He looked across at Inspector Lamb. His eyes gave a scarcely perceptible signal as the woman came up ticket in hand. The two of them stepped forward together and blocked her way.
The shock was absolute. It caught her on the peak of her success and knocked her spinning. The risks had all been run, the price had all been paid. She was secure, triumphant, utterly unprepared. And then, right in her path, the Inspector whom she had tricked, and Peter Renshaw whom she had left to bear the blame. She stopped, and froze before their eyes. Her chin dropped. The colour stood out ghastly on cheeks turned suddenly grey.
The Inspector’s hand came down on her shoulder. He began to say his piece. “Agnes Craddock, alias La Fay, alias Green, I arrest you-” But he got no farther than that. She wrenched from under his hand, whirled round, and darted back across the platform through the first open carriage door and, banging it behind her, out on the other side.
Peter stood where he was. He had identified her, but he would do no more. He saw the Inspector snatch at the carriage door and climb in. The air was suddenly full of loud commotion and noise-the shriek of a whistle, the roar of an oncoming train. Porters ran, the ticket-collector joined them, passengers who had just given up their tickets came streaming back. He saw them run, he heard them shout, and he heard the grinding and clanging of the train which came to rest against the far platform.
The ticket-collector came hurrying back, a fair-haired man with a face like a damp dish-cloth.
“It got her!” he said, and leaned against the wall. “Ran right in front of it she did, and it caught her and knocked her flying. I dunno if she’s dead or not, but I’m to ring up for the ambulance.” He wiped his face with his sleeve and stumbled through into the ticket office.
Chapter XXXVII
Peter Renshaw came back to Craddock House on the Sunday afternoon. He thought, “Well, it’s all over now. Bobby’s safe, and I don’t give a damn whether Mavis is safe or not. No need to either, Mavis being very well able to look out for Mavis Grey.” He thought, “Lee and I can get married. I can take her right away out of this, and I hope to heaven we never see Craddock House again.”
He rang the bell of Lucy Craddock’s flat, and when Lee opened the door he picked her up and held her close, and didn’t say a word.
When they were in the sitting-room he said in an odd, unsteady voice, “Where’s Lucinda?” and Lee said,
“She’s lying down. I think she’s asleep.”
They stood looking at each other. Lee’s lips trembled.
She said, “Why don’t you tell me what has happened?” And Peter said,
“It’s all over-she’s dead. It’s a good thing-better than being hanged. When she saw old Lamb and me she lost her nerve and bolted-right under a train. Horrid business. They got her to a hospital, and she was able to make a statement. Old Lamb says she was as clear as a bell. She dictated a confession. I’ve got a copy of it here. Come and sit down.”
He took out a number of folded type-written sheets and gave them to her. She sat down on the sofa. Peter sat beside her. They read the confession together.
“My name is Agnes Sophia Crouch. My stage name is Rosalie La Fay. I married Ross Craddock at the Marylebone register office on August 25th 1917 when he was over from France on ten days’ leave. That was the only time we lived together. When he came home after the Armistice he’d had enough of me. He said so. Said he’d been a fool to marry me. Said I was older than him. And if I was, I was his wife just the same. He couldn’t get away from that, could he? I’d got my lines.
His father didn’t like it, but he played up. There wasn’t anything against me, and so I told the lawyer. And old Mr. Craddock made me an allowance. It was three hundred a year to start with, but when the depression came he cut it down. And then he cut it again, and when he died Ross brought it down to twenty-five, and then this last year he stopped it altogether. Well, I wasn’t going to stand for that. How could I? I wasn’t getting any younger, and jobs weren’t getting any easier to find. Besides I wasn’t going to put up with it. No one’s ever scored me off without my getting my own back in the end. If he had treated me decently, I’d have let him alone, but he didn’t know how to treat anyone, and I wasn’t going to let him get away with it.
I thought I’d come up to London and smell round a bit, and I thought I’d manage it so that no one would know. I left my room in Doncaster, and I got my sister Annie-she’s Mrs. Love, and a widow-to take a room in Birmingham and call herself Miss La Fay. There ’s enough likeness for a description of one of us to fit the other. But first and last, all Annie knew was that I’d got business in London and didn’t want anyone to know I was there. She thought I was getting a divorce, and she sent my letters on to me care of the post office. She didn’t know anything more than that.
Twenty years ago I played the part of a charwoman called Mrs. Brown. It wasn’t much of a play, but I got the best notices I ever had. Well, I took a fancy to play the part again. I bleached my hair and painted a port-wine mark on my face, and I took a lot of pains over the clothes-to get them shabby enough, you know-and I called myself Mrs. Green. First thing I did was to get friendly with the old woman who did the daily work at Craddock House. She was getting past it, and her married daughter was wanting her to go and help with the children, so I got her to take me round and speak for me. Nobody bothers where a daily comes from.
What I thought was, if Ross wouldn’t give me my allowance I could run him in for a divorce, and then he’d have to give me alimony. I hadn’t any money to pay detectives, so I had to look about and find the evidence myself. Well, up to a fortnight ago I hadn’t got any further, and I was getting right down sick of the whole thing. I’d enjoyed it at first, doing Mrs. Green, and taking everybody in, and feeling what a good job I was making of it, but that had worn off and I was just about as sick of it as I could be.
And then I found Ross’s key sticking in the door of his flat, and I nipped it out and put it in my pocket. I got my opportunity a day or two after that. Peterson had the day off, and Ross went out after breakfast and said he wouldn’t be back till late. Rush had Peterson’s key, but he keeps his times like a piece of clockwork, so I knew just when he’d be out of the way. Well, I had a piece of luck. Ross had left his bunch of keys lying out on the writing-table, so I only had to help myself. I went through the drawers, but there wasn’t anything there. All I found was the pistol he kept in one of them, and I didn’t bother about that till afterwards. And then I opened the despatch-box, and there, right on the top, was a letter from the lawyer, Mr. Prothero, wanting Ross to make his will. It was all wrapped up very politely, and my name not mentioned, but what it amounted to was that he’d better hurry up and make a will if he didn’t want me to come in for all that money of his mother’s that wasn’t tied up. I knew what it meant well enough, and I knew that the law had been altered, and that a widow got her rights now and not just the third that she used to get when her husband died without making a will. And it came over me that if Ross were to die before he made that will, I’d be a rich woman.
I went on turning out the despatch-box. The bottom of it was full of letters from other women. He had kept theirs-he hadn’t kept any of mine. That’s when I made up my mind to kill him. I put everything back, and I went away and thought out the best way of doing it.
I got it all planned. Being on the stage gives you an insight into that sort of thing. If I could get the scene set right, then it was just a matter of timing. I made up my mind I’d do it the next time he brought a girl home to supper, because I meant it to look as if they’d quarrelled and he’d shot himself. In some ways it went better than I’d planned, and in some ways it went worse. Anyhow it went different-but I suppose that’s what always happens, no matter how carefully you plan.