Chapter Fourteen

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(1)

IN the scullery Macdonald said: “You’d better tell me just why you’re here, Mrs. Pinks. Sit down. You’re tired, aren’t you?”

She nodded, her lined face more seamed than ever with weariness and distress, and sat down on a backless chair which she pulled from under the sink.

“Reckon we’ve all ’ad about enough,” she said; “but grumbling don’t ’elp. I came back because of Miss Madge. I guessed what it was. It was yesterday I noticed it. Them drawers in the dresser, very neat she keeps ’em. One of ’em ’as ’er papers and tradesmen’s books and money in. She keeps the key inside the big tureen; nobody knows where it is but ’er and me. She’s always trusted me, and not lost nothing by it neither, as she’d tell you ’erself. Well, yesterday she says to me, ‘Get the money for the baker out of my purse.’ ’Er purse is in that drawer, and I got the key out of the tureen. Well, ’er purse was there all right, and the money in it, so it wasn’t that Peter, but the drawer was all in a fair muddle as you never did see, and ’er cookery book she’s so careful of was all torn to ribbons.” Mrs. Pinks paused and then went on: “Well, it gave me a proper turn. I didn’t say nothing, not wanting to upset ’er. I just got the money out and locked up the drawer and put the key aside till I ’ad a chance to tidy it up. When she went upstairs for a jiff I started putting the drawer straight. An’ in the middle of the muddle there was her passport she got when she thought of going away. She’d shown it to me, see, because ’er photo was such an ’oot. Always kept that locked away upstairs in ’er room. I know that. And there it was, all among the torn bits and that, proper crazy. What would you’ve made of it yourself?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” said Macdonald. “You see, I don’t know her as well as you do.”

“Well, I do know ’er. She’s the tidiest creature going, and the most sensible. And look at it, all in a blooming fiddle-faddle. She must ’a done it ’erself, see, because of that there passport. An’ then I remember ’ow she told me as a kid she used to walk in ’er sleep, and my Liza does ditto. No end to the rum things that kid’ll do in ’er sleep if I don’t catch ’er at it. That’s it, I sez. She’s been walkin’ in ’er sleep, ’er being worried about the old lady’s death and that, so I’ll just slip back tonight and watch out. And ’ere I am, an’ a good thing too, if you asks me.”

“How did you get in?” asked Macdonald, and she looked him straight in the face.

“Latchkey. I got one for the back door. She gave it me herself.”

“Don’t they ever put the bolts on in this house?” asked Macdonald.

“Can’t answer for upstairs, because I don’t know, but Miss Madge don’t shoot the bolts down here till she goes to bed. And I was here before then. Sat in the cupboard under the stairs so’s she shouldn’t see me. So now you know.”

“How long have you had the key to this house, Mrs. Pinks?”

“Nearly a year, now. And I knows all about what you’re thinking, so you needn’t bother to tell me.” She looked round quickly at the kitchen. “She’s moving. Goin’ upstairs agin. Let me go after ’er, just in case.”

“All right.”

She went into the kitchen, and over her shoulder Macdonald saw Madge walk to the kitchen door like an automaton. He suddenly remembered that the door at the top of the basement stairs was locked, and slipped out into the passage and blew cautiously into the speaking tube of the service lift.

“Reeves? Unbolt that door, quickly. Let her go up.”

He heard the bolt slip back a second later, and Madge went on slowly up the basement stairs with Mrs. Pinks behind her. Macdonald knew that Reeves would be on the alert, and the reliable Maddox was upstairs, so the Chief Inspector went back into the kitchen, found the key of the dresser drawer in the big tureen, and opened the drawer. It was as tidy as a drawer could be, with account books, ration books, bill file, purse, notecase, all arranged neatly on the smooth lining paper of the drawer. He was still thus employed when Mrs. Pinks reappeared and sat down heavily at the kitchen table.

“She went straight back to bed agin,” she said. “If this sort of thing goes on, she’s for it. No woman can stand too much. The time comes you just crack up. Don’t feel far orf it meself when all’s said and done.”

“Look here, Mrs. Pinks,” said Macdonald. “I wish you’d take your courage in both hands and give me a few straight answers, even though it does seem to go against the grain. What was the real situation between Mrs. Farrington and her stepdaughter? Was Mrs. Farrington fond of her at all?”

