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Authors: Margery Allingham

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BOOK: The White Cottage Mystery
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‘How do you know I want to have an interview?' he demanded.

Clarry Gale looked blank.

‘Wot's the idea of coming down 'ere, then?' he said. ‘I know wot you're after – I ain't barmy – I just thought I could give you a little 'elp, that's all. You see, I 'appen to know where they are.'

‘They – who are they?'

Mr Gale leant back as well as he could in the high chair, tucked his hands in his trouser pockets and attempted to look disgusted.

‘Now, that's coming it a bit too thick – a bit too thick, that is,' he commented. ‘You know 'oo I mean.'

W.T. crossed one knee over the other and folded his arms.

‘Gale,' he said slowly, ‘when you saw me here, did it never occur to you that I might be interested in
you?'

‘
Me?'
Mr Gale's mouth dropped open and his little ferrety eyes grew wide. ‘Me?' he repeated. ‘You're jokin', guv'nor … You ain't got nothin' against me. I've gone honest for ten years, I 'ave.'

The detective did not speak, and Mr Gale's spirits returned.

‘My alibi was all right too, wasn't it?' he said.

‘Oh, quite,' said W.T. mildly.

‘Well, then, w'y the 'okey-pokey?' Mr Gale was aggrieved. ‘Let's get down to business. I can give you the hotel of them two girls, number of their suite an' everything. Wot's it worth?'

W.T. hesitated.

‘I'll give you two hundred-franc notes for it,' he said at last.

‘Two perishin' quid? That ain't much. If I'd ha' thought that was all you could rise to, guv'nor, I wouldn't 'a' troubled to 'a' come.'

The old detective shrugged his shoulders, and taking out his note-case selected the two notes he had mentioned.

‘Take it or leave it,' he said.

Gale took the money, still grumbling.

‘If you wasn't an old frien' things would be different, I can tell you,' he said, ‘but in mem'ry of the parst an' one thing an' another 'ere you are.' He put his hand in his pocket and drawing
out an envelope thrust it into the detective's face. W.T. glanced at it and put it in his note-case.

Gale edged towards the door. ‘I'll be goin', then,' he said. ‘Glad to 'ave seen you again and to ‘ave done what I could for you. Any other time you want me, I'm staying down the road in the “Maison Sud”.'

‘For long?'

‘No – o'ny a d'y or so. So long, guv'nor. So long to you too, sir.' And Clarry Gale pattered out.

Jerry looked at his father, who was still seated, his arms folded.

‘What's the idea of paying for a piece of information we already have?'

W.T. took out the envelope Gale had given him.

‘Norah Bayliss and Grace Christensen. Suite Number nine. Hôtel Magnifique,' he read aloud.

‘Well, we know that already,' said Jerry. ‘At least, we know the hotel; the number of the suite isn't necessary.'

W.T. nodded absently. He was grave now, and his eyes were veiled with their heavy lids.

‘I don't see what you were driving at,' Jerry persisted. ‘Why didn't you let me pitch the grinning little hypocrite into the street?'

‘Jerry, my boy,' W.T. spoke mildly. ‘You haven't the mind of a detective. Gale has given us some very interesting information. Don't grudge him his francs.'

‘The number of a hotel suite – ‘began Jerry contemptuously.

‘Quite,' said W.T., ‘just think of the things Gale has told us. Unintentionally perhaps, but still told us – facts that are of great interest to us.'

‘I don't see,' said Jerry.

W.T. sat up in his chair and ticked the points off on his fingers as he spoke.

‘First of all,' he said easily, ‘he has told us that he is watching us. Secondly, that he is watching Mrs Christensen and Norah – probably he followed them out here. Thirdly, he is in touch with them – on speaking terms, but not in their employ – '

‘Hold a moment,' cut in Jerry. ‘I don't see how you make that out.'

W.T. looked at him gravely.

‘He must be on speaking terms with them to know that we have not had an interview with Mrs Christensen yet, but, on the other hand, he can't be in their employ, or he would not come to us to sell us information that would mean him losing his job … I'm afraid it's blackmail. He knows something.'

