The Brading Collection (21 page)

It was at this point that Miss Silver put her first question.

“Did you know that she intended writing to him that evening?”

He didn’t know where all this was getting them. He said,

“She did write to him.”

March exclaimed, “You know that?”

“I posted the letter.”

“Do you mind telling us just what happened?”

Charles looked the surprise he felt.

“Nothing happened. After we got in I wrote a letter myself and was going out to post it. Maida was on the stairs with a couple of letters in her hand. I offered to post them for her, and she gave them to me. That was all.”

“Any conversation?”

He was frowning. No harm that he could see in repeating what she had said. He let them have it.

“She just gave me the letters and said, ‘Well, you’re going to have me for a cousin,’ and I said, ‘And very nice too.’ ”

“You’re sure she said that?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Then you took it that the letter she gave you to post was her acceptance of Brading’s offer?”

“Of course.”

March thought, “Well, that’s that. So it wasn’t her letter that made Brading angry, and we’re barking up the wrong tree.”

Miss Silver gave a gently interrogative cough.

“There were two letters, Major Forrest?”

“Yes, two.”

“Did you notice to whom the second letter was addressed?”

“Oh, yes. It happened to be uppermost—I couldn’t help seeing it.”

“And to whom was it addressed?”

For the life of him March couldn’t see what she was getting at. He heard Charles say,

“To a friend of hers, a Mrs. Hunt.”

“Did you notice the address?”

“Oh, she’s a Londoner. She’s been down once or twice. I couldn’t tell you the exact address. If you want it you can get it from Maida.”

Miss Silver coughed again, this time in a deprecating manner. She pursued her questions.

“Is Mrs. Hunt an intimate friend?”

Charles laughed.

“Oh, I should think so. The kind you’d be bosom friends with after a bus ride—hearty, genial—more or less all over everybody.”

March let it go at that.

“Well, I think that’s all we wanted to know. I had better tell you that there have been—developments. I must ask you just to stay in the club for the moment, but apart from that there is no reason why you should not behave as usual.”

Charles took this with rather a straight look.

“Meaning that I’m not under detention any longer?”

“Meaning just what I said.”

“Do you know, I should rather like an explanation.”

March frowned.

“Miss Grey has made a statement.”

He saw the dark face harden.

“What has she said?”

“That Brading was dead when she got here.”

That Charles was completely taken by surprise was beyond doubt. He said,

“What!”

March nodded.

“That is what she says. If she is to be believed, it would of course exonerate you.”

“Lewis was dead when she got here—”

March said, “Go away and think it out.”

Charles got up.

“Where is she?”

It was Miss Silver who answered him.

“She is lying down. One of the chambermaids is looking after her. She was a good deal upset.”

He took himself out of the room in frowning silence.

James Moberly came into the laboratory with the air of a man who has braced himself to meet disaster. Whereas in the ordinary way he stooped a little, he now held himself stiffly upright. Miss Silver smiled at him as he came in. The tone in which she invited him to be seated recalled her schoolroom days. March, glancing from her to Moberly, wondered just what she took him to be—the tongue-tied boy paralysed with shyness—the ingenious one ready for emergency with a lie—the dunce who does not know his lessons—the idler who has scamped his work—or the mutineer who defies authority? Next moment he was recalling Moberly’s story and setting him down as the boy who has blotted his copybook.

Miss Silver said,

“Pray sit down, Mr. Moberly. You must, I am sure, be even more anxious than we are to have this distressing affair cleared up. I believe that you may be able to help us, and the Chief Constable is very kindly allowing me to put some questions to you in his presence.”

James Moberly said nothing. There was a chair on the far side of the table. He sat down upon it without relaxing those taut muscles or appearing to afford himself any ease. With a slight preliminary cough Miss Silver addressed him.

“Will you take your mind back to Friday morning, Mr. Moberly. Mr. Brading had been out, and he had returned. Just before twelve you were having an interview with him in the study.”

He said in a dry, stiff voice,

“I have made a statement about that interview. I haven’t got anything to add to it.”

She continued to smile in an encouraging manner.

“I shall not ask you to do so. Your conversation with Mr. Brading was interrupted by a knock on the door. A waiter of the name of Owen came in, bringing some letters which had arrived by the second post. Mr. Brading took the letters, and the waiter retired. Did you happen to notice what letters there were?”

“Not at the time. I had my back to the room.”

“But you did notice them afterwards?”

