Out of the Past

CHAPTER 34

Darsie Anning woke to heaviness. It was a long time since deep sleep had been hers, but last night she had gone down into a sort of stunned unconsciousness. Emerging from it now, the insupportable burden of the day came on her again. She braced herself to carry it. There could be no proof. The ramblings of an invalid could carry no serious danger. Only there must be no more of them-there must be no more. And how was that to be ensured? She would have to speak very plainly indeed, and perhaps defeat her own ends by frightening her mother out of all control. To say enough but not too much. To alarm her to the point of caution but not past it to where she would babble all she knew. As she dressed, it seemed that this must be her immediate task. She had slept beyond her usual hour. The clock of St. Mark’s was striking half past six. As she opened her door and went down, the silence of the house surprised her. Marie was an early riser, and at this hour she should have been up and busy.

But Marie was neither in the hall nor in the drawing-room. Miss Anning set the windows wide and came back across the hall to the dining-room. Here too the windows were still closed. This was her thought as she opened the door-closed windows and a heavy air, instead of the fresh morning breeze blowing in. Then, as she moved from the threshold, she saw.

Marie Bonnet lay in a heap at the foot of the left-hand window. Darsie Anning had only to look at her once to know that she was dead. She went and looked at her with a cold sickness at her heart. She bent and touched the wrist in which no pulse had beat for many hours. She looked at the window. It was shut, but the catch had been pushed back. It was shut now, but there had been a time in the night when it had been opened from within. It must have been Marie herself who had pushed back the catch and pulled the heavy window up. It must have been that way, and she had let murder in. But it was not Marie who had pulled it down again, because Marie was lying dead-Marie was lying there dead.

Miss Anning walked stiffly back to the hall and across it to her office. The telephone was on the table there. She sat down in her office chair and rang up the police.

It was nearly two hours later that Miss Silver was called to the telephone. Since Mr. Octavius Hardwick had never anticipated the use of such an instrument on the bedroom floor, she was obliged to descend to the study, but as she was already up and dressed she found this no hardship.

Frank Abbott’s voice came to her along the wire.

“Is that you?”

His tone was not quite so nonchalant as usual. Her face took on a grave expression.

“Yes, Frank.”

“I am speaking from Sea View. Do you think you could come down here?”

“Certainly. I will come at once.”

Without further enquiry, she hung up the receiver and went back to her room, where she put on hat and gloves. Proceeding on her way, she encountered Major Hardwick in the hall, and informed him that she was obliged to go out-“To Sea View. I think perhaps Mrs. Anning is not very well. I shall be glad to be of any use I can.”

He looked at her hard for a moment before he said,

“May I ask who rang you up?”

She shook her head.

“I think not, Major Hardwick.”

But she had hardly gone down the road before Beeston came to him, looking grey about the corners of the mouth.

“If I might have a word with you, Mr. James-” He indicated the study, and James followed him there.

“What’s up, Beeston?”

“You may well ask, sir! There’s been another murder!”

“Who?”

“That maid of Miss Anning’s-the French girl. Found strangled this morning, and the police in the house. The paper boy’s just been along with the news. And it’s right enough, for I stepped into the road to see for myself, and there was a police car outside, and the ambulance and all.”

James recalled the paper boy. Red hair and freckles, and a kind of streaked-lightning technique with a bicycle. He said,

“Trust that young devil to pick up anything that’s going!”

“Asking for it, she was, if you ask me,” said Beeston with gloomy pride. “No longer ago than yesterday I remarked on it to Mrs. Beeston. It’s my belief she knew something, and thought she was going to make money out of it. Very full of herself according to Mrs. Rogers, and talking high. And Mrs. Rogers told her she’d be getting into trouble if she didn’t watch it. And she couldn’t have spoken a truer word, as it’s turned out.”

James nodded.

“Look here,” he said, “I think we’ll get breakfast over before we tell the ladies.”

Miss Silver found the front door at Sea View open, and a constable in the hall. The ambulance was just driving away. As she stepped across the threshold, Frank Abbott came out of the dining-room to meet her. He took her back there and shut the door upon them.

“Marie Bonnet has been murdered. Strangled here in this room-over by that left-hand window. They’ve just taken her away.”

Miss Silver said, “Dear me!”-that being the strongest exclamation she permitted herself.

“ ‘Dear me!’ it is, with a vengeance! Colt swears Miss Anning did it, and he wants her arrested out of hand. Says we’ve had two murders and we can’t afford another. Well, it looks as if he might be right.”

“On what grounds?”

“Come over to the window. That’s where she was found- slumped down right under the sill. The catch of the window was drawn back, but the window itself was shut. In fact everything as it is now.”

“The curtains?”

“Open, as you see them. They had not been drawn.”

“And Inspector Colt’s theory is?”

