Through The Wall

by Patricia Wentworth

  She stood there for a long time before she undressed. There was a clock on the floor below-a big old clock with a slow, soft tick, and a slow, heavy stroke for the hours. It stood in the hall, and if she was awake in the night she liked to feel it was there, and that if she listened it would tell her the time. She was awake a good deal in the night, and it was company.

  She was turning back her bed when she heard it strike-just the one heavy stroke which meant that another day had begun. She stood there listening, because she had lost count of the time and she was not sure if there would be another stroke.

  She was just going to move, when she heard a faint sound on the landing. It stopped her before she had really moved at all, because she knew what it was. The board outside the spare room creaked when you stepped on it. She had heard it every time she came and went, with soap, with towels, with bed-linen, getting the room ready for Cyril. All the other boards were steady. It was just this one that made the sound. She stood quite rigid with her eyes on the handle of her door and waited to see if it would move. The bedside lamp was on. All at once it went tingling through her that it might show a line of light under the door.

  Before she knew what she was going to do her hand went out and turned the switch. Then she went over to the door and stood there, a finger on the handle to feel if it would move.

  She couldn’t hear anything. The board did not creak again. She had no feeling that anyone was coming nearer. She thought that if Cyril was crossing the landing bare-foot to her door, she would have some feeling. Her heart beat to suffocation, and it came to her that she did not know what the feeling would be. Everything in her couldn’t have changed so much that she would find herself shrinking. Or could it? She didn’t know.

  There was another sound. It was nowhere near the door. Perhaps from the stairs. Perhaps even farther away-from the hall. She turned the key in the lock. Then she let her whole hand close on the door knob and turned it too. The door swung in.

  The landing was dark and empty. A very faint light came up from the hall. It was so faint that it was really only a thinning of the darkness, but she could see the line of the balustrade which guarded the stairs, heavy and black against the greyness below.

  She came out of her room past the short passage which led to the other house. The door at the end of it was bolted top and bottom. There was one of these doors on every floor, and they were all the same, bolted on this side, with a key to turn on the other.

  She came to the top of the stairs, but before she could come round the newel-post she heard the sound again, and this time she knew what it was. Someone was drawing back the bolts on the door in the hall.

  She stood quite still where she was and listened. There was the same short length of passage that there was upstairs, and the door at the end of it with a bolt at the top and a bolt at the bottom. Since she had heard the sound twice, it would not come again, because both the bolts must have been withdrawn. The only other sound that could be looked for would be the turning of the key on the farther side. But it might have been turned already, before she came out of her room. If it had been, she would not have heard it. She listened to see if she would hear it now.

  And then it came-just a faint click, and before she had time to think whether she had heard it or not she knew that the door was opening, and that someone was coming through. There were two people in the passage now, and one of them had come through from the other house. Two people-and one of them was Cyril, who had gone downstairs in the middle of the night and drawn back the bolts.

  Her knees shook. She was holding to the newel. She let herself down until she was crouching behind the balustrade. It screened her, but she could see over it. She had let herself down because she couldn’t stand any longer. Not to screen herself, or to see more. But in the result she found herself protected from being seen, and in a better position to see. If there had been a light in the passage now, she would have been able to see the whole length of it.

  And then there was a light-the sharp white beam from a small pocket torch. It struck the surface of the door between the houses-old dark paint, rather scratched and chipped. It danced across, and there was no gap at the edge-the door was shut. It slipped like a dazzle on water across a woman’s dark skirt, a woman’s white hand with shining blood-red nails, and came to rest in a trembling circle on the floor.

  As soon as Ina saw the hand she knew that it was Helen Adrian who had come through the door in the wall. Anger, humiliation, and pain suddenly rushed in upon her. It was one o’clock in the morning, and Cyril had slipped down to let Helen Adrian in. They were there in the passage now. She could hear them whispering there. It was the faintest of faint sounds, like a stirring of leaves in the wind. The round eye of the torch stared on the floor, and its reflection shook, and moved, and shifted there. There was a row of pegs with coats hanging from them-old raincoats, hers and Marian’s, umbrellas, and a scarf or two. The torch swung up. Cyril had it in his left hand. She saw his right hand come through the beam and unhook one of the coats. Then it came down again. A scarf of Marian’s came down with it. It was a new one she had bought. A square. Very gay and pretty-shades of blue and yellow. It fell right through the beam of the torch, and Ina was vexed, because it was new, and because Marian liked it, and it was one of the very few things she had got for herself. Right in the middle of all that was happening she could feel vexed about Marian’s scarf.

  And then she was more than vexed, she was angry. There was a rustling. Helen Adrian was putting on Marian’s coat.

  It was just an old raincoat, but she hadn’t any business to come in here in the middle of the night and take it.

  The beam of the torch swung out and back across the blue and yellow of the scarf lying there on the floor. She saw Helen Adrian’s arm in the shabby sleeve of the raincoat come down into the light, she saw the hand with the crimson nails. The torch swung round towards the hall. The two people in the passage came that way. Helen Adrian was tying the scarf over her hair. She didn’t quite laugh, but her whisper had a laughing sound. It carried up the well of the stair. Ina heard her say,

  “Safe enough now.”

