“I recognised the pink scarf she was wearing—it’s a most distinctive shade; and she had on one of those transparent raincoats. I particularly remember Miss Farrer only carried the lightest of cardigans.”
“What did you do?” asked Crook. “Call out or something?”
“Of course not. I didn’t want to startle her. I began to make my way down, but in no time the mist had closed up again, and I had to go slowly. By the time I reached the place where I thought I’d seen her, there was nobody there. Naturally, I assumed she’d come back to the hotel.”
“Could be she’s still on her way.”
Ames frowned. “There’s only one path. If she’s got off that, anything may happen.” He began to walk up and down the room. “I was so sure she and Miss Farrer would stay together.”
“Perhaps they are,” said Lil.
“Come on,” said Crook, who was watching Ames. “What about the card you’ve got up your sleeve?”
Paul Ames turned with an air of desperation. “It’s easy to be wise after the event,” he said, “but I did think I heard a cry a little after the mist came down again.”
“How far off?”
It’s hard to say. Mist muffles the voice. And don’t ask me if it was Maud’s voice, because in such weather all voices are anonymous.”
The two ladies instantly became ghouls. They might have been playing cards, producing one horror after another from their hands. Do you remember—that woman on the moors? the man on the railway line? the baby in the laundry basket?
Suddenly Crook snatched his check cap from a hook. “Anyone want to pass this round for a wreath?” he demanded. “What’s got into you all? We don’t know anyone’s dead. Two girls have lost their way in the mist. I dessay they’re down at the caffy eating hot soup—and don’t I wish I was with them!”
A waiter came in, looking worried. He wanted to know if the other lady
was back, and if he could serve lunch.
“Neither of them is back,” said Floss (or Lil; Crook was never sure which was which, and sometimes wondered if even their husbands knew).
“Oh, yes,” said the waiter, “one lady is coming now ...” and as he spoke the door was pushed open and Maud Ames walked in.
“I do hope I haven’t kept everyone. So you got back, Paul? I wondered.”
“How did you come in?—and when?” her husband demanded.
Maud looked astonished. “I’ve been back quite a long time. When the mist began to thicken I told Meg I wasn’t going to stay out. For one thing, it was getting so cold; besides, you know I don’t like heights, and I thought we might easily get lost.” She looked about her. “Where is Meg?”
“Don’t seem to have come back, sugar,” said Crook. “How long since you left her?”
“Oh, about half an hour, I should think. I came in by the back entry.
There was no one about, and I found a little writing-room. No one’s been near me, and I’m sure I dozed off.”
Crook put out a huge hand and caught her arm. “Didn’t happen to lend Miss Farrer your mac, I suppose?”
Maud looked startled. “Yes, I did. The mist is very wet and clammy. I said, ‘If you insist on hanging about here you’d better put this on.’ I was going straight back, you see.”
“Scarf, too?” asked Crook.
“She asked if she might borrow that. You don’t mind, do you, Paul?”
“That explains it,” said Crook, folding his big hands over his paunch.
“You didn’t see your wife standing on the edge of the ravine, you saw Miss Farrer.”
“What’s that?” The words broke simultaneously from the lips of husband and wife.
“Mr. Ames thought he’d seen you there—through a break in the mist.”
“You can’t have thought so, Paul. I haven’t been within ten yards of the ravine. Meg tried to dare me, but I wouldn’t listen.”
“I said it was astounding,” exclaimed Ames. “Your mackintosh, your scarf— naturally, I thought it was you.”
Maud sent one glance to his face, then turned away. Her own seemed to shrivel under their gaze. Crook took a glass from a tray and put it into her hand.
“Take this, sugar, and relax. And stop worryin’ about Miss Farrer. She’s got the nerve of a mountain goat.”
“I want to hear,” said Maud Ames, brushing the glass aside. “How long ago? And where is she now?”
The words seemed to echo round the room and come bouncing back. Where is she now? Where is Meg Farrer now?
