‘All right — she told Brading that Miss Grey had taken the brooch. Brading rang up and put it across her. She brought it back, and she came away. There’s no evidence to show that she shot him. Why should she? It was a family affair. He wouldn’t expose her.’
Miss Silver said,
‘I am not so sure. He was a cold and vindictive man. If you think of his conduct with regard to Mr. Moberly you will probably agree with this estimate of his character. Then did you notice that when Mrs. Constantine told him that Miss Grey had taken the brooch she said that she did not think he was surprised? I noticed particularly that she repeated this observation when she told her story to you. It was just one of those little things. I watched for it, and it came out just as it had done when she was talking to me.’
He looked faintly startled.
‘You think it important?’
‘Oh, yes, my dear Randal. If Mr. Brading was not surprised, it was because he knew very well that Miss Grey had this failing. When Mrs. Constantine told Major Forrest of the incident, I do not gather that he showed any surprise either.’
‘When did she tell him?’
‘Just before she told me. He was, I understand, neither angry nor surprised, but merely very much concerned that the story should not be repeated.’
‘And what do you deduce from that?’
‘That it was not the first time that something had had to be hushed up. Perhaps on this occasion Mr. Brading led Miss Grey to suppose that he was not prepared to hush up the theft of the brooch. She might have felt driven to a desperate course. I do not say that she was. I do say that she could have brought Major Forrest's revolver from Saltings and shot Mr. Brading with it.’
‘You mean it was physically possible.’
‘She would have known where the weapon was kept. You say Major Forrest’s flat was not locked. She could have had access to it. She could have taken Mr. Brading’s own revolver away with her and put it where you say it was found, in the bottom drawer of the bureau.’
‘Yes — she could have done all that.’
She said,
‘There is another point. It is one which engages my attention very strongly. Miss Grey has been accused of theft. She has been summoned to return the stolen property. She is no stranger, but a member of Mr. Brading’s family circle. The interview which took place was bound to be of an extremely painful nature. Family scenes are apt to be not only painful but prolonged. Do you suppose for a moment that this one would have lasted for only ten minutes? I am perfectly persuaded that Mr. Brading would have no intention of making things easy for her. Remember, he was not surprised at what had happened. He told Mrs. Constantine to leave it to him and he would deal with it. You heard her say that she had never liked Miss Grey, but Mr. Brading’s look and manner made her feel sorry for her then. I feel quite sure that Mr. Brading meant to make Miss Grey feel sorry for herself, and I am tolerably certain that he meant to take more than ten minutes over it.’
‘That’s not evidence.’
‘Of course not, Randal. But I think it should be enough to induce a painstaking search for evidence. A further interrogation of Miss Grey is indicated, and I think that Mr. Moberly should be pressed as to those telephone conversations. You have, of course, taken up the matter with the telephone exchange?’
‘Yes. It was a busy time — no one remembers.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘You know, Crisp isn’t going to be a bit pleased. He thought he’d got the case in the bag.’
‘You have not arrested Major Forrest?’
‘No. He’s over in the writing-room with Crisp. I shall have to detain him unless something comes of this. Now do we go up and call on Miss Grey, or do we have her down here?’
Miss Silver’s needles clicked in a very decided manner.
‘My dear Randal, you will do just what you think best. But if you ask me—’
‘I do. You know how the feminine mind works, and I don’t pretend to.’
She said,
‘You cannot divide minds into sexes. Each human being presents an individual problem. But since you ask me, I think it might be as well to send, let us say, Inspector Crisp for Miss Grey, and to interview her in Mr. Brading’s laboratory. If she were asked to show you just what she did on Friday afternoon — what her movements were, where she stood or sat — it should, I think, be possible to discover to what extent she is telling the truth. The discovery that the theft of the brooch is known will naturally shake her a good deal.’
March got to his feet. He said,
‘All right — we’ll try it that way.’
‘You will send Inspector Crisp?’
