Sleeping Murder (10 page)

M
rs. Mountford's back parlour was a comfortable room. It had a round table covered with a cloth, and some old-fashioned armchairs and a stern-looking but unexpectedly well-sprung sofa against the wall. There were china dogs and other ornaments on the mantelpiece, and a framed coloured representation of the Princess Elizabeth and Margaret Rose. On another wall was the King in Naval uniform, and a photograph of Mr. Mountford in a group of other bakers and confectioners. There was a picture made with shells and a watercolour of a very green sea at Capri. There were a great many other things, none of them with any pretensions to beauty or the higher life; but the net result was a happy, cheerful room where people sat round and enjoyed themselves whenever there was time to do so.

Mrs. Mountford, née Pagett, was short and round and darkhaired with a few grey streaks in the dark. Her sister, Edith Pagett,
was tall and dark and thin. There was hardly any grey in her hair though she was at a guess round about fifty.

“Fancy now,” Edith Pagett was saying. “Little Miss Gwennie. You must excuse me, m'am, speaking like that, but it does take one back. You used to come into my kitchen, as pretty as could be. ‘Winnies,' you used to say. ‘Winnies.' And what you meant was raisins—though why you called them winnies is more than I can say. But raisins was what you meant and raisins it was I used to give you, sultanas, that is, on account of the stones.”

Gwenda stared hard at the upright figure and the red cheeks and black eyes, trying to remember—to remember—but nothing came. Memory was an inconvenient thing.

“I wish I could remember—” she began.

“It's not likely that you would. Just a tiny little mite, that's all you were. Nowadays nobody seems to want to go in a house where there's children. I can't see it, myself. Children give life to a house, that's what I feel. Though nursery meals are always liable to cause a bit of trouble. But if you know what I mean, m'am, that's the nurse's fault, not the child's. Nurses are nearly always difficult—trays and waiting upon and one thing and another. Do you remember Layonee at all, Miss Gwennie? Excuse me, Mrs. Reed, I should say.”

“Léonie? Was she my nurse?”

“Swiss girl, she was. Didn't speak English very well, and very sensitive in her feelings. Used to cry a lot if Lily said something to upset her. Lily was house-parlourmaid. Lily Abbott. A young girl and pert in her ways and a bit flighty. Many a game Lily used to have with you, Miss Gwennie. Play peep-bo through the stairs.”

Gwenda gave a quick uncontrollable shiver.

The stairs …

Then she said suddenly, “I remember Lily. She put a bow on the cat.”

“There now, fancy you remembering that! On your birthday it was, and Lily she was all for it, Thomas must have a bow on. Took one off the chocolate box, and Thomas was mad about it. Ran off into the garden and rubbed through the bushes until he got it off. Cats don't like tricks being played on them.”

“A black and white cat.”

“That's right. Poor old Tommy. Caught mice something beautiful. A real proper mouser.” Edith Pagett paused and coughed primly. “Excuse me running on like this, m'am. But talking brings the old days back. You wanted to ask me something?”

“I like hearing you talk about the old days,” said Gwenda. “That's just what I want to hear about. You see, I was brought up by relations in New Zealand and of course they could never tell me anything about—about my father, and my stepmother. She—she was nice, wasn't she?”

“Very fond of you, she was. Oh yes, she used to take you down to the beach and play with you in the garden. She was quite young herself, you understand. Nothing but a girl, really. I often used to think she enjoyed the games as much as you did. You see she'd been an only child, in a manner of speaking. Dr. Kennedy, her brother, was years and years older and always shut up with his books. When she wasn't away at school, she had to play by herself….”

Miss Marple, sitting back against the wall, asked gently, “You've lived in Dillmouth all your life, haven't you?”

“Oh yes, madam. Father had the farm up behind the hill—Rylands it was always called. He'd no sons, and Mother couldn't
carry on after he died, so she sold it and bought the little fancy shop at the end of the High Street. Yes, I've lived here all my life.”

“And I suppose you know all about everyone in Dillmouth?”

“Well, of course it used to be a small place, then. Though there used always to be a lot of summer visitors as long as I can remember. But nice quiet people who came here every year, not these trippers and charabancs we have nowadays. Good families they were, who'd come back to the same rooms year after year.”

