“I’m coming at once,” I said. “Do you hear? At once.”
I took the stairs two at a time and burst in on Joanna.
“Look here, Jo, I’m going off to the Symmingtons.’”
Joanna lifted a curly blonde head from the pillow and rubbed her eyes like a small child.
“Why—what’s happened?”
“I don’t know. It was the child— Megan. She sounded all in.”
“What do you think it is?”
“The girl Agnes, unless I’m very much mistaken.”
As I went out of the door, Joanna called after me:
“Wait. I’ll get up and drive you down.”
“No need. I’ll drive myself.”
“You can’t drive the car.”
“Yes, I can.”
I did, too. It hurt, but not too much. I’d washed, shaved, dressed, got the car out and driven to the Symmingtons’ in half an hour. Not bad going.
Megan must have been watching for me. She came out of the house at a run and clutched me. Her poor little face was white and twitching.
“Oh, you’ve come—you’ve come!”
“Hold up, funny face,” I said. “Yes, I’ve come. Now what is it?”
She began to shake. I put my arm round her.
“I— I found her.”
“You found Agnes? Where?”
The trembling grew.
“Under the stairs. There’s a cupboard there. It has fishing rods and golf clubs and things. You know.”
I nodded. It was the usual cupboard.
Megan went on.
“She was there—all huddled up—and—and cold—horribly cold. She was—she was dead, you know!”
I asked curiously, “What made you look there?”
“I—I don’t know. You telephoned last night. And we all began wondering where Agnes was. We waited up some time, but she didn’t come in, and at last we went to bed. I didn’t sleep very well and I got up early. There was only Rose (the cook, you know) about. She was very cross about Agnes not having come back. She said she’d been before somewhere when a girl did a flit like that. I had some milk and bread and butter in the kitchen—and then suddenly Rose came in looking queer and she said that Agnes’s outdoor things were still in her room. Her best ones that she goes out in. And I began to wonder if—if she’d ever left the house, and I started looking round, and I opened the cupboard under the stairs and—and she was there….”
“Somebody’s rung up the police, I suppose?”
“Yes, they’re here now. My stepfather rang them up straightaway. And then I—I felt I couldn’t bear it, and I rang you up. You don’t mind?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t mind.”
I looked at her curiously.
“Did anybody give you some brandy, or some coffee, or some tea after—after you found her?”
Megan shook her head.
I cursed the whole Symmington ménage. That stuffed shirt, Symmington, thought of nothing but the police. Neither Elsie Holland nor the cook seemed to have thought of the effect on the sensitive child who had made that gruesome discovery.
“Come on, slabface,” I said. “We’ll go to the kitchen.”
We went round the house to the back door and into the kitchen. Rose, a plump pudding-faced woman of forty, was drinking strong tea by the kitchen fire. She greeted us with a flow of talk and her hand to her heart.
She’d come all over queer, she told me, awful the palpitations were! Just think of it, it might have been her, it might have been any of them, murdered in their beds they might have been.
“Dish out a good strong cup of that tea for Miss Megan,” I said. “She’s had a shock, you know. Remember it was she who found the body.”
The mere mention of a body nearly sent Rose off again, but I quelled her with a stern eye and she poured out a cup of inky fluid.
“There you are, young woman,” I said to Megan. “You drink that down. You haven’t got any brandy, I suppose, Rose?”
Rose said rather doubtfully that there was a drop of cooking brandy left over from the Christmas puddings.
“That’ll do,” I said, and put a dollop of it into Megan’s cup. I saw by Rose’s eye that she thought it a good idea.
I told Megan to stay with Rose.
“I can trust you to look after Miss Megan?” I said, and Rose replied in a gratified way, “Oh yes, sir.”
I went through into the house. If I knew Rose and her kind, she would soon find it necessary to keep her strength up with a little food, and that would be good for Megan too. Confound these people, why couldn’t they look after the child?
Fuming inwardly I ran into Elsie Holland in the hall. She didn’t seem surprised to see me. I suppose that the gruesome excitement of the discovery made one oblivious of who was coming and going. The constable, Bert Rundle, was by the front door.
Elsie Holland gasped out:
“Oh, Mr. Burton, isn’t it awful? Whoever can have done such a dreadful thing?”
“It was murder, then?”
“Oh, yes. She was struck on the back of the head. It’s all blood and hair—oh! it’s awful—and bundled into that cupboard. Who can have done such a wicked thing? And why? Poor Agnes, I’m sure she never did anyone any harm.”
“No,” I said. “Somebody saw to that pretty promptly.”
She stared at me. Not, I thought, a quick-witted girl. But she had good nerves. Her colour was, as usual, slightly heightened by excitement, and I even fancied that in a macabre kind of way, and in spite of a naturally kind heart, she was enjoying the drama.
She said apologetically: “I must go up to the boys. Mr. Symmington is so anxious that they shouldn’t get a shock. He wants me to keep them right away.”
“Megan found the body, I hear,” I said. “I hope somebody is looking after her?”
I will say for Elsie Holland that she looked conscience stricken.
