Three Blind Mice and Other Stories Read online

  "Yes."

  "I thought so. They're much less tolerant than the army and the air force. How long have you been mar­ried? Are you very much in love with him?"

  }THREE BLIND MICE 17}

  "Perhaps you'd like to come up and see your room."

  "Yes, of course that was impertinent. But I did really want to know. I mean, it's interesting, don't you think, to know all about people? What they feel and think, I mean, not just who they are and what they do."

  "I suppose," said Molly in a demure voice, "you are Mr. Wren?"

  The young man stopped short, clutched his hair in both hands and tugged at it,

  "But how frightful—I never put first things first. Yes, I'm Christopher Wren—now, don't laugh. My parents were a romantic couple. They hoped I.'d be an architect. So they thought it a splendid idea to christen me Chris­topher—halfway home, as it were."

  "And are you an architect?" asked Molly, unable to help smiling.

  "Yes, I am," said Mr. Wren triumphantly. "At least I'm nearly one. I'm not fully qualified yet. But it's really a remarkable example of wishful thinking coming off for once. Mind you, actually the name will be a handi­cap, I shall never be }the }Christopher Wren. However, Chris Wren's Pre-Fab Nests may achieve fame."

  Giles came down the stairs again, and Molly said, "I'll show you your room now, Mr. Wren."

  When she came down a few minutes later, Giles said, "Well, did he like the pretty oak furniture?"

  "He was very anxious to have a four-poster, so I gave him the rose room instead."

  Giles grunted and murmured something that ended, ". . . young twerp."

  "Now, look here, Giles," Molly assumed a severe de­meanor. "This isn't a house party of guests we're en-tertairing. This is business. Whether you like Christo­pher Wren or not—"

  "I don't," Giles interjected.

  }18 THREE BLIND MICE}

  "—has nothing whatever to do with it. He's paying seven guineas a week, and that's all that matters."

  }"If he pays it, yes."}

  "He's agreed to pay it. We've got his letter."

  "Did you transfer that suitcase of his to the rose room?"

  "He carried it, of course."

  "Very gallant. But it wouldn't have strained you. There's certainly no question of stones wrapped up in newspaper. It's so light that there seems to me there's probably nothing in it."

  }"Ssh, }here he comes," said Molly warningly.

  Christopher Wren was conducted to the library which looked, Molly thought, very nice, indeed, with its big chairs and its log fire. Dinner, she told him, would be in half an hour's time. In reply to a question, she explained that there were no-other guests at the moment. In that case, Christopher said, how would it be if he came into the kitchen and helped?

  "I can cook you an omelette if you like," he said en­gagingly.

  The subsequent proceedings took place in the kitchen, and Christopher helped with the washing up.

  Somehow, Molly felt, it was not quite the right start for a conventional guest house—and Giles had not liked it at all. Oh, well, thought Molly, as she fell asleep, to­morrow when the others came it would be different.

  The morning came with dark skies and snow. Giles looked grave, and Molly's heart fell. The weather was going to make everything very difficult.

  Mrs. Boyle arrived in the local taxi with chains on the wheels, and the driver brought pessimistic reports of the state of the road.

  "Drifts afore nightfall," he prophesied.

  Mrs. Boyle herself did not lighten the prevailing

  }THREE BLIND MICE 19}

  gloom. She was a large, forbidding-looking woman with a resonant voice and a masterful manner. Her natural aggressiveness had been heightened by a war career of persistent and militant usefulness.

  "If I had not believed this was a }running }concern, I should never have come," she said. "I naturally thought it was a well-established guest house, properly run on scientific lines."

  "There is no obligation for you to remain if you are not satisfied, Mrs. Boyle," said Giles.

  "No, indeed, and I shall not think of doing so."

