“I thought if she learned to love me it might bring sorrow to her. Oh, you mayn’t believe me, but that’s what I felt.”
“I see. Do you still think you were right?”
“No,” said Bess. “I don’t. I think now I may have been entirely wrong.”
“Does your daughter know Ladislaus Malinowski?”
“I’m sure she doesn’t. She said so. You heard her.”
“I heard her, yes.”
“Well, then?”
“She was afraid, you know, when she was sitting here. In our profession we get to know fear when we meet up with it. She was afraid—why? Chocolates or no chocolates, her life has been attempted. That tube story may be true enough—”
“It was ridiculous. Like a thriller—”
“Perhaps. But that sort of thing does happen, Lady Sedgwick. Oftener than you’d think. Can you give me any idea who might want to kill your daughter?”
“Nobody—nobody at all!”
She spoke vehemently.
Chief-Inspector Davy sighed and shook his head.
Chapter Twenty-two
Chief-Inspector Davy waited patiently until Mrs. Melford had finished talking. It had been a singularly unprofitable interview. Cousin Mildred had been incoherent, unbelieving and generally featherheaded. Or that was Father’s private view. Accounts of Elvira’s sweet manners, nice nature, troubles with her teeth, odd excuses told through the telephone, had led on to serious doubts whether Elvira’s friend Bridget was really a suitable friend for her. All these matters had been presented to the Chief-Inspector in a kind of general hasty pudding. Mrs. Melford knew nothing, had heard nothing, had seen nothing and had apparently deduced very little.
A short telephone call to Elvira’s guardian, Colonel Luscombe, had been even more unproductive, though fortunately less wordy. “More Chinese monkeys,” he muttered to his sergeant as he put down the receiver. “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
“The trouble is that everyone who’s had anything to do with this girl has been far too nice—if you get my meaning. Too many nice people who don’t know anything about evil. Not like my old lady.”
“The Bertram’s Hotel one?”
“Yes, that’s the one. She’s had a long life of experience in noticing evil, fancying evil, suspecting evil and going forth to do battle with evil. Let’s see what we can get out of girlfriend Bridget.”
The difficulties in this interview were represented first, last, and most of the time by Bridget’s mamma. To talk to Bridget without the assistance of her mother took all Chief-Inspector Davy’s adroitness and cajolery. He was, it must be admitted, ably seconded by Bridget. After a certain amount of stereotyped questions and answers and expressions of horror on the part of Bridget’s mother at hearing of Elvira’s narrow escape from death, Bridget said, “You know it’s time for that committee meeting, Mum. You said it was very important.”
“Oh dear, dear,” said Bridget’s mother.
“You know they’ll get into a frightful mess without you, Mummy.”
“Oh they will, they certainly will. But perhaps I ought—”
“Now that’s quite all right, Madam,” said Chief-Inspector Davy, putting on his kindly old father look. “You don’t want to worry. Just you get off. I’ve finished all the important things. You’ve told me really everything I wanted to know. I’ve just one or two routine inquiries about people in Italy which I think your daughter, Miss Bridget, might be able to help me with.”
“Well, if you think you can manage, Bridget—”
“Oh, I can manage, Mummy,” said Bridget.
Finally, with a great deal of fuss, Bridget’s mother went off to her committee.
“Oh, dear,” said Bridget, sighing, as she came back after closing the front door. “Really! I do think mothers are difficult.”
“So they tell me,” said Chief-Inspector Davy. “A lot of young ladies I come across have a lot of trouble with their mothers.”
“I’d have thought you’d put it the other way round,” said Bridget.
“Oh I do, I do,” said Davy. “But that’s not how the young ladies see it. Now you can tell me a little more.”
“I couldn’t really speak frankly in front of Mummy,” explained Bridget. “But I do feel, of course, that it is really important that you should know as much as possible about all this. I do know Elvira was terribly worried about something and afraid. She wouldn’t exactly admit she was in danger, but she was.”
