by M. M. Kaye
Simon said curtly: ‘Where is she?’
‘In the garden.’ Miranda jerked her head towards the open door of the drawing-room and the moonlit windows beyond. ‘By the gap in the hedge near the lilac bushes.’
He turned and walked quickly across the hall and into the drawing-room, and she heard him open the french window and go out. After that there was silence for what seemed a very long time …
Miranda leaned her head against the newel post and shut her eyes. She felt utterly exhausted and strangely apathetic. None of this was real. It could not be real, because things like this did not happen to ordinary people like herself. They only happened to strange beings whose faces adorned the pages of the more sensational Sunday papers. She would wake up presently and find that the whole thing was a nightmare.
A slight sound aroused her and she opened her eyes. Simon Lang was standing in front of her, frowning down at her, and he did not look in the least like a nightmare.
‘She’s dead all right,’ said Simon. ‘Who is she?’
‘Friedel. The housemaid.’
Simon leant down and pulled her to her feet and walked her across to the dining-room.
The lights still burned above the table and the room was in every way as Miranda had left it halfway through her supper. It seemed as if months of time must have passed since she had last sat here, and yet her half-eaten meal was still on the table and the hands on the clock-face pointed to five minutes past nine. Friedel had said she would be back by nine. But Friedel was dead and her body lay in the cold spring moonlight beyond the curtained windows of the dining-room.
Miranda began to shiver again, and Simon pushed her down into a chair and held a glass to her mouth. She drank obediently and choked as the fiery liquid caught her throat.
He stood looking down at her with a frown in his eyes, and after a moment or two he pulled up a chair, and sitting down facing her said: ‘Tell me what happened.’
‘I was alone in the house,’ began Miranda haltingly. ‘It was Mademoiselle’s day out, and Robert phoned to say he wouldn’t be back until late, and then Stella rang up and said she would have supper with him at the Club and would I look after Lottie as Friedel wanted to go out for an hour or two. I said good-night to Lottie, and Friedel said that my supper was ready, and then—then she went out.’
‘What time was that?’
‘About a quarter to eight I think. I don’t think I looked at the clock…’
She looked at it now. Not much more than an hour ago! It wasn’t possible—it wasn’t possible____
Simon’s voice jerked her back to the present.
‘What happened then?’
‘I heard someone moving about upstairs and I thought it was Lottie. I called up to her to get back into bed. And then…’ She stopped.
‘And then?’ prompted Simon.
‘I—I was afraid.’
‘Why? What were you afraid of?’
‘I don’t know. I thought that someone was watching me. I was quite sure of it. I didn’t hear anything, it was just a—a feeling. And after a bit I couldn’t bear it any longer, so I went into the hall to see if anyone was there; but there wasn’t anyone. And then I thought I saw something move outside the drawing-room window, and I thought it was Wally…’
‘The Wilkin child? Why?’
‘Because he had been playing round here before, and I’d caught him only this afternoon crawling through the bushes under the windows. I thought he was at it again and that this time I’d catch him and give him a good smacking, so I went out and—and found her.’
Miranda’s voice wavered uncertainly and her hands tightened on the arms of her chair.
‘Where?’
‘Near the lilac bushes, in the gap by the hedge. I told you.’
‘She was on the edge of the lawn,’ said Simon. ‘Did you move her?’
‘Yes … I forgot that. I tried to lift her. I—I thought it was Stella.’
‘Stella? You thought it was Mrs Melville? Why?’
‘She was lying face downwards, you see. And—and her head was in the shadow and she was wearing Stella’s coat.’
Simon Lang did not say anything for what appeared to be a very long time. He sat quite still and looked at Miranda, his face entirely expressionless and his eyes intent and unreadable. And once again, as earlier in the evening, she became aware of the clock, chipping off splinters of time into the silence.
She put up a hand to loosen the enveloping folds of Robert’s Burberry from about her throat, jerking at it as though it impeded her breathing.
