LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER 3

      ‘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.

      ‘She seemed quite happy?’ he asked.

      ‘I suppose so.’

      He pounced on the faint doubtful tone in her voice.

      ‘You only suppose so?’

      ‘Well, it’s not the kind of thing you think about, is it? I should say she was nicely off, with a good job, and quite satisfied with her life. She wasn’t the bubbling over sort. But of course, when she got ill—’

      ‘Yes, when she got ill?’ he prompted her.

      ‘Vexed, she was at first. When she went down with ’flu, I mean. It would put all her schedule out, she said. Missing appointments and all that. But ’flu’s ’flu, and you can’t ignore it when it’s there. So she stopped in bed, and made herself tea on the gas ring, and took aspirin. I said why not have the doctor and she said no point in it. Nothing to do for ’flu but stay in bed and keep warm and I’d better not come near her to catch it. I did a bit of cooking for her when she got better. Hot soup and toast. And a rice pudding now and again. It got her down, of course, ’flu does—but not more than what’s usual, I’d say. It’s after the fever goes down that you get the depression—and she got that like everyone does. She sat there, by the gas fire, I remember, and said to me, “I wish one didn’t have so much time to think. I don’t like having time to think. It gets me down.”’

      Lejeune continued to look deeply attentive and Mrs Coppins warmed to her theme.

      ‘Lent her some magazines, I did. But she didn’t seem able to keep her mind on reading. Said once, I remember, “If things aren’t all they should be, it’s better not to know about it, don’t you agree?” and I said, “That’s right, dearie.” And she said, “I don’t know—I’ve never really been sure.” And I said that was all right, then. And she said, ‘Everything I’ve done has always been perfectly straightforward and above board. I’ve nothing to reproach myself with.” And I said, “Of course you haven’t, dear.” But I did just wonder in my own mind whether in the firm that employed her there mightn’t have been some funny business with the accounts maybe, and she’d got wind of it—but had felt it wasn’t really her business.’

      ‘Possible,’ agreed Lejeune.

      ‘Anyway, she got well again—or nearly so, and went back to work. I told her it was too soon. Give yourself another day or two, I said. And there, how right I was! Come back the second evening, she did, and I could see at once she’d got a high fever. Couldn’t hardly climb the stairs. You must have the doctor, I says, but no, she wouldn’t. Worse and worse she got, all that day, her eyes glassy, and her cheeks like fire, and her breathing terrible. And the next day in the evening she said to me, hardly able to get the words out: “A priest. I must have a priest. And quickly … or it will be too late.” But it wasn’t our vicar she wanted. It had to be a Roman Catholic priest. I never knew she was a Roman, never any crucifix about or anything like that.’

      But there had been a crucifix, tucked away at the bottom of the suitcase. Lejeune did not mention it. He sat listening.

      ‘I saw young Mike in the street and I sent him for that Father Gorman at St Dominic’s. And I rang for the doctor, and the hospital on my own account, not saying nothing to her.’

      ‘You took the priest up to her when he came?’

      ‘Yes, I did. And left them together.’

      ‘Did either of them say anything?’

      ‘Well now, I can’t exactly remember. I was talking myself, saying here was the priest and now she’d be all right, trying to cheer her up, but I do call to mind now as I closed the door I heard her say something about wickedness. Yes—and something, too, about a horse—horse-racing, maybe. I like a half-crown on myself occasionally—but there’s

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