Chapter Six

[Admin]

(1)

“BUT the whole thing is utterly inconceivable, Eddie,” said Anne.

Colonel Farrington had gone upstairs to see Anne after he had left Macdonald in the kitchen with Madge. He had told Anne what Macdonald had said about insulin being the cause of death, and Anne looked horrified and bewildered.

“Now don’t get upset, Anne,” begged the Colonel. “There must be an explanation, and it’s due to Baring that every inquiry should be made. You’ll like this C.I.D. man. He’s a very quiet, courteous fellow; he listens attentively and doesn’t interrupt. Quite unlike the average official of today. This chap---on my soul, he’d have made a fine officer in the Army, and I can’t say more than that. All he wants is a plain statement of fact. He’ll see his way through it, you take it from me. Clearheaded and thoughtful, and very considerate, too. So you’ve nothing to worry about, my dear. I just thought I’d let you know he was in the house. Is Paula up, do you know? He may want to see her, too. She went in to see Muriel just before Baring came. Better let Macdonald have all the details. Wiser and more dignified to meet him halfway.”

After the Colonel had left her, Anne went into her bedroom and glanced at herself in the mirror. Her reflection horrified her, for a pallid face and shadowed eyes looked back at her from the glass. She put some rouge on her cheeks, chose a discreet lipstick, and added a dark line to her arched eyebrows, conscious all the time that she felt sick and cold. It was all very well for the Colonel to take things so calmly. He had said, “There must be an explanation.” But did the police always get the right explanation? It seemed a long time before she heard voices on the stairs which heralded the arrival of Colonel Farrington and the C.I.D. man. The Colonel knocked, as he always did, and waited for her to answer before he came in.

“This is Chief Inspector Macdonald, my dear. My daughter-in-law, Mrs. Strange, Chief Inspector. Her husband is my stepson, but we claim to be ‘in-laws’ all the same.”

The tall C.I.D. man bowed to Anne formally, and she murmured, “How do you do,” as the Colonel said, “Now I’ll leave you to it. The Chief Inspector was good enough to say I gave my evidence clearly. I know he’ll say the same of you.”

Having sat down, Anne turned to Macdonald and waited for him to speak.

“I asked Colonel Farrington and his daughter to tell me the events of Monday,” began Macdonald. “They were both excellent witnesses and gave me a very clear idea of the circumstances preceding Mrs. Farrington’s death. I gather that you did not actually see her on Monday, but will you tell me in your own words if you can add anything to what the others have told me?”

“Very well,” said Anne. “I was out most of Monday. I went to lunch with a friend who was in the W.R.A.F. with me. I got back here about half-past three and went straight upstairs without seeing anybody. My father-in-law generally comes up here and has a drink with me about six o’clock. On Monday he only glanced in, just to tell me that Mrs. Farrington was unwell and had gone to bed. I asked him if there was anything I could do, and he said would I go down and see Madge in the kitchen sometime and tell her he wouldn’t be wanting any supper, as he was waiting for the doctor to come. I didn’t go down immediately, because my husband came in, but I did so about half-past six or a quarter to seven and then came back here to get our own supper. I have a kitchenette on this floor.”

“I see,” said Macdonald. “Did you meet any other member of the household on the stairs or in the hall?”

“I met Paula coming upstairs with her hands full of sherry glasses as I went down, and I saw Joyce in the hall as I came up from the kitchen. She had just come in, and I told her Mrs. Farrington was not well and would she try to prevent the twins making too much noise with their party. Joyce and Philip have the floor above this one, and the twins have the attics, but they do make a shocking lot of noise sometimes.”

“As is the way of the young,” said Macdonald, a half-smile on his grave face. “Do you remember what time the twins’ party arrived, and who admitted them?”

“The party came about eight, and Peter let them in with his own latchkey. They crept in very quietly---probably he was anxious not to be caught by the old folks---but by the time they got onto the landing above they had all got the giggles, and I heard Joyce go out and tell them to be quiet. My husband and I were alone up here until after the nine o’clock news, when Colonel Farrington came up and asked me if I would go and sit downstairs, as he wanted to go out for a breath of fresh air; he had been in the house all day. Of course I said I would go down at once and would sit with the drawing-room door open, so that I should hear if my mother-in-law rang her little bell.”

“Did Colonel Farrington tell you that he had given his wife a sleeping tablet?”

