Chapter Seven

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(1)

At the close of her interview with Macdonald, Mrs. Pinks undertook to go upstairs to see if Paula were dressed.

“I know she’s up now,” said the charwoman, “because I ’eard the bath water a-running while you and me was talking. That’d be Miss Paula; always likes to ’ave ’er bath just when I cleaned the bathroom, and mucks it all up again. Peter’s not that fond of baths; a real mess, ’e is. Why not come up and see them paintings? I’d like you to see them, just give you an idea.”

Nothing loath, Macdonald followed Mrs. Pinks up a steep narrow stairway which led to the attics, the one-time servants’ quarters of Windermere House. On the small landing at the top of the stairs Mrs. Pinks gestured with an expressive thumb. “That way. The bedrooms is this side.”

Thus encouraged, Macdonald opened a door and found himself in a long room immediately under the rafters. The huge cistern was here, in a wooden casing, and the place was lighted by a long skylight. Against one wall sheets of cartoon paper had been pinned up. On these sheets a lively design had been roughed out consisting of a series of grotesques based on human and feline forms. Macdonald, who had a bowing acquaintance with the eccentricities of modern décor, recognised some merit in the vigour of the design, while understanding the feelings of Mrs. Pinks. The cartoons seemed to him to combine a natural sense of rhythm and form with a deliberate perversion of feeling which was almost base. While he stood there meditating what he felt was the abuse of natural facility---for the design was certainly facile in its flowing lines---the door was pushed open and a girl stood staring at him with apprehensive eyes. Then Mrs. Pinks called to her: “I’d better do Mr. Peter’s room, miss. Wasn’t done yesterday.”

The girl turned swiftly. “You can’t do it, Mrs. Pinks. He locked it when he went out. He doesn’t want his things to be moved. I’ll do it when he comes in.”

“And when did ’e go out, I’d like to know? I been doing these stairs ever since I ’eard you talking to ’im up here.”

“You haven’t. You were in the box room when he went out. Go and finish your old stairs and don’t fuss.”

Paula was dressed in a plain woollen frock of deep blue, very full and rather long in the skirt, fitting tightly about the bodice and waist. Macdonald thought the frock did two things: it emphasised her youth by displaying her extreme slenderness and brought out some quality for which the word “medieval” flashed through his mind before he had time to analyse it: something not of today. She turned back to him and smiled, and he was almost shocked by the disquiet of her eyes, deep-sunken in their shadowed sockets, at once so young and so old.

“You are Inspector Macdonald? I’m sorry if I’ve kept you waiting. I was dancing last night and didn’t get home till morning. Shall we go downstairs?”

“Why not stay up here?” inquired Macdonald. “I think it’s rather a good idea to see people against their own background. This is a design for a ballet set, isn’t it?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s only experimental. It’ll never be used. Peter’s never had any training. Do you like ballet?”

“Yes. The first dancer I saw was Nijinsky. That’s a long time ago---long before you were born.”

“Yes, but ballet isn’t a new art.” She stood with her head on one side. “I never thought of a detective liking ballet.”

“We’re very ordinary people, Miss Farrington, having likes and dislikes of our own, like everybody else. You know why I am here?”

“Yes. Daddy told me. I’m afraid I don’t know anything about it. I was up here all Monday evening.”

“Shall we sit down?” Macdonald perched himself on an old stool, and Paula sat down on a wooden box. Her full skirts arranged themselves in flowing lines, and against the background of the white paper with the bold red and black lines of the monstrous cartoon she looked like part of the décor.

“You went in to see your mother when you asked for the key to the glass cabinet,” began Macdonald. “What time was that?”

She replied in a rush, almost breathlessly: “Oh, quite early. Before the doctor came. She was all right then. I just asked if I might have the key, and she gave it to me. I didn’t stay more than a minute.”

“Was your father in the room?”

“No. I think he was telephoning or something. I came straight up here after I’d seen Mother.”

“Didn’t you go and get the sherry glasses from the cabinet?”

“Oh . . . yes. I did.”

“Did you see anybody, in the hall or on the stairs?”

“No. I don’t think so. I came straight up here. We were having a party, and I was busy cutting sandwiches and getting things ready.”

“How many guests did you have?”

“Four. Two girls and two men. They all dance in the cabaret show I’ve been in. I have to take what jobs I can get.”

“And where did you have your party?”

“In here and in my bedroom. We ate and danced in here and sat in my bedroom in between. It was a birthday party for one of the girls. We would have liked to take them out and do it properly, but it costs too much. And it was more fun up here than downstairs. Mummy didn’t like my friends. I suppose they are rather a mixed lot.”

“How long did the party go on?”

