She came out of the post office weaving from side to side of the pavement and smiling to herself.

It was worth risking a little trouble with the police for that amount of money. It would set her up nicely. And it wasn’t very much risk really. She’d only got to say she’d forgotten or couldn’t remember. Lots of women couldn’t remember things that had only happened a year ago. She’d say she got mixed up between Harry and another man. Oh, she could think up lots of things to say.

Mrs Rival was a naturally mercurial type. Her spirits rose as much now as they had been depressed before. She began to think seriously and intently of the first things she would spend the money on…

Colin Lamb’s Narrative

‘You don’t seem to have got much out of that Ramsay woman?’ complained Colonel Beck.

‘There wasn’t much to get.’

‘Sure of that?’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s not an active party?’

‘No.’

Beck gave me a searching glance.

‘Satisfied?’ he asked.

‘Not really.’

‘You hoped for more?’

‘It doesn’t fill the gap.’

‘Well-we’ll have to look elsewhere…give up crescents-eh?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re very monosyllabic. Got a hangover?’

‘I’m no good at this job,’ I said slowly. 

‘Want me to pat you on the head and say “There, there”?’

In spite of myself I laughed.

‘That’s better,’ said Beck. ‘Now then, what’s it all about? Girl trouble, I suppose.’

I shook my head. ‘It’s been coming on for some time.’

‘As a matter of fact I’ve noticed it,’ said Beck unexpectedly. ‘The world’s in a confusing state nowadays. The issues aren’t clear as they used to be. When discouragement sets in, it’s like dry rot. Whacking great mushrooms bursting through the walls! If that’s so, your usefulness to us is over. You’ve done some first-class work, boy. Be content with that. Go back to those damned seaweeds of yours.’

He paused and said: ‘You reallylike the beastly things, don’t you?’

‘I find the whole subject passionately interesting.’

‘I should find it repulsive. Splendid variation in nature, isn’t there? Tastes, I mean. How’s that patent murder of yours? I bet you the girl did it.’

‘You’re wrong,’ I said.

Beck shook his finger at me in an admonitory and avuncular manner.

‘What I say to you is: “Be prepared.” And I don’t mean it in the Boy Scout sense.’

I walked down Charing Cross Road deep in thought. 

At the tube station I bought a paper.

I read that a woman, supposed to have collapsed in the rush hour at Victoria Station yesterday, had been taken to hospital. On arrival there she was found to have been stabbed. She had died without recovering consciousness.

Her name was Mrs Merlina Rival.

I rang Hardcastle.

‘Yes,’ he said in answer to my questions. ‘It’s just as they say.’

His voice sounded hard and bitter.

‘I went to see her night before last. I told her her story about the scar just wouldn’t jell. That the scar tissue was comparatively recent. Funny how people slip up. Just by trying to overdo things. Somebody paid that woman to identify the corpse as being that of her husband, who ran out on her years ago.

‘Very well she did it, too! I believed her all right. And then whoever it was tried to be a little too clever. If she remembered that unimportant little scar as anafterthought, it would carry conviction and clinch the identification. If she had plumped out with it straight away, it might have sounded a bit too glib.’ 

‘So Merlina Rival was in it up to the neck?’

‘Do you know, I rather doubt that. Suppose an old friend or acquaintance goes to her and says: “Look here, I’m in a bit of a spot. A chap I’ve had business dealings with has been murdered. If they identify him and all our dealings come to light, it will be absolute disaster. But if you were to come along and say it’s that husband of yours, Harry Castleton, who did a bunk years ago, then the whole case will peter out.” ’

‘Surely she’d jib at that-say it was too risky?’

‘If so, that someone would say: “What’s the risk? At the worst, you’ve made a mistake. Any woman can make a mistake after fifteen years.” And probably at that point a nice little sum would have been mentioned. And she says O.K. she’ll be a sport! and do it.’

‘With no suspicions?’

‘She wasn’t a suspicious woman. Why, good lord, Colin, every time we catch a murderer there are people who’ve known him well, and simply can’t believe he could do anything like that!’

‘What happened when you went up to see her?’

‘I put the wind up her. After I left, she did what I expected she’d do-tried to get in touch with the man or woman who’d got her into this. I had a tail on her, of course. She went to a post office and put through a call from an automatic call-box. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the box I’d expected her to use at the end of her own street. She had to get change. She came out of the call-box looking pleased with herself. She was kept under observation, but nothing of interest happened until yesterday evening. She went to Victoria Station and took a ticket to Crowdean. It was half past six, the rush hour. She wasn’t on her guard. She thought she was going to meet whoever it was at Crowdean. But the cunning devil was a step ahead of her. Easiest thing in the world to gang up behind someone in a crowd, and press the knife in…Don’t suppose she even knew she had been stabbed. People don’t, you know. Remember that case of Barton in the Levitti Gang robbery? Walked the length of a street before he fell down dead. Just a sudden sharp pain-then you think you’re all right again. But you’re not. You’re dead on your feet although you don’t know it.’

He finished up: ‘Damn and damn and damn!’

‘Have you-checked on-anybody?’

I had to ask. I couldn’t help myself.

His reply came swift and sharp.

‘The Pebmarsh woman was in London yesterday. She did some business for the Institute and returned to Crowdean by the 7.40 train.’ He paused. ‘And Sheila Webb took up a typescript to check over with a foreign author who was in London on his way to New York. She left the Ritz Hotel at 5.30 approx. and took in a cinema-alone-before returning.’ 

‘Look here, Hardcastle,’ I said, ‘I’ve got something for you. Vouched for by an eye witness. A laundry van drew up at 19, Wilbraham Crescent at 1.35 on September the 9th. The man who drove it delivered a big laundry basket at the back door of the house. It was a particularly large laundry basket.’

‘Laundry? What laundry?’

‘The Snowflake Laundry. Know it?’

‘Not off-hand. New laundries are always starting up. It’s an ordinary sort of name for a laundry.’

‘Well-you check up. Aman drove it-and aman took the basket into the house-’

Hardcastle’s voice came suddenly, alert with suspicion.

‘Are you making this up, Colin?’

‘No. I told you I’ve got an eye witness. Check up, Dick. Get on with it.’

I rang off before he could badger me further.

I walked out from the box and looked at my watch. I had a good deal to do-and I wanted to be out of Hardcastle’s reach whilst I did it. I had my future life to arrange.