Give a Corpse a Bad Name (6 page)

Her voice was still tranquil. But in going she caught for a moment at the doorpost, clutching it, her knuckles standing out like white pebbles on the shrivelled brown of her hand. The next moment she was walking on. She bowed again to Toby and George, thanked the sergeant, and pattered out to her car.

The sergeant saw her out to it. He saw Harvey, the manservant from Chovey Place, tuck her into it with plenty of rugs. She thanked Harvey for everything he did for her, and again thanked the sergeant. Returning into the police station, he growled: ‘Now what the hell d'you make of that?'

‘Why, marriage is a very beautiful thing, Sam,' Toby replied. ‘Maternity too, of course, but more particularly marriage.'

‘Poor woman,' said Eggbear sombrely.

‘Oh, I don't know about that. She seemed quite happy.'

‘Can't bear to face the truth, that's how 'tis. And think o' that husband o' hers lettin' her come here by herself …'

‘I mentioned the occasional beauty of marriage,' said Toby.

Eggbear grunted. At that moment the telephone started ringing. He reached out for it. Putting it down again after a minute of conversation, he looked gravely into Toby's face.

‘This,' he said, ‘is the darndest accident I ever had to do with.'

‘What's got unhooked now?'

‘That suitcase. 'Twas in the Wallaford station cloakroom all right, deposited there on Tuesday mornin'. A leather suitcase with the initials SM. But 'twas collected yesterday mornin'.' He frowned, running the end of his pencil up and down the corrugations on his forehead, as if he were playing the xylophone. ‘Collected,' he added, ‘by a tall, dark man with glasses.'

*

The inquest was held that afternoon in the Ring of Bells.

The evidence of Mrs Quantick from Wallaford, of the passport and of Sir Joseph Maxwell was accepted. The body was held to be that of Shelley Maxwell. Sir Joseph was granted a burial certificate.

But in view of the fact that the driver of the sports car that had passed Mrs Milne's, who might prove to have been a witness of the accident itself, or at least to have seen Shelley Maxwell alive, had not yet come forward, the police asked for an adjournment.

If a man stays a night at an hotel, or even two nights, if he has not sent the address of this hotel to any of his acquantances or creditors, if, in fact, he has barely given himself time to realize that he is stopping there, he does not expect any post.

Yet on Friday morning there was a letter for Toby Dyke.

He woke up to see it a few inches in front of his nose. Through the clouds of drowsiness and through his resentment at the fact that someone, contrary to instructions, must have wakened him, he saw an oblong of white with his own name written on it in block capitals.

‘TOBY DYKE ESQ. THE RING OF BELLS. CHOVEY.'

He shut his eyes. But as soon as he did so he felt a hand on his shoulder.

He gave an impatient lurch in the bed. However, as someone was sitting on its edge, the space for lurching in was uncomfortably constricted. He opened his eyes again and saw the letter still being held before him, as, were he thought to be probably dead, a mirror might be held to see if his breath would stain it.

‘What the hell is it?' he asked in thick and sullen tones.

‘It's the post,' said George patiently.

‘Can't be. The post doesn't come till eight-thirty. Never does, anywhere.'

‘Hear that?' said George. ‘It's ten o'clock striking.'

Toby edged a hand from under the bedclothes and took the letter.

‘You know, Tobe, what you ought to do when you wake up is eat barley-sugar,' said George. ‘It'd make you feel better.'

‘Would it?'

‘Sure. I knew a bloke one could hardly tell apart from you up to breakfast-time. He got different later on—he was a dancing instructor. But he hadn't enough sugar in his blood, and the morning's the time when that shows. You want to get a jar of barley-sugar, or maybe chocolate biscuits—'

‘George,' said Toby, who was sitting up, ‘this is a pretty queer letter.'

‘Well, I thought—' George was beginning.

‘Take a look at it,' said Toby, and thrust the single sheet of paper towards him.

George took it. But he only glanced at it, then turned his eyes sideways into a corner of the room.

‘As a matter of
absolute
fact,' he said in an embarrassed voice, ‘I've read it.'

One of Toby's black eyebrows hooked itself up. ‘When?'

‘Well, you were so late coming down,' said George, ‘and there it sat, looking so damn queer …'

‘But it was stuck up,' said Toby.

