She Came Back (14 page)

On the same afternoon Anne rang up Janice Albany.

“It’s Anne Jocelyn speaking. Look here, I wonder if you can help me.”

Janice said, “What is it? What can I do?”

“Well, Lyn was here yesterday. You had her to tea last week. She was talking about someone she met then, and I stupidly forgot to ask her the name. I’ve been wondering whether this woman was related to some people I met in France. Lyn’s out, and it’s teasing me—you know the way things do.”

“Would it have been Miss Silver? She was talking to Lyn, and I think I caught your name.”

“Does she live at Blackheath?”

“Oh, no, she lives in Montague Mansions—15 Montague Mansions.” Then, after a little pause, “She has a niece at Blackheath.”

“Who is she?”

“She’s a pet—straight out of the last century. She wears beaded slippers and a boxed-up fringe, but she’s a marvel at her job.”

“What is her job?”

“She’s a private detective.”

Anne took a long breath and leaned forward over the study table. The room was full of a throbbing mist. Through it she heard Janice telling her things about the murder of Michael Harsch. They came to her in snatches with a continual burden—“Miss Silver was really too marvellous.” Presently she managed to say,

“No, she isn’t the person I thought of. I don’t know why I got it into my head she might be—it was just one of those things… By the way, don’t tell her I asked—she might think it odd.”

“Oh, no, I won’t.”

Anne rang off, but she did not get up for a long time after that.

Later on she kept her appointment. When she came to the shop with the bright blue curtains and the name of Félise over the door she walked straight in. With a murmured “I have an appointment with Mr. Felix,” she passed the girl at the counter, went down the passage between the cubicles, and opened the looking-glass door. She stood for a moment in the dark as Lyndall had stood, and then moved towards the line of light which showed at the edge of the door that faced her. She pushed it open and went in, putting up her hand to shield her eyes.

The light came from a reading-lamp with a dark opaque shade tilted so as to leave the farther side of the room in shadow and to direct a dazzling cone of light upon the door and upon anyone coming in that way. As she turned to get it out of her eyes and to make sure that the latch had caught, she thought, “What a stupid trick! That’s what happened last time—I was dazzled, and I didn’t make sure the door was shut. I’d like to tell him that.”

She turned back to the room, her hand up again, and said in an exasperated voice,

“Turn the light off me, can’t you!”

The room was sparsely furnished—a square of carpet on the floor, a writing-table roughly cutting the space in half, a plain upright chair on the far side, a plain upright chair on the near side, and the electric lamp standing on the table. In the farther chair, and in the deepest of the shadow, Mr. Felix. He lifted a gloved hand and turned the lamp a little. The beam now lay between them. If anyone with a fancy for metaphor had been present, it might have been compared to a fiery sword.

From the nearer chair Anne looked across it and saw very little—no more in fact than she had seen at two previous interviews, a man in a chair, looking bulky in a big loose coat. Nothing else would give just that density and shape to shadow. Gloved hands—she had seen that when he turned the lamp; thick hair, and as he leaned forward, a suggestion that the hair might be red; large round glasses—she thought tinted from the way in which they occasionally picked up a reflection from the place where the beam struck on the whited wall. She had never seen more than that, and she knew better than to try. In this game nothing was so dangerous, nothing, as to know too much.

She leaned back from the beam and heard him say,

“Why have you come? I did not send for you.”

The voice was a husky whisper. There was nothing that could be called an accent, only every now and then an intonation which suggested familiarity with some language other than English. She had her own ideas about this, but she was perfectly well aware that it was wise not to formulate them, even for her own private consideration. Better to accept what you were given, do what you were told, and ask no questions. Only there were some things… She said,

“Why did you do it? I told you she was harmless.”

“Is that why you have come here—to ask questions about what is not your business?”