“Oh dear,” she said. “I forgot all about her. I do hope she’s all right. I’ve been so rushed, you know, and the police and everything—but it was remiss of me. Poor girl, she must be feeling bad. I’ll go and look for her at once.”
I relented.
“She’s all right,” I said. “Rose is looking after her. You get along to the kids.”
She thanked me with a flash of white tombstone teeth and hurried upstairs. After all, the boys were her job, and not Megan— Megan was nobody’s job. Elsie was paid to look after Symmington’s blinking brats. One could hardly blame her for doing so.
As she flashed round the corner of the stairs, I caught my breath. For a minute I caught a glimpse of a Winged Victory, deathless and incredibly beautiful, instead of a conscientious nursery governess.
Then a door opened and Superintendent Nash stepped out into the hall with Symmington behind him.
“Oh, Mr. Burton,” he said. “I was just going to telephone you. I’m glad you are here.”
He didn’t ask me—then—why I was here.
He turned his head and said to Symmington:
“I’ll use this room if I may.”
It was a small morning room with a window on the front of the house.
“Certainly, certainly.”
Symmington’s poise was pretty good, but he looked desperately tired. Superintendent Nash said gently:
“I should have some breakfast if I were you, Mr. Symmington. You and Miss Holland and Miss Megan will feel much better after coffee and eggs and bacon. Murder is a nasty business on an empty stomach.”
He spoke in a comfortable family doctor kind of way.
Symmington gave a faint attempt at a smile and said:
“Thank you, superintendent, I’ll take your advice.”
I followed Nash into the little morning room and he shut the door. He said then:
“You’ve got here very quickly? How did you hear?”
I told him that Megan had rung me up. I felt well-disposed towards Superintendent Nash. He, at any rate, had not forgotten that Megan, too,
would be in need of breakfast.
“I hear that you telephoned last night, Mr. Burton, asking about this girl? Why was that?”
I suppose it did seem odd. I told him about Agnes’s telephone call to Partridge and her nonappearance. He said, “Yes, I see….”
He said it slowly and reflectively, rubbing his chin.
Then he sighed:
“Well,” he said. “It’s murder now, right enough. Direct physical action. The question is, what did the girl know? Did she say anything to this Partridge? Anything definite?”
“I don’t think so. But you can ask her.”
“Yes. I shall come up and see her when I’ve finished here.”
“What happened exactly?” I asked. “Or don’t you know yet?”
“Near enough. It was the maids’ day out—”
“Both of them?”
“Yes, it seems that there used to be two sisters here who liked to go out together, so Mrs. Symmington arranged it that way. Then when these two came, she kept to the same arrangement. They used to leave cold supper laid out in the dining room, and Miss Holland used to get tea.”
“I see.”
“It’s pretty clear up to a point. The cook, Rose, comes from Nether Mickford, and in order to get there on her day out she has to catch the half past two bus. So Agnes has to finish clearing up lunch always. Rose used to wash up the supper things in the evenings to even things up.
“That’s what happened yesterday. Rose went off to catch the bus at two twenty-five, Symmington left for his office at five-and-twenty to three. Elsie Holland and the children went out at a quarter to three. Megan Hunter went out on her bicycle about five minutes later. Agnes would then be alone in the house. As far as I can make out, she normally left the house between three o’clock and half past three.”
“The house being then left empty?”
“Oh, they don’t worry about that down here. There’s not much locking up done in these parts. As I say, at ten minutes to three Agnes was alone in the house. That she never left it is clear, for she was in her cap and apron still when we found her body.”
“I suppose you can tell roughly the time of death?”
“Doctor Griffith won’t commit himself. Between two o’clock and four thirty, is his official medical verdict.”
“How was she killed?”
“She was first stunned by a blow on the back of the head. Afterwards an ordinary kitchen skewer, sharpened to a fine point, was thrust in the base of the skull, causing instantaneous death.”
I lit a cigarette. It was not a nice picture.
“Pretty cold-blooded,” I said.
“Oh yes, yes, that was indicated.”
I inhaled deeply.
“Who did it?” I said. “And why?”
“I don’t suppose,” said Nash slowly, “that we shall ever know exactly why. But we can guess.”
“She knew something?”
“She knew something.”
“She didn’t give anyone here a hint?”
“As far as I can make out, no. She’s been upset, so the cook says, ever since Mrs. Symmington’s death, and according to this Rose, she’s been getting more and more worried, and kept saying she didn’t know what she ought to do.”
He gave a short exasperated sigh.
“It’s always the way. They won’t come to us. They’ve got that deep-seated prejudice against ‘being mixed up with the police.’ If she’d come along and told us what was worrying her, she’d be alive today.”
“Didn’t she give the other woman any hint?”
“No, or so Rose says, and I’m inclined to believe her. For if she had, Rose would have blurted it out at once with a good many fancy embellishments of her own.”
“It’s maddening,” I said, “not to know.”
“We can still guess, Mr. Burton. To begin with, it can’t be anything very defionite. It’s got to be the sort of thing that you think over, and as you think it over, your uneasiness grows. You see what I mean?”
“Yes.”
“Actually, I think I know what it was.”
I looked at him with respect.
“That’s good work, superintendent.”
