-please do anything you like about it.”

“Just a couple of inches then. I cannot consider it hygienic to travel in a compartment to which no air is admitted. My invariable rule at home is two inches at the top and two inches at the bottom for every window in the house.”

It sounded frightfully bleak. Not feeling called upon to make any comment, Ione re-folded the sheets of Margot’s diary and put them away in her handbag. What was she going to do with them? What could she do? She must have time to think.

She was not to have it. Those inquisitive eyes had followed her every movement. The rather high, precise voice addressed her again.

“Allow me to introduce myself-Miss Wotherspoon- 21 Marling Road, Marbury. A very pleasant locality-quiet, and yet close to a shopping centre. Perhaps I may know your name?”

Short of being rude to a chance-met stranger, a lapse for which Cousin Eleanor’s training had completely unfitted her, she must give her name with as good a grace as she could contrive.

Miss Wotherspoon remarked that it was Scotch, had some general observations to make on that country, and came back to her starting point.

“I do hope that I have not disturbed you. I always think conversation makes a journey pass more pleasantly. But you did seem so much interested in what you were reading. Not a private letter of course, or I should not be remarking upon it. More like the pages from a child’s exercise-book-very untidy writing. And of course a child of that age could hardly produce what would be of interest to a grown-up person.”

Ione said nothing.

But Miss Wotherspoon had not done. She gave a small hard laugh, and proceeded in a manner which was obviously intended to be arch.

“And you know, that was what made me just a teeny bit curious-a child’s exercise, and your deep interest. You did say Miss Muir, did you not? But perhaps some niece? Or nephew?”

Ione found herself saying,

“Miss Wotherspoon, the child who wrote those pages is dead. And now perhaps you will not mind if I shut my eyes and do not talk any more. I have rather a headache.”

She leaned back into her corner and closed her mind to a number of small ejaculations such as, “ Oh, really !”, “I had no idea!”, “I’m sure I wouldn’t for the world!” Cousin Eleanor or no Cousin Eleanor, she could not have endured Miss Wotherspoon’s catechism for another moment. That it would have gone on all the way to town, she had no doubt. And everything else apart, she must think-she must think-she must think.

Just how much legal weight would those scrawled pages carry? Would they be admitted as evidence? She just didn’t know. What came to her more and more clearly was that she couldn’t take the responsibility of knocking about London with them. They might be valueless, or they might be of an absolutely crucial importance. It wasn’t her responsibility to say or to judge. She held on to her bag with both hands and knew what she must do. She couldn’t carry this sort of burden alone, nor did she want to be alone with it any more at all. Something like the cold that glances back from ice sent a shudder through mind and body at the thought of it. She was taking no more responsibility, and following no more lonely paths. As soon as they arrived at the terminus she was going to put those torn-out sheets in a registered envelope and post them to Inspector Abbott at Scotland Yard. And she was going to ring up Jim Severn and ask him to meet her at Louisa’s flat. She felt a most extraordinary sense of relief.

Mrs. Robinson opened the door of her ground floor flat and beamed at Ione. She was one of those large shapeless women who must have been quite ravishingly pretty at seventeen before the apple-blossom colour had deepened to a universal flush and spread with all that spreading fat. She had on a short-sleeved overall, and the skin on the inside of the arm above the elbow was still as white as milk. And her eyes as blue as a baby’s. Straw-coloured hair in a kind of demented haycock completed the picture.

“Miss Muir?” she said in a slow, pleasant voice. “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure. And a good thing you sent that wire, or I’d have been out as sure as anything. And you needn’t to bother about the key, because the other lady has just gone up with it.”

“The other lady?”

Mrs. Robinson nodded.

“Miss Blunt’s cousin-elderly lady. Said Miss Blunt asked her to meet you here and explain about one or two things she was to look after for her.”

Really Louisa was too inconsequent! “An elderly cousin” sounded like Lucy Heming, and if ever there was a bore and a person you couldn’t get rid of, it was Lucy.

She took herself up in the automatic lift with the feeling that Lucy Heming on the top of Miss Wotherspoon was just about the last straw. She would expect to be provided with cups of tea, and she would cling. Useless optimism to imagine that she would vanish from the scene when Jim Severn walked in.

The door of the flat was ajar. She closed it behind her, slipping up the safety catch so that Jim would not have to ring. Four doors opened upon the little hall-bathroom and kitchenette straight ahead, each of them just a slip, bedroom to the left, and sitting-room to the right. The sitting-room door stood half-way open. It disclosed Louisa’s rather oddly assorted furniture. She was at the moment devoted to peasant arts and crafts, but had not gone so far as to divest herself of inherited Chippendale and Dresden. A tall grey-haired woman in old-fashioned clothes was looking out of the farther window. She turned as Ione came in, and she was not Lucy Heming.

There was a moment of bewilderment. Then, as the dark eyes met hers, Ione knew. A bare right hand came up out of a ramshackle old bag, and it held a revolver. Incredibly, but as it seemed actually, the revolver was pointed at Ione’s head. The grey-haired woman said,

“Stay just where you are and put up your hands, or I shall shoot!”

The voice was, without any disguise, the voice of Jacqueline Delauny. It was all quite unbelievable, but it was happening. You can’t argue with a revolver at point-blank range. Ione put up her hands.

“That’s better!”

“I can’t keep them like this for very long, you know.”

“It won’t be for long-you needn’t worry. Throw your bag over on to that sofa! Not anywhere in my direction now, or this little toy will go off!”

The bag was in her left hand. She threw it on to the sofa, and saw Jacqueline Delauny edge round until she could reach it. The catch was a stiff one, and she could only use the fingers of her left hand, but she got it open, backed with it to her original position, and turned the contents out upon a small table without for a moment changing her steady aim. Purse, compact, handkerchief, shopping-list-she could only afford the swiftest glance, but she knew at once that what she wanted was not there.