MARIE BELLOC LOWNDES - British Murder Mysteries Collection: 17 Books in One Edition. Marie Belloc Lowndes
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said Mrs. Bunting slowly.
“Been here?” cried her husband. “Then why on earth didn’t he go and fetch Daisy, if he’d time to come here?”
“He was on the way to his job,” his wife answered. “You run along, child, downstairs. Now that you are here you can make yourself useful.”
And Daisy reluctantly obeyed. She wondered what it was her stepmother didn’t want her to hear.
“I’ve something to tell you, Bunting.”
“Yes?” He looked across uneasily. “Yes, Ellen?”
“There’s been another o’ those murders. But the police don’t want anyone to know about it—not yet. That’s why Joe couldn’t go over and fetch Daisy. They’re all on duty again.”
Bunting put out his hand and clutched hold of the edge of the mantelpiece. He had gone very red, but his wife was far too much concerned with her own feelings and sensations to notice it.
There was a long silence between them. Then he spoke, making a great effort to appear unconcerned.
“And where did it happen?” he asked. “Close to the other one?”
She hesitated, then: “I don’t know. He didn’t say. But hush!” she added quickly. “Here’s Daisy! Don’t let’s talk of that horror in front of her-like. Besides, I promised Chandler I’d be mum.”
And he acquiesced.
“You can be laying the cloth, child, while I go up and clear away the lodger’s breakfast.” Without waiting for an answer, she hurried upstairs.
Mr. Sleuth had left the greater part of the nice lemon sole untouched. “I don’t feel well today,” he said fretfully. “And, Mrs. Bunting? I should be much obliged if your husband would lend me that paper I saw in his hand. I do not often care to look at the public prints, but I should like to do so now.”
She flew downstairs. “Bunting,” she said a little breathlessly, “the lodger would like you just to lend him the Sun.”
Bunting handed it over to her. “I’ve read it through,” he observed. “You can tell him that I don’t want it back again.”
On her way up she glanced down at the pink sheet. Occupying a third of the space was an irregular drawing, and under it was written, in rather large characters:
“We are glad to be able to present our readers with an authentic reproduction of the footprint of the half-worn rubber sole which was almost certainly worn by The Avenger when he committed his double murder ten days ago.”
She went into the sitting-room. To her relief it was empty.
“Kindly put the paper down on the table,” came Mr. Sleuth’s muffled voice from the upper landing.
She did so. “Yes, sir. And Bunting don’t want the paper back again, sir. He says he’s read it.” And then she hurried out of the room.
Chapter 23
All afternoon it went on snowing; and the three of them sat there, listening and waiting—Bunting and his wife hardly knew for what; Daisy for the knock which would herald Joe Chandler.
And about four there came the now familiar sound.
Mrs. Bunting hurried out into the passage, and as she opened the front door she whispered, “We haven’t said anything to Daisy yet. Young girls can’t keep secrets.”
Chandler nodded comprehendingly. He now looked the low character he had assumed to the life, for he was blue with cold, disheartened, and tired out.
Daisy gave a little cry of shocked surprise, of amusement, of welcome, when she saw how cleverly he was disguised.
“I never!” she exclaimed. “What a difference it do make, to be sure! Why, you looks quite horrid, Mr. Chandler.”
And, somehow, that little speech of hers amused her father so much that he quite cheered up. Bunting had been very dull and quiet all that afternoon.
“It won’t take me ten minutes to make myself respectable again,” said the young man rather ruefully.
His host and hostess, looking at him eagerly, furtively, both came to the conclusion that he had been unsuccessful—that he had failed, that is, in getting any information worth having. And though, in a sense, they all had a pleasant tea together, there was an air of constraint, even of discomfort, over the little party.
Bunting felt it hard that he couldn’t ask the questions that were trembling on his lips; he would have felt it hard any time during the last month to refrain from knowing anything Joe could tell him, but now it seemed almost intolerable to be in this queer kind of half suspense. There was one important fact he longed to know, and at last came his opportunity of doing so, for Joe Chandler rose to leave, and this time it was Bunting who followed him out into the hall.
“Where did it happen?” he whispered. “Just tell me that, Joe?”
“Primrose Hill,” said the other briefly. “You’ll know all about it in a minute or two, for it’ll be all in the last editions of the evening papers. That’s what’s been arranged.”
“No arrest I suppose?”
Chandler shook his head despondently. “No,” he said, “I’m inclined to think the Yard was on a wrong tack altogether this time. But one can only do one’s best. I don’t know if Mrs. Bunting told you I’d got to question a barmaid about a man who was in her place just before closing-time. Well, she’s said all she knew, and it’s as clear as daylight to me that the eccentric old gent she talks about was only a harmless luny. He gave her a sovereign just because she told him she was a teetotaller!” He laughed ruefully.
Even Bunting was diverted at the notion. “Well, that’s a queer thing for a barmaid to be!” he exclaimed. “She’s niece to the people what keeps the public,” explained Chandler; and then he went out of the front door with a cheerful “So long!”
When Bunting went back into the sitting-room Daisy had disappeared. She had gone downstairs with the tray. “Where’s my girl?” he said irritably.
“She’s just taken the tray downstairs.”
He went out to the top of the kitchen stairs, and called out sharply, “Daisy! Daisy, child! Are you down there?”
“Yes, father,” came her eager, happy voice.
“Better come up out of that cold kitchen.”
He turned and came back to his wife. “Ellen, is the lodger in? I haven’t heard him moving about. Now mind what I says, please! I don’t want Daisy to be mixed up with him.”
“Mr. Sleuth don’t seem very well today,” answered Mrs. Bunting quietly. “‘Tain’t likely I should let Daisy have anything to do with him. Why, she’s never even seen him. ‘Tain’t likely I should allow her to begin waiting on him now.”
But though she was surprised and a little irritated by the tone in which Bunting had spoken, no glimmer of the truth illumined her mind. So accustomed had she become to bearing alone the burden of her awful secret, that it would have required far more than a cross word or two, far more than the fact that Bunting looked ill and tired, for her to have come to suspect that her secret was now shared by another, and that other her husband.
Again and again the poor soul had agonised and trembled at the thought of her house being invaded by the police, but that was only because she had always credited the police with supernatural powers of detection. That they should come to know the awful fact she kept hidden in her breast would have seemed to her, on the whole, a natural thing, but that Bunting should even dimly suspect it appeared