A Moment on the Edge:100 Years of Crime Stories by women

by Elizabeth George

  “The rink. I was watching the skaters.”

  “Quite so. That meant you were facing away from the hotel.”

  “Yes.”

  “And yet you saw the man falling?”

  “Yes.”

  “What made you turn round?”

  I’d no doubt about that. It was the part of my story that everybody had been most concerned with at the time.

  “He shouted.”

  “Shouted what?”

  “Shouted ‘No.’”

  “When did he shout it?”

  I hesitated. Nobody had asked me that before because the answer was obvious.

  “When he fell.”

  “Of course, but at what point during his fall? I take it that it was before he landed on the roof over the dining room or you wouldn’t have turned round in time to see it.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you turned round in time to see him in the air and falling?”

  “Holmes, I don’t think you should…”

  “Oh, do be quiet, Watson. Well, Miss Jessica?”

  “Yes, he was in the air and falling.”

  “And he’d already screamed by then. So at what point did he scream?”

  I wanted to be clever and grown-up, to make him think well of me.

  “I suppose it was when she pushed him out of the window.”

  It was Square Bear’s face that showed most emotion. He screwed up his eyes, went red, and made little imploring signs with his furmittened hands, causing him to look more bear-like than ever. This time the protest was not at his friend, but at me. Silver Stick put up a hand to stop him saying anything, but his face had changed too, with a sharp V on the forehead. The voice was a shade less gentle.

  “When who pushed him out of the window?”

  “His wife, Mrs. McEvoy.”

  I wondered whether to add, “The woman you bowed to last night,” but decided against it.

  “Did you see her push him?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see Mrs. McEvoy at the window?”

  “No.”

  “And yet you tell me that Mrs. McEvoy pushed her husband out of the window. Why?”

  “Everybody knows she did.”

  I knew from the expression on Square Bear’s face that I’d gone badly wrong, but couldn’t see where. He, kindly man, must have guessed that because he started trying to explain to me.

  “You see, my dear, after many years with my good friend Mr. Holmes…”

  Yet again he was waved into silence.

  “Miss Jessica, Dr. Watson means well but I hope he will permit me to speak for myself. It’s a fallacy to believe that age in itself brings wisdom, but one thing it infallibly brings is experience. Will you permit me, from my experience if not from my wisdom, to offer you a little advice?”

  I nodded, not gracious now, just awed.

  “Then my advice is this: always remember that what everybody knows, nobody knows.”

  He used that voice like a skater uses his weight on the blade to skim or turn.

  “You say everybody knows that Mrs. McEvoy pushed her husband out of the window. As far as I know you are the only person in the world who saw Mr. McEvoy fall. And yet, as you’ve told me, you did not see Mrs. McEvoy push him. So who is this ‘everybody’ who can claim such certainty about an event which, as far as we know, nobody witnessed?”

  It’s miserable not knowing answers. What is nineteen times three? What is the past participle of the verb faire? I wanted to

  live up to him, but unwittingly he’d pressed the button that brought on the panic of the schoolroom. I blurted out: “He was very rich and she didn’t love him, and now she’s very rich and can do what she likes.”

  Again the bear’s fur mitts went up, scrabbling the air. Again he was disregarded.

  “So Mrs. McEvoy is rich and can do what she likes? Does it strike you that she’s happy?”

  “Holmes, how can a child know…?”

  I thought of the gypsy music, the gleaming dark fur, the pearls in her hair. I found myself shaking my head.

  “No. And yet she comes here again, exactly a year after her husband died, the very place in the world that you’d expect her to avoid at all costs. She comes here knowing what people are saying about her, making sure everybody has a chance to see her, holding her head high. Have you any idea what that must do to a woman?”

  This time Square Bear really did protest and went on protesting. How could he expect a child to know about the feelings of a mature woman? How could I be blamed for repeating the gossip of my elders? Really, Holmes, it was too much. This time too Silver Stick seemed to agree with him. He smoothed out the V shape in his forehead and apologized.

  “Let us, if we may, return to the surer ground of what you actually saw. I take it that the hotel has not been rebuilt in any way since last year.”

  I turned again to look at the back of the hotel. As far as I could see, it was just as it had been, the glass doors leading from the dining room and breakfast room onto the terrace, a tiled sloping roof above them. Then, joined onto the roof, the three main guest floors of the hotel. The top two floors were the ones that most people took because they had wrought-iron balconies where, on sunny days, you could stand to look at the mountains. Below them were the smaller rooms. They were less popular because, being directly above the kitchen and dining room, they suffered from noise and cooking smells and had no balconies.

  Silver Stick said to Square Bear: “That was the room they had last year, top floor, second from the right. So if he were pushed, he’d have to be pushed over the balcony as well as out of the window. That would take quite a lot of strength, wouldn’t you say?”

  The next question was to me. He asked if I’d seen Mr. McEvoy before he fell out of the window and I said yes, a few times.

  “Was he a small man?”

  “No, quite big.”

  “The same size as Dr. Watson here, for instance?”

  Square Bear straightened his broad shoulders, as if for military inspection.

  “He was fatter.”

  “Younger or older?”

