Through the Wall

Chapter 28

Crisp said, “I could have told you she’d back him up. She’s fond of him-it sticks out all over her.”

“Oh, quite. But she was speaking the truth, you know.”

“Oh, I daresay he put up a tale to her. He would of course. And all that about pushing her over but not beating her head in-well, it doesn’t mean a thing. When a man’s crazy jealous and lets himself go he can’t always stop himself. You get a case like that any day in the papers, and the chap says he doesn’t know what happened. There’s a bit of evidence came up last night from Farne. There was a girl and a young fellow up on the cliffs round about half past six the evening before the murder-Ted Hollins and Gloria Payne. Gloria Payne is a sister of Sergeant Jackson’s wife. She told her sister what she and Ted had heard, and when Mrs. Jackson told her husband, he brought the two of them along to see me.”

“Well?”

“They say they were up on the cliffs between Farne and the cove. Ted is a mechanic at Waley’s garage in Farne. He’s a very respectable boy, and he and Gloria have been going together since they were kids. They were half way down one of those combes that lead to the beach. They heard a man’s voice coming from down below, very angry. There was a woman talking too. They didn’t hear what was said, only the voices-the man angry and the woman talking back at him. But what she said at the end they both of them heard quite plain, and it was, ‘All right-go on and do it! You’ve said you’re going to often enough. Go on and murder me if you feel like it!’ And the man said, ‘I will when I’m ready-you needn’t worry about that,’ and went off in the direction of the cove.”

“Did they see him?”

“No, they didn’t-didn’t see either of them. The cliff cuts under there. But it’s all shingle, and they could hear him going off.”

“You can’t identify him with Felix Brand on that.”

Crisp said stubbornly,

“It’s a private beach. It belongs to Cove House. The whole lot of them were out in the cove having this picnic. Mrs. Brand and Miss Remington both say that Miss Silver and Miss Adrian took a stroll together, and shortly after they returned Miss Silver got up to go. She caught the bus that passes Cove House at six-thirty. Meanwhile, they say, Miss Adrian strolled off again-this time with Felix Brand. They went round the next point in the direction of Farne and were out of sight for the best part of twenty minutes. Then Brand came back alone and in a very bad temper, Miss Adrian following about a quarter of an hour later. Miss Remington says it was quite obvious that they had quarrelled.”

“Very anxious to hang her nephew, isn’t she?”

“Very anxious to explain that he isn’t her nephew,” said Crisp grimly. “Same with Mrs. Brand. He’s only her stepson, and she’s taking care to let everyone know it. The fact is he’s one of those moody chaps-artistic temperament and all that, and they’ve got fed up with him. I grant you Miss Remington is spiteful-sticks out all over her. But she’s telling the truth about Brand and Miss Adrian going off for this walk. She didn’t know there had been anything overheard, and it all fits in. By what Gloria and Ted say they were out on the cliffs by a quarter to seven, and that was when they heard the voices from the beach. It all fits in. I’d say there was enough for an arrest.”

March shook his head.

“You say it all fits in, but it doesn’t. I don’t think he did it. To start with, we know she was going to marry someone else. She told Miss Silver she had made up her mind to leave Cove House in the morning and tell her fiancé she was ready to marry him as soon as he liked. Presumably that is what she told Brand while they were out of sight of the others for those twenty minutes. I can well believe that he made a blazing row about it on the lines reported by Ted and Gloria, after which he flung off and came home alone. What I find difficult to believe is that, after all that, she slipped out of the house in the middle of the night and went down to that lonely terrace to meet him. Why on earth should she? She had had her scene with him and got it over. They were staying in the same house. If she had wanted to speak to him she could have done so. From supper-time till after they went to bed he was here in the drawing-room taking out his feelings on the grand piano. By all accounts nobody else uses this room. She had only to come to him here, and they could have a reconciliation, or another quarrel, or whatever they wanted. She wasn’t romantic or passionate. She was a hard-headed girl with a keen eye to the main chance. I simply don’t see her going down to that terrace in the middle of the night to meet Felix Brand.”

“There’s no saying what girls will do,” said Crisp in a resentful tone. He was thinking of Ethel Sibley who had walked out on him and married an ironmonger. It was five years ago, but it still rankled. In moments of gloom he would tot up what he had spent taking her to the pictures. Only last week he had run into her in Ledbury High Street looking prettier than ever, with the twins in a double pram. That was the sort of thing that made you feel what a much better world it would be if there didn’t have to be women in it messing things up.