Simon said: ‘So you thought it was Mrs Melville. What did you do when you found out that it wasn’t?’
‘I dropped her, and ran in and telephoned you.’
‘Why? Why not a doctor? Or Major Melville?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Miranda wearily. ‘I suppose because I knew that she was dead and I remembered your number. You gave it to me. I can’t quite remember what I thought.’
Simon Lang looked away from her for the first time and his speculative gaze travelled over the table.
‘What time was it, would you say, when you went out into the garden?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t look.’
‘But you must have some idea. It can’t have taken you very long to drink a plate of soup—put it at five minutes. When did you think you heard Lottie moving?’
Miranda pressed her hands to her face, trying to think back. ‘I put the soup plate on the sideboard and helped myself to meat and salad and—and I mixed some dressing. It was after that I thought I heard Lottie.’
‘Let’s say another five minutes. And then?’
‘I told you. I went to the door and called up to her.’
‘And came back to the table but did not touch your food. Why?’
‘I told you,’ repeated Miranda. ‘I felt—I felt jumpy and frightened, so I sat here for a bit and—and listened, I suppose.’
‘For very long?’
‘Not very. Not as much as five minutes. Five minutes is a very long time when you’re sitting quite still and you’re frightened.’
‘Then it was probably about eight o’clock—five past at the most—when you went out into the garden. But it was almost half-past eight when you telephoned me. What were you doing in the garden for twenty minutes, Miranda?’
Miranda stared at him, her eyes wide and frightened, and once again she put up a hand to tug at the cloth about her slender throat. ‘Nothing. I mean I—I looked for Wally. I stood and waited for a bit, thinking I would hear him move. Then I listened to the party in the Leslies’ house until I saw their lights go off and heard them leave.’
Simon let his breath out in a curious little sigh. He said: ‘So you knew that there was no one in the next house.’ It was more in the nature of a statement than a query, but Miranda did not appear to notice that. The brandy that Simon had given her was taking effect and she was feeling less tense and considerably more at ease.
‘Yes. And I began to feel cold and I couldn’t hear anyone moving, so I decided that I would go round the rest of the garden and then lock myself into the house and play the radio until the others came back. So I walked round and … I’ve told you the rest.’
Simon said: ‘Twenty minutes is a long time, Miranda. Too long. Are you quite sure that you’ve told me everything?’
‘Yes,’ said Miranda flatly. She could feel the colour flooding up into her face; it was a childish and Victorian habit that she had failed to outgrow and over which she had no control.
‘And that’s all you did in the garden? Just walked once round it?’
‘I sat on the seat under the cherry tree for a bit. I was thinking.’
‘What about?’
‘Nothing,’ said Miranda quite definitely. ‘Just thinking.’
Simon gave a little shrug and dropped the question.
‘Are you quite sure that there was no one else in the house?’ He saw the look on Miranda’s face and said: ‘So
there was someone. Who was it?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Miranda in a shuddering whisper that made her teeth chatter: ‘It was when I was telephoning you. You rang off, and just afterwards I heard someone put down the receiver of the extension in Stella’s room. There must have been someone up there, listening.’
‘And you’ve no idea who it was?’
‘No. I was too frightened to think. I tore upstairs to Lottie’s room and locked myself in; and then you arrived. That’s all.’
‘You didn’t hear anyone leave the room?’
‘I’m not sure. I thought I did. They could have gone down the front stairs—or the back ones. But—but then I saw that I’d got blood on my dress and I suppose I lost my head.’
Miranda laughed: a dreary little laugh with no mirth in it. ‘I thought what a fool I was to have sent for you—or for anyone! It was exactly the same all over again you see. That’s what made it so awful. And so—so horribly impossible. It was a sort of repeat performance. Do you remember saying that whoever killed the Brigadier must have had blood on them? Well I was the only person who had blood on them. And now I’ve got it again! Silly, isn’t it?’