  “Quite old. As old as you are.”

  Square Bear made a chuffing sound and his shoulders slumped a little.

  “So we have a man about the same age as our friend Watson and heavier. Difficult, wouldn’t you say, for any woman to push him anywhere against his will?”

  “Perhaps she took him by surprise, told him to lean out and look at something, then swept his legs off the floor.”

  That wasn’t my own theory. The event had naturally been analyzed in all its aspects the year before and all the parental care in the world couldn’t have kept it from me.

  “A touching picture. Shall we come back to things we know for certain? What about the snow? Was there as much snow as this last year?”

  “I think so. It came up above my knees last year. It doesn’t quite this year, but then I’ve grown.”

  Square Bear murmured: “They’ll keep records of that sort of thing.”

  “Just so, but we’re also grateful for Miss Jessica’s calibrations. May we trouble you with just one more question?”

  I said yes rather warily.

  “You’ve told us that just before you turned round and saw him falling you heard him shout ‘No.’ What sort of ‘No’ was it?”

  I was puzzled. Nobody had asked me that before.

  “Was it an angry ‘No?’ A protesting ‘No?’ The kind of ‘No’ you’d shout if somebody were pushing you over a balcony?”

  The other man looked as if he wanted to protest again but kept quiet. The intensity in Silver Stick’s eyes would have frozen a brook in mid-babble. When I didn’t answer at once he visibly made himself relax and his voice went softer.

  “It’s hard for you to remember, isn’t it? Everybody was so sure that it was one particular sort of ‘No’ that they’ve fixed their version in your mind. I want you to do something for me, if you would be so kind. I want you to forget
that Dr. Watson and I are here and stand and look down at the ice rink just as you were doing last year. I want you to clear your mind of everything else and think that it really is last year and you’re hearing that shout for the first time. Will you do that?”

  I faced away from them. First I looked at this year’s skaters then I closed my eyes and tried to remember how it had been. I felt the green itchy scarf round my neck, the cold getting to my toes and fingers as I waited. I heard the cry and it was all I could do not to turn round and see the body tumbling again. When I opened my eyes and looked at them they were still waiting patiently.

  “I think I’ve remembered.”

  “And what sort of ‘No’ was it?”

  It was clear in my mind but hard to put into words.

  “It…it was as if he’d been going to say something else if he’d had time. Not just no. No something.”

  “No something what?”

  More silence while I thought about it, then a prompt from Square Bear.

  “Could it have been a name, my dear?”

  “Don’t put any more ideas into her head. You thought he was going to say something after the no, but you don’t know what, is that it?”

  “Yes, like no running, or no cakes today, only that wasn’t it. Something you couldn’t do.”

  “Or something not there, like the cakes?”

  “Yes, something like that. Only it couldn’t have been, could it?”

  “Couldn’t? If something happened in a particular way, then it happened, and there’s no could or couldn’t about it.”

  It was the kind of thing governesses said, but he was smiling now and I had the idea that something I’d said had pleased him.

  “I see your mother and sister coming, so I’m afraid we must end this very useful conversation. I am much obliged to you for your powers of observation. Will you permit me to ask you some more questions if any more occur to me?”

  I nodded.

  “Is it a secret?”

  “Do you want it to be?”

  “Holmes, I don’t think you should encourage this young lady…”

  “My dear Watson, in my observation there’s nothing more precious you can give a child to keep than a secret.”

  My mother came across the terrace with Amanda. Silver Stick and Square Bear touched their hats to her and hoped we enjoyed our walk. When she asked me later what we’d been talking about. I said they’d asked whether the snow was as deep last year and hugged the secret of my partnership. I became in my imagination eyes and ears for him. At the children’s party at teatime on Christmas Eve the parents talked in low tones, believing that we were absorbed in the present-giving round the hotel tree. But it would have taken more than the porter in red robe and white whiskers or his largesse of three wooden geese on a string to distract me from my work. I listened and stored up every scrap against the time when he’d ask me questions again. And I watched Mrs. McEvoy as she went round the hotel through Christmas Eve

  and Christmas Day, pale and upright in her black and her jewels, trailing silence after her like the long train of a dress.

  My call came on Boxing Day. There was another snowball fight in the hotel grounds, for parents as well this time. I stood back from it all and waited by a little clump of bare birches and, sure enough, Silver Stick and Square Bear came walking over to me.

  “I’ve found out a lot about her,” I said.

  “Have you indeed?”

  “He was her second husband. She had another one she loved more, but he died of a fever. It was when they were visiting Egypt a long time ago.”

  “Ten years ago.”

  Silver Stick’s voice was remote. He wasn’t even looking at me.

  “She got married to Mr. McEvoy three years ago. Most people said it was for his money, but there was an American lady at the party and she said Mr. McEvoy seemed quite nice when you first knew him and he was interested in music and singers, so perhaps it was one of those marriages where people quite like each other without being in love, you know?”

  I thought I’d managed that rather well. I’d tried to make it like my mother talking to her friends and it sounded convincing in my ears. I was disappointed at the lack of reaction, so brought up my big guns.

  “Only she didn’t stay liking him because after they got married she found out about his eye.”