* * *
Only the two husbands did justice to the delicious lunch. The ladies had supped full on horrors and needed no other sustenance. Ames played with his food, Maud made no effort to conceal her fears. As for Crook, he missed his nice English dishes. These kickshaws were very well in their way, but give him a nice steak-and-kidney pud, or a cut off the joint, with two veg. and plenty of thick gravy. All through the meal people threw up their heads in listening attitudes or half turned in their chairs, or said, “What was that?” But whatever it was, it was never Meg Farrer.
Ames said abruptly, “We ought to let Davidson know. We can’t just sit around here as if nothing had happened.”
“Well,” returned Crook, sensibly, “we don’t know that it has. At least, none of us knows. I wonder why you’re so tootin’ sure there’s something wrong with the girl.”
After lunch the two couples went back to ground level, taking Maud with them. The two men sat about, smoking and exchanging an occasional word. The mist thinned slowly. Meg Farrer didn’t come back.
The next ski-lift brought up Davidson, with a forehead like corrugated cardboard.
“I knew that girl would make trouble,” he said wretchedly. “I tried to keep the situation dark, but...”
“You’ve a hope with those two poll parrots at large,” was Crook’s unchivalrous comment.
As soon as the atmosphere had cleared a bit, the three men walked up to the edge of the ravine. Visibility was rapidly improving as the sudden wind blew the fog into wisps and trails that floated towards the skyline. By the time they reached the place where Ames thought he had glimpsed a woman’s figure, they could see for a fair distance, but there wasn’t a sign of a human creature anywhere, except for themselves. Crook heard Ames take a deep breath before he looked over the edge. The setting was desolate enough, with the earth raw where the landslide had occurred, and great rocks and boulders standing clumped a short distance away.
Ames uttered a brief cry. Crook’s glance followed his. In the bright light that was swiftly superseding the mist a patch of colour was easily discernible a long way down.
“That’s Maud’s scarf,” said Paul Ames. “I couldn’t mistake it.”
“It could have floated down,” muttered Davidson, and stopped. Hadn’t Ames said it had been tied round the figure’s head?
“If she’s down there,” said Crook at last, “she hasn’t a chance. Look at those rocks at the bottom. They’d smash you to a jelly.”
“Thank goodness Maud went down with the others,” Ames remarked. “I suppose it was just daredevilry that made her stand there, looking down.”
“Suicide,” added Davidson, bitterly.
But there was quite a different word in Crook’s mind.
* * *
When the news was known at the hotel, all was gossip and speculation. “Very thoughtless,” declared Arsenic. “Spoiling our trip. Still, the minute I set eyes on her I knew she was the selfish type. I said so, didn’t I, Amy?”
Old Lace Amy said, “Yes, dear, you did.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me to know she tried to climb down just to get attention for herself. She was as mad as a March hare. I said so that first day, didn’t I, Amy?”
Amy said, “Yes, dear, you did.”
“I don’t think they ought to expect us to stay on after this,” continued Arsenic. “I shall tell Mr. Davidson.”
“Have a heart,” said Crook, appearing suddenly from behind a pillar. “All
these plans are made weeks ahead to a particular pattern; all the tours have to dovetail. You can’t suddenly shift two dozen people at a couple of hours’ notice.”
Arsenic threw her head back so far she nearly threw it over her shoulder.
That common Mr. Crook! She couldn’t think what the Scarlet Runner people were thinking of. Best Tours for the Best People was their advertisement.
The man who clearly wasn’t the best people went on calmly, “The Ames couple will have to give evidence or make a statement or something, once they’ve got the girl up. Davidson’s telephoning London. She seems to have a brother who must be told.”
“I daresay he won’t shed many tears,” said Arsenic callously. “I’ll tell you one person who won’t be sorry, and that’s Mrs. Ames. If ever I saw a girl make a dead set at someone else’s husband ...”
Crook ambled off. He had other fish to fry. The next day he and Davidson went to identify ail that was left of Meg Farrer. A team of locals had brought her up, and she wasn’t a pretty sight. Crook felt sick, remembering how she had taunted him with being a bossy old nursie not twenty-four hours before.
