Vanishing Point (9 page)

The tea-party broke up rather early. Rosamond was uneasy about Jenny, and Lucy Cunningham about Mrs. Parsons’s cat.

“I did ask Henry to keep an eye on the garden, but you know what men are, they become immersed. And cats are so determined. If it wants to sharpen its claws on that particular tree it will persevere.”

“Well, I don’t see how you are going to stop it, my dear.”

“A squirtful of water,” said Miss Cunningham firmly. “If I get back now there will be just enough light.”

When they had gone Mrs. Merridew allowed herself a little indignation.

“I can’t imagine why Lucy should expect the Parsons’s cat to be sitting there waiting for her to come home and fill a squirt. It seems ridiculous to me, and I very nearly told her so. Dear me—who on earth can this be!”

She had been looking in the direction of the window to watch Miss Lucy go. She now saw a tall, elegant young man come up the flagged path and disappear behind the jasmine on the porch. Miss Silver had a premonition. She was therefore not really surprised when Florrie looked round the edge of the door, a habit of which Mrs. Merridew had tried in vain to break her, and announced that Mr. Abbott had called to see Miss Silver— “and I put him in the dining-room.” Had Frank but known it, this was an almost unexampled tribute. If Florrie knew anyone she showed him in. If she didn’t she left him standing in the hall, or in an extreme case upon the doorstep. Mrs. Merridew had laboured in vain. In this, as in a good many other directions, Florrie took her own way.

Miss Silver picked up her knitting-bag and made haste to forestall the invitation which she saw rising to Mrs. Merridew’s lips.

“An old friend who, I believe, may have called on a matter of business. You will not mind if I see him in the dining-room, Marian?”

Mrs. Merridew was disappointed. She would have liked to meet her schoolfellow’s old friend. She said so as Miss Silver withdrew, but she was not at all sure that her remark had been heard. The door closed, and she was left to wonder what the old friend’s business could be.

In the dining-room Miss Silver took a chair. When Frank Abbott had also seated himself she said,

“I must not stay too long, or my kind hostess will feel hurt. If you can spare the time before you go, I should like to introduce you. I did not really like to neglect her offer to bring you into the drawing-room, but in the light of recent developments it occurred to me that you might wish to see me privately.”

He nodded.

“Yes, of course. I take it you are well up to date in the matter of this latest disappearance. Well, it is fairly fluttering the official dovecotes. You see, it may be important, or it may be nothing at all. They don’t like to neglect the first possibility, but they don’t want to make fools of themselves by treating it as a matter of urgency, and then find out that the lady has just gone off on a jaunt.”

“No one in Hazel Green believes in that as a possibility.”

He laughed.

“Of course they don’t! Trust a village to make up its mind to the worst! No one will actually say so, but there will be the deepest disappointment if it turns out that she has been week-ending with the odd friend or relation.”

Miss Silver looked grave.

“She has lived here for a good many years, and no one knows of any such relation or friend. But you were saying?”

“So I was. Delicate situation of the high-ups. And when the high-ups are in a delicate situation the low-downs don’t always know exactly where they are. And that goes for you and me. In the upshot, I continue my visit, and you continue yours. You, in fact, are just where you were, and you keep your eyes and your ears open and pass on anything that comes your way. I am rather more complicated than that. Scotland Yard has been asked to allow me to remain, but I’ve been given a strong hint to be as unobtrusive as I can. Just in case it all turns out to be nothing, when nobody will want to look as if they had picked up a sledgehammer to take a swipe at a midge.”

Miss Silver had opened her knitting-bag. She produced little Josephine’s cherry-coloured hood, now more than half completed. The bright wool made a pleasant contrast with the dark blue of her dress. She said,

“I understand perfectly. The whole affair calls for discretion.”

“You’ve said it! And that being that, what have you got to tell me?”

The grey needles clicked.