  “His eye?”

  A reaction at last, but from Square Bear, not Silver Stick. I grabbed for the right word and clung to it.

  “Roving. It was a roving eye. He kept looking at other ladies and she didn’t like it.”

  I hoped they’d understand that it meant looking in a special way. I didn’t know myself exactly what special way, but the adults talking among themselves at the party had certainly understood. But it seemed I’d overestimated these two because they were just standing there staring at me. Perhaps Silver Stick wasn’t as clever

  as I’d thought. I threw in my last little oddment of information,

  something anybody could understand.

  “I found out her first name. It’s Irene.”

  Square Bear cleared his throat. Silver Stick said nothing. He was looking over my head at the snowball fight.

  “Holmes, I really think we should leave Jessica to play with her little friends.”

  “Not yet. There’s something I wanted to ask her. Do you remember the staff at the hotel last Christmas?”

  Here was a dreadful comedown. I’d brought him a head richly crammed with love, money, and marriages and he was asking about the domestics. Perhaps the disappointment on my face looked like stupidity because his voice became impatient.

  “The people who looked after you, the porters and the waiters and the maids, especially the maids.”

  “They’re the same…I think.” I was running them through my head. There was Petra with her thick plaits who brought us our cups of chocolate, fat Renata who made our beds, gray-haired Ulrike with her limp.

  “None left?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Then the memory came to me of blond curls escaping from a maid’s uniform cap and a clear voice singing as she swept the corridors, blithe as a bird.

  “There was Eva, but she got married.”

  “Who did she marry?”

  “Franz, the man who’s got the sleigh.”

  It was flying down the drive as I spoke, silver bells jangling, the little horse gold in the sunshine.

  “A good marriage for a hotel maid.”

  “Oh, he didn’t have the sleigh last year. He was only the under porter.”

  “Indeed. Watson, I think we must have a ride in this sleigh. Will you see the head porter about booking it?”

  I hoped he might invite me to go with them but he said nothing about that. Still, he seemed to be in a good temper again—although I couldn’t see that it was from anything I’d told him.

  “Miss Jessica, again I’m obliged to you. I may have yet another favor to ask, but all in good time.”

  I went reluctantly to join the snowballers as the two of them walked through the snow back to the hotel.

  That afternoon, on our walk, they went past us on their way down the drive in Franz’s sleigh. It didn’t look like a pleasure trip. Franz’s handsome face was serious and Holmes was staring straight ahead. Instead of turning up toward the forest at the end of the hotel drive they turned left for the village. Our walk also took us to the village because Father wanted to see an old man about getting a stick carved. When we walked down the little main street we saw the sleigh and horse standing outside a neat chalet with green shutters next to the church. I knew it was Franz’s own house and wondered what had become of his passengers. About half an hour later, when we’d seen about Father’s stick, we walked back up the street and there were Holmes and Watson standing on the balcony outside the chalet with Eva, the maid from last year. Her fair hair was as curly as ever but her head was bent. She seemed to be listening intently to something that Holmes was saying and the dro
op of her shoulders told me she wasn’t happy.

  “Why is Silver Stick talking to her?”

  Amanda, very properly, was rebuked for staring and asking questions about things that didn’t concern her. Being older and wiser, I said nothing but kept my secret coiled in my heart. Was it Eva who pushed him? Would they lock her up in prison? A little guilt stirred along with the pleasure, because he wouldn’t have known about Eva if I hadn’t told him, but not enough to spoil it. Later I watched from our window hoping to see the sleigh coming back, but it didn’t that day. Instead, just before it got dark, Holmes and Watson came back on foot up the drive, walking fast, saying nothing.

  Next morning, Square Bear came up to Mother at coffee time. “I wonder if you would permit Miss Jessica to take a short walk with me on the terrace.”

  Mother hesitated, but Square Bear was so obviously respectable, and anyway you could see the terrace from the coffee room. I put on my hat, cape, and gloves and walked with him out of the glass doors into the cold air. We stood looking down at the rink, in exactly the same place as I’d been standing when they first spoke to me. I knew that was no accident. Square Bear’s fussiness, the tension in his voice that he was so unsuccessful in hiding, left no doubt of it. There was something odd about the terrace, too—far more people on it than would normally be the case on a cold morning. There must have been two dozen or so standing round in stiff little groups, talking to each other, waiting.

  “Where’s Mr. Holmes?”

  Square Bear looked at me, eyes watering from the cold.

  “The truth is, my dear, I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing. He gave me my instructions at breakfast and I haven’t seen him since.”

  “Instructions about me?”

  Before he could answer, the scream came. It was a man’s scream, tearing through the air like a saw blade, and there was a word in it. The word was “No.” I turned with the breath choking in my throat and, just as there’d been last year, there was a dark thing in the air, its clothes flapping out round it. A collective gasp from the people on the terrace, then a soft thump as the thing hit the deep snow on the restaurant roof and began sliding. I heard “No” again and this time it was my own voice, because I knew from last year what was coming next—the slide down the steep roof gathering snow as it came, the flop onto the terrace only a few yards from where I was standing, the arm sticking out.