I looked after him in perturbation. He was in a dangerous mood. And he was not such a numskull as I had imagined. He had seen the truth that morning, and – almost superhumanly, it must have been – concealed his terrible knowledge under his usual demeanour of cynical trifling. And he had been intending himself to kill Scott-Davies. He had been saved from committing murder, and he was not grateful. That he cherished such ridiculous feelings towards myself was of no importance; De Ravel’s enmity, hidden or open, could affect me or my affairs not a whit. But was it safe to permit him to associate with his wife while he remained in this mood? Hardly.
I went to the drawing-room window and, succeeding in attracting the attention of John, beckoned him outside, where I acquainted him with the purport of this remarkable interview. John undertook to arrange things so that Mrs de Ravel should be in no danger that night at least. It was something to do with a reshufflement of the bedrooms, and he went indoors again to pass the warning on to Ethel. I lingered in the garden, grateful for the cool air and the solitude.
It had grown dark now, and, leaning against a tree, so absorbed was in my own meditations that the first knowledge I had of being no longer alone was a hand clutching suddenly at mine. I turned about with a violent start, and became aware of Armorel’s dark green dress at my side.
‘Pinkie,’ she whispered urgently. ‘I had to come and ask you something. Don’t be furious. I simply had to.’
‘Of course I won’t’ I said gently.
‘Are you,’ she gasped, ‘are you – you are terribly in love with Elsa, aren’t you?’
‘Really, Armorel,’ I said stiffly. ‘Does that matter?’
‘Yes – oh, yes. Of course it does. Can’t you see?’
For a moment I thought that the shock had turned the poor girl’s brain, and she was suffering from the delusion of being violently in love with me. But there was nothing of the kind in the face that was turned to me. Anxiety, fear, suspense, desperation even; but insanity, no.
‘No,’ I replied more kindly. ‘I must confess I can’t. Why do you ask such a thing?’
‘Because I must know. I must. Please tell me. Pinkie, you are in love with her, aren’t you?’
‘Well, if you must know,’ I replied, puzzled by her apparently desperate anxiety that I should be in love with Miss Verity, ‘no, I am not.’
She shrank back as if I had made a threatening movement. ‘Oh, Pinkie,’ she wailed softly, and fumbled for her handkerchief.
‘My dear girl,’ I said in bewilderment, ‘what is all this about?’
‘Why, because you – you didn’t do it for her, then. You did it – because of what I said this morning. Oh, Pinkie, I – I made you do it,’
I may perhaps be pardoned for the slight exasperation I showed. ‘Are you accusing me of having shot your cousin, Armorel?’ I said tartly. ‘Because if so let me give you the satisfaction of informing you that I didn’t shoot him on your behalf, or on Miss Verity’s behalf, or on De Ravel’s behalf, or on anyone’s behalf. In fact, I’m sorry to disappoint you and all the others, but I didn’t shoot him at all.’
Armorel looked at me dubiously. ‘You didn’t? Oh! Well, I suppose you’d hardly say so if you had, would you? But – well, it does sound a beastly thing to say, but I’ve got over the shock now, and – and I’m glad. And if you had, I wanted to – to thank you. But as you didn’t…’
Her voice trailed off. She stood looking at me for a moment as if expecting me to say something, but I did not speak. She turned and walked slowly back into the house.
I was considerably more disconcerted than I had shown. Nobody seemed to have the least doubt that I had calmly walked down from Mrs Fitzwilliam’s side and shot Eric Scott-Davies. The thing was already an open secret. My denials were calmly put aside. It was intolerable.
A shadow detached itself from the other shadows and came towards me.
‘Mr Pinkerton,’ said a deep, throbbing voice, ‘I heard what you said to Armorel. You did not deceive her. Still less did you deceive me. Why did you kill my lover, Mr Pinkerton?’
