She had brought with her a large envelope, addressed to herself at home, and ready stamped. Into this she put the envelope containing the photographs. In the hall she put on her macintosh again, belted it up very short and on her high-heeled shoes wibble-wobbled herself out of the side door again and into the rainy evening.
She had marked a convenient pillar-box between her home and the office. She now returned to it and there posted the envelope; in a dark corner behind it, let down the macintosh to its full length, took off the plastic hood, dried it carefully and rolled it away in its little plastic case. The handbag had been chosen, long in advance, to accommodate a folding umbrella. In her own image again, without the furtiveness and certainly without the wibble-wobble, she returned to Mr. Bindell’s office; tried the front door, put on a puzzled air, went round to the side door at last—went in, shaking the wet umbrella, called up the stairs, mounted to Mr. Bindell’s door—shrieked like any startled woman upon seeing the blood-stained figure sprawled across the desk, ran to him, made such futile attempts as anyone might make to do something, anything… Pushed aside the horrid black gun, picked up the plastic with fastidious finger-tips and quickly dropped it again; at last picked up the telephone…(‘Well, I may just have touched things—if there are any fingerprints on them, then I must have, but I was so shocked I hardly knew what I was doing… And blood, yes, there may be blood on me, on my clothes—but I did try to lift his head, I did handle the blood-spattered telephone….’) Meanwhile, however, she contented herself with dialling the police. ‘Do please come quickly! It’s dreadful. Yes, Mr. Bindell—you know, the solicitor. Yes, I came to see him on business—the papers are right here on his desk; he said to drop in any time, he’d be working late…’
The investigations took simply ages. It was not for several months that widowed Mrs. Hartley felt the time ripe to call upon widowed Mrs. Bindell. ‘I thought I should have a word with you about Linda’s acceptance to Hallfield School.’
‘That matter comes up before the Board on Tuesday,’ said Mrs. Bindell—by this time well back in harness.
‘Then Linda will start with Joy next term,’ said Louisa—and it was a statement.
‘If we decide to admit her,’ said Mrs. Bindell.
‘I think you’ll decide to admit her all right,’ said Louisa. She produced a large envelope and slid out a couple of glossy black and white prints. ‘Disgusting, aren’t they?’
‘Where on earth—?’ cried Mrs. Bindell, absolutely shocked.
‘That night I found your husband dead,’ said Louisa. ‘I told the police that I touched nothing in his office, Mrs. Bindell, but that wasn’t quite true. He had evidently been taken by surprise when the murderer came: this—filth—was spread out on the blotter in front of him.’ Mrs. Bindell opened her mouth as though to speak but shut it again. ‘I happened to have a large handbag and I gathered the things up and brought them away with me. I thought,’ said Louisa, limpidly, ‘that you wouldn’t care for them to be found by anyone else. No one wants a scandal; and you, with all the work you do in this town—Board of Governors at Hallfield, for example—you’d be particularly susceptible, wouldn’t you?’ Mrs. Bindell tried again to speak and again fell silent. ‘You’re going to suggest perhaps,’ said Louisa, ‘that I can’t prove that these pictures belonged to him? But these people—well, pore over this kind of stuff, so I’ve been told: sort of gloating over it, you know: and this glossy paper will be covered with his fingerprints.’
Mrs. Bindell seemed to think about it, sitting in a saggy heap, all the bounce and arrogance gone from her. She said at last, arriving surprisingly quickly on the whole at a proper conclusion: ‘How much shall I have to pay?’
Louisa had handed over two thousand pounds to Mr. Bindell. Say another thousand for pain and stress, not to mention what might, she supposed, be called ‘danger money’. ‘I’ll take three thousand down,’ she said. ‘That’s to settle—well, a kind of debt. And then of course there’s the matter of Linda getting into Hallfield. After that…’ She shrugged. ‘I’m not hard up, Mrs. Bindell; financially I shall be quite safe—now. So it won’t be a matter of cash. Just as long as my Linda gets along happily and successfully in Sanstone. Of course the right school is going to help, and then she and Joy might take some course together, modelling or whatever it is they’ll have set their hearts on by then; and of course knowing the right people helps too, and going to all the parties…’ She returned the envelope to her bag. ‘The secret will be safe with me,’ she said. ‘I don’t go to Rotary lunches or get drunk in pubs.’ And she fastened the bag with a snap and got up to leave. ‘Monday afternoon, perhaps, you could drop the money in at my house?—when you call to invite me to run a stall at the bazaar you’re organising for Lady William. I’ve never been asked even to help there; and though to be honest I don’t think I’ve missed much, still, everybody else goes and I’d like to know Lady William. I believe her children are charming, and the boy’s about three years older than my Linda… One never knows, does one?’ She thought it over for a moment, puzzled. ‘Now what exactly would his title be?’