Читать книгу The Listening Eye - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 9

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Of the two newspapers to which Miss Silver subscribed she was in the habit of glancing through the one addicted to headlines and pictures at the breakfast-table, whilst reserving the perusal of The Times for a more leisured hour. On the morning following her visit to Blackheath she had no more than sat down and reached for the former than there stared at her from the front page a heading which instantly fixed her attention. It ran:

DARING JEWEL ROBBERY

THE BELLINGDON NECKLACE STOLEN

SECRETARY FOUND SHOT

Like Sally Foster, Miss Silver had heard of the Bellingdon necklace. She had even read the same article about it and its conjectured history that Sally had. She was aware of the intention ascribed to Lucius Bellingdon of presenting it to his daughter in order that she might wear it at the fancy dress ball he was proposing to give. Her eye travelled over a repetition of these particulars and came back to all that seemed to be known about the robbery. It was not much. The necklace had been in safe keeping at the County Bank in Ledlington. Mr Bellingdon, who had a large account there, had written to say that his secretary, Hubert Garratt, would call for it at 12 noon on the 14th instant. The secretary duly provided with a written authorization, arrived punctually, signed for the valuable package, and left again by car, driving himself. That was the last time he was seen alive. The car was found twenty minutes later on the grass verge of a turning off the London road with the secretary dead at the wheel and the necklace gone. The turning an unfrequented one, would be a short cut to Merefields, Lucius Bellingdon’s country home.

There were photographs of Merefields, of Mr Bellingdon, a gentleman of dominating appearance with a jutting chin, his daughter Mrs Herne, and the unfortunate secretary.

Miss Silver read all that there was to read, and had no more than come to the end of it, when the telephone bell rang. It was not with any great surprise that she recognized the voice of Detective Inspector Frank Abbott. Since he announced himself in this manner instead of his off-duty ‘This is Frank’, she was instantly aware that he was ringing up from Scotland Yard. She said,

‘Miss Silver speaking.’

His voice came back with a touch of formality quite noticeably absent from their private relationship. There was between them a strong tie of affection, and on his side a high degree of respect which did not prevent him from regarding her idiosyncrasies with appreciation and enjoyment. She was, he considered, a period piece, from her Edwardian hair style with its controlling net to her beaded shoes of a smaller size than is usual today, and from her admiration for the late Lord Tennyson to the stock of elevated maxims which he was in the habit of referring to as Maudie’s Moralities. What he said now was,

‘I suppose you have seen the paper?’

The gravity of her reply informed him that he need not particularize any special item of news. He said,

‘The Chief would be glad if you could make it convenient to come round to the Yard. It is with reference to the conversation you had with him the day before yesterday. He would be glad to have a talk with you.’

About three-quarters of an hour later she was being ushered into the Chief Inspector’s room. It was by no means the first conversation she had had with him there, but as he rose from behind his desk to greet her, she thought he appeared to be vexed and burdened beyond his wont. With the briefest preliminaries he sat down again, filling his chair squarely—a big man of country stock with a florid face and strong dark hair which only the most rigorous cut prevented from curling.

Frank Abbott, standing on the hearth, presented as great a contrast as was possible—tall, slim, elegant, with a long bony nose, fair hair mirror-smooth, and the light blue eyes which were capable of so icy a stare. Miss Silver was one of the people for whom they could soften. They did so now.

She had taken the chair which had been set for her on the far side of the writing-table. She wore the black cloth coat which had seen so many years of service and, the wind being exceptionally cold, an antique tippet of faded yellowish fur. Her hat, no more than two years old, was of black felt renovated last autumn, the trimming being now of black ribbon arranged in loops, with a bunch of violets added recently to mark the approach of spring. She wore black kid gloves and carried a well-worn handbag.

Lamb sat back in his chair and said in a voice that kept its country sound,

‘Well, Miss Silver, I suppose you can guess why I wanted to see you.’

She inclined her head.

‘I have read the account in the paper.’

He lifted a big square hand and let it fall again upon his knee.

‘And I suppose you’ve been saying to yourself, “Well, I told them, and they wouldn’t take any notice.” That’s what you’ve been doing, isn’t it?’

She said with a touch of primness, ‘I hope I should not be so unjust.’

His eyes, irreverently compared by Frank Abbott to the larger and more bulging type of peppermint bullseye, were turned upon her for a moment.

‘Well, I ask you! Ledlington! Who’d have thought of that? You bring me a mare’s nest that might have been anywhere in the kingdom! I believe I mentioned a good few places on the telephone when we were talking—and not a clue to which of them would be the least unlikely, or what any of it was about anyhow! And then it turns out to be Ledlington and the Bellingdon necklace! Of course if we’d known what was going to be stolen—’ He broke off with a short laugh. ‘Pity your Miss Paine didn’t get hold of something useful whilst she was about it!’

Miss Silver looked at him in a manner which reminded Frank Abbott of a bird with its eye upon a worm. There was nothing contemptuous about it, it was just bright and enquiring.

‘I do not remember that I mentioned my caller’s name.’

‘No, you didn’t. Careful not to, weren’t you? But you did give me the address of the gallery, and you did tell me there was a portrait of her hanging there, that the artist rented her top floor, and that his name was Moray. And no need for anyone to be Sherlock Holmes for Frank here to get his address and go round and see him. And when you hear a couple of the things he walked into, I’m expecting you to have a bit of a shock. There—it’s your pigeon, Frank. You’d better get along with it and tell her.’

Miss Silver transferred her attention to Inspector Abbott.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘the gallery identified the picture for me as soon as I said it was a portrait of a deaf woman by an artist called Moray. And a very good portrait I thought it was—streets ahead of most of the other stuff they’d got there, so I wasn’t surprised to see that it was marked “Sold”. What did surprise me, and what’s going to surprise you, is the name of the man who bought it. There was an old chap called Pegler taking the entrance money, very friendly and chatty and tumbling over himself to link the picture up with this morning’s smash-hit headlines. Because it seems that the man who bought Miss Paine’s portrait is no other than Lucius Bellingdon, “And you’ll have heard all about his having his diamond necklace stolen and his secretary shot in the papers this morning,” as Mr Pegler put it.’

Miss Silver said, ‘Dear me!’

‘He had quite a lot to say about Miss Paine one way and another. Told me how she’d been in to see her picture, and how she “did that lip-reading a treat”, and had advised him about his grand-daughter who was going deaf. He said she was a very nice lady and a lot of people were ever so interested when he told them how good she was at the lip-reading. “They wouldn’t hardly credit it,” he said. So then he told me about the gentleman that was in there the same time as she was, and how he wouldn’t believe she could tell what anyone was saying—not the length of the gallery—“but I told him she could, because I’d heard Mr Moray use those very words, and the gentleman went away and he didn’t look any too pleased”. I asked him if he would know the man again, and he said he would, but when it came to a description it was the sort where there’s nothing to take hold of. He wouldn’t go so far as to say the gentleman was tall, nor yet short—he wasn’t to say fair-complexioned, nor you wouldn’t say he was dark, but he had a black felt hat and a drab raincoat.’ Here Inspector Abbott broke off and addressed his Chief. ‘I don’t suppose we have any statistics as to how many men in Greater London would have been wearing black hats and drab raincoats on that particular day—’

Lamb said curtly, ‘Get on with your story!’

Frank obliged.

‘I got Moray’s address, which is 13 Porlock Square, and I went down there. The woman who came to the door said she lodged in the basement, and when I asked for Miss Paine she got out her handkerchief and said Miss Paine had been run over by a bus coming home the day before yesterday evening, and they took her off to the hospital but she never came round.’