“See one?”
“Read one, if you like? I’m not accusing you of spying on your mistress’s correspondence, if that’s what you fear—but sometimes it may be hard to avoid seeing something that isn’t intended for us.”
“Pinkie” nodded in acquiescence. “On two occasions I did happen to notice an initial at the foot of the card,” she contributed.
“And what was it?” inquired Anthony.
“Just the one letter ‘X’—that was all.”
Anthony looked across at the Inspector and waited for his next move. The latter caught Mr. Bathurst’s meaning. He produced the postcard found amongst Miss Delaney’s belongings in the bedroom and handed it across to the woman. “Is this one of those to which you are referring?”
“Pinkie” gazed at it with wide-open eyes. “Yes—yes! That is one of the cards I mentioned. That’s in a handwriting I don’t know. Where did you get this?”
“I’ll show you later on,” observed Bannister with a touch of severity, “meanwhile you can definitely state that Miss Delaney has received several communications in the same handwriting as this postcard—yes?”
“Pinkie” nodded, “Several, sir.”
“How long would you say they had been coming? Could you give a time?” questioned Anthony.
She puckered her brows as she sat there and thought over the question.
“Let me help you with a suggestion,” broke in Anthony, “Would it be correct to say that they commenced to come somewhere about the time that Alan Warburton’s visits began to get less frequent? Could you agree with that?”
“Let me think” she answered. The three men watched her closely. “As far as I can remember the first time I saw this handwriting was about Eastertide last year. I think it was on the Maundy Thursday. Yes, it was about then when young Warburton stopped coming here. Let me think again. If I’ve given you the impression that his visits gradually dropped off, I’m afraid I’ve confused you. They didn’t—now I think more clearly. They stopped quite suddenly—I should say a month or so before I noticed these letters and things coming. I know!”—she concluded on a note of triumphant remembrance. “He hasn’t been here since the Hunt Ball at Westhampton—early last year.”
Mr. Bathurst felt his blood course a little more fiercely through his veins. He remembered the trenchant query that he had put to himself upon the occasion of his first visit from the Crown Prince of Clorania. “What was it that had happened at the Hunt Ball at Westhampton in the February of the previous year?” Find the right answer to that, he argued to himself and he would go a long distance towards solving the entire mystery. Bannister’s thoughts were evidently following similar lines for the expression on his face showed that he thought “Pinkie’s” statement to be extremely important.
“That was in the February,” she continued, “only a few weeks before Major Carruthers was killed in his motoring accident. I’m certain, now I come to think of it, that young Mr. Warburton hasn’t been here to see Miss Sheila since then.” She spiced her statement with unmistakable emphasis and certainty.
“Did you notice this change in Miss Delaney that you speak of immediately after?” queried Anthony.
“After when?”
“After this Ball that you have mentioned?”
She thought for a while before she answered. “Yes, I think I can say now that it was after that, that she began to alter. Just a little. Perhaps some people wouldn’t have noticed it. But in small ways—”
Anthony interrupted her. “So that it might be a perfectly reasonable inference for one to make—that Miss Delaney met somebody at the Ball whom she preferred to Mr. Alan Warburton? What would you say to that?”
“Yes—it might,” she conceded with a quick movement of the hand.
“Let’s ask her to have a look at the bedroom,” put in Bannister, “she may be able to help us there too.”
Ross crossed the corridor and opened the bedroom door; Bannister piloted her in it and shewed her the indescribable scene of confusion in the room itself.
“Any idea what they were looking for?” he demanded of her sharply. “Pinkie” slowly shook her head.
“None whatever! All Miss Sheila’s valuables—except her own personal jewellery of course, were always kept at the bank.”
“H’m,” grunted Bannister, “You’re sure she kept nothing valuable in any of these drawers?”
“I’m quite sure—although—”
“Although what?”
“Well, she was in the habit of keeping that small drawer on the right there always locked. I’ve often noticed that.” She pointed to the drawer she mentioned.
“Why?” ventured Anthony, “do you know?”
“I am sure that she kept nothing that you could call valuable—there—in the real sense of the word—that is—” She hesitated again. “I think that she just kept private things in there. Things that she considered valuable, let us say—but that nobody else would.”
Anthony nodded. “And I think I agree with you Miss Kerr. I think it extremely likely that she would do so.”
“Another point,” Bannister cut in, “when you went home to Otterton for your holiday the other day—were you aware then that Miss Delaney was intending to go to Seabourne?”
“No. I knew she intended going away somewhere—as my card showed you—but I didn’t know to what particular part of the world she was going. I understood when I left her here, that she didn’t know for certain, herself—that she hadn’t made up her mind. She was always inclined to leave holidays till the last minute.”
“Had Seabourne been mentioned between you?” persisted Bannister.
“To my knowledge,” she answered, “never—that is to say in connection with this last holiday of Miss Sheila’s.”
“Now think, Miss Kerr,” exclaimed the Inspector, still quietly persistent, “has anything at all unusual or abnormal happened here, lately?”
“How do you mean?” she returned.
“In any way,” he reiterated, “in the country one day is very like another—full up with the ‘trivial round and common task’—has anything happened recently to disturb this? Has anything occurred that you could call unusual?”
She thought. “All I can think of was the Indian’s visit about a month ago,” she declared.
“The Indian!” cried Bannister, “what Indian?”
“I think his name was Lal Singh or something like that.
