Out of the Past

CHAPTER 25

In the morning-room at Cliff Edge, so restful, so delightfully cool, Miss Silver sat knitting. She had chosen one of those low armless chairs produced by the Victorian age in which needlework was considered a woman’s most necessary accomplishment. Miss Silver’s own needles were of a composition then undreamed of, but she found the same comfort as the ladies of that generation in the low seat, the dumpy back, and the absence of restraining arms. She had a chair of this type in her own flat, the legacy of an aunt, and she valued it highly. The heat outside was at its most extreme, but in this north room the temperature was really very pleasant, very pleasant indeed.

She was not alone. For the time being at any rate, police interviews with members of the household were over. Inspector Colt had departed. But Inspector Abbott stood with his back to the carved overmantel and addressed himself to his “revered preceptress.”

“You are actually staying in the house?”

“Mrs. Hardwick has most kindly invited me to do so.”

He exclaimed, “Well, I don’t know how you pull it off!” His tone was half affectionate, half exasperated.

Miss Silver permitted herself a slight reproving cough.

“My dear Frank! As I have already informed you, Mrs. Maybury has asked for my professional assistance. I have explained to her the terms on which it can be given, and Mrs. Hardwick has suggested that I should transfer my things from Sea View. Proximity with the members of the house-party and the opportunity which this will give for a more intimate observation than can be afforded by any casual meetings-”

He threw up his hands.

“Oh, yes-you will see them all from the inside! Which is just what we poor policemen never do. What we get is a carefully decorated outside with all the garbage tidied out of the way.”

Miss Silver allowed it to appear that she considered this metaphor to be lacking in refinement. Without a spoken word, Inspector Abbott stood rebuked. After a brief but impressive pause she said,

“There are certainly great advantages in being within the family circle. No one is always on his guard, or if he is observed to be so, it would in itself be a highly suspicious circumstance.”

He nodded.

“And that, as I said, is where you have the pull. Now will you tell me just what you make of Pippa Maybury’s story?”

Miss Silver dipped into her gaily flowered knitting-bag and produced a fresh ball of wool. She had hoped to finish this little pink coatee for her niece Dorothy’s expected baby from the one at present reposing in her lap, but since it was now reduced to a few filmy strands, she would have regretfully to break into a new ball. This would leave her with just too little for another coatee, but perhaps some small white stripes could be introduced. Her attention had not really wandered, but she now brought it fully back to the question she had been asked.

“What do you think of it yourself?”

One of the colourless eyebrows lifted slightly.

“Well, she is either such a natural born liar that she can reel it off without so much as having to stop and think, or-she is telling the truth.”

“Yes, I think so.”

“You think she is telling the truth?”

“Yes, Frank.”

“Would you mind telling me why?”

The pale grey needles clicked.

“She made no attempt to impress me. There were many points in her story where a very slight alteration of the facts would have shown her in a more favourable light, but I could detect no tendency in this direction. In the second place, she was shocked, upset, and frightened, but her chief preoccupation was not lest she should be arrested for murder, but whether her husband would come to know that she had once put herself in a very false position.”

“Well, I noticed that myself. We didn’t press her as to just what she had done, but it was plain that it had given Alan Field a hold over her. And that supplies her with a pretty strong motive for the murder.”

Miss Silver inclined her head.

“On the surface, yes. But actually I do not think so. She told me the whole story, which she need not have done, and the preoccupation of which I spoke was very noticeable. It was her husband of whom she was thinking. She really did not seem to notice that she was furnishing evidence which might deepen the suspicion against her. I should like to say that she did not carry her foolish behaviour to its logical conclusion- her real feelings for her husband stopped her in time. But she had placed herself in a position which could have been exploited by Alan Field.”

Frank whistled.

“He really had something on her then, and he was blackmailing her! She was terrified that he was going to tell her husband. She had an assignation with him at twenty past twelve in the beach hut where he was murdered, and she comes in some time after that with her dress soaked and drips blood all up the stairs. You know, my dear ma’am, it’s quite a formidable case.”

