The Clock Strikes Twelve

Chapter 10

Somewhere round about half past eleven Elliot Wray came broad awake. His mood of drifting acquiescence broke. Albert was well away with the migration of eels to the Sargasso Sea with a view to increasing and multiplying there, and quite suddenly the flow of that instructive voice had become sharply intolerable. Like the continual falling of a drop of water upon one spot, it had produced an inability to endure what had by insensible degrees become a torture. He stood up, stretched himself, and said,

“Let’s have a drink.”

Albert stared, his mind for the moment infested by eels. Through the thick lenses which screened them his eyes bore a strong resemblance to the smaller kind of bullseye. They were just the same shade of brown, and they bulged. If you can imagine a bulls-eye with an offended expression, you have Albert.

Elliot grinned.

“Come on! Lane used to leave a tray in the dining-room. Let’s prospect.”

The rooms in this side of the house lay immediately over James Paradine’s suite and the library and billiard-room. To reach the dining-room they could either descend the stair at the end of the passage or, turning left, come out upon the main staircase, and so down into the hall. This was the way they had come up and the quicker way. It also made it unnecessary to pass the study.

Elliot turned to the left and walked down the short flight which led to the central landing. For the first half-dozen steps a view of the hall below was largely obscured by the massive gilt chandelier. Its lights extinguished, it was just a black shape hanging in midair against a single lamp which burned below. Just short of the landing the hall came into view, and with it the big double mahogany door which led to the lobby and the porch beyond. The right-hand leaf of the door was in movement. Afterwards Elliot had to press himself very hard on this point-how sure was he that the door had been moving? And like the late Galileo he found himself obstinately of the opinion that it moved. By the time he was on the landing and had turned to make the further descent the movement had ceased. He reflected that if James Paradine had had a visitor it was none of his business, and perhaps as well to have been just too late to see who that visitor was. As they came into the hall, there was a sound of some sort from the upper floor. Like the movement of the door, it was more of an impression than a certifiable fact.

He proceeded into the dining-room, where he had a mild whisky and soda and watched Albert Pearson make himself a cup of cocoa over a spirit lamp. A disposition on Albert’s part to go on talking about eels was countered by the statement that he had taken in all the information he could hold, and that he would cease to provide an alibi if he had to take in any more. Whereupon Albert looked superior and solaced himself with cocoa.

Later, as Elliot mounted the stairs, he tried to analyse his impression about that second sound. There had been a sound, he was quite sure of that-a sound from upstairs, from the part of the house over the drawing-room. Grace Paradine slept there, and Phyllida. Each had a sitting-room and bathroom. Nobody else slept in that part of the house. The servants’ quarters were beyond, in a separate wing. If anyone moved there, it must be Phyllida or Miss Paradine. The sound was like the sound of somebody moving. When he had to press himself on this point too, he could get no nearer to it than that. What he had heard might have been a footstep, or it might have been the opening or the closing of a door. His impression was featureless, without detail. He had heard a sound-he thought that he had heard somebody move. He went back to his room and saw that the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece were pointing to eight minutes past twelve.

It was 1943. Albert no longer required an alibi.