Patricia Wentworth: Miss Silver Deals With Death

“What did you really think we were going to find?” said Frank Abbott. “And did you know, or were gambling?”

Miss Silver gave him a glance of mild reproach.

“That is not an expression which I should choose,” she said. “On my return from Tunbridge Wells I saw the Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard. At that time I was tolerably certain that a search of Mrs. Meredith’s flat would discover the fair wig and the smart black clothes worn by the woman who visited Miss Garside at tea-time on the day of her death. I thought it more than likely that there would be other disguises, and some compromising papers. On my return to Vandeleur House I confronted Ivy Lord with the evidence which I possessed. She then told me what I had already guessed, that, instigated by Miss Roland, she had entered several of the flats at night, using the fire-escape and the ledges which run round the house. She said she rather enjoyed doing it, and if she had been seen, there was a genuine history of sleep-walking to get her off. She had not, of course, the least idea that there was anything serious involved. She said Miss Roland told her that someone had been playing a practical joke and she wanted to get even. They quarrelled over the letter which Ivy found on her second visit to Mrs. Meredith’s flat. She took it from the drawer in which many similar letters were afterwards discovered, and she selected this one because she knew the writer. She showed it to Miss Roland, but she did not mean her to keep it. She said she did not think it would be right. In the quarrel that followed, a corner of the letter got torn off. This afterwards furnished me with an important clue.”

“Why didn’t Ivy come upstairs with all the rest of us?” said Meade.

“She was so much upset that suspicion would inevitably have been aroused. Also Mrs. Simpson is an extremely vindictive person, and I was afraid of what she might do if she realised that Ivy Lord was going to be the chief witness against her. As regards the first point, it was highly necessary to keep everything going smoothly until Sergeant Curtis had had time to make a thorough search. Miss Crane having been separated from her accomplice, this search and Packer’s subsequent arrest took place without any untoward incident. No resistance was offered, Mrs. Meredith was not alarmed, and the compromising clothes and papers were duly discovered. When Sergeant Curtis appeared at the door to say that Anderson was below he was, in fact, notifying the Chief Inspector that the search had produced results which warranted the arrest of Miss Crane.”

“The Chief has a good poker face,” said Frank Abbott. “The bored official stare when Curtis showed up-good, wasn’t it?”

Miss Silver coughed.

“If Miss Crane had been given the slightest warning, the situation might have developed very dangerously. I was quite sure that she would be armed, and Major Armitage had been warned to look out for any movement of her right hand in the direction of that capacious raincoat pocket. He is much to be congratulated on the promptness with which he acted. It would have been impossible to place one of the police officers next to her without putting her on her guard. Well, we have all cause to be grateful that so dangerous a criminal is now under lock and key.”

“Do you really think she murdered Miss Garside?” said Agnes Drake in a shrinking voice.

“I think she did,” said Miss Silver soberly. “It was, from her point of view, a perfectly logical thing to do. She knew from Mrs. Smollett that the poor woman had exchanged a worthless ring of her own for a valuable one of Miss Roland’s. She had also been informed of a conversation between Mrs. Lemming and Miss Garside which made it quite plain that the latter was not in her flat at the time of the murder. And she had herself seen her coming up from the basement just before this time. It was perfectly clear that while Miss Garside’s continued existence might be extremely dangerous, Miss Garside’s death might be extremely useful. If it could be made to look like suicide it would be tantamount to a confession. We do not know how she effected this latest crime. She may have used the sale of the ring to introduce herself. She brought the morphia tablets with her, and found an opportunity of slipping them into Miss Garside’s tea. It will not, fortunately, be necessary to prove all this. She will be tried for the murders of Louisa Spedding and Carola Roland, and with Ivy Lord’s evidence there should, I think, be no doubt of a conviction.”

They talked a little more, and then they said goodbye.

Meade and Giles walked slowly down the street. When they had turned the corner, he said,

“They’re sending me back to the States. Will you come too?”

She looked up at him, flushing.

“Will they let me?”

“I think so. Will you come if they do?”

Her look was enough. The hand on his arm shook before she could control it. She said,

“When?”

“Next Clipper. But you mustn’t tell.”

Nicholas and Agnes Drake walked in a companionable silence. They had everything in the world to say, and all the time in the world in which to say it.

Frank Abbott remained alone with his hostess. Her room delighted him as much as she did. His gaze travelled reverentially from the flowered wallpaper to the curly walnut chairs, from Landseer and Millais to the silver-framed photographs which thronged the mantelpiece, from a monstrous pink china ornament in the form of a bee to Miss Silver herself in her best afternoon dress of a neatly patterned purplish material with collar and cuffs of Maltese lace, a brooch of carved bog-oak set with three small pearls and bracelets to match, the double eye-glass which she used for reading suspended about her neck by a fine black cord, her feet encased in beaded glacé slippers.

Having arrived, the gaze remained and was fixed. Miss Silver, aware of it, glanced at him with mild enquiry. She saw a tall young man who could be impudent, but whose demeanour at the moment was modest in the extreme. Whilst she looked up, he looked down. And then, without any warning at all, he was bowing over her hand and kissing it.

“You’re a wonder, Maudie!” he said, and fled.

Miss Silver’s eyebrows rose, but she did not appear displeased. She said, “Dear me-” and relaxed in an indulgent smile.

Born in Mussoorie, India, in 1878, Patricia Wentworth was the daughter of an English general. Educated in England, she returned to India, where she began to write and was first published. She married, but in 1906 was left a widow with four children, and returned again to England where she resumed her writing, this time to earn a living for herself and her family. She married again in 1920 and lived in Surrey until her death in 1961.

Miss Wentworth’s early works were mainly historical fiction, and her first mystery, published in 1923, was The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith. In 1928 she wrote The Case Is Closed and gave birth to her most enduring creation, Miss Maud Silver.