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  “She did. But I am afraid there is not very much to be made of the description. She was a plain, downright person, and her mind was taken up with the shock she had received and the knowledge which she believed herself to have acquired. In these circumstances, her description did not go beyond the fact that the man wore a drab raincoat, that he was somewhere about thirty, and that he was of average height and complexion. The caretaker at the gallery does not seem able to add anything to this, though he appears to have had some conversation with him-and, significantly enough, upon the subject of Miss Paine’s portrait, which I understand you have purchased. He recognized it, and most unfortunately the caretaker mentioned both her deafness and her proficiency in lip-reading.”

  “He recognized Miss Paine?”

  “As the woman who had been looking in his direction when he made what he must have remembered as some highly compromising remarks. They could not have been overheard at the distance, but Miss Paine’s lip-reading must have suggested a dangerous possibility. We do not know, and can only surmise, the lengths to which such a conclusion might have carried him. Inspector Abbott did go round to the gallery to see whether anything could be added to Miss Paine’s description of the man she had watched.”

  Bellingdon said,

  “Yes, I believe he did. As a matter of fact, I went round myself. Pegler is a nice old boy. I had met him, and I thought I’d like a word or two with him direct. He remembers seeing two men on the seat, and he didn’t think they had anything to do with one another-says they came separately and left separately. That is all he does seem to have noticed about the one in the dark raincoat, but he remembers the other one stopping and talking about Miss Paine’s portrait. By the way, Pegler says she came back afterwards and he told her how interested this man had been about her picture and her being deaf, and the lip-reading. And he said she looked as if he had said something that upset her, and he hoped she didn’t think he had taken a liberty.”

  Miss Silver said, “She had reason to be upset.”

  Bellingdon nodded.

  “Well, to get back to this man and his description. I don’t think Pegler is any help. He said he was quite a pleasant gentleman- and that was about all there was to it. Height? ‘A bit taller than me, sir. At least that is what I should say.’ Fair or dark? ‘Nothing that you would notice either way.’ Colour of his eyes? ‘Well, I couldn’t really say, sir.’ And when you put all that together you’ve got something that would fit any man that wasn’t extra tall or extra short, or that hadn’t got red hair, or a beard, or a moustache, or something that stuck out so that you couldn’t miss it.”

  Miss Silver agreed. Bellingdon went on.

  “So we get back to the murderer. Why was he so much afraid of being identified that he must do murder? As the Chief Inspector has suggested, a motor-cyclist’s cap and goggles would flummox anyone who wasn’t an intimate. There you have it, Miss Silver-he wouldn’t trust any disguise to shield him from the man he was going to rob. Perhaps it was his voice that would have given him away-voices are very individual. I don’t know, but there must have been some reason why he preferred what he called a certainty and was perfectly prepared to shoot two people if there had been two in the car. There is another reason why I am forced to believe him to have been in close touch with my family circle. It was only in that circle that anyone knew when the bank would be handing over the necklace. I suppose you have heard about the necklace?”

  She turned the soft mass of wool upon her lap. The delicate fern pattern displayed its fronds for a moment and then fell lightly together again.

  “Yes, Mr. Bellingdon, I have read about the necklace. An interesting and well-written account of a beautiful and valuable piece.”

  He gave a short grim laugh.

  “A paste copy would be as beautiful, and no one would do murder for it. I say that to myself, and I’ve said it to my daughter, but all the time there’s something in me that won’t tolerate a fake.”

  Miss Silver looked up brightly.

  “That is because it carries with it the suggestion of fraud. But if you call it a copy or let it stand on its own merits of design and craftsmanship, the stigma vanishes.”

  He shook his head.

