The inspector paused, and then went on in obedience to an urgent gesture from Anthony.
‘A week ago, Carmen Ferrarez, the young daughter of Don Fernando, arrived in this country from a convent in France. Her first action was to seek out Anna Rosenburg at Hampstead. There she is reported to have had a violent scene with the old woman, and her words at leaving were overheard by one of the servants.
‘“You have it still,” she cried. “All these years you have grown rich on it – but I say to you solemnly that in the end it will bring you bad luck. You have no moral right to it, and the day will come when you will wish you had never seen the Shawl of the Thousand Flowers.”
‘Three days after that, Carmen Ferrarez disappeared mysteriously from the hotel where she was staying. In her room was found a name and address – the name of Conrad Fleckman, and also a note from a man purporting to be an antique dealer asking if she were disposed to part with a certain embroidered shawl which he believed she had in her possession. The address given on the note was a false one.
‘It is clear that the shawl is the centre of the whole mystery. Yesterday morning Conrad Fleckman called upon Anna Rosenburg. She was shut up with him for an hour or more, and when he left she was obliged to go to bed, so white and shaken was she by the interview. But she gave orders that if he came to see her again he was always to be admitted. Last night she got up and went out about nine o’clock, and did not return. She was found this morning in the house occupied by Conrad Fleckman, stabbed through the heart. On the floor beside her was – what do you think?’
‘The shawl?’ breathed Anthony. ‘The Shawl of a Thousand Flowers.’
‘Something far more gruesome than that. Something which explained the whole mysterious business of the shawl and made its hidden value clear . . . Excuse me, I fancy that’s the chief –’
There had indeed been a ring at the bell. Anthony contained his impatience as best he could and waited for the inspector to return. He was pretty well at ease about his own position now. As soon as they took the fingerprints they would realise their mistake.
And then, perhaps, Carmen would ring up . . .
The Shawl of a Thousand Flowers! What a strange story – just the kind of story to make an appropriate setting for the girl’s exquisite dark beauty.
Carmen Ferrarez . . .
He jerked himself back from day dreaming. What a time that inspector fellow was. He rose and pulled the door open. The flat was strangely silent. Could they have gone? Surely not without a word to him.
He strode out into the next room. It was empty – so was the sitting-room. Strangely empty! It had a bare dishevelled appearance. Good heavens! His enamels – the silver!
He rushed wildly through the flat. It was the same tale everywhere. The place had been denuded. Every single thing of value, and Anthony had a very pretty collector’s taste in small things, had been taken.
With a groan Anthony staggered to a chair, his head in his hands. He was aroused by the ringing of the front door bell. He opened it to confront Rogers.
‘You’ll excuse me, sir,’ said Rogers. ‘But the gentlemen fancied you might be wanting something.’
‘The gentlemen?’
‘Those two friends of yours, sir. I helped them with the packing as best I could. Very fortunately I happened to have them two good cases in the basement.’ His eyes dropped to the floor. ‘I’ve swept up the straw as best I could, sir.’
‘You packed the things in here?’ groaned Anthony. ‘Yes, sir. Was that not your wishes, sir? It was the tall gentleman told me to do so, sir, and seeing as you were busy talking to the other gentleman in the little end room, I didn’t like to disturb you.’
‘I wasn’t talking to him,’ said Anthony. ‘He was talking to me – curse him.’
Rogers coughed.
‘I’m sure I’m very sorry for the necessity, sir,’ he murmured. ‘Necessity?’
‘Of parting with your little treasures, sir.’
‘Eh? Oh, yes. Ha, ha!’ He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘They’ve driven off by now, I suppose. Those – those friends of mine, I mean?’
‘Oh, yes, sir, some time ago. I put the cases on the taxi and the tall gentleman went upstairs again, and then they both came running down and drove off at once . . . Excuse me, sir, but is anything wrong, sir?’
Rogers might well ask. The hollow groan which Anthony emitted would have aroused surmise anywhere.
‘Everything is wrong, thank you, Rogers. But I see clearly that you were not to blame. Leave me, I would commune a while with my telephone.’
Five minutes later saw Anthony pouring his tale into the ears of Inspector Driver, who sat opposite to him, note-book in hand. An unsympathetic man, Inspector Driver, and not (Anthony reflected) nearly so like a real inspector! Distinctly stagey, in fact. Another striking example of the superiority of Art over Nature.
Anthony reached the end of his tale. The inspector shut up his notebook.
‘Well?’ said Anthony anxiously.
‘Clear as paint,’ said the inspector. ‘It’s the Patterson gang. They’ve done a lot of smart work lately. Big fair man, small dark man, and the girl.’
‘The girl?’
‘Yes, dark and mighty good looking. Acts as a decoy usually.’
‘A – a Spanish girl?’
‘She might call herself that. She was born in Hampstead.’
‘I said it was a bracing place,’ murmured Anthony.
‘Yes, it’s clear enough,’ said the inspector, rising to depart. ‘She got you on the phone and pitched you a tale – she guessed you’d come along all right. Then she goes along to old Mother Gibson’s who isn’t above accepting a tip for the use of her room for them as finds it awkward to meet in public – lovers, you understand, nothing criminal. You fall for it all right, they get you back here, and while one of them pitches you a tale, the other gets away with the swag. It’s the Pattersons all right – just their touch.’