  "Perhaps, Mrs. Boyle,"" said Giles, "you would like to ring up for a taxi. The roads are not yet blocked. If there has been any misapprehension it would, perhaps, be better- if you went elsewhere." He added, "We have had so many applications for rooms that we shall be able to fill your place quite easily—indeed, in future we are charging a higher rate for our rooms."

  }Mrs. Boyle threw him a sharp glance. "I am certainly not going to leave before I have tried what the place is like. Perhaps you would let me have a rather large bath towel, Mrs. Davis. I am not accustomed to drying myself on a pocket handkerchief."

  Giles grinned at Molly behind Mrs. Boyle's retreating back.

  "Darling, you were wonderful," said Molly. "The way

  you stood up to her."}s}

  "Bullies soon climb down when they get their own medicine," said Giles.

  "Oh, dear," said Molly. "I wonder how she'll get on with Christopher Wren."

  "She won't," said Giles.

  And, indeed, that very afternoon, Mrs. Boyle remarked to Molly, "That's a very peculiar young man," with distinct disfavor in her voice.

  }20 THREE }BLIND MICE}

  The baker arrived looking like an Arctic explorer and delivered the bread with the warning that his next call, due in two days' time, might not materialize.

  "Holdups everywhere," he announced, "Got plenty of stores in, I hope?"

  "Oh, yes," said Molly. "We've got lots of tins. I'd bet­ter take extra flour, though."

  She thought vaguely that there was something the Irish made called soda bread. If the worst came to the worst she could probably make that.

  The baker had also brought the papers, and she spread them out on the hall table. Foreign affairs had receded in importance. The weather and the murder of Mrs. Lyon occupied the front page.

  She was staring at the blurred reproduction of the dead woman's features when Christopher Wren's voice behind her said, "Rather a }sordid }murder, don't you think? Such a drab-looking woman and such a }drab }street. One can't feel, can one, that there is any story behind it?" .

  "I've no doubt," said Mrs. Boyle with a snort, "that the creature got no more than she deserved."

  "Oh." Mr. Wren turned to her with engaging eager­ness. "So you think it's definitely a }sex }crime, do you?"

  "I suggested nothing of the kind, Mr. Wren."

  "But she }was }strangled, wasn't she? I wonder—" he held out his long white hands—"what it would feel like to strangle anyone."

  "Really, Mr. Wren!"

  Christopher moved nearer to her, lowering his voice. "Have you considered, Mrs. Boyle, just what it would feel like to be strangled?"

  Mrs. Boyle said again, even more indignantly, "Really, Mr. Wren!"

  Molly read hurriedly out, " 'The man the police are

  }THREE BLIND }MICE }21}

  anxious to interview was wearing a dark overcoat and a light Homburg hat, was of medium height, and wore a woolen scarf,' "

  "In fact," said Christopher Wren, "he looked just like everybody else." He laughed.

  "Yes," said Molly. "Just like everybody else." ,

  In his room at Scotland Yard, Inspector Parminter said to Detective Sergeant Kane, "I'll see those two workmen now."

  "Yes, sir."

  "What are they like?"

  "Decent class workingmen. Rather slow reactions. De­pendable."

  }"Right." Inspector Parminter nodded.}

  Presently two embarrassed-looking men in their best clothes were shown into his room. Parminter summed them up with a quick eye. He was an adept at setting people at their ease.

  "So you think you've some information that might be useful to us on the Lyon case," he said. "Good of you to come along. Sit down. Smoke?"

  He waited while they accepted cigarettes and lit up.

  "Pretty awful weather outside."

  }"It is tha
t, sir."}

  "Well, now, then—let's have it."

  The two men looked at each other, embarrassed now that it came to the difficulties of narration.

  "Go ahead, Joe," said the bigger of the two.

  Joe went ahead. "It was like this, see. We 'adn't got a match."

  "Where was this?"

  "Jarman Street—we was working on the road there-gas mains."