“Not very much, I am afraid, and probably nothing that you do not already know. I am, of course, fortunately placed here, as Mrs. Merridew knows everyone in the neighbourhood and her daily maid is a cousin of Maggie Bell who disappeared from Hazel Green a year ago. She is, in fact, the Florrie mentioned on the card received by Mr. and Mrs. Bell after Maggie’s disappearance and supposed to have been written by her.”

“Supposed?”

“Florrie says that Maggie always wrote both their names with a Y, whereas on the card the spelling is IE.”

“I thought there were no specimens of Maggie’s handwriting-”

“Maggie and Florrie were at school together. She is quite positive that Maggie did not write that card.”

“Then why didn’t she say so? She didn’t—did she?”

“Oh, no. She is the type who would never tell anything to the police. And she said the card was being a comfort to Maggie’s parents and she couldn’t take it from them. They are dead now, but she only burst out about it in the shock of Miss Holiday’s disappearance.”

“It was a shock to her?”

“A very considerable one.”

“Well, that’s that. What else?”

She was knitting rapidly, her expression serious and intent. It was a moment before she said,

“There are two households here intimately connected with one another and with the two women who have disappeared. The Cunninghams live in the Dower House, just out of the village, and next door to them in Crewe House there is Miss Lydia Crewe. Both these ladies are old friends of Mrs. Merridew’s, and I have met them here at tea. Maggie Bell worked for the Cunninghams. The household consists of Miss Lucy, who is in her middle fifties, a brother Henry, and her nephew Nicholas, employed as a draughtsman at the Dalling Grange experimental station. Miss Crewe is, or was, Miss Holiday’s employer. She is on terms of old and intimate friendship with Miss Cunningham, whom she is said to dominate. More than twenty years ago there was an engagement between her and Miss Cunningham’s brother Henry. Following on the unsubstantiated suspicion that he had been concerned in the disappearance of a valuable diamond ring, Henry Cunningham left the country. I have not been able to discover what foundation there was for this rumour. The lady who owned the ring has long since left the neighbourhood. She was a Mrs. Maberly, the wife of a rich self-made man, and notoriously careless about her belongings, but Henry Cunningham seems to have taken the gossip very much to heart. In fact, my dear Frank, he ran away from it, and from his engagement to Lydia Crewe. He returned about three years ago, and lives in a very retired manner, occupying himself with bird-watching and nature study. Most of this you will know already, but you may not be aware of the persistent and painful breach between him and Miss Crewe. Only yesterday they met just outside this house as she arrived to have tea with Mrs. Merridew, and according to what I am told is her invariable practice she cut him dead. In spite of which her intimate friendship with his sister continues. Nicholas Cunningham is also a constant visitor at Crewe House, and she is said to be devoted to him. Her household consists of herself, her nieces Rosamond and Jenny Maxwell, the latter a child of twelve and recovering from a serious motor accident sustained a couple of years ago, and the cook, Mrs. Bolder, an old trusted servant with a rather celebrated temper. Miss Holiday and a girl called Ivy Blane are daily helps, but Ivy does not go there on Sundays.”

“Do you mean that Miss Holiday does?”

“Yes. As I told you, she has neither friends nor relations, and I gather that the midday meal is an attraction. She has just the one room at Mrs. Maple’s, and she is no cook.”

Frank laughed.

“I’ve been hearing about Mrs. Maple. I gather she routed Denning horse and foot. I want you to come round there with me if you will by and by. At present all we know is that the cook at Crewe House says Miss Holiday left at about half past five, and we don’t know whether she ever got home or not, because Mrs. Maple can’t be induced to tell us. Which leaves Mrs. Bolder the last person to see her. In other words, we don’t know for certain that she ever left Crewe House.”

Miss Silver stopped him.

“Oh, yes,” she said—“Miss Cunningham met her.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because she mentioned it when she was here at tea this afternoon. Mrs. Merridew was wondering whether there had been any quarrel between Miss Holiday and the cook, and Miss Cunningham said, ‘Oh, she looked all right when I met her’. She was apparently on her way up to Crewe House, when she encountered Miss Holiday coming away. They met at the foot of the drive. I asked Miss Cunningham whether she had spoken to her, and she spilt her tea. I do not wish to stress this incident, because I believe it may have been quite accidental. Miss Cunningham is a large, untidy person. Her movements are very often jerky. She appears to be very good-natured.”

