Death and Miss Dane Read online

“Well?”

  “The doctor has been a regular visitor up at Brakeways. Who was it you’d have said he went to see?”

  “The two women,” said Bob promptly. “You thought he went up there to play chess with old Allenby?”

  “Yes. You never liked Philppa, did you?”

  “I never knew much about her; it was Frances who didn’t like her. I concentrated on disliking her mother. It was no use telling you, because you had to be loyal and we have to be discreet.”

  Paul kicked the log fire into a blaze. “Things seem to be happening rather fast,” he said morosely.

  “Wrong. Things are just happening,” said Bob. “You’re not used to it; nothing’s happened to you since your father died and you got your head down over an office desk, working like blazes. You lifted it once, saw a pretty girl and remembered that you were over 30, and so you proposed, and as you were a fine big handsome guy, she didn’t notice that your heart wasn’t really in it. Or she didn’t care.”

  “It would have been all right,” said Paul, “if she hadn’t interfered with the running of the office. The office is—”

  “—your sphere? Right—but it’s been obvious to Frances for some time that her days with you were numbered. So much so, that tonight she’s tendering her resignation.” Paul turned to stare at him.

  “You’re…you’re joking,” he said.

  “Not me. We talked it over tonight, and made up our minds. She wants to go—not at once, of course; the date she’d set was when you came back from your honeymoon. But she wants to leave and—” he grinned at Paul “—I want to join.”

  “Join?”

  “That’s it; join.”

  “I’d like to have you. I’d like it more than anything.”

  “Thanks. I can’t join you until September; I’ve got to finish my contract. But come September, I’ll be with you—and Frances will leave you and she and I’ll settle down and have a family. We’ve waited too long; maybe we’ll have more success with kids than we did with cows. If we don’t, we shan’t be able to sell them to the General. It’s a pity about him,” he said in a brooding voice. “I liked the way he treated us over the sale of the farm. When’s the inquest?”

  “Haven’t heard. What made you change your mind about joining the firm?”

  “The cynics would say I changed it because you’d turned the thing into a success. But the reason is that my ideas about this valley have changed. Coming down from London when I married, I thought it was all too Sleepy Hollow for words. I thought you were a fool to stick yourself in a small business and live with your Mamma in a tiddly-widdly cottage; sissy, I thought you were. Big fellow like you, I told myself, ought to do something dramatic—emigrate; go to Canada and hew logs; do things the hard way. Now I know that that’s exactly how you did do things: the hard way. You rebuilt on the old site. You took the bird in hand and made it sing. For some time, I admit, I wondered whether the business was prospering because people found it novel to do business with a baronet—but when I took this travelling job and got around a bit, I learned a lot, and I got a lot of surprises. So you’re a success, and I’ll join you.”

  “Well, thank God for something pleasant to think about on a raw evening,” said Paul. “What do you do when a girl throws a ring in your face? Crawl back, or sit and wait?”

  “I’ve only just joined your firm,” Bob reminded him. “I don’t want to get chucked out again straight away for speaking my mind about the Mitchells, daughter or Mamma.”

  “She was going to marry the General,” said Paul, and saw Bob jerk himself upright in his seat.

  “Who told you that?” he asked in amazement.

  “Mrs. Mitchell herself, when I went up there last night.”

  “The doctor wouldn’t have liked that,” said Bob slowly.

  “He didn’t know. He had his suspicions, but he wasn’t sure. He asked me in the office this morning whether there had been any engagement between her and the General.”

  “And I suppose you wouldn’t tell him?”

  “She hadn’t told it to me in confidence, but I imagined that the General’s death might make a difference.”

  “You bet it will,” said Bob. “But—if she was really engaged to the General—it won’t make any difference to the doctor. Men of his type don’t like having their charms weighed and found wanting.”

  “You don’t imagine she’d ever have considered him—the doctor—as a husband, do you?”

  “Why not?”

  “You said just now—”

  “I said she was wary of his reputation. In my view, she’d try for the General—and Sanctuary—and if she didn’t get them, she’d settle for the doctor. Only…I don’t think the doctor’ll go along with that little plan. Speaking of Sanctuary, will it go to Mrs. Zimmerman?”