  And Cyril said,

  “You can’t be too careful.”

  It was all just on the edge of sound. It was so nearly over the edge that she might not have heard it at all. Through all the days that followed she was to ask herself what she had really heard. But it always came back to that “Safe enough now,” and, “You can’t be too careful.”

  They crossed the hall to the study door, and went in and shut it after them.

  Chapter 20

  The hotel in Farne was really very up to date. Not only was the food exceptional and the service prompt, but there was a telephone in every bedroom. Richard Cunningham had one beside him as he lay watching a light haze draw up off the sea and melt into a cloudless sky. He could rise early when he chose, but he had not chosen today. It was too pleasant to be at nobody’s beck and call, with another perfect day in prospect. All this, and Marian too. They had travelled a long way yesterday. They would travel farther today, and tomorrow-

  The telephone bell rang. He put out his hand, took up the receiver, and Marian was speaking.

  “Richard-is it you?”

  At once there was a shadow. Her voice was steady only because she would not let it shake. That came to him. Control. What had happened that Marian must control her voice when she spoke to him? This in a flash while he said,

  “What is it?”

  “Something has happened.”

  “What?”

  “Something dreadful. There’s been an accident.”

  “To whom?”

  “To Helen Adrian. Richard, she’s dead.”

  “How?”

  “We don’t know. The two women who help next door, Mrs. Bell and Mrs. Woolley, they get here at eight. The aunts have tea in their rooms-Helen too. She wasn’t there. They thought-she and Felix-had gone down-to bathe. Mrs. Woolley went a little way, to see if t
hey were coming. She couldn’t see them. She went down farther. She saw Helen Adrian lying on the beach where the last lot of steps go down. You remember how steep they are. Mrs. Woolley thought she had fallen and hurt herself. She went down to see. And Helen was dead.”

  He had a picture in his mind of the last steep drop to the beach. The path took a turn. There was no rail-or was there? For the moment he wasn’t sure. Then the blurred picture cleared. The garden was terraced to the beach. The last steep steps went down from the lowest terrace to the shingle of the cove. A railing guarded them. But there was no railing to the terrace itself. It followed the sloping line of the cliff, and on the narrowest side it fell steeply.

  Into the picture in his mind there came, small and clear, Helen Adrian lying under the drop, her hair bright against the stones. He said,

  “Horrible!”

  He heard her take her breath.

  “Yes. I rang to tell you not to come out. It won’t be-very pleasant. There will be the police-” She wouldn’t let her voice shake, but she couldn’t make it go on.

  He knew just why she had stopped like that. He said,

  “Marian, let me come. It’s horrible for you and Ina. There might be something I could do. I’d like to be there.”

  She got her voice going again. It was steady but faint. It said,

  “You’d better not. You don’t want to get mixed up in it. There’ll be-reporters. You see, it wasn’t-an accident. They think someone-killed her.”

  He said her name quickly, insistently. And then,

  “But of course I’ll come! What did you think-didn’t you know? Look here, I’ll be out as soon as I can make it.”

  “You mustn’t-”

  He said, “Don’t talk nonsense!” and hung up.

  When he got out to Cove House Mrs. Woolley was still alternating between being overcome by her feelings and the urge to enlarge upon the most exciting experience that was ever likely to come her way. She had already told the whole thing a good many times-to her sister Gladys Bell between hysterical sobs; to an augmented audience of Penny, chalk-white and rigid; to Mrs. Brand and Miss Cassy; to Eliza Cotton; to Miss Marian Brand and Mrs. Felton; and finally to the police, who rather belatedly instructed her not to gossip. The narrative had by now become set. She used the same words, and stopped to cry in the same places. She went through it all again for Richard Cunningham, from the moment when, receiving no answer to her knock, she had opened Miss Adrian’s door and looked in to find the room empty, to the moment the recollection of which really did make her heart thump and her head swim when she had looked from the narrow end of the last terrace to the beach and seen a body lying there on the stones below. “And I don’t know how I got down those steps-I don’t reely. Seems to me one minute I was up there looking down at her, and the next there I was, taking her poor hand. And of course I knew she was dead, because it was as cold as ice, let alone her head being all smashed in, poor thing.”

  There was a police sergeant from Farne in charge, but within the next half hour superior authority had begun to function. Inspector Crisp arrived from Ledlington and at once proceeded to make himself felt. The whole ghastly business which waits on murder was set in motion. Mrs. Woolley went through her story again, photographs were taken, and one by one every member of the two households were interviewed. Every member except one. Felix Brand was not in his room. Had not been in his room when Mrs. Bell went up and knocked on the door, which was just before her sister ran in panting and crying from the beach. He was not in the house, or in the garden, or in the cove. Nobody, in fact, had seen him since half past ten the evening before.

