'I see. But there is really very little I could say.'
'You can say why you wanted to leave.'
'I had a feeling that there were things going on that I didn't know about.'
'You mean you didn't think that it was a genuine concern?'
'Something of the kind. It didn't seem to me to be run in a businesslike way. I suspected that there must be some ulterior object behind it. But what that object was I still don't know.'
Lejeune asked more questions as to exactly what work she had been asked to do. Lists of names in a certain neighbourhood had been handed out. Her job was to visit those people, ask certain questions, and note down the answers.
'And what struck you as wrong about that?'
'The questions did not seem to me to follow up any particular line of research. They seemed desultory, almost haphazard. As though – how can I put it? – they were a cloak for something else.'
'Have you any idea what the something else might have been?'
'No. That's what puzzled me.'
She paused a moment and then said doubtfully:
'I did wonder, at one time, whether the whole thing could have been organized with a view perhaps to burglaries, a spying out of the land, so to speak. But that couldn't be it, because I was never asked for any description of the rooms, fastenings, etc., or when the occupants of the flat or house were likely to be out or away.'
'What articles did you deal with in the questions?'
'It varied. Sometimes it was foodstuffs. Cereals, cake mixes, or it might be soap flakes and detergents. Sometimes cosmetics, face powder, lipsticks, creams, etc. Sometimes patent medicines or remedies, brands of aspirin, cough pastilles, sleeping pills, pep pills, gargles, mouthwashes, indigestion remedies and so on.'
'You were not asked,' Lejeune spoke casually, 'to supply samples of any particular goods?'
'No. Nothing of that kind.'
'You merely asked questions and noted down the answers. '
'Yes.'
'What was supposed to be the object of these inquiries?'
'That was what seemed so odd. We were never told exactly. It was supposed to be done in order to supply information to certain manufacturing firms – but it was an extraordinarily amateurish way of going about it. Not systematic at all.'
'Would it be possible, do you think, that among the questions you were told to ask, there was just one question or one group of questions, that was the object of the enterprise, and that the others might have been camouflage?'
She considered the point, frowning a little, then she nodded.
'Yes,' she said. 'That would account for the haphazard choice – but I haven't the least idea what question or questions were the important ones?'
Lejeune looked at her keenly.
'There must be more to it than what you've told us,' he said gently.
'That's the point, there isn't really. I just felt there was something wrong about the whole setup. And then I talked to another woman, a Mrs Davis -'
'You talked to a Mrs Davis – yes?'
Lejeune's voice remained quite unchanged.
'She wasn't happy about things, either.'
'And why wasn't she happy?'
'She'd overheard something.'
'What had she overheard?'
'I told you I couldn't be definite. She didn't tell me in so many words. Only that from what she had overheard, the whole setup was a racket of some kind. 'It's not what it seems to be.' That is what she said. Then she said: 'Oh well, it doesn't affect us. The money's very good and we're not asked to do anything that's against the law – so I don't see that we need bother our heads about it.''
'That was all?'
'There was one other thing she said. I don't know what she meant by it. She said: 'Sometimes I feel like Typhoid Mary.' At the time I didn't know what she meant.'
Lejeune took a paper from his pocket and handed it to her.
'Do any of the names on that list mean anything to you? Did you call upon any of them that you can remember?'
'I wouldn't remember.' She took the paper. 'I saw so many…' She paused as her eye went down the list. She said:
'Ormerod.'
'You remember an Ormerod?'
'No. But Mrs Davis mentioned him once. He died very suddenly, didn't he? Cerebral hemorrhage. It upset her. She said, 'He was on my list a fortnight ago. Looked like a man in the pink of condition.' It was after that that she made the remark about Typhoid Mary. She said, 'Some of the people I call on seem to curl up their toes and pass out just from having one look at me.' She laughed about it and said it was a coincidence. But I don't think she liked it much. However, she said she wasn't going to worry.'
'And that was all?'
'Well -'
'Tell me.'
'It was some time later. I hadn't seen her for a while. But we met one day in a restaurant in Soho. I told her that I'd left the C.R.C. and got another job. She asked me why, and I told her I'd felt uneasy, not knowing what was going on. She said: 'Perhaps you've been wise. But it's good money and short hours. And after all, we've all got to take our chance in this life! I've not had much luck in my life and why should I care what happens to other people?' I said: 'I don't understand what you're talking about. What exactly is wrong with that show?' She said: 'I can't be sure, but I'll tell you I recognized someone the other day. Coming out of a house where he'd no business to be and carrying a bag of tools. What was he doing with those I'd like to know?' She asked me, too, if I'd ever come across a woman who ran a pub called the Pale Horse somewhere. I asked her what the Pale Horse had to do with it.'
'And what did she say?'
'She laughed and said: 'Read your Bible.''
Mrs Brandon added: 'I don't know what she meant. That was the last time I saw her. I don't know where she is now, whether she's still with C.R.C. or whether she's left.'
'Mrs Davis is dead,' said Lejeune.
Eileen Brandon looked startled.
'Dead! But how?'
'Pneumonia, two months ago.'
'Oh, I see. I'm sorry.'
'Is there anything else you can tell us, Mrs Brandon?'
'I'm afraid not. I have heard other people mention that phrase – the Pale Horse, but if you ask them about it, they shut up at once. They look afraid, too.'
She looked uneasy.
'I – I don't want to be mixed up in anything dangerous, Inspector Lejeune. I've got two small children… honestly, I don't know anything more than I've told you.'
He looked at her keenly, then he nodded his head and let her go.
'That takes us a little further,' said Lejeune when Eileen Brandon had gone. 'Mrs Davis got to know too much. She tried to shut her eyes to the meaning of what was going on, but she must have had a very shrewd suspicion of what it was. Then she was suddenly taken ill, and when she was dying, she sent for a priest and told him what she knew and suspected. The question is, how much did she know? That list of people, I should say, is a list of people she had called on in the course of her job, and who had subsequently died. Hence the remark about Typhoid Mary. The real question is, who was it she 'recognized' coming out of a house where he had no business to
