Through the Wall

Chapter 25

For the second day running Miss Silver arrived at Cove House in time for tea. She was glad to avail herself of the lift which Randal March had offered, but, like Mrs. John Gilpin [3], she arranged for the conveyance to stop somewhat short of its destination-not, as in the case of the eighteenth-century lady, because she would not have the neighbours think her proud, but because she considered it unnecessary to advertize the fact that she had driven out from Farne with the Chief Constable. She therefore allowed him to precede her, and then walked leisurely in between the rough pillars at the gate and deposited her suit-case on the mat before using the heavy old knocker on the right-hand front door.

Once arrived, she proceeded to settle down and become part of the household. From the study windows the Chief Constable was observed to emerge from the glass door of the drawing-room in the other house and, accompanied by Inspector Crisp, to proceed across the lawn to the steps descending to the cove. Sometime after his return he rang the front door bell on this side and asked to see Miss Brand and Mrs. Felton.

Miss Silver, offering to leave the room, was invited to remain. He asked them no more than a few questions, relating chiefly to such small points as the time of their return from the shore and the locking up of the house. Marian replied that they had come in between seven and a quarter past, and as it was turning chilly, she had herself shut the doors and windows.

“When you say shut, Miss Brand, do you mean that they were locked? I see you have the same glass door into the garden that they have in the next house.”

She said, “Yes-it was locked. I’ll show you.”

She jumped up, went to the open door, and drew it to. As the handle turned it drove an iron bolt into a prepared socket, an old-fashioned arrangement which took him back to the house which his mother had had in his schoolroom days.

He said, “I see. And the front door?”

“Eliza will know about that. It was locked when I let Mr. Cunningham out at half past ten.”

“And you locked it after him?”

“Oh, yes.”

Eliza, sent for, asserted that the front door had been locked from the time the party went down to the beach. She didn’t hold with leaving it open, and always turned the key if she was alone in the house.

“And the door to the kitchen-it’s at the side, isn’t it?”

“It was locked.”

The next question was addressed to everyone there.

“Then there was no door or window open on the ground floor after you came up from the beach?”

Marian said, “No-it was getting cold.”

To which Eliza added that she had shut the upstairs windows a good half hour before.

“And the doors between the two houses?”

Marian answered this.

“They are kept bolted. Until today they hadn’t been opened since we came. Eliza will tell you the same.”

Eliza told him.

Ina Felton was leaning back in one of the big comfortable chairs. She looked small and frail. Her dark hair appeared to melt into the brown leather upholstery. Her face was white against it. She had not spoken at all, but when March asked her if she agreed with the others she found an exhausted voice and said, “Yes.” Just the one word, but it sounded as if it was too much trouble to say. He thought the girl was ill, and reflected that Miss Silver would look after her.

A few questions about Marian Brand’s raincoat and scarf elicited no more than he already knew. The coat had been down on the beach, but the scarf left hanging on its peg by the door through to the other house. The bolted door. Richard Cunningham had brought the coat in and hung it up on the same peg as the scarf at a quarter past seven. In the morning the coat was on the seat near the place from which Helen Adrian had fallen. The scarf was still on the peg, but most horribly stained with blood. And all the house was shut. Not a door had been opened when Mrs. Woolley ran up screaming from the bottom terrace to say that Miss Adrian was dead.

When this point had been established the Chief Constable got up and went away.

Miss Silver was no stranger to an atmosphere of unhappiness and suspense. It had often been her professional duty to move amongst those who had sustained some shock of terror or of grief. She had sat at many a table where members of the same household looked at one another in fear and looked away again in haste lest they should see what they could not afterwards forget. She had a fund of quiet small talk which served to mitigate these occasions. She knew how to impart a soothing sense of the commonplace. Her presence made a small oasis of cheerfulness and afforded relief from strain.

Before the evening was over she had come to comfortable terms with Eliza over the desirability of inducing Penny and Ina to have a good drink of hot milk and get off to bed.

“Which if you’ll take on Mrs. Felton, I’ll go in next door and see to Penny. They haven’t eaten enough to keep a mouse alive since it happened, and we don’t want illness in the house on top of everything else. I can stand over Penny till I get it done, because I’ve had her from a child, but I think you’d be best for Mrs. Felton. She just keeps on saying, ‘No,’ or ‘Let me alone,’ to Miss Marian and me, but you’ve a kind of a firm way with you, and I think if you was just to walk right in and not take no for an answer-”

Ina drank the milk because she didn’t like to be rude, and because it was less trouble than going on saying no. She dropped asleep after it, and could not remember that she had dreamed, only there was a crushing sense of fear that went with her into her sleep.

