The Blind Side (15 page)

“Were you alluding to Rush?”

The head was tossed again.

“If it was the last word I was h'ever to speak, I
was
, sir.”

Detective Abbott began to write.

“Rush was under threat of dismissal by Mr. Craddock?”

“I heard rum with my own ears, sir, as I was coming across the landing. The door of the flat was open, and the door of this room we're in was on the jar, and Mr. Craddock, he was in a proper shouting rage, and you'll excuse me repeating his language, which wasn't fit for a lady to hear let alone to repeat. He says as loud as a bull, ‘You've been mucking up my papers!' he says. And Rush, he answers him back as bold as brass. ‘And what would I want with your papers, Mr. Ross?' he says. And Mr. Craddock says, ‘How do I know what you want? Blackmail, I shouldn't wonder!' And Rush ups and says, ‘You did ought to be ashamed of yourself, Mr. Ross, talking to me like that!' And Mr. Craddock says, ‘Get to hell out of here!' And Rush come out, and when he see me, if ever there was a man that looked like murder, it was him, and he went down the stairs swearing to himself all the way.”

The Inspector said, “H'm! Mr. Craddock had missed some of his papers. Is that what you made of it?”

Mrs. Green sniffed.

“I couldn't say, sir. That's what I heard. I can't say more and I can't say less. What I hears I remembers. And there's more things than that I could tell you if I thought it my duty like you said.”

“It is undoubtedly your duty,” said the Inspector in a most encouraging voice.

Mrs. Green sniffed again.

“I'm not one to listen, nor yet to poke my nose into other people's business, but I've got my work to do, and if a lady leaves her door open and talks into her telephone that's just inside, well, it's not my business to put cotton wool in my ears. And no later man the very evening before poor Mr. Craddock was murdered what did I hear but Miss Lucy Craddock say—”

“Wait a minute, Mrs. Green. When you say the evening before Mr. Craddock was murdered, do you mean the Tuesday evening? He was murdered some time after midnight of that night.”

“Yes, sir—the Tuesday evening. It would be about a quarter to half past six, and a shocking long day I'd had on account of cleaning up after Mr. and Mrs. Connell.”

“You were on the landing, and Miss Craddock's door was open?”

“Half open, sir. She was all ready to start—going abroad she was—and Rush had just been up for the luggage, when the telephone bell went, and there she was, talking, and never give a thought to the door.”

“Well now, what did she say?”

“You could have knocked me down with a feather,” said Mrs. Green. “Dusting the banisters I was, and I heard her say quite plain, ‘Oh, my dear, you know Ross is turning me out.' And then something about there being nothing in the will to stop him, and he wouldn't turn Miss Mary out on account of her being an invalid—that's the one that died—but as for Miss Lucy, he said she'd got to go. Getting on thirty years she's been there, and I don't wonder she was put about. She said as how he'd written her a horrible cruel letter, and it was all about Miss Mavis Grey that he didn't mean no good to. Ever so worked up she sounded. And, ‘I've got quite a desperate feeling,' she says. It was Miss Fenton she was talking to, and there was a lot about
her
wanting to come here while Miss Lucy was away. I'd my dusting to do and I didn't trouble to listen, but I heard Miss Craddock say as how she was feeling desperate, and desperate she sounded—I'll swear to that. And now they're saying she never went off to the Continent at all. Looks as meek as a mouse she does, but there—it's often the quiet ones that's the worst when they're roused.”

The Inspector let her go after that.

“Every blessed one of 'em might have done it as far as I can see,” he said in a disgusted tone as Detective Abbott came back after making sure that both doors were shut. “Talented lot of eavesdroppers they've got in this house too!”

“Yes, sir.”

The Inspector took a decision, a very minor decision, but one that was to have an unforeseen result. Getting out of his chair, he said,

“I'll go down and have a word with Rush. Perhaps he'll be easier to handle in his own quarters. And I'd rather like to see that wife of his. I suppose she
is
bedridden.”

“Haven't you got enough suspects without her, sir?” said Detective Abbott.