She laughed again, loudly, and Simon said curtly: ‘Stop it, Miranda!’
‘I’m sorry. I feel a little odd.’
‘You’re tight,’ said Simon unkindly.
He got up and stood looking down at her for a moment, his hands in his pockets. ‘You’d better go upstairs and take that coat off, and get back into your dress,’ he said. ‘I’m going to do some telephoning and there will be quite a few people round here soon. You’ll have to answer a good many questions, and if your story is true there’s no point in your not wearing the dress you had on when you found that woman. If fact, it won’t look so good if you’re not. Do you know where I can contact Major Melville?’
Miranda didn’t answer the question. She stood up quickly; so quickly that for the second time that evening she knocked over her chair, but this time she did not notice it. She said breathlessly: ‘It is true! Why should you say it isn’t true?’
‘I haven’t said so,’ said Simon evenly. ‘Where is Major Melville?’
‘I don’t know. Yes I do. Stella said they’d probably have supper at the Club.’
Simon walked past her and out of the room, and Miranda stooped mechanically and replaced the fallen chair. Her heart was hammering again and once more she felt as though she was in the grip of a nightmare. ‘Twenty minutes is a long time, Miranda…’
Were innocent people ever hanged for murders they had not committed? ‘If your story is true.’ How could you prove a thing like that if people would not take your word for it? She had read books in which people who discovered murdered bodies instantly panicked and either attempted to dispose of them, or concealed evidence and were, on that account, suspected of committing the crime. And she had always thought scornfully that of course any innocent person would instantly ring for the police, and only a hysterical or a guilty person would keep quiet about it. But perhaps those panic-stricken characters had been right after all. She, Miranda, had sent for the police, in the person of Simon Lang. But she might well have been better off if she had done nothing, concealed evidence, and professed blank ignorance of the whole affair.
CHAPTER 12
Miranda awoke next morning with an aching head and a dull sense of disaster.
She sat up wearily and frowned at the clock by her bedside, wondering if it had stopped, for the hands pointed at ten minutes to eleven. But the small strip of bright sunlight that pierced between the curtains confirmed the lateness of the hour, and she crawled out of bed and crossing to the basin turned on both taps and splashed her face with water.
Her eyes felt heavy from lack of sleep; her head ached abominably and her brain seemed singularly sluggish. She began to dress slowly, remembering as she did so the details of the past night …
Friedel Schultz was dead; murdered. Someone had hit her over the back of the head with one of the iron pokers from the boiler-room. Her death must have been more a matter of chance than judgement, for had the blow fallen an inch higher it would have stunned but not killed her.
Within an hour of her death a wind had risen and blown steadily and with increasing force until shortly before midnight, when it had culminated in a brief and violent storm. There would be no trace of footprints on the sandy paths or by the lilac bushes on this bright morning to betray where the murderer had stood, or come, or gone; and Miranda herself had dragged Friedel’s body from where it had originally lain …
They had questioned her about that for hours: Simon Lang and the grey-haired man who had spoken to them in the waiting-room at Charlottenburg station, and a third man whom she could not remember having seen before, but who had evidently interrogated Stella and Mademoiselle on their first morning in Berlin.
There had been a doctor too, and a couple of medical orderlies with a stretcher who had carried the body of Friedel away from the house. There had been people with lights and cameras; though by the time these had arrived the little breeze that had driven Miranda from her seat by the cherry trees had freshened to a wind that had blown the sandy paths clean, and there was nothing to photograph except Friedel herself, lying on her back at the edge of the lawn where Miranda had left her.
Simon had failed to contact either Robert or Stella, and they had returned in the middle of it all, though not together: Stella arriving shortly after ten o’clock and Robert half an hour later.
Mademoiselle had returned at half past eleven. She had been to see a film at the A.K.C. cinema in the Reichskanzler Platz, and had walked home after coffee and biscuits at a café.