I admit freely that I simply fled into the house.
chapter eight
I can pass with some brevity over the events of the next day. I myself was not called upon to submit to another questioning by the superintendent, though a number of interviews were held of which the importance to myself will be obvious later. The greater part of the day, however, was occupied by the police in searching for material facts on the scene of the death (I would not, unlike some others, prejudge the issue by describing it as the scene of the ‘crime’), instead of for personal fancies among the persons so intimately concerned.
My own urgent instinct was to follow the police down to the clearing by the stream and watch their activities there, even from concealment. I reflected, however, that in the event of my being discovered thus spying on them, the action would be held strongly against me; and my judgment repressed the impulse. Besides, John was to some extent in the confidence of the police and had accompanied them, and I should be able to get a tolerably accurate version of their actions and their discoveries, if any, later from him.
It will be readily understood that my situation now was an exceedingly awkward one. With the exception of Miss Verity, each single member of the party had given me to understand, in unmistakable terms, that he or she had no doubt of my responsibility for Eric’s death. It is true that this did not in all cases imply condemnation but rather the reverse, but it was a position which I could not but feel acutely. And yet what could I do? Nothing, so far as I could see, but wait: wait for the police to learn of this general suspicion, as it seemed to me they inevitably must. And then what would happen? I told myself over and over again what I knew to be perfectly true in fact, that the police would never make an arrest on so grave a charge on mere suspicion alone, that they must have solid evidence to support it, that a presumed motive and opportunity were not enough by themselves, and that in my case for the life of me I could not see how any such evidence could be forthcoming; yet I derived singularly little comfort from such reflections. It was as if I stood trapped on the crumbling edge of a precipice, unable to retreat, yet knowing that the ground beneath my feet must inevitably give way under me sooner or later.
During the morning I endeavoured to distract my gloomy apprehensions by a brisk walk down the valley to the little cove where the stream discharged into the sea, but for once the wild beauty of the scenery failed to grip me. Just beyond the confines of John’s land I noticed as I passed a patient angler holding a rod and line over the stream. I am no fisherman myself, but I know the rudiments of the sport and it was evident that this one did not. He did not appear to be dangling a worm, and he was certainly not casting a fly; he was instead sitting on a camp stool on the bank, in full view of any fish there might have been, watching a float, of all things, dancing in the shallows of the swiftly running water; in other words, he was not even attempting to fish a pool!
Dismissing him contemptuously as a foolish summer visitor, completely ignorant of the sport which he was endeavouring to practise, I passed on. About a mile further I sat down for a few minutes in an effort to force myself to admire the view. It was a favourite resting place of mine, and I remembered that the last time I had sat here had been in the company of Elsa Verity. I cannot say I was sorry that she was not here with me now; she alone of the party had not launched that terrible accusation against me, and in her case it would come loaded with unspeakable tragedy. I could only hope that the monstrous idea had not occurred to her. In the meantime her continued absence was without doubt a relief.
Chancing to glance upstream, I noticed that the ridiculous fisherman had set up his stool right in the bend of the stream where it passed out of my vision, and was industriously fishing in the shallows there with his absurd float. Anxious to avoid the sight of any other human being as one does when one is in trouble (a survival of the animal instinct of our simian ancestors, no doubt, with perhaps an indication
that they were not gregarious), I got up and walked round the next bend. As I rounded it I glanced back. The man was hurriedly collecting his impedimenta together.
It did not need any wits I may possess to realize that I was being shadowed. I was ‘under observation’.
Well, it could only have been expected. I did not allow the fact to interfere with the need I felt for exercise. I completed my walk to the coast, sat on the shore for a few minutes, covertly glancing at my shadower on the top of the cliff behind me, and returned to the farm for lunch.
After washing my hands in the bathroom it chanced that I found I required a clean handkerchief, and went to my bedroom to obtain one. Orderliness in small details is one of my foibles (if indeed so sensible a habit can be thus termed), and I invariably keep my handkerchiefs and my collars in the same drawer of any chest-of-drawers which I happen to be occupying, the right-hand top one, with the handkerchiefs on the right front corner, my soft collars in the rest of the front of the drawer, and my stiff collars at the back. Pulling open the drawer in question now, I noticed at once a stiff collar right in the front of the drawer; the next instant I noticed that the stack of handkerchiefs, which I invariably keep with their edges parallel with the sides of the drawer, was twisted slightly askew.
