The Dower House Mystery (23 page)

Jane shut the door, and took up her old position on the hearth-rug.

“Sit down, Molloy,” said Sir Julian; and Mr. Molloy sat down very composedly in a Chippendale armchair. “Now,” said Sir Julian Le Mesurier. “Now, Molloy, just come straight to the point. You told Mrs. March that you had information about the forged French notes.”

“Ah, well,” said Molloy, “that's going a little too quick. I'll not beat about the bush, and I'll tell you right here and now that I've had enough of politics, and politics has had enough of me. It's no game for a gentleman, when all's said and done; and I've the chance of marrying comfortably—the family hotel line—and settling down in peace and quiet.”—Sir Julian began to draw a row of small heraldic kittens—“It's an old man I'm getting, and I'd be glad to feel that I'd be left to die in peace.”

Sir Julian's small, light eyes rested on him for the merest fraction of time.

“All right, Molloy, go on,” he said. “If your information's worth anything and you behave yourself, we shan't interfere with you. Now, these forgeries—are you in the game yourself?”

Mr. Molloy's shocked expression would have done an archbishop credit.

“I am not,” he said. “Politics is what I've stuck to—and I'll not say that I've not been on the black side of the law now and again—; but there's half the width of hell between politics and this forging game.”

Sir Julian spoke without looking up again:

“All right. You're not in it, but you know something about it? Now, will you just get on and tell us what you know.”—He glanced over his shoulder—“Notes, Henry.”

Mr. Molloy crossed one leg over the other, threw back his head, and gazed meditatively at the ceiling.

“Well now, where would I start?” he said, and appeared to plunge into thought. After a pause of some duration, during which Sir Julian put all his kittens into Toby frills, Molloy heaved a sigh and resumed, “Without prejudice then. I'd business last year in Barcelona, and I had to come away in a hurry because of a difference of opinion with some of the Comrades there. It suited me book to cut over the French frontier. Now there's a little place that I needn't name, on the Spanish side, that I stayed the night in. I'd used the inn before and knew the people, and when they gave me the third best room, it was reasonable enough I'd want to know why; and they told me that two gentlemen had come in ahead of me and booked the best of everything. Well now, that surprised me, and when I was up in my room and heard voices next door, I'd the curiosity to put my ear to the crack, just as it were to find out what these gentlemen might be.”

It was at this juncture that Mr. Molloy observed a look of singular incredulity upon the face of his niece Jane March.

“I'll not say,” he continued hastily, “that I hadn't some idea that I might be interested in their conversation. The door was a badly fitting door, and, as I stood there, I could hear a man talking French; but he wasn't a Frenchman. He was an Englishman, and what he said was just this, ‘I'm late with them, but the risk gets greater every time.' The man that answered him, he was French right enough. He said, ‘I was getting anxious. How have you managed this time? You are clever, you know, with your samples, and your pictures, and your Heaven knows what. What is it this time?' The Englishman laughed a little. He said, ‘This time it is sketching-blocks. I have taken orders from a dozen art schools; they are enchanted with the quality of the paper.' They both laughed. Then the Frenchman asked, ‘And how is Mademoiselle Anaïs?'”

Molloy, as he spoke the name, looked about him. Jane stood in frowning silence. Henry March was writing. Sir Julian had begun a new line of cats. The name apparently conveyed nothing to any one of the three. Molloy went on speaking in measured tones:

“The Englishman said ‘She's well. I think she finds the country dull.' And then the Frenchman laughed and said ‘Mademoiselle Anaïs, and your fogs, and your British Sunday, and your phlegm! Oh la, la, la—she has a temperament that one!'” Molloy hesitated, paused, looked round again. “That is all,” he said.

Jane lifted her head in surprise. Henry was finishing a sentence. Sir Julian looked up.

“And why do you think that this interesting conversation referred to those forged notes?” he inquired.

“Ah, now,” said Molloy, “that's where you have me. When I made inquiries I found that the gentleman with the English accent was travelling for a firm of paper manufacturers with samples of sketching-blocks, and the French gentleman was a traveller in light wines—all very innocent and ordinary, and nothing for anyone to lay hold of, as you say.” He paused and then added, “It was the lady's name that gave the show away, gentlemen—and not the first time a very promising affair has come to grief through having a woman mixed up in it.”