Mrs. Pinks sat and thought for a while. “All right,” she said. “I’ll trust you. I may be doin’ the wrong thing, I don’t know, but I’ll trust you. I reckon you’ve got more sense than most, and you been pretty decent so far. The old lady hated Madge. Hated her, see? And for why? Because she was jealous. The Colonel’s always been special fond of Madge and she of ’im, and it just made the old lady so mad there wasn’t nothing she wouldn’t’ve done to make trouble between ’em. As the Colonel got older ’e sorter turned to Madge, more an’ more. She understood ’im, and that’s more’n ’is wife ever done. Not that Mrs. F. wanted to get rid o’ Madge. Not much. Lazy as sin, Mrs. F. was, and smart with it. She knew she’d never get no one to run this ruddy ’ouse like Madge runs it. Cook and clean and everything smooth as clockwork. But Mrs. F. was always trying to show the Colonel what a mean, spiteful daughter ’e’d got. It’s got so’s Madge wouldn’t never ’ardly put ’er nose above stairs, there was always something if she did.”

Macdonald nodded. “Yes. I understand all that. The stepdaughter-stepmother relationship has always been difficult. But you say that Mrs. Farrington tried to show that Madge was mean and spiteful. Wasn’t there more to it than that?”

The old woman sighed. “All right, ’ave it your own way. Been talking to Tony, ’aven’t you? Mrs. F. wanted to make out Madge was crackers. To keep ’er under ’er thumb, see? She must never go away. Always got to be watched.”

“Yes. I see,” said Macdonald. “And now about Madge herself. You told me just now I’d got some common sense. So have you, so you might as well go on.”

“Suppose I might,” she said wearily. “Madge hated her back. Who wouldn’t? And she was afraid of ’er in a way, knowing what she was at. But Mrs. F. was much more afraid of Madge in some ways. Madge mustn’t never go into ’er bedroom. Never pass ’er on the stairs. Never be alone with ’er. I seen it. I know. You see, Mrs. F. knew Madge wasn’t crackers, knew it quite well. And she knew as ’ow Madge saw through ’er, wiv ’er darling Madgie one minute and I’ll just ring up Dr. Baring about ’er the next. There it was, something shocking, and the pore old Colonel always pretending everything was O.K.”

There was silence for a moment, broken only by Mrs. Pinks’ slow, heavy breathing. At last she spoke again. “If Madge ’ad been queer in the ’ead, no matter ’ow little, I should ’a known it. I worked with ’er every day for three years. She talked to me. I am the only person in this ’ouse, bar the Colonel, she ever talks to. I’ve never ’eard ’er say or do one thing that wasn’t sensible, never. She’s got a tongue, I’ll not deny it, and she’s ticked off them lot upstairs time and again, but she’s never said an ’ard word to me. If she’s crackers, so’s you, and me, and everyone else. The only thing I ever known ’er do that was queer was muckin’ up that drawer. An’ she did that in ’er sleep. You saw ’er tonight.”

“Yes. I saw her. Did she ever come to see you at home, Mrs. Pinks?”

She stared at him. “I thought that was coming,” she replied. “Yes. She used to come and see my old man. Cooked ’im things ’e could eat. Spent ’er own money on birthday presents for the kids, and she’s not got much.” She broke off and gave another great sigh. “You might as well know. ’E died. My old man. This morning it was, while I was ’ere. Just went off in ’is sleep, same’s the old lady.”

“I’m sorry,” said Macdonald, and she sniffed back her tears.

“Oh, ’e ’adn’t ’ad much to live for, not this last year or two. Something else wrong besides that there. They took ’im to the mortuary. We’ve only got the two rooms. Gave the other to a young married couple. So ’e ’ad to go. That’s why I managed to pop along ’ere tonight. Nothing I ’ad to do at ’ome.” She wiped her eyes and sniffed again.

“Now let’s get this straight,” she said. “Maybe you’re goin’ to say as ’ow Madge pinched that stuff from the lot I got for me old man from the National ’Ealth. Maybe you’ll say, that’s why ’e died, ’im not ’aving the right doses, seeing some ’ad been pinched. I’m not such a fool as I look. I reckoned you’d work that one out, and I did, too, quite as quick as you did. And I tell you it ain’t true. I giv’im the stuff meself, an’ ’e ’ad it according. An’ if you’re thinking of pulling that one over Miss Madge, I tell you it won’t work. I’ll say I giv’ it to the old lady meself, see? I could ’a, too; I was here that evening, wasn’t I? So that’s that. An’ if you want to run me in, you get on wiv it. Me sister’ll look after the kids. Down in the country, she is. But you leave Miss Madge alone. I reckon I’ve ’ad a better life than she ’as; ’ard though it’s been some ways, I’ve ’ad me fun, and it’s more’n you can say of her. So what abaht it?”

“I think you’d better go home and look after those kids,” said Macdonald, “and leave me to sort things out here. So off you go.”

“And ’ow d’you know I didn’t do it?” she asked truculently.

“I don’t know, Mrs. Pinks. But I’m not going to oblige by arresting you until I’ve got the evidence. Thanks very much all the same.”

She stood, arms akimbo. “An’ ’ow d’you know I won’t bolt?”