For a moment I thought that a careless maid had been tampering with the contents. Then a stab of suspicion shot through me and I hastily examined the contents of the other drawers. There was not a doubt about it: all had been slightly but unmistakably disturbed. My possessions had been searched.
Why a momentary but most acute feeling of alarm, almost of panic, should for an instant have made my knees tremble and my mouth go dry, I am unable to say. I knew perfectly well what I had done and what I had not done, and I knew with my conscious mind that a police search of my possessions could not harm me in the slightest degree; there was naturally nothing for them to find. It was instructive afterwards to note how this conscious knowledge was for an instant utterly swamped in blind fear, and how utterly for a second or two the subconscious, with its inbred terror of falling into the clutches of the police, took possession of me.
A minute later I had pulled myself together, and went down to lunch.
After the meal I made an opportunity to ask John about the morning’s news.
It appeared that the superintendent had been trying to trace Eric’s path from the glade where we had left him to the spot where his body was found, but without the least success. It had not rained for over a week and the ground was consequently hard. No identifiable footprints could be deciphered, and even the traces I was supposed to have made in dragging Eric from the centre of the glade to the edge were hardly discernible. As for crushed grass and broken fronds of bracken and so on, these were in abundance everywhere, both in the track where Scott-Davies had been lying and also in the other track connecting the two glades, as well as in the smaller glade itself. The superintendent had remarked with disgust that apparently a herd of cattle might have been through the place, and John had disconcerted him by replying that undoubtedly a herd of cattle had been through the place, for they came down to the stream to water and on hot days would spend some time in the shade on its banks, wandering anywhere along them. The superintendent then promptly gave up the search for incriminating traces, and the police had wasted most of their morning. And not only down by the stream, I thought, my mind on my own disarranged drawers.
I should perhaps have said that the earlier part of the morning had been occupied, it seemed, in questioning the house servants, but John did not imagine that anything of importance could have been learned from them. I was not to know till later how exceedingly wrong this assumption proved to be.
‘And De Ravel?’ I asked. ‘Everything all right there?’
John nodded. ‘Apparently, quite. They had separate rooms last night, and of course that’ll continue. But Ethel says there’s nothing to be feared. She had a word, tactfully, with Sylvia last night, and she told Ethel in confidence that they had it out yesterday and that all De Ravel’s anger was directed against Eric, not against Sylvia at all.’
‘That’s strange,’ I suggested.
‘I don’t think so. Remember, Paul’s half Latin, and he has the Latin respect for genuine love. Sylvia told him frankly that she was genuinely in love with Eric, and he promptly forgave her anything she’d done. I should imagine, too, that he felt rather humbled by the shock of discovering that she wasn’t in love with himself, and you know how he puts her on a pedestal; anything she does is ipso facto right, even unfaithfulness.’
‘It’s an attitude I can hardly pretend to understand, but no doubt one should not condemn it on that account. But in that case, if Mrs de Ravel was able to convince him that it was a case of real love, why should his feelings be so strong against Eric? There was no doubt of them last night. The fellow was beside himself with hatred.’
‘Ah,’ said John, ‘because he didn’t believe there was any love on Eric’s side at all. Just one of his usual conquests. You can imagine how he’d take that, in the case of his goddess. In fact,’ added John seriously, ‘I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Sylvia deliberately told him so, or at any rate gave him the impression. And with full knowledge of what the consequences might be.’
I whistled. ‘You realize what you’re implying, John? You imply that Mrs de Ravel wilfully incited her husband to commit murder.’
John’s serious expression deepened. ‘I know. And I wouldn’t put it past her. It was after the engagement had been announced, remember; and it’s my opinion that Sylvia would have stuck at nothing, absolutely nothing, to prevent Eric walking off with Elsa under her nose. It would have been a mortal blow to her vanity; and with a woman like Sylvia her vanity is sacrosanct.’