  “So the doctor said.”

  “Can’t imagine the old lady up there, somehow.”

  Paul did not reply. The door had opened, and his mother came in with Mrs. Zimmerman. Behind them came Frances, Rosario and Anabel Dane. Mrs. Zimmerman looked pale, but she seemed to have recovered all her dignity of manner.

  “Come and sit down,” said Paul, drawing up a chair.

  But it was some time before they sat down, for Mrs. Zimmerman, like the Three Kings from the East, had come bearing gifts. Laying a number of packages on the sofa, she unwrapped one and handed to Lady Saracen—a delicate Kashmir shawl—of the kind, she explained, that was so fine that it could be drawn through a wedding ring. Certainly it would now have passed through without difficulty, since most of it was worn away, but Mrs. Zimmerman draped it around the shoulders of her hostess and showed her how it could be arranged so as to hide the holes.

  “It belonged to my great-great-grandfather,” she said. “He brought it home from India as a present for somebody or other, but he found it so warm on winter evenings that he decided to keep it for himself.”

  For Rosario there was a very old, very battered bound volume of Punch.

  “Be careful how you handle it, my dear,” warned Mrs. Zimmerman. “The binding is loose, but you can easily glue it together. You’ll find that some of the pages have pictures cut out of them—my grandmother did that to make a scrap album, but you must look at the rest; it’s said, you know, that nothing gives a clearer picture of English life than Punch.”

  Rosario, holding the sagging volume together with difficulty, murmured her thanks, and Paul discovered that he was waiting with schoolboy eagerness for his turn; there was a small, rather knobbly parcel left, and he was certain that it was to be his. It was. Mrs. Zimmerman, unwrapping it, held it out to him.

  “This is for you,” she said. “No, no, I insist; you’ve been too, too good and I shall feel very unhappy if you don’t let me repay you in some small measure. It is a pipe rack, as you’ll see in a moment when I hold this piece up—so. I made it myself when I was very, very much younger than I am now, but I believe I must have used an inferior sort of glue, because it never really stuck properly. Perhaps you will be able to get some stickier stuff and mend it.”

  Paul, bowing his gratitude, collected the gifts and placed them on a table, and a little later Lady Saracen led everybody to dinner. After the meal, Mrs. Zimmerman insisted upon helping with the washing up, and having broken two plates, became so agitated that she went upstairs and brought down a short length of yellow brocade and pressed it upon Lady Saracen; it would be too frail, she explained, to make up into a garment, but with care, it might be framed and used as a fire-screen.

  “I shall never, never forget your kindness,” she declared in the drawing-room when they were all assembled and Paul had persuaded her to sit down and drink her coffee. “When I came here, I was feeling dreadfully ill—you have made me almost better. If only I can rest a little, I shall be able to remember everything again. I thought, do you know”—She looked around the circle of faces—“I really thought that I was losing my wits.”

  “Anybody would have felt the same, alone at the Lodge,”
said Lady Saracen.

  “Oh, I never mind being alone. When my brother suggested my going to the Lodge, I was as pleased to go as he was pleased to see me go. He wouldn’t have been a very gay companion, you know.” She sighed. “His was a wasted life, I think. He could have had great happiness, but he threw it away.” She handed her cup to Anabel. “Thank you, Isabel, my dear.”

  “Anabel,” corrected Rosario gently.

  “How silly of me! I get names so mixed up.” She struggled to move her chair back a little from the fire, and Paul went to help her. “Thank you, thank you. I never,” she told the others, “sit close to a fire; I cannot bear the heat. I made it a rule, when I lived in England many years ago, never to have fires between April and November. Up at the Lodge I refused to have any coal sent to me after the end of March, and I haven’t had a fire since.”

  “Oh, but—” began Frances, and stopped.

  Mrs. Zimmerman turned to her.

  “You were saying?”

  “Nothing,” Frances frowned. “It was only that…when I came to see you yesterday morning, you…well, you had a fire then.”

