The Catherine Wheel (21 page)

Florence put a hand on her shoulder.

“Look here, you mean well, I grant you that, but this isn’t your business. And I don’t know what you’re talking about neither, and if I did I wouldn’t care. Get that—I wouldn’t care! If someone was to bring me a good glass of poison this minute, I’d just as soon drink it and be done with everything! So you can stop your hinting about my being in danger! I don’t care if I am! Do you get that? I don’t give a damn!”

Miss Silver looked at her with compassion. There was a moment when their eyes met, a moment when things hung in the balance. The hand on Miss Silver’s shoulder weighed heavily. It shook a little, and then it was withdrawn. Florence Duke said with a catch in her voice,

“Oh, well, it’ll be all the same a hundred years hence.”

Then she turned and went out of the room and into her own, and shut the door.

Miss Silver waited for what she was hoping to hear, the sound of a key being turned in the lock of the door which was next to her own. It was turned roughly and with no attempt at concealment. To all whom it might concern, Florence Duke had locked herself in for the night. Miss Silver experienced a decided feeling of relief. She had no desire to sit up all night, but if that door had not been locked, she might have felt herself obliged to do so. As it was, she felt quite sure that by setting her door ajar she would at once become aware of any attempt to tamper with the lock of Mrs. Duke’s room. The mere fact that her own door was ajar would act as a deterrent.

She undressed, put on her dressing-gown, and went across to the bathroom to wash, taking her towel with her. There was a faint pleasant scent in the passage. The light from a small wall-lamp disclosed the fact that powder had been spilled upon the carpet. The scent was agreeable and not too insistent. It suggested an expensive beauty-shop and Lady Marian. The bathroom smelled of it too. It required no great powers of deduction to assume that Marian Thorpe-Ennington had taken a bath and had spilled some of her powder as she came or went.

Her ablutions over, Miss Silver crossed the passage again, drew a blue crochet shawl about her shoulders, and sitting up in bed, reached for her old shabby Bible. It was her custom to read a portion of Scripture before she slept. As she opened the book, the yellow candlelight fell upon the psalm in which David prays to be delivered from Saul and Doeg:

“The proud have laid a snare for me and cords; they have spread a net by the wayside; they have set gins for me.”

The words appeared to her to be almost too appropriate. She turned the leaves in search of a more consoling passage.

She did not put out her light for quite a long time. With her door some six inches open, sounds came to her from the other rooms, from the well of the stairs. Footsteps crossed the landing, entered the passage on the farther side, and passed out of hearing. The murmur of voices from the Thorpe-Enningtons’ room died away. Midnight and silence were in her house. She blew out her candle and fell into a light sleep. The smallest sound would have roused her. Even without being aware of such a sound she was never far from consciousness. When the old wall-clock downstairs struck each of the hours between twelve and seven she was at once fully awake and, waking, was aware only of sleep in the house and the silence gathering.

At seven footsteps came again, a long way off in the passage on the other side of the landing—doors opening, the distant sound of voices. Eily and the Castells were up. Miss Silver got up too. She went over to the bathroom to wash, as she had done the night before, and was pleased to find that the water was still warm.

Before she came back into her own room she very gently tried the handle of Florence Duke’s door. It was still locked. She completed her dressing with a feeling of satisfaction. The night was safely over, and within the next few hours the inquest would be over too and Florence Duke’s evidence would have been placed on record. Alone in her room, she admitted to herself that it would be very pleasant indeed to get back to her comfortable flat, and to the ministrations of her devoted Hannah.

By eight o’clock others were stirring. There was some competition for the bathroom. Jane Heron came out of her room looking fresh and blooming. She ran downstairs humming a tune, and Jeremy joined her. Mildred Taverner appeared next, pale, nervous, and not sure whether she ought to wear her blue beads to an inquest. Miss Silver’s door being half open, she knocked upon it and came in to invite an opinion.