I removed my pince-nez and polished them on my handkerchief. I have noticed it as a habit of mine, purely nervous, when I am deliberating an important statement.
‘After all of which,’ I said slowly, ‘Eric is shot.’
John caught the implied question. ‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘During all of which. This happened after they left you and Eric, to go to the places where they were to wait, and before they returned here. During the time, in fact, when our detectives were supposed to be detecting and when Eric was actually shot.’
The significance of this jumped to my eye. ‘Then those two weren’t alone?’ I exclaimed. ‘They were together? They’ve got a mutual alibi?’
‘They have,’ John agreed gravely. ‘They have. Otherwise –’ There was no need for him to finish the sentence. Otherwise, was his meaning, he might have been more ready to accept my own denial. It was unfortunate.
There was a moment’s silence, while I found it necessary to readjust certain of my ideas.
‘Do the police know this?’ I asked then.
‘I think not. I gather that Paul intends to say nothing about it, in case awkward questions are asked about the reason for their being together. There’s no need, you see, for the scandal to be raked up now; at least, so far as the police are concerned.’
‘Oh, none,’ I said, with perhaps more sarcasm than I should have employed in the circumstances. ‘The police can learn all about my supposed but quite illusory reasons for shooting Scott-Davies, but not about De Ravel’s very real one.’
‘But if De Ravel couldn’t have shot him?’
‘We have only his wife’s word for that,’ I said tartly. It was an observation which, I admit now, I should not have made, but the reader must remember that at that time I was in the desperate position of the drowning man catching at any piece of driftwood.
John put on his most obstinate expression. ‘A word which I, for one, am quite prepared to accept. I’ve been assuming, by the way, Cyril, that you will keep all this to yourself. I’ve been passing on to you a confidence which isn’t my own, simply because I thought you might consider it of importance, in view of your own position.’
‘Certainly,’ I replied stiffly, ‘you need not fear that I will a
buse it.’ I did not point out to him that he was ready to accept Mrs de Ravel’s bare word but not mine, which in other circumstances I might have found in the highest degree offensive.
Nor did I trouble to offer my own word again. It seemed in some monstrous way to have become tacitly accepted between us that I was responsible for Scott-Davies’ death; and as any further denial would have carried no more weight than before, I found it beneath my dignity to attempt it.
Instead I asked: ‘And where were they? At the swimming pool, or – ’
‘Swimming pool,’ John answered laconically. ‘Look here, I must go. I promised to see the superintendent after lunch.’
I nodded, thinking rapidly.
I have not yet enumerated the various places in which the other members of our party were supposed to be during the mock murder, and to which they actually (or presumably) retired after Eric Scott-Davies and I had played our scene. In view of what afterwards transpired, the point is an important one and it would be better for me to deal with it at once. The superintendent of course was already in possession of this information.
I have already explained that each of them was to be alone, with the object of being able to produce no confirmation of his or her alibi for the benefit of the would-be detectives; and until a few moments ago I had supposed that, with the change of the mock death to a real one, this humorous predicament had in all cases become a very real one. The allotted places had been as follows: De Ravel was to be at the swimming pool, practising his diving, an accomplishment in which he was unusually proficient; Mrs de Ravel was to be sun-bathing in the enclosure, surrounded by a thick belt of young trees and undergrowth, constructed by John for that purpose on the slope above the swimming pool;Armorel was supposed to be lying, with a book and a rug, on the hillside on the other side of the house, in a rough uncultivated expanse of bracken dotted with furze overlooking the sea in the distance, known as the Moorland Field; John was to be wandering anywhere in the woods towards the bottom of the valley with a gun, looking for rabbits; Elsa Verity was to be picking bluebells in Bluebell Wood, where Ethel was to have joined her had she not encountered the supposed corpse on the way and given the alarm as I have already described.
The Second Shot Page 12