The Ivory Dagger

CHAPTER XXXIX

There was a knock on Miss Whitaker’s bedroom door. She did not pause in her pacing up and down. She had risen early because bed had become intolerable during the endless hours of a wakeful night. The fire was dead, but a couple of half burned logs sprawled on the still warm ash. She coaxed them until a smoulder of sparks quickened in the wood. She had paper to her hand. She had sat till past midnight reading old letters. Now she fed them to the springing flames, leaf by leaf and sheet by sheet. Sometimes a line would catch her eye, starting out in letters of fire before the page crumpled into ash like Herbert Whitall’s promises. ‘You and the child’-that was one of the sentences. It came to her then with a deadly certainty that if the child had been strong and healthy she wouldn’t have had to whistle for her ten thousand pounds. It was because he was frail, because he was delicate, because he needed so much care, that Herbert denied him the means of having these things. She would never, never forgive him for that. She fed the flames with his letters as she fed her anger with the thought of him lying dead, and of Lila Dryden with the blood on her hand and on her dress. Herbert was dead, and the girl would hang for it. She fed her anger.

When all the letters were burned, she fell to pacing the room. With brief intervals, she had been at it ever since, her door locked against the housemaid.

‘It’s your tea, miss.’

‘Put it down. I’ll take it presently.’

She had gulped the scalding tea, and only realized then how cold she was-through and through, and deep, deep down in spite of her anger and the blaze Herbert Whitall’s letters had made.

Presently she dressed and fell to her pacing again. So many steps to the window, so many steps to the bed. Count the steps, and it stopped you thinking. Go on counting, or you’ll start thinking again.

The knock came on her door for the second time. She jerked her head round and said,

‘I don’t want anything. Let me alone!’

It was Marsham’s voice that answered her.

‘Chief Inspector Lamb and Inspector Abbott are in the study, Miss Whitaker. They would be glad if you would come down.’

She stood for a moment before she unlocked the door. She went to the dressing-table, touched the ordered waves of her hair, used powderpuff and lipstick. She was wearing the black dress which looked like mourning, high to the neck and long to the wrists. She was thinner than when she had bought it. Her eyes burned against the pallor of her face. She walked past Marsham as if he wasn’t there, and so down the stairs and along the passage to the study.

As she came in, three pairs of eyes were turned towards her. Frank Abbott murmured, ‘Medusa-’ under his breath, the word being most unfortunately overheard by Lamb, who had never heard of the lady but was immediately convinced of her being foreign. The blank innocence of Inspector Abbott’s regard did nothing to shake this conviction, but at the moment he had Miss Whitaker to deal with.

Having offered her a chair and seen her seat herself in what he would have described as a ‘tragedy queen kind of way’, he cautioned her that anything she said would be taken down and might be used in evidence, and proceeded to unmask his guns.

‘Miss Whitaker-in a statement made on Sunday morning you say-’ Here he paused, received a paper from Frank

Abbott, unfolded it with deliberation, and read:

‘ “I received a telephone call from my sister, Mrs. West, at approximately nine p.m. on Saturday evening. She was not at all well, and I became very anxious about her being alone in the house with her little boy, who had been ill. I told Sir Herbert that I was going to spend the night with her, and I asked Mrs. Considine to give me a lift as far as the village so that I might catch the last bus into Emsworth. I took the bus, got off at Emsworth station, and proceeded to 32 Station Road where my sister lives. I stayed the night with her, and returned to Vineyards by the ten o’clock bus next morning, when I learned of Sir Herbert Whitall’s death.”

Now, that’s your statement. Anything you’d like to alter-or add to it?’

She sat up straight, her hands in her lap. White hands with blood-red nails, black dress, white face with blood-red lips, and the eyes with their smouldering fire. The lips opened and said,

‘Nothing.’

‘Well, Miss Whitaker, it is due to you to tell you that I have here a statement from a witness who is prepared to swear that instead of staying at Emsworth all night with your sister you bicycled back to Vineyards, ariving there just before twelve o’clock. This witness says that you left your bicycle leaning against a tree near the top of the drive and proceeded through the shrubbery on foot. He followed you, and saw you go up on to the terrace. He waited a little, and then went after you. The glass door to the study was open. Looking between the curtains he saw Sir Herbert Whitall lying dead on the floor with the ivory dagger still in the, wound. He states that you were standing beside the body, and that he heard you use these words- “You asked for it, and you’ve got it.” After this-after this, Miss Whitaker, Miss Dryden came in by the door from the passage. She was walking in her sleep. The witness is quite positive on this point. He had a sister who used to walk in her sleep, and he is quite positive that Miss Dryden was in that state and had no idea what was going on. I think you know what happened next. This witness saw you withdraw the dagger, wipe it on Miss Dryden’s dress, and put it into her hand. He heard you say, “You’re for it, lovely Lila.” Miss Dryden let the dagger fall, but of course her fingerprints were afterwards found on it and her hand was stained.’

