Four Strange Women (12 page)

“Now then, my good woman,” said the colonel briskly, “what's all this?”

“Please, sir, I didn't mean no harm, sir,” she answered in a small, whining voice, certainly assumed.

The colonel looked at her sharply. It seemed he, too, recognized the false note in her voice.

“What's your name?” he asked. “What were you doing out there?”

“Please, sir, I didn't mean no harm,” she answered in the same whining tones. “Please, sir, I didn't mean nothing. Please, sir, I'm Mrs. Jane Jones. Please, sir, I only thought if I went to the back door they might give me a little bite of something to eat. Please, sir, they do sometimes, if I sing for it, sir.”

“Sing for it?” the colonel repeated in a puzzled way. Then, more sharply:—“You say you are married. Where's your husband?”

“Please, sir, he's dead, sir, a long time ago, sir. At least, I think so, sir. He left me, sir.”

“Where do you live?”

“I don't live nowhere, please, sir. At least, I mean, anywhere, sir. That's why I sing, please, sir, to get the price of a bed. I've got that, please, sir.” She dived into the recesses of her appalling old raincoat and produced a filthy rag that once perhaps had been a handkerchief and that now appeared to have a few coins tied up in one corner. “I thought if they let me sing at the back door they might give me some supper, sir. Sometimes I get enough for breakfast, too.”

“Why were you listening at the window?” the colonel demanded abruptly.

“Oh, I wasn't, sir. Please, sir, I wouldn't never think of such a thing, so I wouldn't. Only sometimes it's a help to know what the gentleman's like, because there's some you could see at once would as like as not set the dog on you or send for the police, even though you ain't doing nothing wrong. And then again there's some as look as if they might listen theirselves, and that's generally good for silver as well as a bite to eat. And sometimes I can see they're Welsh and then I know it's all right.”

“Why?”

“I sing Welsh songs then,” she answered.

“Do you mean you know Welsh?” the colonel asked; “that you sing in Welsh?”

“Yes, sir.”

The colonel looked a trifle incredulous. Bobby, speaking for the first time, said:—

“That much is true, anyhow. I happened to notice her outside a pub last night. It was an old lament in Welsh she was singing.”

The woman who called herself Jane Jones flashed at Bobby a glance that reminded him of her other personality, the one she had shown in the lounge. He found himself thinking of little Mr. Eyton. Had everyone, he wondered, a second personality? Did each commonplace, every-day exterior conceal such hidden fires? Bobby continued:—

“I believe a constable told her to move on. There was some sort of fuss and afterwards a complaint was made against the constable for being too officious. Inspector Morris got it, he sent it on to the city police. It was their man and their affair.”

“I slipped away, I did,” the woman said in the same whining voice she had used throughout, a sort of ‘kind-sir-spare-a-copper' voice. “I always do if there's trouble. Not that there ain't nothing wrong in singing nor in kind- hearted ladies and gentlemen giving a copper or two. Why shouldn't they? And me always moving on at once when so told by the police gentlemen.”

The colonel was plainly more puzzled than ever. Bobby said:—

“May I ask a question, sir?” The colonel nodded. Bobby said:—“Mrs. Jones, were you in Wychwood Forest the other night, at the ‘Green Man', on the Long Dene road?”

There was caution in her eyes now. She said:—

“Is that where they let me come inside? They were very kind. After I had sung a bit, they made a collection for me.”

“The landlord wanted you to stay, didn't he?” Bobby asked. “I think he said you could sleep there, said you could have a job if you liked, help in the day, sing at night. You refused. He was annoyed, told you to take yourself off. Is that so?”

“I didn't think he really meant it,” she answered, still cautious. “I didn't trust him. He wasn't drunk, but he had had a drop. I didn't expect he would feel the same in the morning.”

Bobby looked at the colonel. It was his chief's examination, not his. But Glynne nodded.

“Carry on,” he said briefly. “Your pigeon.”

Bobby turned to the woman again.

“Was it because you thought he might change his mind next morning that you refused the offer of a good bed for the night?”

