Out of the Past

CHAPTER 40

Colonel Trevor had been profoundly shocked. Adela Castleton whom he had known for thirty years! It was the sort of thing you read about in the papers. Not that he read that kind of paper himself, but you couldn’t always get away from the headlines. Monstrous! He didn’t know what they were coming to! Well connected woman-well brought up-poor Geoffrey Castleton’s widow-going about murdering people right and left-trying to murder James! Must have been mad-only possible explanation-stark, staring mad!

Maisie Trevor had already begun to say that she had always thought there was something a little odd about Adela. “And that very hot weather-well, I suppose it just finished her. But I always did think…” And presently there would be all sorts of instances of strange behaviour on the part of Adela Castleton.

Pippa wept on Bill Maybury’s solid shoulder. She cried until her lovely white skin was blotched and her blue eyes practically invisible between swollen lids. All she wanted was to be able to go on crying with Bill’s arm round her, and to know that no one was going to arrest her or take her away to prison. Bill would keep her safe, and even if her eyes swelled right up and she looked a complete mess, he would go on loving her just the same. In her secret mind she promised her own rather vague idea of God that she would never, never, never flirt with anyone again, or let anyone kiss her except Bill. It would be dull, but she wouldn’t, she really wouldn’t. She clung to Bill and told him so between her sobs. He kissed the top of her head and held her close.

“Won’t you, Pippa?” he said.

In the big bedroom which had been Octavius Hardwick’s Carmona stood looking down over the garden which grew wooden figureheads instead of flowers-a woman with blank eyes and jutting breast; a Triton with a great carved shell; an Admiral battered by storms and come at last into a quiet haven, and many more. The cement path ran between them to the cliff. Adela Castleton had gone down it to kill in the night, not once but twice-had gone down it again on the morning of that very day with murder in her heart for James. Alan had gone down it on Wednesday not knowing that his death was no more than half a dozen hours away. Pippa Maybury had come up it with the stain of his blood on her dress.

She heard the door open and shut again. James came up behind her, but she did not turn. He stood there, looking out too. Presently she said,

“How soon can we go away?”

“You can go tomorrow if you want to. At least I should think you could.”

“No, no, I didn’t mean that-I said we.”

“I shall have to stay for the inquest. I shouldn’t think they would want you.”

“Of course I won’t go!”

“Is it of course?”

“You know it is!”

He put his arms round her and she leaned against him. She thought, “It doesn’t really matter as long as we are here together.”

Miss Silver talked with Inspector Abbott in the morning-room.

“I shall be off by an early train, so I thought I had better come and pay my respects tonight and let you know how the Cardozo affair has panned out.”

Really these modern expressions! Derived, of course, from the gold-mining industry, and in its way expressive, but one could hardly approve it. She said,

“You have interviewed Mr. Cardozo?”

“We have. You will remember that he was trying to trace his brother Felipe. On Wednesday he identified as his a body which had been taken out of the river, which is where I came into the case. On Thursday after the murder of Alan Field had taken place he went back on his identification and produced a yarn about Felipe having had a badly broken leg of which the body furnished no evidence. When it came out, as it did, that he had been on Field’s track and had actually been in Cliffton at the time of the murder, it wasn’t hard to guess why he had invented that broken leg. Felipe was in possession of a family paper which described the whereabouts of our old friend the Pirates’ Hoard. It had been discovered by an uncle, reburied somewhere in his own house or garden, but he was himself bumped off before he could turn any of it into cash, and his property was sold to pay his debts. We got all this from Cardozo, who I really do believe is telling the truth. He says every time the property has come into the market the Cardozo family has missed the bus. Either they hadn’t got the paper, or they couldn’t raise the purchase price, and of course the greatest secrecy was necessary. Now the house is for sale again. Felipe had been foolish enough to confide in Alan Field, who swore he could raise the purchase price over here. Just what happened after that José doesn’t know. He had a row with his brother over Field being taken in on the deal, and they shut down on him. He didn’t know where they were or what they were doing. And then just the other day he heard that they had been seen over here-together. The man who told him knew Felipe well and gave a very good description of Field. José got the wind up and came bothering the Chief. Coming down to Wednesday-he had identified his brother’s body and found out that Field was here. He made up his mind that Field had murdered Felipe and got away with the paper describing the whereabouts of the treasure. And he got into his car and drove away to find him. After that everything happened as already stated. He went to see him at Sea View and missed him, picked up Marie who was more than willing, and went off with her to the Jolly Fishermen. She has agreed to take a note to Field when she goes in, but she isn’t in a hurry. They get back about eleven, and she plays Miss Anning a trick, obviously not for the first time. She goes in, the door is locked after her, and as soon as she thinks it safe she comes down again and gets out of the dining-room window. As she observed, it was a fine night for a walk.

