‘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.
At first the memory was so strong that I thought that was what I was seeing, and it took a few seconds for me to realise that it wasn’t happening that way. The thing had fallen a little to the side and instead of sliding straight down the roof it was being carried to a little ornamental railing at the edge of it, where the main hotel joined onto the annex, driving a wedge of snow in front of it. Then somebody said, unbelievingly: ‘He’s stopped.’ And the thing had stopped. Instead of plunging over the roof to the terrace, it had been swept up against the railing, bundled in snow like a cylindrical snowball and stopped within a yard of the edge. Then it sat up, clinging with one hand to the railing, covered from waist down in snow. If he’d been wearing a hat when he came out of the window he’d lost it in the fall because his damp hair was gleaming silver above his smiling brown face. It was an inward kind of smile, as if only he could appreciate the thing that he’d done.
Then the chattering started. Some people were yelling to get a ladder, others running. The rest were asking each other what had happened until somebody spotted the window wide open three floors above us.
‘Her window. Mrs McEvoy’s window.’
‘He fell off Mrs McEvoy’s balcony, just like last year.’
‘But he didn’t…’
At some point Square Bear had put a hand on my shoulder. Now he bent down beside me, looking anxiously into my face, saying we should go in and find Mother. I wished he’d get out of my way because I wanted to see Silver Stick on the roof. Then Mother arrived, wafting clouds of scent and drama. I had to go inside of course, but not before I’d seen the ladder arrive and Silver Stick coming down it, a little stiffly but dignified. And one more thing. Just as he stepped off the ladder the glass doors to the terrace opened and out she came. She hadn’t been there when it happened but now, in her black fur jacket, she stepped through the people as if they weren’t there, and gave him her hand and thanked him.
At dinner that night she dined alone at her table, as on the other nights, but it took her longer to get to it. Her long walk across the dining room was made longer by all the people who wanted to speak to her, to inquire after her health, to tell her how pleased they were to see her again. It was as if she’d just arrived that afternoon, instead of being there for five days already. There were several posies of flowers on her table that must have been sent up especially from the town, and champagne in a silver bucket beside it. Silver Stick and Square Bear bowed to her as she went past their table, but ordinary polite little nods, not like that first night. The smile she gave them was like the sun coming up.
We were sent off to bed as soon as we’d had our soup as usual. Amanda went to sleep at once but I lay awake, resenting my exile from what mattered. Our parents’ sitting room was next to our bedroom and I heard them come in, excited still. Then, soon afterwards, a knock on the door of our suite, the murmur of voices and my father, a little taken aback, saying yes come in by all means. Then their voices, Square Bear’s first, fussing with apologies about it being so late, then Silver Stick’s cutting through him: ‘The fact is, you’re owed an explanation, or rather your daughter is. Dr Watson suggested that we should give it to you so that some time in the future when Jessica’s old enough, you may decide to tell her.’
If I’d owned a chest of gold and had watched somebody throwing it away in a crowded street I couldn’t have been more furious than hearing my secret about to be squandered. My first thought was to rush through to the other room in my night-dress and bare feet and demand that he should speak to me, not to them. Then caution took over, and although I did get out of bed, I went just as far as the door, opened it a crack so that I could hear better and padded back to bed. There were sounds of chairs being rearranged, people settling into them, then Silver Stick’s voice.
‘I should say at the start, for reasons we need not go into, that Dr Watson and I were convinced that Irene McEvoy had not pushed her husband to his death. The question was how to prove it, and in that regard your daughter’s evidence was indispensable. She alone saw Mr McEvoy fall, and she alone heard what he shouted. The accurate ear of childhood – once certain adult nonsenses had been discarded – recorded that shout as precisely as a phonograph and knew that strictly speaking it was only half a shout, that Mr McEvoy, if he’d had time, would have added something else to it.’
A pause. I sat up in bed with the counterpane round my neck, straining not to miss a word of his quiet, clear voice.
‘No – something. The question was, No what? Mr McEvoy had expected something to be there and his last thought on earth was surprise at the lack of it, surprise so acute that he was trying to shout it with his last breath. The question was, what that thing could have been.’
Silence, waiting for an answer, but nobody said anything.
‘If you look up at the back of the hotel from the terrace you will notice one obvious thing. The third and fourth floors have balconies. The second floor does not. The room inhabited by Mr and Mrs McEvoy had a balcony. A person staying in the suite would be aware of that. He would not necessarily be aware, unless he were a particularly observant man, that the second-floor rooms had no balconies. Until it was too late. I formed the theory that Mr McEvoy had not in fact fallen from the window of his own room but from a lower room belonging to somebody else, which accounted for his attempted last words: “No … balcony.”’