“Yes. Mr. Brading was at his table. I turned round and came back. The letters were lying there. There were two of them. One looked like a local bill, and the other was from Mrs. Robinson.” He spoke in short jerky sentences, his voice under constraint.

March said, “Sure about that? You knew her writing?”

“Yes—it is very distinctive.”

“Did you see Mr. Brading open the letters?”

“No. He referred to the conversation we had been having about my wanting to leave. He said, ‘I don’t want to hear any more about it. The matter is closed.’ Then he picked up Mrs. Robinson’s letter and went over to the annexe.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“You followed him, did you not? How much time had elapsed before you did so?”

“Between five and ten minutes. I could not accept what he said. I could not accept that the matter was closed. I went after him to tell him so, but that of course I would remain for a reasonable time until he was suited.”

“Did you in fact tell him these things?”

He hesitated. The nervous strain under which he was labouring became more apparent. He said at last,

“I had no opportunity.”

“You say in your statement that he was telephoning when you came into the annexe—he was using the instrument in his bedroom and the door was open. You say that you retired to the end of the passage beyond the laboratory door in order to avoid overhearing his conversation. Why did you not simply enter the laboratory?”

Moberly’s eyes went past her. He said,

“I don’t know.”

She laid down her knitting for a moment and leaned towards him, her hands on the pale pink wool.

“Mr. Moberly, I am going to beg you to be frank. In your statement you say that Mr. Brading made two calls, that the tone of his voice was angry, and that only two words reached you. They were, ‘You’d better!’ Pray consider whether the time has not come when you should tell us what you really heard.”

“Miss Silver—” His voice broke off on something like a groan.

She gave him another of those encouraging smiles.

“The truth is always best, Mr. Moberly. I know that you heard more than you have admitted.”

He said, “Yes,” still in that groaning voice. And then, “What was I to do? I knew that I was suspected—he had taken care of that. He used to tell me to pray for his long life, because his death would ruin me whatever way it came. I thought, ‘The less I say, the better for me. It will only look as if I was trying to put the blame on someone else.’ And I did not like her very much. Everyone knew that.”

March said, “Miss Grey?”

James Moberly shook his head.

“Oh, no. That was later. When I first went in he was talking to Mrs. Robinson.”

“How do you know?”

“He used her name.” The strain had gone out of his voice. It was just tired and toneless.

“Go on.”

“It was the first thing I heard—‘My dear Maida!’ I went away down the passage. I didn’t wish to overhear. But then I stopped. It was his voice that stopped me, because he was speaking to Mrs. Robinson, but his voice—”

He had been sitting forward, shoulders hunched, hands between his knees. Now he straightened a little and looked at them. It was a look full of remembered pain. He repeated the last two words.

“His voice—that’s what stopped me. He was speaking to her the way he used to speak to me when he wanted to—remind me—to hurt. It was the way he had been speaking to me in the study when I told him that I wanted to leave.” A kind of shudder ran over him, his eyes went blank. He said half under his breath, “He knew how to hurt.”

Miss Silver said,

“Yes, there was a love of cruelty.”

He turned to her with a startled expression.

“He liked hurting people—he liked hurting me. It made him feel what a lot of power he had. He liked that. But he was in love with Mrs. Robinson. When I heard him speak to her like that I was afraid. I wondered what had happened. I listened—it doesn’t sound nice, but that’s what I did—I stood there and I listened.”

March said, “What did you hear?”

“I told you. He said, ‘My dear Maida!’ in that voice. Then there was a break—she was saying something. And he said, ‘That is most interesting. Do you expect me to believe it? You can come down here this afternoon and say it all over again. Then you can judge for yourself just how much ice it cuts.’ Then he laughed and said, ‘My dear Maida!’ again, the same as before—‘My dear Maida! You put those two letters in the wrong envelopes, and there’s an end of it! Your “Dear Poppy” may be interested in what you wrote to me, but I assure you it’s nothing to the interest I feel in what you said to her. Perhaps you have forgotten the terms in which you were pleased to describe me. You can revive your memory when I return you the letter this afternoon. I should also like to show you the will I signed this morning. I should like you to watch its obsequies. There’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip, isn’t there?’ Then he rang off and gave Miss Grey’s number. I went farther off down the passage. I didn’t want to hear what he said to her—I’m not an eavesdropper. All I did hear was that his voice went on being angry, and once he said, ‘You’d better!’ That’s all I heard.”

March said, “Are you prepared to write all that down and sign it?”

He nodded.