“I thought that might have been so. Of course I didn’t like to ask you too much in front of your mother.”
“Oh no,” said Bridget, “we don’t want Mummy to hear about it. She gets in such a frightful state about things and she’d go and tell everyone. I mean, if Elvira doesn’t want things like this to be known….”
“First of all,” said Chief-Inspector Davy, “I want to know about a box of chocolates in Italy. I gather there was some idea that a box was sent to her which might have been poisoned.”
Bridget’s eyes opened wide. “Poisoned,” she said. “Oh no. I don’t think so. At least….”
“There was something?”
“Oh yes. A box of chocolates came and Elvira did eat a lot of them and she was rather sick that night. Quite ill.”
“But she didn’t suspect poison?”
“No. At least—oh yes, she did say that someone was trying to poison one of us and we looked at the chocolates to see, you know, if anything had been injected into them.”
“And had it?”
“No, it hadn’t,” said Bridget. “At least, not as far as we could see.”
“But perhaps your friend, Miss Elvira, might still have thought so?”
“Well, she might—but she didn’t say anymore.”
“But you think she was afraid of someone?”
“I didn’t think so at the time or notice anything. It was only here, later.”
“What about this man, Guido?”
Bridget giggled.
“He had a terrific crush on Elvira,” she said.
“And you and your friend used to meet him places?”
“Well, I don’t mind telling you,” said Bridget. “After all you’re the police. It isn’t important to you, that sort of thing and I expect you understand. Countess Martinelli was frightfully strict—or thought she was. And of course we had all sorts of dodges and things. We all stood in with each other. You know.”
“And told the right lies, I suppose?”
“Well, I’m afraid so,” said Bridget. “But what can one do when anyone is so suspicious?”
“So you did meet Guido and all that. And used he to threaten Elvira?”
“Oh, not seriously, I don’t think.”
“Then perhaps there was someone else she used to meet?”
“Oh—that—well, I don’t know.”
“Please tell me, Miss Bridget. It might be—vital, you know.”
“Yes. Yes I can see that. Well there was someone. I don’t know who it was, but there was someone else—she really minded about. She was deadly serious. I mean it was a really important thing.”
“She used to meet him?”
“I think so. I mean she’d say she was meeting Guido but it wasn’t Guido. It was this other man.”
“Any idea who it was?”
“No.” Bridget sounded a little uncertain.
“It wouldn’t be a racing motorist called Ladislaus Malinowski?”
Bridget gaped at him.
“So you know?”
“Am I right?”
“Yes—I think so. She’d got a photograph of him torn out of a paper. She kept it under her stockings.”
“That might have been just a pin-up hero, mightn’t it?”
“Well it might, of course, but I don’t think it was.”
“Did she meet him here in this country, do you know?”
“I don’t know. You see I don’t know really what she’s been doing since she came back from Italy.”
&nbs
p; “She came up to London to the dentist,” Davy prompted her. “Or so she said. Instead she came to you. She rang up Mrs. Melford with some story about an old governess.”
A faint giggle came from Bridget.
“That wasn’t true, was it?” said the Chief-Inspector, smiling. “Where did she really go?”
Bridget hesitated and then said, “She went to Ireland.”
“She went to Ireland, did she? Why?”
“She wouldn’t tell me. She said there was something she had to find out.”
“Do you know where she went in Ireland?”
“Not exactly. She mentioned a name. Bally something. Ballygowlan, I think it was.”
“I see. You’re sure she went to Ireland?”
“I saw her off at Kensington Airport. She went by Aer Lingus.”
“She came back when?”
“The following day.”
“Also by air?”
“Yes.”
“You’re quite sure, are you, that she came back by air?”
“Well—I suppose she did!”
“Had she taken a return ticket?”
“No. No, she didn’t. I remember.”
“She might have come back another way, mightn’t she?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“She might have come back for instance by the Irish Mail?”