“I shall have my coat on and a scarf, so I don’t suppose they will show, but if it should be very hot—at the inquest, I mean— I should want to open my coat—I always do get hot when I’m nervous—and perhaps take the scarf off too, and then the beads would show. Of course the scarf is a coloured one, but I haven’t any black, and I couldn’t be expected to know that anyone was going to be murdered.” The tip of her long, pale nose became quite pink with agitation. “It really is so difficult, because I shouldn’t like anyone to think I was heartless, and in a sort of way I suppose you might say he was a cousin.”

Miss Silver said in a kind, firm voice,

“I am sure no one would think that you were heartless, but if it made you feel any more comfortable, you could leave the beads in a drawer and put them on again after the inquest is over.”

Mildred Taverner’s nose became a much deeper pink. Her agitation was sensibly increased.

“Oh, but I wear them always. I shouldn’t like to leave them here, not with things like murders happening. I really couldn’t bear it if—you see, they were given to me by such a very dear friend—such a very dear friend—and he is dead, and I have always worn them. We weren’t exactly engaged, but he gave me the beads.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“Then I should wear them.”

The door was still open to the passage. It really was a relief that Lady Marian should come out of her room at this moment, since, without some interruption, it seemed quite possible that Mildred Taverner might continue to discuss her qualms indefinitely. Unfortunately the sight of Lady Marian in a beautifully cut black town suit had anything but a calming effect. Miss Taverner gazed at the white crepe blouse, the two rows of pearls, the small black hat, and the slimming elegance of the coat and skirt, with a feeling akin to despair. So smart, so suitable, so completely beyond her reach. She resigned herself, but the feeling of inferiority sank deep and added to the chronic uncertainty with which she contemplated the problem of living.

Lady Marian was in excellent looks and spirits. She had enjoyed nearly ten hours of refreshing sleep, and by lunchtime the Catherine-Wheel and its unpleasant happenings would have gone to join all those other past events which served her as an inexhaustible source of anecdote. Even the fact that Freddy with another painful business meeting before him was in a state of suicidal depression raised no more than a ripple upon the surface of her mind. She showed, in fact, some zest in explaining how low he was. “But, as I said to him, ‘Something always does turn up, and as to being ruined, well, who isn’t? And I can’t see it makes any difference whether the creditors have your money, because it all goes in income tax anyhow, and when you haven’t got any more they do have to stop, so we shan’t have to go on filling up any more of those dreadful forms.’ ”

Miss Silver, who was nearest to the door, had not been attending very closely to these remarks. From where she stood she could see the landing and the top of the stairs.

At this moment Eily came round the corner carrying three or four pairs of shoes newly cleaned. She put Jane Heron’s inside her room, Lady Marian’s and Freddy Thorpe-Ennington’s beside their door, and then crossed over with the remaining pair in her hand—shabby patent leather with bulging toes and exaggerated heels. She had put them down at Florence Duke’s door and was straightening up again, when Miss Silver stepped into the passage and addressed her.

“Just knock on the door, Eily, and see whether Mrs. Duke is up.”

Eily tapped on the panel, waited for a moment, and tapped again. When there was no reply she looked round at Miss Silver in a hesitating manner.

“Do you think she is asleep?”

Miss Silver stepped forward, put her hand on the knob of the door, and turned it gently. The door was locked, as it had been when she tried it last. She knocked herself this time, so loudly that Mildred Taverner and Marian Thorpe-Ennington came out into the passage to see what was going on. But from behind that locked door there was neither voice nor answer.

Miss Silver turned from it, her face grave.

“I am afraid that there must be something wrong. I think, Eily, that you had better fetch Mr. Castell.”

Eily looked scared.

“Should I just take a look through the keyhole?”

Miss Silver coughed.

“The key will be in the lock—”

But Eily was already stooping down.

“But it isn’t,” she said. “I can see right over the bed… Oh, Miss Silver, she isn’t there—it’s not been slept in!”

“Can you see any sign of Mrs. Duke?”

“Oh, no, I can’t! There’s the bed turned down—like I left it—”

Miss Silver said in a quiet voice,

“Go and fetch your uncle.”