‘And my things?’ said Anthony anxiously.
‘We’ll do what we can, sir. But the Pattersons are uncommon sharp.’
‘They seem to be,’ said Anthony bitterly.
The inspector departed, and scarcely had he gone before there came a ring at the door. Anthony opened it. A small boy stood there, holding a package.
‘Parcel for you, sir.’
Anthony took it with some surprise. He was not expecting a parcel of any kind. Returning to the sitting-room with it, he cut the string.
It was the liqueur set!
‘Damn!’ said Anthony.
Then he noticed that at the bottom of one of the glasses there was a tiny artificial rose. His mind flew back to the upper room in Kirk Street.
‘I do like you – yes, I do like you. You will remember that whatever happens, won’t you?’
That was what she had said. Whatever happens . . . Did she mean –
Anthony took hold of himself sternly.
‘This won’t do,’ he admonished himself.
His eye fell on the typewriter, and he sat down with a resolute face.
THE MYSTERY OF THE SECOND CUCUMBER
His face grew dreamy again. The Shawl of a Thousand Flowers. What was it that was found on the floor beside the dead body? The gruesome thing that explained the whole mystery?
Nothing, of course, since it was only a trumped-up tale to hold his attention, and the teller had used the old Arabian Nights’ trick of breaking off at the most interesting point. But couldn’t there be a gruesome thing that explained the whole mystery? couldn’t there now? If one gave one’s mind to it?
Anthony tore the sheet of paper from his typewriter and substituted another. He typed a headline:
THE MYSTERY OF THE SPANISH SHAWL
He surveyed it for a moment or two in silence.
Then he began to type rapidly . . .
Chapter 8
Philomel Cottage
‘Philomel Cottage’ was first published in Grand Magazine, November 1924.
/> ‘Goodbye, darling.’
‘Goodbye, sweetheart.’
Alix Martin stood leaning over the small rustic gate, watching the retreating figure of her husband as he walked down the road in the direction of the village.
Presently he turned a bend and was lost to sight, but Alix still stayed in the same position, absentmindedly smoothing a lock of the rich brown hair which had blown across her face, her eyes far away and dreamy.
Alix Martin was not beautiful, nor even, strictly speaking, pretty. But her face, the face of a woman no longer in her first youth, was irradiated and softened until her former colleagues of the old office days would hardly have recognized her. Miss Alex King had been a trim businesslike young woman, efficient, slightly brusque in manner, obviously capable and matter-of-fact.
Alix had graduated in a hard school. For fifteen years, from the age of eighteen until she was thirty-three, she had kept herself (and for seven years of the time an invalid mother) by her work as a shorthand typist. It was the struggle for existence which had hardened the soft lines of her girlish face.
True, there had been romance – of a kind – Dick Windyford, a fellow-clerk. Very much of a woman at heart, Alix had always known without seeming to know that he cared. Outwardly they had been friends, nothing more. Out of his slender salary Dick had been hard put to it to provide for the schooling of a younger brother. For the moment he could not think of marriage.
And then suddenly deliverance from daily toil had come to the girl in the most unexpected manner. A distant cousin had died, leaving her money to Alix – a few thousand pounds, enough to bring in a couple of hundred a year. To Alix it was freedom, life, independence. Now she and Dick need wait no longer.
But Dick reacted unexpectedly. He had never directly spoken of his love to Alix; now he seemed less inclined to do so than ever. He avoided her, became morose and gloomy. Alix was quick to realize the truth. She had become a woman of means. Delicacy and pride stood in the way of Dick’s asking her to be his wife.
She liked him none the worse for it, and was indeed deliberating as to whether she herself might not take the first step, when for the second time the unexpected descended upon her.
She met Gerald Martin at a friend’s house. He fell violently in love with her and within a week they were engaged. Alix, who had always considered herself ‘not the falling-in-love kind’, was swept clean off her feet.
Unwittingly she had found the way to arouse her former lover. Dick Windyford had come to her stammering with rage and anger.
‘The man’s a perfect stranger to you! You know nothing about him!’
‘I know that I love him.’
‘How can you know – in a week?’
‘It doesn’t take everyone eleven years to find out that they’re in love with a girl,’ cried Alix angrily.
His face went white.
‘I’ve cared for you ever since I met you. I thought that you cared also.’
Alix was truthful.
‘I thought so too,’ she admitted. ‘But that was because I didn’t know what love was.’
Then Dick had burst out again. Prayers, entreaties, even threats – threats against the man who had supplanted him. It was amazing to Alix to see the volcano that existed beneath the reserved exterior of the man she had thought she knew so well.
Her thoughts went back to that interview now, on this sunny morning, as she leant on the gate of the cottage. She had been married a month, and she was idyllically happy. Yet, in the momentary absence of the husband who was everything to her, a tinge of anxiety invaded her perfect happiness. And the cause of that anxiety was Dick Windyford.