My mother gasped. My father said: ‘By Jove …’
‘Once I’d arrived at that conclusion, the question was what Mr McEvoy was doing in somebody else’s room. The possibility of thieving could be ruled out since he was a very rich man. Then he was seeing somebody. The nex
t question was who. And here your daughter was incidentally helpful in a way she is too young to understand. She confided to us in all innocence an overheard piece of adult gossip to the effect that the late McEvoy had a roving eye.’
My father began to laugh, then stifled it. My mother said ‘Well’ in a way that boded trouble for me later.
‘Once my attention was directed that way, the answer became obvious. Mr McEvoy was in somebody else’s hotel room for what one might describe as an episode of galanterie. But the accident happened in the middle of the morning. Did ever a lady in the history of the world make a romantic assignation for that hour of the day? Therefore it wasn’t a lady. So I asked myself what group of people are most likely to be encountered in hotel rooms in mid-morning and the answer was …’
‘Good heavens, the chambermaid.’
My mother’s voice, and Holmes was clearly none too pleased at being interrupted.
‘Quite so. Mr McEvoy had gone to meet a chambermaid. I asked some questions to establish whether any young and attractive chambermaid had left the hotel since last Christmas. There was such a one, named Eva. She’d married the under-porter and brought him as a dowry enough money to buy that elegant little sleigh. Now a prudent chambermaid may amass a modest dowry by saving tips, but one look at that sleigh will tell you that Eva’s dowry might best be described as, well … immodest.’
Another laugh from my father, cut off by a look from my mother I could well imagine.
‘Dr Watson and I went to see Eva. I told her what I’d deduced and she, poor girl, confirmed it with some details – the sound of the housekeeper’s voice outside, Mr McEvoy’s well-practised but ill-advised tactic of taking refuge on the balcony. You may say that the girl Eva should have confessed at once what had happened …’
‘I do indeed.’
‘But bear in mind her position. Not only her post at the hotel but her engagement to the handsome Franz would be forfeited. And, after all, there was no question of anybody being tried in court. The fashionable world was perfectly happy to connive at the story that Mr McEvoy had fallen accidentally from his window – while inwardly convicting an innocent woman of his murder.’
My mother said, sounding quite subdued for once: ‘But Mrs McEvoy must have known. Why didn’t she say something?’
‘Ah, to answer that one needs to know something about Mrs McEvoy’s history, and it so happens that Dr Watson and I are in that position. A long time ago, before her first happy marriage, Mrs McEvoy was loved by a prince. He was not, I must admit, a particularly admirable prince, but prince he was. Can you imagine how it felt for a woman to come from that to being deceived with a hotel chambermaid by a man who made his fortune from bathroom furnishings? Can you conceive that a proud woman might choose to be thought a murderess rather than submit to that indignity?’
Another silence, then my mother breathed: ‘Yes. Yes, I think I can.’ Then, ‘Poor woman.’
‘It was not pity that Irene McEvoy ever needed.’ Then, in a different tone of voice: ‘So there you have it. And it is your decision how much, if anything, you decide to pass on to Jessica in due course.’
There were sounds of people getting up from chairs, then my father said: ‘And your, um, demonstration this morning?’
‘Oh, that little drama. I knew what had happened, but for Mrs McEvoy’s sake it was necessary to prove to the world she was innocent. I couldn’t call Eva as witness because I’d given her my word. I’d studied the pitch of the roof and the depth of the snow and I was scientifically convinced that a man falling from Mrs McEvoy’s balcony would not have landed on the terrace. You know the result.’
Good nights were said, rather subdued, and they were shown out. Through the crack in the door I glimpsed them. As they came level with the crack, Silver Stick, usually so precise in his movements, dropped his pipe and had to kneel to pick it up. As he knelt, his bright eyes met mine through the crack and he smiled, an odd, quick smile unseen by anybody else. He’d known I’d been listening all the time.
When they’d gone Mother and Father sat for a long time in silence.
At last Father said: ‘If he’d got it wrong, he’d have killed himself.’
‘Like the skiing.’
‘He must have loved her very much.’
‘It’s his own logic he loves.’
But then, my mother always was the unromantic one.
Waxworks
Ethel Lina White
Sonia made her first entry in her notebook:
Eleven o’clock. The lights are out. The porter has just locked the door. I can hear his footsteps echoing down the corridor. They grow fainter. Now there is silence. I am alone.
