The Gazebo (21 page)

LOOKING BACK UPON the interview, Miss Silver could not feel any satisfaction. It provided much food for thought, aroused both suspicion as to the past and anxiety as to the future, yet supplied none of the answers which these speculations and doubts demanded. After Mrs Blount’s burst of crying she had pulled herself together and would say no more. Like so many people who are threatened, the mere fact that she had spoken of her fears had to some extent dissipated them. As Miss Silver had said, how was Sid to know that he had called out in his sleep and said… Her thought shuddered away from what he had said. The hot tea had done her good. Things are always worse on an empty stomach. She ought to have eaten some breakfast, but her throat had closed up against it. She caught the bus back and got out at Miss Madison’s guest house, which was about halfway up the hill. Lunch was just going in – a really good stew with dumplings in it like her mother used to make, and an apple pie. The people down here called them tarts, but that was nonsense. A tart was an open pastry case filled in with fruit or jam, and with maybe a criss-cross of pastry on the top, but a thing that had the fruit in the middle and was all covered in was a pie, whether it had apples in it, or plums, or anything else you liked. Her mother came from the north, and people in the north gave things their proper names.

She ate some of the apple pie and then went up and lay on her bed and slept for a while. It wasn’t a very quiet sleep, because it was full of rushing dreams. In one of them Sid was angry with her because she had baked an apple pie and the pastry had gone sad. He took the helping she had given him and threw it at her plate and all, and the edge of the plate cut her like a knife, so that the blood soaked through her dress and she knew that she was going to die. And then it was all different and she was in a dark cave that wound and turned and she couldn’t see where she was going, but there was a footstep that followed her all the way. She began to run, but she couldn’t get away from it. It was Sid’s footstep, and Sid’s voice calling after her to stop, only she knew that if she did he would kill her, and she knew how. Those two strong hands of his would come round her neck and wring the life out of her. In her dream they touched her and she screamed. And woke up screaming.

Mr Blount shut the door behind him and clapped his hand over her mouth.

‘Crazy – that’s what you are!’ he said in a low furious voice. ‘You don’t want everyone to think I’m doing you in, do you?’

She pushed at his hand, and he took it away from her mouth.

‘Oh…’ she said on a long-drawn sob. And then, ‘I was dreaming.’

‘Overate yourself at lunch I shouldn’t wonder! What were you dreaming about?’

She said faintly,

‘Someone – running after me…’

He stood over her with a frowning look. No one would have thought him jovial now. After a moment he turned away.

‘Well, get up! I want to talk to you!’

She hadn’t undressed, only loosened her stays and pulled the eiderdown over her. She got up now, laying everything straight on the bed and putting back the pink coverlet. When she had finished he came back from the window where he had stood tapping on the glass and dropped a hand on her shoulder.

‘What’s all this about last night?’ he said.

He could have asked no more terrifying question. Her face went blank with fear.

‘Last night…’

He swore under his breath.

‘You heard. When I came in just now, there was Miss Madison wanting to see me – very nicely spoken and all that, but the first and the last of it was there had been a disturbance in the night and it had waked those two women down the passage – Mrs Doyle and Miss What’s-her-name.’

‘Miss Moxon.’

‘I’m not bothering with her name – I want to know what they heard! All I could tell Miss Madison was that I slept all night, and that if there was any disturbance it must have been you! Anyone say anything to you about it?’

‘No, Sid.’

‘Sure about that?’

‘I didn’t get up.’

‘Breakfast in bed – they’ll charge extra for that!’

‘I didn’t have – breakfast. I had some coffee in the town.’

‘No one spoke to you at lunch?’

He kept staring at her, and she couldn’t look away. She was beginning to feel confused. She tried not to speak, but she heard herself say,

‘Only Miss Moxon.’

‘Did she say she had been disturbed?’

‘Something like that.’

He said, ‘I’ll have what she said, or I’ll cut it out of you!’

The knife – that was her terror. His hand moved towards the pocket where he kept it. ‘Oh, God – any way but that!’ Words were jerked out of her.

‘She only – said – someone called out – and waked her.’

‘What did you say?’

She had never found it easy to tell lies. They just don’t come to you if you haven’t been brought up that way. She stared helplessly.

‘What did you say?’

‘I said – you – called out.’

He took her by the other shoulder too, held her face right up to his, and cursed her under his breath. Even if someone had been just outside the door they wouldn’t have heard what he said, but she had to hear it. She had to hear it. What it led up to was,

‘You told her I called out?’