  “If I can’t have a Rembrandt I don’t want a copy. Not rational, but there are plenty of us all in the same boat. Which is why the price of the real thing keeps on going up, and why murder was done for my necklace in Cranberry Lane a couple of days ago. Well, we’ve run off the rails. I was saying there had got to be a contact with my family circle, so I had better tell you something more about it. To start with, I am a widower, and I have a daughter-twenty-four last birthday-married a couple of years ago, not exactly against my will, but certainly against my wish. Nothing much against him-nothing much to him. Rackety young fellow whose idea of amusing himself was to drive as near a hundred miles an hour as his car would let him, and when he wasn’t doing that to spend as much money as possible in the shortest possible time. He finished up by crashing over a precipice in the Austrian Tyrol and leaving Moira a widow just about the time she was beginning to think she’d have done better to take my advice. Well, there she is-Moira Herne.”

  Miss Silver said, “Excuse me, Mr. Bellingdon-” She went over to the writing-table, took from a drawer a bright blue exercise-book and a neatly pointed pencil, and came back to her chair. Her knitting laid aside for the moment, she headed a page with the words The Bellingdon Necklace, placed Moira Herne’s name on the left-hand side of the next line, and entered the particulars which Mr. Bellingdon had just imparted. When this had been done she said “Yes?” in an interrogative manner and waited for him to go on.

  He said abruptly, “I have a service flat in town, but my home is at Merefields near Ledlington. Cranberry Lane is a short cut to it from the London road. It is a comfortable old-fashioned house, and I am lucky in having a good staff. The butler and cook have been with me for twenty years. They are husband and wife. The name is Hilton.”

  Miss Silver wrote it down.

  “Then there’s my secretary, Hubert Garratt. He has been in my employment for ten years, but I have actually known him for a great deal longer than that.”

  Miss Silver held her pencil suspended.

  “His death will have been a personal loss?”

  “He is not dead.”

  “The shot was not a fatal one?”

  “Oh, yes, it was fatal all right. The person who was shot was not Hubert Garratt.”

  “The papers-”

  “The papers had got hold of the wrong end of the stick. What information they had was correct, but it didn’t go far enough-and don’t bother about my mixing my metaphors, because I’ve never been able to worry about that. I was earning my living when I was fourteen, and the books I bothered with were the ones that were going to help me to earn it. But to come back to Hubert Garratt. I wrote and told the bank he’d be fetching the necklace at twelve noon on Tuesday. Now the people who knew that were myself and the bank, Hubert Garratt, my daughter, and two other people. Early on Tuesday morning I was told that Garratt was ill. Since the war he has a tendency to asthma. I went to see him, and found him quite disabled, and told him he wasn’t to attempt to go for the necklace. I rang up the bank, spoke to the manager, and told him there was a change and I was sending Garratt’s assistant, a young fellow called Arthur Hughes. The manager took the precaution of ringing off and then ringing me back, and I gave him Arthur’s description and said he would show a letter from me naming him as Garratt’s substitute. Well, that all went off without a hitch. Arthur left the bank with the necklace, but he was shot dead in Cranberry Lane.”

  Miss Silver confided these details to the blue exercise book. Bellingdon watched her with an odd look upon his face. The pale blue knitting and the bright blue book, the pencil, the hair-net, the brooch which fastened the front of her olive-green cashmere, a rose carved out of a black bog-oak with an Irish pearl at its heart, all combined to make as unlikely a picture of a private
detective as he could well imagine. He thought he could transplant her to Merefields without there being the slightest risk of her being taken for one. When she had finished writing she looked up.

  “And the other two people who were aware that the necklace was being fetched-was Mr. Hughes one of them?”

  “Well, no, he wasn’t. As far as I know, he knew nothing about the plan until I called him in and told him he would have to go to the bank for me instead of Garratt.”

  “You say as far as you know, Mr. Bellingdon.”

  “Oh, that? It meant nothing. Garratt said he didn’t mention it, and no one else would.”

  “And the other two people were?”

  He made a mental note that she could be pertinacious.

  “One of them is a guest in the house, and the other-there could be no possible connection.”

  Miss Silver gave a gentle cough.