March said, “Oh, well, that’s how it looks to me. But putting all that on one side, there’s this matter of Marian Brand’s raincoat and scarf. I don’t see my way to arresting Felix Brand until we’ve got it cleared up. Richard Cunningham is positive that he brought the coat up from the beach soon after seven and hung it on the same peg with the scarf. He is quite positive that the scarf was there. Everyone next door is quite positive that from that time onwards all the doors and windows in the house were shut, with the exception of bedroom windows opened when the occupants were ready for bed. With this exception everything was still shut when Mrs. Woolley gave the alarm next morning. How did Marian Brand’s raincoat get down on to the terrace where it was found? How did her scarf become stained with blood? And after being stained, how did it get back upon the peg where Jackson found it within an hour of the alarm being given? Felix Brand couldn’t have taken the raincoat or the scarf. He had no access to them. No one on this side of the house had access to them. In the confusion after the alarm had been given I suppose it is just possible that someone could have slipped in next door with the scarf and hung it up where it was found, but it certainly wasn’t Felix Brand, who was miles away at the time on the yacht that had picked him up.”

Crisp was an honest man. It was not in him to suppress evidence however little he liked it. He said in an unwilling voice, “That scarf couldn’t have been put back after the alarm. It was put back with the blood on it wet enough to soak into the plaster round the peg. It’s a dark corner, but if you shine a torch on it you’ll see for yourself.”

March said, “Well, there you are-we can’t arrest Felix Brand. When is that fellow Felton coming back?”

“Felton? We’ve got his address. We can get him back.”

“Yes, I think so. He was blackmailing Helen Adrian. She went to Miss Silver about it, as I told you. There’s no absolute proof that the blackmailer was Felton, but she was convinced of it herself, and it seems likely enough. One of the last things she said to Miss Silver was that she meant to have it out with Cyril. She was going to offer him ten pounds down and tell him that once she was married he could do as he liked, but her husband would break his head if he bothered her. Miss Silver was trying to dissuade her from seeing Felton herself, but she had planned the interview and was determined to have it. Now when was it going to take place? Felton wasn’t in the same house. He wasn’t at her beck and call. She couldn’t see him in the presence of his wife or sister-in-law. She couldn’t ask him over here and have a private interview with the two old ladies watching and Felix Brand on the premises. She would really have a reason for leaving the house in the middle of the night to meet Cyril Felton, and no particular reason for being afraid of doing so. There were no passionate feelings involved-it was just a commercial transaction. It seems to me it would be quite in character for her to meet him like that.”

Crisp made a sharp movement. He wanted to have his say-he had been wanting to have it for some time. He came out with it now.

“You’re saying he killed her. Where’s his motive? More likely if it was the other way round. I’ve never heard of the blackmailer doing the killing.”

“She told Miss Silver that if he gave any trouble, she was going to threaten him with the police. You’ve seen him-I haven’t. Is he the kind that might panic and lose his head?”

“Goodlooking young fellow, and knows it. Never done a stroke of work he could help, I should say. Fancy manners. I can believe the blackmailing part of it all right. He’s the sort that must have money, and don’t care for the sweat of earning it.”

March said,

“That’s the sort that might panic and hit out. It wouldn’t have been planned. Say she threatened him. He pushed her, she went over the drop. And then he went down and finished her off for fear of what she would say. It looks to me as if it had been like that.”

“What about Miss Brand’s raincoat and scarf?”

March was frowning.

“Easy, as far as having access to them goes. He had only to fetch them, leave the coat lying across the back of the seat, get the stain on the scarf, and bring it back to where he took it from.”

Crisp looked up, brightly intent.

“And why would he want to do that?”

March said drily, “If Miss Brand were out of the way, his wife would come in for a very considerable sum of money which was left to her sister by the late Mr. Martin Brand.”

“Mrs. Felton didn’t get any of it?”

“No. I gather that Mr. Brand hadn’t much opinion of Cyril. He left everything to his niece Marian.”

Crisp jerked a nod.

“I remember hearing something about it-it made a lot of local talk. The next-door people didn’t get anything either- it all went to the one niece. It’s the sort of thing that makes bad feeling in a family. But if Miss Marian Brand was out of the way?”

“Then Mrs. Felton gets half, and the next-door people get half between them. Miss Silver is my informant. She always knows everything. And Marian Brand confirmed it to me yesterday, so it’s all according to Cocker. [4]”

“Then all the relations on both sides of the house would have some sort of a motive for putting a murder on Miss Marian Brand.”

March said very drily indeed,

“But only someone on her own side of the house could have taken her coat and her scarf to the scene of the crime and put the bloodstained scarf back again.”