The Clock Strikes Twelve

Chapter 22

Miss Silver sat primly at the writing-table. An exercise-book with a bright green cover lay in front of her upon Mark’s blotting-pad. Mark himself sat facing her. Lydia lay back in the most comfortable of the chairs and looked on. The names of the Paradine family connection had been entered in the exercise-book, together with such facts as had been elicited about each. The circumstances surrounding the New Year’s Eve party and Mr. Paradine’s death had been repeated.

Mark said abruptly,

“We’re putting you to a lot of trouble. I think we should have waited until we had discussed the matter with the rest of the family. They may not feel-”

Miss Silver coughed.

“You are not committing yourself to anything, Mr. Paradine-that is understood. I should, naturally, regard anything you have said to me as confidential. At the same time I feel it my duty to point out to you that resistance to enquiry on the part of any member of the family would be a fact the significance of which could not be overlooked.”

He leaned back frowning.

“People are not necessarily criminals and murderers because they would dislike being cross-examined by a stranger.”

Miss Silver smiled indulgently.

“No, indeed, Mr. Paradine. The publicity in which murder involves a bereaved family is truly distressing, but I fear it is unavoidable. I will amplify your remark if I may, and say that it is not everyone with something to hide who is a criminal. One of the complications in a case of this kind is the fact that many people have thoughts, wishes, or actions which they would not willingly expose even to a friend, yet when police enquiries are being made these private motives and actions are brought to light. It is, in fact, a little like the Judgment Day, if I may use such a comparison without being considered profane.”

Mark said, “Yes, that’s true.”

He was in process of surprising himself. After some twenty minutes’ conversation with this curiously dowdy little person, in the course of which she had neither said nor done anything at all remarkable, he was experiencing the strangest sense of relief. He could remember nothing like it since his nursery days. Old Nanna, the tyrant and mainstay of that dim early time before his parents died-there was something about Miss Silver that revived these memories. The old-fashioned decorum, the authority which has no need of self-assertion because it is unquestioned-it was these things that he discerned, and upon which he found himself disposed to lean. Miss Silver’s shrewd, kind glance-perfectly kind, piercingly shrewd-took him back to things he had forgotten. “Not the least manner of good your standing there and telling me a lie, Master Mark. I won’t have it for one thing, and it won’t do you no good for another.”

There was that effect, but there was also a reassurance that he had not known since the time when he would wake sweating with nightmare to the light of Nanna’s candle and the sound of her, “Come, come now-what’s all this?”

He looked up and met her eyes. Something had gone from his. Miss Silver saw in them what she had seen in many eyes before, a desperate need of help. She smiled slightly, as one smiles at an anxious child, and said,

“Well, Mr. Paradine, we will leave it like that. You will go back and consult the rest of the family, and then if you wish it, I will come out to the River House and do what I can to help you.”

He said abruptly,

“I don’t want to consult them-I’m prepared to take the responsibility. I want you to take the case. I want you to come out to the River House with me now.”

She became very serious.

“Are you quite sure about that?”

He gave a brief impatient nod.

“Yes, I’m quite sure. I want you to come. Lydia’s right-we’ve got to clear this up. Someone inside, in the house, will have a better chance of doing it than the police-I can see that.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“You must understand, Mr. Paradine, that my position will be quite a private one, and that I can be no party to anything to which the police could take exception. May I ask who is in charge of the case?”

“Superintendent Vyner.”

An expression of interest appeared on her face.

“Indeed? I have heard of him from an old pupil of mine, Randal March, who is Superintendent at Ledlington. He considers him a very able man.”

She got up with the air of the teacher who dismisses a class.

“Very well, then. I will just go across the landing and pack my case.”