The Gazebo (17 page)

Miss Silver showed the most gratifying interest.

‘And how could you tell?’

‘I counted them,’ said Lily simply. ‘There are three in the diamond and sapphire ring, and three in the ruby and diamond ring, and three more in the ring with two pearls in it, and five in the one that is just diamonds and nothing else. And all the five diamonds were there! So I said, “Perhaps you lost it later on?” And she was quite cross and said, oh, no she hadn’t, because all the stones were there when she dressed to come out that morning. I can’t think why she should say that, when she started off by telling me about the ring slipping round on her finger so maybe she hadn’t noticed that the stone was gone.’

‘How strange,’ said Miss Silver. ‘And all this happened on the bus on Wednesday morning? You saw the stone was gone, and first she told you that the ring was in the habit of slipping round on her finger so that she might not have noticed the loss of one of the stones, and then she said that she had noticed that the stone was there when she was dressing to come out?’

Lily gave a pleased smile.

‘Yes, that was what she said. She thinks a lot of that ring, you know. Some uncle or great-uncle in the family brought the stones from India. They cost a lot of money. Mr Harrison had them re-set for her as a wedding-present. She was ever so upset at losing one.’

Miss Silver then narrated an instance of a ring being lost on a beach in Devonshire and turning up some years later in a handbag belonging, not to the person who had lost the ring, but to a relative who had not been anywhere near the beach when it was missed. It was quite a long story, with a good many excursions into such irrelevancies as the exact relationship between the loser and the finder of the ring and both their previous and their subsequent histories. By the time the story was finished Mrs Harrison had receded into the background, emerging later on, no longer in connexion with the ring but introduced by Mabel for the purpose of importing Mr Worple into the conversation.

‘A really dreadful young man – quite like one of those spivs you hear about in the papers. I saw them with my own eyes going into Sefton’s. I had to go in myself for some buns, and there they were in one of those little alcoves at the end of the shop. I came home and told my sisters that I could not believe they had only just met.’

‘Oh, yes, she did!’ said Nettie.

‘And it turns out I was perfectly right. And who do you think he really is? You may have noticed the house-agents in the High Street, Martin and Steadman – well, old Mr Martin, the present Mr Martin’s father, married a Mrs Worple as his second wife, and this is her son, Fred Worple. He went into the business when he first grew up, but he wasn’t at all satisfactory, and after a little he disappeared and the Martins stopped talking about him. Getting on for ten years ago that must be, and now here he is back again and quite well off. Our daily maid Doris had it from Mrs Lane who works for the Martins – all these dailies will talk, you know. And I don’t know where Fred Worple knew Mrs Harrison, but it seems they are quite old friends, and they have been seeing each other every day.’ Nettie came darting in. ‘I wonder Mr Harrison likes it!’

‘Perhaps he doesn’t,’ said Lily Pimm.

MISS SILVER WALKED back to The Lodge in a thoughtful frame of mind. The Miss Pimms certainly had an unusual talent for gathering information. The amount with which they had furnished her provided much food for thought. Mrs Harrison had been the subject of Mabel’s most serious strictures – her dress, her bridge manners, her addiction to members of the opposite sex, her treatment of her husband. She had lost her temper with him during a bridge party at Mrs Justice’s only about a fortnight ago. Of course he was not a good player, and she made him worse by continually criticizing his play, but when she called him a fool with an adjective in front of it which Mabel felt she could not repeat, and finished up by throwing her cards in his face, it really did pass all bounds. A supplement by Nettie deprecated the fact that similar exhibitions were said to be not uncommon at Grove Hill House. Mrs Harrison couldn’t bear to be crossed. If Mr Harrison said a word, she would flare right up. On one occasion she had thrown a decanter at his head. If it had hit him he might have been killed, but he ducked and it went smashing into a big mirror on the dining-room wall. Nettie had also quite a lot to say about the dead set that had been made at young Dr Hamilton, and at the curate at St Jude’s – ‘Such a nice young man, and we found that we had met an aunt of his at Brighton before the war.’ There was indeed plenty for Miss Silver to turn over in her mind.

Althea had given her a key to the front door. As she came into the hall the murmur of voices in the drawing-room informed her that Nicholas Carey was still there. She hoped to see him before he took his leave, but she did not think he would be in any great hurry to go. She had reached the foot of the stairs, had indeed already laid her hand on the baluster, when she checked and remained for some moments without moving. When she did move it was to go up to her bedroom, but with a changed purpose. Leaving the door ajar, she removed her gloves and put them neatly away in the left-hand top drawer of the chest of drawers. Then, opening the right-hand top drawer, she took out a powerful electric torch, a useful gift from Frank Abbott, and putting it in the pocket of her coat made her way downstairs again. The immediate purpose of the torch did not appear. It would not be dark until eight o’clock, and it was now no more than a quarter past six.