  “If I am to help you, Mr. Bellingdon, it would be better that I should have all the facts. As Lord Tennyson so wisely says, ‘So trust me not at all or all in all.’ ”

  “Does he? Well, it might do with some people, but I wouldn’t like to say it would answer in every case. Anyhow there isn’t any question about trusting here. The two people are my late wife’s cousin, Elaine Bray-Miss Bray, who is kind enough to run Merefields for me-and Mrs. Scott who is a guest in the house.”

  Miss Silver remained in an attentive attitude. Without so much as a word or a look it was conveyed to Lucius Bellingdon that something further was expected. There are times when silence can be more particular than speech. Since the last thing he desired was any particularity in either of these two cases, he yielded the point with a trace of stubborn amusement.

  “Miss Bray took charge of my daughter and of the management of the house when my wife died. She had been living with us for some years as my wife was not strong. I owe her a good deal. Mrs. Scott-” he tried, with what success he was not certain, to keep his voice and manner as indifferent as might be- “Mrs. Scott is, as I said, a guest and a close personal friend.”

  Miss Silver wrote these things down. She also made a mental note that Mr. Bellingdon felt himself to be under an obligation to his late wife’s cousin, and that it was something of a burden to him. In the case of Mrs. Scott she had no difficulty in discerning a warmer feeling and the fact that he did not desire this feeling to appear. She wrote in her book, and heard him say with a note of relief in his voice,

  “Well, I think that is all. There is a gardener and his wife-she helps in the house -and there is a woman and a couple of girls who come in by the day from the village, but they could have had no knowledge of how or when I should be getting the diamonds out of the bank.”

  Miss Silver reflected that this was what was invariably said whenever an important leakage of information occurred. No matter how completely the event would prove him wrong, the person concerned invariably expressed entire confidence in those surrounding him and was prepared to dogmatize on the question of there being no possible way in which a leakage could have taken place. She picked up her knitting, drew on the blue wool, and said,

  “Mr. Bellingdon, impossibilities do not occur. You will not ask me to believe that they do. This robbery and the resultant murder was no chance affair. It was very carefully planned, and every detail of the proposed transfer of the necklace was known to the people who planned it some nineteen hours before the crime took place. This is not in dispute. If the leakage did not occur in your own immediate circle, then it must have occurred at the bank. When you first notified them that you would be withdrawing the necklace, did you write, or did you telephone?”

  “I wrote to the manager. You are thinking that a telephone conversation might have been overheard?”

  “It had occurred to me.”

  He shook his head.

  “There was no telephone communication until the Tuesday morning, when I rang up to say that Garratt was ill and that Arthur Hughes would be acting for him. The leakage had already occurred-at least on the previous day.”

  Miss Silver’s needles clicked.

  “That would not preclude a leakage from the bank. To whom did the manager either pass your letter or speak of the matter?”

  “I took that up with him personally, and of course the police have done so too. He says nobody saw the letter except himself, and he locked it away carefully and only gave the necessary instructions when young Hughes arrived at the bank with my second letter next day. He is quite definite on these points.”

  Miss Silver observed a meditative silence. There was nothing to be gained by continuing to dot i’s which had already been dotted, or to cross t’s already sufficiently provided in that respect.

  Lucius Bellingdon regarded her with a certain frowning intensity. It was the kind of look which was apt to make people nervous-it had, in fact, very seldom failed to do so. It failed now. Miss Silver went on knitting in a perfectly placid manner.

  He leaned forward suddenly and said,

  “When will you come down to Merefields?”

  She did not appear to be at all taken aback.

  “In what capacity, Mr. Bellingdon?”

  “Well, I’ve got to find out who has been talking.”

  “You do not, I suppose, desire to advertise that fact. My usefulness would be very much impaired if it were known.”

  “My idea was that you should replace young Hughes as assistant secretary.”

  She appeared to consider this before saying,

  “I am not versed in typing and shorthand. Nor do I really feel that I could sustain the part.”