CHAPTER XXIII

The Rushes' basement room had a fair sized window through the top of which Mrs. Rush could see the railings which guarded the area and the legs and feet of the passers-by. She didn't complain, but she sometimes felt that it would be pleasant to see a whole person for a change. For one thing, she never knew what sort of hats were being worn, and she took a particular interest in hats. It was no good asking Rush, because the vain adornment of their heads by young females was one of the subjects upon which it was better not to set him off.

Everything in the room was as bright and neat and clean as a new pin. Mrs. Rush wore a white flannelette night gown, and her bed had a brightly printed coverlet. She had finished her baby socks and was starting a little vest for Ellen's baby. On the newly distempered wall opposite her bed hung photographic enlargements of her five children, all taken at about the same age, so that a stranger might have been misled into thinking her the mother of quintuplets. There was Stanley who had been killed on the Somme; Ethel, dead thirty years ago come Michaelmas; Ernie that was in Australia and only wrote at Christmas; Daisy—well Daisy didn't bear thinking about; and Ellen, her youngest and her darling. There they hung, the little boys in sailor suits and the little girls in starched white muslin dresses, and Mrs. Rush looked at them all day long. She had fought the one terrible battle of her married life when Rush wanted to take Daisy's picture down, and she had fought it to a finish and won. “She hadn't done nothing wrong when that was took. That's how I see her, and that's how I'm a-going to see her, and you can't get me from it.”

Rush looked surprised and not at all pleased when he saw the Inspector. Mrs. Rush on the other hand was pleasurably excited. It was pain and grief to her to be out of things, and here after all was Inspector Lamb and a pleasanter spoken man you couldn't hope to find. Asking how long she'd been ill, when most people had forgotten that there had ever been a time when she was up and about. Quite a little colour came into her cheeks as she talked to him. And he noticed the children's pictures too, and said he was a family man himself. And no manner of good for Rush to stand there grumbling to himself. Right down bad manners, and he needn't think he wouldn't hear about it when the Inspector was gone.

“Well now, Mrs. Rush, I just want a word with your husband here, and I hope I'm not disturbing you coming in like this, but to tell you the truth I'm right down sick of that room upstairs, and I thought I'd like to make your acquaintance.”

He crossed to the foot of the bed and turned to Rush.

“There's a matter that came up just now, and I'd like to know what you've got to say about it. I've been told that you and Mr. Craddock had words on Tuesday afternoon—something about his papers having been disturbed.”

“Who said so?” said Rush with a growl.

“Someone who heard what passed. Come, sergeant, tell me about it yourself if you don't want me to take someone else's story.”

“Albert—” said Mrs. Rush in a pleading voice.

“There's nothing to tell!” said Rush angrily. “Mr. Ross, he forgot himself. Thirty years I been in this job, and the first time anyone ever said or thought but what I did my duty! Mr. Ross, he forgot himself, and now that he's dead I've no wish to bring it up.”

There was a rough dignity about his squared shoulders and the set of his head. “If he isn't an innocent man, he's a very good actor,” thought the Inspector. He said,

“That does you credit. But I've got my duty too, you know, and I'll have to ask you what took place between you.”

Mrs. Rush looked up from her knitting.

“Now don't you be so disobliging, Father.”

Rush scowled at her. A completely meaningless mannerism as far as she was concerned, it having quite ceased to intimidate her after the first month of their marriage.

“A lot of busybodying going on over this business, it seems to me.” The Inspector was getting the scowl now. “First and last of it was, Mr. Ross called me into his room and said someone had been mucking about with his papers. Then he forgot himself and said it was me—said there was papers missing, and something about blackmail. And I told him he'd forgot himself and I come away.”

“Why should he think it was you? You haven't got a key to the flat, have you? Why didn't he suspect Peterson?”

“No, I haven't got a key—and if I had a hundred I wouldn't touch his papers. But Sunday Peterson had the day off and I had his key. And seems Mr. Ross forgot his bunch of keys that day—left them lying on his table. He's uncommon careless with them. And I told him straight I saw them, and I never touched them nor I never touched his papers, and if anyone says so, alive or dead, he's a liar!”

“Did he threaten you with dismissal?” said the Inspector.

