'Marjorie had a good many friends. It could have been any one of them.'
'She was so distressed. Crying, in fact. I don't think that was like her. Do you?'
After a moment she said, 'No, she wouldn't have made a scene. Not Marjorie. But I'm afraid I can't help you. It would be-prying. And she's dead.'
'This polite conspiracy of silence is all very well and good,' I pointed out, a little angry with her. 'But I think Marjorie would approve of a little 'prying' if it meant her killer was found out.'
Helen Calder studied my face for a moment, and then nodded. 'You're absolutely right, you know. We've all taken such pride in closing ranks to protect her memory. I never considered the fact that we were protecting her murderer as well. But you see, people do ask about her death, and I've gotten quite good at fending off gossipmongers. Heaven knows there have been enough of them. But even if I answer your questions, what possible good will it do?'
'I myself stepped forward when there was a notice in the newspapers asking for any information about Mrs. Evanson on that last day of her life. I met with an Inspector Herbert at Scotland Yard. It was not as difficult as I'd expected.' I smiled. 'Sadly, I don't think what I told him about seeing her at the railway station was very useful. But it did fill in a part of their picture about her movements after leaving her home earlier in the day.'
She said, 'Yes, all right. There was a man. I don't how she came to meet him. She told me he was in London just for the day, and they talked for a bit. And then he asked her to join him for dinner. I know this because Marjorie mentioned it casually in another context, that it brought home to her just how much she missed Meriwether and the things they often did together. It pointed up her loneliness, she said, and she was left to face that. 'I shan't do that again,' she told me. 'It's too painful.''
'Did she tell you the man's name?'
'No, and I really didn't care to ask. I didn't want to make more of the event than she already had done. I was hoping it would come to nothing.'
'But she saw him again?'
'She must have done. I met her coming out of a milliner's shop with a hatbox in her hand. She greeted me sheepishly, as if she hadn't wanted to run into anyone she knew. I was about to tease her when it occurred to me that perhaps she was dining with that man again. There was almost a schoolgirl's furtiveness about her.'
'Can you be sure it was the same man?'
'I must believe it was. Marjorie wasn't the sort to take up with strangers, and it was no more than a month after the first dinner.'
'What happened next?'
'It was almost a month later-two months after that first dinner-and she was standing waiting for a cab, and I saw she'd been crying. My first thought was that she'd had bad news about Meriwether, and she answered that she'd had a letter from him only the day before and he was all right.' She shook her head. 'Looking back, I wonder if she'd broken off with this man. It was the last time I saw her-she began to refuse invitations, keeping to herself after that. There was this group of women she worked with. I told myself at the time that listening to their experiences was doing her more harm than good. I should have made an effort to see her, but I had my own worries, and I kept putting it off. To tell you the truth, I thought she might feel compelled to confess, and I didn't want to know.'
'Do you perhaps know of a Lieutenant Fordham?' I asked.
Mrs. Calder frowned. 'Ought I to know him? Do you think he was the man Marjorie was seeing?'
'I have no real reason to believe it. His name came up in a different connection. But I'd like to ask, if Marjorie were in trouble-of any kind-would she have turned to you for help? And if not to you, where would she go?'
'She didn't come here. My housekeeper would have told me if she had called. I wish she had.' She shook her head. 'There's really no one else she was close to. Except for Michael Hart. But of course he was in France.'
'If you could ask among her friends? It could lead somewhere.'
'Yes, by all means. I'm ashamed now that I didn't do something. You're very brave to take on this search. It should have been me.'
But she hadn't wanted to know.
I told her how she could contact me, and thanked her.
Sadly, we were still no closer to finding Marjorie's killer.
I was outside on the pavement, preparing to crank the motorcar, when I realized that she hadn't asked me if Marjorie was pregnant.
Did she know already? Or was this something else she didn't want to hear?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
As I was about to pull over at the Marlborough Hotel, I saw a face in a cab window that caught my attention. Serena Melton. She appeared to be very upset.
I swerved back into heavy traffic, ignoring a horn blown in disgust, and fell in behind her cab, wondering where she might be going, although it was more likely that she was coming from somewhere instead.
But I was right. She was going. I trailed her back to the house where her brother and his wife had lived. She asked the cabbie to wait and went up the steps to knock at the door.
There was no answer. She waited for a moment and tried again. And again no one came to answer the summons.
She was coming back down the steps, when I turned in behind the cab and called to her.
'Serena? Imagine running into you in London. Could I take you somewhere?'
She looked at me, and after a moment paid off the cabbie and came to join me in my motorcar.
'What brings you to London?' she asked. 'I thought you were in France again. '
'How are you?' I asked her instead of answering. Then, 'Is anything wrong?'
'I've just had a most unpleasant conversation with someone who knew my brother's wife. It was very upsetting.'
'In that house? The one you were just coming out of?'
'No, no. That's my brother's house. I was hoping to have some tea and a lie down, before taking the train home.'
'Are you any closer to finding out who killed your brother's wife?' It was baldly put but there was no other way to ask.
'How did you-oh. The weekend at Melton Hall.' She sighed, pulling off her gloves and then after a moment putting them on again. 'It's been the most hopeless task. But the police are still sitting on their hands, doing nothing. I spoke to the inspector in charge this morning. He tried to assure me that everything possible was being done. But it isn't. I know it isn't.'
'It's likely-' I began, but she interrupted me, turning toward me with anger in her eyes.
'His latest theory has to do with someone from Oxford. I don't know that Marjorie even knew anyone there. He's grasping at straws.'
I couldn't explain what I'd been told about the reason the police were searching for that person. It wasn't my place to pass on such information if the police had not. And so I said, 'Do you have any idea what your sister-in-law did that day?'
'The police have told me that she went out in the early afternoon and never came back. She knew Merry would be arriving that day, and I'd assumed she would go at once to see him. I was intending to visit him the following day, when he was a little more rested from his journey. But of course the police were at our door before I could go. And it was left to me to tell him what had happened. I couldn't understand how she'd come to die in London. I thought there must be some mistake. They'd had some difficulty in identifying her-her purse was taken- and if her housekeeper hadn't spoken to the constable on their street, the police wouldn't have known who she was as soon as they did.'
It was, for the most part, what Michael had learned from Marjorie's housekeeper.
We were nearing Kensington Palace. I said, 'You remarked earlier that you'd just had an unpleasant conversation-' I left it there.
