by Bruce, Leo
“Locked? “repeated Mrs Derosse.
“Yes. I wanted to break it in but the bishop thinks we should wait for the police.”
“There!” said the woman. “That shows she meant to do it, doesn’t it? Locking herself in, like that. You’d think people would have more consideration.”
This brought no reply.
The rest of that night I shall describe briefly, though it seemed endless at the time and there was daylight before we eventually got to bed.
Two plain-clothes men arrived from Belstock and seemed reasonably efficient. They took statements from everyone, including the man and woman, who were afterwards taken back to their camp in a police-car, the police promising to see what could be done about their boat. It was recovered, I heard afterwards, and returned to its owner.
The door of Sonia’s room was opened, but no one except the police was allowed to enter. They spent a considerable time there that night, and early on the following morning others were there for an hour or mpre, looking for fingerprints I presumed.
Lawson and Jerrison returned and, though Lawson was almost incoherent, Jerrison was able to give the police a description of what they had found. It was not, I was told, for me to hear, though Mrs Jerrison later gave me very horrid descriptions of it.
My informant was again Mrs Jerrison when I heard that, after considerable searching, the original key of Sonia’s room was found on the rocks not far from the body, which meant, according to Mrs Jerrison, that it had been in her hand when she fell.
I did not see the couple again before the inquest, when I heard that their name was Grimburn—Lionel and Freda Grimburn, of Grays, Essex. But already on the night of the tragedy I gained a hint of how the story would develop with their growing narrative enthusiasm as time went on. As we heard it first it was fairly simply that of a girl sitting quietly on a balcony then diving—this word was never omitted—into space. The police got a rather more vivid version. “There she was, framed in the lighted window like someone in a picture one minute and in the next she had gone crashing to her death on the rocks below.” “How do you know that?” asked one of the policemen, for this was before the return of Lawson and Jerrison. “Well, it stands to reason,” said Mr Grimburn. “From that height, I mean.”
By the time the coroner heard the story it had further embellishments. She had looked peaceful up there. The Grimburns couldn’t help noticing how peaceful she looked. Then—ough, it was like a bird taking off. Only she wasn’t a bird, poor thing. She went straight down. Like a stone. To be killed instantly on the rocks. It was horrible. The Grimburns would never get over it. Never. The most horrible thing they’d ever seen.
I wondered, in my no doubt heartless way, how many times they had already told the story in the Merrydown Holiday Camp, and how many more times they would tell it to reporters and to friends when they returned to Grays.
Meanwhile, I myself said nothing about Sonia’s visit to me that evening and I was relieved to find that no one, so far as I could judge, had any inkling of it. I suppose it was my duty to give full details of it to the police, but I was able to answer their few questions without lying and salved my conscience that way. I did not want to become any further involved and if this had, as it seemed, been suicide, I did not see what purpose would be served by anyone knowing that she had tried to leave some document with me.
But I wondered what had become of it. Had she hidden it somewhere in the house or persuaded another guest or one of the Derosses to take charge of it?
I tried Mrs Jerrison. “I wonder what became of her bag,” I said. “That would surely help to show whether it was suicide or not. A woman wouldn’t jump to her death with her bag in her hand, would she?”
“She didn’t,” said Mrs Jerrison positively. “I know that because I saw one of the policemen taking it out of the house with him. They must have found it in her room. Though what they found in it I can’t say.”
Perhaps the strangest part of the whole thing was the silence in which it took place. The Grimburns heard no sound from Sonia and, if she had made any, surely Mrs Derosse in the room below, with an open window, would have heard it. But she says she heard nothing.
9
THESE were the last words in Helena Gort’s journal and Carolus put it down and looked at his watch. Twenty past three. He did not hesitate or ponder over what he had read but reached for the switch and, leaving himself in darkness, turned over to sleep.
Helena Gort came down to breakfast, moving as usual without hesitation.
“What do you think about it? “she asked at once.
“I’m going there,” said Carolus. “I’m distinctly interested. But I don’t think you’d better come with me. Send for your things and go somewhere else.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“You know just what I mean. It’s dangerous.”
Helena laughed. “Oh don’t be absurd. What danger can there be for me?”
“My dear Helena, that is precisely what Sonia Reid
thought. You yourself describe her, on the very night of her death, as being apparently quite unafraid.”
“Then you think she was murdered?”
Carolus was silent a moment. “Unlike the coroner’s,” he said at least, “mine would be an open verdict at this point.”
“If so, there was some reason in her case. What reason could there possibly be in mine?”
“You say ‘possibly’. I can tell you a possible reason straight away. I don’t say probable, mind you. Suppose there is someone in that house to whom the document Sonia wanted you to take means life or death. Suppose that he or she—shall we say?—caused Sonia’s death in order to obtain possession of it. Suppose in the meantime she had handed it to someone else or hidden it, so that the murderer failed to obtain it. Suppose the murderer knew she went to see you that evening. None of those suppositions are far-fetched and they do point inevitably to danger for you.”