Anne hesitated before she replied. Macdonald had been aware from the moment he saw her that she was in a state of tension. She was certainly frightened, and she had not had Madge’s training. A nurse is trained to meet all emergencies with a calm face and steady hands, and five years’ training has a lasting effect. Anne was keeping still by a visible effort: her lips were dry and her pleasant conversational voice sounded forced. Yet to Macdonald’s mind it was Anne who had more poise as a rule, more social flair, more reason to be satisfied with herself than Madge, and self-satisfaction does give a certain sort of poise.

Anne reached out for a cigarette and lighted it before she replied: “Yes. He did. He said something about not liking dope; he’s very old-fashioned, you know. I took my knitting and went downstairs with him and told him not to hurry back. Then I went and made up the drawing-room fire, which had gone low, and sat with the door open.”

“How were you sitting---with your back to the door?”

“No. I sat with my feet up on the settee, sideways to the door, so that I could see into the hall. I was watching for Madge. You see, Madge is the only one of us who could really tell if Mrs. Farrington was ill or just fussing. She was very nervous of herself, you know, and was always heading for a crisis over her heart pains.”

“Yes. I understand about that. Did you see anybody pass through the hall?”

“Nobody at all. I was a bit worried because I could hear the twins’ wireless. They must have had it on very loud. But I knew that if Mrs. Farrington heard it she would ring her bell. Oh, the telephone rang once. The bell is in the hall, but the instrument is just by the settee in the drawing-room. I snatched the receiver off to stop the bell ringing.”

“Who was it calling?”

“A friend of Mrs. Farrington’s, one of those tiresome women who talks interminably. She wanted help with a Primrose League fête and poured out a flood of details which she apparently wanted me to write down. I did start making notes, and then I got impatient and rang off.”

“So that during the time you were telephoning you would not have noticed if anybody passed through the hall?”

“No. I suppose I shouldn’t.”

“Did you write down the number of the telephone caller?”

“No. I think she said her name was Jones, but it didn’t convey anything to me. After that I just sat and knitted until Eddie, Colonel Farrington, came in, soon after ten. He sat and talked to me for a few minutes, and then I went upstairs.”

“While you were talking to him was the drawing-room door open or shut?”

“I think it was shut. He closed it as he came in. I said, ‘It’s all right. She hasn’t rung for anything, so she must be asleep,’ and he said, ‘Good. Nothing like sleep for curing aches and pains.’ ”

“Can you remember if you and he were talking about anything in particular? That is to say, was it a conversation which absorbed your attention, or just trivialities?”

“Nothing very important. I was a bit sleepy. I think I said how much we should miss Madge if she did go to America. She’s been so good about running this house.”

“That I can well believe,” said Macdonald. “Wasn’t her father rather upset about the prospect of her going?”

“No. Not upset. He’s the most unselfish person in the world. He always wants all of us to do what is likely to make us happy, and he thought it would be very good for Madge to get away.”

“He struck me as an eminently kindly, unselfish man,” said Macdonald. “When does Miss Madge go to America?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her that yourself,” replied Anne. “I don’t think the date has been settled, but I may be mistaken.”

Macdonald waited for a second or two, his pause being quite deliberate. He was still trying to assess Anne and decide what it was that kept her nerves aquiver. The Chief Inspector found that the majority of persons he questioned were nervous or excited to start with, but when they found they were not being browbeaten or interrupted the nervousness generally wore off, as though the sound of their own voices and the expression of their own experiences had a calming effect. It was on this account that Macdonald generally encouraged his witnesses to tell their story in their own way. It gave him a better chance to study them and arrive at a rough-and-ready judgment of their characteristics.

Anne put out her cigarette and asked abruptly: “Is that all?”

“No,” replied Macdonald. “Colonel Farrington will have told you the cause of Mrs. Farrington’s death?”

“Yes.”

“His own theory, as you probably know, is that Dr. Baring injected insulin by mistake. For various reasons, that is in the highest degree improbable. Without going into technical reasons, it seems probable that Mrs. Farrington was murdered. It is my duty to ask you if you can tell me of anyone who, in your opinion, had any motive to wish for her death, or any grudge or enmity against her.”

“Of course not,” Anne retorted immediately. “The idea seems ridiculous to me. She was a very harmless old lady, a bit tiresome, perhaps, because she fussed a lot over her health, but she was what you would call a very nice woman: courteous and gracious, and devoted to her children.”

“You were fond of her?” queried Macdonald.

Anne frowned. “I find that question rather offensive,” she replied.

