Puzzle of the Silver Persian (14 page)

“Have you!” said Miss Withers, arising.

The sergeant was thoughtful. “If you go back to the hotel, tell Miss Noring that, if she requests it, the Yard will put a man where he can prevent anything happening to her. We’ve got operatives who specialize in hotel work.”

“I will,” promised the school teacher. “But I don’t think she’ll ask it.”

“Then you’d better keep an eye on her yourself,” Secker suggested. “Though I still don’t see how anything further could happen. Unless there’s a madman loose—a madman who can work black magic. The Fraser girl was murdered, I’ll admit that. But no one can make a man swallow poison, and no one can hypnotize another man into jumping down a lift shaft.”

“I didn’t say that anyone did,” Miss Withers retorted. They were walking toward the door. “By the way, are we all to be kept in town for this second inquest?”

“Todd’s? I don’t think so. Filsom will take statements if he wants them. Everything the coroner needs has been brought out in the investigation of the Noel case.”

“Everything!” said Miss Withers, her voice full of meaning. “Mark my words, young man, there is something very askew with this so simple affair.”

Sergeant Secker was beginning to agree. His lightheartedness had left him. “The case is out o’joint,” he remarked sadly. He knew that, only a few hours from London, the Hunt was cubbing over his ancestral and much-mortgaged acres, while his own horse ate its head off in a stable. “Oh, cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right.”

“Some people would call that egotism,” Miss Withers told him, and swept out toward the Embankment.

There was a raw and chilly wind, and as the street lamps began to come on Miss Withers was impelled to think of the warmth and nourishment to be found in a cup of tea. Across from the Alexandria was a brightly lit Lyons, reminding her pleasantly of Childs back home. She stepped inside and sought for a table, but before she found one she was greeted by the Honorable Emily. Leslie Reverson rose swiftly to hold a chair for her, and she joined them.

“Been sightseeing?” inquired the Honorable Emily.

“Some of them,” Miss Withers admitted.

“You may have the town,” confessed the Englishwoman. “It’s wonderful, I know—but I never come up to London unless I must. I’ve been taking advantage of this enforced visit to have some clothes made, and as soon as they’re fitted properly Leslie and I shall dash back to Cornwall. Things like this—” she made a wide gesture which Miss Withers took to include the events of the past week or more—“never happen in Cornwall.”

Leslie Reverson made his first contribution. “Nothing ever happens in Cornwall,” he said bitterly. “Not since the Phoenicians came trading for tin, and they’ve done with it these thousand years or so.” He rose to his feet.

“Mind if I dash along?” He got part way to the door and then returned. “Aunt, could I—I mean—”

The Honorable Emily arose, reaching for her pocketbook as she did so. Miss Withers sipped her tea and listened to Reversons hurried voice. She did not catch the words, but what he said seemed to amuse his aunt.

“Don’t be silly,” the Honorable Emily said, in a clear loud voice. “Here’s ten bob. Flowers will do just as well, and they’re not half so dear.” She returned to the table, closing her purse.

“The younger generation on the loose,” she remarked. “Heaven knows what’s got into the boy, he runs through his allowance in no time at all. Just one girl after another…”

Miss Withers saw that her companion was in an open mood. “It seemed to me that your nephew took rather a shine to Candida Noring,” she suggested.

The Honorable Emily nodded. “He could do worse,” she observed. “Good sensible girl. A bit dowdy on the boat, but she seems to have, as you say, snapped out of it now she’s in London. Do you know—” she leaned closer—“I was worried for a time on the voyage coming over. Leslie was making calf’s-eyes at that Fraser girl. But luckily he didn’t get involved with her. He’s only twenty, and his father and mother died when he was a child, so I’m responsible for him. I shall feel a great deal more comfortable when I get him safe back home.”

“If you ever do,” Miss Withers very nearly spoke aloud. They passed out of the tea shop and crossed over to the hotel. The Honorable Emily provided herself with all the afternoon papers and a comic magazine.

“My only vice,” she explained. “I dearly love to curl up in a hot tub and read myself to sleep. And the papers come in handy afterward—for Tobermory.”