“Again, I don’t know. But I shouldn’t if I were you. You wouldn’t get very far, so you’d only be wasting your money.”

“Call yerself a cop,” she said with withering scorn. “You’re too much like an ’uman being. All right. I’ll be going. But remember. I warned you.”

“More than I did to you,” replied Macdonald.

(2)

When Macdonald had seen Mrs. Pinks out of the house, he bolted the basement door and went up to Reeves, who was hovering by the drawing-room door, alternately keeping an eye on the hall and on Tony Strange, who was beginning to stir a little.

“Well, we seem to be getting quite a series of reactions,” murmured Reeves. “I reckon Madge was sleepwalking all right. Mind diseased, what?”

“Not diseased in the accepted sense, Reeves. She’s as sane as you or I, but her mind’s in a turmoil of fear and distress, and the reason’s not far to guess. I’ve been talking to Mrs. Pinks. Her husband died today---probably diabetic coma. She had argued out for herself the implications of that one.”

“Had she, by heck,” said Reeves. “I reckoned she could follow out what you would call a logical sequence of events. She’s made like that, looks things straight in the face.”

“She does that all right,” said Macdonald, “to the very end. She told me that if I thought of arresting Madge, she---Mrs. Pinks---would say she’d killed Mrs. Farrington herself, and reminded me that she was here on the Monday night.”

“She’s a game old scout,” said Reeves; “but we can’t have her doing that. She’ll muck up the doings properly. Madge must have been damned good to the old soul to make her feel like that about it.”

“I think she has been good to her,” said Macdonald. “Hallo, your patient’s showing signs of animation. You’d better go and keep him quiet and persuade him that he’s better off on the sofa than anywhere else. I don’t think things’ll be improved by sending him up to his wife at the moment.”

Reeves went back into the drawing room, and Macdonald sat down on one of the chairs in the hall. He did not in the least expect that this unquiet household had settled down for the remainder of the night, but he decided to wait on events and spend a few minutes thinking out the implications of what had occurred in the past hour.

It was about half an hour after he had left Reeves that Macdonald heard a door open on the first floor. The sound of voices from the drawing room had ceased. . . . Reeves had evidently persuaded Tony Strange to keep quiet and to make the best of the sofa. A light was on in the hall and it shone on the wide dignified staircase, showing the good Turkey carpet and the well-polished handrail. A dignified, prosperous, middle-class interior, thought Macdonald, much too decorous to make a suitable setting for the seething hates and fears of those who dwelt in this mansion.

When the door opened there was silence for a few seconds, as though somebody stood listening, and then came the swish of a silk dressing gown: Joyce’s taffeta dressing gown, observed Macdonald. Mrs. Duncan was presumably going back to her own flat after talking to Anne Strange. Joyce moved very carefully, with only an occasional click from her feather-trimmed mules. Then another door, on the second floor, was cautiously opened and closed. Another five minutes passed before Anne Strange came out of her room. She came deliberately downstairs, and Macdonald stood up when she reached the hall.

“Can I speak to you, please?” she asked.

“If you wish,” rejoined Macdonald quietly. “Shall we go upstairs to your sitting room? Your husband is on the sofa in the drawing room. He may be awake, and if he hears you talking he may want to come and join in.”

She nodded, a sort of surprised look in her eyes---surprise that anybody could sound as tranquil and ordinary as this C.I.D. man did. She led the way upstairs and they went into the sitting room, where bowls of daffodils were in flower, each bowl standing on a cork mat which protected the rosewood tables.

Macdonald closed the door and stood just inside the room. “You’ll be worrying about your husband, Mrs. Strange. He’s all right. He knocked his head as he fell and he’s concussed a bit, but it’s nothing to worry about. Are you sure you want to talk now? Wouldn’t you be better advised to wait until morning? It’s easy to get things out of focus in the middle of the night.”

“Haven’t we all got things out of focus?” she asked. “That’s just the trouble. I can’t go to sleep, and I’d rather talk to you and get it over. I lost my head just now, when I asked you if Tony had killed Madge, but I was terrified when I heard that crash. I’d like to explain, if I may.”

“As you will,” said Macdonald; “but remember that we, as police, have had plenty of experience of what nervous tension can do, even to seemingly well-balanced, well-behaved people like yourselves. It’s very difficult to keep quite normal under circumstances like this.”

“That was very kindly said,” she replied. “I think you’d be quite justified in considering us all mentally unstable.”

“I don’t do that,” replied Macdonald. “Nerves affect different people in different ways. For instance, Miss Madge has kept her self-control completely when she was awake. When she went to sleep her subconscious took over and she walked in her sleep. Didn’t it occur to you when you heard her come downstairs on Monday night that that might be the explanation?”

“No. I just didn’t think of it. Do you mean that you did?”

