Miss Silver laid down the spoon she had been polishing and agreed.

“You have such a graphic way of telling things, Mrs. Smollett. I am sure you quite make me feel I know all these people. Do pray go on. It is most absorbing. What about the two ground-floor flats? Do you know the people in them?”

Mrs. Smollett preened herself.

“Old Mrs. Meredith in No. 1, I’m there regular twice a week- have been ever since they come. The beginning of the summer it was, if you can call it a summer.”

“They are newcomers?”

“They and Mrs. Underwood and Miss Roland, they all come round about the spring. Spooners, they’ve been here since Christmas. Mr. Drake, and the Willards a matter of two years, Miss Garside and the Lemmings nearer five. You see, Mrs. Meredith’s got to be on a ground floor because of going out in her chair-and awkward enough getting it up and down the steps, but there’s two of them and Mr. Bell gives a hand.”

“Two of them?”

Mrs. Smollett nodded.

“Miss Crane-she’s the companion. And Packer-she’s the maid.”

“I hope they look after the old lady well. It is very sad to be dependent upon strangers.”

Mrs. Smollett heaved a sigh.

“That’s right, miss, and if it was that Packer, I wouldn’t like to be the one that depended on her. Mind you, I don’t say but what she’s good at her work. Give everyone their due, she keeps the place and the old lady well enough with me going in twice a week, but not a word out of her half the time and sour enough to turn the milk. I don’t know how Miss Crane puts up with it. Quite a different kind of person she is, and devoted to the old lady-well, you wouldn’t credit it. Only yesterday she says to me, ‘Mrs. Smollett,’ she says, ‘I don’t know what I should do if anything happened to Mrs. Meredith.’”

Miss Silver took up another spoon.

“Has she been with her long?”

“Bound to have been,” said Mrs. Smollett, wringing out a dishcloth. “She’s not the changing sort Miss Crane isn’t. Come to think of it, there was Mrs. Meredith’s nephew that come to say good-bye before he went off to Palestine, and I heard him say when he come in, ‘Well, Miss Crane, it must be a matter of ten years since I saw my pore aunt. I’m afraid I’ll see a great change in her.’ And Miss Crane she says, ‘I’m afraid you will, Colonel Meredith. There’s changes in us all in ten years,’ she says, ‘and I don’t suppose you’d have reckernised me if you’d a-met me in the street,’ and he laughs and says, ‘I’d a-known you anywhere.’ A very jolly, laughing gentleman, but I thought he was having her on, for the hall was that dark you could hardly see your way let alone reckernising anyone you hadn’t seen for ten years. Seems he’d been in Ireland and India and all over the place, and about the only relation the pore old lady’s got by all accounts. Funny the way things turn out, isn’t it? There’s Miss Garside and pore old Mrs. Meredith with next to no relations at all, and Miss Lemming in No. 2 that’s got one too many, pore thing.”

Miss Silver said “Indeed?” in an interested voice.

Mrs. Smollett stood the washing-up bowl on end and hung the dishcloth over it to dry.

“Well you may say so!” she said. “If ever there was a pore trampled slave it’s Miss Agnes Lemming. Day nor night her mother don’t give her no peace. It’s ‘Do this!’ and ‘Do that!’ and ‘Come here!’ and ‘Go there!’ and ‘Why did you do this?’ and ‘Why didn’t you do that?’ till you’d wonder how any ’uman woman could put up with it. She don’t do it to me, Mrs. Lemming don’t, for I wouldn’t take it not from her nor from nobody, not if I was a heathen black I wouldn’t. And why Miss Agnes don’t walk out and leave her passes me. Her spirit’s broke, pore thing, that’s what it is, and a crool shame, for she’s as nice a lady as you could find, and a very feeling heart-too feeling, if you was to ask me.” Miss Silver went on asking her.

CHAPTER 31

It was a little later that Sergeant Abbott came in on his Chief Inspector and said,

“Guess who is here.”

Lamb removed his gaze from Sergeant Curtis’ report and said,

“What’s that?”

Sergeant Abbott permitted himself a faint malicious smile.

“I said, ‘Guess who is here.’”

“Haven’t time for guessing.”

“Well, then, I’ll tell you-Miss Silver.”

“What!”

“The one and only Maud Silver. In the character of visiting friend to Mrs. Underwood.”

“Oh, good lor!”

“You’ve said it, sir.”

“What’s brought her here?”

“Mrs. Underwood-obviously. She’s rattled-wants someone to hold her hand. Enter Maudie as the discreet friend.”