The only thing to remember, he told himself, was that she couldn’t have known much about it. All the same, he had a vision he couldn’t so easily put out of his mind. Pretty, reckless Meg Farrer standing as near the edge as she could get, laughing to herself because she wasn’t frightened like poor Maud Ames, and then suddenly, without warning, since the mist would deaden all footsteps, the violent thrust, the stagger, the cry, and then the fall to those bitter rocks so far below. He hadn’t liked her particularly—his cups of tea were rum old girls on the shady side of sixty, and he didn’t believe any of them would have allowed themselves to come to such a sticky end; but she had been happy and reckless and alive and now she was dead and pretty well unrecognisable.
Maud Ames was waiting when he returned. “Did you see her?”
“Yes.”
“Was there anything to show she knew—knew she was falling, I mean?”
“Difficult to tell now,” said Crook.
Maud shuddered. “I can’t get the picture out of my mind. Poor Meg standing there staring down at those awful rocks at the foot of the ravine—like the broken glass they used to put on the tops of walls, and then, without warning, feeling herself pushed off her feet ...”
“I can tell you one thing,” said Crook, “she didn’t make any effort to save herself. Remember those high heels she was wearing? If she’d felt herself slipping she’d have tried to dig her heels in and you’d have seen the result. But there was no mud on those shoes she couldn’t have picked up just by strolling around. She might have jumped ...”
“You don’t believe that,” cried Maud, scornfully. “Why should she? She loved her life. Besides, it all hangs together too well—you can’t take this as an isolated incident. There were too many predecessors before we came out here, Paul and I. And you heard him say that he thought it was me standing there.”
“Oh, I don’t think he had any reason for wanting to shove Miss Farrer over the edge,” Crook agreed, obligingly. “But don’t imagine you’ve got a water-tight case against him, because of what can easily be explained away as a lot of coincidences. You slipped on the platform, you muddled your sleeping tablets. You slipped again on that cobbled French road, and your husband helped to save you. You went out with a too adventurous girl, and she fell. You haven’t as much of a case against dear Paul as you could take to fill a thimble. Anyway,” he added, grimly, “you can feel safe till you’re home. Another accident within the week would make even a mute call Howzat? And as soon as you get home, change your address and your will. I wonder you didn’t think of that before.”
“You still don’t understand,” said Maud, heavily. “It isn’t just the money.”
“Meanin’ so long as you’re alive you’re an obstacle in his path?”
Crook knew what she meant. There are plenty of rich women knocking around looking for Mr. Right, and the best way to get hold of their dough is to marry them. But, of course, if you’ve already got an ever-loving, well, it does cramp your style.
“It all goes to show,” he told himself, “you do better to stay in your own country.”
He went off presently by himself. Something bothered him, something he couldn’t put a finger on as yet. Sometime, somewhere, someone had said something that offered a key to the situation. On the face of it, the conclusion he and Maud Ames had reached was bonanza; but his memory itched and kept on itching. He supposed that the princess with the pea in her roseleaf bed had felt just the same. It was about 6 o’clock when he realised what it was that was tormenting him, and the knowledge sent him hareing back to the hotel. He found Davidson in the bar.
“Have one on me,” the courier offered. “Praise the pigs, that’s over. Death by misadventure. Even London can’t give me the sack with that verdict.”
“Fine, if that’s what you want,” said Crook absent-mindedly. “Seen the Ameses anywhere?”
“They’ve gone,” said Davidson. “In a sense, it’s a relief ...”
“You mean, left the tour?”
“Yes. It seems some of the others had an idea she was in some way responsible for Miss Farrer’s death—on account of the mackintosh, see?—and were making it uncomfortable for her. Anyhow, she told her husband she’d rather they packed up, and as he isn’t a tour-minded sort of chap at the best of times and wasn’t going to make any trouble about a refund—which the company won’t allow—I did what I could to help.”