“I’m afraid that an inquiry into suspected murder is often offensive, Mrs. Strange,” replied Macdonald. “I asked you a very simple question. If a person has an affection for another, they can generally give some information about them which may be valuable.”

“I’m afraid I can’t give you much information about her. While I and my husband had many reasons to be grateful to her, I never got on to terms of intimacy with my mother-in-law. She was very set and limited in her outlook and we had very little in common. To put it simply, she rather bored me, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t respect her good qualities.”

“And you know of nobody who had any motive to wish her out of the way?”

“Nobody at all.”

“You would say that it is untrue that Mrs. Farrington had the ability to exasperate everybody in this house except her husband?”

Anne moved jerkily, restlessly. “Did Madge tell you that? If so, she ought to be ashamed of herself.”

“I didn’t say that anybody told me. I asked you if it were untrue.”

“In essentials, quite untrue. In a house like this there tend to be small irritations, but to exaggerate them at a time like this is unforgivable.”

“Thank you for answering my questions, Mrs. Strange. I am sorry that you found them painful, but if you think it over you will realise that an inquiry of this nature has to take precedence over people’s feelings. Only one thing matters, and that is to find the truth.”

Anne made no reply, and with a formal bow, Macdonald left her.

(2)

On the flight of stairs leading from Anne’s floor to the one above. Mrs. Pinks was busy brushing down the stair carpet. Seeing her thus occupied, Macdonald said: “You’ve got a tidy-sized job there. Do you do the whole lot from top to bottom at one go, or do a flight a day?”

“I do the whole blooming lot, seventy of ’em, bang off. Never did fancy doing jobs by ’alves. I always says if everyone did as they ought in this ’ouse, these stairs’d be done by them what uses them most: one flight Mrs. Tony, one flight Mrs. Philip, one flight the twins, leaving the basement to me. But if you knew the words they’d ’ad, and the complaints they makes, why, you wouldn’t believe it. Same with the bathrooms. Always someone else’s fault. I wouldn’t live in this ’ouse, not for any money.”

Mrs. Pinks stood up to let Macdonald pass, adding: “And if you’ve got a minute to spare some time, I’d like a word with you meself.”

“I’ve got plenty of time,” replied Macdonald. “It’s my job to listen to anybody who’s got a word to say.”

“Well, say if we pop up into the box room, along to the right on the next floor. Mrs. Philip’s gone out, and Miss Paula’s still in bed. Never met such a girl for stopping in bed. Gives me the fair fidgets.”

She led the way along the passage on the second floor to a little room which was used for storing suitcases and trunks, and having closed the door, she turned and faced Macdonald, her skinny arms folded across the bib of her apron.

“You’re a C.I.D. man?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“And you’re asking about things because you believe that someone bumped off old Mrs. F.?”

“I’m asking about things because old Mrs. Farrington did not die a natural death, and the doctors can’t give a burial certificate. Will you tell me your name and address and how long you’ve been employed here?”

“Mrs. Pinks---109a Culworth Buildings, N.W. I been here three years. Miss Madge engaged me. She heard of me from Mrs. Baines, wife of one of the painters they ’ad working ’ere. You’d better get this straight. I’d been in trouble, see. I worked in Polton’s, one o’ them chain stores. Me ’usband was sick and I couldn’t make do with four kids on the insurance money. I was run in for pinching---fruit and that. My Gert ’ad ’ad measles and me old man couldn’t eat the usual, and fruit was perishin’ dear. So I pinched them some grapes and that. Got bound over. I told Miss Madge the ’ole story and she said she’d risk it, and I worked for ’er three years. And if ever there’s a Christian, it’s Miss Madge. She’s been proper decent to me, and I’ll never forget it.”

“Well, I’m glad you told me all about that,” said Macdonald. “What’s the matter with your husband?”

“Diabetes.”

“I see,” said Macdonald. “Did Miss Madge tell you what caused her mother’s death?”

“Yes. That’s why I came to you. I want you to get this straight. She never done it, not Miss Madge. They’ll all try to put it on her. But she never done it.”

“Why do you say, ‘They’ll all try to put it on her’?”

“Because they will. You just wait. Not the Colonel. He won’t. He’s a gentleman, and he’s fond of Miss Madge. He understands ’er and ’e loves ’er. She’s ’is own child, and ’e knows ’er, same’s ’e knows hisself. I want to make you see what things is like here,” she burst out. “It’s only me can tell you. The others won’t.”

“It’s my job to know what things have been like here,” said Macdonald. “So go ahead. Tell me the truth as you’ve seen it. Don’t exaggerate, and don’t repeat what other people have said. Only what you’ve seen yourself.”