“I have done so. I wrote it down on Friday night whilst it was all fresh in my mind. My wife has the paper. I gave it to her to keep in case—”

“Then it did occur to you that this was evidence of the first importance?”

He shook his head.

“I don’t know. I wanted to safeguard myself. I didn’t want to accuse anyone else. I was afraid of what might have happened when Mr. Brading and Mrs. Robinson met. But then Miss Grey said that he was alive when she left him at ten minutes past three.”

March looked at him hard.

“She doesn’t say that now. She says she found him dead.”

James Moberly stared back at him for a moment. Then he gave a groan and put his head in his hands.

March said, “I’d like to have that statement, Moberly.”

When he had gone out March turned to Miss Silver. She sat there knitting, the second pink vest almost finished. She might have had no more on her mind than the impending baby and its outfit. He contemplated the clicking needles, the small busy hands, the unruffled demeanour. He may have been recalling how she knitted her way through the case of the Poisoned Caterpillars in which she had saved his life, or that much more recent case in which his own deepest feelings had been involved, and from which he had emerged with a wife.* [see Miss Silver #15 Miss Silver Comes to Stay 1949.] He may have been thinking merely of the case in hand. He said,

“Well, it looks as if that ace of yours had taken the trick. We’ll have to have Constable and Mrs. Robinson here and put them through it. If she did it, he must have been in it up to the neck.”

“Oh, yes, Randal. It must have been very carefully planned.”

“Do you think Maida Robinson did the shooting?”

“I fear so. I fear that she came here meaning to do it. Mr. Brading intended to show her the will he had made in her favour and to destroy it in front of her eyes. She came here determined to prevent his doing so. She had Major Forrest’s revolver in that large white bag under her bathing-dress. Mr. Brading meant to punish her. He meant her to read the will before he destroyed it. It would be quite easy for her to come up beside him and lean forward to look at it. He would suspect nothing. His mind was full of the desire to punish and humiliate her. She shot him like that, dropped the revolver on the floor, took his own revolver out of the drawer, put it in her bag, and came away, leaving the bag behind her. Her part is done as far as the annexe is concerned. She comes through the glass passage into the hall, exclaims that she has left her bag, and sends Major Constable back for it. Now observe, Randal. I told you that the murderer had been hurried. Major Constable has to be very quick indeed. You must remember his training in the Commandos. He has it all planned, all timed, but all must be done at lightning speed. I feel sure that he would not trust Mrs. Robinson to remove her own fingerprints, or to place Mr. Brading’s upon the revolver. It is there that hurry betrays him—those fingerprints are not quite right. He has to be absolutely certain that Mrs. Robinson has left nothing that will compromise her. He would have to wipe her fingerprints from the drawer as well as from the revolver and substitute Mr. Brading’s. And in the middle of all that Mrs. Robinson rings through from the office, and he has to answer her and provide a man’s voice which will pass with Miss Snagge for Mr. Brading’s. You will remember that she heard no words, only a man’s voice answering Mrs. Robinson. I feel sure that that scene must have been very carefully timed and rehearsed. The telephone receiver here was probably protected by a handkerchief—it must bear Mr. Brading’s fingerprints and no others. And with all this, Major Constable must be absent for no longer than was necessary to fetch Mrs. Robinson’s bag and perhaps say a few polite words. The margin of safety was an extremely narrow one, and every second’s delay would cut it down. A very bold and carefully premeditated crime.”

March said, “An extraordinarily cold-blooded one.”

She said, “Yes. Crimes perpetrated for money are usually cold-blooded. There is an element of deliberate choice which is absent from the crime of passion.”

He said, “But Constable—what brings him into it? They were the barest acquaintances.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“Do you believe that? I find myself unable to do so. You will remember that I have not seen either of them, but from what I have been able to gather, there was—I hardly know how to put it—an effect of intimacy. Perhaps suggestions would be a better word—Major Forrest’s remark to me that his friend had ‘fallen hard’ for Mrs. Robinson. Stacy Mainwaring said they seemed like old friends. Mrs. Constantine concluded quite bluntly that they were having an affair. I think you will find that there is some link, some previous contact. That sort of thing is very hard to disguise, and it must be remembered that the absolute necessity for disguising it arose quite unexpectedly and with great suddenness. They have not appeared together anywhere since Mr. Brading’s death.”

March said, “I’d forgotten you hadn’t seen them. She is—rather beautiful. It’s hard to believe—”

She looked at him with a faint pitying smile and coughed.

“Oh, my dear Randal!” she said.