Patricia Wentworth - Vanishing Point

The constable coughed behind his hand. Like a stabbing knife the thought came into her mind, “What has Fred been up to?” He had a smile on his face, and to anyone who didn’t know him like she did his voice was just the jolly, friendly voice he’d use for company. But it couldn’t take her in. There was something wrong, and he was trying to put a face on it.

She went into her own room and put on the first clothes that came to hand, a royal blue skirt and jumper and a purple cardigan. She dragged a comb through her hair and tidied it. The bright colours gave her a ghastly look, but she didn’t think about that. She put on her stockings and a pair of quilted slippers with a fleecy lining that were warm to her feet. She took a little pleasure from the warmth.

Fred came out of his room, and there was a trampling of feet through the house and out by the back door. Mrs. Selby went into the kitchen and put a kettle on the oil stove, but it had boiled, and come off the boil, and cooled, and gone back on a low flame, before anyone came into the house. The rain was falling in a steady drizzle when she went to the back door and looked out. Sometimes there was nothing to see except the rain falling on the hen-houses, and the hens, rather draggled, pecking and scratching in their runs. Sometimes the men came into view, crossing from one shed to another. There were two good sheds on the place. She couldn’t think what they wanted with them.

In the end the trampling feet were back in the house again. Only one of the men came through into the kitchen, the Inspector from Melbury. He came right up to her with his hand shut down over something and stood there, the kitchen table between them. Then he laid down his hand on the bright checked cloth and opened it, and there in the middle of his palm was one of Miss Holiday’s beads. There was no mistaking it- bright sky-blue, with those gold and silver flakes mixed in under the glass. Her mouth opened, and before she could stop herself she said,

“But that’s one of Miss Holiday’s beads!”

The Inspector said,

“Sure about that, Mrs. Selby?”

“Oh, yes-of course I’m sure. Why, she-”

There was a chair beside her. She sat down on it and stared at him.

“Mrs. Selby, when you gave us a description of what Miss Holiday was wearing on Sunday night you included a string of blue beads. Do you identify this bead as having formed part of that string?”

Her voice had sunk away. She could hardly hear it herself when she said,

“Yes-”

He said,

“When Miss Holiday’s body was taken up out of the well the string of beads had broken, but some of them were discovered in her clothing. This bead has just been found in the last of the sheds we searched. It had slipped inside the mouth of an old sack. Is there any way in which you can account for its being there?”

She said, “No.”

“Miss Holiday was alive when you saw her last?”

“Oh, yes.”

“She was wearing these beads?”

“Oh, yes.”

“The string wasn’t broken?”

“Oh, no.”

“Did you see her again after she left this house?”

He had taken her back to the Sunday evening-sitting there with Miss Holiday in the lounge-seeing the blue beads and thinking how pretty they were when the bits of gold and silver sparkled under the light-going to the door with her and seeing her out. Everything else seemed to have slipped away. It was just saying good-bye on the Sunday evening that was real. She could see Miss Holiday going out of the front door, and herself shutting it and turning the key. She said,

“I let her out, and I locked the door. I never saw her again.”

When Lydia Crewe stopped screaming she began to talk. She talked through all that remained of the night, and she was still talking when they brought Fred Selby into the station and began to question him there after cautioning him that anything he said might be taken down and used in evidence. Lydia Crewe had been cautioned too, but it made no difference, she just went on talking. Something-some control, some check, had slipped. Frank Abbott was reminded of a clock belonging to his grandmother, the redoubtable Lady Evelyn Abbott. It had started striking in the middle of family prayers and no one had been able to stop it. Her look of surprise and disapproval merging into outraged rebuke remained with him as a pleasant memory.

But there was nothing pleasant about Lydia Crewe’s performance. Plainly enough, she had passed the bounds of sanity whilst remaining dreadfully and convincingly lucid. First and foremost there stood out pride in her own achievements. To preserve Crewe House, to endow it with new wealth, were objects which justified all that she had done, and she took great pride in the doing of it. When they told her that her conversation about the Melbury rubies had been overheard by two witnesses and the rubies themselves recovered, two from the bodies of spiders freshly mounted by Henry, and the rest from his table drawer, she ran off into telling them exactly how she had changed the stones.

“What was the good of them to Felicia Melbury or to anyone else kept locked up in a safe? How many times do you suppose she wore them last year? Exactly twice-at the County Ball and the Melbury Hunt Ball! So I rang her up and said could I come over-we are connected by marriage, you know-and when I got there she told me she was wearing the famous necklace, which I knew already, and she was quite pleased to show it off. So I had my chance. You wouldn’t understand the process, because I invented it myself-paper specially prepared to take an exact impression. It has, of course, to be supplemented by a keen colour sense and a photographic memory, both of which I possess. I had only to invent a pretext for getting her out of the room for a moment. I said that I had forgotten my handkerchief, and she went into her bedroom next door to get me one. By the time she returned the impression had been taken and the paper was safe in my bag. To make a finished sketch from which a jeweller could work was a business requiring a great deal of skill. The stones for the substitute necklace came from Paris to my specification. Selby has an extremely clever workman in his shop in Garstin Street. You didn’t know he had a jeweller’s shop, did you-but no one expects the police to be clever. We outwitted you every time.”

The Melbury superintendent said nothing. A massive man, not given to change of countenance. Frank Abbott said,

“Not this time, Miss Crewe.”

She went on as if he had not spoken.

“It’s just a shabby shop in a shabby street-pins on brooches, and watches to mend-cheap strings of pearls for the local girl to put round her neck and think she looks like somebody. You didn’t know Selby had a shop like that, did you? He retired from the business he used to run with his brother, but he stuck to his little jeweller’s shop and the clever Hirsch-a very industrious man and actually very trustworthy. When the necklace was ready I had only to wait for the Hunt Ball and go over to Melbury Towers again. Felicia doesn’t like me, but she is afraid of my tongue. I go there when I choose, and she is always very polite. There is very little I don’t know about most people in the county. I went over, I admired the necklace, and I changed it for the one which Hirsch had made. She was actually in the room at the time. I had called her attention to something in the garden, and the change only took a moment.”

The harsh voice went on and on. She was asked about Miss Holiday. She took up the tale of the envelope thrust carelessly into an overall pocket by a frightened woman and dropped again for Lucy Cunningham to pick up and bring back to Crewe House.

“So then, you see, she had to go. She might have looked inside and seen the sketch for the necklace. Selby managed very cleverly.”