‘Crisp is with Forrest. We were just going to take him to the station and charge him when you rang up. I’m not justified in letting him out of sight unless this turns out to be something.’
‘You left him here while you went to Ledlington to fetch the Inspector.’
‘That was before Lewis Brading’s revolver turned up at Saltings, and I had Jackson on duty outside. If Forrest had tried to steal a march on us he’d have been stopped. I can send Jackson for Miss Grey.’
Miss Silver was putting away her knitting.
‘I think I have seen him, a pleasant-looking young man. I should prefer that you sent Inspector Crisp.’
‘Whom nobody could describe as pleasant! Ruthless — aren’t you?’
She picked up her pale pink ball.
‘I want the truth, Randal.’
THIRTY-ONE
THERE ARE DAYS WHEN time seems to be suspended. Stacy had seen the Chief Constable’s car drive away with Charles. She had seen Miss Silver receive Myra Constantine’s summons and repair to her sitting-room. After an interminable stretched-out interval she had seen the Chief Constable’s car come back. It stopped, and three people got out — March himself, who came upstairs to join Myra and Miss Silver, and, from the back of the car, Charles and Inspector Crisp. Her heart jumped. They had gone away with the Inspector sitting in front beside the Chief Constable, and Charles at the back, but they returned like this. She made herself face what it meant — what it must mean. They wouldn’t let Charles sit by himself any more. They had arrested him, or they were going to arrest him. Crisp was there to see that he didn’t get away.
She saw them come into the house together, and looking down over the well of the stairs, she watched them pass through the hall in the direction of the writing-room and out of sight.
She had been all this while on the bedroom floor, moving between her own room and the stairs. Immediately opposite the stair-head a dressing-room had been done away with to widen the corridor and bring in light and air. A long window looked out over the porch and took the breeze and the distant glitter of the sea. When Stacy stood at this window she could watch who came and went. If she moved to the stairhead she had only to lean upon the rail to see what passed below. If she walked to the end of the corridor she could see the glass-roofed passage to the annexe and hear the voices that rose and fell behind Myra’s sitting-room door. She could hear the voices, but not what they said. Sound reached her, but no words.
Once, as she walked back along the passage, Hester Constantine stood at her open door. She looked like a dead woman who had dragged herself from her grave to listen, her head bent, one hand on the jamb. She was straining to catch the sound from the room across the way. She and Stacy looked at one another. Then Hester’s free hand came up and touched her.
‘Who’s there?’
‘The Chief Constable.’
‘Why?’
‘Charles—’
Hester drew a long breath and stepped back. It didn’t matter to her whether Charles Forrest was hanged or not. She shut her door.
Stacy went back to the window over the porch. It was then that she began to think about going down to the writing-room. If she went down she would see Charles again. She didn’t see how they could stop her. Even if he was under arrest, she might be able to speak to him, and she would at least see him again. It began to mat
ter more than anything else in the world.
When the door of Myra’s sitting-room opened and Miss Silver came out with the Chief Constable she felt an agonizing pang, because she thought that she had lost her chance. She stood rigid in the recess and heard Miss Silver say,
‘If you can spare me a little time — no one will disturb us in the study.’
She let them go down, leaned over the balustrade to watch them out of sight, and then ran down herself. Where the time had lagged endlessly, it was now slipping away — the last remaining time in which she could see Charles, touch him, hear him speak. She ran, and came into the writing-room with quickened breath and colour in her cheeks.
Charles stood on the hearth with his back to her, apparently engaged in the contemplation of the gloomy battle picture which lowered from the chimney-breast. He had a turn for quotation, and was thinking that it would be aptly described by that passage in the Bible which speaks of a confused noise and garments rolled in blood — ‘Every battle of the warrior...’ No, he wasn’t sure if he’d got it right now. These things came floating up out of your mind like jetsam.