As they stood waiting, Geoffrey Taverner came along the opposite passage from his room and crossed the landing to join them.

“Is anything wrong, Miss Silver?”

“I am afraid that there may be. I think you had better take your sister away.”

But Mildred refused to go—or at any rate no farther than Miss Silver’s room, where she sat trembling on the edge of the bed and shed weak, forlorn tears. They dripped upon the Venetian beads, and so down into her lap as she listened whilst Castell enquired of all and sundry why heaven should be thus afflicting him.

“My respectable house!” he groaned. “Mrs. Duke—are you there? If you are asleep, will you wake up and speak to us! We are getting alarmed. I shall have to break in the door if you do not answer.” He raised his voice to a bellow—“Mrs. Duke!” then turned away with a gesture of despair. “It is no good. She may be ill—she may have taken too much of a sleeping draught—she does not hear—we shall have to break the door—”

Jeremy and Jane had arrived to swell the crowd. Jacob Taverner came across the landing wrapped in his greatcoat. Freddy Thorpe-Ennington, fully dressed but with his fair hair wildly unbrushed, stared from the threshold of his room. Jeremy said,

“Wait a bit—don’t any of these other keys fit?”

“Fool!” said Castell, smiting himself upon the breast. “Idiot— imbecile! Why did I not think of that? I tell you I am out of my senses with all this trouble! The key of the cupboard at the end of the passage, perhaps that will fit—I do not know. It fits one of these rooms, but I have forgotten which. It may be this one, or it may be one of the others—I do not know any more. I have no memory left—the brain gives way—I am distracted!”

In this state of distraction he precipitated himself along the passage, wrenched the key from a cupboard door, rushed back with it, and forced it violently into the lock. It grated, creaked, and under the utmost pressure turned.

Castell jerked at the handle and threw the door wide open. Every inch of the rather dingy room was visible. One side of the curtains had been pulled back. The daylight which entered was not bright, but it was sufficient. It showed the bed as Eily had described it, stripped of its coverlet and turned down for the night. It showed the space beneath it quite empty. It showed a worn square of carpet on the floor, a chest of drawers, a washstand, and two chairs. It showed a hanging-cupboard with the door fallen open. Inside it hung the bright blue coat and skirt and the sheepskin coat in which Florence Duke had arrived. But of Florence Duke herself there was no sign whatever. Except for its ordinary furniture the room was empty.

It was the police who had found her getting on for an hour later. She had gone over the cliff at its highest point, about a hundred yards beyond the hotel. She had fallen upon the rocks, and must have been killed immediately. The body had not been in the water, since this heaped and tumbled mass of rocks was covered only at the highest tides. She was wearing what she had worn the night before, the brightly flowered dress of artificial silk, the silk stockings, and indoor shoes. One of the shoes had come off and had been caught up on a small straggling bush about half way down.

A little later in Castell’s office Inspector Crisp was giving it as his opinion that it was a plain case of suicide, and that in the circumstances it was as good as a confession to the murder of Luke White.

“Clears the whole thing up, if you ask me. Can’t see any reason for putting the other inquest off myself, but the Chief Constable seems to think it would be better.”

Frank Abbott nodded.

“Yes—I think so.”

“Well, I can’t see it myself. But there, I’m not the Chief Constable—as I expect you were going to say.” He laughed quite good-humouredly.

Miss Silver, who had so far contributed nothing to the conversation, now gave a slight dry cough. Frank Abbott turned his head as if expecting her to speak, but she did not do so. For the moment her eyes were upon her knitting. The blue dress approached completion. He turned back to Crisp.

“You are satisfied that it was suicide?”

Crisp made a gesture.

