by Evelyn Weiss
a visitor knocks. Carver hadn’t arrived at that moment at the door: he’d been waiting outside in the corridor all evening. Waiting for the pre-arranged signal: Chisholm opening the door.
So, in the bathroom, I heard no knock, but I did hear a door opening and a brief conversation between Chisholm and a man who appears to have come to the wrong cabin. Then, Carver knocked on Spence’s door. Spence opened the door and recognized Carver as Gilmour’s bodyguard. Carver told Spence that he was not meaning to interfere, but he had spotted something suspicious and would like to talk to Spence about it. Carver suggested that they both walk along the corridor for a moment: perhaps he told Spence that he had something to point out to him, maybe on the Grand Staircase or nearby. When they walked towards the staircase, they were seen by Rufus du Pavey, who concluded that Carver was his rival for Spence’s affections.
So, Spence and Carver were now away from Spence’s door, and I was still in the bathroom. It only needed to be for one minute. But for that minute, no-one in our cabin could see Chisholm. And there was an open door by which to leave our cabin, and an open door by which to enter Spence’s cabin. Chisholm took our wine carafe into Spence’s cabin and swapped it for Spence’s. But at that point, two things happened which he did not anticipate.
One of them was simple. Chisholm saw a sheet of paper on Spence’s desk which he recognized as British Secret Intelligence code. A sensible man would have left it there. But no-one is sensible all the time, and Chisholm was anxious to discover how much Spence knew. He made a split-second decision and took the paper, and Spence’s silver pen as well. But he missed many other sheets of paper, all of them full of coded information, which were locked inside the drawer of Spence’s desk.
The other thing that happened was much more unexpected. Chisholm saw you, Kitty, in Spence’s room.”
“I was so embarrassed, I could have sunk through the floor in shame, Miss Agnes.”
“And I can guess what Chisholm said, Kitty. He said to you ‘I won’t tell anyone you’re in here, Kitty. Your secret is safe with me.’ He acted as if he was doing nothing wrong: as if you were the one who had been discovered doing mischief.”
“That’s right. I just felt so ashamed. Up to then – being with Percy, it had all been – fun, and exciting. Suddenly it seemed dirty and nasty.”
“What happened then, Kitty?”
“Sir Chisholm went back to the door of Percy’s cabin, saying again that he would never tell anyone what I’d been doing with the Viscount. I hardly noticed him swapping the carafes of wine: I had no idea what he was doing. If I thought about that at all, I guessed he’d agreed the swap with Percy… but really, all I remember was feeling so horribly, horribly ashamed. And then Sir Chisholm was gone… and Percy came back. He was as charming and kind as ever. Nothing improper happened, Miss Agnes. We just went up to the Palm Court Room, and danced.”
“And then later, Kitty – after the dancing, and the announcement to go along to the lifeboats, you both came back to Percy’s cabin, you saw him drink the wine – and the effect it had on him. Did you recall the carafes at that point, did you think that maybe Chisholm had something to do with Percy’s sudden illness?”
“I think I did, yes. But, Miss Agnes, there was something in my mind that couldn’t face up to it. My generous, kind employer – that he had done something that had killed Percy – it wasn’t possible. My brain just made some kind of decision for me, to pretend it never happened. I said to myself that I never, ever saw Sir Chisholm with that carafe of wine.”
“And then after the Titanic, in New York –”
“Sir Chisholm came and found me at the Harlem Hospital, he was kinder than ever, he brought me home. On full pay, even though of course I couldn’t do any work for him. And he made sure the ship’s doctor looked after me.”
Axelson nods. “That’s because Chisholm was a kind man. A kind man with a fatal flaw. The most dangerous sort of man in the world.”
I nod back at him. “What was strange, professor, was that Chisholm dared let Kitty be hypnotized by you.”
“As I mentioned, Miss Agnes, I have had to conclude, sadly, that Chisholm regarded me as a harmless quack. I think that’s why he wanted to work with me on the Spence case. He thought my investigations had no hope of discovering the real facts of Spence’s murder. I think that he felt we were on – your English phrase – a ‘wild goose chase’. He deliberately supported my investigation because he thought it would lead away from, not towards, the truth. In one way, I am slightly disappointed that such an intelligent man could not understand my Hypnotic-Forensic Method. But I console myself by thinking: that intelligent man was also a murderer and a traitor.”