Piggy left his last kitten whiskerless.

“What date was this? Last year, you said. Can you give us the month and day?”

“I can. It was St. Patrick's Day, the seventeenth of March.”

“Anaïs?” repeated Sir Julian, “Anaïs?—well, you seem to know more about the lady than I do, Molloy. Just go on being helpful, will you. Do you know her? Who is she?”

“I wouldn't say that I know her,” said Molloy. “No, I wouldn't say that I know her. But it came to me by a side wind a year or two ago that she was doing some very high-grade work in the forged note line.”

“Who is she?”

Molloy hesitated.

“They call her Mademoiselle Anaïs. She went to Russia before the war with a man called Karazoff—Prince Paul Karazoff—, and that's how I heard of her first, through the Russian Comrades. Karazoff was killed in '16, and she came back to Paris and took up this other line. And that's all I know, gentlemen.”

“It's not very much,” said Sir Julian.

“It's more than you knew before,” said Molloy easily.

“What names were the two men using?”

“The Englishman was Robinson—”

“And his firm?”

“Ah, you have me there—I never thought to ask.”

“And the other?”

“Lebrun—but they would not be their real names, of course.”

“And that's all you know? Surely you saw the men?”

“Devil a bit. I slept like a dog; and they were off by daylight. You've all I know, and I hope it'll be of use to you.” He stood up as he spoke, pushing his chair back.

Beneath the grand manner Jane perceived that he was ill at ease, impatient to be gone.

“I think he knows something more,” she said quickly. “I think he knows something more about the woman.”

“Yes,” said Sir Julian, “I thought so too. Come now, Molloy, you've told us little enough. You can't afford to keep anything back. You said you didn't know the woman. Have you ever seen her? Come now, describe her, please.”

“I've never laid eyes on her in me life,” said Molloy.

Sir Julian began to tear his sheet of paper into long strips.

“Perhaps,” he suggested, “you can furnish us with a description, nevertheless.”

“Some Comrade may have mentioned what the lady looked like,” Mr. Molloy resigned himself. “Well, then, I have heard said that she has red hair.”

It was Jane who put the last question. She had been watching Molloy very closely all the time.

“Is this Anaïs French?” she asked suddenly, and got a glance in return, half protesting, half admiring.

“English she was to start with,” he said reluctantly.

Sir Julian had his comment to make on that.

“English! Anaïs? That's not a very English name, Molloy. Are you sure she was English?”

“Well, they called her Flash Annie before she went to Russia,” said Mr. Molloy.

Chapter XXX

Wednesday was a busy day for Amabel. She and Ellen lit fires in the two disused bedrooms, swept, cleaned, dusted, and by four o'clock had them in a habitable condition. Ellen throughout maintained a demeanour which indicated that she didn't hold with “they Millers.” When it came to making Miss Miller's bed she burst suddenly into speech.

“I should ha' thought that Mr. Miller, being away all day yesterday and to-day, would ha' wanted his sister 'ome in the evening,” she said. “Coming back to a empty 'ouse isn't what most men likes, nor wouldn't put up with neither—and, take it or leave it, that there Miller's a man like the rest of 'em.”

“
Mr
. Miller, Ellen!” said Amabel gently, but firmly. “And you haven't got the blanket straight on your side. I wish you'd look at what you're doing and leave my friends alone.”

Ellen jerked the blanket fiercely.

“Friends!” she muttered. “Save us and preserve us—friends!” Then, finding that Amabel took no notice, she broke with great suddenness into excited speech. “It's the crawlingness of it that I 'ates—I can't abide creepingness and crawlingness. And all I says is this, if we'd been meant to crawl, worms we should 'ave been made to start with—worms, or snakes, or such like.”

“Ellen, do be quiet,” said Amabel wearily. “We shall have to make this bed again. You've got
all
the blanket now. Here, strip it back and start fresh.”