Three times since her marriage she had dreamed the same dream. The environment differed, but the main facts were always the same. She saw her husband lying dead and Dick Windyford standing over him, and she knew clearly and distinctly that his was the hand which had dealt the fatal blow.
But horrible though that was, there was something more horrible still – horrible, that was, on awakening, for in the dream it seemed perfectly natural and inevitable. She, Alix Martin, was glad that her husband was dead; she stretched out grateful hands to the murderer, sometimes she thanked him. The dream always ended the same way, with herself clasped in Dick Windyford’s arms.
She had said nothing of this dream to her husband, but secretly it had perturbed her more than she liked to admit. Was it a warning – a warning against Dick Windyford?
Alix was roused from her thoughts by the sharp ringing of the telephone bell from within the house. She entered the cottage and picked up the receiver. Suddenly she swayed, and put out a hand against the wall.
‘Who did you say was speaking?’
‘Why, Alix, what’s the matter with your voice? I wouldn’t have known it. It’s Dick.’
‘Oh!’ said Alix. ‘Oh! Where – where are you?’
‘At the Traveller’s Arms – that’s the right name, isn’t it? Or don’t you even know of the existence of your village pub? I’m on my holiday – doing a bit of fishing here. Any objection to my looking you two good people up this evening after dinner?’
‘No,’ said Alix sharply. ‘You mustn’t come.’
There was a pause, and then Dick’s voice, with a subtle alteration in it, spoke again.
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said formally. ‘Of course I won’t bother you –’
Alix broke in hastily. He must think her behaviour too extraordinary. It was extraordinary. Her nerves must be all to pieces.
‘I only meant that we were – engaged tonight,’ she explained, trying to make her voice sound as natural as possible. ‘Won’t you – won’t you come to dinner tomorrow night?’
But Dick evidently noticed the lack of cordiality in her tone.
‘Thanks very much,’ he said, in the same formal voice, ‘but I may be moving on any time. Depends if a pal of mine turns up or not. Goodbye, Alix.’ He paused, and then added hastily, in a different tone: ‘Best of luck to you, my dear.’
Alix hung up the receiver with a feeling of relief.
‘He mustn’t come here,’ she repeated to herself. ‘He mustn’t come here. Oh, what a fool I am! To imagine myself into a state like this. All the same, I’m glad he’s not coming.’
She caught up a rustic rush hat from a table, and passed out into the garden again, pausing to look up at the name carved over the porch: Philomel Cottage.
‘Isn’t it a very fanciful name?’ she had said to Gerald once before they were married. He had laughed.
‘You little Cockney,’ he had said, affectionately. ‘I don’t believe you have ever heard a nightingale. I’m glad you haven’t. Nightingales should sing only for lovers. We’ll hear them together on a summer’s evening outside our own home.’
And at the remembrance of how they had indeed heard them, Alix, standing in the doorway of her home, blushed happily.
It was Gerald who had found Philomel Cottage. He had come to Alix bursting with excitement. He had found the very spot for them – unique – a gem – the chance of a lifetime. And when Alix had seen it she too was captivated. It was true that the situation was rather lonely – they were two miles from the nearest village – but the cottage itself was so exquisite with its old-world appearance, and its solid comfort of bathrooms, hot-water system, electric light, and telephone, that she fell a victim to its charm immediately. And then a hitch occurred. The owner, a rich man who had made it his whim, declined to let it. He would only sell.
Gerald Martin, though possessed of a good income, was unable to touch his capital. He could raise at most a thousand pounds. The owner was asking three. But Alix, who had set her heart on the place, came to the rescue. Her own capital was easily realized, being in bearer bonds. She would contribute half of it to the purchase of the home. So Philomel Cottage became their very own, and never for a minute had Alix regretted the choice. It was true that servants did not appreciate the rural solitude – indeed, at the moment they had none at all – but Alix, who
had been starved of domestic life, thoroughly enjoyed cooking dainty little meals and looking after the house.
The garden, which was magnificently stocked with flowers, was attended by an old man from the village who came twice a week.
As she rounded the corner of the house, Alix was surprised to see the old gardener in question busy over the flower-beds. She was surprised because his days for work were Mondays and Fridays, and today was Wednesday.
‘Why, George, what are you doing here?’ she asked, as she came towards him.
The old man straightened up with a chuckle, touching the brim of an aged cap.
‘I thought as how you’d be surprised, ma’am. But ’tis this way. There be a fête over to Squire’s on Friday, and I sez to myself, I sez, neither Mr Martin nor yet his good lady won’t take it amiss if I comes for once on a Wednesday instead of a Friday.’
‘That’s quite all right,’ said Alix. ‘I hope you’ll enjoy yourself at the fête.’
‘I reckon to,’ said George simply. ‘It’s a fine thing to be able to eat your fill and know all the time as it’s not you as is paying for it. Squire allus has a proper sit-down tea for ’is tenants. Then I thought too, ma’am, as I might as well see you before you goes away so as to learn your wishes for the borders. You have no idea when you’ll be back, ma’am, I suppose?’
‘But I’m not going away.’
George stared.
‘Bain’t you going to Lunnon tomorrow?’