“Oh . . . rather late. They went between one and two . . . about.”

“All together?”

“Yes. I crept down and let them out. We really did creep. I made them all take their shoes off, and they didn’t put them on again until they got outside. I didn’t put the lights on, either. I took a torch.”

Paula still talked almost breathlessly, her eyes meeting Macdonald’s from time to time in a flickering glance which seemed like an appeal.

“And then?” he asked.

“Oh, I came up here again and went to bed.”

“Are you quite sure?” persisted Macdonald. “You do realise, don’t you, that this is a very serious matter? I am asking you for evidence, and that evidence must be exact, not casual.”

“I know. I’ve told you just what happened. When we came downstairs the house was dead quiet, not a sound.”

“You say you came straight up here again and went to bed. What about the sherry glasses? They were back in the cabinet early next morning.”

“Oh . . . I forgot . . . but I got up early and washed them up and put them away. I knew Madge would fuss if I didn’t. She’s an awful fusser.”

“What time was it when you came down in the morning?”

“I don’t know. It was only just getting light. It was before Daddy came up to Madge. I heard him come upstairs.”

“So you went to bed about two o’clock and woke up again before six to do the washing up?”

“No. I didn’t. I don’t sleep very well, and I’d been drinking a lot of black coffee. I didn’t go to sleep until after it was light. I often don’t. That’s why I’m so late getting up. I seem to go to sleep when other people wake up.”

“It doesn’t seem a very good idea to me,” said Macdonald; “but let’s get back to Tuesday morning. You say you got up before it was quite light and washed the glasses. Where did you wash them?”

“In the bathroom on the next floor. Then I took them downstairs and put them away and locked the cabinet. After that I went down to the kitchen. I was cold and I thought I could find a hot-water bottle to take back to bed with me, but the one I sometimes borrow wasn’t there, so I went back to bed without it. When I got upstairs again I remembered I’d left the key of the cabinet on the kitchen table, but I was too tired to go downstairs again, so I just thought Madge would find it there. I was just getting sleepy when I heard Madge’s alarm clock go off, and a little later Father came upstairs to her room. I heard his voice. I went downstairs a little later. Madge was telephoning. I asked her what was the matter, but she only snapped at me, and I came upstairs again. I felt simply awful, but there wasn’t anything I could do because Madge was so hateful. Later on I went in and told Anne, and she said I’d better go back to bed because I was cold.”

She spoke like an unhappy child, and Macdonald’s mind was divided between irritation and a realisation that he was sorry for her. He did not believe that she was telling the truth, and she seemed so much too young to be involved in this sorry story.

“Did you see a lot of your mother?” he asked gently, and to his surprise she answered quite composedly:

“Oh, no. We didn’t get on very well. She didn’t understand the sort of world I know. She thought dancing was just pretty-pretty, and I had a tough time before I made her understand I was serious about it. I know she meant to be kind, but she just didn’t understand. I can’t think how she ever had children like Peter and me. We were all wrong. It was the war, partly, and we went to a crazy sort of school because it was in the Welsh mountains and so safe. And we just grew different.”

“I think there is often a big gap between children and parents of today,” said Macdonald. “The war, as you say, does account for it in young people of your age. Getting back to your party again, I suppose that in the general movement it was impossible to say that everybody could be accounted for all the time?”

She grasped his meaning immediately. “Oh, but we were all up here. Nobody went downstairs.”

“Can that be true? You say the party went on from eight o’clock until two. Didn’t people go down to the bathroom, and if so, you wouldn’t have been likely to notice how long they were away, would you? It wasn’t even as though you all stayed in one room.”

“I wish you’d say exactly what you mean.” This time the words were snapped out, in the manner of an angry child. “I suppose you’re suggesting that I, or Peter, could have gone downstairs without being noticed and gone into Mother’s room and jabbed a hypodermic into her while she was asleep.”

“I’m not suggesting anything, Miss Farrington. I am giving you the opportunity to prove that such a thing was impossible if the suggestion is made. You have got to realise that someone did use a hypodermic on your mother.”

“I do realise it, but it wasn’t done by Peter or by me. I was watching him nearly all the time. Peter gets drunk on about two gins, and I knew I’d got to watch him. And I did watch him. He wasn’t out of my sight long enough to have gone downstairs: you know how many stairs there are up to this floor. Anyway, he didn’t want to go downstairs, in case he met any of the family. They all fuss so when we have a party.”

“And did Peter get drunk?”

“Not really. Only sleepy. Actually he went to bed before they all went home.” She suddenly stood up. “Do you mind if we go downstairs? I’m frozen, and there isn’t a stove up here. It fused or something.”