“A woman can't be too careful about an offer of that sort,” she told him. “I've always been respectable.”

“Of course, that's nonsense, as you very well know,” Bobby said. “The landlord's married and there are three or four women employees. The ‘Green Man' does a good trade, gets all the Long Dene traffic. What was your real reason for refusing? Where did you spend the night?”

She was plainly on the defensive now. She said:—

“I've forgotten.”

A familiar phrase, a useful phrase when both the truth and a lie seem equally dangerous.

“Your memory is rather suddenly defective,” Bobby said dryly. “Did you spend the night in the forest?”

“Oh, no, why should I? It was a barn somewhere, I don't know where. It was dark; and it was dark when I left in the morning. I always do when I sleep in a barn; I mean, I go before the farm people are up.”

“Do you know that was the night when a caravan in the forest caught fire and a man lost his life?”

“Please, sir, I don't know nothing about that.”

“For goodness' sake,” snapped Bobby impatiently, “don't talk in that idiotic way. Anyone can see it's put on—and not very well put on, either.”

“Please, sir, I don't know nothing about that,” she answered deliberately, and Bobby recognized the note of mockery in her voice.

“You are merely making us certain you have something to hide,” Bobby told her. “I suppose you know this gentleman is Colonel Glynne, chief constable of the county.”

“No, sir, please, sir, I don't know nothing about that,” came the same response.

Bobby began to get a little red. Colonel Glynne was beginning to look a little amused. Bobby felt his examination was not being a great success. He tried again. He said:—

“Do you know murder is a serious matter?”

“Yes, I know that,” she answered; and this time there was that in her voice that startled both men, so did it seem vibrant with a quick and unexpected passion. She saw them looking at her, and instantly she seemed to feel she had betrayed something she had wished to keep concealed. In those whining tones she had begun by using, and then forgotten for a time, she repeated: “Please, sir, I don't know nothing about that.”

Bobby looked at her steadily and thoughtfully and for a time there was silence in the room. Then he said more gently than he had spoken before:—

“I think you know that there was murder done the other night and have you then made up your mind you will not help?”

She made no answer, but in her eyes, those deep and hollow eyes, there came now a different look, though one that Bobby could not fathom. He waited patiently and then she said:—

“I have nothing to say.”

He was silent, watching her closely, hoping to see some sign of weakening, some sign that she might change her mind. But she stood impassive, patient and inscrutable, and after a time, he said:—

“What is your name?”

“Mrs. Jane Jones.”

“I mean your real name.”

“I have forgotten,” she answered.

“What was in your mind in the lounge?”

“Only what sweet young ladies they looked and if one of them would be likely to give me sixpence if I asked for it.”

“That is a foolish answer,” Bobby said.

“You'll get no other,” she told him.

Bobby looked rather helplessly at his chief. He felt this kind of question and answer could go on for ever. The colonel had told him to carry on and he had done so, with, so far, a conspicuous lack of success. The colonel said now, speaking to Mrs. Jones, since that is the name by which she chose to be known:—

“You said you wanted some supper. Mr. Owen will take you to the kitchen and ask them to give you something.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said. “I'll sing for it, sir. I always like to sing for my supper.”

“I am sure they will enjoy listening to you. I've no doubt I should myself,” the colonel answered. “Owen, you might see to it, will you? And you might see if Biddle is there. Tell him Mrs. Jones is waiting for a little as we may want to have another chat with her. You won't mind, Mrs. Jones, will you?”

She dropped him a curtsey and another to Bobby, both full of a scarcely concealed mockery. She said:—

“Mind, when I'm in such luck to meet two such kind gentlemen and be given my supper without hardly asking for it. Why, I haven't had such luck since the night I was at ninety-nine Mountain Street, off the Edgware Road, and they gave me a five-pound note, almost for nothing at all.”

She bobbed to them both once more, and then made quickly for the door and Bobby followed her, frowning and puzzled, and more disturbed than he was quite willing to admit, even to himself. He noticed her shuffling, sloppy tread in those worn-out shoes of hers and wondered how in them she managed to move at all.