He sat down on the ledge of the window sill, and Mrs. Pinks seated herself on an old bedroom chair and began: “When they came back to this ’ouse after the war, Miss Madge ’ad been ill. That’s why she couldn’t go on wiv her nursing. At first it was only Colonel and Mrs. F. Then the twins came ’ome. Then Mr. and Mrs. Strange came. Then young Mr. and Mrs. Duncan, Mrs. Philip we calls ’er. And Miss Madge cooked for the lot of ’em, with me and Milly Pardon doing the ’ouse. Then Milly got married and left only me. Work? I tell you we fair slaved, and never a thank you from no one, only complaints about this, that, and the other. I don’t wonder Miss Madge said some bitter things. She’s got a tongue and she used it. You see, all them others, Joyce and Tony and Paula and Peter, they was Mrs. F.’s children. All tarred with the same brush. Selfish they is, the whole boiling of them. Won’t do a hand’s turn for no one. It was ‘Madge can do this and Madge should do that,’ from morning to night. And old Mrs. F. was the worst of the lot. She liked having them all together for meals---one big ’appy family she called ’em, I don’t think.”

“Do you mean that they quarrelled?” asked Macdonald.

“Bickered, backchat, and that,” said Mrs. Pinks. “The old lady played them off one against the other. First one’d be favourite, then another, but if anything was wrong, always blame Miss Madge. You know ’ow it is with some women when they gets old: they lives on the young, so to speak. Old Mrs. F., she liked ’aving ’em all together; she could keep tabs on ’em, everlasting asking questions an’ prying. Well, at last there’s a proper blow-up. Mrs. Strange say she must ’ave her own kitchenette and do ’er own meals, and then Mrs. Duncan says she’ll do ditto, and because they was both afraid of offending the old lady, they blames everything on to Miss Madge and says she’d been that disagreeable they couldn’t stand it no longer.”

Macdonald listened with lively interest to Mrs. Pinks’ vigorous cockney speech. Even allowing for the charwoman’s obvious devotion to Madge, she yet gave a good picture of the resentments which had animated the family living in this dignified house.

“It’s rather surprising that Miss Madge put up with things for so long,” he said. “She seems a very competent person. She could have got many an easier job elsewhere.”

“If I told ’er so once, I told ’er an ’undred times,” said Mrs. Pinks. “She’s a tiptop cook, a good manager, and she’s easy to work under. She didn’t want to go away because of ’er dad. She’s real fond of ’er dad, and I don’t wonder, because a kinder man never lived. But she’d got just about fed-up, and I reckon she’d’ve chucked it pretty soon. And now what’s ’appened? All this to-do about the old lady, and Miss Madge says she can’t leave ’er dad. And them others whispering together. Oh, it makes me that mad, I know what they’re getting at. Blame Miss Madge. The same old story. Don’t you listen to ’em.”

“It’s my business to listen to everybody, and to sort out the truth from the falsehood,” said Macdonald quietly. “Now here’s a plain question. If Mrs. Farrington was killed, have you any idea who killed her?”

Mrs. Pinks twisted her apron round and round her work-worn hands. “You call it a plain question,” she said slowly. “I reckon it’s an ’orrible question. I’m not one o’ those to go calling other folks murderers light’earted like. It’s a shocking thing to point at someone and say they killed their own mother.”

“You’re perfectly right. It’s a shocking thing,” replied Macdonald gravely; “but if you know anything, it’s your duty to tell it. It’s my business to find out if what you tell me is true, and if it means what you think it means.”

“Well, that’s straight,” she said slowly. “There’s something about you I can trust, so I’ll tell you what I knows and you can sort it out. But I’m not saying she did it. I got daughters of me own, and I’d never say a thing like that.” She gave her thumb an upward jerk. “That Miss Paula, you knows of her? Had a party on Monday night and borrowed the sherry glasses. Locked up, them glasses is. The old lady always locked things up. Miss Paula got the key somehow; I reckon she pinched it when her ma wasn’t looking. Mrs. F. wouldn’t never ’ave let the twins ’ave them sherry glasses. Well, the next morning the glasses was back in the cabinet, some of them. Reckon the others got smashed. And the cabinet was locked. Miss Madge asks Paula where she put the key after she’d put the glasses back, and Paula says, ‘You’ve got the key. I left it on the kitchen table.’ Now that’s a lie. Paula didn’t get dressed till after nine, and I was here before that. And Miss Madge and the Colonel came down here just after six that morning, and the key wasn’t on the kitchen table then. I reckon Paula tried to put the key back where she got it from, in the old lady’s bedroom. And that room’s been locked ever since. You look and see if that key’s in the bedroom. Because if it is, I reckon one of them twins put it there after their party, and they say they never went into the bedroom. I know I’m not much of an ’and at telling things, but d’you see what I mean?”

