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She left the room. He thought, disturbed, ‘What did she mean by that? Does she want me to suggest a line of defence? For whom?’
His meditations were interrupted by the entrance of a man about fifty years of age. He had a naturally powerful frame, but stooped slightly. His clothes were untidy and his hair carelessly brushed. He looked good-natured but vague.
‘Sir Edward Palliser? Oh, how do you do. Magdalen sent me along. It’s very good of you, I’m sure, to wish to help us. Though I don’t think anything will ever be really discovered. I mean, they won’t catch the fellow.’
‘You think it was a burglar then – someone from outside?’
‘Well, it must have been. It couldn’t be one of the family. These fellows are very clever nowadays, they climb like cats and they get in and out as they like.’
‘Where were you, Mr Crabtree, when the tragedy occurred?’
‘I was busy with my stamps – in my little sitting-room upstairs.’
‘You didn’t hear anything?’
‘No – but then I never do hear anything when I’m absorbed. Very foolish of me, but there it is.’
‘Is the sitting-room you refer to over this room?’
‘No, it’s at the back.’
Again the door opened. A small fair woman entered. Her hands were twitching nervously. She looked fretful and excited.
‘William, why didn’t you wait for me? I said “wait”.’
‘Sorry, my dear, I forgot. Sir Edward Palliser – my wife.’
‘How do you do, Mrs Crabtree? I hope you don’t mind my coming here to ask a few questions. I know how anxious you must all be to have things cleared up.’
‘Naturally. But I can’t tell you anything – can I, William? I was asleep – on my bed – I only woke up when Martha screamed.’
Her hands continued to twitch. ‘Where is your room, Mrs Crabtree?’
‘It’s over this. But I didn’t hear anything – how could I? I was asleep.’ He could get nothing out of her but that. She knew nothing – she had heard nothing – she had been asleep. She reiterated it with the obstinacy of a frightened woman. Yet Sir Edward knew very well that it might easily be – probably was – the bare truth.
He excused himself at last – said he would like to put a few questions to Martha. William Crabtree volunteered to take him to the kitchen. In the hall, Sir Edward nearly collided with a tall dark young man who was striding towards the front door.
‘Mr Matthew Vaughan?’
‘Yes – but look here, I can’t wait. I’ve got an appointment.’
‘Matthew!’ It was his sister’s voice from the stairs. ‘Oh! Matthew, you promised –’
‘I know, sis. But I can’t. Got to meet a fellow. And, anyway, what’s the good of talking about the damned thing over and over again. We have enough of that with the police. I’m fed up with the whole show.’
The front door banged. Mr Matthew Vaughan had made his exit.
Sir Edward was introduced into the kitchen. Martha was ironing. She paused, iron in hand. Sir Edward shut the door behind him.
‘Miss Vaughan has asked me to help her,’ he said. ‘I hope you won’t object to my asking you a few questions.’
She looked at him, then shook her head.
‘None of them did it, sir. I know what you’re thinking, but it isn’t so. As nice a set of ladies and gentlemen as you could wish to see.’
‘I’ve no doubt of it. But their niceness isn’t what we call evidence, you know.’
‘Perhaps not, sir. The law’s a funny thing. But there is evidence – as you call it, sir. None of them could have done it without my knowing.’
‘But surely –’
‘I know what I’m talking about sir. There, listen to that –’
‘That’ was a creaking sound above their heads.
‘The stairs, sir. Every time anyone goes up or down, the stairs creak something awful. It doesn’t matter how quiet you go. Mrs Crabtree, she was lying on her bed, and Mr Crabtree was fiddling about with them wretched stamps of his, and Miss Magdalen she was up above again working her machine, and if any one of those three had come down the stairs I should have known it. And they didn’t!’
She spoke with a positive assurance which impressed the barrister. He thought: ‘A good witness. She’d carry weight.’
‘You mightn’t have noticed.’
‘Yes, I would. I’d have noticed without noticing, so to speak. Like you notice when a door shuts and somebody goes out.’
