Free Such Is Death by Leo Bruce Page B

questions silly and impertinent but I believe you have some pretensions to being a gentleman. If you have been told anything relating to myself and the Lobbins I trust you will treat it with the contempt it deserves.”
    â€œI will when I know the truth of the matter. What is it?”
    â€œI will give you my confidence. Lobbin’s wife is a most offensive woman. Most offensive. Some months ago therewas an incident of a very humiliating kind. I would prefer to forget it but since you have apparently heard something of it you had better know the truth.”
    â€œI should like to.”
    â€œLobbin himself is a harmless individual, clumsy, tactless and of course without the instincts of a gentleman. But he meant no harm. He asked me if he might call on me to give me some information which he thought would interest me. I gave him permission to do so and one evening at six o’clock he came here. Most unfortunately, as it happened, no one was with me. It is impossible to find domestic servants now and I have only a daily woman. I was alone here.
    â€œLobbin, of course, behaved with complete propriety, gave me his information and went away. But under the stress of the nagging of his wife he apparently revealed to her that he had made this call and she, either from stupidity or design, put a most monstrous interpretation on it. She arrived here on the following evening and demanded to see me. My daily woman, who fortunately stayed late that day, with the greatest courage told her I was out but she forced her way into this room and began to say the most unspeakable things.”
    â€œSuch as?”
    â€œI should not dream of repeating them. Had I wished to make it a police court action she would have been heavily fined or sent to prison, but of course I could do nothing of the sort. She actually suggested that there had been something improper between her husband and me.”
    Carolus succeeded in suppressing a smile.
    â€œReally!” he said.
    â€œIt would not be the first time, she shouted in coarse and ringing tones, that she had discovered her husband’s infidelities. Can you imagine anything so sordid? And this was supposed to relate to
me
! To me, Mr Deene. I was too angry to speak. Eventually my daily woman, who showed the greatest resource, ran down and fetched the night porter.”
    â€œVivienne’s husband,” said Carolus.
    â€œI beg your pardon?”
    â€œNothing. I’m sorry to interrupt.”
    â€œThe night porter, a large and serious-minded man, was able to remove the woman from this apartment and I gave orders that she should never again be admitted, even to the hall downstairs.”
    â€œYou haven’t been troubled again?”
    â€œNot directly. But I gather that this woman’s venomous tongue has continued to spread the vilest slanders. I have consulted my brother Locksley Rafter, who is a solicitor. He came to see me about it quite recently. Actually, on the afternoon of the day on which this wretched man was found murdered.”
    â€œI see. Now what I should like to know, Mrs Dalbinney, was the nature of the information Lobbin brought to you that day.”
    â€œWhy? What possible relevance can that have?”
    â€œDifficult to say. But I should like to hear it.”
    Mrs Dalbinney paused.
    â€œYou may not believe me, Mr Deene, but I must tell you that this is the first time I have realized that it
may
have some relevance, for it concerned my brother Ernest, whom I then believed to be dead.”
    â€œIndeed?”
    â€œYes. It appeared that Lobbin had been a prisoner of war with him and they had undergone forced labour together on the notorious Burma Road. He remembered my brother well. The name ‘Rafter’ is an unusual one. The family goes back to Plantagenet times when a certain Simon de Rafter or de Raefter …”
    â€œYes, yes. Very interesting. Didn’t Lobbin at once recognize the name when he heard