Unnatural death
“Righto,” said Mrs. Cropper. “I’m sure you’re proper gentlemen, if Mrs.
Gulliver answers for you, for I’ve never known her mistaken in a person
yet, have I, Mrs. G? I’ll tell you anything I know, which isn’t much,
for it’s all a horrible mystery to me. Only I don’t want you to delay
me, for I’ve got to go straight on down to Mother. She’ll be in a
dreadful way, so fond as she was of Bertha, and she’s all alone except
for the young girl that looks after her, and that’s not much comfort
when you’ve lost your daughter so sudden.”
“We shall not detain you a moment, Mrs. Cropper,” said Mr. Murbles. “We
propose, if you will allow us, to accompany you to London, and to ask
you a few questions on the way, and then—again with your permission—we
should like to see you safely home to Mrs. Gotobed’s house, wherever
that may be.”
“Christchurch, near Bournemouth,” said Lord Peter. “I’ll run you down
straight away, if you like. It will save time.”
“I say, you know all about it, don’t you?” exclaimed Mrs. Cropper with
some admiration. “Well, hadn’t we better get a move on, or we’ll miss
this train?”
“Quite right,” said Mr. Murbles. “Allow me to offer you my arm.”
Mrs. Cropper approving of this arrangement, the party made its way to
the station, after the usual disembarkation formalities. As they passed
the barrier on to the platform Mrs. Cropper gave a little exclamation
and leaned forward as though something had caught her eye.
“What is it, Mrs. Cropper?” said Lord Peter’s voice in her ear. “Did you
think you recognised somebody?”
“You’re a noticing one, aren’t you?” said Mrs. Cropper. “Make a good
waiter—you would—not meaning any offence, sir, that’s a real compliment
from one who knows. Yes, I did think I saw someone, but it couldn’t be,
because the minute she caught my eye she went away.”
“Who did you think it was?”
“Why, I thought it looked like Miss Whittaker, as Bertha and me used to
work for.”
“Where was she?”
“Just down by that pillar there, a tall dark lady in a crimson hat and
grey fur. But she’s gone now.”
“Excuse me.”
Lord Peter unhitched Mrs. Gulliver from his arm, hitched her smartly on
to the unoccupied arm of Mr. Murbles, and plunged into the crowd. Mr.
Murbles, quite unperturbed by this eccentric behaviour, shepherded the
two women into an empty first-class carriage which, Mrs. Cropper noted,
bore a large label, “Reserved for Lord Peter Wimsey and party.” Mrs.
Cropper made some protesting observation about her ticket, but Mr.
Murbles merely replied that everything was provided for, and that
privacy could be more conveniently secured in this way.
“Your friend’s going to be left behind,” said Mrs. Cropper as the train
moved out.
“That would be very unlike him,” replied Mr. Murbles, calmly unfolding a
couple of rugs and exchanging his old-fashioned top-hat for a curious
kind of travelling cap with flaps to it. Mrs. Cropper, in the midst of
her anxiety, could not help wondering where in the world he had
contrived to purchase this Victorian relic. As a matter of fact, Mr.
Murbles’ caps were specially made to his own design by an exceedingly
expensive West End hatter, who held Mr. Murbles in deep respect as a
real gentleman of the old school.
Nothing, however, was seen of Lord Peter for something like a quarter of
an hour, when he suddenly put his head in with an amiable smile and
said:
“One red-haired woman in a crimson hat; three dark women in black hats;
several nondescript women in those pull-on sort of dust-coloured hats;
old women with grey hair, various; sixteen flappers without hats—hats on
rack, I mean, but none of ’em crimson; two obvious brides in blue hats;
innumerable fair women in hats of all colours; one ash-blonde dressed as
a nurse, none of ’em our friend as far as I know. Thought I’d best just
toddle along the train to make sure. There’s just one dark sort of
female whose hat I can’t see because it’s tucked down beside her. Wonder
if Mrs. Cropper would mind doin’ a little stagger down the corridor to
take a squint at her.”
Mrs. Cropper, with some surprise, consented to do so.
“Right you are. ’Splain later. About four carriages along. Now, look
here, Mrs. Cropper, if it _should_ be anybody you know, I’d rather on
the whole she didn’t spot you watching her. I want you to walk along
behind me, just glancin’ into the compartments but keepin’ your collar
turned up. When we come to the party I have in mind, I’ll make a screen
for you, what?”
These manœuvres were successfully accomplished, Lord Peter lighting a
cigarette opposite the suspected compartment, while Mrs. Cropper viewed
the hatless lady under cover of his raised elbows. But the result was
disappointing. Mrs. Cropper had never seen the lady before, and a
further promenade from end to end of the train produced no better
results.
“We must leave it to Bunter, then,” said his lordship, cheerfully, as
they returned to their seats. “I put him on the trail as soon as you
gave me the good word. Now, Mrs. Cropper, we really get down to
business. First of all, we should be glad of any suggestions you may
have to make about your sister’s death. We don’t want to distress you,
but we have got an idea that there might, just possibly, be something
behind it.”
“There’s just one thing, sir—your lordship, I suppose I should say.
Bertha was a real good girl—I can answer for that absolutely. There
wouldn’t have been any carryings-on with her young man—nothing of that.
I know people have been saying all sorts of things, and perhaps, with
lots of girls as they are, it isn’t to be wondered at. But, believe me,
Bertha wouldn’t go for to do anything that wasn’t right. Perhaps you’d
like to see this last letter she wrote me. I’m sure nothing could be
nicer and properer from a girl just looking forward to a happy marriage.