“I suppose,” said Giles, “that you knew Helen Kennedy before she was Mrs. Halliday?”

“Well, I knew
of
her, so to speak, and I may have seen her about. But I didn't know her proper until I went into service there.”

“And you liked her,” said Miss Marple.

Edith Pagett turned towards her.

“Yes, madam, I did,” she said. There was a trace of defiance in her manner. “No matter what anybody says. She was as nice as could be to me always. I'd never have believed she'd do what she did do. Took my breath away, it did. Although, mind you, there
had
been talk—”

She stopped rather abruptly and gave a quick apologetic glance at Gwenda.

Gwenda spoke impulsively.

“I want to know,” she said. “Please don't think I shall mind anything you say. She wasn't my own mother—”

“That's true enough, m'am.”

“And you see, we are very anxious to—to find her. She went away from here—and she seems to have been quite lost sight of. We don't know where she is living now, or even if she is alive. And there are reasons—”

She hesitated and Giles said quickly, “Legal reasons. We don't know whether to presume death or—or what.”

“Oh, I quite understand, sir. My cousin's husband was missing—after Ypres it was—and there was a lot of trouble about presuming death and that. Real vexing it was for her. Naturally, sir, if there is anything I can tell you that will help in any way—it isn't as if you were strangers. Miss Gwenda and her ‘winnies.' So funny you used to say it.”

“That's very kind of you,” said Giles. “So, if you don't mind, I'll just fire away. Mrs. Halliday left home quite suddenly, I understand?”

“Yes, sir, it was a great shock to all of us—and especially to the Major, poor man. He collapsed completely.”

“I'm going to ask you right out—have you any idea who the man was she went away with?”

Edith Pagett shook her head.

“That's what Dr. Kennedy asked me—and I couldn't tell him. Lily couldn't either. And of course that Layonee, being a foreigner, didn't know a thing about it.”

“You didn't
know,
” said Giles. “But could you make a guess? Now that it's all so long ago, it wouldn't matter—even if the guess is all wrong. You must, surely, have had some suspicion.”

“Well, we had our suspicions … but mind you, it wasn't more than suspicions. And as far as I'm concerned, I never saw anything at all. But Lily who, as I told you, was a sharp kind of girl, Lily had her ideas—had had them for a long time. ‘Mark my words,' she used to say. ‘That chap's sweet on her. Only got to see him looking at her as she pours out the tea. And does his wife look daggers!'”

“I see. And who was the—er—chap?”

“Now I'm afraid, sir, I just don't remember his name. Not after all
these years. A Captain—Esdale—no, that wasn't it—Emery—no. I have a kind of feeling it began with an E. Or it might have been H. Rather an unusual kind of name. But I've never even thought of it for sixteen years. He and his wife were staying at the Royal Clarence.”

“Summer visitors?”

“Yes, but I think that he—or maybe both of them—had known Mrs. Halliday before. They came to the house quite often. Anyway, according to Lily he was sweet on Mrs. Halliday.”

“And his wife didn't like it.”

“No, sir … But mind you, I never believed for a moment that there was anything wrong about it. And I still don't know what to think.”

Gwenda asked, “Were they still here—at the Royal Clarence—when—when Helen—my stepmother went away?”

“As far as I recollect they went away just about the same time, a day earlier or a day later—anyway, it was close enough to make people talk. But I never heard anything definite. It was all kept very quiet if it
was
so. Quite a nine days' wonder Mrs. Halliday going off like that, so sudden. But people did say she'd always been flighty—not that I ever saw anything of the kind myself. I wouldn't have been willing to go to Norfolk with them if I'd thought that.”

For a moment three people stared at her intently. Then Giles said, “Norfolk? Were they going to Norfolk?”

“Yes, sir. They'd bought a house there. Mrs. Halliday told me about three weeks before—before all this happened. She asked me if I'd come with them when they moved, and I said I would. After all, I'd never been away from Dillmouth, and I thought perhaps I'd like a change—seeing as I liked the family.”

“I never heard they had bought a house in Norfolk,” said Giles.

