Vanishing Point (4 page)

Chief Inspector Lamb sat back in his office chair and allowed his frowning gaze to rest for so long upon Detective Inspector Frank Abbott that that promising young officer began to wonder which of the crimes regarded by his Chief with particular disfavour he had committed this time. Whichever it was, the appropriate homily would undoubtedly be forthcoming. Since he knew them all by heart, from Thinking oneself Better than one’s Superiors, Entertaining a quite False Impression that one’s Opinion had been Sought or was Desired, through a long list to, last and not by any means least, the Using of Foreign Words where Plain English ought to be Enough for Anyone, he awaited the breaking of the storm with resignation, and was surprised that it should be still delayed.

Lamb glowered. His big face was florid. The heavy thatch of black hair, irrepressibly determined to curl on the temples, showed only the slightest tendency to become thinner at the crown. His prominent brown eyes were fixed in an unwavering stare upon Frank’s tall elegance. The cut of his clothes, the harmony of socks, tie, and handkerchief, the shining perfection of the shoes, might individually or collectively provide the theme of a discourse. But it was not until a respectful “Yes, sir?” had been interjected that the Chief Inspector broke this menacing silence. On a deep growling note he produced these unexpected words,

“Didn’t you send me a picture-postcard from a place called Melbury sometime or other?”

Reflecting that it was rather long after the event for this to be brought up as a breach of discipline, and that to the best of his recollection the card itself had merely carried a photograph of the new Melbury housing estate, Frank replied,

“It would have been about this time last year. I had a weekend, and ran down to see a cousin.”

Lamb nodded, still frowning.

“Don’t know why you sent me the card.”

“People you mentioned—-friends of one of your daughters who were moving to Melbury—I thought they might be interested in the housing estate.”

Lamb grunted. He and Mrs. Lamb had had a trying time last year with their daughter Violet. Why she couldn’t take a decent young fellow and marry him and have done with it, he didn’t know. This time it had been one of those long-haired cranks who want to do away with the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Police, and then everything would be quite convenient for everybody. The fellow had some sort of job at Melbury, and Violet had actually got to the point of saying she wanted to marry him. But thank goodness it was all over now, and she was going out with the son of one of their chapel members, a very steady young man, and with good prospects in his father’s business, which was wholesale groceries. Not desiring to enter upon these details, he cleared his throat and said in a dogmatic manner,

“Quite so, quite so. Melbury—exactly—about this time last year.”

“Yes, sir?”

Lamb leaned forward and picked up a pencil. He wrote the word Melbury upon a piece of paper, and then said in a slow and meditative manner,

“You were staying with cousins. What about staying with them again?”

One of Frank’s pale eyebrows rose.

“Oh, I don’t know them all that well,” he said. “They asked me down, and I went.” There was a faint gleam of humour in his eyes. “I have rather a lot of cousins.”

Lamb said heartily,

“A good thing family feeling. Pity there isn’t more of it these days. Plenty of people don’t know who their own greatgrandfather was.”

Inspector Abbott smoothed back the very fair hair which was already beyond criticism.

“My great-grandfather had twenty-seven children,” he remarked negligently. “One or two of his brothers and nephews also helped to keep up the average, which is why I can find a cousin in most places if I’m put to it. Sometimes it’s convenient.”

Lamb began to tear up the paper upon which he had written the word Melbury.

“Well, I was thinking of that,” he said. “And I was wondering how it would be if you were to look up these Melbury cousins of yours again.” He dropped the torn-up bits into a large waste-paper basket.

It was borne in upon a young man with an irreverent turn of humour that his respected Chief was giving an exhibition of tact. He was reminded of Dr. Johnson’s reply when invited by Boswell to give his opinion on the subject of a woman’s preaching. “Sir, it is like a dog walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.” He said in a respectful manner,

“Very good of you, sir, but I hardly think—”

The Chief Inspector made the sound which may be written “Tchah!” and came into the open.

“As a matter of fact I wouldn’t mind having someone down in the neighbourhood without making an official matter of it. The whole thing may be a mare’s nest, or it may not, and whether it is or whether it isn’t is not properly our pigeon. But I had better begin at the beginning.”

Frank Abbott murmured that it might be as well. He continued to prop the mantelpiece.

Lamb pulled some notes out of a drawer, slapped them down on the desk in front of him, and looked up to ask a question.

“These cousins of yours—do they live right in Melbury?”

“I’m afraid not, sir. Did you want them to? They’re a mile or two out, on the Hazel Green side.”

Lamb nodded.

“You know Hazel Green?”

“I’ve passed through it. I was only down there for a weekend.”

