The Watersplash

CHAPTER XXII

There was still some cold, sallow daylight outside, but Miss Silver’s bright blue curtains were drawn, and the electric light shone down upon a well furnished tea-table. Emma Meadows had made some of her feather-light scones, there were two kinds of sandwiches, and a highly ornamental cake with almond icing which nobody could have told from the real thing. All this for the benefit of Detective Inspector Frank Abbott who had come to tea on this Sunday afternoon.

“Emma spoils you,” said Miss Silver with an indulgent look.

Frank, long and lazy in one of the Victorian chairs, reached for another sandwich. The light shone upon mirror-smooth fair hair, a beautiful dark blue suit, the latest and most restrained of ties, handkerchiefs and socks, and upon shoes which did full justice to long, elegant feet. Nobody, in fact, would have taken him for a police inspector. He said in a languid tone,

“It does my Unconscious no end of good to be spoiled.”

Miss Silver registered disapproval.

“My dear Frank!”

“It was thwarted when I was a child. You didn’t know my grandmother, but you’ve seen her portrait. She was a good thwarter, and if your grandmother thwarts you when you are three, you get a complex, or an inhibition or something that sours you for life.”

Miss Silver remembered the portrait very well. It hung in the house of his uncle, Colonel Abbott, at Abbottsleigh, and it depicted a very formidable woman. Old Lady Evelyn Abbott had tyrannized over three generations and spoiled the lives of a good many people. Frank, whom she had cut out of her will, had inherited the very fair hair, the cool pale eyes, the long narrow face, the definite touch of arrogance. Fortunately for himself, he possessed a much stronger sense of humour and a kinder heart, though this was sedulously concealed. She remarked that at the moment the trouble appeared to be that a good many people had not been thwarted enough.

He gazed at her between half-closed lids.

“How right you are! As always! Spare the rod and spoil the child!”

Miss Silver coughed.

“I do not approve of children being beaten. It is always a confession of failure. A person who does not know how to control them will not succeed by using force.”

He sat up.

“Esteemed preceptress! If I eat any more sandwiches I shall not be able to cope with the cake. Will Emma be devastated if I plump for the sandwiches?”

Miss Silver was pouring herself out a second cup of tea.

“She will certainly be hurt if you do not have any of the cake.”

“She seems to have surpassed herself all round. When the figure is irretrievably gone, she must be content to bear the blame. My tailor tells me I have put on half an inch round the waist. It is probably the beginning of the end. I shall have to spend my next leave at one of those horrible places where they give you nothing but orange juice for a week.”

Miss Silver waited until he had finished his slice of cake. Then she said,

“I have something very much on my mind.”

He lent across to put down his cup.

“What is it?”

“There was a case in the papers yesterday morning. I would have rung you up about it if you had not been coming to tea this afternoon. A young woman named Clarice Dean was found drowned in a watersplash at a place called Greenings.”

“Yes.”

“You read the account?”

“I saw it. Suicide or accident.”

“Neither, I believe.”

“You know something?”

“I know of a possible motive for her murder.”

He whistled.

“Oh, you do, do you? Now what have you been up to?”

She did not smile.

“Nothing so far. There has not been time. I am thinking of going to Greenings.”

Those very light blue eyes were fixed upon her now. As always when his attention was engaged, they had rather a bleak expression.

“Oh-”

She smiled gravely.

“I think I had better tell you about it.”

“I think you had.”

She put down her cup upon the tray, reached for the knitting-bag which was never far away, and took out a ball of pink wool and four bone needles upon three of which there appeared the faint rosy outline of a baby’s vest. Inserting the fourth needle, she began to knit with great rapidity in the continental fashion, her hands low in her lap. The vest, one of a set, was for Mrs. Charles Forrest who had been Stacy Mainwaring, and who was expecting a baby in the early spring. Since this kind of knitting did not require her attention, she looked across the tea-table and began to tell Frank Abbott about her interview with Clarice Dean.

“Quite a coincidence, but such things do happen, and I had been pointed out to her.”

“By whom?”

“It was that young Winnington who was on the Mirabel Montague case. He seems to have been a friend of hers for a short time. He pointed me out, and I am afraid he told her some highly coloured tales about me.”

Frank looked very bleak indeed.

“Oh, he did, did he? Well, you have produced the coincidence and the girl. What did the girl produce?”

She told him with the accuracy which he had learned to expect from her. When she had finished he said,

“She never actually saw this second will?”