“Certainly. Will you just show me which is your room and which is your brother’s?”

“All right.” She went to the door and pointed across the landing. “The first is mine. The second is Peter’s. The last one is a lumber room.”

Paula moved to the stairs and went down a few steps, but Macdonald crossed the little landing and went on past Paula’s bedroom door, which stood open, to the next door. She called to him: “I told you Peter’s door was locked. He often locks it when he goes out. He hates having his things moved about.”

Macdonald bent and looked in the keyhole of the bedroom door. Then he turned a torchlight on it and said: “But this door is locked on the inside. The key is still in the lock.”

(2)

It never took Macdonald long to make up his mind. While Paula was still calling out, “It isn’t. It can’t be,” the C.I.D. man took a pair of long, slender pliers from his pocket and got them inside the big old-fashioned keyhole and turned the key. Then he said to Paula: “If your brother has gone out, what is there to worry about? Somebody locked this door on the inside. Do you know who is here?”

“Nobody. It’s all a silly mistake. You can’t go in---Peter hates people going into his room.”

Macdonald opened the door: the curtains were across the window, but the light which filtered in from the open door showed him the boy’s slack figure lying across the disordered bed. A voice sounded on the stairs---Madge’s voice---cool and sensible: “What the matter, Paula? What are you arguing about?”

Macdonald said: “Stay with your sister; the lad, here, is ill.”

As Madge had done when called into her mother’s bedroom, Macdonald went and pulled the curtains apart swiftly and then came back to the bed. The boy was dressed, his limbs sprawled limply across the bed; he was breathing, but quite unconscious. When Macdonald lifted his hand it dropped limply back again on the bedclothes. He went and opened the window and leaned out, giving a long, clear whistle, and heard an answer from the street beneath. As he came back to the bed Madge entered the room.

“I’ve taken her down to Anne,” she said as she came up to the bed.

“I’ll get an ambulance,” said Macdonald. “Can you tell what’s the cause of this?”

She stood with her fingers on his pulse and then raised one of the eyelids. “I think it’s drugs. Not insulin again. Oh, God, what possessed him to do it, poor silly boy?”

Macdonald had heard the front-door bell ringing far below, then Mrs. Pinks’ voice was raised in audible protest, and swift footsteps sounded, taking the stairs three at a time. Macdonald went to the door. “Reeves? Good. Ambulance and surgeon. The phone’s in the drawing room on the ground floor. Stay downstairs and bring the men up when they come.”

He went back into the room. “Had you any idea the lad took drugs?” he asked.

Madge took her time in answering. “I don’t know, but I wondered. I hardly ever see him. He’s out a lot, and he doesn’t ever speak to me if he can help it. He’s never had a chance to be a reasonable person.”

“Why not?”

“Mothered to death, almost. He was a delicate child, the second of the twins, always ailing. He never went to school until the war started; too delicate. It was all rot, of course. He’d have been much better at school. At home he just malingered the whole time. Then he was sent to one of those freak schools, with Paula. When he left he was more impossible than ever. Then he began to hate his mother. The Services wouldn’t have him because of his poor physique, and his mother got him a job in a lawyer’s office, which I believe he hates. Anyway, he’s been a neurotic mess for months. I suppose he got in a panic when he heard you were in the house, and this is the result.” Her voice was slow and reflective, a brooding voice. She stood and looked down at the boy lying on the bed, and then her eyes roamed round the littered, untidy room, as though looking for something, and Macdonald watched her in turn.

“You say he began to hate his mother?” he asked. “Why was that?”

“A perfectly natural revulsion from being alternately petted and bullied. He got away from it while he was at school, and when he came back home again he resented it, and eventually it nauseated him. Paula knows much more about him than anybody else, but she won’t tell you anything. She’s always got him out of his messes. She’d do anything for him. She knows if he’s taken to drugs, but she won’t tell you. She’ll probably say I poisoned him.”

(3)

“Morphia, or one of its derivatives. Where did he get it from?”

The police surgeon cocked an eye at Macdonald, and the latter replied: “It seems likely that it was obtained from the same source as the insulin which killed his mother. It’s my job to check that. It’s yours to tell me if he’s an addict, or if this is an isolated instance. Either way, it’s better for him to be kept under observation for the time being. When you’ve got him away I want to search this room.”

“You have some lively jobs, Chief. And this house looks the very essence of dignified middle-class prosperity.”

Macdonald glanced round the slovenly, littered room; clothes and painting materials, books, papers and paper bags, toilet articles and dirty shoes, modelling clay, charcoal, and drawing inks were strewn in grubby confusion over chairs and chest and table and floor. A half-packed suitcase lay by the bed, piles of torn-up papers were under the bed; the walls were scrawled over with grotesque drawings and the grate was filled with a noxious mess of burnt papers and dirty paint rags.

