Death Knocks Three Times (7 page)

“Stand back there,” roared the guard, but he didn’t pay any heed. This was the only quick train of the day. He snatched at a door handle, twisted it and managed to hump himself and the bag inside the carriage, landing in an ungraceful tangle on the floor. When he pulled himself together he found his luck was altogether out. The train was by no means full but he hadn’t been fortunate enough to pick an empty carriage. There was a woman sitting in the farther corner, barricaded by The Times, and giving the impression that the abrupt arrival of such a hobbledehoy as himself was beneath her notice. John seated himself in the corner farthest away from her. He desired neither sympathy nor censure, and he nurtured the curiously old-fashioned notion diat for a single man to find himself alone for a long journey—this was a non-stop train for almost two hours—with a woman was to chance a fate worse than death. He saw, too, with rising disgust, that he was in a third-class carriage of the non-communicating variety, so he couldn’t even walk through and find his proper place. No, he was stuck with this outrageous female until the next stop, which was, in fact, Brakemouth.

When it became clear that she was no more anxious to talk to him than he to her he calmed somewhat, and presently, pulling out his cigarette case, he decided to make the best of a bad job. He had just struck a match when a determined rather masculine voice said, “This is not a smoking compartment,” an observation that shocked him so much that he let the match burn down and scorch his fingers before he could collect sufficient self-possession to say in a rather sarcastic voice, “Have you any objection to my smoking, madam?”

His companion’s cue, seeing that she was talking to a gentleman, should have been, “Not at all,” but she didn’t seem to know any of the rules of the game.

“If I had none,” said she frostily, “I should scarcely have selected a non-smoking carriage.”

No sympathy, you perceive, no sweet reasonableness, no realization of a sensitive fellow-creature’s absolute need for a cigarette at this hour of the morning. A spinster, he was convinced, and how lucky some chap, himself for example, was not to have married her.

“I almost missed the train,” he said, “otherwise, of course, I should not have entered a non-smoking compartment.”

The lady took no notice of this explanation. She was still entrenched behind The Times when the train ran out of the tunnel into which it had suddenly plunged. He was staring across at his companion, who had lowered the paper while they were in darkness.

It was Miss Pettigiew.

She looked through him and then, as though he had no existence, she laid The Times aside and produced a book from her hearty, shabby traveling bag. It had a bright orange cover and he recognized the series at once. Anger at this treatment of himself— for who was she, poor presuming faded female, to behave in so cavalier a manner to a published novelist—made him break his rule to never getting into conversation with traveling companions.

and he inquired in bland tones: “I hope the book you have today is proving more satisfactory than its predecessor.”

She lifted her long face, topped by its hideous felt basin hat, and gave him an incredulous look.

“I beg your pardon?”

He had begun to feel better. “Say It With Blood, wasn’t it? I happened to be in Garrods when you were returning it. I hope you won’t think me impertinent (not that he cared, of course) if I say I agree with every word you said about it.”

“Ah, was that the occasion? I did not recall … Indeed, I had begun to wonder if the last time we met you were in fancy dress. I pride myself on never forgetting the face of an acquaintance.”

“A very improbable solution,” he acknowledged.

Miss Pettigrew laid aside her book and folded her long powerful hands. “The trouble is,” said she calmly, “that the convincing murderers don’t waste time writing about death, they set about the business in real earnest.”

That shook him a little, he had to confess. Perhaps, he thought, she was one of these unbalanced people who, whenever a crime is reported, ring up the police and claim responsibility. Or perhaps she really was a man-eater. He remembered with dismay that there were several tunnels between here and Brakemouth, that there were no stops, and one of the tunnels was exceedingly long. He also noticed that in that horrible hat she wore a long old-fashioned hatpin, and in detective stories of the twenties hatpins were not infrequently used as weapons of attack. However, he pulled himself together to sustain his side of the conversation.

“Yes, I suppose so,” he agreed. “I remember your saying on that occasion that if you could be certain of not being convicted you m.ight commit a murder yourself.”

“I dare say.” She was quite unmoved. “In fact, I am making this journey today in connection with a crime.”