Lamb gave a long soft whistle and tilted back his chair.

“She’s discreet enough. I wonder what she’s up to.”

Frank Abbott sat down on the arm of one of the big chairs.

“What are you going to do about it-let her in?” Then, as Lamb frowned and made no answer, “She’s lucky, you know. Every time she touches a case the police come out of it in a blaze of glory. Maudie the Mascot. The Policeman’s Joy-Promotion waits upon her Path.”

Lamb nodded.

“It isn’t all luck either,” he said. “Remember the first time we ran up against her? I don’t mind saying I put her down as a harmless old maid and I handed her off-politely, you know, because you don’t want to be hard on a lady. Well, as often as I handed her off, there she was back again, and the next thing I knew, it was, ‘May I have a word with you, Inspector?’ and she was giving me the answers as neat as a crossword puzzle and no fuss about it. I’ve got a respect for Miss Silver.”

Frank Abbott laughed.

“Oh, so have I. She makes me feel like the bottom of the infant class in a kindergarten. That’s why I call her Maudie-it’s just whistling to keep my courage up. Are you going to let her in on this?”

“You can’t keep her out,” said Lamb-“and I don’t know that I want to. This is the sort of case where she could be useful. She’ll be watching Mrs. Underwood’s interests over the blackmailing, I take it. Mrs. U. may have been in touch with her before the murder-probably was. That would account for her coming in at once like this. Yes, she might be useful, and I’ll tell you why. People-that’s her strong suit-she knows people. Learnt it in the schoolroom teaching kids-I don’t know-but she’s got it. She sizes people up quicker than anyone I’ve known, and she don’t make mistakes. Remember the Poisoned Caterpillars case-March told us about that-and the Chinese Shawl? If she’s got a line on this blackmailing business-and I suspect she has, or Mrs. Underwood wouldn’t have called her in-then we want whatever it is she’s got. There hasn’t been time for Mrs. U. to make a new contact, but if she had already been to Miss Silver about the blackmailing, then she’d have done exactly what she has done-gone straight out of this room to the telephone and called Miss Silver in. You see, the blackmail may be at the bottom of the whole business, and we want to know all about it. The girl may have been mixed up with the Mayfair people-may even have been a principal. If it weren’t for that accommodation address, I’d think she’d only been having a kind of private flutter with Mrs. Underwood, and that the Armitage business was just what her sister says, a nasty spiteful joke. But the address sticks in my throat. It was the one the Mayfair people used, and Mrs. Underwood sent her first letter there-the one with the money in it. Then the Mayfair business blows up, and Mrs. Underwood gets a different address next time, and the answer she sends there turns up in Carola Roland’s bag. There’s something there, and I’d like to know what Miss Silver knows about it. Of course the girl may have been murdered by the man she had drinks with. Mr. Maundersley-Smith will have to account for his movements. He may have been the man Bell saw going away at half past eight. If he’s got an alibi, the man may have been Major Armitage-he had plenty of time to come back and kill her. It’s no good saying she was just having a joke with him, because he didn’t know that until after she was dead. She certainly upset Miss Underwood very much indeed, and the letter she showed her and Major Armitage must have looked uncommonly like proof that there had been a marriage. And he didn’t remember that she was his brother’s widow until midnight, when she had probably been dead for an hour or two. You remember he accounted for the sudden recovery of his memory by saying he supposed it was due to the shock, and he explained that by saying he meant the shock of having Miss Roland claim to be his wife. But it might quite easily have been the shock of having killed her. I don’t say he did, and I don’t say he didn’t, but he might have done… Then there’s Mrs. Willard. I don’t think a lot about her, but she’s there. Mr. Willard seems to have been dangling after Miss Roland, and it looks as if he and his wife had had a fair-sized row, or he wouldn’t have stayed out all night. But husbands and wives quarrel a lot more than anyone thinks, and it’s oftener about little things than big ones, so it mayn’t have had anything to do with Miss Roland at all. I don’t give much for their being upset this morning. If he liked the girl he would be upset, and the more he showed it, the more upset Mrs. W. would be-that’s human nature. Well, I’m expecting the fingerprints and the surgeon’s report along any time now, and then we’ll know where we are. I think Curtis got prints from most of the people in the house, so we’ll be able to see whether any of them were up here or not. Major Armitage and Miss Underwood were, we know, but I’m curious about whether Mrs. U. was telling the truth when she said she didn’t come in.”