“It must by then have been getting on for midnight. They are moving off, when Marie pulls him by the sleeve. She puts her lips to his ear and whispers. Someone else is getting out of that convenient dining-room window. They stand perfectly still, and a man drops to the ground and goes off round the house in the direction of the cliff path. When he has gone, Marie says, ‘That was Monsieur Field,’ and Cardozo is angry. He wishes to follow and have it out with him, and that doesn’t suit Marie at all. She tries to persuade him to put it off-to wait till tomorrow. She says he is angry, he will make a scene, she will get into trouble-perhaps even it may be a matter for the police, and what would he say to that? Cardozo admits that he would think very poorly of it, and he cools down. They talk a little longer, and then he says that he will be prudent and control himself, but why should they not walk along the cliff and see what has happened to Alan? Well, they do. Figuring it out, they must have just missed Mrs. Anning, who left by way of the glass door in the drawing-room. She must have been on her way down the path to the beach before they came to the place where it leaves the cliff path. They went on beyond that, and so they did not see Lady Castleton come along from Cliff Edge and go down too. But they didn’t go very far. All at once Cardozo saw the flash of a torch on the beach-Field put on his torch when he went into the hut, and so did Lady Castleton. When Cardozo saw the light he took it into his head that Field was down there, and that it was a place where they might talk and no one disturb them. He turned back, went down the path to the beach, and came to the hut just as Mrs. Anning describes. Extraordinary thing, that statement of hers, don’t you think? Now you heard it twice. Did she vary it at all?”

“By scarcely a word, Frank. But to me that seems natural. Ever since her illness her mind had remained unoccupied. When, once more startled into action, it began to receive and record impressions, I should expect them to be simple, factual, and enduring. She told her story as a child does or an uneducated person, without the distraction of other and competing thoughts. The result, a clear and truthful narrative.”

He said,

“Yes. As usual, you hit the nail on the head. Well, that’s all about Cardozo, I think. He got the paper he was looking for of course, just as Mrs. Anning says. And if she hadn’t made her simple factual statement, it might have cost him his life. No one-no one would have believed he was innocent if that paper had been found on him actually stained, as it was, with Field’s blood. He could wash his hands, as Marie very prudently insisted on his doing, but he could not wash the blood off that piece of paper, and if he had been picked up with it on him-”

“Where was it, Frank?”

He laughed.

“In the heel of his right boot. He must have known he was risking his neck by keeping it on him, but there wasn’t a soul in the world he would trust with it. And now he’ll be off to collect the treasure-if it really exists. Ill-gotten goods don’t seem very lucky to handle. This particular lot has the usual trail of blood and crime.”

Miss Silver quoted from a very much older author than her favourite Lord Tennyson:

“ ‘He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent.’ ”

Frank lifted a hand and let it fall again.

“Well, Solomon knew a thing or two,” he said. “And now, what about you? Are you staying on, or are you coming back to town?”

“I shall be returning to Sea View for a few days. Miss Anning has been able to get temporary help, a very nice woman who was with them for some years before her marriage, and she will, I think, be glad to have me there, though now that Mrs. Anning is so much better she will be more of a companion.”

“I am afraid this business will have hit her financially.”

“To a certain extent that is unavoidable. But she has a number of September bookings which she hopes will not be affected. There are three Miss Margetsons who come down every year for the whole of the month. She has rung them up, and they would not think of altering their arrangements. There are also some friends of theirs, a Mr. and Mrs. Bunting, to whom they had recommended Sea View, and who are most unlikely to change their plans. So I hope that Miss Anning will not be too much inconvenienced.”

Frank Abbott, stretched comfortably on the small of his back, remarked that she would be lucky if she got out of it so well.