“'E comes into Eliza Moorshed's front shop yesterday morning,” said Ellen, her voice a little louder than usual, “and 'e bought a tuppenny-'a'penny stamp and a time-table, ‘I wanted to make sure they 'adn't altered the nine-thirty for Maxton. I'll catch it comfortable,' 'e says, and off 'e goes. And that very evening we was all a-'aving of our teas—lovely jam Eliza Moorshed makes, if she is my cousin—when who should come in but that young, fair-'aired Orchard that drives the carrier's cart to Ledlington and is nephew to Eliza's 'usband's sister-in-law. Well, 'e comes in, and sits down and 'as 'is tea, and 'e says, ‘I done nothing but run into Forsham people in Ledlington to-day.'”

“Well, why shouldn't he?—Ellen, that sheet is
not
straight.”

Ellen gave it a perfunctory pat.

“It wasn't 'e that shouldn't,” she said darkly. “It's them that says they're catching trains to Maxton, and then turns up on the steps of the Queen's Hotel in Ledlington as bold as brazen serpents.”

“Now, Ellen!”

“Tom Orchard seen 'im with 'is own eyes. ‘I shall catch the train to Maxton nicely,' says 'e in Eliza Moorshed's front shop at a quarter past nine; and at 'alf-past twelve Tom Orchard seen 'im coming out of the Queen's Hotel in Ledlington, which is a good fifty mile away from where 'e said 'e was a-going. Oh, yes, and for all 'is brazenness 'e didn't want to be seen neither, for when Mr. Bronson drove up in 'is Rolls-Royce car—which 'e 'appened to do at that very individual minute,—that there Miller pops back into the hotel just as quick as a weazle—Tom Orchard seen 'im.”

“Well, it's really not our business,” said Amabel. “The counterpane is on that chair behind you.”

Ellen spread out the counterpane with an air of gloom. As she smoothed it over the pillow, she said,

“Tom Orchard seen Mrs. King in Ledlington too, with 'er 'ands just as full of parcels as they could 'old—wonderful where some folk gets the money from, and she without a penny piece if all's true that's said about 'er.”

“It never is,” said Amabel. “I shouldn't worry about it if I were you.”

Ellen tossed her head and sniffed.

“Anyhow she don't pay 'er lawful bills at Eliza Moorshed's,” she announced.

As she spoke, the first rumble of thunder sounded outside. Amabel looked out of the window.

“There's a storm coming up. You'd better hurry, Ellen. We've just got through in time.”

Ellen cast one glance at the sky, and hurried in good earnest.

Julian Forsham was very silent at tea. His mind recurred again and again to that moment in the wood when the lightning flash had seemed to show him the face of Annie Brown. The impression, so startlingly vivid at the time, was, in retrospect, a stark impossibility. Brownie's story of the thunderstorm, his own recollection of Annie clinging to him in terror, and the repetition of the scene that afternoon with another hysterical woman—these were the elements out of which the sudden flash of recognition had been evolved. It seemed inconceivable that in any circumstances Miss Lemoine, the black-haired Frenchwoman, should have suggested to his mind Annie Brown with her red hair, village breeding, and speech very much what Jenny's was now. He had found Mademoiselle Lemoine a cultivated person with a taste for art and literature, and a degree of social tact unusual in her position, obviously a woman of the world, travelled and cultivated. His mind could hardly have played him an odder trick. He replied absently to Miss Miller's painstaking conversation, and relapsed again into frowning silence.

Amabel did not attempt to talk. She was glad enough to sit still and rest.

They had nearly finished tea when Anita King was ushered in.

“Mr. Bronson's going to pick me up,” she announced. “I meant to get here ages ago; but I had to shelter from that horrible storm. And where do you think I sheltered?”—She addressed herself to Miss Miller—“You'll never guess, I'm sure. But when I saw that inky cloud I just rushed for your bungalow. And your brother was ever so nice to me.”

“I'm glad you were able to get in,” said Anne Miller.

Nita King dropped into a chair, unfastening her furs and throwing them back.

“I should have
died
if I'd had to stay out in a storm,” she declared. “I'm just simply terrified of storms. I'm afraid your brother found me a great nuisance, for I just sat and
shuddered
. And when those dreadful,
dreadful
claps of thunder came, I simply had to scream a little—I couldn't help it.”