It had all been a nightmare. The lights above the dining-room table shining down on the remains of Miranda’s supper and the faces of the three men who questioned her. The arrival of Stella, who had walked into the hall just as Friedel’s limp body was being carried in from the garden.
Simon had gone out to intercept her and explain the ugly situation in as few words as possible, but Stella had not appeared to hear him. She had only stared at Friedel and said in a queer high-pitched voice: ‘But she’s wearing my coat! Why is she wearing my coat? Where’s Miranda?’
‘I’m here,’ said Miranda shaking off the hand of the grey-haired man who would have detained her, and running into the hall: ‘She must have borrowed it Stel’, and thought she could put it back before you got home. But I thought it was you who’d been killed … I saw the coat, and I thought it was you!’ Miranda’s voice wavered.
Stella’s eyes widened until they were violet circles, and the last vestige of colour drained out of her pale face leaving it a dreadful greenish white. She put up a hand to her throat and said in a dry whisper: ‘You thought it was me!’ And then she had fainted, falling to the floor in a sprawling, untidy heap.
Hours later—or was it only minutes?—she had been carried up to her room, where she had been very sick, and finally the doctor had given her an injection of morphia and she had gone to sleep. But that had not been until after Robert had arrived back.
Robert, it appeared, had intended to work late at the office and dine in the Mess, but the Colonel had rung him up shortly before seven-thirty and suggested that he bring the work over to his house for discussion since another matter relating to it had just cropped up, and stay to supper there: whereupon Robert had borrowed a fellow officer’s car and had driven to the Lawrences’ house.
He had listened to an account of the evening’s happenings with incredulity. Then he had seen Miranda sitting pallid and exhausted, facing her interrogators over the dining-room table, and he had lost his temper.
‘What the hell do you mean by devilling the girl? Can’t you wait to do your bullying in the morning?’ stormed Robert. He strode over to the table and put his arms around her, and Miranda, turning, had clung to him and burst into overwrought tears.
Robert picked her up bodily, and having favoured the assembly with an unprintable opinion of the
m, carried her out into the hall and up the stairs. Stella’s bedroom door stood open, and Stella was facing it, her fair hair dark with water where the doctor had bathed her forehead and face, and looking as though she was about to be sick again. Robert put Miranda roughly on her feet and left her at a run, and she saw him catch Stella into his arms. Then the doctor closed the door on them, and she was alone on the landing and Lottie had awakened and was demanding a drink of water.
Miranda dried her wet cheeks with the back of her hand and attended to the matter, and having retrieved Rollerbear from the floor and succeeded in settling Lottie off to sleep again, went slowly downstairs once more.
Simon Lang was still sitting in the dining-room, but the others had gone. He was engaged in playing patience with a doll-sized pack of cards that Lottie had left on the windowsill, and he looked up briefly as she came into the room and then thoughtfully placed the queen of diamonds on the king of clubs before speaking.
‘I think some of these must be missing,’ he said. ‘Why did you come down again? Your cousin is quite right. As far as you are concerned there is no real reason why you should answer any more questions until the morning.’
‘I don’t intend to,’ said Miranda wearily. She sank into a chair, resting her elbows on the table and her chin in her hads. ‘But I can’t go to bed yet. I shouldn’t sleep. Besides, Mademoiselle isn’t back yet. Someone will have to let her in.’
‘Someone will. I’m afraid that I must break it to you that I shall have to stick around here until the governess turns up.’
‘Why?’
‘Oh just a matter of routine you know. Someone has got to ask the usual questions: where was she, what was she doing at such-and-such a time, and all the rest of it.’
‘Why can’t you ask her that in the morning?’
Simon Lang looked along the lines of cards, added a three of clubs, and said softly: ‘She might have a different story by the morning.’
Miranda got up abruptly and went over to the sideboard, returning a moment or so later with a glass in her hand.