Chapter Thirty-six

When Superintendent Martin left Ford House he had a good deal to think about. In the upshot he betook himself to see Randal March, the Chief Constable of Ledshire. After some preliminaries on the subject of the death of Meriel Ford and the fact that there was now indisputable proof that she had been murdered, Martin said in rather a tentative manner,

‘There is a Miss Silver staying in the house there.’

There had been a time when the handsome and robust Chief Constable was a spoiled and delicate little boy. He had not been considered strong enough to go to school, and had therefore shared his sisters’ lessons for some years beyond the usual time. Over that schoolroom Miss Maud Silver had presided with a firmness and tact which won his entire respect and affection. She had always kept up with the family, and when in later years their paths crossed again he found both the affection and the respect enhanced. He was then Inspector March, and she no longer a governess. They came together over the affair of the Poisoned Caterpillars, and he most gratefully admitted that her skill and courage had saved his life. He had encountered her in her professional capacity a good many times since then.

He looked in a considering fashion at the Superintendent and said,

‘I know Miss Silver very well indeed.’

‘I thought I remembered her name, sir. Hadn’t she something to do with that business at the Catherine-Wheel?’

Randal March nodded.

‘She has had something to do with quite a number of cases in Ledshire. How does she come into this one?’

Martin told him.

‘And what does she say about it all?’

Martin told him that too, finished up with, ‘And what I was wondering was just what notice-’

The Chief Constable laughed.

‘I should advise you to take quite a lot of notice of anything she puts forward! I won’t say she is never wrong, but I will say that she is usually right. She has a very just, acute and penetrating mind, and she has what the police can never have, the opportunity of seeing people off their guard. We come in after a crime, and we get everyone in a state of jitters. This may make a guilty person give himself away, but it also makes innocent people act as if they were guilty, especially in a murder case. It is astonishing how often there is something they want to hide. We turn a searchlight on them, and they all start trying to cover up. But Miss Silver sees them when we have shut the door behind us and gone away. They draw a long breath of relief and relax. The innocent ones confide in her – she is astonishingly easy to confide in – and the guilty get the feeling that they have been too clever for the police. I have seen it produce remarkable results.’

Martin said, ‘Well, sir, she’s easy to talk to, and that’s a fact. I was hoping I hadn’t said too much.’

‘She is perfectly discreet.’

‘And she was right about the footprints under that window and the fingerprints on the sill. Someone stood and listened there all right. Only it wasn’t Meriel Ford – the fingerprints are not hers.’ He went on talking to the Chief Constable.

It was not until next morning that he returned to Ford House. He asked for Miss Silver, and waited for her in the small room where they had talked before. When she came in he took the hand she offered him, waited for her to be seated, and then came out with,

‘Well, we’ve investigated the fingerprints on the outside of the sitting-room at the Lodge, and they’re good enough and clear enough, but they weren’t made by Miss Meriel Ford.’

Miss Silver allowed herself to say, ‘Dear me!’

He nodded.

‘You thought they would be hers, didn’t you? Well, they’re not, and that’s that. Both the footprints and the fingerprints are out. And they’re not Mrs Trent’s, or the boy’s either. She made no trouble about letting us take them for comparison. Well, we compared them with the prints from up here. It did cross my mind that they might be Mrs Geoffrey’s, but that’s out too, and so are all the others. Of course there’s nothing to say just when they were made, but they were fresh. Then whilst we were about it we went over the front door, and the passage, and the door into the sitting-room. Miss Meriel’s prints were there all right. Nothing you could swear to on the handles – too much of a mix up with Mrs Trent’s and the little boy’s – but a good clear print of her left hand on the wall of the passage as if she had come in in the dark and been feeling her way, and one of the right hand on the jamb of the sitting-room door as if she had stood there to listen.’

‘Then she was there.’

‘Oh, yes, she was there all right! And the question is, did Geoffrey Ford walk home with her? Or follow her? And how did he get her to go to the pool?’

‘You suspect him of the murder?’

‘What do you think yourself?’

‘If Miss Preston was deliberately pushed into the pool – and it begins to look as if she was – then we have to consider why anyone should have pushed her. The only shadow of a motive suggested by anyone is the one put forward by yourself. You say she was wearing a coat of a very marked and unusual pattern which belonged to Adriana Ford, and you suggest that the person who attacked her did so under the impression that she was Adriana Ford. Now there is no evidence on this point at all, but whereas, so far as we know, no one benefited by the death of Mabel Preston, quite a number of people stood to benefit under the will of Adriana Ford. Miss Ford was quite frank on the subject. She has provided handsomely for the Simmons and for the maid, Meeson, who used to be her dresser. There is a legacy to Mr Rutherford, but the main beneficiaries are Mrs Somers, Meriel Ford, and Mr and Mrs Geoffrey Ford. Any one of these people had a motive for her death. Any one of them could have slipped out of that cocktail party and pushed Mabel Preston into the pool under the impression that they were pushing Miss Ford. Well, there we are – and no evidence to show that any of them did it.’

Miss Silver sat in an attitude of gentle composure. Her eyes rested on Superintendent Martin’s face with an expression of most gratifying attention. Detective Inspector Frank Abbott of Scotland Yard was wont to say that she had the same effect upon him as the match-box has upon the match – she enabled him to produce the illuminating spark. He was, as Miss Silver very frequently pointed out, addicted to talking in a very extravagant manner when not on duty. But it is certain that Superintendent Martin was experiencing a somewhat similar feeling. He was conscious of an unusually clear train of thought and of the power of putting it into words. He would not, perhaps, have admitted that Miss Silver had anything to do with this, but it is a fact that he found her a very stimulating listener. He continued in the same vein.

‘Then we come to the death of Meriel Ford – a strong young woman and, unlike Mabel Preston, sober. She couldn’t just be pushed down into the pool and drowned. She was hit over the head with a golfclub and put in the pool to make sure. And when you come to the motive in her case, we get that shred of stuff which you found caught in the hedge. It proves that she was down by the pool between half past six and the time Meeson saw her with coffee all down the front of her dress. That would be about an hour. The medical evidence puts Mabel Preston’s death within that time. The moment these facts became known the person who murdered Mabel Preston would realize that he was in danger – if there was such a person. Just for the moment I am assuming that there was. Well then, out of the possible suspects, Mrs Somers is the only one who is in the clear. She wasn’t at the cocktail party, she didn’t know about that shred of stuff, and she wasn’t here when Meriel Ford was killed. But all the others knew. Simmons and Ninian Rutherford were in the hall when Meriel was accusing Meeson of telling tales about the piece of stuff, and the Geoffrey Fords were on the landing. Geoffrey Ford went down to see Mrs Trent that evening. Meriel Ford followed him out of the drawing-room. You suggested that she might have followed him to the Lodge. I think there is evidence that she did so, and that she stood listening at the sitting-room door. Would it have been in her character to let it stop at that?’