  He said,

  “I get a great many begging letters and appeals of all sorts. I should think they might be quite in your line. Hughes was no good at them at all. They have to be weeded out. I don’t read a tenth of them myself, the rest go straight into the waste-paper basket. Then there’s a good deal of social correspondence. My daughter ought to do it, but she can’t be bothered. I noticed that you write a very clear hand. Garratt will deal with anything that needs typing. What about it?”

  The busy needles stopped. She laid down her hands upon the pale blue wool.

  “Have you said anything about replacing Mr. Hughes?”

  “Yes, I have. All I need do now is to ring up Miss Bray and tell her you have been recommended to me by a friend, and that I am bringing you down with me tomorrow.”

  Chapter 10

  MEREFIELDS lay in the spring sunshine with a sprinkle of daffodils in its shrubberies and a broad band of many coloured hyacinths where the drive spread into a wide sweep and half a dozen grey stone steps went up to the front door. The hyacinths looked across the gravel at the house, and from every room which faced that way you could look back at the hyacinths. Lucius Bellingdon pointed them out to Miss Silver with pride.

  “Gardeners like cutting holes in the grass and putting in skimped-up mats of flowers. Donald was a bit obstinate when I said I wanted hyacinths all the way along opposite the house, and that sweet-smelling stuff my mother used to call cherry pie to come along after them.”

  Miss Silver smiled.

  “But you got your way.”

  He nodded.

  “Smell nice, don’t they-but a bit heavy if you have them in the house. Well now, come along in and meet everyone. Lunch is at one and I’m ready for it, so I hope you are too.”

  They encountered Miss Bray in the hall. Bellingdon had expanded his original account of her on the way down.

  “Ellen is what she was christened, but don’t say I told you. She thinks Elaine sounds better. Personally I think it’s silly, but what’s the odds so long as it makes her happy? There’s no reason why it should but it seems to, and I ought to be used to it by now.”

  She came towards them in a grey woollen dress with a dreary-looking black scarf trailing down below the waist on either side and a jet chain looped two or three times about her neck, which was long and thin. She had fair hair with a good deal of grey in it worn gathered into a loose untidy knot
quite insufficiently controlled by an unusual number of hairpins. A further attempt to confine it with a piece of black velvet ribbon could not really be said to be successful. She peered at Miss Silver as if she were shortsighted, but her manner was perfectly amiable as she said,

  “Oh, how do you do? I am afraid it is a great rush for you coming down here like this. Lucius did tell me your name, but I am afraid I have forgotten it. Names are so very difficult, don’t you think? And so often they are very misleading. Now I find I so rarely think of my friends by their names. I always feel that there is something much more personal-something that cannot really be put into words-something which I have heard compared to the scent of a flower-”

  Lucius Bellingdon said briskly,

  “This is Miss Silver, Elaine, and I expect she would like to go to her room before lunch.”

  Miss Bray talked all the way up the beautiful staircase with its shallow steps and along a panelled corridor to a room which, she informed Miss Silver, was opposite to her own. It had a good view of the hyacinths and was most comfortably furnished with bright chintzes, a moss-green carpet, and what she was very pleased to see, a small electric fire. Previous experiences in the country had left her under no illusions as to the icy temperatures to which many habitual residents had apparently become enured. Her warmest clothing invariably accompanied her on a country visit, but it would be more comfortable not to require it. There was not only this convenient fire, but the sight of a radiator and the genial warmth of the temperature informed her that the house was centrally heated.

  Miss Bray was assiduous in her attentions.

  “The bathroom is next door. I cannot tell you how relieved I was when Lucius rang up and said that he had induced you to come down. Even in two days the letters and appeals have piled up in the most trying way. Poor Mr. Garratt is still far from well. I cannot think what can have brought on such a shocking attack. The begging letters are the worst, but Lucius does not think it right to tear them up unread. He tells me you are particularly well adapted to deal with them. It is work which I could not possibly undertake- it would upset me too much. I am afraid I am foolishly sensitive to anything sordid. The seamy side of life-it does not do for me to allow myself to come in contact with it. It haunts me. Now I’m sure you are very strong-minded!”