Rightly concluding that Miss Brand and Mr. Cunningham did not really require the society of a third person, Miss Silver proceeded to pay a call of condolence next door. This visit may be considered as an instance of the power of character to triumph over environment.

It was easy to see that her presence was not desired. Mrs. Brand sat blankly immobile with a newspaper on her lap. She did not read it, she did not turn a page. She just sat there and made no attempt to talk. Miss Remington, on the other hand, was voluble. It was indeed difficult to imagine any circumstance which would reduce her to silence. She rehearsed the events of the day, repeating what Mrs. Woolley had said, what she had felt like when she heard her say it, what they had all felt, said, done, from Inspector Crisp to “poor little Penny who is quite crushed. No stamina, no courage, no will-power. Now I am sure you have noticed that about the young people of the day. I don’t know whether it was the war, or what, but I am sure you must have noticed it. They simply cannot confront an emergency.”

Miss Silver said mildly that she had not noticed it. She had produced Derek’s stocking and was knitting comfortably.

Cassy Remington gave a shrill protesting cry.

“No stamina at all! The least strain and they give way! Look at Ina Felton! She has collapsed in the most ridiculous manner. She hardly knew Miss Adrian-unless, of course, there was something going on that we don’t know about. But I suppose the police will make full enquiries. I wouldn’t like to accuse her of anything-you must understand that. Then there’s Penny. No one can pretend that she had any affection for Helen Adrian. In fact quite the reverse-we all know that. But she is just giving way. I’m sure if I have told her once that it is her duty to rouse herself, I have told her fifty times. But no, she just gives way-goes off to her room and shuts herself up there.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“It is sometimes better to leave people alone after a shock.”

Miss Cassy jingled her chain in a contemptuous manner.

“All these young people are the same. Look at Felix! He loses his head over this girl and rushes off to drown himself. Most selfish, most inconsiderate! My sister and I have this dreadful tragedy happening in our house, and we do not collapse-we behave with dignity, we carry on. Nobody pampers us.”

Miss Silver continued to knit. She murmured that it was all very sad, very distressing.

Cassy Remington sent her a darting glance.

“Half an hour ago I met Eliza Cotton going up to Penny’s room with a cup of hot milk. Pampering I call it! And how she has the face to come over here leaving us the way she did-”

Miss Silver murmured in a non-committal manner which did not soothe. There was a toss of the head with its well-arranged waves.

“Not that our house is our own in any way at present.” She repeated the last words with malice. “Not in any way. I’m sure the police walk in and out as if the whole place belonged to them. That horrid Inspector Crisp was here again just as we were sitting down to tea. And brought the Chief Constable! And there they were, out and down to the cove, and up on every floor, looking at the doors going through to the other side of the house, and Crisp going round to open them, though what it’s got to do with them how many locks and bolts and bars there are, I’m sure I can’t see. I may be stupid-I suppose I am-”-the head was tossed again- “but I can’t see what a purely domestic arrangement like that has got to do with the police. I’m sure it’s bad enough having one’s own niece bolting doors against us as if we were a lunatic asylum or a menagerie of wild beasts!”

Mrs. Brand came out of her silence with a “Really, Cassy!” Her voice was heavy with resentment. She said,

“Marian Brand is my niece by marriage only. She is your second cousin twice removed. The houses were originally two. They have now been divided again.”

Cassy Remington’s colour rose to an angry flush.

“Oh, if you like it, Florence, there’s no more to be said. I’m sure I have no desire to claim relationship with Marian and Ina-or perhaps you think I should speak of them as Miss Brand and Mrs. Felton.”

Florence Brand made no reply. Her large pale face showed nothing. Presently, however, she intervened with a remark about Miss Silver’s knitting and Cassy Remington’s complaints were interrupted.

Miss Silver stayed for an hour, and had managed to draw Mrs. Brand into a slight show of interest over a pattern for long-sleeved vests and the address of a shop where the wool suitable for making them could be bought. It transpired that Florence had always worn wool next to the skin, and had now arrived at measurements which made it practically impossible for her to procure the necessary underwear. She got as far as saying that she might have some wool upstairs in the box-room, and Miss Silver offered to help her look for it in the morning.