  She stopped. Mrs. Zimmerman’s face had gone gray, and she was struggling to rise. Lady Saracen hurried to help her.

  “We shouldn’t be talking of yesterday,” she said gently. “Please, please don’t let us go on; let’s talk of something else.”

  “No,” Mrs. Zimmerman seemed to be having difficulty with her breathing. “No. I want to…to think. I’ve got to think. I’ve got to…remember.”

  She put out a hand, and Rosario, who was nearest, caught it and held it. Mrs. Zimmerman spoke in a voice of desperate appeal, her eyes on Frances.

  “Help me!” she begged. “There couldn’t have been a fire! I had nothing to burn, nothing!”

  Paul spoke slowly.

  “You were packing, clearing up your things,” he said. “Could you have been burning papers?”

  “Burning…papers.” The voice was slow, dragging. Mrs. Zimmerman’s eyes were closed. “Yes, yes, yes…papers.” She opened her eyes and looked around the circle of anxious faces, resting at last on Anabel Dane. “Isabel—you’ll help me, won’t you?”

  “If I can.” Anabel’s voice was infinitely soothing. “You were burning papers. Were they special papers, or were you burning them just because you were clearing things up and—”

  “Clearing…things…up. Yes, yes, yes!” Mrs. Zimmerman spoke rapidly. “I was clearing things up—and I found it! I found it!” she cried in a voice of triumph. “I wasn’t looking for it; I was just clearing up, and I put all the old papers into the grate—yes, into the grate, and I was burning them, and I was scarcely looking at them, until suddenly…I saw it! It was on the back of a paper that a friend of mine had sent me—her daughter’s wedding. Yes, yes, that was it! She sent me the cutting that had all the wedding pictures, and I remember folding it up, and when I folded it to push it into the grate, I…I saw the names, and I went out at once and I took the paper to him, and I showed it to him and I said, ‘There: there it is for you to read for yourself.’ And he read it and he gave it back to me and I felt sorry I’d shown it to him, because he looked so dreadful…so dreadful. But he had to know, and perhaps it was as well that he knew before it was too late. I went away and I left him…I left him alone, all alone, and they murdered him…murdered him…”

  She swayed, and Paul caught her. She clung to him, breathing heavily.

  “Paul—we must get the doctor,” whispered Lady Saracen.

  “No.” Mrs. Zimmerman brought the word out gaspingly. “No, I won’t… I tell you I won’t see him…I won’t…I won’t.”

  “Very well.” said Lady Saracen. “But you must come and lie down for a little while. Please—please come and rest.”

  “Rest? No, NO. I must…I must go to the police.” Mrs. Zimmerman looked around wildly. “The police—I must go to them.”

  “If you’ll rest now,” said Paul gently, “I’ll bring the police here in the morning and you can tell them…what you have to tell them.”

  “No. Tonight. Tonight,” she said. “I—” Her eyes closed, and she seemed to crumple in his arms. Bob came to help him and between them they got her tall, slight figure up the stairs and laid her on the bed. Lady Saracen followed them, and motioned them away.

  “Leave me with her,” she whispered. “She must be absolutely quiet.”

  “The doctor said something about a sedative,” Paul said in a low voice.

  “Later. For the moment, just let her lie. I’ll stay with her until she’s quiet.”

  Paul and Bob went downstairs, and with the others sat around the fire and tried to unravel the mystery of the papers, but conjecture led nowhere, and presently Frances rose and pulled her husband to his feet.

  “Come on—we’ll go,” she said. “Paul and his mother have enough on their hands. But I shan’t sleep tonight. She shuddered. “This thing’s got too close for my liking.”

  “Are you going to fetch the police tonight?” Bob asked Paul.

  “Not unless I have to. I have an idea that she’s collapsed; if she recovers and makes a fuss, I’ll ring them up. But what she needs first is a doctor.”

  “Shall I ring him up and ask him to look in here on his way up to see Mr. Allenby?” Frances asked.

  “I don’t think he’ll be going there,” said Paul. “I saw Mr. Allenby this evening and he told me he was getting up tomorrow.”