George put a hand in a pocket and brought out a little tube of seccotine. ‘And you'd never notice the smell, Tobe. I would, but you wouldn't.'

Toby grunted. ‘Well, it's queer all right. Or just plain nasty.' He took the letter back from George and looked it over once more.

It was a sheet of cheap, lined paper, the kind that is advertised nowadays as suitable for airmail. It had no address, no signature. Letters cut from a newspaper and pasted on to the paper composed its message, which ran:
‘YOU WERE LOOKING FOR A BOTTLE WEREN'T YOU? WHAT ABOUT THE FLASK IN MRS MILNE'S CAR?'

‘Been thinking it over, George?' said Toby.

George nodded.

‘Well, I'm having my breakfast before I give it any careful thought. Here, get off my bed; that's the side I get out.'

George got up and withdrew against the wall. ‘Tobe,' he said earnestly, ‘I'd never have opened it if it had been an ordinary letter. But it was the knowing you hadn't given the address to anyone, and the block letters—they've been done with a ruler and a hard pencil—'

‘Have they, by God?' Toby, half out of bed, paused and picked the envelope off the eiderdown. ‘Careful beggar. Posted here in Chovey. Well, we'll take it along to the sergeant to help cheer him up. You go and tell them I'll want my eggs and bacon in ten minutes.'

He lit himself another cigarette, then started dressing.

About an hour and a half later, when Toby handed the anonymous letter over to Sergeant Eggbear, the symptoms of cheerfulness that it produced in him were a sinking of his heavy chin, a lowering of his eyebrows and a hissing sound through his teeth.

‘ “You were looking for a bottle weren't you? What about the flask in Mrs Milne's car?” Damn them, this is just the sort o' thing that would start up, now 'tis known as the fellow was Bish Maxwell. Someone tryin' to make trouble between Maxwells and Mrs Milne. “You were looking for a—” ' He looked up suddenly at Toby. ‘When were
you
lookin' for a bottle?'

Toby shrugged his shoulders. ‘Whom did your constable tell about it?'

‘Yes, might've been that way. Cecil—where's Cecil? Who's the lad been talkin' to?'

‘What I'd like to know,' said Toby, ‘is who's got a grudge against your Mrs Milne. What I mean is, do you feel like making guesses about who sent this, or do you have to start from the bottom?'

But the sergeant preferred to settle one thing at a time, and it was not until he had questioned Leat and had received the answer that he had happened to mention the co-operation of Toby Dyke and his friend in the bottle-hunt to quite a number of people, that Toby's question had its turn.

‘Toby,' said the sergeant then, ‘I'm goin to tell you the whole thing, just as it happened. 'Tis botherin' me.' And he went over the story, from the time that Mrs Milne had hurried, white-faced, into the police station, until the present. Toby had already heard most of it, but there were some details in it, such as a description of Leat's visit to the major, that were new.

Toby nodded at each slight interval in the story, but at the end of it he said: ‘Yes, Sam, but what you haven't given me is the background. You've left out the social side of it. These people, the Maxwells, Mrs Milne, what are they like? What's their relation to one another?'

Eggbear played the xylophone up and down his forehead. He looked uncomfortable and unwilling to say anything. All at once, with a charging rush of words, he started: ‘You know how 'tis in this kind o' place, Toby—all talk, everywhere you go, naught but talk. I was out in my garden this mornin' lookin' if there was some violets for my missis to take to her mother today over to Purbrook. What with the frost there wasn't any, though the bed's full o' buds. But what I mean to say is, if you was to go out in the street and ask the first person you see what Sergeant Eggbear was doin' at half-past seven this mornin', he'd answer on the nail: “Pickin' violets.” And if you was to ask him what he knew about Maxwells and Milnes he'd answer just as fast, and all as if he'd seen it with his own eyes. Well, maybe
some
of what he told you might be true …'

‘Yes, yes,' said Toby, ‘but that's what I want. Some of the scandal of the neighbourhood. Something to make me take an interest.'

George gave a chuckle.

‘Well, go on, Sam,' said Toby.

