The Pale Horse

On a sudden impulse he leaned forward and took the telephone directory from the desk.

‘E to L. Let’s see. Hesketh, Mrs A … John and Co., Plumbers … Sir Isidore. Ah! here we are! Hesketh-Dubois, Lady, Forty-nine, Ellesmere Square, S.W.1. What say we just ring her up?’

‘Saying what?’

‘Inspiration will come,’ said Doctor Corrigan airily.

‘Go ahead,’ said Lejeune.

‘What?’ Corrigan stared at him.

‘I said go ahead,’ Lejeune spoke airily. ‘Don’t look so taken aback.’ He himself picked up the receiver. ‘Give me an outside line.’ He looked at Corrigan. ‘Number?’

‘Grosvenor 64578.’

Lejeune repeated it, then handed the receiver over to Corrigan.

‘Enjoy yourself,’ he said.

Faintly puzzled, Corrigan looked at him as he waited. The ringing tone continued for some time before anyone answered. Then, interspersed with heavy breathing, a woman’s voice said:

‘Grosvenor 64578.’

‘Is that Lady Hesketh-Dubois’s house?’

‘Well—well, yes—I mean—’

Doctor Corrigan ignored these uncertainties.

‘Can I speak to her, please?’

‘No, that you can’t do! Lady Hesketh-Dubois died last April.’

‘Oh!’ Startled, Dr Corrigan ignored the ‘Who is it speaking, please?’ and gently replaced the receiver.

He looked coldly at Inspector Lejeune.

‘So that’s why you were so ready to let me ring up.’

Lejeune smiled maliciously.

‘We don’t really neglect the obvious,’ he pointed out.

‘Last April,’ said Corrigan thoughtfully. ‘Five months ago. Five months since blackmail or whatever it was has failed to worry her. She didn’t commit suicide, or anything like that?’

‘No. She died of a tumour on the brain.’

‘So now we start again,’ said Corrigan, looking down at the list.

Lejeune sighed.

‘We don’t really know that list had anything to do with it,’ he pointed out. ‘It may have been just an ordinary coshing on a foggy night—and precious little hope of finding who did it unless we have a piece of luck …’

Dr Corrigan said:

‘Do you mind if I continue to concentrate on this list?’

‘Go ahead. I wish you all the luck in the world.’

‘Meaning I’m not likely to get anywhere if you haven’t! Don’t be too sure. I shall concentrate on Corrigan. Mr or Mrs or Miss Corrigan—with a big interrogation mark.’

CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_304022dc-8232-5ae3-abbf-04e06416cd8c)

‘Well, really, Mr Lejeune, I don’t see what more I can tell you! I told it all before to your sergeant. I don’t know who Mrs Davis was, or where she came from. She’d been with me about six months. She paid her rent regular, and she seemed a nice quiet respectable person, and what more you expect me to say I’m sure I don’t know.’

Mrs Coppins paused for breath and looked at Lejeune with some displeasure. He gave her the gentle melancholy smile which he knew by experience was not without its effect.

‘Not that I wouldn’t be willing to help if I could,’ she amended.

‘Thank you. That’s what we need—help. Women know—they feel instinctively—so much more than a man can know.’

It was a good gambit, and it worked.

‘Ah,’ said Mrs Coppins. ‘I wish Coppins could hear you. So hoity-toity and off-hand he always was. “Saying you know things when you haven’t got anything to go on!” he’d say and snort. And nine times out of ten I was right.’

‘That’s why I’d like to hear what ideas you have about Mrs Davis. Was she—an unhappy woman, do you think?’

‘Now as to that—no, I wouldn’t say so. Businesslike. That’s what she always seemed. Methodical. As though she’d got her life planned and was acting accordingly. She had a job, I understand, with one of these consumer research associations. Going around and asking people what soap powder they used, or flour, and what they spend on their weekly budget and how it’s divided up. Of course I’ve always felt that sort of thing is snooping really—and why the Government or anyone else wants to know beats me! All you hear at the end of it is only what everybody has known perfectly well all along—but there, there’s a craze for that sort of thing nowadays. And if you’ve got to have it, I should say that poor Mrs Davis would do the job very nicely. A pleasant manner, not nosy, just businesslike and matter-of-fact.’

‘You don’t know the actual name of the firm or association that employed her?’

‘No, I don’t, I’m afraid.’

‘Did she ever mention relatives—?’

‘No. I gathered she was a widow and had lost her husband many years ago. A bit of an invalid he’d been, but she never talked much about him.’

‘She didn’t mention where she came from—what part of the country?’

‘I don’t think she was a Londoner. Came from somewhere up north, I should say.’

‘You didn’t feel there was anything—well, mysterious about her?’

Lejeune felt a doubt as he spoke. If she was a suggestible woman—But Mrs Coppins did not take advantage of the opportunity offered to her.

‘Well, I can’t say really that I did. Certainly not from anything she ever said. The only thing that perhaps might have made me wonder was her suitcase. Good quality it was, but not new. And the initials on it had been painted over. J.D.—Jessie Davis. But originally it had been J. something else. H., I think. But it might have been an A. Still, I didn’t think anything of that at the time. You can often pick up a good piece of luggage second-hand ever so cheap, and then it’s natural to get the initials altered. She hadn’t a lot of stuff—only the one case.’

Lejeune knew that. The dead woman had had curiously few personal possessions. No letters had been kept, no photographs. She had had apparently no insurance card, no bank book, no cheque book. Her clothes were of good everyday serviceable quality, nearly new.