“Yes. You could make two assumptions. First, the one your husband made, that she was responsible for killing Mrs. Farrington. If that were so, would she have been likely, when she was awake, to come downstairs at the very moment when the twins were taking their visitors down, with the possibility that the light in the hall would be switched on so that she was seen by them? Of course she wouldn’t. It was the very last moment she would have chosen. But if she were walking in her sleep, the whole thing was perfectly explicable. The slight sound overhead, when the party moved off, was enough to make her stir, and she went downstairs unconsciously. I think she probably went right down to the kitchen, as she did tonight. She told me she had taken three aspirin tablets, so she was very sound asleep.”

“Do you believe all that she says?” asked Anne incredulously.

“She has been much more accurate than most witnesses,” replied Macdonald. “Some things she has omitted. I know that, but no witness can be expected to relate every detail which may go in the scale against them.”

Anne shivered. “You said there were two assumptions,” she said slowly; “one being Tony’s.”

“Yes. One that she was guilty, and if so, I argued she wasn’t awake. But if she were innocent, and had still been awake, she would certainly have asked the twins what they were doing, and you would have heard her.”

“But you didn’t know if I were telling the truth,” said Anne.

“Of course I didn’t---but I believed you had heard what you said you had heard when you described the dragging sound her dressing gown made and the faint thud of bedroom slippers. That was observation, not make-up. Now what was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

“What I said about Tony. It was crazy of me, but I was nearly frantic because I knew he had made up his mind that Madge killed his mother, and we’ve all been getting more and more on edge as the day went on. I heard him get up, and I heard Madge when she got out of bed, and I was stark terrified. Of course it was crazy, but things get like that at night. Then I heard that awful crash, and I went flying downstairs, absolutely convinced that something hideous had happened. And the door at the top of the stairs was locked and I heard your voices, and I think I just went mad with sheer nerves.”

“That’s the way things can happen,” said Macdonald. “It didn’t occur to you that the converse had happened and that Madge had attacked your husband?”

“No. She wouldn’t. . . . I can’t tell you why I’m so sure, but I don’t believe Madge did it. That’s why I got so unreasonable with Tony, even though, as he pointed out. Paula tried to make out I did it. But I wanted to explain to you why I said such a frightful thing about Tony. I just didn’t know what I was saying.”

“Let’s try to get this straight,” said Macdonald. “What you’re really thinking is that your husband believes that Madge killed his mother and he’s determined that it shall be proved she killed her, willy-nilly?”

“I don’t know,” she said miserably. “I’ve got to the stage when I dare not look my own thoughts in the face. Of course I knew all about Tony and Madge. Mrs. Farrington brought them both up. She adored Tony and hated Madge. Tony was one of those successful children, bonny and clever and healthy, admired by everybody. Madge was plain and stupid and sullen. She must have had a miserable childhood, and of course she was always trying spiteful silly tricks on Tony---you can’t blame her. So whenever anything went wrong Madge was always blamed, and it’s the same now. Tony can’t be fair to her. I don’t like Madge, but I haven’t got a thing about her, like Tony has.”

“Did you realise that Mrs. Farrington insisted that Madge was of unsound mind?”

“I’ve heard her make horrible suggestions, but she never risked saying anything outright to me. I loathed Mrs. Farrington. We all did, except Tony and Eddie, and even Tony got mad sometimes, especially when Mrs. Farrington said things about me.”

She broke off abruptly and then went on hastily: “So you see, we weren’t a very happy household. I suppose I could have got out of it if I hadn’t been so lazy, but I’m a born procrastinator. Always hoping things will be better.”

Macdonald, listening to a great deal in Anne’s narrative that was already familiar to him, noted the one point which opened a new vista on this sorry story of family feuds. Anne went on: “When you first questioned me I tried to observe the decencies, to pretend that everything here was all right. It’s second nature to try to cover up family difficulties when you’re talking to a stranger. But now I know it’s no good. You’ve seen us all with the lid off. Do believe me when I tell you that even I didn’t realise how bad things had got, with Madge and the twins being in such a state.”

“Did you know that Peter had backed a bill he couldn’t meet and that Paula was ready to do anything to get the money for him?”

“I knew he was in a mess and that she wanted money to get him out of it. I didn’t realise he’d taken to drugs. None of us knew that, unless Paula did.” Her voice died away, a very weary voice, and then she made one more effort. “You do realise I didn’t mean what I said about Tony attacking Madge? I know he wouldn’t do anything violent, he’s simply not made like that.”

“All right,” said Macdonald gently. “I won’t hold you accountable for what you said, and, in any case, no wife is asked to give evidence against her husband, you know, even when there’s quite a lot to give. So why not try to go to sleep and forget it all for now?”

“If I could only wake up and find it was all a nightmare,” she replied.