Sir Edward shifted his ground.
‘That is three of them acounted for, but there is a fourth. Was Mr Matthew Vaughan upstairs also?’
‘No, but he was in the little room downstairs. Next door. And he was typewriting. You can hear it plain in here. His machine never stopped for a moment. Not for a moment, sir, I can swear to it. A nasty irritating tap tapping noise it is, too.’
Sir Edward paused a minute. ‘It was you who found her, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir, it was. Lying there with blood on her poor hair. And no one hearing a sound on account of the tap-tapping of Mr Matthew’s typewriter.’
‘I understand you are positive that no one came into the house?’
‘How could they, sir, without my knowing? The bell rings in here. And there’s only the one door.’
He looked at her straight in the face. ‘You were attached to Miss Crabtree?’
A warm glow – genuine – unmistakable – came into her face. ‘Yes, indeed, I was, sir. But for Miss Crabtree – well, I’m getting on and I don’t mind speaking of it now. I got into trouble, sir, when I was a girl, and Miss Crabtree stood by me – took me back into her service, she did, when it was all over. I’d have died for her – I would indeed.’
Sir Edward knew sincerity when he heard it. Martha was sincere.
‘As far as you know, no one came to the door –?’
‘No one could have come.’
‘I said as far as you know. But if Miss Crabtree had been expecting someone – if she opened the door to that someone herself . . .’
‘Oh!’ Martha seemed taken aback.
‘That’s possible, I suppose?’ Sir Edward urged. ‘It’s possible – yes – but it isn’t very likely. I mean . . .’
She was clearly taken aback. She couldn’t deny and yet she wanted to do so. Why? Because she knew that the truth lay elsewhere. Was that it? The four people in the house – one of them guilty? Did Martha want to shield that guilty party? Had the stairs creaked? Had someone come stealthily down and did Martha know who that someone was?
She herself was honest – Sir Edward was convinced of that.
He pressed his point, watching her.
‘Miss Crabtree might have done that, I suppose? The window of that room faces the street. She might have seen whoever it was she was waiting for from the window and gone out into the hall and let him – or her – in. She might even have wished that no one should see the person.’
Martha looked troubled. She said at last reluctantly:
‘Yes, you may be right, sir. I never thought of that. That she was expecting a gentleman – yes, it well might be.’
It was though she began to perceive advantages in the idea. ‘You were the last person to see her, were you not?’
‘Yes, sir. After I’d cleared away the tea. I took the receipted books to her and the change from the money she’d given me.’
‘Had she given the money to you in five-pound notes?’
‘A five-pound note, sir,’ said Martha in a shocked voice. ‘The book never came up as high as five pounds. I’m very careful.’
‘Where did she keep her money?’
‘I don’t rightly know, sir. I should say that she carried it about with her – in her black velvet bag. But of course she may have kept it in one of the drawers in her bedroom that were locked. She was very fond of locking up things, though prone to lose her keys.’
Sir Edward nodded.
‘You don’t know how much money
she had – in five-pound notes, I mean?’
‘No, sir, I couldn’t say what the exact amount was.’
‘And she said nothing to you that could lead you to believe that she was expecting anybody?’
‘No, sir.’
‘You’re quite sure? What exactly did she say?’
‘Well,’ Martha considered, ‘she said the butcher was nothing more than a rogue and a cheat, and she said I’d had in a quarter of a pound of tea more than I ought, and she said Mrs Crabtree was full of nonsense for not liking to eat margarine, and she didn’t like one of the sixpences I’d brought her back – one of the new ones with oak leaves on it – she said it was bad, and I had a lot of trouble to convince her. And she said – oh, that the fishmonger had sent haddocks instead of whitings, and had I told him about it, and I said I had – and, really, I think that’s all, sir.’
Martha’s speech had made the deceased lady loom clear to Sir Edward as a detailed description would never have done. He said casually:
‘Rather a difficult mistress to please, eh?’
