Through the Wall

Chapter 41

Miss Silver pushed the door open and came into the room. Cassy Remington whisked round. For a moment those rather bright blue eyes of hers stared. Then she gave a little affected cry.

“Oh! You gave me quite a fright! What is it? How in the world did you come here? What do you want?” With each of the short sentences her voice was higher and angrier.

Miss Silver said very composedly,

“I want to make sure that Penny does not drink that coffee or take that tablet which you have laid out for her.”

Cassy Remington laughed, high and shrill.

“The tablet! Dear me-you must forgive me if I laugh! You can have it analysed if you like! And what a fool you will be making of yourself! I can show you the bottle it came out of. They are perfectly harmless tablets. My sister has taken them for years.”

Miss Silver coughed gently.

“How full was the bottle when you took it from Mrs. Brand’s room, and how empty is it now? It is that cup of coffee which should be analysed. I think I will take charge of it.”

She came up to the table as she spoke. But she had hardly lifted the cup before Cassy caught her by the wrist and dashed it from her hand. The cup fell, the coffee spilled upon the carpet. The blue eyes blazed in triumph.

“Now get it analysed!”

Miss Silver raised her voice and called, “Mr. Cunningham!”

It was plain that he had not remained on the far side of the door between the houses, since he was in the room before she had finished saying his name. Miss Silver addressed him immediately and without any sign of disturbance.

“Will you be so kind as to pick up that coffee-cup? The contents will have to be analysed.” Then, as he did so, “There should, I think, be enough of the coffee left to show whether it has been tampered with.”

He stood there with the cup in his hand, tilting it.

“There is about a third left, and a considerable white sediment.”

Penny had not moved, except to lift her eyes to Miss Silver’s face. They had a wide, fixed look. Cassy Remington stood beside the table, rigid with anger, her colour high. At Richard’s last word she made a sudden spring, catching at his hand and at the cup. But the attempt failed. The hand was lifted and the cup held high above her reach. In a kind of whirlwind of fury she ran out of the room and down the stairs.

Richard Cunningham said, “What now?” He brought his hand down and gave Miss Silver the cup. She said gravely,

“I think you should go after her, and I think you should be quick.”

She set down the cup, went over to the window, and opened it. The sound of running feet came to them, stumbling in their haste. She said gravely,

“You had better go through the other house and take Constable Wilkins with you. I will call up the police.”

She had a start of them. Richard Cunningham had to put his shoes on, lay hands on a torch, and collect Joe Wilkins from the kitchen. They went out of the back door and stood listening at the edge of the lawn where the steps went down towards the beach. She could have reached it, knowing every step of the way. But the tide was up, there was no sand to muffle her footsteps. If she moved upon the shingle, they would hear her. They heard nothing.

Descending from terrace to terrace, each was found to be empty. They came down the last steps and stood where the body of Helen Adrian had lain. The water did not come up so far. Even the highest tide with the wind behind it would not come up as far as the steps.

Richard spoke his thought aloud.

“She couldn’t get around the point.”

“Not either way-not for getting on for three hours, I should say.”

“Could she get away up the cove?”

Joe shook his head in the dark.

“Not likely-not her. I’ve done it when I was a boy, but I wouldn’t say I could do it now-not in the dark.”

They did what they could. Joe tramped in the shingle, making a circuit of the upper end of the cove, throwing the torchlight before him, whilst Richard stood on guard at the bottom of the steps. Listening to the noise which his boots made on the shingle, magnified by an echo from the steep sides of the cove, Richard considered that Cassy Remington had very little chance of getting away unheard. He began to wonder if they had missed her in the dark somewhere on one of the terraces, a supposition which brought a host of unwelcome fears in its train. Suppose she had doubled back into the house. If she was the murderer they had been looking for she might be insane, and was certainly dangerous. He endured some of the longest and most uncomfortable minutes of his life until the arrival of the police set him free to go back to the house. He had not imagined that he would ever greet Crisp with so much relief.

He found everyone up in both houses, and a state of furious activity prevailing, with Crisp at his most belligerent directing it. Everyone, of course, had done everything they shouldn’t. It was inexcusable that the coffee should have been spilt. It was inexcusable that Miss Remington should have been allowed to leave the house. For his part, he could not see why she had done so. He knew what he would call evidence, but apparently Miss Silver had different ideas about it. Admitting that the two-thirds-empty coffee-cup contained a sediment, it wasn’t for him to say what it was. All this in front of everyone in the drawing-room.

Miss Silver coughed with dignity.

“I have told you of the conversation which I was able to overhear between Miss Remington and Mrs. Brand, Inspector. This is confirmed by Mrs. Brand herself, and by Miss Penny Halliday who also overheard it. To all three of us it was, I think, evidence that Miss Remington intended to accuse Mr. Felix Brand. I do not think that any one of us believed that she would be telling the truth. When she told her sister she intended to tell the police that she had seen Mr. Felix come in off the road at twenty to five, Mrs. Brand replied, ‘And did you?’ After which Miss Remington attempted to frighten her sister into acquiescence by asserting that her dress would be found to be stained down the front with blood, as well as with the fruit juice spilled on it at lunch. If this proves to be the case, both Mr. Felix and Miss Penny, as well as Eliza Cotton, will tell you that Mrs. Brand sleeps heavily in the afternoon, and that it would be perfectly possible for the murderer to have wiped the knife on her dress without waking her up. I believe you will find that that is what Miss Remington did.”

Florence Brand stared between resentment and relief. To be told that she slept heavily-and in front of all those people! But to have Cassy make her out a murderess! She came down on the side of relief. She said in a dull voice,

“She was always spiteful from a child!”

The search for Cassy Remington went on. Lights flashed on the beach, and the sound of men’s voices came up. Nobody went to bed. Eliza made tea and brought it in. By an unspoken consensus of opinion no one suggested coffee.

It was during her second cup of tea that Florence Brand said in an affronted manner,

“I really cannot think where Cassy can be. We are all being kept out of our beds. It is most uncomfortable.”

Miss Silver coughed, and supplied the mot juste.

“Crime is an excessively uncomfortable thing, Mrs. Brand.”