Now, a girl as wrote like that wouldn’t be going larking about, sir,
would she? I couldn’t rest, thinking they was saying that about her.”
Lord Peter took the letter, glanced through it, and handed it reverently
to Mr. Murbles.
“We’re not thinking that at all, Mrs. Cropper, though of course we’re
very glad to have your point of view, don’t you see. Now, do you think
it possible your sister might have been—what shall I say?—got hold of by
some woman with a plausible story and all that, and—well—pushed into
some position which shocked her very much? Was she cautious and up to
the tricks of London people and all that?”
And he outlined Parker’s theory of the engaging Mrs. Forrest and the
supposed dinner in the flat.
“Well, my lord, I wouldn’t say Bertha was a very quick girl—not as quick
as me, you know. She’d always be ready to believe what she was told and
give people credit for the best. Took more after her father, like. I’m
Mother’s girl, they always said, and I don’t trust anybody further than
I can see them. But I’d warned her very careful against taking up with
women as talks to a girl in the street, and she did ought to have been
on her guard.”
“Of course,” said Peter, “it may have been somebody she’d got to know
quite well—say, at the restaurant, and she thought she was a nice lady
and there’d be no harm in going to see her. Or the lady might have
suggested taking her into good service. One never knows.”
“I think she’d have mentioned it in her letters if she’d talked to the
lady much, my lord. It’s wonderful what a lot of things she’d find to
tell me about the customers. And I don’t think she’d be for going into
service again. We got real fed up with service, down in Leahampton.”
“Ah, yes. Now that brings us to quite a different point—the thing we
wanted to ask you or your sister about before this sad accident took
place. You were in service with this Miss Whittaker whom you mentioned
just now. I wonder if you’d mind telling us just exactly why you left.
It was a good place, I suppose?”
“Yes, my lord, quite a good place as places go, though of course a girl
doesn’t get her freedom the way she does in a restaurant. And naturally
there was a good deal of waiting on the old lady. Not as we minded that,
for she was a very kind, good lady, and generous too.”
“But when she became so ill, I suppose Miss Whittaker managed
everything, what?”
“Yes, my lord; but it wasn’t a hard place—lots of the girls envied us.
Only Miss Whittaker was very particular.”
“Especially about the china, what?”
“Ah, they told you about that, then?”
“I told ’em, dearie,” put in Mrs. Gulliver. “I told ’em all about how
you come to leave your place and go to London.”
“And it struck us,” put in Mr. Murbles, “that it was, shall we say,
somewhat rash of Miss Whittaker to dismiss so competent and, if I may
put it so, so well-spoken and personable a pair of maids on so trivial a
pretext.”
“You’re right there, sir. Bertha—I told you she was the trusting one—she
was quite ready to believe as she done wrong, and thought how good it
was of Miss Whittaker to forgive her breaking the china, and take so
much interest in sending us to London, but I always thought there was
something more than met the eye. Didn’t I, Mrs. Gulliver?”
“That you did, dear; something more than meets the eye, that’s what you
says to me, and what I agrees with.”
“And did you, in your own mind,” pursued Mr. Murbles, “connect this
sudden dismissal with anything which had taken place?”
“Well, I did then,” replied Mrs. Cropper, with some spirit. “I said to
Bertha—but she would hear nothing of it, taking after her father as I
tell you—I said, ‘Mark my words,’ I said, ‘Miss Whittaker don’t care to
have us in the house after the row she had with the old lady.’”
“And what row was that?” inquired Mr. Murbles.
“Well, I don’t know as I ought rightly to tell you about it, seeing it’s
all over now and we promised to say nothing about it.”
“That, of course,” said Mr. Murbles, checking Lord Peter, who was about
to burst in impetuously, “depends upon your own conscience. But, if it
will be of any help to you in making up your mind, I think I may say, in
the strictest confidence, that this information may be of the utmost
importance to us—in a roundabout way which I won’t trouble you with—in
investigating a very singular set of circumstances which have been
brought to our notice. And it is just barely possible—again in a very
roundabout way—that it may assist us in throwing some light on the
melancholy tragedy of your sister’s decease. Further than that I cannot
go at the moment.”
“Well, now,” said Mrs. Cropper, “if that’s so—though, mind you, I don’t
see what connection there could be—but if you think that’s so, I reckon
I’d better come across with it, as my husband would say. After all, I
only promised I wouldn’t mention about it to the people in Leahampton,
as might have made mischief out of it—and a gossipy lot they is, and no
mistake.”
“We’ve nothing to do with the Leahampton crowd,” said his lordship, “and
it won’t be passed along unless it turns out to be necessary.”
“Righto. Well, I’ll tell you. One morning early in September Miss
Whittaker comes along to Bertha and I, and says, ‘I want you girls to be
just handy on the landing outside Miss Dawson’s bedroom,’ she says,
‘because I may want you to come in and witness her signature to a
document. We shall want two witnesses,’ she says, ‘and you’ll have to
see her sign; but I don’t want to flurry her with a lot of people in the
room, so when I give you the tip, I want you to come just inside the
door without making a noise, so that you can see her write her name, and
then I’ll bring it straight across to you and you can write your names
where I show you. It’s quite easy,’ she says, ‘nothing to do but just
put your names opposite where you see the word Witnesses.’
“Bertha was always a bit the timid sort—afraid of documents and that