What do you think of all that?” demanded the colonel when Bobby returned from depositing Mrs. Jones in the kitchen and seeing that Biddle was there to take care she made no unauthorized departure.

“There's something she doesn't mean to let us know,” Bobby answered slowly. “Whether it's about herself or about Mr. Baird's death, I'm not sure. It might be either. It will be difficult to get her to talk.”

“You asked her about what happened in the lounge. What was it?”

Bobby tried to explain. He found it difficult. As he told the story there did not seem, even to himself, to be much in it. Colonel Glynne looked merely puzzled. Bobby, either from lack of skill in the telling, or from lack of imagination on the colonel's side, entirely failed to convey the impression of strain, of concealed passion, of an unknown and brooding menace that had affected him so powerfully; so powerfully, he believed, the three young women.

The colonel continued to look puzzled.

“Mrs. Jones didn't say anything?” he asked.

“No, sir,” Bobby agreed. “It was the—the atmosphere,” he concluded, remembering the word little Mr. Eyton had used to Inspector Morris.

Colonel Glynne looked now less puzzled than unimpressed. He said:—

“Do you mean you think they had met in any way before, any of them?”

“No, sir,” Bobby answered. “What I thought—” He paused, trying to put his thought into appropriate words.

“What I mean is—” He paused once more and then plunged. He said:—“I think the idea I got was that they were complete strangers to her, and that was partly why she stared so—Mrs. Jones, I mean—as if there was something she suspected but wasn't sure of, something she wanted to know and that she thought they could tell her, or one of them, and if only she could find out, then something would happen. But all the same she wasn't sure, and I'm equally sure none of them knew who she was or what she wanted.”

“It all sounds rather vague,” the colonel observed.

“Yes, sir, so it does,” agreed Bobby. He added, half to himself:—“I thought Lady May looked frightened, Miss Glynne puzzled, and Miss Hannay angry.”

“I'll go and speak to them,” the colonel said. “You wait here.”

He was gone only a few minutes. When he came back, he said:—

“They say they never saw her before. May says she thought the woman was mad and she was quite scared. Becky says she can't think what was the matter with her. Hazel says she thought her most insolent, and felt like giving her a good box on the ears.” He chuckled faintly, in spite of his evident underlying uneasiness. “Hazel is a bit like that, she would go for anyone who offended her as soon as not. A fellow tried to snatch her bag once and she fetched him one with a tennis racket across the face that sent him off in double quick time. Tried to follow him, too, but he dodged away in the traffic.” With a gesture he dismissed the incident in the lounge as of little importance. He went on:—“You say this Mrs. Jones, as she calls herself, was somewhere near at the time of the fire?”

“So far as we can tell, sir, when we aren't sure when the fire actually happened,” Bobby answered, “but certainly about that time.” He paused and then added apologetically:— “I didn't attach any importance to it at first. It didn't strike me there was any connection, I don't think I even mentioned it in my report. It was when I called at the ‘Green Man'. We were all busy trying to check up on any strangers who might have been seen. At the ‘Green Man' they said there hadn't been many. They told me about those they could remember. Nothing very interesting, but when I pressed them for something more the landlord mentioned a woman who had been singing for coppers. Some of the customers liked her singing and he offered her a job—help in the day, sing at night. He was very peeved when she wouldn't. He told me he supposed it was the idea of doing a job of work that frightened her away.”

“She may have seen something,” the colonel said. “She was clearly somewhere about at the time. Nothing we can take hold of, and it doesn't look as if she meant to talk. I don't see how we can hold her. There's no charge, is there? What do you suggest?”

“I don't think we can charge her,” Bobby agreed. “I think we could justify sending her to headquarters to be searched by the matron. But I don't think it would be any good—if she really had anything to do with Baird's death, or even if she has any knowledge, she would know the risk she was running in coming here, and she won't have anything incriminating on her. My own idea is that the best plan would be to let her go for the present. She may come forward of her own free will later on. Or enough may turn up for us to take action on.”