“Yes. I understand. It’s important, and I’ll see it’s cleared up.”

“I know it cuts both ways,” said Mrs. Pinks sadly; “but that Paula, she’s telling lies and trying to put things on Miss Madge, and I won’t stand for that. And then there’s something else. You know it was old Mrs. F. had the money. The Colonel’s not got a bean. It’s the twins and Mrs. Philip who want the money. The twins special, because Peter’s got hisself into some sort of a mess. You’ll find out about that.”

“How do you know about it?” asked Macdonald.

“Because they’re silly young fools. Up till the day the old lady died Peter’d been going out to work every morning at ’arf-past eight, same’s he’s done for months. On Tuesday he stayed at home, and Wednesday, too. I told you I do the bathrooms. The bathroom on this floor’s a new one, put in when Mrs. Duncan created because she and ’er ’usband ’ad to share with Mrs. Strange. Mrs. Duncan ’as to share with the twins now, and she don’t like that, either. But that bathroom’s just under Miss Paula’s bedroom, and you can hear voices same as if you was in the same room, and I heard Mister Peter saying, ‘I got to have that money somehow and I got to have it quick. Can’t you borrow on the will?’ and Paula she says, ‘I’ll see what I can do, but I daren’t let anybody know. There’s all this fuss over the post-mortem.’ I won’t swear to them being the exact words, but it’s near enough. You find out why them twins needs the money. They’ve been up to something. That Peter’s ’ad a job in a lawyer’s office, but I reckon they chucked ’im out and ’e’s doing something in the painting line. ’E didn’t let on, though---went out at ’arf-past eight regular, as tho’ ’e was going to ’is office, but I knew ’e wasn’t.”

“How did you know?”

“Common sense. I does his bedroom. The twins ’as the attic floor between them. This past month Peter’s bedroom’s been all in a muck with paints and sketches, and ’e’s fixed up that room under the leads as a sort of studio---great enormous sheets ’e’s got up there, and such drawings as you never did see. Indecent I calls ’em, and ’ideous at that.”

(3)

“Now for a few plain questions,” said Macdonald. “Were you in the kitchen when Mrs. Farrington came down to speak to Miss Madge on Monday morning?”

“I was in the scullery---same thing. I could ’ear all that was said, and I told Miss Madge so afterwards. And I said if she’d got any gump she’d walk out right away. ‘You go up them basement steps with what’s left of the ’ousekeeping money,’ I says. ‘You’ve earned it, if ever a girl did.’ Eight to dinner, if you please, and that meant soup, bird, and et ceteras; two sweets, savoury, and dessert. And all the washing up afterwards, single’anded. When a girl’s dog-tired. I asks you. She said, ‘No, I won’t’---and I could ’a cheered when I ’eard ’er.”

“You mean that she was really angry?”

“No. I don’t. She was quiet, but quite decided. ‘I won’t do it,’ she says. And between you and me, she’d no need. She’d been offered a decent job, and she told her ma so. And the old lady started ’orf on ’er heart-attack line. And then the Colonel comes in and takes madam off upstairs to lie down.”

Macdonald, with an inward chuckle, meditated that if ever Mrs. Pinks were put in the witness box she would brighten the dreariest of dreary cases. Shrewd, trenchant, and yet not excessively voluble, she was the type to give a cross-examining counsel a run for his money.

“You came back here on Monday evening?” he inquired, but his question did not seem to worry Mrs. Pinks at all.

“Yes. I did. I brought Miss Madge some shrimps.”

“And a bunch of daffodils.”

“Oh, that. Fancy ’er telling you that. I do like a nice bunch o’ flowers. She was real down’earted. Just cooked supper for six and no one to eat it. She told me and my two kids to sit down and polish it orf. And we did, not ’arf. She’s a lovely cook, Miss Madge is. Then I ’elped ’er wash up our plates and off we went ’ome. Saw the doctor’s car go off just as we went up the area steps. ’Arf-past seven that was. I ’ad to get back to my old man by eight. I was glad we popped in. Cheered Miss Madge up to see my two tuck into that supper she’d cooked.”