“You mean, you are considering committing—but no, that’s absurd.”

“Has it never occurred to you that successful murders are often committed precisely for that reason, because people in general consider it would be absurd to suspect A or B of violence? However, I did not say I was proposing to commit a murder. But I am convinced that a crime has been committed and I am, I fancy, being

asked down to prevent a second crime possibly of a similar nature. That is, of course, speculation.”

“So you’re going down to do the police’s job for them?” said John with sudden brutal candor. “Why doesn’t your friend, whoever she is (it didn’t occur to him that it might be a man), go to the police direct?”

Miss Pettigrew shut up like a clam. “Really, that is her affair. Personally, if I am asked to confer a small favor, it does not occur to me to suggest to my friend that the police are paid for this purpose. Besides, there are occasions when a private individual may be of more use than the authorities.”

John found himself reflecting that if he were the criminal in question he’d walk from the police fast enough, but if it were Miss Pettigrew in pursuit you wouldn’t see him for dust.

“Perhaps you have suspicions?” he hinted.

“Hardly, since I am not yet on the scene. But I am a logical person. If I see a vase hurtle across a room, I look for the hand that flung it. If my house burns down and there has been no storm and I have no electricity on the premises, I look for some human agency at work. And if letters appear without a signature or even a stamp, I am not persuaded that they were delivered by some celestial or diabolical messenger. I am, on the contrary, convinced that they were written by someone in close contact with myself, and by a process of elimination and by using such wits as God has given me, I set about discovering the author.”

John Sherren, reminding himself he was a published novelist and the speaker no more than an ex-governess who looked the part, pulled himself together.

“Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, I perceive,” said he, politely. “Are you—if one may ask—making this journey in a professional capacity?”

She replied, with perfect composure: “My friend considers that she is in some danger from the writer of these unsigned letters, and she has asked me to give her my company and my assistance.”

“When you say danger, do you imply violence?”

“That is what the writer of the letters appears to have done.”

Some people have all the luck, thought John. He’d never even seen an anonymous letter himself. “And what reason … ?” he began delicately.

“Brakemouth is like every other place on the map,” snapped Miss Pettigrew. “People there are just as acquisitive as anywhere else, and if your neighbor has something you cannot afford or do not inherit, then what I understand is known as a jealousy complex is set up, and when this complex is sufficiently developed we may expect trouble in tangible form.”

It all sounded a bit highfalutin to her hearer. “So someone is jealous of your friend,” he simplified. “I remember meeting an ex-inspector of the Yard once. He told me that all crimes of violence, by which he meant murder, are committed for one of two reasons —passion and greed.”

“The majority are a mixture of the two,” said Miss Pettigrew, unbending slightly. “I am convinced they are in this case.”

“But your friend—I mean, why … ?”

“She recently sujffered a severe bereavement, a very close relative died in distressing circumstances.”

“I think I see.” John nodded intelligently. “X claims to believe that she knows more of the tragedy than she has chosen to reveal. Is it a matter of an inconvenient husband being conveniently removed?”

Miss Pettigrew’s face seemed to close up. Her eyes returned to the book open on her knee.

“Like myself,” she said, “my friend is a spinster.”

A sudden suspicion, so monstrous that he would not allow himself to contemplate it, floated like some enormous balloon filled with poisonous gas into John’s mind.

“This relation?” he compelled himself to ask. “A brother, perhaps? Or a sister?”

“A sister,” said Miss Pettigrew, and it seemed that the balloon was about to burst. “A woman of emotional make-up, easily alarmed, easily dominated. I need hardly say that no other person, so far as we know, attaches any suspicion to my friend …”

“So far as you know,” agreed John.

Miss Pettigrew’s face suddenly loomed up enormous, so that it seemed to fill half the carriage.

“May I ask what you mean by that?”

“Well, but you don’t know, I mean nobody knows. Perhaps half Brakemouth is saying the same thing.” He couldn’t imagine why he was being so reckless. The old woman annoyed him, that was all.

