mind.
‘Can’t say I’ve ever seen a convict I would call a gent,’ Cribb went on, ‘but I suppose some must have
Mrs Probert opened her eyes and resumed her sphinx-like gaze across the room, as if that would afford some relief from the pain of what she was to say. ‘Yes, I know what prison would do to him. It would break him in mind and body, and, as you rightly calculate, no woman’s secret is worth such a price. I shall tell you what happened for his sake, and I hope and pray that there is some compassion in you. The professor came to our house on Saturday night at my invitation. He came to visit me in my room. I knew that my husband would be fully occupied downstairs. I left the back door unbolted. Professor Quayle is, as you have discovered, an old friend. If I tell you that our occasional evenings together were innocent in everything but the sharing of a small bottle of gin, I know that you have every right to disbelieve me, as my husband unquestionably will when he hears of this.’
Cribb shook his head. ‘In this investigation, ma’am, I’ve heard no end of things I disbelieved, but I’ve no reason yet to doubt anything I’ve heard from you, and that includes the statement you have just made. As for your husband, I can think of no way he would get to hear about these meetings, can you, Thackeray?’
‘No.’ Thackeray threw caution to the winds and added, ‘Definitely not, Sergeant.’
‘Fetch the professor, then, and have the darbies taken off him first.’ When Thackeray had left on this errand, Cribb confided to Mrs Probert, ‘He’s totally reliable. Got his black eye for safeguarding a lady’s secret.’
The reunion of the professor and Mrs Probert was simple and affecting, the more so considering that she had knocked him insensible at their last meeting. He entered the room, white, gaunt, with clothes creased and chin unshaven, and crossed to where she was under the hatstand and took her hands.
‘Winifred!’
‘Eustace!’
‘Your flask of gin is with the duty sergeant at the desk outside, sir,’ said Cribb, as a sort of benediction. ‘I offer my apologies for the inconvenience you’ve been put to since Saturday night. You understand that we only became aware of the facts this morning. Mrs Probert has made it clear that your purpose in entering her dwelling- house was not felonious.’
An affectionate look passed between the professor and Mrs Probert before he told Cribb, ‘You did no more than your duty, Sergeant.’
‘Thank you, sir. Before you leave, however, I wonder if you’d oblige me by clarifying one small point.’
‘Naturally, if I can.’
‘It concerns a certain hat-shop not far from here, and the visits Miss Alice Probert makes there.’
The professor glanced nervously at Mrs Probert, who was the first to respond. ‘What is the professor presumed to know about my daughter and a hat-shop, Sergeant?’
‘That she often visits there, ma’am. I didn’t put the point to you because it was unnecessary. On my first call at your house, you passed a remark about it. If you remember, your husband explained your daughter’s absence by saying that she was on a charitable excursion and you commented that she was buying a hat.’
‘So I did,’ agreed Mrs Probert.
‘A small matter, really, or so it seemed at the time,’ continued Cribb. ‘There was young Alice going off with an armful of marrows to do good works, and on the way she was slipping into a milliner’s to try on hats. Nothing criminal in it. Just something to smile over. I suppose a friend of yours must have told you that Alice is in the habit of going in there, or was it one of the servants?’
‘It was Hitchman,’ Mrs Probert confirmed.
‘The deaf woman? Sharp eyes, that one, and not above telling a tale about the young lady of the house. I don’t suppose the information troubled you, or you wouldn’t have mentioned it to the professor. It was just a family joke, and you passed it on to an old friend, didn’t you?’
Mrs Probert nodded.
‘And you, sir,’ Cribb went on, turning to Quayle, ‘mentioned it to your young lodger, Peter Brand, in the way people pass on an amusing story.’
‘I must confess that I did,’ the professor agreed.
‘But then the story came back to you and your husband, ma’am,’ said Cribb. ‘Peter Brand came to your house on the night before the seance and repeated it, with one significant addition. He had taken the trouble to follow Alice to the shop one morning and seen her go inside and come out ten minutes later, veiled and dressed in different clothes. What construction could you put upon it but that she was secretly visiting somebody? That was certainly Brand’s interpretation, and it was sufficient to secure your husband’s co-operation during the seance.’
‘Co-operation?’ said Mrs Probert. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘You must understand that Brand was a sharp-a confidence trickster, ma’am. He found that calling up the spirits in Richmond and Belgravia was a better game by far than working a pea and thimbles on a sordid little fairground. He needed help, of course. Even your thimble-rigger has his nobblers in the crowd around him. He secured accomplices by blackmailing ’em. The price of his silence was not money, but collaboration. He needed your husband’s help, so he found a way to blackmail him, and he very shrewdly judged that the best lever he had on Dr Probert was not his own reputation, but his daughter’s.’
‘The monster!’ said Quayle.
‘I have always known she would be the ruin of us,’ said Mrs Probert, leaving no doubt whom she regarded as the monster. ‘That girl never gives a thought to the consequences of her behaviour.’
Cribb treated the comment as Dr Probert would have done: he ignored it. ‘He was just a clever sharp, sir. I wouldn’t put it any stronger than that.’
‘Well, I would, Sergeant,’ Quayle insisted. ‘Damn it, he was impugning Miss Probert’s reputation, and the unfortunate young lady didn’t know a thing about it.’
‘I rather think she did, sir,’ said Cribb. ‘If you had studied the circumstances of the seance, as I have, you would know that Miss Alice herself made some extraordinary claims. At one point in the evening she announced that a spirit hand was pulling at her dress, and later that her hair was being stroked. I believe that Brand had made a separate approach to Alice and told her what he had seen when he followed her. He threatened to tell everything to Captain Nye unless she agreed to assist him in producing fraudulent effects.’
‘Are you saying that he was blackmailing Dr Probert and his daughter at the same time, and with the same information?’
‘Yes, sir. He was a clever sharp, as I said. Neither of ’em was to know that the other was being blackmailed, of course. And if you think
‘
‘A supposition, you say,’ said Quayle. ‘Do you have any reason to think she was not on her way to an assignation?’
‘In point of fact, I do, sir,’ Cribb answered. ‘Miss Probert went out on one of her little jaunts yesterday morning, and I ordered Constable Thackeray to follow her and observe discreetly what went on.’
‘My word! And did you, Constable?’
Thackeray went a shade pinker. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Really? Well, do not keep us in suspense. What was she really doing?’
Thackeray was never more relieved to hear Cribb clear his throat prior to speaking. ‘Before we go into that, sir, I think we might ask Mrs Probert the same question. I’m sure that as Miss Alice was allowed to visit the hat- shop yesterday, she must have given a satisfactory explanation to her parents.’
Everyone looked at Mrs Probert, who continued to look at the wall in front of her. ‘Her father spoke to her, yes. Something had to be said, although it is difficult in our family. He dotes on her, but we have lost the facility for natural conversation. After Peter Brand had died, however, it was important to show the girl what an impossible situation she had put her father in by her inconsiderate behaviour, so he spoke to her on Sunday over the main course at dinner. It was roast lamb. She succeeded in convincing us that she has no secret lover. She is still devoted to Captain Nye.’
‘Capital news!’ exclaimed Professor Quayle.
‘The captain, too, is quite enslaved,’ continued Mrs Probert, with no more enthusiasm than if she was reading