Miss Withers wished her a pleasant soak and sought her own room, where she sat and stared at the red coals of her fire until long after the dinner hour. They presented innumerable fantastic pictures, but never did they suggest the clear and definite answer to this complex puzzle which the spinster wanted to see. Finally she took up a piece of hotel stationery. “I might do it by algebra,” she thought. “X equals—that’s the trouble. X doesn’t equal anything. Nor, for that matter, does Y or Z.” She swept away her meaningless figures and wished wistfully that she understood relativity.

Hunger drove her out of her room, and on an impulse she rapped on Candida’s door. She found the girl dressed in a flannel bathrobe and munching on a bun. A bottle of milk stood on the dresser.

“Come in,” she cried gayly. “Share my frugal repast—there’s lots of buns.”

Miss Withers accepted a chair and a bun. “Dieting?” she inquired pleasantly. Candida shook her head vigorously.

“Broke,” she announced. “Or severely bent, anyhow. I was hoping for another invitation to dinner tonight, like a regular little gold-digger. Of course, I could have dinner sent up and put it on the bill, but I didn’t want to go in any deeper than I must.”

Miss Withers understood. “It’s always a bother getting remittances over here,” she said. “But I’d be glad to lend you a few pounds…”

Candida’s eyes warmed. “You’re sweet. But it’s not what you think.” She hesitated, taking a big bite of bun, and then went on. “I wasn’t going to say anything about it. But there’s no harm in your knowing. You see—Rosemary was to have paid our traveling expenses. She carried the money—and took it with her when she went. That’s how I know it wasn’t suicide, because Rosemary would never have left me stranded. I didn’t want to mention it, because it seems so petty. But now I’m left on my own funds, and they aren’t worthy of the name.”

Miss Withers digested this information. “Rosemary was banker, then?”

Candida took a deep breath. “It’s a long story,” she said. “But I want to talk about it, I’ve been silent long enough. You see, I’ve known Rosemary Fraser ever since she was a baby. Her people have a lot of money and move with the upper crust of Buffalo…”

Miss Withers internally shivered at the thought, but the girl went on. “And I’m just Candy Noring, whose father died before she was born and whose mother tried to be a dressmaker and broke her heart at it. When I was in high school I used to earn a little extra money by minding babies, and Rosemary was my first charge. My mother died, and some of the people for whom she had worked sort of banded together to help me through school. It made them feel very charitable, and I suppose I wasn’t so much of a burden at that. I used to slave at vacation times as a companion, and an extra maid, and a practical nurse, and anything else I was called on to do, but most times I went to take care of Rosemary. She was such a sweet little girl, and though she had the world handed to her on a silver platter, we were more like sisters than anything else.”

Candida smoothed her fingers, as if drawing on an imaginary pair of gloves. “Then I got a scholarship at St. Andrews, one of the oldest girls’ colleges in the East. For several years I nearly lost touch with Rosemary, although one summer as a special treat I was allowed to go up to their camp in Canada as a companion for her. When I graduated, I stayed on as an instructor. Then Rosemary came to St. Andrews, and we became close friends again. This was to have been her sophomore year—”

Miss Withers was computing years and other figures. “I see,” she said.

“Not yet,” Candida told her dreamily. “Then Rosemary got into a scrape this year at Bar Harbor, in Maine, where her family took her every summer for the hot weather. She’s never told me what it was all about, but I presume that it concerned—a man. She was an unsophisticated, soft little thing, romantic as they come. She wrote sonnets and tore them up all summer, but when fall came she refused to go back to school. She wanted to go around the world, she said. Well, she always had her own way. Her family only stipulated that I must go along to take care of her—as I’ve always taken care of her. All I was to get were my expenses—but what half-starved college instructor wouldn’t take a trip around the world just for the ride? We were to have sailed next Monday on the
Empress of Siam…
”

Candida broke off and sniffled at a handkerchief. “I’ve tried not to think of myself. But it’s hard, when all your life you’ve been sitting on the outside looking at the good things through a pane of glass—and then to have a wonderful trip dangled before your eyes and snatched away!”

Miss Withers agreed. “But something was snatched away from Rosemary, too. Her desire for life—or else her life itself. Tell me, do you honestly think that she was capable of committing suicide?”

Candida shook her head wildly. “How do I know? Rosemary was capable of anything. She dramatized herself and everything that happened to her. She might have been driven to take her own life by the cruel, thoughtless laughter of the people at that captain’s dinner. But it would have been more like her to get hold of a gun, somehow, and blaze away at the whole lot. She—” The girl stopped short. “I’m not going to talk about her any more.”