‘Blackmail? Gale blackmailing Mrs Christensen?' Jerry spoke quickly. ‘That's impossible, Dad – I mean, your own argument cuts both ways. Gale wouldn't come to us to sell us information that would – would mean you getting at Mrs Christensen and so removing his source of money.'

W.T. nodded. ‘That's true,' he said; ‘but, you see, Gale knew that I was bound to find Mrs Christensen sooner or later – he wanted to know how much I knew, and also to make sure that I wasn't after
him.
Incidentally he thought he might pick up anything there was going before the smash. I know that type so well. They don't think ahead at all. Probably he guessed I had seen him, and wondered why I was so quiet – folk with uneasy consciences get nerves, Jerry.'

‘Blackmail,' repeated the boy, to whom the idea was new, and horrible for its very likelihood. ‘If Mrs Christensen is paying Gale blackmail it's pretty certain that she – she's guilty – and Norah … Oh, my God, Dad!'

Old W.T. looked across at the boy's drawn face and his own expression softened.

‘The next move,' he said, ‘is mine.'

13 Mrs Christensen's Secret

As W.T. walked down the steep, narrow streets of the old border village no one would have dreamed that he was a detective on a case of murder.

He looked upon the scene around him with mild interest. His face was already tanned by the intense sun, and it looked dark against the whiteness of his hair. It was early yet, and the town was alive and busy, its inhabitants hard at work before the mid-day sun should make energetic labour an impossibility, but already the stony shore was gay with bathers. The warm waters of the bay were exquisitely blue – more blue, it seemed, than the sky, and so clear that from the road the detective could see the shadows of the shoals of little fish in its shallow depths. Every hour sleek cars and strange old canopied victorias from the station brought new arrivals to this coast of pleasure.

As W.T. passed by several faces in the crowds recognized him, and on these occasions the man or woman would glance at him sharply and move on hurriedly. These were society crooks – pick-pockets and confidence men, girl decoys and cardsharpers, come to the South from every corner of the Continent. They would work all along the coast, drifting from Mentone to Monte Carlo, from Monte Carlo to Cannes and Nice as the season progressed and their whims advised them.

W.T. was not looking forward to his task that morning; he stalked on towards the hotel with his face grave and his expression determined.

The Hôtel Magnifique stands at the far end of the road that runs round the bay – hardly five hundred yards from the Italian border. It is a huge, flat building facing the sea, a projecting wing at either end of the main block. In the courtyard thus formed
there is a garden, semi-tropical and very formal, but pleasant enough for a country in which there seem to be no birds in the trees and no freshness in the leaves.

As the detective turned into this garden he saw her.

Grace Christensen was a woman of the pretty, graceful, feminine type that is not too clever. Just now she was seated in the shadow of the banana tree outside the hotel porch. W.T. noticed a subtle change in her bearing since he had last seen her in Paris. She was paler, and although her attention was fixed upon the paper on her knee and he could not see her eyes, the detective knew by the way her fingers tore nervously at the gloves in her lap that she was afraid.

‘Mrs Christensen,' he said.

At the sound of his voice a little stifled scream escaped the woman, and she looked up at him, every tinge of colour vanishing from her face.

The detective was astonished. Either Mrs Christensen had been a marvellous actress in Paris and was now taken completely by surprise, or in Paris she had thought herself safe and now had reason to believe that her guilt had been discovered. In W.T.'s private opinion most women, while being strictly moral according to their own codes, very often had no sense of the law at all.

‘Mr Challoner?' she said, and her voice wavered. ‘Why have you come here?'

‘Suppose we walk down there,' he suggested, indicating the hill road into Italy. ‘I want to talk to you.'

The woman rose to her feet, and stood hesitating, her face ashy and her slender body swaying a little.

‘I – I don't think I can walk,' she said at last, ‘but we have a sitting-room here – Norah is out – we shouldn't be disturbed.'

W.T. followed her into the great dim hotel that was so oddly reminiscent of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and within five minutes found himself seated opposite her in the pink-and-gold monstrosity of a lounge in suite No. 9.

In that five minutes she seemed to have become old. Lines had appeared round her mouth and under her wide, deep-blue eyes. The woman was the first to speak.