  Inspector Parminter nodded. Later he would get down

  }22 THREE }BLIND }MICE}

  to exact details of time and place. Jarman Street, he knew was in the close vicinity of Culver Street where the trag­edy had taken place.

  "You hadn't got a match," he repeated encouragingly. "No. Finished my box, J 'ad, and Bill's lighter wouldn't work, and so I spoke to a bloke as was passing. 'Can you give us a match, mister?' I says. Didn't think nothing particular, I didn't, not then. He was just passing—like lots of others—I just 'appened to arsk 'im." Again Parminter nodded.

  "Well, he give us a match, 'e did. Didn't say nothing. 'Cruel cold,' Bill said to 'im, and he just answered, whispering-like, 'Yes, it is.' Got a cold on his chest, I thought. He was all wrapped up, anyway. 'Thanks, mis­ter,' I says and gives him back his matches, and he moves off quick, so quick that when I sees 'e'd dropped some­thing, it's almost too late to call 'im back. It was a little notebook as he must 'ave pulled out of 'is pocket when he got the matches out. "Hi, mister,' I calls after 'im, 'you've dropped something.' But he didn't seem to hear— he just quickens up and bolts round the corner, didn't 'e, Bill?"

  "That's right," agreed Bill. "Like a scurrying rabbit." "Into the Harrow Road, that was, and it didn't seem as we'd catch up with him there, not the rate 'e was going, and, anyway, by then it was a bit late—it was only }: }a little book, not a wallet or anything like that—maybe | it wasn't important. 'Funny bloke,' I says. 'His hat pulled, down over his eyes, and all buttoned up—like a crook on the pictures,' I says to Bill, didn't }I, }Bill?" "That's what you said," agreed Bill, "Funny I should have said that, not that I thought anything at the time. Just in a hurry to get home, that's what I thought, and I didn't blame 'im. Not 'arf cold, it was!"

  }THREE BLIND MICE 23}

  }"Not 'arf," agreed Bill.}

  "So I says to Bill, 'Let's 'ave a look at this little book and see if it's important.' Well, sir, I took a look. 'Only a couple of addresses,' I says to Bill. Seventy-Four Culver Street and some blinking manor 'ouse."

  "Ritzy," said Bill with a snort of disapproval.

  Joe continued his tale with a certain gusto now that he had got wound up.

  " 'Seventy-Four Culver Street,' I says to Bill. 'That's just round the corner from 'ere. When we knock off, we'll take it round'—and then I sees something written across the top of the page. 'What's this?' I says to Bill. And he takes it and reads it out. ' "Three blind mice"— must be off 'is knocker,' he says—and just at that very moment—yes, it was that very moment, sir, we 'ears some woman yelling, 'Murder!' a couple of streets away!"

  Joe paused at this artistic climax.

  "Didn't half yell, did she?" he resumed. " 'Here,' I says to Bill, 'you nip along.' And by and by he comes back and says there's a big crowd and the police are there and some woman's had her throat cut or been strangled and that was the landlady who found her, yelling for the police. 'Where was it?' I says to him. 'In Culver Street,' he says. 'What number?' I asks, and he says he didn't rightly notice."

  Bill coughed and shuffled his feet with the sheepish air of one who has not done himself justice.

  "So I says, 'We'll nip around and make sure,' and when we finds it's number seventy-four we talk it over, and 'Maybe," Bill says, 'the address in the notebook's got nothing to do with it,' and I says as maybe it }has, }and, anyway, after we've talked it over and heard the police want to interview a man who left the 'ouse about that time, Well, we come along 'ere and ask if we can see the gentleman who's handling the case, and I'm sure I 'ope

  }24 THREE BLIND MICE}

  }as we aren't wasting your time.'}

  "You acted very properly," said Parminter approving­ly. "You've brought the notebook with you? Thank you Now—"

  His questions became brisk and professional. He got places, times, dates—the only thing he did not get was a description of the man who had dropped the notebook. Instead he got the same description as he had already got from a hysterical landlady, the description of a hat pulled down over the eyes, a buttoned-up coat, a muffler swathed round the lower part of a face, a voice that was only a whisper, gloved hands.