  Chapter 21

  When Richard arrived at Cove House Eliza met him at the front door and took him through to the kitchen. She had her own views as to what his place in the family was going to be, and she considered that he did ought to know what was going on. Miss Marian’s raincoat found down by the body, and Miss Marian’s scarf with a great bloodstain on it hanging up in the passage which led through to next door. And Sergeant Jackson taking charge of it, and in there in the study this minute asking all manner of questions which no one could answer. She did think Mr. Cunningham ought to know. And when she had told him all about it, so did he.

  Then, right on the top of that, there was Mrs. Woolley at the back door. He never really knew what excuse she made, or whether she troubled to make one, because the minute she saw him she burst out crying all over again and began to tell him about finding the body.

  The ground floor door between the two houses stood open as he walked through the hall from the kitchen. Sergeant Jackson went down the passage which led to it and passed out of sight on the other side. His solid blue back brought home the realities of the situation with something like a physical shock. Marian’s house wasn’t her own any longer. It was merged with a house where someone had been murdered. All its doors and all its rooms were open to the police. And if anyone in either house had any secret thing to hide, it would be open too.

  Marian came out of the study. As soon as she saw Richard she put a finger to her lips and went back. He followed her and shut the door, but she stepped away from his outstretched hand.

  “Richard, you mustn’t get mixed up in this.”

  She was dreadfully pale. There was the control of which he had been aware when she rang him up. He said,

  “My dear, I am mixed up in it-at least as much as you are. It’s been a great shock, but it’s not as if you were involved in any way.”

  She looked at him. He was aware that she had an impulse to speak, and that she checked it. She stood in the place to which she had fallen back after shutting the door. She did not move from it. But the distance between them had widened, her thought had withdrawn.

  He went on to say quietly,

  “After all, you hardly knew her. I gather that the Inspector from Ledlington has just arrived. He sounds very vigorous and efficient. If Mrs. Woolley hadn’t been over here visiting Eliza, I feel sure that I wouldn’t have had the chance of seeing her. One of the constabulary has now recalled her to the fold, and she will have to tell her story all over again. She’s enjoying it, you know. Nice amiable creature, and quite properly shocked and horrified, but just at the moment she’s got the centre of the stage and she can’t help enjoying it.”

  Her mind shuddered, but she held her body still. He was as much aware of that as if it was his own thought that was shaken. He said,

  “Felix Brand is missing?”

  “Yes.”

  “That means the police will suspect him.”

  She said, “Yes,” again. And then, “I haven’t seen Penny. Eliza says she’s like a bit of stone. She loves him dreadfully.”

  He nodded.

  “How is Ina?”

  She took a long breath.

  “It’s been a most frightful shock.”

  “Where is she?”

  “In her room. She won’t come down.”

  “The police will want to see her.”

  “The sergeant asked us all whether we had heard anything in the night. They think she would have-cried out. Nobody seems to have heard any cry. He said the Inspector from Ledlington would want to see us when he came, and not to go out. But Cyril says he has to go up to town.”

  “He’d better not.”

  “He says he has an audition.”

  “He’ll have to tell that to the police.”

  As he spoke, Cyril Felton walked in. Like everyone else in the two houses, he looked the worse for wear. He had shaved carelessly and cut himself. Richard thought there was a moment in which he was undecided as to how he should play the part which had been thrust upon him without rehearsal. He came down on the side of being shocked but brave-the man of the world who knows that life and his own affairs must go on. He came forward with his hand out.

  Richard felt that a really good producer would have cut the handshake down to a nod, but the “Hullo, Cunningham- shocking business this,” achieved quite the right casual note.r />
  Richard said, “Yes.”

  Cyril continued.

  “Naturally they think it’s Felix. Frightfully silly of him to do a bolt like this. Of course the chap was insane with jealousy.”

  “Cyril!” Marian’s voice cut in with a note of anger in it.

  He stared at her.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “You’ve no right to say it was Felix!”

  “All right, all right-I’m not saying it, but the police will. As as matter of fact I don’t see why it couldn’t have been an accident.”

  Marian grew perceptibly paler.

  “You would if you had listened to Mrs. Woolley.”

  He gave a vague half shrug.

  “Oh, well, I should have thought pitching down over that drop on to the shingle would account for anything. But the police will have it their own way. It’s no concern of mine. I just felt sorry for the chap, that’s all. Look here, what’s the matter with Ina? I’ve got to get up to this audition today, and there she is, locked in her room. I can’t get up to town without some cash-I’m cleaned right out. And there she is, locked in her room and won’t let me in.”

  “The police won’t let you go.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “Darling, they haven’t the slightest right to stop me. It’s all quite simple. I believe the Inspector from Ledlington has arrived. I just go through and tell him what I know, which is just about nothing at all, and I catch the next bus to the station. If he insists, I can come back tonight, but I must get up for that audition. So if you can make it a fiver-”

  Marian looked as if she was going to say something, and changed her mind. She went out of the room, leaving the door open behind her. They heard her run up the stairs.