  “Well, if there’s anything we can do,” said Bob, shepherding his wife and Anabel into the hall, “you’ve only to pick up the phone.”

  “Thanks.”

  The three drove away, and a little later Lady Saracen came downstairs and joined Paul and Rosario in the drawing-room.

  “She seems to be quite calm,” she said. “She’s lying still and she’s breathing naturally. I think she’s asleep. I do hope so.”

  “Well, sit down and you can go up again in a little while and see how she is,” said Paul. “Rosario, you look tired; shouldn’t you go to bed?”

  Rosario did not seem to want to go to bed. The three sat by the fire, saying little, and after a time Lady Saracen stirred uneasily.

  “I think I’ll go up and look at her,” she said.

  “We’ll all go up—to bed,” said Paul.

  “But if she wants the police?”

  “Then we’ll call them. But she’s probably asleep.”

  Lady Saracen went upstairs.

  A moment later they heard her cry out. Paul found himself out of the room and going up the stairs in three bounds.

  “What is it?” he asked, as he reached the landing.

  “Oh, what is it?” gasped Rosario, behind him.

  Lady Saracen’s face was white. She was leaning against the open door of the bedroom.

  “She’s…she’s gone! She isn’t here!”

  Chapter 7

  It took them only a few moments to search the house. Mrs. Zimmerman was not to be found.

  “Do you think she went to the police?” Lady Saracen asked shakily.

  “No. I think she’s on her way to the Lodge,” said Paul.

  “The Lodge?”

  “To look for that paper,” he said, and turned to make his way to the garage. “She’ll be walking up just as she walked down this morning. I’ll catch her up, mother; don’t worry. Rosario, don’t let her worry.”

  He caught up Mrs. Zimmerman three- quarters of a mile along the road that led to the Lodge. He stopped the car and got out and opened the door for her, and without a word she climbed in. She turned to him as he took his place once more at the wheel.

  “You’ll take me there, won’t you?” she asked.

  He hesitated.

  “You’re not really fit enough to do this,” he said.

  “I’ve got to find that paper. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Won’t the morning be soon enough?”

  “The morning will be too late,” she said.

  “All right,” he said. “The mor
ning will be too late—but you’re still not fit to go up there. If you’ll tell me what to look for and where to look for it, I’ll go. That is, if you promise to go home now and wait quietly there until I get back.”

  “I promise faithfully,” she said.

  He turned the car.

  “What is it, and where is it?” he asked.

  “It’s a newspaper cutting, and it’s in my bureau. I can’t tell you exactly which drawer it will be in, but there are only four; it will be in one of them.”

  “But if you were packing; why would you have put the paper back into your desk?”

  “Because, don’t you see,” she said in surprise, “I knew that I shouldn’t be leaving, after all.” She groped in her bag. “The front door key of the Lodge,” she said handing it to him. “And…thank you more than I can say.”

  He took her back to the Cottage, and Lady Saracen met them, and with Rosario helped Lady Zimmerman out of the car. But before Paul drove away there was something more she had to say.

  “It’s coming back by degrees,” she told him. “I don’t remember everything yet, but when you bring back the paper I shall be able to fill up the blanks. But one thing I do remember, and that is where I saw Isabel before.”

  “Isabel?”

  “You call her Anabel, but her name is Isabel, of course. I knew I must have seen her somewhere but it had gone with all the rest.”

  “Where and when did you see her?” he asked.

  “I can’t remember when, but I can remember very clearly where,” said Mrs. Zimmerman. “I saw her with the General.”

  He sat very still. He saw the three woman going into the house, but he did not drive away. When Rosario came running out of the house and spoke to him, he looked at her uncomprehendingly.

  “I am so glad you had not gone,” she said breathlessly. “The telephone. It was Bob.”

  With a tremendous effort, he brought his mind to what she was saying.

  “He wants to see you. His car has gone. He put it into the garage when they got home, and then he heard it being driven away. It’s gone. And…”

  “And?”

  “Anabel has gone too,” said Rosario