“The dignified middle-class prosperity seems to have gone haywire,” said Macdonald; “but this room seems to me to be more representative of the minds of the inmates of the house than does the orderliness of the lower floors.”

He broke off as Colonel Farrington appeared at the door. Whatever the Colonel had been about to say, the sight of the room and the boy’s figure on the bed deprived him of speech. He turned mutely to Macdonald.

“He’s not in any danger, sir. Just drugged. I’m having him sent to hospital. The stretcher men will be here any minute.”

“But what happened? Why . . . and who did it?”

“So far as I can tell, he must have doped himself, sir. The door was locked on the inside and the key was still in the lock. The only person who could have locked the door was the boy himself, because the window was latched and nobody could have got out that way. Ah, there’s the ambulance----”

“But surely he could be looked after here---in his own home,” cried the Colonel. “We could move him into another room, get a nurse; surely you needn’t----”

“He’ll be better in hospital, sir. Now, if you’ll wait outside while the men come up---there’s not too much room in here.”

After the stretcher had been carried downstairs. Macdonald left Detective Inspector Reeves in Peter’s bedroom and told Colonel Farrington that he wanted to see Paula again. The Colonel said: “Can I be with you while you talk to her? She’s only a child, and Anne says she seems numbed with the shock of finding Peter like this.”

“I think it would be wiser if you let me talk to her without any of her own family present, sir. If you prefer it, a woman officer can be present. There is a very sensible, kindly woman waiting in the car outside. You see, you naturally regard your daughter as still a child. I know she is young, but she is old enough to be held responsible for what she says and does.”

“But she hasn’t done anything,” said the old man despairingly. “You have just said that Peter himself must have been responsible for his condition. He had locked himself in that room.”

“Yes, but I think his sister knew what had happened to some extent. I’m sorry, sir, but she has got to answer some questions---or be given the chance of answering some questions.”

(4)

Paula faced Macdonald with a set face, her lips in a tight line, her eyes dark.

“You told me that your brother had gone out while Mrs. Pinks was talking to me in the box room,” said Macdonald. “Why did you say that?”

“Because I thought he had gone out. I called to him and he didn’t answer. I tried his door and it was locked. He only locks it when he goes out, so I supposed he had gone out.”

“You went to his room and talked to him before you had your bath, after you had been told that a detective was in the house?”

“No. I didn’t.”

“Very well. Did you know that he was taking drugs, or that he possessed any drugs?”

“No.”

“Did you know that he was in trouble of any kind, that he had any money troubles or any other worries?”

“He was always hard up, but I was so used to it I didn’t take much notice.”

“Then what was he referring to when he said, ‘I’ve got to have that money and to have it quickly. Can’t you borrow it under the will?’ ”

“He never said anything of the kind.”

Macdonald paused for a moment, and the woman officer, having finished her competent line of shorthand, waited with pencil poised.

“At the moment, you are not on oath,” said Macdonald. “I shall simply ask you to sign a statement of what you have just said. But at some future time you may be asked the same questions when you are on oath in the witness box. Do you understand what perjury is?”

“Yes.”

“Then I advise you to think things over. If it be proved that your brother is in serious financial difficulties---and such things are very easy to prove---no judge or jury will believe that you knew nothing about it. I don’t believe it. I realise fully how hard things are for you, but no hard situation is ever simplified by lying about it.”

Paula sat perfectly still and made no answer.

Macdonald went on: “When I first saw you upstairs this morning you said, ‘Shall we go downstairs?’ Later you said, ‘Do you mind if we go downstairs? I’m frozen stiff.’ When I asked which was your brother’s room you said. ‘Peter’s door is locked. He often locks it when he goes out.’ Weren’t you doing your best to get me away from the top floor because you knew your brother had doped himself?”

She made no answer, and Macdonald went on: “Earlier you had said, ‘Peter has gone out.’ Not ‘I think he has gone out.’ Doesn’t he generally speak to you in the morning before he goes out?”

“No. I’m generally asleep when he goes out.”

“Once again, have you any idea he took drugs?”

“No.”

“Then do you believe that someone else drugged him deliberately for their own ends?”

“I don’t know.”

Paula signed her statement later, and the woman officer said to Macdonald: “Of course she did know that her brother had doped himself. If she hadn’t known she would have been bursting with questions. One can always tell when a witness of that type is obstinately telling lies, they’re so utterly unnatural.”

“She hasn’t had much practice, poor child,” said Macdonald. “The boy is her twin, and she’s trying to do her best for him.”