Miss Silver went through the house into the garden and up the flagged path to the gazebo. The windows of Althea’s bedroom and of the bathroom looked out this way, as did those of the kitchen, scullery and larder, but failing a spectator at any of these the place was private, a ten-foot hedge screening it from the road on the one side and massed trees and shrubs intervening to shield it from the house next door.

Miss Silver was a person whose actions were prescribed by principle, reason, and common sense. She would have claimed no other impulsion, and would have ascribed her success in the field of detection to no other cause. Yet at this moment she was obeying what Frank Abbott might have called a hunch. She would herself have repudiated the term, but there were times in her experience when thoughts and impressions too vague to attract attention would suddenly combine to form an arresting picture. Looking back upon it afterwards, she could find no better explanation for her presence in the gazebo. It would have been carefully and competently searched by the police. She had visited it herself immediately after her arrival. Every trace of the tragedy had been removed. Yet she stood at the entrance and subjected the whole interior to as careful a scrutiny as if it had never been examined before. The structure was of brick and stucco, the door, the floor, the window-frames, and some panelling, of oak. All the workmanship was very good indeed, and the woodwork had lasted well. There were four windows with glass in them, two on either side of the door so as to afford the widest possible view. In the days when the only buildings to be seen from this point would be a rustic cottage or some distant farmstead the prospect must indeed have been delightful.

In the centre of the floor there was a table. Against the farther wall was a solid bench with some quite modern deck-chairs stacked on one side of it. The floor had been swept after the removal of Mrs Graham’s body, and screened as it was by trees and a tall hedge, no fresh dust had drifted in.

After some time Miss Silver stepped inside and turned on her torch. Although still quite light in the garden, the interior of the gazebo held shadowed patches, notably under the windows and where the heavy bench cast its own shade. The powerful electric beam slid to and for across the floor under the table and the bench. She laid the torch down while she shifted the deck-chairs. The police had been thorough. There was no dust where they had stood, nothing but the swept floor and the panelling that came smoothly down to meet it. The ray moved steadily until every inch of the floor had been explored.

When the whole circuit of the place had been made and she had come back to the entrance she stood there, her hand with the torch in it hanging down, the beam switched on. Her eye, following it, had its first impression that there had been dust in the gazebo, and that it had been swept out this way. The weathering of the floor-board next the door had left a crack between itself and the sill. The beam dazzled on the crack and showed it filled with dust. She went down upon her knees and laying the torch on its side extracted a hairpin from her neat plaits and began to clear the crack.

There was grit and dust in plenty, there were a couple of small dead spiders, there was a pin, there was a strand of cobweb, there was the upper half of a press-button, there was more grit, there was fine powdered dust, there was something that the sideways-stabbing ray of the torch pricked into light. She took it up between finger and thumb and laid it in her palm. She had had no reasonable expectation that she would find it – there was no reason to suppose that it would be there to be found. She could form no certain idea as to how it had come into the crack. It might have rolled there as it fell and been covered by the dust that was later swept across the threshold. It might have been lying on the floor unnoticed when Althea found her mother’s body. It might have been her desperate flying feet that flicked it into the crack, it might have been the feet of any of those she summoned. However it came there, it had remained unnoticed until now. Miss Silver looked at it with grave composure. Whatever else might be in doubt, she had no doubt at all that the small bright object in her palm was the missing stone from Ella Harrison’s ring.

MISS SILVER RANG up Detective Inspector Frank Abbott. Since he had gone to town to lay the case against Nicholas Carey before his immediate superiors, she began by trying Scotland Yard, only to find that he had been there and had left again. She therefore dialled his private number, and was relieved to hear his voice in an unhurried ‘Hallo…’

‘Miss Silver speaking. I wondered whether you would be returning here tonight.’

‘My dear ma’am! Even the hard-worked constabulary get an occasional half hour off! Tonight I dine out with one of my more ornamental cousins. Her husband has so much money that if they went on spending the capital for the next fifty years they wouldn’t be able to get through it. Oil. The meal will be super. I shall be back on the job first thing in the morning. What did you want me for?’

Miss Silver coughed.

‘It would not, I think, be advisable to discuss it on the telephone.’

A faint whistle came back to her along the line.

‘An ace up the sleeve? A rabbit out of a hat? Or a cat in the bag?’

‘I will let you know tomorrow.’

As he rang off he wondered what she had got hold of. He knew her too well to suppose that she had rung him up for nothing. At intervals during a most agreeable evening the thought recurred. He had known her to pull rabbits out of hats before now.

Miss Silver left Nicholas and Althea to themselves, only appearing in the hall when he made a move to go. When the door had closed behind him she went back into the drawing-room with Althea.