Miss Silver smiled.

“I do not need to point out to you that it would be extremely difficult to prove the blackmail.”

He laughed.

“As always, you touch the spot! Now let us for the moment adopt your view of the engaging Pippa and review the alternatives. This evidence about Mrs. Field’s paper-knife, which at first sight appears to fasten the crime upon someone in this house, quite fails to do so if we are to accept Pippa Maybury’s further evidence-and I’m afraid we’ve got to accept it, because it has quite a lot of backing. She says the dagger was sticking in the book Mrs. Field had down on the beach on Wednesday, Pages From the Lives of Great Victorians. This is corroborated by Mrs. Hardwick, Lady Castleton, Mrs. Trevor and by Mrs. Field herself.”

“As far as the morning is concerned, I can add my own testimony.”

“When it comes to the late afternoon, Mrs. Hardwick says the book was still there, and so does Mrs. Field. They left all their things there and locked the hut. Pippa Maybury says she saw the dagger there after midnight when she stumbled over Field’s body, and she also says that the book was there on the floor beside his outstretched hand. Which is perfectly true, because that is where it was when Colt arrived on the scene after being rung up by Colonel Anthony. So I think we have got to accept her evidence as to the dagger and the book. Which means that the dagger was there in the hut and could have been used by absolutely anyone who came along. Let us now see who that someone might have been.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“You are not, I suppose, forgetting Mr. Cardozo?”

“Certainly not. He shall be Provisional Suspect Number One. He could have done it of course. There was plenty of time between his leaving the Jolly Fishermen and midnight. He says, and Marie Bonnet says, that he spent the time in her company, but I don’t think it would be at all difficult to persuade Marie to say anything that was made really worth her while. The weak part of the alibi is, of course, that it places him entirely in her power. If she thinks she is running too much risk, or that he isn’t paying her enough, she has only to go to the police and his number will be up. He might have stumbled into such a situation, but I doubt whether he would have planned it.”

Miss Silver gazed at him in a meditative manner.

“It would have been quite possible for him to be aware of Alan Field’s presence at the hut. He states that Marie returned to Sea View, remained there long enough for Miss Anning to lock up, and then slipped out again. I think it is very probable that Mr. Field followed the same course. Miss Anning says he came in, and that she did not know he had gone out again. But he did go. Marie could have seen him, and so could Mr. Cardozo, who on his own statement was waiting for her. There would have been no difficulty about following him to the hut. He may not have intended the use of violence.”

“Yes, that’s possible. But how are we going to prove it if the girl sticks to her story?”

“I do not know.”

“Nor I. Let me offer you another suspect. What do you say to James Hardwick?”

“Dear me-you surprise me!”

“Well, I don’t often do that, so I had better make the most of it. Just take a look at him. Mrs. Hardwick was brought up with Field, and they were going to be married. He walked out on what was to have been their wedding day and went off in a hurry to South America, leaving quite a dust behind him. When Cardozo told me the name of the man he was after, I had heard it before. A couple of drinks with the biggest gossip of my acquaintance, and I knew a lot more. He was full of information about Alan Field. Had actually run into him on the eve of his departure. Said he was jingling with money and standing drinks all round. As the evening wore on, he got very chatty indeed and practically told my friend that it was being made well worth his while to clear out. George inferred that someone thought Carmona Leigh would be better off without him, and when she married James Hardwick three months later he came to the conclusion that he knew who that someone was. Now, do you see, if all that is true-and George really has got a knack of picking things up-Hardwick might not be altogether pleased to find that the prodigal had returned. He comes back on the Wednesday and finds Field actually in the house. There are indications that he was, well, let us say restrained in his greeting, and that Field left almost at once. The butler’s evidence is that Mrs. Hardwick had quite a colour, but was quiet at dinner. Mrs. Trevor, who is a silly chatterbox of a woman, said she thought Carmona had a headache-such a pity when James had just come home, but such a hot sun, quite like India, and Lady Castleton had felt it too. Everyone else very firm about dear Carmona being just as usual. Well, we don’t know what may have taken place between the Hardwicks, but you will admit that there was quite a situation, and that there may have been words. I think there are definite indications that the reunion wasn’t being a great success. Beyond that we can’t really go, but it is fascinating to speculate. Suppose Field had been upsetting Carmona by (a) making love to her, (b) trying on a spot of blackmail, or (c) letting cats out of bags, there would be all the material for a tense connubial scene. Leaving the first two on one side, and speaking as one to whom girls are an open book, what would you say Carmona’s reactions would have been to hearing that she was the subject of a financial transaction, and that Field had in effect been bought off marrying her?”

