Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 19, No. 99, February 1952
- Автор: Грубер Фрэнк, Кемельман Гарри
- Год: 1952
- Язык: английский
- Год: American Mercury
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 19, No. 99, February 1952». Краткое содержание книги:
Most of these questions were answered in time. First, no one ever again saw Miss Raynor walking in the street in her blue cloak and cameo. That seemed to indicate that Miss Raynor had been as real as The Walled House and had departed with it. The question of the money did not quite prove anything either way. There were five hundred and twenty-two pounds three shillings in her bank account, but no trace of any will could be found. None of the local solicitors had ever acted for her, and the bank manager had to confess that he had never set eyes on her. The money was paid into her account direct from government securities, and the milkman and the coal merchant were always paid by check. Neither the bank manager nor his two predecessors had ever seen Miss Raynor in person. So there was a good deal of speculation concerning the nature of her existence.
The talk no doubt would have died down very quickly if it hadn’t been for the vicar. He had always been very scathing about any form of superstition and had refused to believe that there was anything odd about Miss Raynor except that she did not go to church. He was very distressed that there was neither an arm nor a leg left for him to bury in public. He felt that that would have put the whole matter in its proper perspective for good and all. As this was denied him he proposed to hold a special memorial service for her. But here again he was frustrated. The air-raid wardens pointed out that with another raid possible at any moment it was undesirable to gather people unnecessarily in one place. So, finally, he decided to have her name engraved — at his own expense — on her father’s tombstone...
Considering what Miss Raynor’s relations with her father were supposed to have been, it was perhaps a rash thing to suggest. In any case, the stone mason who was entrusted with the work was taken ill and nearly died the night before he was due to cut the first letter. After that no one else would take on the job, and tongues started wagging again.
It was soon after the sudden illness of the stone mason that I went in to see Mrs. Reason. I would have gone sooner but Mrs. Reason had been in bed with her arthritis ever since the bomb fell. Arthritis permitting, there was never any difficulty about seeing Mrs. Reason in spite of her ninety-one years; for she kept a curiosity shop and sold anything from antimacassars to old golf balls. She never remembered who you were nor what she had told you the last time you were there. This last peculiarity gave me an opportunity to check up and see if her stories about Miss Raynor had now altered in any way. For Mrs. Reason was the source of nearly all the stories about Miss Raynor. She was the only living person who had known Miss Raynor when she was a young girl and unquestionably alive.
Mrs. Reason was sitting shelling peas in her usual chair by the fireplace, with all her junk around her. I begged her not to get up and then continued.
“Nice to see you about again, Mrs. Reason. How are you?”
“Poorly,” she replied. “Poorly. But I mustn’t complain at my age... Anything special that you want today, Mr. Spenlove?”
Spenlove is not my name, but I passed that over.
“No,” I said. “I’d just like to have a look round.”
“Go ahead,” she answered. “But you won’t find much. Can’t get the stuff nowadays. Can’t get about as I did. But there’s a nice pair of rummers over there.”
I wriggled my way round to look at the rummers while Mrs. Reason went on shelling peas. One had to wriggle in Mrs. Reason’s shop, for if your front wasn’t in danger of knocking something over your back was sure to be.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Reason shelled another pod and went on acidly.
“So the poor old vicar couldn’t bury her after all!”
I examined the rummers, saying nothing.
“Couldn’t even put her name on the tombstone!” Mrs. Reason continued scathingly. “Well, some people just won’t take a telling, Mr. Spenlove.”
I put the rummers down.
“What did you tell the vicar, Mrs. Reason?”
“Why, the truth! The same as I told everyone else. That Alice Raynor died in 1871. Suicide it may have been — and then again it may not.”
“But, Mrs. Reason, the milk bottles! The bank account! How do you explain those?”
“I don’t explain it, Mr. Spenlove. And I don’t explain either how people saw her in the street. I never saw her — but then I knew she wasn’t there.”
I sat down in the high-backed chair opposite Mrs. Reason.
“What was Alice Raynor like in those days?” I asked.
“Pretty,” she answered. “Very pretty. And gay. And naughty, too. She had dark hair which was parted in the middle and sleeked down the sides of her head. I wore it that way myself then. It was the fashion, you know.”
“She was an only child?”
“Yes, her mother died in childbirth. That was when Mr. Raynor put the wall all round the house.”
“To shut himself in?”
“To shut people out, I should say. To keep Alice for himself.”
“And what was Mr. Raynor like?”
“Hard. Self-righteous. With a spade-shaped beard. You don’t know what fathers were like in those days. Thought the Almighty of themselves.”
“Was there any truth in this elopement story?”
“Of course there was!”
“But if she was kept shut up like that, how could she meet anyone?”
“She went out with her father; they were important gentry, you know. It was at Canterbury it happened. There was some to-do at the cathedral, and this young rip was down from London staying with friends. He sat next to her in the pew.”
“That was the beginning of it?”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“There were notes. Billets-doux, they called them then.”
“But how did you know?”
“I was the go-between.”
“I see! And the elopement?”
“I was to keep a lighted candle in my window so long as the way was clear. The candle was there all the night, but he never came. He had been killed in Hyde Park in a duel that very morning.”
“But, Mrs. Reason, surely dueling was finished in England by 1871!”
The old lady gave me a scalding look.
“Dueling is just a form of fighting, Mr. Spenlove. To the best of my knowledge men haven’t finished fighting yet.”
I went on more humbly. “Anyway he was killed?”
“Yes. But of course no one knew then what had happened. I don’t think Alice ever knew why he didn’t come.”
“And if he had come, she was going to let herself down with the silken ladder?”
“That’s right. The pony-carriage was to have been round the corner in Nightrider Street.”
“Were you watching by the window with the candle?”
“Of course!”
“What happened?”
“It was July and her window was open. Ready. Then at three o’clock in the morning — that was two hours after Harry ought to have come — I saw a hand shut the window. A big hand — not like hers at all.”
“And you never saw Alice again?”
“Never. A few days later Mr. Raynor gave out that she had gone to finish her education in Brussels.”
“And after that?”
“Mr. Raynor was found the next morning at the foot of the stairs with his neck broken, and the silken ladder was all entangled about his feet.”
“Was there an inquest?”
“Yes, of a kind. Accidental causes, they said.”
“But you didn’t believe them?”
“Oh, yes, I did. At the time. It wasn’t till two years later that I began to wonder about it, and then it was too late to do anything. Not that I ever could have, they being gentry and me not.”