  When the men had gone he remained staring down at the little book lying open on his table. Presently it would go to the appropriate department to see what evidence, if any, of fingerprints it might reveal. But now his at­tention was held by the two addresses and by the line of small handwriting along the top of the page.

  He turned his head as Sergeant Kane came into the room.

  "Come here, Kane. Look at this."

  Kane stood behind him and let out a low whistle as he read out, " 'Three Blind Micel' Well, I'm dashed!"

  "Yes." Parminter opened a drawer and took out a half sheet of notepaper which he laid beside the notebook on his desk. It had been found pinned carefully to the murdered woman.

  On it was written, }This is the first. }Below was a child­ish drawing of three mice and a bar of music.

  Kane whistled the tune softly. }Three Blind Mice, See

  how they run—}

  "That's it, all right. That's the signature tune."

  "Crazy, isn't it, sir?"

  "Yes." Parminter frowned. "The identification of the woman is quite certain?"

  }THREE }BLIND MICE 25}

  "Yes, sir. Here's the report from the fingerprints de­partment. Mrs. Lyon, as she called herself, was really Maureen Gregg. She was released from Holloway two months ago on completion of her sentence."

  Parminter said thoughtfully, "She went to Seventy-Four Culver Street calling herself Maureen Lyon. She occasionally drank a bit and she had been known to bring a man home with her once or twice. She displayed no fear of anything or anyone. There's no reason to be­lieve she thought herself in any danger. This man rings the bell, asks for her, and is told by the landlady to go up to the second floor. She can't describe him, says only that he was of medium height and seemed to have a bad cold and lost his voice. She went back again to the base­ment and heard nothing of a suspicious nature. She did not hear the man go out. Ten minutes or so later she took tea to her lodger and discovered her strangled.

  "This wasn't a casual murder, Kane. It was carefully planned." He paused and then added abruptly, "I won­der how many houses there are in England called Monkswell Manor?"

  "There might be only one, sir."

  "That would probably be too much luck. But get on with it. There's no time to lose."

  }The sergeant's eye rested appreciatively on two entries in the notebook—}74 Culver Street; Monkswell Manor.}

  }He said, "So you think—"}

  Parminter said swiftly, "Yes. Don't you?"

  "Could be. Monkswell Manor—now where— Do you know, sir, I could swear I've seen that name quite lately."

  "Where?"

  "That's what I'm trying to remember. Wait a minute-Newspaper— }Times. }Back page. Wait a minute— Hotels and boardinghouses— Half a sec, sir—it's an old one. I was doing the crossword."

  }26 THHEE BLIND MICE}

  He hurried out of the room and returned in triumph. "Here you are, sir, look."

  The inspector followed the pointing finger.

  "Monkswell Manor, Harpleden, Berks." He drew the telephone toward him. "Get me the Berkshire County police."

  With the arrival of Major Metcalf, Monkswell Manor settled into its routine as a going concern. Major Metcalf was neither formidable like Mrs. Boyle, nor erratic like Christopher Wren. He was a stolid, middle-aged man of spruce military appearance, who had done most of his service in India. He appeared satisfied with his room and its furniture, and while he and M
rs. Boyle did not actual­ly find mutual friends, he had known cousins of friends of hers—"the Yorkshire branch," out in Poonah. His luggage, however, two heavy pigskin cases, satisfied even Giles's suspicious nature.

  Truth to tell, Molly and Giles did not have much time for speculating about their guests. Between them, dinner was cooked, served, eaten, and washed up satisfactorily. Major Metcalf praised the coffee, and Giles and Molly retired to bed, tired but triumphant—to be roused about two in the morning by the persistent ringing of a bell. "Damn," said Giles. "It's the front door. What on earth—"