She ought to have stopped there and let it go. Something boiled up in her. For a moment she didn’t care. She had been hating him hard for nearly forty-eight hours—hating him because the police had come down on her, because Joan Tallent had dropped out of the blue to tattle in front of Philip, because of Nellie Collins who had never done anyone any harm. The middle reason was of course quite illogical, because he didn’t know that Joan existed. But logic has very little to do with the primitive instincts. The hating stuff boiled over, and she said,

“I suppose it isn’t my business if you’ve brought the police down on me!”

The toneless voice came back.

“You will explain what you mean by that.”

“She talked about coming up to see me.”

“She promised—”

Anne laughed angrily.

“She talked to a woman in the train! Told her all about bringing up Annie Joyce and asking if she could come up and see me!”

“How do you know?”

She said in a hesitating way,

“The police told me.”

“There is something more than that. You will tell me. Who is this woman?”

She had not made up her mind whether she would tell him or not. He had been too quick for her—she would have to tell him now. But she wouldn’t tell him any more than she need. Let him find out the rest for himself. She said with an appearance of frankness,

“She is a Miss Silver.”

“Did the police tell you that?”

“No—Lyndall Armitage told me.”

After a slight pause he said,

“How does she come into it? Does she know this Miss Silver?”

“She met her out at tea.”

“How do you know?”

“Lyndall told me.”

“Tell me every word she said. You will be accurate.”

She repeated as nearly as possible word for word what Lyndall had said.

“So you see, Nellie Collins did talk, and the woman she talked to is in touch with the police. She told them Nellie Collins said she was coming up to meet me under the clock at Waterloo at a quarter to four that Monday afternoon, and they naturally wanted to know about it. Fortunately, I wasn’t ever really alone all day or up to eleven o’clock at night.”

Mr. Felix said gently,

“That is because you followed your instructions, which provided you with a series of very good alibis. This will perhaps convince you of how wise it is to obey orders and ask no questions.”

She sat there with the beam between them and digested this. It was most convincingly true. She had been told to bring Ivy Fossett with her up to town and keep her overnight. She had been told to ask Lilla Jocelyn, or failing her some other friend or relation, to be at the flat not later than three o’clock, and to keep her there until seven. It was also true that she had asked no questions. She had not even asked them of herself. She had obeyed, and Nellie Collins had died. Impatience rose in her. What did it matter whether one little chattering woman died or not? The world was soaked with blood and sodden with grief. You couldn’t live other people’s lives—you could only fight for your own hand and struggle to survive.

Mr. Felix said, “What did you say to the police? Every word of it!”

When she stopped speaking he nodded.

“You did very well, I think. It is unlikely that they will trouble you again. But there is a point I do not understand. This girl Lyndall—what made her speak to you about Nellie Collins? Why did it seem sufficiently important to her? This is the point—did it seem important? You have told me her words, but what I want is the manner in which those words were said. You have given me the conversation, but I want the setting. How did it all come up? Was it amongst other things in the course of conversation—first this and then that, and then what you have repeated to me? Or did this girl, this Lyndall, make a visit to you in order that she might tell you what she did tell you?”

Anne moistened her lips.

“She came to tell me.”

“She came with the purpose to tell you that she had met someone who talked about Nellie Collins—who said that Nellie Collins had come to London to meet you?”

Anne said, “Yes.”

She heard him say, “That might be serious. Will you stop speaking as if your words were rationed, and tell me what I want to know—not what she said, but the manner in which she said it. The words are nothing, the manner is everything. In what manner was it said? Was it narrated as a coincidence, or as if she had some suspicion in her mind?”

He lifted that gloved hand, and suddenly the light was on her face again. She said sharply, “Don’t do that!” and he laughed and shifted it.

“Then you will stop playing with me and tell me what I want to know.”

She felt a burning anger, and behind it fear. She had the same thought about Lyndall as she had had about Nellie Collins—what did one girl matter? If she had pushed into this business she must take the consequences. If you could keep your own feet you were lucky. You couldn’t afford to bother about anyone else. She said in a smooth voice,

“You don’t give me time to tell you. I’m not holding anything back. But I don’t want you to think it is more important than it really is.”

“I will be the judge of that. You will find it safer not to keep anything back.”