“No. That was the weak part of the story.”

He said drily,

“It would certainly want some backing up, especially if she was aiming to marry the chap. After all, what does her story amount to? An old man makes a will cutting out the nephew whom he believes to be dead. He dies, the will is proved, and the estate passes to his brother. Six months later the nephew turns up. Six months after that this nurse comes back from Canada, where she has been since the old man died, and goes down to Greenings, where she finds the nephew, who has just gone back there to take up a job. The rest depends solely upon her unsupported testimony. She says the old man woke up in the night and told her that he had seen his nephew in a dream, that he wasn’t dead after all, and that he proposed to make another will. She went out on the following afternoon, and when she came back she says he told her that he had actually made this will and got two of the gardeners in to witness it. One of them has since been lost at sea, and the other is the subject of the coincidence featured in last night’s headlines. He gets himself drowned in the watersplash at Greenings just a week before Clarice does. And she told you-but there again we have only her word for it-that she had talked to him about the will, then he remembered witnessing it, and that he was contemplating a spot of blackmail. He seemed to think that Uncle Arnold would probably ante up. She says she asked him to keep quiet about it for a bit, and she gave you the impression that she was considering just what kind of profit she could make out of it all for Clarice Dean. Well, we don’t know whether she did anything about it or not, because she drowns in the water-splash just a week after Jackson does-” He broke off suddenly. “Do you know, I started out to debunk Miss Clarice Dean and her story, and I have half talked myself into thinking that there may be something in it. Candidly now, how did it all strike you at the time? Intuition is your long suit, isn’t it? Well, how did it strike you? And how did she strike you? Hoax? Hysterical girl telling the tale? Exhibitionist with unique opportunity of showing off to the famous Miss Maud Silver?”

“My dear Frank-” Her tone reproved this extravagance but in an abstracted manner, and she continued immediately with a serious, “Oh, no, I do not think so. She was in a state of considerable nervous tension. The death of this man Jackson had alarmed her. She felt the need to unburden herself to someone. I do not think that she could have had any ulterior motive in telling me what she did. She was driven to it by her uneasiness, but she had certainly no intention of taking my advice.”

“Which was?”

“That she should not attempt to make any profit for herself out of what she knew, that to do so might amount to blackmail, and that blackmail was not only a punishable offence but an extremely dangerous one-for the blackmailer. I urged her to think over what I had said, and if she knew anything which she thought she ought to tell the police, to make no delay in doing so.”

“And what did she say to that?”

Miss Silver’s needles clicked, the pink ball revolved.

“She turned extremely pale and told me to mind my own business. After which she ran away.”

“Frightened?”

“I thought so.”

He whistled.

“And on the strength of that you propose to go down to Greenings?”

She smiled.

“It is not quite so absurd as it may sound. The daughter of one of my oldest friends is married to the Vicar of Greenings-cum-Littleton. She has been urging me to visit her for some time. Miss Dean’s story made so strong an impression on me that I wrote and asked Mrs. Ball for a little more information. Miss Dean did not intend that I should be able to identify the village of which she spoke. She had, as I told you, disguised it as Greenways, but she was careless enough to let the real name slip, and my attention was naturally arrested. I wrote to Ruth Ball saying that I had come across a girl who I thought was nursing a patient in Greenings-an elderly lady to whom she had alluded as Miss Ora. Perhaps you would care to see her reply.”

She handed it to him and watched whilst he read it.

When he had finished he said,

“It was written before the girl was drowned, I see.”

“Yes. But I had hardly read it, when Emma came in with the evening paper, and there was the headline, ‘Girl drowned in watersplash. Strange coincidence.’ You cannot be surprised that I have given the matter some thought.”

He said in a meditative voice,

“No. A watersplash is not usually deep enough to drown anyone. If a man and a girl manage to bring it off on two successive Fridays, the long arm of coincidence would seem to be doing a record stretch, and when both the man and the girl are mixed up with a missing will-well, it does begin to look as if someone had been busy. If one was on the case, which one is not, and therefore as much entitled to an opinion as any other member of the intelligent public, one might feel inclined to ask, ‘Cui bono?’ To whose advantage would it be to do away with the only two people who seemed to know anything about this inconvenient will?”

Miss Silver coughed and said primly,

“There can, of course, be only one answer to that.”

“Uncle Arnold?”

“Mr. Arnold Random.”