'Of course I am sure. He just leave and I see him go from the drive across to the summerhouse. And presently,' said Mitzi defiantly, 'I go out to see if there are any nice young green nettles.'
Would there, the Inspector wondered, be any nice young green nettles in October? But he appreciated that Mitzi had had to produce a hurried reason for what had undoubtedly been nothing more than plain snooping.
'You didn't hear any more than what you have told me?'
Mitzi looked aggrieved.
'That Miss Bunner, the one with the long nose, she call and call me. Mitzi! Mitzi! So I have to go. Oh, she is irritating. Always interfering. Says she will teach me to cook. Her cooking! It tastes, yes, everything she does, of water, water, water!'
'Why didn't you tell me this the other day?' asked Craddock sternly.
'Because I did not remember – I did not think… Only afterwards do I say to myself, it was planned then – planned with her.'
'You are quite sure it was Mrs. Haymes?'
'Oh, yes, I am sure. Oh, yes, I am very sure. She is a thief, that Mrs. Haymes. A thief and the associate of thieves. What she gets for working in the garden, it is not enough for such a fine lady, no. She has to rob Miss Blacklog who has been kind to her. Oh, she is bad, bad, bad, that one!'
'Supposing,' said the Inspector, watching her closely, 'that someone was to say that you had been seen talking to Rudi Scherz?'
The suggestion had less effect than he had hoped for.
Mitzi merely snorted and tossed her head.
'If anyone say they see me talking to him, that is lies, lies, lies, lies,' she said contemptuously. 'To tell lies about anyone, that is easy, but in England you have to prove them true. Miss Blacklog tell me that, and it is true, is it not? I do not speak with murderers and thieves. And no English policeman shall say I do. And how can I do cooking for lunch if you are here, talk, talk, talk? Go out of my kitchens, please. I want now to make a very careful sauce.'
Craddock went obediently. He was a little shaken in his suspicions of Mitzi. Her story about Phillipa Haymes had been told with great conviction. Mitzi might be a liar (he thought she was), but he fancied that there might be some substratum of truth in this particular tale. He resolved to speak to Phillipa on the subject. She had seemed to him when he questioned her a quiet, well-bred young woman. He had had no suspicion of her.
Crossing the hall, in his abstraction, he tried to open the wrong door. Miss Bunner, descending the staircase, hastily put him right.
'Not that door,' she said. 'It doesn't open. The next one to the left. Very confusing, isn't it. So many doors.'
'There are a good many,' said Craddock, looking up and down the narrow hall.
Miss Bunner amiably enumerated them for him.
'First the door to the cloakroom, and then the cloaks cupboard door and then the dining-room that's on that side. And on this side, the dummy door that you were trying to get through and then there's the drawing-room door proper, and then the china cupboard door and the door of the little flower room, and at the end the side door. Most confusing. Especially these two being so near together. I've often tried the wrong one by mistake. We used to have the hall table against it, as a matter of fact, but then we moved it along against the wall there.'
Craddock had noted, almost mechanically, a thin line horizontally across the panels of the door he had been trying to open. He realised now it was the mark where the table had been. Something stirred vaguely in his mind as he asked, 'Moved? How long ago?'
In questioning Dora Bunner there was fortunately no need to give a reason for any question. Any query on any subject seemed perfectly natural to the garrulous Miss Bunner who delighted in the giving of information, however trivial.
'Now let me see, really quite recently – ten days or a fortnight ago.'
'Why was it moved?'
'I really can't remember. Something to do with the flowers. I think Phillipa did a big vase – she arranges flowers quite beautifully – all autumn colouring and twigs and branches, and it was so big it caught your hair as you went past, and so Phillipa said, 'Why not move the table along and anyway the flowers would look much better against the bare wall than against the panels of the door.' Only we had to take down ' Wellington at Waterloo.' Not a print I'm really very fond of. We put it under the stairs.'
'It's not really a dummy, then?' Craddock asked, looking at the door.
'Oh, no, it's a real door, if that's what you mean. It's the door of the small drawing-room, but when the rooms were thrown into one, one didn't need two doors, so this one was fastened up.'
'Fastened up?' Craddock tried it again, gently. 'You mean it's nailed up? Or just locked?'
'Oh, locked, I think, and bolted too.'
He saw the bolt at the top and tried it. The bolt slid back easily – too easily…
'When was it last open?' he asked Miss Bunner.
'Oh, years and years ago, I imagine. It's never been opened since I've been here, I know that.'
'You don't know where the key is?'
'There are a lot of keys in the hall drawer. It's probably among those.'
Craddock followed her and looked at a rusty assortment of old keys pushed far back in the drawer. He scanned them and selected one that looked different from the rest and went back to the door. The key fitted and turned easily. He pushed and the door slid open noiselessly.
'Oh, do be careful,' cried Miss Bunner. 'There may be something resting against it inside. We never open it.'
'Don't you?' said the Inspector.
His face now was grim. He said with emphasis: 'This door's been opened quite recently, Miss Bunner. The lock's been oiled and the hinges.'
She stared at him, her foolish face a gape.
'But who could have done that?' she asked.
'That's what I mean to find out,' said Craddock grimly. He thought – 'X from outside? No – X was here – in this house – X was in the drawing-room that night…'
Chapter 10
PIP AND EMMA
I
Miss Blacklog listened to him this time with more attention. She was an intelligent woman, as he had known, and she grasped the implications of what he had to tell her.
'Yes,' she said quietly. 'That does alter things… No one had any right to meddle with that door. Nobody has meddled with it to my knowledge.'
'You see what it means,' the Inspector urged. 'When the lights went out, anybody in this room the other night could have slipped out of that door, come up behind Rudi Scherz and fired at you.'
'Without being seen or heard or noticed?'
'Without being seen or heard or noticed. Remember when the lights went out people moved, exclaimed, bumped into each other. And after that all that could be seen was the blinding light of the electric torch.'
Miss Blacklog said slowly, 'And you believe that one of those people – one of my nice commonplace neighbours – slipped out and tried to murder me? Me? But why? For goodness' sake, why?'
'I've a feeling that you must know the answer to that question, Miss Blacklog.'
'But I don't, Inspector. I can assure you, I don't.'