She said, “I was going to tell you. It is just that—well— Lyndall saw me come in here last week.”

“That was very careless of you. Go on!”

“I didn’t see her—she was on the other side of the road. She followed me into the shop. She wasn’t sure about its being me—she hadn’t seen my face. So she came through the shop to see if I was in one of the cubicles. She opened the door at the end and got as far as the other side of this door. It wasn’t latched—you may thank this glaring light of yours for that. If you hadn’t blinded me as I came in, I should have made sure it was properly shut. She heard me say, ‘Why don’t you let me write to Nellie Collins? She’s quite harmless.’ And she heard you answer, ‘That is not for you to say.’ Then she panicked and ran away.”

The gloved hand fell to the table’s edge, gripping it hard. He said,

“She recognized your voice? For certain?”

“No. She just thought it was my voice—she wasn’t sure. I could have made her think it was all a mistake if she hadn’t met this damned woman at the Albanys’ and heard about Nellie Collins saying she was coming up to meet me.”

“To how many people will she have told this story?”

“She hadn’t told it to anyone—yesterday.”

“How do you know?”

“She said she hadn’t.” Her shoulders moved in the slightest possible shrug. “Actually she’s one of those people who tell the truth. I don’t think she could get away with a lie even if she tried to, and I don’t think she would try.”

“What did you say to her?”

“I reeled off my alibi to prove that I couldn’t have anything to do with Nellie Collins’ unfortunate accident. I said the whole thing was nonsense—she’d mistaken someone else for me. And I pitched it hot and strong about the unpleasant publicity we had already had, and just how damaging it would be for Philip if she started any gossip about Nellie Collins. She promised she wouldn’t say a word, and I really don’t think she will.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s in love with Philip.”

He took his hand off the table.

“Is he in love with her?”

“I believe so.”

“And you say that she is safe—that she will not talk?”

“She won’t do anything to hurt Philip.”

He leaned forward.

“Are you as stupid as you sound? If she tells no one else she will tell him.”

She laughed.

“Oh, no, she won’t! They don’t see each other, for one thing, except in the bosom of the family. It was all pour le bon motif, you know. Philip was on the point of proposing to her—hence his joy at my return. They suffer in silence and hope that no one notices. Also, Lyndall was one of my bridesmaids and very devoted. It is surprising, but I believe she was the only person who was genuinely glad to see me. She ran right across the room and flung her arms round my neck. At the moment, she thought about me, not Philip. Which I consider a triumph—don’t you?”

He said abruptly, “How old is she?”

“Twenty, or twenty-one—younger than that in herself.”

There was a silence. He rested his head upon his hands as if he were thinking. When he did not speak, she said,

“I think it’s safe so far. She won’t tell Philip because she used to be fond of me. And she won’t tell anyone else because she is fond of Philip. But it’s gone far enough—I won’t come here any more.”

He said, “No, it would not be safe. There must be another arrangement. You will have your instructions.”

“I said it had gone far enough. It’s too dangerous. I won’t go on with it.”

“You won’t?” The voice was the same monotone, only just above the level of a whisper, but it sent a shiver over her.

On the other side of the beam he had looked up. For a moment the lenses which screened his eyes threw back a faint menacing gleam.

She said, “It’s too dangerous.”

“That is not your business! You are to obey your orders, not to think whether they bring you into danger! In any army in the world the man who thinks like that will find himself before a firing-squad.”

She controlled herself to say, “This is England.”

The faintly foreign intonation was accentuated in his answer.

“And you think that makes a difference?”

She didn’t answer that. When the silence had lasted just long enough he said, very softly indeed.

“It did not make so much difference to Nellie Collins—did it?”

No one would have known that she was frightened. For a moment she felt quite sick with fright, but it didn’t show. She had had a lot of practice in not letting her feelings show. Years of practice—years of making herself agreeable when she was tired, when she was angry, when with all her heart she hated her necessity. The bitter apprenticeship served her now. She could say without a tremor,