Millicent Whitaker had not stirred or shown by even the slightest change in her expression that his words either reached her or moved her. Her face presented a cold, lifeless surface which seemed as incapable of expression as a mask. Only the eyes were alive with a spark which might yet smoulder into flame.

After making a very decided pause Lamb said,

‘Is there anything you would like to say?’

She did make a movement then. The hands with the blood-red nails unclasped, and then clasped themselves again. The lips opened.

‘You say you have a witness. Who is he?’

Lamb said, ‘The young footman, Frederick Baines. He was out on Saturday night-slipped out to see his girl. You passed him in the drive when he was coming back. He followed you.’

‘It’s a lie.’ Voice and words were without expression.

‘He is prepared to swear that he followed you to this room, saw you withdraw the dagger from the wound, and stain Miss Dryden’s dress and hand. In view of this, I have no choice but to arrest you. I shall take you down to the station and charge you with the murder of Sir Herbert Whitall.’

The mask broke up, colour rushed into her face. She threw up her head as if she were jerking something away.

‘I tell you it’s a lie! It’s a damnable lie! He’s making it up! He’s crazy about that stupid girl Lila Dryden! He’s making up a story to protect her, and to spite me! It’s a lie from beginning to end! I didn’t pass anyone in the drive-there wasn’t anyone to pass-’ She checked on the last word, her hand to her mouth as if to push back the words which had come flooding out. But they had been spoken. The sound of them was still on the air. They couldn’t be unsaid.

‘Then you were in the drive a little before twelve on the night of the murder.’

She looked at him, at Miss Silver, at Frank Abbott-three faces, all grave, one of them compassionate. The last chance in the world, the chance she could not have foreseen or guarded against, had tripped her. The whole plan, so carefully prepared, so efficiently carried out, had come to grief on a boy’s fancy for a village girl. Passion died in her. She was too tired, too beaten to go on. She said in an exhausted voice,

‘He’s got it wrong-you’ve all got it wrong. I didn’t kill him. I meant to. I took my sister’s bicycle and came back. I meant to kill him. He wouldn’t let me go. He didn’t want me any more, but he wouldn’t let me go. I was to stay and see him with that girl Lila-I was to go on being the perfect secretary-’

Lamb said,

‘You could have left.’

She gave a curious little laugh.

‘Could I? Look here, I’ll tell you, and you will see what kind of a man he was. There was a cheque-for my salary. He was in America. The child was ill-his own child. I had to have enough money-I altered one of the figures. I told him as soon as he came back-I didn’t try and hide it. It wasn’t for me, it was for the child. And he said that it was all right, and not to worry. But when I wanted to leave he said he had kept the cheque, and if I didn’t stay he would use it to ruin me. So I was going to kill him.’

Frank Abbott said sharply,

‘You expected to come in for ten thousand if he died before he could sign the new will he was planning.’

She lifted a hand and let it fall again.

‘Oh, yes. He cheated about that-I might have known-’

Lamb said,

‘This is a confession you are making, Miss Whitaker-before witnesses. I have cautioned you.’

She stared at him.

‘You mean-about the cheque? It was five years ago.’

Lamb sat forward.

‘I don’t mean anything of the sort. I mean the murder.’

She shook her head.

‘Oh, no-I told you. You’ve got it wrong. I was going to kill him, but I didn’t have to. I had a knife-I was going to use it. I knew he would be in the study-I had left the window unbolted-’

Frank Abbott said, ‘When?’

‘After dinner, when they were all in the drawing-room. He had been reminding me about the cheque just before Mr. Haile arrived, so I was going to kill him. I thought it would be a good night to do it-because of there being so many people in the house. Mr. Haile was going to ask him for money, and Herbert always quarrelled with the Professor. So I unbolted the glass door, and asked Mrs. Considine to give me a lift to the bus to go to my sister at Emsworth. She really did telephone. The child hadn’t been well-she was ringing me up every evening-so everything fitted. You mustn’t think she knew anything-she didn’t. I said I would go straight to bed. She didn’t know I got out and took her bicycle. I had it all worked out. It was a very good alibi. But I needn’t have bothered-a lot of people hated Herbert. He was dead when I got here. One of them had killed him.’

She spoke with a kind of weary calm. The dreadful tension of the last few days was relaxed. This release was all that mattered. Fear, hope, passion, the poison of jealousy, even the will to survive, dissolved in it and were gone.

When Lamb asked her if she wished to make a statement she agreed without interest. What Frank Abbott then took down differed by scarcely a word from what she had already said. When the statement had been read over to her she signed it and asked if she could go to her room and lie down, because she thought that now she might be able to sleep.

Lamb let her go. With Mary Good in charge and a constable on the landing, it would be better to defer the arrest until her statement had been carefully checked over with that of Frederick Baines.