He was thinking quite dispassionately that it was odd to be worrying about a quotation while you were waiting to know whether you were going to be arrested for murder, when he heard the door fly open and turned to see Stacy come running in. She pushed the door to behind her and came to him, breathing quickly, her colour wavering, her eyes wide and startled.
‘Charles!’
Inspector Crisp came forward from the strategic position which he had been occupying midway between the door and the window with an eye to each. Stacy hadn’t even noticed him. She didn’t notice him now. She held on to Charles with both hands and looked at him with all her heart in her eyes.
Crisp forced himself upon the attention with a brisk, ‘I beg your pardon, Miss Mainwaring—’
Stacy did not look at him or speak to him. She said under her breath,
‘Send him away.’
If Charles’s voice was not quite steady when he answered her, it was due to the fact that the emotions have a way of being interchangeable in moments of stress. The interval between laughter and tears can be traversed without intention. He said,
‘I’m afraid he wouldn’t go.’
‘Miss Mainwaring—’
Stacy went on taking no notice. She held on to Charles with desperation.
‘They haven’t — arrested you?’
He looked over her head at Crisp, the angry terrier to the life, with a rat just out of reach.
‘I believe not — technically. But we are on debatable ground. What would you call it, Crisp? Detained for further questioning is an expression I seem to have read in the papers. Or am I on the way to the station to be charged? That also has a familiar ring.’
The tone did nothing to sweeten Crisp. He said in his stiffest and most official manner,
‘I must ask Miss Mainwaring to leave.’
Charles said, ‘All in good time. If I’m not actually arrested, you know, I have an idea that I still have a few rights.’ He dropped his voice for Stacy’s ear. ‘You’d better go, you know.’
Her hands clung.
‘Are they going to arrest you?’
‘We’re on the way. I gather that a red herring has crossed the path. It may or may not divert us.’
‘Miss Mainwaring—’
Stacy continued to take no notice.
‘If they — if they do it — will— will they let me come and see you?’
‘Do you want to?’
‘Charles!’
‘Nasty sordid business, you know. I sit at one end of a table and you sit at the other, and a warder listens in.’
‘Major Forrest, will you kindly ask Miss Mainwaring to go. I’ve my duty to do.’
‘I don’t think it extends to putting her out by force, does it? And so far moral suasion doesn’t seem to be getting us anywhere.’ He dropped his voice again. ‘You’d really better go, Stacy. This is trying us a bit high, don’t you think?’
‘You?’
‘Me.’
She said, ‘I’ll go’, and took her hands away so suddenly that he thought she had lost her balance and would fall, but before he could touch her she had steadied herself. Her colour was all gone. She said, ‘Goodbye—’ in an exhausted voice which hardly reached him. Then she turned round and went out of the room.
Crisp held the door and shut it after her rather forcefully. No one could say that he had banged it, but it had that effect. Stacy had not looked at him when she came. She did not look at him as she went. He might not have been there.
When he turned round from not banging the door Charles Forrest was once more standing with his back to him looking in the direction of the battle picture on the chimney-breast, but this time it is to be doubted whether he really saw it.
THIRTY-TWO
LILIAS GREY PULLED BACK the curtains from her sitting-room windows. The sun was off them now, and there was the beginning of a breeze from the sea. The day really had been stiflingly hot, but in the next hour or two the air would freshen. She went over to the door and opened it to make a draught in the room. It was a grievance that her flat opened directly from the sitting-room upon the corridor. In his downstairs flat Charles had a nice little lobby entrance. She had not seen, and never would see, why she could not have one too. Facts adduced by Mr. Adams, the architect, made no difference to this point of view. It was, and remained, a grievance. On a hot day like this, of course, there was a certain advantage in being able to achieve a through draught.