“I hope she knows that if it hadn’t been for you she would have been arrested before Lady Castleton showed her hand. In fact if it hadn’t been for you, I suppose the hand just wouldn’t have been shown at all. Now, how on earth did you come to suspect her? I’ve been wondering about that.”

“The sleeping-tablet,” said Miss Silver. “When I found that she had not only taken them in Mrs. Hardwick’s presence, but had asked her to look in again and make sure that she was sleeping, the idea of a carefully prepared alibi suggested itself. The whole thing was out of character in anyone so obviously assured and self-reliant as Lady Castleton. I went on to consider her relation to the other people in the house. She had known them all for a very long time. She was beautiful, gifted, and successful, but she did not seem to inspire affection. She was bound to Mrs. Field by old ties of friendship, but the link appeared to be more one of habit than of anything else. There did not seem to have been any warmth in her marriage. Mrs. Trevor informs me that the only person to whom she had ever been truly attached was her sister Irene, drowned ten years ago. There was, I found, a general feeling that she took her own way and did what she chose. One of those dominant women who do not allow themselves to be deflected from whatever purpose they may have in hand. In fact a very dangerous person to blackmail.”

“But you did not know that she was being blackmailed.”

She said in her most precise manner,

“It became apparent. Mrs. Field talked to me a good deal. It was clear that her stepson had been trying to get money out of her. She did not say that the letters which he was threatening to publish involved Lady Castleton’s young sister. She merely told me that girls always would run after her husband, and that he was too kind-hearted to snub them. She said there was one in particular who had behaved very foolishly, and that it had all been very distressing, because she was drowned whilst bathing, but of course that must have been due to an attack of cramp. It was Mrs. Trevor who supplied the link, when she told me of Lady Castleton’s devotion to a sister who had met with this tragic fate. It is difficult in retrospect to reckon up all the small things which confirm suspicion and add to it. If the letters mentioned by Mrs. Field were of equal concern to Lady Castleton, would Alan Field have neglected this farther opportunity of blackmail? Was she the kind of woman who would submit to such pressure to allow her sister’s name to be damaged? I was sure that she was not. Continuing my observations, I discerned what interested me very much. Everyone in the house showed signs of increasing strain. Pippa Maybury was very near to breaking-point. But Lady Castleton, described as suffering from severe headaches on Tuesday and Wednesday and being obliged to go off early to bed and take a sleeping-draught, appeared now to be in perfect health. Under a controlled manner I was aware of something to which it is difficult to give a name. Triumph is, perhaps, too strong a word-satisfaction not in quite the right vein. Perhaps the nearest I can get to it is accomplishment. It kept on getting stronger all the time, and in the end it alarmed me profoundly-” She broke off with a slight smile, adding, “You see, it is all very simple.”

He laughed.

“It always is! As I started off by saying, quite a number of people have cause to be very grateful that you found it so. Hardwick might just have gone on holding his tongue-”

Miss Silver shook her head.

“He would not have allowed an innocent person to be arrested.”

“Well, you know, the beautiful Adela had a very strong pull-old family friend-guest in his house-Personage with a capital P. And against all that-well, when you come to sort it out, nothing but a fairly strong suspicion. She might have put up the same story as Pippa Maybury-said she had come down to meet him and found him dead. As a matter of fact I can’t think why she didn’t.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“And why not?”

“Oh, no, she would not do that.”

“She would never have made such an admission. You must remember that she was, as you have said, a personage. In one way and another her name has been before the public for thirty years, and there has never been a whisper against her character. She had a good deal of aristocratic pride, and she would, I am sure, have preferred her own death, or that of anyone else, to having it supposed that she had made a secret assignation with Mr. Field. I am, in fact, reminded of the well known lines in which Lord Tennyson, speaking of Sir Lancelot, says:

The circumstances, of course, are not the same, but there is a certain similarity which I find suggestive.”

He watched her through half closed lids. This was Maudie in essence. The Victorian Standard Applied. The Moral Pointed. Penetrating Analysis of Character. And all served up with the true Tennysonian garnish. His respect for her was immense, his enjoyment perennial. He came reluctantly to his feet and kissed her hand.

“Madam, your most devoted! Till our next crime!”

She looked at him between affection and reproof.

“My dear Frank!”