But the sergeant was still hesitant. It was rumoured, he said, that Sir Joseph and Mrs Milne were not at all friendly. But she was dining up to the Place the other night, so what did you make of that? It was rumoured that Sir Joseph and Lady Maxwell quarrelled about Mrs Milne; it was rumoured that Sir Joseph and his brother, the major, quarrelled about her too; it was rumoured that Daphne Milne was always quarrelling with her mother, in fact had had a quarrel with her and gone off to London only last week, and that was supposed to be about Adrian Laws—but weren't Mrs Milne and young Laws in the Ring of Bells the other night, quite friendly like? And then, Mrs Milne wasn't what you'd call good at keeping her servants …

Toby sat on a corner of the table, frowning. ‘Not,' he said, his slanting, dark eyes glowering at the anonymous message, ‘a very popular lady. At any rate, her popularity with some people only increases her unpopularity with others. That's her sort. I think, Sam, George and I are going along to have a chat with her about this letter.' And with a swinging movement of his long legs he was off the table and pulling George towards the door.

But his haste did not succeed in leaving Sergeant Eggbear behind them. If Mrs Milne was to be interviewed about the letter it was only proper, the sergeant explained with unusually dour stubbornness, that he should be in charge. It was in his Austin Seven, some minutes later, that the three of them approached The Laurels.

They were shown by Cecil Leat's cousin Ruby into Mrs Milne's green-and-grey drawing-room.

Coming up the drive, standing on the doorstep, crossing the polished parquet of the hall, they had heard a piano. Chopin, but now from this waltz and now from that study—all of it, however, of the easier kind. It was impatient, muddled playing, and not particularly musical. As Ruby opened the drawing-room door it stopped abruptly.

A girl seated at the piano looked over her shoulder at them, then stood up.

She was a girl of slim hips and long, slim legs, waving fair hair and eyes as remarkably blue as a cynodendron. Skin of a dazzling freshness and fairness drew attention from the fact that her features were not distinguished. There was, in the terms of the cosmetic advertisements, a blooming naturalness about her. That is to say, there was only a very little powder on her face, her lipstick was only a shade pinker and brighter than her lips themselves would have been, and her hair appeared as if the wind had been at it—a cunning wind, however, with Bond Street experience behind it. She wore slim, well-tailored tweeds and golf shoes and a check blouse with a childish-looking little round collar and a big bow at her neck.

One hand went nervously to this bow, as she stood there, to tug at an end of it.

‘Good morning,' she said, with a husky softness that had the effect of an unexpected shyness. Her glance went over the three of them, then came to rest on Toby.

‘Mornin', Miss Milne,' said Eggbear. ‘I'd heard you was up to London. Did you have a nice time?'

‘I was only up for a day or two,' she answered, still looking at the dark and somewhat striking face behind the sergeant, ‘shopping and so on. I—I didn't do much exciting.'

‘You're mother's in, I'm told.'

‘Y-yes, I'll go and … I don't expect she'll … Do sit down, Sergeant Eggbear; I'll see if …' And she made a dive for the door. But even then her eyes came round once more to gaze into Toby's. As she pulled the door shut behind her Toby let out the breath he had been holding.

‘My God, what a glorious girl!'

‘Yes,' said Eggbear, ‘she's pretty.'

Toby laughed derisively. ‘Pretty! But what a pity, Sam, that such a gorgeous creature should be so frightened.'

‘Ah, that don't mean anythin'. She always was a shy sort of girl.'

Again a knowledgeable laugh answered him. ‘My good Sam, that shyness is only a part of her picture of herself. But her eyes, her eyes! That wasn't shyness, that wasn't dewy wood-fairyness, that was fear.'

This time the sergeant chose to laugh.

‘Maybe,' said George, ‘the sergeant don't know what fear looks like in the eyes of a beautiful girl, like you do, Tobe.'

With a sharp frown of suspicion Toby looked round at him. But George was gazing at his own reflection in the gold-framed, convex mirror that hung above the fireplace. From the way he was bulging his eyes and mouthing, it looked as if he must be trying to catch up with the distortion of the reflection.

‘Stop that, George, she's coming!' Toby turned quickly to the door.

Mrs Milne, in her greeting, was gravely inquiring. She seemed to assume that the sergeant would not have called upon her with his friend unless the matter were of some importance. She said: ‘Good morning, Mr Dyke,' without waiting for Toby to be introduced to her, and when they were all seated, she in a deep easy chair, she said: ‘I've been half-expecting you, Sergeant. I've been having a feeling that this thing wasn't at an end.' On the arms of the chair her hands, with their flashing rings, lay with a limpness unlike the tension of her neck and shoulders.