She was sick with fear. It was no use trying to hold anything back. She got out two words on a gasping breath.

‘She knew…’

He let go of her suddenly and stood back. Perhaps he was afraid of what his strong hands might do. He couldn’t kill her here in Miss Madison’s Pink Room. He walked away, getting as far from her as he could before he turned and said,

‘You said I called out. Was that true?’

‘Yes, Sid. You were dreaming.’

‘Did I just call out, or did I say something?’

‘You – called – out.’

He made a step towards her.

‘If you lie to me, I’ll slit your throat!’

‘No, no, I won’t – I’ll tell you.’

‘What did I say?’

He wouldn’t stop asking her until she told him. There was no strength in her to hold anything back. She told him what he had said. As soon as the words were out of her mouth she knew what she had done. She tried to undo it.

‘She didn’t – hear what you said. She only heard you call out. Nobody heard what you said – except me.’

He repeated the words quite smoothly and quietly,

‘Nobody heard except you? But you heard me – or you say you did. How many people have you gone blabbing to?’

‘No one – no one.’

He said,

‘And you’d better not! D’you hear? And now you’d better get busy and pack! We’re off just as soon as we can be ready!’

‘Where – where are we going?’

He said, ‘You’ll know when you get there!’ and began to take his things out of the chest of drawers and throw them into a suitcase.

MISS SILVER LAID her hands down for a moment upon her knitting.

‘I believe I have told you everything that passed between us. I should like to know what you think about it.’

Frank Abbott did not reply immediately. He looked at her, neat and earnest, with the half-finished vest in her lap. He knew from experience that the description of her interview with Mrs Blount would have been a most carefully accurate one. Just what it all amounted to was another matter. He said so, adding,

‘There might be quite a simple explanation, you know.’

‘Yes, Frank?’

‘Mrs Blount may be off her head.’

She picked up her knitting again.

‘That was not my impression.’

‘It would cover your account of her behaviour.’

She coughed gently.

‘No account of anyone’s behaviour can convey more than a bare outline. Mrs Blount was very much afraid.’

‘She might be afraid and yet have no cause for it.’

‘In my opinion she was suffering from shock.’

‘Well, you saw her, and I didn’t. But, you know, it sounds a good deal like persecution mania. That “Perhaps he will kill me – I don’t know. If he thinks I heard what he was saying. I think he will” – it sounds rather that way, you know.’

Miss Silver shook her head.

‘It sounded to me as if the poor woman had overheard something which had terrified her into a breakdown. Her husband had talked in his sleep. She did not tell me what he said, and I could not press her, but it had thrown her into a condition of shock in which all the natural restraints had ceased to operate and she talked out what was on her mind. I feel sure that only a great shock would have put her into the state she was in when I met her. The Blounts are staying at a guest house half way up the hill. Whatever it was that had shocked her probably happened at some time during the night, since she spoke of her husband having talked in his sleep. I think that she herself had not slept again, and that she had eaten nothing. I think she had come out because she could no longer stay in the house. When I spoke to her she was standing aimlessly at the next bus stop with, I believe, no idea of what she would do next. I am particularly glad that you have called, because I felt that I should see you without delay. I believe that Mrs Blount may be in serious danger.’

Twenty-four hours ago he might have laughed at her. Now he was conscious of no desire to take the case of Mrs Blount too lightly. He said,

‘You know, you asked if we could dig up something about Blount and Worple…’

She raised her eyes to his and said, ‘Yes?’

‘Well, there isn’t very much for you, but there is something. If Worple isn’t the rose, he’s been near it. In other words, if he isn’t a proved criminal, he’s been mixed up with people who are. He is full of money at the moment, his own account being that he had a lucky win on an outsider – no details given as to when, where, or how. He fancies himself as a ladies’ man. He calls himself a commission agent, and he’s got a tongue as long as your arm.’

Miss Silver’s glance reproved this metaphor.

‘And Mr Blount?’

‘Oh, Blount has rather a respectable background. His father had a second-hand shop in the Edgware Road. Blount himself is supposed to have been a bit of a rolling stone. Then he came in for the business and settled down. Mrs Blount had some money of her own. Her people didn’t want her to marry him. There was a family quarrel, and they don’t speak. The parents are dead, and the brothers and sisters didn’t like the money going out of the family. She was middle-aged, and they thought they could count on it staying put. There’s been some talk about Blount. He’s away a good bit, and when he’s back she goes about looking frightened. Worple and Blount have been pretty thick for a year or two. That is the lay-out. Nothing much to go on, nothing you can take hold of. I should say offhand that both Worple and Blount are fairly shady characters. For some reason or other there is an impression that Blount is a bad man to cross. He was married before, and his wife fell under a train. It might have been an accident, it might have been suicide. He was supposed to have been miles away when it happened.’

