Faintley Speaking

Darling was tempted to refer to the cases of Miss Camille Clifford and other ladies whom their friends would not have supposed capable of some of the erratic and inexplicable emotions which had led to their being murdered, but he held his peace, hoping that something would pop up in the aunt’s whining, complaining monologue which would give a clue to Miss Faintley’s murderer.

He was not nearly as certain as the aunt professed to be that there was not a love-affair at the bottom of the mystery. The fact, that, unknown to her aunt, Miss Faintley had purposed to stay in Cromlech when she was supposed to be staying in Torbury, was very significant, he thought. He glanced at Vardon. Vardon drummed on the table for a moment, and then asked:

‘Did you receive a letter from your niece after she left here?’

‘A postcard, not a letter. I would always like to know she’d arrived safely. Trains are such funny things nowadays, what with accidents and assaults and the drivers not stopping at the right stations and not troubling to look at the signal-boxes and always grumbling when they have to spend a night away from their wives. I never did think British Railways would work, and, of course, they don’t. I always used to like the old G.W.R. You could trust the G.W.R. as I always said.’

‘And have you kept the postcard?’ asked Vardon, damming the stream, or, possibly, blocking the track.

‘Oh, yes, I’ve got it. I shall always keep it now, of course, it being Lily’s last words. You won’t want to take it away with you, will you?’

‘I should just like to see it.’

‘It’s postmarked Torbury all right, if that’s what you mean. Think of the deceitfulness, if she was really at Cromlech!’

She brought the card. The postmark was indeed Torbury, so there was not much doubt but that Miss Faintley had not intended to allow her aunt to know that she had spent any nights in Cromlech. Still, that was not evidence of any criminal intention.

‘It wouldn’t do if our relatives had to know everything we got up to,’ said Vardon soothingly. ‘We’re all entitled to a bit of private life sometimes. Don’t mean there’s any harm in it, although, in this case, it’s turned out very distressing indeed. You said your niece was living somewhere else in Kindleford before you took over her housekeeping, didn’t you? I’d better have the address of those lodgings.’ He took it down. ‘How long was your niece there?’

‘A matter of three weeks. She didn’t like it there at all. No home comforts, and she had to eat with the family, which didn’t suit her ladyship at all.’

‘Looks like a job for the Yard if the young woman had London connexions,’ said Vardon when the two officers had returned to Kindleford police station. ‘I don’t suppose they’ll be able to tell us anything helpful at the school here.’

‘Trouble is that the schools are all on holiday. It’s hard to get hold of anybody, even if they could be of use. What about trying the Education Office?’

‘Better than nothing, but, all the same, a dead end, I expect.’

The Education Office proved to be an annexe to the Town Hall. The Education Officer was on holiday, but his deputy, an alert woman of about thirty, was able to assure the police that, so far as the Education Office was concerned, they knew nothing about Miss Faintley except the formal matters relating to her employment and could suggest nothing which would help an investigation into the circumstances of her sudden death.

Vardon went next to the lodgings which Miss Faintley had occupied. They were at a terrace house in one of the better streets of Kindleford, but were drab and depressing. The landlady, a tall female whose appearance was not improved by her dust-cap and overall, was prepared with two observations. She had never liked Miss Faintley from the first, and she had always said that those stuck-up ones came off the worst in the end.

Vardon, disregarding these remarks, which were prejudiced, he felt, by the fact that Miss Faintley had not remained longer in the lodgings, inquired concerning Miss Faintley’s friends and acquaintances.

‘Oh, she’d have one and another in to tea, and sometimes she went on a hike or to the pictures.’

‘Were the “one-and-another” men or women friends?’

‘Well, come to think of it, there has only ever been the one – a Miss Franks from the school. They seemed to be very thick, her and Miss Faintley did, though what they saw in each other —’

‘No men friends, so far as you know, then?’

‘There’s them that can get men friends of the right sort, which is the marrying kind, and them that can get ’em of the wrong sort, which is what I prefer not to name, and there’s some can’t get ’em of any sort, and that was Miss Faintley.’

The landlady’s contempt was obvious. Vardon thanked her for her information, and returned to the aunt to put the same questions.

There was a Miss Franks, the aunt agreed. She had been once or twice to visit them, but had seemed rather Red in her ideas, her being the art teacher, so the older Miss Faintley had warned the younger Miss Faintley that (whether they had the moral right to do so or not) Education Committees were conditioned to take a poor view of such people. The younger Miss Faintley had taken the hint, her aunt thought, and nothing more had been seen of Miss Franks at the flat.

Consumed by impatience, Vardon longed for the end of the school’s summer vacation. He decided that if Miss Franks could not help him, probably nobody could. There remained the headmistress. Vardon wondered whether it might be possible to find her, at the school engaged in the composition of time-tables for the coming term. He was unlucky. The only people he encountered were the caretaker and a couple of cleaners.

‘Miss Faintley?’ said the caretaker, a lean, sardonic man of forty-five. ‘Yes, I saw the notice in the papers. Ever served in a mixed battery, Inspector? Always the ones nobody ever thought of who pick up all the trouble. The real floozies never cop out. It’s the amateurs buy it, sir… always.’

‘So Miss Faintley was what one might call the typical schoolmistress, eh?’

‘There’s no such thing as a typical schoolmistress. Colonel’s lady and Judy O’Grady… that’s what they are. And what they are under their skins only the kids know… and, like God, they won’t let on, not