The pink coatee revolved. Miss Silver said,

“She would be deeply humiliated, and in all probability extremely angry.”

Frank nodded.

“Exactly. And in any of the three cases James might easily be left in a fairly maddened state and quite under the impression that she was regretting her precious Alan. Now suppose he saw Pippa Maybury go down the garden and took her for Carmona-he could have done, you know-his dressing-room windows look that way. I don’t suppose the difference in the colour of the hair would show. It was after midnight, and anyhow a jealous man doesn’t always stop to think. Well, he could have followed her-no, that won’t do, because he would have had to get there first, and a good bit first, in order to have a row and leave Field stabbed before Pippa arrived. A pity, because it was coming out rather well that way.”

Miss Silver looked meditatively at a particular hideous piece of Indian brass which cumbered the mantelpiece to Frank Abbott’s right. She might have been thinking how distressingly it went with the black marble clock in the middle and the bronze horses on either side, but she was not. She was, as a matter of fact, debating in her mind whether or not to put forward a speculation of her own. In the end she considered that she might as well do so. Turning towards him, and with a slight introductory cough, she said,

“Has it not occurred to you that Alan Field could have had an earlier appointment than the one with Mrs. Maybury? If her story is true-and I believe that it is-someone had been there before her. This person, whom we must suppose to be the murderer, may or may not have had such an appointment. He, or she, may have noticed a light in the hut and gone down to see who was there, or Mr. Field may have been followed.”

Frank gave her a quick look;

“Have you any reason to suppose that he was? Because that brings me to the third of my suspects, Miss Darsie Anning. When we were talking about Cardozo it emerged that Alan Field must have slipped out of the house in some such way as Marie Bonnet did, since Miss Anning had locked the front door and was under the impression that all her guests were in. If she had been looking out of her window she could have seen him leave, and she could have decided to follow him. I wonder whether she did, and whether anyone saw her. You know, Marie Bonnet said a curious thing when we were questioning her. Colt had been pressing her about this alibi which she was giving Cardozo. Did she really come out and rejoin him after she had gone into Sea View? Had he offered her any inducement to say that she did? Didn’t she risk losing her place by admitting to it? Well, she was all innocence. Was it not her duty to be frank with the police? And besides, her services were valuable-Miss Anning would not be in a hurry to dispense with them. Oh, no, she wasn’t afraid that she would lose her place. It doesn’t sound anything when you repeat it, but she had a sort of look-assured, sly, confident- I can’t get the right word for it, but it was something like that. I didn’t think so much of it at the time-the girl is always putting on an act of some kind-but whenever it comes back to me I find myself wondering whether she thinks she has some kind of a hold over Miss Anning-something over and above what she told us before about hearing her say to Field, ‘I could kill you for that!’ I should rather have expected her to bring the incident up, but she didn’t, and I thought it odd.”

Miss Silver made no comment. She continued to knit. After a slight pause she remarked that he had now presented a choice of four suspects, and all that seemed to be lacking was the evidence necessary for an arrest.

Frank Abbott gave her a shrewd look.

“Do you really consider that there is such a lack of evidence in Pippa Maybury’s case?”