Josephine Tey - Загадочные события во Франчесе / The Franchise Affair

“Smorgasbord.”

“Yes. While they ate and drank, the younger woman told her that they had no maid at the moment and asked her if she would like to be a maid for them for a little. She said that she wouldn’t. They tried persuasion, but she stuck to it that that was not at all the kind of job she would take. Their faces began to grow blurred as she talked, and when they suggested that she might at least come upstairs and see what a nice bedroom she would have if she stayed she was too fuddled in her mind to do anything but follow their suggestion. She remembers going up a first flight with a carpet, and a second flight with what she calls ‘something hard’ underfoot, and that was all she remembered until she woke in daylight on a truckle bed in a bare little attic. She was wearing only her slip, and there was no sign of the rest of her clothes. The door was locked, and the small round window would not open. In any case—”

“ Round window!” said Robert, uncomfortably.

But it was Marion who answered him. “Yes,” she said, meaningly. “A round window up in the roof.”

Since his last thought as he came to her front door a few minutes ago had been how badly placed was the little round window in the roof, there seemed to Robert to be no adequate comment. Grant made his usual pause for courtesy’s sake, and went on.

“Presently the younger woman arrived with a bowl of porridge. The girl refused it and demanded her clothes and her release. The woman said that she would eat it when she was hungry enough and went away, leaving the porridge behind. She was alone till evening, when the same woman brought her tea on a tray with fresh cakes and tried to talk her into giving the maid’s job a trial. The girl again refused, and for days, according to her story, this alternate coaxing and bullying went on, sometimes by one of the women and sometimes by the other. Then she decided that if she could break the small round window she might be able to crawl out of it on to the roof, which was protected by a parapet, and call the attention of some passerby, or some visiting tradesman, to her plight. Unfortunately, her only implement was a chair, and she had managed only to crack the glass before the younger woman interrupted her, in a great passion. She snatched the chair from the girl and belaboured her with it until she was breathless. She went away, taking the chair with her, and the girl thought that was the end of it. But in a few moments the woman came back with what the girl thinks was a dog whip and beat her until she fainted. Next day the older woman appeared with an armful of bed-linen and said that if she would not work she would at least sew. No sewing, no food. She was too stiff to sew and so had no food. The following day she was threatened with another beating if she did not sew. So she mended some of the linen and was given stew for supper. This arrangement lasted for some time, but if her sewing was bad or insufficient, she was either beaten or deprived of food. Then one evening the older woman brought the usual bowl of stew and went away leaving the door unlocked. The girl waited, thinking it was a trap that would end in another beating; but in the end she ventured on to the landing. There was no sound, and she ran down a flight of uncarpeted stairs. Then down a second flight to the first landing. Now she could hear the two women talking in the kitchen. She crept down the last flight and dashed for the door. It was unlocked and she ran out just as she was into the night.”

“In her slip?” Robert asked.

“I forgot to say that the slip had been exchanged for her dress. There was no heating in the attic, and in nothing but a slip she would probably have died.”

“If she ever was in an attic,” Robert said.

“If, as you say, she ever was in an attic,” the Inspector agreed smoothly. And without his customary pause of courtesy went on: “She does not remember much after that. She walked a great distance in the dark, she says. It seemed a highroad but there was no traffic and she met no one. Then, on a main road, some time later, a lorry driver saw her in his headlight and stopped to give her a lift. She was so tired that she fell straight asleep. She woke as she was being set on her feet at the roadside. The lorry driver was laughing at her and saying that she was like a sawdust doll that had lost its stuffing. It seemed to be still night time. The lorry driver said this was where she said she wanted to be put off, and drove away. After a little she recognised the corner. It was less than two miles from her home. She heard a clock strike eleven. And shortly before midnight she arrived home.”

There was a short silence.

“And this is the girl who is sitting in a car outside the gate of The Franchise at this moment?” said Robert.

“Yes.”

“I take it that you have reasons for bringing her here.”

“Yes. When the girl had recovered sufficiently she was induced to tell her story to the police. It was taken down in shorthand as she told it, and she read the typed version and signed it. In that statement there were two things that helped the police a lot. These are the relevant extracts:

‘When we had been going for some time we passed a bus that had MILFORD in a lighted sign on it. No, I don’t know where Milford is. No, I have never been there.’

“That is one. The other is:

‘From the window of the attic I could see a high brick wall with a big iron gate in the middle of it. There was a road on the further side of the wall, because I could see the telegraph posts. No, I couldn’t see the traffic on it because the wall was too high. Just the tops of lorry loads sometimes. You couldn’t see through the gate because it had sheets of iron on the inside. Inside the gate the carriage way went straight for a little and then divided in two into a circle up to the door. No, it wasn’t a garden, just grass. Yes, lawn, I suppose. No, I don’t remember any shrubs; just the grass and the paths.’”

Grant shut the little notebook he had been quoting from.

“As far as we know – and the search has been thorough – there is no other house between Larborough and Milford which fulfils the girl’s description except The Franchise. The Franchise, moreover, fulfils it in every particular. When the girl saw the wall and the gate today she was sure that this was the place; but she has not so far seen inside the gate, of course. I had first to explain matters to Miss Sharpe, and find out if she was willing to be confronted with the girl. She very rightly suggested that some legal witness should be present.”

“Do you wonder that I wanted help in a hurry?” Marion Sharpe said, turning to Robert. “Can you imagine a more nightmare piece of nonsense?”

“The girl’s story is certainly the oddest mixture of the factual and the absurd. I know that domestic help is scarce,” Robert said, “but would anyone hope to enlist a servant by forcibly detaining her, to say nothing of beating and starving her.”

“No normal person, of course,” Grant agreed, keeping his eye steadily fixed on Robert’s so that it had no tendency to slide over to Marion Sharpe. “But believe me in my first twelve months in the force I had come across a dozen things much more incredible. There is no end to the extravagances of human conduct.”

“I agree; but the extravagance is just as likely to be in the girl’s conduct. After all, the extravagance begins with her. She is the one who has been missing for—” He paused in question.

“A month,” Grant supplied.

“For a month; while there is no suggestion that the household at The Franchise has varied at all from its routine. Would it not be possible for Miss Sharpe to provide an alibi for the day in question?”