“Well, you see, Mr. Burton, I know something that you don’t. On the afternoon that Mrs. Symmington committed suicide both maids were supposed to be out. It was their day out. But actually Agnes came back to the house.”
“You know that?”
“Yes. Agnes has a boyfriend—young Rendell from the fish shop. Wednesday is early closing and he comes along to meet Agnes and they go for a walk, or to the pictures if it’s wet. That Wednesday they had a row practically as soon as they met. Our letter writer had been active, suggesting that Agnes had other fish to fry, and young Fred Rendell was all worked up. They quarrelled violently and Agnes bolted back home and said she wasn’t coming out unless Fred said he was sorry.”
“Well?”
“Well, Mr. Burton, the kitchen faces the back of the house but the pantry looks out where we are looking now. There’s only one entrance gate. You come through it and either up to the front door, or else along the path at the side of the house to the back door.”
He paused.
“Now I’ll tell you something. That letter that came to Mrs. Symmington that afternoon didn’t come by post. It had a used stamp affixed to it, and the postmark faked quite convincingly in lampblack, so that it would seem to have been delivered by the postman with the afternoon letters. But actually it had not been through the post. You see what that means?”
I said slowly: “It means that it was left by hand, pushed through the letter box some time before the afternoon post was delivered, so that it should be amongst the other letters.”
“Exactly. The afternoon post comes round about a quarter to four. My theory is this. The girl was in the pantry looking through the window (it’s masked by shrubs but you can see through them quite well) watching out for her young man to turn up and apologize.”
I said: “And she saw whoever it was deliver that note?”
“That’s my guess, Mr. Burton. I may be wrong, of course.”
“I don’t think you are… It’s simple—and convincing—and it means that Agnes knew who the anonymous letter writer was.”
“Yes.”
“But then why didn’t she—?”
I paused, frowning.
Nash said quickly:
“As I see it, the girl didn’t realize what she had seen. Not at first. Somebody had left a letter at the house, yes—but that somebody was nobody she would dream of connecting with the anonymous letters. It was somebody, from that point of view, quite above suspicion.
“But the more she thought about it, the more uneasy she grew. Ought she, perhaps, to tell someone about it? In her perplexity she thinks of Miss Barton’s Partridge who, I gather, is a somewhat dominant personality and whose judgment Agnes would accept unhesitatingly. She decides to ask Partridge what she ought to do.”
“Yes,” I said thoughtfully. “It fits well enough. And somehow or other, Poison Pen found out. How did she find out, superintendent?”
“You’re not used to living in the country, Mr. Burton. It’s a kind of miracle how things get round. First of all there’s the telephone call. Who overheard it your end?” I reflected.
“I answered the telephone originally. Then I called up the stairs to Partridge.”
“Mentioning the girl’s name?”
“Yes—yes, I did.”
“Anyone overhear you?”
“My sister or Miss Griffith might have done so.”
“Ah, Miss Griffith. What was she doing up there?”
I explained.
“Was she going back to the village?”
“She was going to Mr. Pye first.”
Superintendent Nash sighed.
“That’s two ways it could have gone all over the place.”
I was incredulous.
“Do you mean that either Miss Griffith or Mr. Pye would bot
her to repeat a meaningless little bit of information like that?”
“Anything’s news in a place like this. You’d be surprised. If the dressmaker’s mother has got a bad corn everybody hears about it! And then there is this end. Miss Holland, Rose—they could have heard what Agnes said. And there’s Fred Rendell. It may have gone round through him that Agnes went back to the house that afternoon.”
I gave a slight shiver. I was looking out of the window. In front of me was a neat square of grass and a path and the low prim gate.
Someone had opened the gate, had walked very correctly and quietly up to the house, and had pushed a letter through the letter box. I saw, hazily, in my mind’s eye, that vague woman’s shape. The face was blank—but it must be a face that I knew….
Superintendent Nash was saying:
“All the same, this narrows things down. That’s always the way we get ’em in the end. Steady, patient elimination. There aren’t so very many people it could be now.”
“You mean—?”
“It knocks out any women clerks who were at their work all yesterday afternoon. It knocks out the schoolmistress. She was teaching. And the district nurse. I know where she was yesterday. Not that I ever thought it was any of them, but now we’re sure. You see, Mr. Burton, we’ve got two definite times now on which to concentrate—yesterday afternoon, and the week before. On the day of Mrs. Symmington’s death from, say, a quarter past three (the earliest possible time at which Agnes could have been back in the house after her quarrel) and four o’clock when the post must have come (but I can get that fixed more accurately with the postman). And yesterday from ten minutes to three (when Miss Megan Hunter left the house) until half past three or more probably a quarter past three as Agnes hadn’t begun to change.”
“What do you think happened yesterday?”
Nash made a grimace.
“What do I think? I think a certain lady walked up to the front door and rang the bell, quite calm and smiling, the afternoon caller… Maybe she asked for Miss Holland, or for Miss Megan, or perhaps she had brought a parcel. Anyway Agnes turns round to get a salver for cards, or to take the parcel in, and our ladylike caller bats her on the back of her unsuspecting head.”