The Gazebo

TWENTY-ONE

WHAT ARE WE going to do, Nicky?’

They sat close together on the deep sofa in the drawing-room. They were not leaning back; Althea’s left hand rested palm downwards on the stuff of the seat. Nicky’s right hand covered it. He said.

‘There isn’t anything very much that we can do.’ He didn’t like to say, ‘It will pass,’ but the thought was in his mind. They would have to get through the inquest and the funeral, and then they could get married and he would take her away. He wondered if she would want to sell the house, and whether the two lots of people who were after it would still be so anxious to buy now that there had been a murder there. The sooner he could get Allie away the better – right away. These things filled his mind, but it was a bit soon to start talking about them to Allie, so he just said there wasn’t much they could do and left it at that.

He wasn’t so stupid as to think they were clear out of the wood either. Miss Cotton’s statement was all right in a way and as far as it went. Fortunately, it did go far enough to make it clear that Allie had taken her mother back into the house and shut the door. It also made it perfectly clear that there had been a frightful row. He had an unpleasantly sharp impression in his mind of Mrs Graham screaming out that he wanted to kill her, and a few other helpful things like that. There really wasn’t any way out of the police having their eye on him as suspect number one. And he couldn’t blame them, since look where he would, he couldn’t for the life of him think of reasons why Nicholas Carey should want Mrs Graham out of the way, but as far as he could see, no reason at all why anyone else should.

He said abruptly,

‘It’s frightful for you, but it won’t go on being so bad. We’ve just got to go through with it – the police and everything. They’ll either find out who did it, or they won’t. Whether they do or not, there will be a lot of talk, and then there won’t be so much, and presently something else will happen and everyone will switch on to that. Miss Silver is staying on with you for a bit?’

‘Yes.’ Her voice became suddenly warmer. ‘Nicky, do you know, Mrs Justice rang up and said would I come to them. I do think it was terribly kind of her. Only when she heard I’d got Miss Silver here she said I couldn’t have anyone better, and I think she actually was a little bit relieved.’

‘You’d rather be here?’

‘Much rather. Mrs Justice is so kind, but she talks all the time, and she would keep wanting me to have cups of Ovaltine and things like that. It used to drive Sophy crazy.’

A shudder went over her. Mrs Graham was devoted to Ovaltine. She had it in the middle of the morning, and she had it the last thing at night in bed. She was very particular indeed about the way it was made. Althea had had to make it twice a day for years. She would never have to make it again.

This train of thought was broken in upon by Nicholas. He said in what seemed to be an entirely irrelevant manner,

‘I had better clear out of the Harrisons ’.’

Althea’s hand jerked under his.

‘Why?’

He had several reasons, but he only gave her one of them.

‘Well, it’s involving them in what isn’t any affair of theirs. I expect the police will want me to be somewhere handy whilst they are clearing things up, and I can get a room at the George.’

An hour or two later Ella Harrison looked round an open bedroom door and found him packing. She came in and said ‘Hullo, what’s all this?’ A suitcase was open on the bed, right on one of the new covers. Really, men were the limit! He pushed a pair of socks into a corner and turned round.

‘Oh, I was coming down to see you… I thought I had better clear out.’

Eye-shadow, mascara, powder, lipstick, she had them all on. The reinforced eyebrows rose.

‘What on earth for?’

‘Well, I’m a bit conspicuous, don’t you think? I don’t think it’s quite fair to you and Jack.’

‘My dear Nicky – what nonsense! We won’t hear of your going! Besides the police will expect you to hang around until after the inquest.’

‘I could get a room at the George.’

‘We wouldn’t hear of it! Jack would be furious. Besides it would look so bad – as if we had turned you out. It might do you quite a lot of harm – as if we believed the kind of talk that’s going round. That’s what I really came up to see you about.’ She went back a step, pushed the door so that it shut and latched, and came back again. ‘You see, Nicky, you could be in a bit of a spot, couldn’t you?’

She was being kind, and the trouble was that he couldn’t take it. He disliked her too much – the brassy hair and all that make-up, her laugh, the way she picked on Allie, the way she treated poor old Jack. She was a handsome woman. The eyes that were smiling at him were undeniably fine. He didn’t dislike people as a rule, but he disliked Ella Harrison.

She was saying in a voice as brassy as the hair,

‘Lucky for you and for Thea that Nurse Cotton should have been passing after you’d had that dust-up in – what do you call the place – the gazebo. A bit of nonsense giving it an outlandish name like that, but that was just Winifred Graham all over!’

He shook his head.

‘The name is much older than Mrs Graham – eighteenth – nineteenth century – at least a hundred years before her time.’

She laughed.

‘Well, that’s not what we were talking about anyhow. I said it was lucky Nurse Cotton could swear that Thea took her mother into the house and left you there in the garden. What the police are going to want to know is why did she come out again.’ He said,

‘You seem to know a lot about it all.’

She made an impatient movement.

‘Do you suppose that people don’t talk? Nurse Cotton made a statement to the police, didn’t she? She’s friendly with a Miss Sanders who teaches at that little preparatory school in Down Road. Miss Sanders has an aunt who used to be governess to the Miss Pimms. I met Lily Pimm this morning, and she told me all about it. And all about what Miss Cotton said to the police. And as I said, it’s a good thing for you that Nurse Cotton says Thea went into the house with her mother and left you there in the garden. She says she came back the same way about half an hour or three quarters of an hour later, which is about the time the murder must have been done, and she says she didn’t see anything or hear anyone then. It gives one a creep to think poor Winifred Graham may have been lying there dead just the other side of the hedge in that – what did you call it – gazebo, when Nurse Cotton went by. Of course what puzzles everyone is, why should Winifred have gone into the house with Thea and then come out again as I suppose she must have done.’