“But she spilt her tea.”

“Yes, she spilt her tea. And when I recurred to the subject of Miss Holiday and again asked whether she had spoken to her, she looked vague and said in an absent-minded sort of way, ‘Oh, just a few words’.”

Mrs. Maple sat and looked at her visitor. Naturally, she knew Miss Silver by sight—visiting Mrs. Merridew at the White Cottage, and an old school friend. Florrie Hunt spoke well of her, and it wasn’t everybody that got the soft side of Florrie’s tongue. But the gentleman with her—well, he was a bit of a puzzler. A gentleman he was and you couldn’t get from it, and none of those nasty uniforms. But if he hadn’t got something to do with the police, why was he here and wanting to know about Miss Holiday? For the matter of that, why was Mrs. Merridew’s friend here either? Questions they wanted answered. Nice clear voices they’d got—took the trouble to open their mouths and speak plain so that you could hear what they said. But she hadn’t properly made up her mind whether she’d let on that she’d heard them or not. Perhaps she would, and perhaps she wouldn’t—she was in two minds about it. She was getting a little tired of being out of whatever it was that was going on, but on the other hand she wasn’t going to make herself cheap by talking to constables and such.

She was a very clean, tidy old woman with a round face, blue eyes, and an obstinate chin. Her white hair was done up in a great many tight plaits at the back of her head, and she wore a black stuff dress and a hand-knitted purple cardigan. No one could have found a speck of dust anywhere in the house. She gazed mildly at Miss Silver and said,

“I’m hard of hearing.”

Miss Silver made the comment that it was a sad affliction, and Mrs. Maple found that she could hear her comfortably. Approving the sentiment, she made up her mind to oblige. She folded her hands in her lap and said graciously,

“I don’t rightly know what it’s all about. There’s people that come in and you can’t hear a word they say—nothing but mumble, mumble, mumble. And most upsetting it is, for what you don’t hear you can’t answer, but so far as I can I’m sure I’m more than willing if there’s anything the gentleman wants to ask me—or you, ma’am.”

Frank leaned towards her.

“That is very good of you, Mrs. Maple. We just want to know whether Miss Holiday came home at all last night.”

Mrs. Maple shook her head.

“Seven o’clock I woke up same as I always do, and downstairs to get myself a cup of tea. There was a lady I lived with put me in the way of it, and Miss Holiday she likes one too, so I come down, and as a rule she won’t be long. As soon as she hears me she’ll slip into her dressing-gown and be after me for her cup of tea. Then back she’ll go upstairs and into her clothes and off up to Crewe House where she gets her breakfast. Mrs. Bolder’s a good hand with hens, and there’ll be an egg most days this time of the year. I’ll say that for Mrs. Bolder, a temper she may have and there’s no denying it, but she don’t grudge anyone their food. Very good meals they have up at Crewe House and Miss Holiday couldn’t say different.”

“But this morning she did not come down for her cup of tea?” said Miss Silver.

Mrs. Maple shook her head.

“Not a sign of her. So I called up the stairs, and when I’d called three times I went up, and there was her room with nobody in it and the bed not slept in.”

Frank Abbott said,

“You don’t think she could have got up and gone out early? If she had done that she would have made her bed before she went, wouldn’t she? Are you quite sure she didn’t go out?”

Mrs. Maple produced a slight air of triumph.

“With both of the doors locked and all the windows latched!” she said.

“I see. Then it comes to this—the last you saw of Miss Holiday was when she went off to Crewe House yesterday morning?”

Mrs. Maple tossed her head.

“Time enough to say what it comes to when you’ve heard me say it!”

Frank smiled in an agreeable manner.

“Well, when did you see her last?”

Mrs. Maple was enjoying herself. There wasn’t anyone could tell them what they wanted to know except her, and she wasn’t going to be in too much of a hurry. If you made things too easy for people they didn’t think any the better of you for it. She retreated into being rather deafer than she need have been.