“I’m certainly going back,” said Helena Gort. “For one thing, I doubt if you would get in without me. You’re my nephew or my stepson or something. Mrs Derosse has her niece to ‘put things right’, surely I can have a nephew to look after me?”
“I see your point. I still think you should move.”
“No one will know who you are,” went on Helena Gort as though she had not heard him. “It isn’t as though you were one of these really famous investigators. You just come to stay and use your eyes and ears. I’m going back anyway, so if you really think there’s danger in the place you ought to come.”
“I will.”
When Carolus told Mrs Stick that he would like her to have a good holiday and therefore intended to close the house, her feelings seemed to be mixed.
“I’mnot saying we shouldn’t like a bit of a holiday,” she said. “Especially if we can get down to Clacton. Stick dearly loves a day’s shrimping and there’s nothing does his sciatica good like the salt water. Only how are we to enjoy ourselves when we daren’t so much as pick the paper up in the morning for fear of seeing you mixed up in something? I was only saying to Stick, we shan’t be able to see a paper next, not without not knowing whether you haven’t got yourself into trouble. I did think this lady, a friend of your mother’s and that, would know better than to lead you into anything, but no, there it was,’ suspects’. I heard it as plain as could be. What are we to think?”
“You go and have your holiday,” said Carolus. “You won’t see my name in any papers, I promise you.”
“I’m sure I hope not, sir.”
At eleven o’clock Carolus and Helena drove off in his Bentley Continental, the car which one of his colleagues on the school staff had called ‘a piece of sheer exhibitionism’.
“You know,” said Carolus, “I don’t think your idea of my being your nephew is a very good one. I think I’d rather chance Mrs Derosse not admitting me, but say straight out that you have invited me because I’ve got a certain amount of experience of this sort of thing. After all
, unless she has anything to conceal she ought to be glad rather than sorry.”
“And her guests?”
“It’s not as though I am a policeman. They’ll probably want to talk—most of them.”
“Just as you think, Carolus. I have a feeling that Christine won’t be too pleased.”
“Oh. Why?”
“I don’t know. She has a reputation for being able to handle things herself.”
“We can only try.”
They were successful but perhaps only because Christine was out when they reached Cat’s Cradle and they interviewed Mrs Derosse alone.
“There is a room, isn’t there?” said Helena at once. “The one Christine had before she moved into the room in the tower.”
“Yes, there is a room. I wasn’t thinking of letting it while things are like this.”
Carolus longed to ask ‘like what?’ but resisted it.
“Mr Deene is a very old friend of mine, Mrs Derosse. In fact I knew his mother. He has a flair for clearing up mysteries of this sort and I’ve no doubt would soon have your place back to its old self.”
“You mean, he’s a detective?”
Carolus wished his least favourite pupil Rupert Priggley could hear this. It would make him wince.
“Nothing so old-fashioned,” said Helena. “He just seems to sense how these things happen.”
“I don’t think Christine would be very pleased. She wants to clear this up herself.”
“Oh come now, Mrs Derosse. I’m simply asking you to let a room to my old friend Carolus Deene.”
“I don’t see how I can refuse. But I do hope it’s not going to cause more trouble.”
“You do want the whole thing dissipated, don’t you?”
Mrs Derosse tried a feeble retort. “But it is. Sonia’s death has been proved suicide and Lydia Mallister’s we know was her heart.”
“Then why, if there is nothing strange about all this, are your guests in a state which I can only call one of terror? Why does everyone lock his door and watch every move of the others? Why have they all got the jitters?”
Mrs Derosse sat down rather heavily.
“I know,” she said.
Helena followed her advantage.
“Do you think Lydia Mallister died naturally? Do you believe Sonia committed suicide?”
“No,” admitted Mrs Derosse. “Yet I don’t see how either of them could be murder.”
“Carolus will,” said Helena confidently, forgetting the object of the argument. “He’s capable of finding a murder in any set of circumstances, I assure you.”
“But I don’t want …”
“It would clear the air,” said Helena finally and the arrangement was made.
But, as Mrs Derosse and Helena anticipated, it did not please Christine. She drove up half an hour later in her pale-blue sports car and gave a disdainful look at the Bentley as she passed it. She must have heard from her aunt the identity of its owner because, when she came into the lounge to find Helena and Carolus alone, she was obviously controlling great annoyance.
“Oh, Christine,” said Helena pleasantly, “this is Carolus Deene.”
“I know,” said Christine with a short nod, “my aunt told me you had come to stay here. I’m sorry I was out. I will tell you frankly, Mr Deene, I should have asked her not to let you have a room.”
Carolus smiled. “I’m an undesirable?”
“In the circumstances, yes. I know all about you. I’ve read your cases. I can quite see that this must be a nice little mystery for you. Just the sort of thing you like. But does it ever occur to you, Mr Deene, that people’s lives are not all crossword puzzles for your amusement? My aunt has her living to make. It’s rather more important to us than providing you with an intriguing summer holiday.”