She had come up close to him. He could smell the heavy scent she used. He loathed women who scented themselves. He made an excuse to go over to the washstand and collect toothbrush, nailbrush, a tube of toothpaste, and a face-cloth. He was rolling them up in paper, when Ella Harrison exclaimed,

‘You ought to have a case for those! You can’t pack them like that! I’ll get you one next time I’m in the High Street! Men really do want looking after!’ Then, breaking off, ‘Of course what the police will want to know is, what did you do after Thea took her mother away.’

He was irritated every time she said Thea. For one thing it reminded him of Mrs Graham, and for another it wasn’t for her to play tricks with Allie’s name. The thought went through his mind and stiffened it against her as he said,

‘I told the police what I did. I went for a walk.’

He tossed his parcel into the suitcase from the other side of the bed, but she was edging round it towards him again.

‘Nicky, that is no good. You went for a walk! At that hour? It’s too thin! What you want is someone to say what time you got back here! It would probably take Thea half an hour to get her mother back to bed and settled down after the upset she had had – at least she can always say it did. Nurse Cotton is supposed to have left her cottage at half past ten, and it would take her until about a quarter to eleven to get to the top of Hill Rise and start listening in to the row that was going on in the gazebo. Well, it wouldn’t be a lot short of eleven by the time Thea got her mother indoors and up into her room, and it would be a good deal after that before she got her to bed and was able to leave her. So if someone could say that you were back in this house by eleven – well, that would let you out, wouldn’t it?’

‘And who is supposed to be going to say that?’

She had been moving along past the foot of the bed. Now she turned the corner and was on the same side as he was. She said,

‘Suppose I was to say it…’

She looked at him between the long mascaraed lashes. It made her angry too. The pleasure and the anger were stimulating.

He said,

‘You certainly couldn’t do anything of the sort! I didn’t look at the time, but it must have been all of twelve o’clock before I came back here.’

She laughed.

‘Well, I shouldn’t tell that to the police, darling!’ Then, with a change of manner, ‘Nicky, you know you might be in quite a tight place over this. There’s Nurse Cotton to say you had a row with Winifred Graham, and that she said things like you wanting to kill her. And then later on she’s found dead in that damned gazebo – well, there you are! There wasn’t anyone else who had quarrelled with her. There wasn’t anyone else who had a motive for killing her, unless it was Thea – and that doesn’t let you out, because if Thea was in it you would be bound to be in it too.’

‘We weren’t either of us in it.’

She stood there smiling.

‘Well, that’s what you say, but no one is going to believe it – unless you can prove that you just weren’t there. It all turns on that. And when you say there isn’t anything I could do about it, that’s just where you’re wrong, because I could. Look here, Nicky, why won’t you be friends with me? I could help you a lot, you know – and I would if you’d stop glaring at me and looking as if you’d like to murder me too.’

He was so angry that he couldn’t trust himself to speak. Instead he went over to the walnut chest on the other side of the room, opened the top long drawer, and came back with a pile of underclothes, which he dumped in the suitcase on the bed. By this time he was able to manage a tone of deadly politeness.

‘It is very kind of you, but I am afraid there isn’t anything you can do.’

It wasn’t Ella’s way to beat about the bush. She never had and she never would. She came right out into the open with a frank,

‘I can say you got back here by eleven o’clock, and that you couldn’t have gone out again because you were with me. Come along, Nicky, isn’t that worth being nice to me for? Or isn’t it? But you can’t expect me to do it if you keep on looking at me as if I could go to hell and be damned to me!’

He restrained himself. When he had fetched half a dozen shirts and packed them, he was able to achieve a conversational tone.

‘It’s a kind thought, but I’m afraid I’ve already told the police that I went for quite a long walk and didn’t get in until fairly late.’

‘That, darling, was only because of your being Jack’s cousin and a perfect gentleman and not wanting to give me away. Quite good reasons for saying you took that walk. Nobody will believe in it anyhow. It’s just a question of whether you would rather they believed you were waiting in Winifred Graham’s garden to lure her out and murder her, or that you were here having fun and games with me. People always like to believe the worst, you know, and there’s quite a good chance they could be got to believe it about you and me.’

‘And what are Jack and Althea supposed to think about it?’

She shrugged her shoulders.

‘I don’t give a damn!’

‘Perhaps I do.’

She sat down on the end of the bed. Her voice dropped.

‘I meant that, you know – all of it! I suppose you haven’t been here all this week without tumbling to it that Jack bores me stiff? Well, you don’t. We could have a good time together, you know. I like travelling – going places. We’d get on like a house on fire if you’d only let yourself go. And you needn’t bother about Jack – all he really wants is what he calls a quiet life. But I haven’t got any use for being poor. If I swear you were with me on Tuesday night it’ll clear you, but Jack will probably divorce me – and I should have to reckon on that. If I don’t do it, you’ll probably hang, and it would be up to you to see I didn’t suffer for saving your neck, wouldn’t it? We could go abroad till it all blew over – travel and have a good time.’

Oh, they could travel, could they? He found his thought straying to some of the places to which he might conduct Ella Harrison and dump her. There was an Asian desert scourged by Polar winds. There were leech-infested swamps. There was a tribe of head-hunters. He said in a perfectly civilized voice,

‘I’m afraid there’s nothing doing, Ella. You see, if it hadn’t been for Mrs Graham’s death Althea and I would be married by now.’