‘Well?' she said softly. ‘Tell me, why have you come?' There was a certain determined bravery in her tone.

‘I want to talk to you,' he said cautiously. ‘There are certain things about Eric Crowther that I want to know.'

The woman shot a terrified glance at him.

‘I told you all I knew on the day he died,' she said.

W.T. shook his head.

‘Let us be honest with each other,' he said. ‘The situation is difficult, and – '

‘Oh, it
is
!' The words seemed to be wrung from her heart, and he paused and looked at her in surprise. Neither the words nor her tone seemed to suggest guilt. There was fear there certainly, but not admission. ‘I – I'm sorry; I ought not to have interrupted you,' she went on. ‘I will tell you all I know.'

‘Everything?' The detective looked at her keenly as he spoke. ‘I assure you it will be the best thing you can do, the more one knows the more fairly one can judge.'

The woman nodded.

‘I will tell you everything,' she repeated.

‘Good,' said the detective. ‘Then suppose we start at the beginning. Who was Jack Grey?'

W.T.'s tone was casual, but had he bellowed the name loud enough for all the world to hear the effect upon the woman could not have been more extraordinary. She sprang from her chair and shrank away from him, her face frozen into a mask in which only the eyes seemed to be alive.

‘Oh, my God! – my God!' she whispered.

‘Tell me,' he said, ‘nothing matters now but the truth.'

‘Oh, again –
again!'
The words broke from the girl in an agony of weariness. ‘I thought that was over for ever. Must I have it again – always, always that? Is there never any peace?'

W.T. leant forward, his face grave and his eyes troubled.

‘Can't you explain all this, Mrs Christensen? Don't you see if you don't speak I must draw my own conclusions from the words you let fall, and I may so easily be wrong.'

‘Mr Challoner,' she said, ‘you – you detectives can – can keep things secret if you want to, can't you? I – I mean,' she went on
hurriedly, ‘if a thing that happened a long time ago wasn't anything to do really with – with the crime you were investigating, it wouldn't all have to come out, would it? – not if it wouldn't help and would just spoil people's lives –
young
lives?'

W.T. stared at her, his mind busy knitting together the loose threads she had given him, and suddenly the truth dawned upon him.

‘Mrs Christensen,' he said, ‘your child – is not your husband's. Jack Grey was …'

‘My lover.' The two words broke from the woman in a whisper, and she bowed her head over her hands.

W.T. sat silent, the situation becoming more and more clear to him at every moment.

‘I see,' he said.

‘Your husband does not know?'

She shook her head. ‘No –
must
he know now? Must it all come out at last?' She was becoming hysterical again, and the old man spoke reassuringly.

‘I will do everything in my power to prevent it,' he said. ‘If you tell me everything I feel sure that that can be arranged.'

‘You promise?'

‘I promise.'

The woman fixed her eyes on his face.

‘It was wrong but it was understandable,' she began softly, ‘and if it hadn't been for that fiend Crowther no one would ever have known. You – you see, Jack and I were sweethearts from childhood – we lived near each other, and when we grew up we fell in love …' She paused, and in at the windows the heat-laden breeze brought the laughter and perfume of the fashionable throng without.

‘His father died just after he left school,' she went on. ‘The old man was an eccentric, a great student of the brain, and he admired Crowther's work – he was wonderfully clever, you know. Old Professor Grey had no one to appoint as guardian over Jack, and when he knew he was dying he wrote to Crowther and asked him as a fellow-scientist if he would undertake the charge. To everyone's astonishment Crowther said he would.'

Again she was silent, and W.T. nodded encouragingly.

‘Crowther opposed our marriage from the start,' she went on, her voice very small and ineffably sad in the sunlit room. ‘We were so much in love and so very young. We were very helpless too. Before the war parents and guardians had more power than they have today.' She sighed, and the detective wondered that she could find this so real and so sad when there was a noose hanging over her head; the murder was an unimportant factor in her mind.

‘So he parted us,' she said suddenly. ‘He was a curious man, Mr Challoner. He seemed – seemed to enjoy doing it, as if he knew how he was hurting us, and liked doing it.'

BOOK: The White Cottage Mystery
13.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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