“Ten years past she’s been lodging here,” she said, “and never gone over her time.”

“Yes, but when did you see her last, Mrs. Maple?”

She decided that perhaps she had better hear him. She shook her head in a melancholy way.

“Ah, now, if you’d said that to start with. I’m sure I’m not one to keep anything back—far from it. Now let me see—she come in a quarter to six by the church clock, but I didn’t speak to her then—not to say speak.”

“That is what we wanted to know—whether she came back here after leaving Crewe House.”

“Oh, yes, she come back all right.”

“You are sure about that?”

Mrs. Maple drew herself up in an offended manner.

“I may be hard of hearing, but I’ve the use of my eyes, sir.”

Miss Silver judged it prudent to interpose.

“And you saw Miss Holiday come into the house at a quarter to six?”

“With my own eyes,” said Mrs. Maple. “And up the stairs to her room.”

“Would there be anything out of the usual about that?”

Mrs. Maple couldn’t say that there would, adding that Miss Holiday wasn’t the chattering kind, which she didn’t hold with herself and wouldn’t have kept her ten years if she had been.

“And when did she go out again?” said Frank Abbott.

“Well now—” She considered, her plump form upright, her head a little on one side. “Just after seven it would have been, because I’d heard the church clock strike the hour.”

“Then you can hear the clock strike all right?”

“Seeing it’s just about overhead, so I ought! Deaf as a post I’d have to be before I couldn’t hear that! When she first come here Miss Holiday used to complain about it, but I told her she’d get used to it, and she did.”

Frank maintained his agreeable smile. If he tried to push her he would get nothing.

“So she went out again at seven. Did she say where she was going?”

It is possible that Mrs. Maple discerned the impatience which he was at so much pains to hide. She produced a clean pocket-handkerchief and leaned her nose against it in a meditative manner.

“She wouldn’t go out without letting me know,” she said.

“Where was she going, Mrs. Maple?”

This time she gave him his answer.

“Oh, just down the road to see Mrs. Selby.”

Miss Silver said in her ordinary voice,

“They live just at the end of the lane. He is a retired business man, and they keep hens. Florrie tells me that Miss Holiday would sometimes go in to keep Mrs. Selby company in the evening while Mr. Selby was at the Holly Tree.”

It appeared that Mrs. Maple had been perfectly able to follow this speech. She said,

“That’s right. Miss Holiday’s a bit soft about men—don’t hold with them and wouldn’t go down to the Selbys only when Mr. Selby was out of the way.”

“She was afraid of him?”

Mrs. Maple looked superior.

“Not of him special—it was just men she didn’t hold with. Nobody couldn’t be afraid of Mr. Selby. Sweets for the children, and a laugh and a joke for everyone. Why, in most houses where there was a gentleman Miss Holiday wouldn’t go into them at all, but she’d go down to Mrs. Selby’s when she knew Mr. Selby would be out.”

“And she could count on that—Sundays and all?”

Mrs. Maple nodded.

“Till closing time—regular as clockwork.”

Frank Abbott took up his questioning again.

“So Miss Holiday went out to see Mrs. Selby soon after seven o’clock. What time would you ordinarily expect her back?”

“Nine o’clock. Not often she’d be later than that. Come nine o’clock I’m in my bed, and she knows it.”

“And if she should be any later, would you sit up for her?”

“Not for her nor for no one,” said Mrs. Maple in an obstinate voice. “I’ve got to have my rest. Nine o’clock I’m in my bed and I won’t go from it.”

“Then if she came back after nine?”

“She’d find the key under the mat same as I put it when she goes in to Melbury for the pictures.”

“And where was the key this morning, Mrs. Maple?”

She said in a voice with a sudden quaver in it,

“Under the mat—same as I put it when I went upstairs.”

“So she didn’t come in?”

Mrs. Maple had recovered herself. She didn’t know why she had had that moment when everything seemed to shake. She was all right again now. She said,

“Stands to reason she didn’t—not if the key was under the mat.”