“I’m sorry you should feel that. I do enjoy trying to find the truth in complicated cases. I won’t deny it. But I don’t think of people as chess pieces, either, Miss Derosse. If your aunt is the innocent victim of circumstances, I shall do all I can to be of assistance to her.”
Christine swung round, flushed with anger. “If my aunt,” she said, “If my aunt is innocent! Are you suggesting …”
“Miss Derosse, you must surely know that I must approach this with an open mind. It naturally seems absurd to you who know your aunt and are fond of her …”
Suddenly Christine smiled. “I was forgetting that part of the formula,” she said.
“Thank you,” said Carol us.
“I’ll admit this, so far as I know anything about you, you don’t look for publicity. What I dislike is that this place which is my aunt’s pride, in fact her whole life, should be turned into a sort of haunted house at the fair.”
“That,” said Carolus, “has happened already, with two deaths, police inquiries, and an inquest. I’m not raising the dust any further. There can’t really be much peace here till you know the truth, even if the truth is just what it appears to be to the outsider.”
“I want to know the truth, too,” said Christine.
“Then help me to find it.”
Christine considered. “I won’t obstruct you,” she said.
“You won’t tell me all you know?”
“All I know? What do you think I know about it that the police don’t?”
“Quite a lot. For instance, what did Sonia Reid talk to you about on the night of her death?”
“To me?”
“Yes, Miss Derosse.”
“I don’t remember her talking to me that night.”
“You don’t? She did not ask you a favour, by any chance?”
Christine pulled at her cigarette.
“So you’ve started already. And on me. What makes you think Sonia would ask me a favour?”
“Because you were probably the only person in the house she could trust.”
“What favour?”
“Just to look after something.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“All right, Miss Derosse. Only I thought you were not going to obstruct me.”
“I didn’t promise to help you, either. Let’s have a drink,” said Christine. She seemed to feel some relief.
“Where are you going to start? “she asked Carolus over a dry martini.
“In the holiday camp, of course.”
“Have you ever been to one?”
“No.”
“You’ll find it fascinating. What do you think Mr and Mrs Grimburn can tell you?”
“Too much, I’m afraid. I should think their story by now is so over-rehearsed that it will be difficult to extract any of its pristine truth. But I can try.”
“You can. You certainly won’t have any difficulty in making them talk.”
“You see, that does seem to be the crux of the thing. What caused that young woman to go hurtling off into space? Was it pre-determined or accidental? Voluntary or involuntary? These are the first questions, aren’t they? It’s the old trio—murder, suicide or accident. It just might be that something those moonlight boaters saw will help me judge that.”
“I shouldn’t be too hopeful. And you’ll have to hear a lot more.”
Carolus grinned. “I’m rather used to that. It’s nearly always too much—or too little.”
Bishop Grissell came in and Christine introduced Carolus, explaining his identity.
“Not much in my line, I’m afraid,” said the bishop, stoutly.
When his sister joined them she was even more direct. “You mean you’re a detective? “she snorted at Carolus.
“I’m a schoolmaster,” replied Carolus smugly. “But with insatiable curiosity.”
Phiz said: “Phuh!”
“He asks the most devastating questions,” said Christine, beginning to enjoy herself. “He’ll probably ask you where you were on the night of the crime, Miss Grissell.”
“What crime?” asked Phiz loftily.
“The first,” said Carolus. “The death of Lydia Mallister.” He wat
ched her closely.
“Have I walked into a mad-house?” asked Phiz.
Carolus resisted the temptation to say’ Not yet’. “Don’t worry, Miss Grissell,” he said. “I shan’t ask any questions you don’t want to answer.”
“That’s impudent,” said Phiz.
“I’m sorry. I meant it to be reassuring.”
“Have you any official status in this matter?”
“Oh, none whatever.”
“Then why should we be expected to answer any questions of yours?”
“People sometimes want to help me arrive at the truth.”
“Jesting Pilate, eh?” said the bishop heartily. “Phiz, my dear, I’ve no doubt Mr Deene means to be helpful.”
When the Gee-Gees appeared they were even more conciliatory than the bishop. Miss Grey, it appeared, had read books about Carolus’s investigations and was most interested, she said, to meet him.
“Particularly if you manage to relieve us all of our doubts over this nasty series of incidents, Mr Deene. This was, I assure you, a most peaceful and happy little community before …”
“Yes, Miss Grey; before what?” asked Carol us.
Miss Grey was confused.
“Well, I suppose …”
Miss Godwin came to her assistance.
“Before Lydia Mallister’s death,” she said firmly.
The Natterleys did not appear before lunch, but when the meal was over they waited for Carolus to be introduced to them.
“We understand that you are here to investigate,” said the Major. “We would like you to know that anything we can tell you that may assist you is entirely at your disposal.”
“We have tried not to involve ourselves in the talk which has followed these very unpleasant events,” his wife added. “But naturally, living in the house, it has been impossible for us not to observe and hear certain things.”
“You will find we have a certain amount of information which will be of the greatest importance to you,” stated Major Natterley. “And when you reach a point in your investigations at which it will be helpful to you we shall be only too ready to give it to you.”