“Know where they’ve gone?” asked Crook.
“We rang through to Innsbruck and by a mere chance there were two seats on a chartered plane going to Zurich that they could have.”
“Why Zurich?” asked Crook.
“I don’t think they cared. They just wanted to part brass-rags with the gang.”
“And how!” said Crook, feelingly. “No notion where they’ll be staying at Zurich, I take it?”
“They shouldn’t have a lot of difficulty getting accommodations, seeing the sort of summer it’s been.”
“How many hotels in Zurich? Couple of hundred, I daresay. One thing, those bright red suitcases your benign company gives its clients ‘ull mark’ em out anywhere. What’s the quickest way for me to get to Zurich? No more chartered planes on tap, I suppose?”
“What on earth do you want to go to Zurich for?”
“I don’t want to go,” explained Crook, carefully, “but I’ve never yet been accessory before the fact in a murder case, and you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
Davidson looked all at sea. “Who’s talking about murder?”
“I am. Me, Arthur Crook. Don’t forget the name, you might need me some day. Unless I get there in time—and the odds are about eighty to one against—there’s going to be another Death by Accident, but this time the victim’s name will be Ames.”
* * *
For all his hustling propensities, it was twenty-four hours before Crook arrived in Zurich, and by that time the birds had flown. When he asked where, no one seemed to know. At last he got wind of them through the local office of the Travellers’ Joy agency. A tormented clerk declared, “The English, they are impossible. They want always to take the most difficult journey in the quickest time. It would be quicker to fly back to England and proceed to Brittany by boat, I told them, but ...” The clerk threw up his hands in despair.
Crook, who could, on his day, be a credit to Beelzebub, the father of lies, persuaded them that he was an official connected with Scotland Yard on the trail of a dangerous criminal, and thus enlisted their help. For two days he knocked about hunting them down, but though eventually he located them, it was too late. The little seaside resort was ringing with the news of the tragedy.
“Poor lady!” they said, throwing up their hands and going through a perfect pantomime of gesture. “Married less than a year.”
There were plenty of English there, and Crook singled out a man who seemed to ha
ve his head screwed on properly, and inveigled him into a bar.
“How was it?” he suggested.
“A hideous shock,” said the man.
“Not to me,” said Crook.
“You mean, you expected something of the sort?”
“It ain’t my idea of pleasure, gallivanting round the Continong, where I don’t speak a word of the lingo, and the native’s idea of breakfast is coffee and a sugar bun. Didn’t happen to see it yourself, I suppose?”
“We all saw it—all of us who were on the beach, that is. They’d only just arrived, and it seems Mr. Ames suggested taking a boat out. Well, it was calm
enough near the shore, though it was a bit choppy farther out, but you don’t have to go out far. They sat at the next table to us in the café drinking coffee.
Mrs. Ames said, ‘Perhaps all the boats will be engaged.’ But of course they weren’t. Then she said, ‘Isn’t it a bit cold?’ She’d want a wrap, she said, and up he popped to fetch one. A devoted couple, you know.”
“I’ll say,” murmured Crook. “Me, I prefer the sort of devotion that don’t wait till you’re a nice way out and then tip the boat. That’s about the size of it, ain’t it?”
“He seemed to come over faint suddenly,” said the other. “Annie—my wife—did say they were going a good way from shore, but the chap seemed to know how to handle his oars. It all happened in a split-second; he stopped rowing and sort of drooped, and I suppose she leaned forward to help him— anyway, the next minute they were both in the water. We could see their heads bobbing, and we thought they’d try and right the boat, but—I suppose it was cramp or something. Anyway, in about thirty seconds one of the heads disappeared. And it didn’t come up again.”
“And the other?” asked Crook.
“There was a second boat not too far off, and that went to the rescue. Poor Mrs. Ames! Shakes you, doesn’t it? Mrs. Parks and me were thinking of going for a row tomorrow, but now—well, I’m not so sure.”
Sequel to Murder: The Cases of Arthur Crook and Other Mysteries Page 6