‘Supposed, Frank?’

He said,

‘I gather that the present Mrs Blount’s family have made slanderous insinuations, but the general opinion is that whatever happened or didn’t happen, nobody was going to catch Blount out.’

‘Rather a strange attitude if there was nothing against his character before the accident occurred. Did he come into money from his wife?’

Frank cocked an eyebrow.

‘That, my dear ma’am, is one of the things which started people talking.’

‘One of the things, Frank?’

His light, cool gaze rested upon her.

‘There seems to have been an idea that the Blount family was rather too prone to accidents.’

‘There were others?’

‘Blount’s father broke his neck falling down an appropriately antique flight of stairs in his secondhand shop one dark night. He was alone in the house, and when they found him in the morning he was dead. His son had gone down into Sussex on a job.’

‘Then why was there any talk about it?’

‘Oh, just their nasty minds, I expect. He really did go down into Sussex, and he really did have a job there, but as some of the nasty-minded pointed out, he had a motorbike and he could have come back, done what he had planned to do, and returned to finish his job in Sussex. It’s just one of those things. If he had wanted to do it, I suppose it could have been done. He came into a paying business and the old man’s savings.’

Miss Silver said gravely,

‘Two accidents, and both of them profitable to Mr Blount. Do you really think that the present Mrs Blount may not have good reason to be afraid? She too has money of her own. Last night he talked in his sleep. It was what she heard him say that had induced the state of shock in which I found her. It must have been something of a very serious nature. Nothing less would account for her condition. In my own mind I feel very little doubt that it was something which would connect him with the murder of Mrs Graham.’

‘My dear ma’am!’

She looked at him steadily.

‘I do not need you to tell me that there is no evidence of such a connexion. Mrs Blount would not be available as a witness, and in any case I do not imagine that words uttered by a sleeping man would be admissible in a court of law. But consider for a moment Mr Blount’s character and behaviour. His father and his first wife both meet with accidents from which he profits. He marries a second woman with money of her own, brings her here, and begins to bid for Mrs Graham’s house. Then Mr Worple turns up. They bid one against the other until they have reached the extravagant price of seven thousand pounds, at which point Mr Worple withdraws his pretensions to the house but continues to pay marked and unwelcome attentions to Miss Graham. I do not know how you would interpret the situation up to this point, but in the light of what you have just told me about a previous intimacy between Mr Blount and Mr Worple it seems to me probable that, whatever their object in acquiring The Lodge, they had come to the conclusion that partnership might prove more profitable than rivalry.’

He was looking at her with great attention.

‘Whatever their object might be in acquiring The Lodge – what exactly do you mean by that?’

‘I am unable to believe in the motive put forward by either of them. Mr Blount is not the man to spend a large sum of money in order to gratify a whim of his wife’s. Nor does Mr Worple seem to me to have shown so much attachment to his family and his early surroundings as to make it at all credible that he should wish to sacrifice a large sum of money in order to acquire a totally unsuitable house.’

‘And you think that he has now agreed to share The Lodge with Mr and Mrs Blount?’

She looked down thoughtfully at the small pink vest and measured it against her hand.

‘No – that is not what I think. I do not believe that either Mr Blount or Mr Worple has any intention of residing at The Lodge.’

‘They were prepared to spend seven thousand pounds on a house without any intention of living it!’

‘If Mr Blount was prepared to pay seven thousand pounds for The Lodge, it was because he expected to make a handsome profit. If he and Mr Worple have come to some agreement, the purchase price would be shared between them, but the profit would also have to be shared. Since their rivalry has been eliminated, they will naturally not expect the price to be so high. Only this morning Mr Martin the house-agent intimated that the circumstances of Mrs Graham’s death must seriously affect the value of the property.’

‘Well, it would, wouldn’t it? But let us come back to the point. How do you suppose Mr Blount expects to turn a handsome profit upon an ordinary suburban house for which he was willing to pay seven thousand pounds? And he does seem to have been willing to pay that when he and Worple were still bidding each other up. The profit couldn’t possibly come from a re-sale, you know. What do you suppose he was after?’

Miss Silver gave a meditative cough.

‘I believe he may have wished to dig in the garden,’ she said.