I look at Axelson. “Chisholm didn’t believe in you at the beginning, Professor. But Kitty – when you began talking under hypnosis, he realized that the hypnosis was having some effect. That you were beginning to reveal secrets. Chisholm became afraid that you would mention that you had seen him with the carafe in Spence’s cabin. After the second hypnosis session, he realized that the risk was such that he needed to contact Carver and get him to abduct you immediately.
Once the possibility occurred to me that Chisholm might have murdered Spence, and that he might have organized your kidnap, Kitty, it occurred to me: perhaps he sent you to Glenlui. It is, after all, in the middle of nowhere, and rarely in contact with the outside world. My problem was how to contact Glenlui from the Olympic.” I look across at our strong-armed rower. “But then, Fraser, I recalled your letter, that I saw among Chisholm’s papers on his desk at Grafton Square. I remembered the name ‘Mr Laurie’, and I sent my third telegram. I asked the Inverness-shire police to trace you, Fraser, and make contact with you. I asked the police to ask you if you knew a Kitty Murray, a young servant girl who had recently arrived at Glenlui Castle. Thank you for responding to me.”
The voice comes from behind the oars. “That’s all right, Miss Frocester. I’m glad to have been able to help.”
Kitty has the last words about her former employer. She looks at Fraser as he rows, and I sense the bond between the two of them as he smiles back at her. Then she murmurs, as if to herself. “Sir Chisholm may have been a traitor. But he was kind to me, at least in the beginning. And his plans very nearly succeeded.”
Loch Lui’s shores are closer, greener now: I see an azure mist of bluebells in the dappled sunshine beneath the trees. The castle, like an illustration from a book of fairytales, looms up above us, and the sound of the water slipping over the oars is in my ears. I look back across the sparkling waters of the loch. The blueness of the waves and of the clear, pure sky is almost dizzying. The serenity of this place seems eternal: older than the lush meadows looming under the woods, spangled with flowers like a green sky of stars; older than the jutting headland of gnarled Scots pines that nod their branches in the breeze, in time with their own reflections that nod back at them in the water. Older even than the towering mountains, their purple flanks patterned bright, then dark, then bright again by the moving shadows of the drifting clouds above. It feels like we have always been here, and we always will be here – the sunshine, the swish of the oars, the smiles.
And yet in my mind is the professor’s prediction of impending war. Right here, right now, in this place of peace and happiness, I have a sense that our whole world is about to change.
Violently.
The End
In preparation
Murder on the Western Front
(taster extract below)
Also by Evelyn Weiss
The Outcall
Murder on the Western Front
Evelyn Weiss
1.Wipers
I feel faint. Looking down, I see that my hands are bathed in bright arterial blood.
“Frocester! You're wanted. Major Jardine needs to speak to you. Now.”
“I'm coming, I'm coming.” I'm gripping the blood-soaked dressing with both hands, pulling it tight in an attempt to seal the arteries. The soldier's knee is a
mangled mess. All I can do for him right now is to stop the blood ebbing away: I’m getting him ready so he can be transferred to the Casualty Clearing Station. He lies quietly, murmuring like a child talking to himself, on the stretcher that they brought him in on ten minutes ago.
“Go, Agnes. I can finish this. I wonder what the chief wants with you?”
“Thank you, Nurse Carstairs.”
Our makeshift hospital is, in fact, the ground floor of what was once a hotel. The treatment room is the former dining room, which used to look out over the medieval square at the centre of the Belgian market town of Ypres. But there is no view out of our windows any more. The blasts of the German shells raining down on the town have destroyed every pane of glass, so we have covered the windows with cotton sheets, shading our patients from the bright sunshine. Outside, it’s a gorgeous spring day: April 22nd, 1915. It’s early evening. One window is uncovered, and a single shaft of sunlight penetrates the room and shines on the floor, showing a surface of dull red: dried blood.
My shoes go clack-clack as I hurry across the tiles of the reception lobby to what used to be the hotel manager's office. Although I'm hurrying, I can't help noticing a severe-faced woman, dressed in black, standing at the lobby’s reception desk, as if waiting for something or someone. As I knock