Miss Pettigrew continued to regard him as if he were some monster unexpectedly revealed under a flat stone. “How very singular!” she said, after a moment, and he felt an icy thrill run through him. He tried to say something hearty and amusing, just to show her he had been pulling her leg, but another glance assured him that no one would dare hint she even possessed such a limb.

“I suppose I’m going off my head. It’s the strain,” he told himself foolishly. Hurriedly he buried himself behind his paper, and they didn’t exchange another word until they drew up at Brake-mouth. But like a worm tunnelling in his brain went the question, “What did she mean by that—how very singular? Did it have some personal application? Does she guess?” Who he was, he meant, why he’d come? She was such an old witch, anything was possible.

At Brakemouth John moved half-heartedly toward the rack with a murmur about getting her bag down, but she said in that deep, unfeeling voice: “Thank you. A porter will attend to that,” so he picked up his own bag and scurried across to the Railway Hotel to dump it there. He called himself every kind of a fool, but all the same he wanted to get to Greenglades (that was the name of his Aunt Clara’s hotel) and make sure that his idiotic inspiration in the train had no foundation in fact. It was a relief to find that they had allotted him a quite good room at the Railway Hotel, and he tidied himself rapidly and then hurried down again. As he crossed the hall a man standing by the desk lifted his head and instantly dropped it again. He was a short, sturdy figure, wearing a suit of bright brown and a brown billycock hat, that he casually tilted over his face as he sauntered forward to watch which way the newcomer went. John was in such a hurry he noticed nothing. As he raised his arm to signal the only taxi in view, a porter came out and beat him by a couple of seconds. Behind the porter, like a figure of doom, came the detestable Miss Pettigrew. John looked around frantically, as though he expected another taxi to drop from the clouds. He didn’t notice a little red car standing by the gutter, and indeed in his present mood he wasn’t likely to notice anything so small and, at first sight, so primitive. The next instant the porter had ushered his bete noire into the taxi and was crossing to speak to him.

“Mr. Sherren?” he said. “The lady told me to say that if you’re going to Greenglades she can take you along with her.”

And, “Thanks, chum,” said Mr. Crook under his breath. “Now we know where we’re going.”

Sheepishly John accepted the offer.

“Well, Mr. Sherren,” said the dragon composedly, “I dare say I am right in thinking you are here for the same reason as myself—to visit Miss Bond. I noticed your name on your suitcase in the train.”

He tried to pass it off casually. “Yes, I’ve come down for a night or two. Not that I had heard from Aunt Clara that she was troubled about any anonymous letters, but—^you might call it telepathy, I suppose. I had a feeling something was wrong.”

“Really, Mr. Sherren? Very interesting. You feel something is wrong. I know she is in danger—in great danger.”

He couldn’t meet her eyes. She was a terrible woman. He wondered if her secret source of knowledge told her anything else, that he’d come down to carry out the threats in the anonymous letters and murder his Aunt Clara. It wouldn’t have surprised him in the least.

M
ISS BOND might be in peril of her life, but there was nothing to indicate that fact as she came forward into the lounge of Greenglades to greet her visitors. When she saw John her brows rose.

“My dear John, this is an unexpected pleasure. Or perhaps Miss Pettigrew has called you into conference.”

“Not at all,” said John, quickly. “We met quite by chance on the train.”

“Traveling in the same carriage,” amplified Miss Pettigrew. “An unexpected pleasure for me also.”

“I am afraid your letter must have gone astray,” Miss Bond continued. “However, as you are here, perhaps you can be of assistance. You call yourself a realist, I believe. I have something here real enough to make your hair stand on end—what’s left of it.” Smiling, she turned to Miss Pettigrew. “How are you, Frances?

You never seem to change. It was good of you to come so far for an old woman’s whim.”

She led the way into a small, cheerful, well-furnished sitting room. Miss Pettigrew looked around with interest.

“I was very fond of Isabel, as you know, Clara. I always thought if I were a man I should have wanted to marry her. She was so obviously the type that needs looking after. Pretty and fluffy and no brains at all, as Mr. Herbert puts it—or words to that effect. Dear me, Clara, is this your private sitting room?”