In his frequent comments on the case Mr. Fortune is apt to insist that its chequered course was determined by the unreliability of people’s taste in eating. If everyone could be trusted to like what they ought to like, he will point out, its results might have been even more unjust. In this he finds sad proof of the mystery of evil… .
The inquest on Constable Mills was opened and warily adjourned without any evidence to warn the world that the police knew he had been poisoned.
Some days afterwards, Underwood talked to Mr. Fortune over the telephone. “About that clue of yours, the saffron cake, sir. Well, I’ve pretty well combed out Mills’s beat for west - country people, and I can only find one set. There’s an old lady living in Belair Avenue - Miss Pearse by name. She’s a Devonshire woman, and makes a bit of fuss about it. Pair of old Devonshire servants too. But I’ve had a, talk with them, and they won’t own to knowing Mills at all. I should say they’re telling the truth. Keep themselves to themselves sort of women. So it looks like petering out.”
“You think so?” Reggie murmured.
“I do. Pity. It seemed a real good line. But there you are.”
“Oh, no. Not anywhere,” Reggie murmured. “Miss Pearse, an old lady of Devon. Well, well.” He became musical: “Tom Pearse, Tom Pearse, lend me your grey mare, All along, out along, down along lee - -”
“What’s that, sir?” said Underwood.
“Wi’ Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney, Peter Davy, Dan’l Whiddon, Harry Hawk, Old Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all…” Reggie concluded the Devonian ballad. “Where are you speakin’ from? Langdon? The police station? All right, I’ll come out. We’ll call on Miss Pearse of Belair Avenue.”
“If you say so - - “Underwood conveyed doubt and disapproval.
“Oh, my dear chap! Quite in order. I’m the medical man investigatin’ Mills’s death, introduced by Inspector Underwood, in charge of the case. Did she happen to know the poor man, his habits and what not and so forth? And we’ll see what we can get.”
You may now behold Inspector Underwood and Mr. Fortune walking from the police station of Langdon to the home of Miss Pearse, The Nest, Belair Avenue. Langdon is a suburb of hills, and the determination of Mr. Fortune to walk surprised Underwood. The reason given was a desire to get the atmosphere.
No part of the world is more peaceful than the umbrageous streets of Langdon in the afternoon. The superlative of their somnolence may be found in Belair Avenue. It climbs along the shoulder of one of the highest hills. The houses in it, some fifty years old, exhibit the opulent fancy of that period. The Nest is built in stone, and dowdily resembles a castle in a German fairy - tale. Next door to it, Bellagio is a tall conglomeration of purple brick, with oriel windows and a pagoda top. And so on.
A grey - haired maid, who sniffed at Underwood, let them into The Nest, left them on the mat, and, reappearing in time, conducted them up a narrow staircase which twisted mediaevally to a room smelling of pot - pourri and lavender, and decorated with chintz, silhouettes, and miniatures. Two small lancet windows admitted some light, but no air. They seemed not made to open.
Reggie looked out on a garden descending in steps of lawn, so steeply the ground fell away behind the house, with flower - beds containing nothing but geraniums, calceolarias, and lobelia. He moaned at it. He looked beyond to the garden of Bellagio.
That at least was different. There the ground dropped still more steeply. From a little terrace behind the house a tall flight of steps led down to a rectangle paved with tiles, in which was a pool where dark water gleamed between lily leaves. All was uncared for, dirty, moss - grown, weed - grown. But it had been elaborate. Funereal shrubs grew out of the tiles. There were awful objects of art upon them: china dwarfs of German manufacture; at the foot of the steps leered, greenish - yellow, a china toad.
“Oh, my hat!” Reggie groaned, and directed his suffering eyes to look beyond. The rest of the Bellagio garden sloped away into an artificial wilderness of shrubbery through which, on either side the path vanishing down the hill, loomed more images in crockery or plaster. Along the path a woman moved. She seemed to be tidying the unkempt shrubs, and weeding the path in spasms, without steady purpose. She was not beautiful. She wore a drab woollen coat and a cotton skirt faded into a dingy confusion of colour, and she seemed to have no more definite shape than these old clothes. She was lank and ungainly. In her tangle of hay - coloured hair no grey appeared, but her long face looked age - it shone sallow, it was worried, fretful, dreamily earnest. She fussed out of sight.
Reggie’s eyes came back to contemplate, with new horror, the terrace and the toad.
“You wished to see me?” said a small prim voice. And he turned, and seemed to be a child again meeting his grandmother. So imposing was the presence of Miss Pearse. She was a small woman; she was all black to her white hair and parchment face - a face little and meek and pretty, but with the perfect assurance of authority in this world and the next.
“It is about the poor policeman?” she went on. “Pray sit down. I shall be happy to give you any help which is possible.” Her composure, her condescension, let them infer that she expected to be asked for help and was prepared. She surveyed them with pale blue eyes which were without expression.
After a moment the quiet voice spoke again. She had known Mills for many years; she discoursed on the proper relations of the police to ladies of importance, lamented his demise, and passed on to indicate her unique position in Langdon. … It appeared that she was of its oldest and bluest blood, by divine right the leader of its society… .
Underwood became restive, and interrupted with a brusque question: did she happen to see Mills the night he died?
Miss Pearse was affronted. She made an odd movement of neck and head, like a duck swallowing, and informed him that it was not her habit to go walking after nightfall.
Underwood told her that she didn’t take the point. What they wanted was some information about Mills’s condition - state of health and so on - as he went round his beat the night he died. For instance, there was the chance he might have come to her house.
Miss Pearse, biting the words, remarked that it was an improper suggestion. The inspector should be aware that she would not tolerate her servants entertaining a man.
“Sorry to distress you,” Reggie murmured. “It’s a very distressin’ case. But we have to do the poor fellow justice, and I did hope you might help us. West - country man, wasn’t he? Devon man?”
“Indeed?” For the first time Miss Pearse betrayed surprise. “I had no idea of that. I shouldn’t have thought it.”
“Really?” Reggie put up his eyebrows. “But you ought to be a judge. You’re Devonshire.”
Miss Pearse flushed. “I am of a Devonshire family.”
“Oh, yes. Yes. That would be another reason for him coming to your house if he wanted help.”
“If he was a Devon man.” She spoke slowly; she stared. “But I tell you I have no reason to think so.”