She stopped writing to glance at her company. Seen in the light from the street-lamp, which streamed in through the high window, the room seemed to be full of people. Their faces were those of men and women of character and intelligence. They stood in groups, as though in conversation, or sat apart, in solitary reverie.
But they neither moved nor spoke.
When Sonia had last seen them in the glare of the electric globes, they had been a collection of ordinary waxworks, some of which were the worse for wear. The black velvet which lined the walls of the Gallery was alike tawdry and filmed with dust.
The side opposite to the window was built into alcoves, which held highly moral tableaux, depicting contrasting scenes in the career of Vice and Virtue. Sonia had slipped into one of these recesses, just before closing-time, in order to hide for her vigil.
It had been a simple affair. The porter had merely rung his bell, and the few courting-couples who represented the Public had taken his hint and hurried towards the exit.
No one was likely to risk being locked in, for the Waxwork Collection of Oldhampton had lately acquired a sinister reputation. The foundation for this lay in the fate of a stranger to the town – a commercial traveller – who had cut his throat in the Hall of Horrors.
Since then, two persons had, separately, spent the night in the Gallery and, in the morning, each had been found dead.
In both cases the verdict had been ‘Natural death, due to heart failure.’ The first victim – a local alderman – had been addicted to alcohol, and was in very bad shape. The second – his great friend – was a delicate little man, a martyr to asthma, and slightly unhinged through unwise absorption in spiritualism.
While the coincidence of the tragedies stirred up a considerable amount of local superstition, the general belief was that both deaths were due to the power of suggestion, in conjunction with macabre surroundings. The victims had let themselves be frightened to death by the Waxworks.
Sonia was there, in the Gallery, to test its truth.
She was the latest addition to the staff of the Oldhampton Gazette. Bubbling with enthusiasm, she made no secret of her literary ambitions, and it was difficult to feed her with enough work. Her colleagues listened to her with mingled amusement and boredom, but they liked her as a refreshing novelty. As for her fine future, they looked to young Wells – the Sporting Editor – to effect her speedy and painless removal from the sphere of journalism.
On Christmas Eve, Sonia took them all into her confidence over her intention to spend a night in the Waxworks, on the last night of the old year.
‘Copy there,’ she declared. ‘I’m not timid and I have fairly sensitive perceptions, so I ought to be able to write up the effect of imagination on the nervous system. I mean to record my impressions, every hour, while they’re piping-hot.’
Looking up suddenly, she had surprised a green glare in the eyes of Hubert Poke.
When Sonia came to work on the Gazette, she had a secret fear of unwelcome amorous attentions, since she was the only woman on the staff. But the first passion she awoke was hatred.
Poke hated her impersonally, as the representative of a Force, numerically superior to his own sex, which was on the opposing side in the battle for existence. He feared her, too, because she was the unknown element, and possessed the
unfair weapon of charm.
Before she came, he had been the star turn on the Gazette. His own position on the staff gratified his vanity and entirely satisfied his narrow ambition. But Sonia had stolen some of his thunder. On more than one occasion she had written up a story he had failed to cover, and he had to admit that her success was due to a quicker wit.
For some time past he had been playing with the idea of spending a night in the Waxworks, but was deterred by the knowledge that his brain was not sufficiently temperate for the experiment. Lately he had been subject to sudden red rages, when he had felt a thick hot taste in his throat, as though of blood. He knew that his jealousy of Sonia was accountable. It had almost reached the stage of mania, and trembled on the brink of homicidal urge.
While his brain was still creaking with the idea of first-hand experience in the ill-omened Gallery, Sonia had nipped in with her ready-made plan.
Controlling himself with an effort, he listened while the sub-editor issued a warning to Sonia.
‘Bon idea, young woman, but you will find the experience a bit raw. You’ve no notion how uncanny these big deserted buildings can be.’
‘That’s so,’ nodded young Wells. ‘I once spent a night in a haunted house.’
Sonia looked at him with her habitual interest. He was short and thickset, with a three-cornered smile which appealed to her.
‘Did you see anything?’ she asked.
‘No, I cleared out before the show came on. Windy. After a bit, one can imagine anything.’
It was then that Poke introduced a new note into the discussion by his own theory of the mystery deaths.
Sitting alone in the deserted Gallery, Sonia preferred to forget his words. She resolutely drove them from her mind while she began to settle down for the night.
Her first action was to cross to the figure of Cardinal Wolsey and unceremoniously raise his heavy scarlet robe. From under its voluminous folds, she drew out her cushion and attaché-case, which she had hidden earlier in the evening.
Ten Classic Crime Stories for the Festive Season Page 13