“What else? She killed Luke White—jealousy over that girl Eily—and when I rang her up and told her she would have to identify the body she got the wind up. Wouldn’t face it—went and chucked herself over the cliff. “ He gazed complacently at the London man who couldn’t see a simple solution when he’d got it right under his nose. “Psychology,” he said—“that’s what you’ve got to bear in mind, especially when you’re dealing with women. This Florence Duke—you’ve got to put yourself in her place, look at it from her point of view. She was jealous of Eily Fogarty. This Luke White, he’d got the name for being able to get round any woman, and by all accounts he got round a good few of them. He got round Florence Duke, married her, and left her. Then she comes here and finds him making love to this girl Eily. On her own admission she went down to meet him the night he was murdered, and she was found practically standing over the body with his blood on her hands. Well, a woman will stab a man she’s been fond of if she’s jealous enough. But this is where psychology comes in. She’s done the murder when she was all worked up, but when she’s told she’s got to come in cold blood and look at the corpse she just can’t face it—she goes and chucks herself over the cliff. That’s psychology.”

Miss Silver laid her knitting down in her lap and coughed again.

“That would be one explanation, Inspector, but it is not the only one.”

Crisp looked hard at her.

“Look here, Miss Silver, you were the last person to see Florence Duke or to have any conversation with her. Was she, or was she not, in a state of nervous depression?”

“I have already told you that she was.”

“She was nervous and depressed because she knew she had got to see her husband’s body and give evidence at the inquest?”

“She was frightened and nervous about the identification. I would remind you, Inspector, that I had particularly desired she should not be told until this morning that she would have to identify the body.”

Crisp frowned.

“I thought it best to let her know. Now, Miss Silver—are you prepared to state that there was nothing in Mrs. Duke’s conversation or behaviour to support the idea of suicide?”

Miss Silver looked at him in a candid manner and said,

“No.”

“Then I think I have a right to ask you what she did say.”

Miss Silver said gravely,

“She spoke of her married life. It was obviously very much on her mind. She spoke of there being things which she could not forget. When I warned her that she might be in danger and begged her to let Captain Taverner take her to a place of safety for the night—”

He interrupted forcibly.

“You did that?”

She inclined her head.

“I am thankful to be able to recall that I did. She would not listen to me. She said she did not care. She went so far as to say, ‘If someone was to bring me a good glass of poison this minute, I’d drink it.’ ”

Crisp brought his fist down with a bang on the table.

“That’s all I want, thank you, and that’s all the jury will want! Short of someone seeing her go over the cliff it’s all anyone could want!”

Miss Silver coughed.

“I wish to be perfectly fair, and I have told you what the poor woman said. But I did not believe at the time, nor do I believe now, that she had any serious intention of taking her own life. She was in the mood to wish herself dead as an alternative to the painful position in which she found herself, but I have to state that I do not believe she committed suicide. I believe that she was murdered.”

Crisp threw himself back in his chair.

“Come, come, Miss Silver, you can’t expect us to swallow that! On your own showing Mrs. Duke locked herself into her room last night. You left your own door open, and you say that you are a very light sleeper and that the slightest noise in the passage would have waked you, yet you heard nothing. Are you going to ask us to believe that someone got into Mrs. Duke’s room, overpowered her, got her downstairs, and threw her over the cliff, all without making any sound at all?”

“No, Inspector.”

He went on in a tone flavored with contempt.

“To start with, according to you she had her key in the door, so no other key could have been used from the outside. To go on with, she walked down that passage on her own feet. There was powder spilt there, and she had walked through it—her stockings were full of the stuff. Look here, it’s simple enough what she did. She knew you were watching her, and she meant to give you the slip. You say you went over to the bathroom to wash. Well, as soon as you’d gone she unlocked her door, locked it again on the outside in case you tried the handle, took her shoes in her hand, and went off along the passage and down the stairs in her stocking feet. That’s how she picked up the powder. Castell found the back door unlocked this morning, so that’s how she got out of the house. Then all she’d got to do was walk up the hill to the top of the cliff and throw herself over. And to cap it all, there’s the missing key in her pocket. It’s as plain as a pikestaff.”

Miss Silver coughed, but she had no time to do more, for at that moment the door opened and the Chief Constable came into the room.