‘Oh, Miss Silver…’

Miss Silver looked at her. She was flushed and trembling.

‘My dear, you had better come and sit down.’

Althea pushed back her hair with one of those shaking hands.

‘He has left the Harrisons and gone down to the George. He says he thinks they are bound to arrest him and it wouldn’t be fair to Jack Harrison to let it happen in his house.’

‘You don’t think they will, do you?’

‘Suppose they do – then I shan’t be able to see him again… Oh, I oughtn’t to have let him go! He could have stayed for supper – there was no need for him to go to the hotel. Oh, I don’t know why I let him go – only he said he had an article to write for the Janitor and he wanted to get it done before – before…’

‘My dear, pray calm yourself.’

Althea sank down upon the sofa.

‘How can I? You know – he didn’t do it – he didn’t! Why should he? We were going to be married next day. I wasn’t going to let anything stop me this time – he knew that. Your Emily Chapell was going to come – and it was all fixed. Besides he wouldn’t do an awful thing like that – he couldn’t! You must believe me! I don’t only love him, I know him! He couldn’t do it!’

All that quiet self-control was gone. This was a new Althea, ablaze with conviction, passionate in defence.

Miss Silver sat quietly down beside her.

‘My dear…’

Althea turned a vehement look upon her.

‘You don’t believe me, but you’ve got to! If I can’t convince you, how am I, how is Nicky, going to convince anyone – all these policemen, lawyers, a jury – people who don’t know him – people who will believe that he did it! And he won’t say the thing that would save him!’

Miss Silver raised her hand in a hortatory manner.

‘I have not said I believe that Mr Carey murdered your mother. You say there is something that would save him, but that he is reluctant to avail himself of it. Pray tell me what it is.’

In her normal frame of mind Althea would hardly have spoken. But the floodgates were open, thoughts and words rushed through them without check.

‘He could have an alibi, but he won’t let her do it. It’s because of Jack – I’m sure of it – but he won’t say so. She would say he was in by eleven, and that they were together, but he won’t let her do it.’

‘Miss Graham, to whom are you alluding?’

Althea stared, her eyes unnaturally wide and bright.

‘Ella Harrison – Mrs Harrison. He is staying with them, you know – at least he was. He has gone to the George now, but he was at the Harrisons when it happened. Jack and he are cousins, and Ella said she would say that Nicky was in by eleven, and that they were together for quite a long time after that. If she did, it would save him, wouldn’t it? That woman – that Mrs. Traill who says she heard Mother call out to Nicky between twenty and half past eleven – it’s what she says that is going to make them arrest him. But if Ella Harrison says Nicky was with her at Grove Hill House, then he couldn’t have been in the gazebo, could he – and they wouldn’t arrest him.’

‘It would rather depend upon whether they thought Mrs Harrison was telling the truth.’

Althea said in a piteous voice,

‘He couldn’t have been at Grove Hill House and in the gazebo at the same time – he couldn’t!’

Miss Silver looked at her compassionately.

‘Does Mr Carey say that he was at Grove Hill House?’

Althea had a failing look.

‘He doesn’t – know – when he got in. Ella Harrison says she knows. He could not let her say he was in.’

‘And he will not?’

‘He – he…’ Her voice failed altogether.

‘I see that he will not. Is it because he is aware that it would not be true?’

‘He doesn’t know what time he got in. He says so. And if he doesn’t know, then how can he tell whether it’s true or not?’

Miss Silver said gravely,

‘I believe Mr Carey has stated that, without being able to set any time for his return, he believes it was late before he got back to Grove Hill House.’

‘He doesn’t know. Ella Harrison says he was in by eleven. Why can’t he let her say it?’

‘Has he not told you why?’

Althea looked away.

‘He doesn’t say. I think it’s because of Jack. I think – I think if she says he was in, she will say they stayed together – a long time. Oh, don’t you see what I mean? Don’t you see what people might think – what Jack might think?

Miss Silver saw very clearly indeed. She saw a number of things. But before she could speak Althea broke in again.

‘But it wouldn’t be true, so what would it matter? Jack Harrison wouldn’t believe it. Nicky is his cousin. He didn’t stay with Ella after he came in – he went straight up to bed. They could tell him she was only saying it to help Nicky. Jack wouldn’t believe there was anything wrong.’

Miss Silver did not speak for a moment. Then she said,

‘Mr Carey would be very foolish indeed if he were to rely on perjured evidence. Perjury is both a moral and a legal crime. A person who volunteers to commit this crime must either be of an entirely unreliable character or be actuated by some extremely strong motive. In Mrs Harrison’s case, have you asked yourself whether she has such a motive, and what that motive might be?’

Althea said only just above her breath,

‘To help Nicky…’