Six
HAT PAINT
Luke had been just in the act of applying a match to a cigarette. The unexpectedness of her remark momentarily paralysed his hand. He remained quite motionless for a second or two, the match burned down and scorched his fingers.
“Damn,” said Luke as he dropped the match and shook his hand vigorously. “I beg your pardon. You gave me rather a nasty jolt.” He smiled ruefully.
“Did I?”
“Yes.” He sighed. “Oh, well, I suppose anyone of real intelligence was bound to see through me! That story of my writing a book on folklore didn’t take you in for a moment, I suppose?”
“Not after I’d once seen you.”
“You believed it up to then?”
“Yes.”
“All the same it wasn’t really a good story,” said Luke critically. “I mean, any man might want to write a book, but the bit about coming down here and passing myself off as a cousin—I suppose that made you smell a rat?”
Bridget shook her head.
“No. I had an explanation for that—I thought I had, I mean. I presumed you were pretty hard up—a lot of my and Jimmy’s friends are that—and I thought he suggested the cousin stunt so that—well, so that it would save your pride.”
“But when I arrived,” said Luke, “my appearance immediately suggested such opulence that that explanation was out of the question?”
Her mouth curved in its slow smile.
“Oh, no,” she said. “It wasn’t that. It was simply that you were the wrong kind of person.”
“Not sufficient brains to write a book? Don’t spare my feelings. I’d rather know.”
“You might write a book—but not that kind of book—old superstitions—delving into the past—not that sort of thing! You’re not the kind of man to whom the past means much—perhaps not even the future—only just the present.”
“H’m—I see.” He made a wry face. “Damn it all, you’ve made me nervous ever since I got here! You look so confoundedly intelligent.”
“I’m sorry,” said Bridget drily. “What did you expect?”
“Well, I really hadn’t thought about it.”
But she went on calmly:
“A fluffy little person—with just enough brains to realize her opportunities and marry her boss?”
Luke made a confused noise. She turned a cool amused glance on him.
“I quite understand. It’s all right. I’m not annoyed.”
Luke chose effrontery.
“Well, perhaps, it was something faintly approaching that. But I didn’t think much about it.”
She said slowly:
“No, you wouldn’t. You don’t cross your fences till you get to them.”
But Luke was despondent.
“Oh, I’ve no doubt I did my stuff pretty rottenly! Has Lord Whitfield seen through me too?”
“Oh, no. If you said you’d come down here to study the habits of water beetles and write a monograph about them, it would have been OK with Gordon. He’s got a beautiful believing mind.”
“All the same I wasn’t a bit convincing! I got rattled somehow.”
“I cramped your style,” said Bridget. “I saw that. It rather amused me, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, it would! Women with any brains are usually cold-bloodedly cruel.”
Bridget murmured:
“One has to take one’s pleasures as one can in this life!” She paused a minute, then said: “Why are you down here, Mr. Fitzwilliam?”
They had returned full circle to the original question. Luke had been aware that it must be so. In the last few seconds he had been trying to make up his mind. He looked up now and met her eyes—shrewd inquiring eyes that met his with a calm, steady gaze. There was a gravity in them which he had not quite expected to find there.
“It would be better, I think,” he said meditatively, “not to tell you anymore lies.”
“Much better.”
“But the truth’s awkward…Look here, have you yourself formed any opinion—I mean has anything occurred to you about my being here?”
She nodded slowly and thoughtfully.
“What was your idea? Will you tell me? I fancy it may help somehow.”
Bridget said quietly:
“I had an idea that you came down here in connection with the death of that girl, Amy Gibbs.”
“That’s it, then! That’s what I saw—what I felt—whenever her name cropped up! I knew there was something. So you thought I came down about that?”
“Didn’t you?”
“In a way—yes.”
He was silent—frowning. The girl beside him sat equally silent, not moving. She said nothing to disturb his train of thought.
He made up his mind.
“I’ve come down here on a wild goose chase—on a fantastical and probably quite absurd and melodramatic supposition. Amy Gibbs is part of that whole business. I’m interested to find out exactly how she died.”
“Yes, I thought so.”
“But dash it all—why did you think so? What is there about her death that—well—aroused your interest?”