“That Marie came down in the night-the body was found at six-thirty, and she had been dead for some hours then-she came down in the night and drew back the catch to let herself out of this window, just as she did when she joined Cardozo on Wednesday night. She got the catch drawn back, but she hadn’t time to get the window open because, according to Colt, Miss Anning came down and caught her. He says she probably slanged the girl, who retaliated by accusing her of the murder of Alan Field. I’ve always had an idea that she knew more than she had told. It looks as if it was something so damning that Miss Anning killed her for it.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“Who found the body?”

“According to her own statement, Miss Anning. At six-thirty-her usual hour for getting up, or so she says. The girl ought to have been up too. She came down to look for her, found her lying under the window, and rang up the station. The front door was bolted and all the ground-floor windows latched.”

“Except this one.”

“Except this one-which has Marie’s fingerprints upon the catch and upon the window-frame.”

“Not Miss Anning’s?”

“An old print or two-nothing relevant. Marie’s are all over the place.”

“Not anyone else’s?”

“No. Well, there it is. Officially, you are here because, if Miss Anning is arrested, something will have to be done about her mother. I thought perhaps-”

Miss Silver inclined her head.

“Presently, Frank. There is something I have to say to you first. I have reason to believe that Marie Bonnet was engaged in blackmailing the murderer of Alan Field.”

“What makes you think so?”

“There have been a number of small indications. I overheard a conversation between the Beestons and Mrs. Rogers.” She repeated it with her usual meticulous accuracy. “Later, when I had the opportunity of warning Marie as to the danger of such a course, her manner convinced me that there had been no mistake.”

“She was angry?”

“No, Frank. She put on an innocent air and could not imagine what I meant. If she had been really innocent she would have resented my caution with a good deal of vehemence and have told me to mind my own business. The fact that she took the trouble to control this natural impulse convinced me that she had something to conceal.”

Frank Abbott made a slight impatient movement.

“If you are by any chance advancing this as a defense of Miss Anning, it seems to me that it points the other way. There is no one on whom she would be more likely to have a hold than Miss Anning-no one about whom she would be more likely to know something of a compromising nature, except perhaps Cardozo, and he’s out. Had business in London yesterday, and we let him go, but they put a tail on him at the other end, and you can take it from me that he didn’t come back here last night and kill Marie Bonnet.”

“You are sure about that?”

“Oh, yes. He went back to his rooms, dined with another man at a café in Soho, went with him to a cinema, and on to a night club. Didn’t get back till three in the morning. It just couldn’t have been done.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“I thought you said he went up to town on business.”

Frank Abbott laughed.

“It may have been the kind that is done at night clubs-I wouldn’t know. The one he went to has quite a South American flavour. He may have wanted to see a man about a deal, or he may have left his business till the morning. He was out by ten o’clock-went to see a solicitor and one or two other people. But wherever he went, he didn’t come down here and kill Marie. And that puts the odds on Miss Anning.”

She looked at him.

“Do you really think so?”

“It looks like it.”

“Does it?”

“You don’t think so?”

“Why should Miss Anning make an appointment with Marie Bonnet down here in her own dining-room in the middle of the night?”

“How do you know that it was an appointment?”

“If, as I believe, it was a question of blackmail-and that is the only conceivable motive for this murder-Marie would have to meet the person she was blackmailing in order to drive her bargain. If the person was Miss Anning, nothing could be easier. She could see her privately at any time of the day- in her bedroom, in the office. There would be no need for an appointment in the night. But if it was not Miss Anning-if it was someone from outside-it would be a different matter. Where and how could these two people meet without arousing comment? The days are long and light. Any meeting would be remarked and would cause talk. You see, it is not so easy. But Marie would have some prudence. She would not go out on the cliffs in the middle of the night or down on to the beach to meet someone who had killed already. She might have thought it would be safe to talk from the window. She would, I think, have thought that.”

“But the window was shut.”

Miss Silver turned towards it.

“They have finished with the fingerprints?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Then will you raise the sash from the bottom.”

He did so. When it stood about eighteen inches above the sill she stopped him.

“Now will you go round and come up on the outside.”

She stood waiting until he appeared, her face composed and rather stern. As he bent to the open space between them, she knelt down on the polished boards. Her head was now very much on a level with his.

“You see, Frank, two people could talk like this, and if I were so incautious as to lean forward, you would not, I believe, find it difficult to strangle me.”

He bent lower to examine the ground.

“There is no sign that anyone has been here.”

“Would you expect there to be? The cement of the drive comes right up to the wall, and in this heat there is no dew. The nights are as dry as the days.”

He stared.

“But the window was shut.”

“I think you will find that you can close it from where you are.”

“From the outside? There were no fingerprints.”

“Do you suppose that the person who planned this murder would be so careless as to leave any?”