“Well, it's funny you should say that, sir, because Mrs. Halliday seemed to want it kept very quiet. She asked me not to speak about it to anyone at all—so of course I didn't. But she'd been wanting to go away from Dillmouth for some time. She'd been pressing Major Halliday to go, but he liked it at Dillmouth. I even believe he wrote to Mrs. Findeyson whom St. Catherine's belonged to, asking if she'd consider selling it. But Mrs. Halliday was dead against it. She seemed to have turned right against Dillmouth. It's almost as though she was afraid to stop there.”

The words came out quite naturally, yet at the sound of them the three people listening again stiffened to attention.

Giles said, “You don't think she wanted to go to Norfolk to be near this—the man whose name you can't remember?”

Edith Pagett looked distressed.

“Oh indeed, sir, I wouldn't like to think
that.
And I don't think it, not for a moment. Besides I don't think that—I remember now—they came from up North somewhere, that lady and gentleman did. Northumberland, I think it was. Anyway, they liked coming south for a holiday because it was so mild down here.”

Gwenda said: “She was afraid of something, wasn't she? Or of someone? My stepmother, I mean.”

“I do remember—now that you say that—”

“Yes?”

“Lily came into the kitchen one day. She'd been dusting the stairs, and she said, ‘Ructions!' she said. She had a very common way of talking sometimes, Lily had, so you must excuse me.

“So I asked her what she meant and she said that the missus had
come in from the garden with the master into the drawing room and the door to the hall being open, Lily heard what they said.

“‘
I'm afraid of you,
' that's what Mrs. Halliday had said.

“‘And she sounded scared too,' Lily said. ‘
I've been afraid of you for a long time. You're mad. You're not normal. Go away and leave me alone. You must leave me alone. I'm frightened. I think, underneath, I've always been frightened of you.
..
.
'

“Something of that kind—of course I can't say now to the exact words. But Lily, she took it very seriously, and that's why, after it all happened, she—”

Edith Pagett stopped dead. A curious frightened look came over her face.

“I didn't mean, I'm sure—” she began. “Excuse me, madam, my tongue runs away with me.”

Giles said gently: “Please tell us, Edith. It's really important, you see, that we should know. It's all a long time ago now, but we've got to
know.
”

“I couldn't say, I'm sure,” said Edith helplessly.

Miss Marple asked: “What was it Lily didn't believe—or did believe?”

Edith Pagett said apologetically: “Lily was always one to get ideas in her head. I never took no notice of them. She was always one for going to the pictures and she got a lot of silly melodramatic ideas that way. She was out at the pictures the night it happened—and what's more she took Layonee with her—and very wrong
that
was, and I told her so. ‘Oh, that's all right,' she said. ‘It's not leaving the child alone in the house. You're down in the kitchen and the master and the missus will be in later and anyway that child never
wakes once she's off to sleep.' But it was wrong, and I told her so, though of course I never knew about Layonee going till afterwards. If I had, I'd have run up to see she—you, I mean, Miss Gwenda—were quite all right. You can't hear a thing from the kitchen when the baize door's shut.”

Edith Pagett paused and then went on: “I was doing some ironing. The evening passed ever so quick and the first thing I knew Dr. Kennedy came out in the kitchen and asked me where Lily was and I said it was her night off but she'd be in any minute now and sure enough she came in that very minute and he took her upstairs to the mistress's room. Wanted to know if she'd taken any clothes away with her, and what. So Lily looked about and told him and then she come down to me. All agog she was. ‘She's hooked it,' she said. ‘Gone off with someone. The master's all in. Had a stroke or something. Apparently it's been a terrible shock to him. More fool he. He ought to have seen it coming.' ‘You shouldn't speak like that,' I said. ‘How do you know she's gone off with anybody? Maybe she had a telegram from a sick relation.' ‘Sick relation my foot,' Lily says (always a common way of speaking, as I said). ‘She left a note.' ‘Who's she gone off with?' I said. ‘Who do you think?' Lily said. ‘Not likely to be Mr. Sobersides Fane, for all his sheep's eyes and the way he follows her round like a dog.' So I said, ‘You think it's Captain—whatever his name was.' And she said, ‘He's my bet. Unless it's our mystery man in the flashy car.' (That's just a silly joke we had.) And I said, ‘I don't believe it. Not Mrs. Halliday. She wouldn't do a thing like that.' And Lily says, ‘Well, it seems she's done it.'