“Well, not so long after you were there a woman called Maggie Bell disappeared from the village. She went out one night for a breath of air and never came back again. About a week later there were two cards with a London postmark… Yes—let me see—Paddington. One was to her employer and said, ‘Away temporary. M.B.’ And the other to her parents, ‘Coming back as soon as I can. Florrie will come in. Don’t worry. Maggie.’ The employer is a Miss Cunningham. Maggie worked there daily. The other members of the household are an elderly invalidish brother, Henry Cunningham, and a young chap, Nicholas Cunningham, who is a nephew. Now about half a mile out of Hazel Green and off the main road you have Dalling Grange which was taken over by the Air Ministry during the war and has been retained by them for experimental purposes. Nicholas Cunningham works there. The experiments are top secret, and the Security chaps get jumpy if anything happens within a hundred miles of the place. They got jumpy over Maggie Bell. She was forty years old and no looker. No one had ever seen her with a man. I know that’s what the friends and relations always say, but in this case it really seems to have been true. After those two postcards there has never been anything more, and she has never been traced.”

“What about the postcards—were they genuine?”

“I don’t know. The parents didn’t question them, nor did Miss Cunningham. Maggie was always at home, and the only specimen of her handwriting available was the signature on her identity card. The handwriting people wouldn’t commit themselves one way or the other. The fact is, she wrote a horrid scrawl, and the pen used on the identity card must have been just about through.”

“And where do we come in?”

“We don’t, properly speaking. We’re being dragged in—the Paddington postmarks—and if you ask me, a lot of fuss about nothing. To my mind the woman must have met with some accident. She had old parents, she was a good daughter, and she was the breadwinner. She wouldn’t have gone off and left the father and mother to fend for themselves. The question is, what took her to London and kept her there for a week? If the postcards are genuine, it wants explaining. And if they are not, then everybody would like to know who wrote them, and why.”

Frank Abbott said,

“A bit late in the day, isn’t it, sir? What exactly is the point of my going down to Melbury now?”

Lamb frowned heavily.

“The fact is, there’s been a leakage of information. We’re being asked to co-operate. We shouldn’t send anyone down there officially, but it was agreed that it might not be a bad plan if you were to take a spot of leave and pay a private visit to the neighbourhood. There seems to be an idea that it mightn’t be a bad plan to sift over the local gossip.” He cleared his throat and added, “On the social side, as it were.”

Frank Abbott straightened himself. A respectful and attentive expression gave way to an irrepressible gleam of humour as he murmured,

“What you really want is Miss Silver.”

The Chief Inspector’s colour deepened, his brows drew together. But there was no explosion. Instead, with merely the hint of a growl in his voice, he observed that it mightn’t be a bad thing. “One of those cases where I don’t say she wouldn’t be useful. The fact is, people like talking, but they don’t like talking to the police. That’s where Miss Silver comes in. The only thing that stops people talking is being afraid. Well, no one’s afraid of Miss Silver. She’s a good mixer—makes people feel she likes them—sits there with her knitting and makes herself pleasant. And mind you, it isn’t put on either. It wouldn’t go down like it does if it was. She likes people and she takes an interest in them, and they fairly tumble over themselves to tell her things. Whereas if it was you or one of the locals coming in with a notebook, you’d have them stiffening up and putting everything away under lock and key. There’s a lot goes on in a village that doesn’t get talked about—not to outsiders. It gets known all right, and it gets whispered from one to another, but it doesn’t get as far as the police, and if they come in and ask questions there isn’t anybody knows a thing. I grew up in a village and I know. They’ve changed a lot since I was a boy— motor buses, and cinemas, and the wireless, and the young people going away to the towns—but they haven’t changed all that underneath. You go and have a talk with Miss Silver and see if she hasn’t got some old crony she could run down and visit in the Melbury direction. Mind, it’s got to look accidental, or it won’t be any good. The fact is, everyone wants this job finished off good and quick. If there’s anything going on down there, they want to know what it is. And if there isn’t anything going on, they want to be sure that there isn’t before people get up asking questions in the House.”

Miss Silver was dispensing coffee in the flowered set which had been the Christmas present of a grateful client. The cups had a blue and gold border and little gay bunches of flowers, the saucers a similar border and an occasional scattered bloom. Frank Abbott, having duly admired them, enjoyed his coffee and awaited the moment to do this errand. Not in the house of any one of his numerous relations did he feel more at home than in Miss Maud Silver’s flat, with its rather bright peacock-blue curtains, its carpet in the same shade adorned by floral wreaths, its workmanlike desk, and the Victorian chairs with their frames of bright carved walnut and the upholstery which matched the curtains. The pictures looking down upon the scene were all old friends—reproductions of The Soul’s Awakening, The Stag at Bay, Hope, and The Black Brunswicker. Miss Silver herself, with her neatly netted fringe, her beaded shoes, the large gold locket which exhibited her parents’ initials in high relief and contained locks of their hair, might have stepped out of any family album before the twentieth century wars had shattered a Victorian and Edwardian world. In appearance, in manner, and tradition she was miraculously a survival. Even her dress, though lacking the sweeping folds of those earlier days, contrived to produce its own effect of being permanently out of date. The little net vest with its high boned collar suggested the nineties, and the stamp of the small dressmaker—“Ladies’ own materials made up”— provided every garment she wore with a family likeness to all those other garments fashioned laboriously in villages and back streets before the days when a gentlewoman could purchase or wear a ready-made dress.