Rush glared at him.

“No, he didn't.”

“Sure of that?”

“What are you getting at?”

The Inspector was watching him closely.

“When a murder has taken place, anyone who has had a serious quarrel with the murdered man is bound to come under suspicion.”

A deep flush ran up to the roots of Rush's thick grey hair. He breamed heavily. Then he said,

“You're suspecting
me
?”

Mrs. Rush said, “Oh, sir!” She let her knitting fall and clasped her hands. “Oh, sir! Oh, Albert! Oh, sir—he never did! Oh, Albert—you've got to tell him now. It's not right—not if they're going to think it's you. And if he's innocent it won't hurt him, and if he's done it it's not for us to stand in the way of the law—”

“Here,” said Rush, “you're upsetting her—that's what you're doing. And I won't have it! Come into the kitchen!”

Mrs. Rush began to tremble very much.

“Not a step!” she said. “Albert, you come right over here and let me get a hold of you!”

“All right, all right—nothing to put yourself about like that, my girl.”

She leaned back against her pillows.

“Give him the case, Albert,” she said.

“Have it your own way,” said Rush.

He opened a drawer, took out a silver cigarette-case, and landed it to the Inspector.

“I was going to give it back to him on the quiet,” he said. “Found it laying by the side of the stairs Wednesday morning when I come to do the hall. Didn't think anything about it at first, no more than what he'd dropped it, and I put it away to give it back to him or to Miss Mavis.”

The Inspector looked at the case—ah ordinary engine-turned affair with a medallion for initials. The initials were R. F. He pressed the catch and the case fell open on his palm. There were cigarettes on one side, but on the other side there was a photograph of Miss Mavis Grey.

The Inspector pursed his lips as if he were going to whistle. Then he said,

“And who were you going to give it back to?”

The porter and his wife spoke together. Rush said, “Mr. Bobby Foster,” and Mrs. Rush said, “Miss Mavis's young man.”

CHAPTER XXIV

About twenty minutes later the Inspector hung up the receiver and faced Detective Abbott across the writing-table.

“Inquest tomorrow at two-thirty. We'll have 'em all there, and perhaps it'll put the wind up some of 'em. But we shall have to ask for an adjournment unless we get a bit of luck.”

“Like the murderer walking in and saying ‘Please, sir, I did it.'”

The Inspector frowned.

“Lintott's gone to check up on Mr. Foster. I want his fingerprints. If they correspond with the lot we couldn't account for on the banisters and on this door, then it looks pretty black against him.”

“What did the Ducks and Drakes say?”

“Oh, he was round there on the Tuesday night, but he was so drunk they wouldn't let him in. Tried three times—asked for Miss Grey and said he'd got to see her. The porter says Mr. Renshaw put him into a taxi and sent him home. Well, suppose he got home and got drinking some more, and then came round here to have it out with Mr. Craddock—I don't mind telling you it begins to look like that to me. I've told Lintott to find out at his rooms when he came in, and whether anyone heard him go out again—” He broke off because the sitting-room door was pushed open and Peter Renshaw came in.

“Am I interrupting?” he said.

“As a matter of fact I wanted to see you, Mr. Renshaw. I am informed that you met Mr. Foster—Mr. Bobby Foster—as you came out of the Ducks and Drakes on Tuesday night, and that after some conversation you got him into a taxi and sent him home.”

“All correct.”

“Well now, Mr. Renshaw, I have an account of that conversation from the porter at the Ducks and Drakes. He says Mr. Foster had been backwards and forwards asking for Miss Mavis Grey and wanting to know whether she was there with Mr. Craddock.” The Inspector made a significant pause, and then asked, “Was Mr. Foster drunk?”

“It depends on what you call drunk. He was walking and talking, but I didn't take much notice of what he said.”

“Ah, but the porter did. He says Mr. Foster used threatening language—says he offered to knock Mr. Craddock's head off and kick it in the gutter—says he used the expression that shooting was too good for him. How's that, Mr. Renshaw?”

Peter groaned inwardly. Bobby would go and say things like that about a man who was going to get himself murdered. Gosh—what a mess! Aloud he said,