“One thing I’m as sure of as I’m sure of anything,” Miss Withers remarked conversationally. “And that is that Peter Noel did not kill Rosemary Fraser.”

Candida’s eyes opened very wide, but she did not say anything. She produced a paper bag. “Have another bun?” Her voice trembled a little.

Miss Withers declined. “The best thing for you to do, young woman, is to put all this unhappiness out of your mind. Don’t stay here in your room by yourself: get out and play. Think of something cheerful…”

She placed her hand on Candida’s shoulder, and found her tense as a coiled spring. Then the girl suddenly relaxed.

“You’re very wise and kind,” she said. “I’ll snap out of it. I’ve got something nice to think about, anyhow—” Suddenly she jumped to her feet and ran over to the dresser. From the top drawer she took a tremendous black ebony box and displayed it proudly to her guest.

“This came for me just before you dropped in,” said Candida. “Wasn’t it sweet of him?”

Miss Withers surveyed the tightly packed and aromatic contents—five hundred fine Turkish cigarettes, with tips of straw and cork and gold and silver and many-colored silk. The cover bore the name of one of England’s foremost tobacconists—Empey’s—and lying on top of the highest tray was a neatly engraved card, “Leslie Pendavid Reverson.”

“It’s better than an invitation to dinner,” Miss Withers assured her. “Why, the box will be a treasure even after the cigarettes are gone.” She closed the lid and surveyed the finely cut black wood with approval. The bottom bore a strip of pasted felt, so as not to mar a table-top. Miss Withers noticed that a careless salesperson had forgotten to remove the tiny price sticker and saw upon it the neat notation “£2.”

“You’ll have a coffin nail with me, won’t you?” said Candida eagerly. “Try one of those tiny Russian ones, or the perfumed ones with silk tips…”

“Mercy sakes no,” said Hildegarde Withers. “I should be terribly ill. I know that most women smoke today, but when I was a girl we were taught that tobacco was physically and morally wrong—for girls.”

Candida shrugged and took up one of the scented cigarettes with delicate fingers. Miss Withers sensed that here was a girl who appreciated the luxuries, the fine and tangible things of life, perhaps because for so many years she had seen them only at a distance. “They look so perfect in the box that I hate to take this,” Candida remarked. But she struck a match and held it to the tip.

“I must run along,” Miss Withers told her. “Now, keep a stiff upper lip, and if you receive any more anonymous notes, bring them to me as quick as you can.”

Candida took the cigarette from her mouth. “But—there won’t be any more notes with a black border now that Todd has killed himself, will there?”

Miss Withers realized that Candida did not know of the black-bordered missive which had gone down with Andy Todd to his death.

“I hope and pray not,” she told the girl, and took her departure. When she looked at her watch she saw that it was almost ten o’clock. In spite of her tea and the buns she had shared with Candida she was very hungry.

“I’ll just drop down to the grill and have a bite,” she decided. “After all, Candida has cigarettes to take the edge from her appetite. But I need to keep up my strength.”

She was surprised to notice that all the way down the hall in the direction of the lift she had been talking to herself. A maid, bound on some errand involving two pillows, looked at her suspiciously, and the school teacher pretended to be humming.

But she only talked to herself when something in her mind was clamoring for attention—something in her subconscious which raised its hand, like one of the pupils back in the third grade of Jefferson School, when it wanted to speak. The talking, she knew, was an effort to ignore that signal… because it meant bad news.

As she stepped into the elevator she began systematically to search her mind. Some thought, some word, had started a train of the sort of guesswork which she had learned to heed. What had it been—black-bordered letters, Reverson’s card, buns, cigarettes—coffin nails?
Coffin nails!

The elevator was at the ground floor, and in a daze she followed the other occupants out into the hall. Then she stopped short and was about to implore the man to take her back to the fifth floor in a hurry when she caught a glimpse of the Honorable Emily, resplendent in a dinner gown of modest crimson, moving across the distant foyer.

Down the corridor Miss Withers went, swooping like some grim, ungainly bird of prey. She came upon the Honorable Emily just as that lady was settling herself beneath a potted palm and preparing for an hour with a brandy-and-soda while the orchestra played its evening rounds of Strauss.