Frank Abbott found amidst these surroundings a sense of security which he could not put into words. It was with reluctance that he set down his coffee-cup and returned to the world of crime.

“You do not happen to know anyone in Melbury, I suppose? Or do you?”

Miss Silver put her own cup down upon the coffee-tray before she replied. She had at times a way of contemplating a new subject with the kind of bright attention with which a bird may be seen to regard a problematical worm. This was one of those times. Frank received the very decided impression that Melbury was a worm, and that she was so regarding it. She repeated the name on a slight note of enquiry.

“Melbury?”

He nodded.

“Do you know anyone there?”

“Not precisely in Melbury. But why do you ask?”

“The Chief would be glad if you did.”

“My dear Frank!”

“He wants someone to feel the social pulse, not so much in Melbury itself as in the neighbouring village of Hazel Green.”

Miss Silver said, “Dear me!”

This being her strongest expression of astonishment or concern, he was not surprised when she followed it with,

“This is really quite a coincidence.”

“Then you do know someone there?”

“I have an old schoolfellow in Hazel Green.”

“My dear Miss Silver!”

She lifted a flowered knitting-bag from the lower tier of the small table which supported the coffee-tray and, opening it, took out a pair of needles from which there depended a narrow strip of ribbing in an extremely pleasing shade. Little Josephine, her niece Ethel Burkett’s youngest child, was now approaching her sixth birthday. A twin set in this delightful cherry colour would be very becoming. It used to be the fashion to dress a fair child in nothing but blue, but in this matter she applauded the modern trend. As she pulled on the cherry-coloured ball and began to knit she amplified her previous remark.

“I had really quite lost sight of Marian. It is not always possible to keep up with one’s schoolfellows, and during my early days in the scholastic profession, I was very fully occupied, but as recently as last year I came across her again at the house of another old school friend, Cecilia Voycey. She had invited her to stay, and thought it would be pleasant to have a little reunion. Melling is not very far from Melbury, and I really was extremely pleased to see Marian again, though rather sadly changed. She married into an old county family. They owned what was quite a show place but successive death duties crippled the property, and during the war it was taken over by the government.”

Frank Abbott cocked an eyebrow and said,

“Not Dalling Grange?”

“That, I believe, is the name. The Merridews had been there for a long time, and it seems a pity. Marian is now a childless widow, and I think it is a relief to her to have a small manageable house and fewer responsibilities.”

“Could you go and stay with her?”

“She has invited me to do so.”

“Then listen.”

As he unfolded the tale of Maggie Bell, with its possible ramifications into the experiments now being carried on at Dalling Grange and the Air Ministry’s perturbation on the score of possible leakages of information, Miss Silver continued to knit. When he had finished she said gravely,

“There seems to be very little to go upon.”

Frank threw out a hand.

“Practically nothing. They appear to think there has been some leakage, but I don’t believe they are sure. It’s not unknown for two people to hit on the same idea in different countries and at about the same time, and if there is, or has been, a leakage, what is there to connect it with the disappearance of Maggie Bell? I don’t quite see what we are expected to do about it anyhow. The disappearance took place a year ago. We haven’t been told very much about the leakage, but I gather it is a good deal more recent. The fact remains that there is a pretty considerable flap going on, and it wouldn’t do any particular harm if you were to pay this visit to your friend Mrs. Merridew.”

She knitted in silence for some moments, and then began to ask questions.

“Maggie worked for this Miss Cunningham?”

“For four hours every morning—eight to twelve.”

“And the nephew, Nicholas Cunningham, is employed on research work at Dalling Grange?”

“Exactly.”

“And the other inmate of the house, Mr. Henry Cunningham—what does he do?”

“He is engaged upon a book dealing with the local moths and butterflies.”

“Has he ever published anything?”

“Not that I know of. One of these dawdling dilettante kind of chaps, I should think, with enough of a hobby to give him an excuse for being idle.”

“He has been living there with his sister for how long?”

“For the last three years. The Security people have been over his whole dossier, and it all sounds harmless enough. A bit of a rolling stone, but nothing against him. During the war he was in a Japanese prison camp, and his family had given him up for dead. Then one day he walked in, and has been there ever since. Naturally he has been suspect number one, but none of the ends tie up. On the face of it he is just an elderly drifter, not in very good health and glad to come home and slip back into his place in the family. Well, what am I to say to the Chief? I’m being sent down myself to stay with a cousin. He’s got a job as architect on the new Melbury housing estate. Are you going to come down and hold my hand?”

Miss Silver knitted to the end of her row. Then she said,

“I will write to Marian Merridew tonight.”