She came back from the door to stand by the window again. It had been such a very long day. Charles had not been to see her. She felt angry and resentful because he had not been. She had seen him for a moment in the hall on his way out to lunch with Major Constable, and that was all. She wouldn’t have seen him then if she hadn’t heard Major Constable go down and followed him, because of course she guessed at once that Charles would be taking him out to lunch. She felt a grievance about that. Charles hadn’t asked her to come too. She would have said no of course. If anyone saw her, they might think it strange so soon after Lewis’s death. Oh, no, she wouldn’t have gone, but she would like to have been asked. No one would think anything of Charles and Jack Constable having lunch together in Ledbury — even nowadays men were much freer than women — but it would not be prudent for her to be seen at an hotel or a restaurant until the funeral was over. She would have to go to the funeral of course. However hot it was, she would have to wear her black coat and skirt, because she had nothing else that would be suitable. Fortunately it wasn’t very thick, but it was wool— and in this weather! But she would have to wear it — and at the inquest too.
All the time these thoughts were going through her mind they were getting nearer to the inquest. She would have to go to it, and be sworn, and give her evidence. When she got to this point everything in her shook and was confused. That was what frightened her about the inquest. She would have to stand up in that sort of box with a ledge in front of it and read the oath from the printed card they gave you and give her evidence. The room would be crowded, and everyone would be looking at her. The black coat and skirt was becoming. It threw up her fair hair. She could wear the little black hat which hardly hid it at all — just that flattering tilt over the eyes, and the scrap of veil to soften the brim. She had a comforting picture of herself standing there, rather pathetically slim and fair, doing her best to be brave. Then the shaking, and the fear came back. Suppose this horrid frightened feeling came over her when she was giving her evidence and she got confused and didn’t know what to say. It had all been such a horrid shock. And no one came near her. Charles didn’t come near her.
She stared out the window. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, or a shadow on the sea.
Someone was coming up the stairs — a man. Charles? Major Constable? The sound came in through the open door. She turned round and went to it, and saw Inspector Crisp step up on to the landing.
In the annexe the stage was set when Crisp brought her in. The glass passage was like a furnace, just as it had been on that dreadful Friday afternoon. To step from all that heat and glare into the room which Lewis Brading had designed for his Collection was to lose a good ten degrees of heat and to drop into what seemed for the moment to be darkness. Only one light burned high up, and the black-hung walls muffled it. Lilias Grey caught her breath, checked, felt Crisp’s touch on her arm, and went on again. He said, ‘This way, Miss Grey,’ and they came into the lighted passage beyond.
The door of the laboratory was ajar. Crisp opened it and stood aside for her to enter. All the laboratory lights were on. The room seemed dazzlingly bright, like a room in a hospital — white walls and ceiling and a chill upon the air.
She turned to the right as she came in, and saw the Chief Constable facing her across Lewis’s table a dozen feet away. He was sitting where Lewis had sat. Away on his left there was a little dowdy woman with some pale pink knitting in her lap. That would be Charles’ private detective. Somehow the sight of her, sitting there looking so exactly like somebody’s governess, was a relief. The cold, fluttering sensation which had been making her feel quite sick began to subside. It was tiresome to be dragged down here on a hot evening, and with no reason given except that the police wished to check up on some of the statements which had been made. But there was nothing to be frightened about. Her nerves were just playing her tricks, and no wonder after the shock she had had. It was all just a routine matter, as common-place and ordinary as the dowdy little governess person sitting there knitting up pale pink wool.
March said, ‘Come in, Miss Grey. There are just a few questions I must ask you. Crisp, will you be ready to take notes?’
The fluttering feeling returned. Very foolish of course — just her nerves. Randal March was a good-looking man. He had been Superintendent at Ledlington before he became Chief Constable. He looked like a country gentleman — big, fair, becomingly bronzed.
The Inspector had settled himself and taken out a notebook. It was these formalities which made you feel nervous. And no need for them that she could see. Why couldn’t Mr. March just call on her in her own drawing-room? So much more suitable. He said quite politely, but in what she could only call an official voice,
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