Bridget said:
“I’ve thought—all along—that there was something wrong about it. That’s why I took you to see Miss Waynflete.”
“Why?”
“Because she thinks so too.”
“Oh.” Luke thought back rapidly. He understood now the underlying suggestions of that intelligent spinster’s manner. “She thinks as you do—that there’s something—odd about it?”
Bridget nodded.
“Why exactly?”
“Hat paint, to begin with.”
“What do you mean, hat paint?”
“Well, about twenty years ago, people did paint hats—one season you had a pink straw, next season a bottle of hat paint and it became dark blue—then perhaps another bottle and a black hat! But nowadays—hats are cheap—tawdry stuff to be thrown away when out of fashion.”
“Even girls of the class of Amy Gibbs?”
“I’d be more likely to paint a hat than she would! Thrift’s gone out. And there’s another thing. It was red hat paint.”
“Well?”
“And Amy Gibbs had red hair—carrots!”
“You mean it doesn’t go together?”
Bridget nodded.
“You wouldn’t wear a scarlet hat with carroty hair. It’s the sort of thing a man wouldn’t realize, but—”
Luke interrupted her with heavy significance.
“No—a man wouldn’t realize that. It fits in—it all fits in.”
Bridget said:
“Jimmy has got some odd friends at Scotland Yard. You’re not—”
Luke said quickly:
“I’m not an official detective—and I’m not a well-known private investigator with rooms in Baker Street, etc. I’m exactly what Jimmy told you I was—a retired policeman from the East. I’m horning in on this business because of an odd thing that happened in the train to London.”
He gave a brief synopsis of his conversation with Miss Pinkerton and the subsequent events which had brought about his presence in Wychwood.
“So you see,” he ended. “It’s fantastic! I’m looking for a certain man—a secret killer—a man here in Wychwood—probably well-known and respected. If Miss Pinkerton’s right and you’re right and Miss What’s-’er-name is right—that man killed Amy Gibbs.”
Bridget said: “I see.”
“It could have been done from outside, I suppose?”
“Yes, I think so,” said Bridget slowly. “Reed, the constable, climbed up to her window by means of an outhouse. The window was open. It was a bit of a scramble, but a reasonably active man would find no real difficulty.”
“And having done that, he did what?”
“Substituted a bottle of hat paint for the cough linctus.”
“Hoping she’d do exactly what she did do—wake up, drink it off, and that everyone would say she’d made a mistake or committed suici
de?”
“Yes.”
“There was no suspicion of what they call in books, ‘foul play’ at the inquest?”
“No.”
“Men again, I suppose—the hat paint point wasn’t raised?”
“No.”
“But it occurred to you?”
“Yes.”
“And to Miss Waynflete? Have you discussed it together?”
Bridget smiled faintly:
“Oh, no—not in the sense you mean. I mean we haven’t said anything right out. I don’t really know how far the old pussy has gone in her own mind. I’d say she’d been just worried to start with—and gradually getting more so. She’s quite intelligent, you know, went to Girton or wanted to, and was advanced when she was young. She’s not got quite the woolly mind of most of the people down here.”
“Miss Pinkerton had rather a woolly mind I should imagine,” said Luke. “That’s why I never dreamed there was anything in her story to begin with.”
“She was pretty shrewd, I always thought,” said Bridget. “Most of these rambling old dears are as sharp as nails in some ways. You said she mentioned other names?”
Luke nodded.
“Yes. A small boy—that was Tommy Pierce—I remembered the name as soon as I heard it. And I’m pretty sure that the man Carter came in too.”
“Carter, Tommy Pierce, Amy Gibbs, Dr. Humbleby,” said Bridget thoughtfully. “As you say, it’s almost too fantastic to be true! Who on earth would want to kill all those people? They were all so different!”
Luke said:
“Any idea as to why anyone should want to do away with Amy Gibbs?”
Bridget shook her head.
“I can’t imagine.”
“What about the man Carter? How did he die, by the way?”
“Fell into the river and was drowned. He was on his way home, it was a misty night and he was quite drunk. There’s a footbridge with a rail on only one side. It was taken for granted that he missed his footing.”