“I am not connected with the Welfare, but with the police.”
“You better come in, then. That Mrs Coggins next door got her ears on elastic.” She stood aside and Dame Beatrice entered the parlour. It was clean, and the floor and furniture had been polished. The wallpaper-pattern was somewhat unrestrained, but the armchairs and settee looked comfortable and Mrs Darbey immediately lighted the gas fire. “Now,” she said, “I don’t see what the police have got to do with it. There’s no law against a girl making Mabel’s mistake, is there?”
“I am not aware of such a law. What I have come to find out is only obliquely concerned with your daughter, Mrs Darbey. Do you know the name of the baby’s father?”
“No, Mabel wouldn’t say. Said she wouldn’t marry him, even if he asked her, which he wasn’t likely to do. So it’s no good you or the police thinking it’s any use buggering along them lines. She’ll get over it, and, although I’ve spoke my mind, I reckon she’s only in the same boat as half-a-dozen others I could name. She means to have the baby adopted, and then she’s going to live with her auntie and uncle at Wolverhampton for a bit. Time she gets back it will all have blown over, I daresay. It ain’t the disgrace it used to be, you know. Nobody don’t think all that much of it nowadays. After all, it’s natural-like. The baby’s the unlucky one, not the mother.”
“I asked whether you knew the name of the baby’s father for a reason which does not really affect your daughter at all.”
“Oh? How’s that, then?”
“He may be wanted on a charge of murder.”
“Oh, my goodness! Murdering who?”
“I am not prepared to tell you that at present.”
“Well, what’s it got to do with Mabel, then?”
“I assure you, very little. If the father is not the man I think he is, then, probably, nothing at all. Come, Mrs Darbey, you know who the father is, don’t you?”
“Mabel’s never said.”
“That isn’t an answer. You suspect someone. I’d like to know who it is. After all, as I have told you, murder is suspected and…”
“Suspected? I thought it was proved.”
“You are thinking of the schoolmaster, Mr Spey, but I am referring to the death of the Sunday School superintendent, Mr Luton.”
“But the paper said…”
“Yes, I know what the paper said. What the papers say is not necessarily the whole truth, is it?”
“If I was to tell you what I think and believe, I might find myself in trouble. It don’t do to say all you think. I don’t want to find myself in a police court, so I ain’t naming no names. I’ve got no proof, and Mabel won’t say. I expect she’s frightened, like I am, of being had up for putting the blame where I reckon it will never be proved. Them that’s in high society can do as they like with the law, same as they always could. So now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to see to the dinner. Mabel’s dad is up the allotment, as usual of a Sunday, and he’ll be hungry when he comes in.”
“Very well, Mrs Darbey,” said Dame Beatrice, getting up. “It has been very good of you to let me talk to you. If I give
“No,” said Mrs Darbey, flatly. “I’ve had quite enough trouble, as it is, over all this business. Mabel’s acted real silly, and I’m not the one to deny it, but perhaps she couldn’t help herself, being in service and all that. Anyway, soon as the baby comes it’ll all be over, and with any luck we’ll have a quiet life once more. Thank you for calling, and I’m sorry I can’t oblige, but the less said the better, and I haven’t got no proof.”
“Giles Faudrey will run into trouble one of these days,” said Dame Beatrice, in an off-hand tone, “but you are probably wise to say nothing, even to me.”
“Who told you I meant Giles Faudrey? You don’t mean…here, you’re putting words in my mouth! I never said a word about Giles Faudrey!”
“One of us had to,” said Dame Beatrice, “and now that we’ve gone as far as this, we must go a little bit further. How did Mr Luton find out that Faudrey was the man?”
“I’ve no idea, I tell you, and I don’t want to say any more.”
“Not even although I assure you that I believe the father of your daughter’s baby to be a triple murderer?”
“Please go, please do! I don’t want to get mixed up in anything, I tell you…and I don’t know nothing for sure.”
“It seems that Mr Luton must have done. How would he have found out?”
“I don’t know! I suppose he got it out of Mabel! I must see to the dinner! Please go.”
Dame Beatrice returned to the Sunday School hall and reached it to the sound of the bells from the parish church. Julian was waiting at the gate. The Sunday School children were leaving the hall to go home and, at a further gate, the congregation was drifting in for the eleven o’clock service in the chapel. It seemed, thought Dame Beatrice, that the Darbey family must sit down to their Sunday dinner at an unusually early hour.
She went into the Sunday School hall and was able to buttonhole the secretary once more.
“Just one thing,” she said, “before you go into chapel. Would you have called Mr Luton a reckless man?”
“I don’t know that I’d use that word. He had a lot of courage. If he ever thought someone was doing wrong, he said so, not mincing his words.”
“Always a risky proceeding, don’t you think? At any rate, he seems to have found it so.”
