Through The Wall (15 page)

Richard Cunningham said,

“Blackmail. That’s pretty nasty. You say Helen suspected him?”

Miss Silver inclined her head.

“After I came out of the library I met her quite by accident. She was with Mr. Felix Brand, but she sent him away, and we sat in one of the shelters on the Front and talked. She was extremely frank. She told me that the person who was blackmailing her must be either Mr. Felix Brand or Mr. Felton, since no one else had any knowledge of the incidents upon which the blackmail was based. I told her Mr. Felton was in Farne, and she was very much surprised. Before we parted she told me she really was quite sure that it was Mr. Felton who was blackmailing her. She said it would not be in Mr. Brand’s line. She said she had quite made up her mind what she would do. She was going to see Mr. Felton, tell him she knew that the letters she had received were from him, and that she would give him ten pounds down. If he held out for more, she said she would threaten him with the police.”

“Did she meet him?”

“That is what we do not know. They certainly met and talked at the picnic, but she had not had any private meeting with him then. You may have noticed that I had a short stroll with her. It was at her instance that I was asked to Cove House, and I wanted to know why she had suggested the invitation. She said she wanted me to see the people there. I told her some of the things I saw, and I gave her some advice. I told her that the whole situation was dangerous, and I advised her to leave and return to town. I offered to see Mr. Felton on her behalf, telling her that I was quite sure he would not be difficult to dispose of. She replied that she would rather take him on herself, adding that she was not afraid of him or of anyone. It was obvious from this that there had been no private meeting between them, but that she meant to effect one. I think that is all I can tell you, Mr. Cunningham.”

He said, “She could have met him that night.”

The busy needles clicked.

“I think she intended to do so.”

There was a pause. Then he said,

“Why should he kill her? If he was blackmailing her he was hoping to get money out of her. I shouldn’t have thought—”

“She may have threatened to expose him. She did, in fact, intend to use that threat. All this I shall feel it my duty to communicate to the Chief Constable. Do you still wish me to come to Cove House?”

He met her eyes full and said,

“Yes, I do, Miss Silver.”

Before going up to Cove House Miss Silver had some preparations to make. Richard Cunningham left her to them and went back to be firm with Marian Brand.

“She will be here by four o’clock, and whether you like it or not, my dear, I’ve brought a suitcase, and I’m staying too. I can sleep on the study sofa.”

Marian looked at him. She had much ado not to show all the relief she felt. She said gravely,

“There are two spare rooms. I will put you in the one Cyril had.”

“Isn’t he coming back?”

“Not today, or tomorrow. I don’t feel that we can look any farther ahead than that.”

When Ethel Burkett came up from the beach Miss Silver was packing a well worn suit-case. She exclaimed, and received an affectionate smile.

“So fortunate that your friend Miss Blundell should be arriving this evening. Really quite providential. It would have distressed me to feel that I was leaving you alone.”

“But, Auntie—”

“A professional call. And you will enjoy a tête-à-tête with your friend. I shall not be at any distance, and shall hope to return before Miss Blundell leaves.”

Her packing completed and lunch disposed of, she rang up the exchange and gave the Chief Constable of Ledshire’s private number. When his familiar voice came on the line she allowed no restless hurry to intrude upon the occasion.

“My dear Randal—”

“Miss Silver! Now where have you dropped from? You don’t sound like London.”

“No—I’m at Farne with my niece Ethel and her little girl. Such delightful weather. But tell me of yourselves. Rietta is well?”

“Blooming. And the boy is immense. We have begun to call him George.”

“And your dear mother?…And Isabel—and Margaret?”

He had with these two sisters once shared a schoolroom over which Miss Silver presided. Her voice could still evoke its memories. The delicate spoiled little boy whom she had taken over had outgrown these drawbacks. She would never have admitted to having any favourite among her pupils, but she had remained on terms of close affection with the March family, and during the last few years had been more than once brought into what she herself would have described as professional association with Randal. His feelings for her were those of affection, gratitude, and the deepest respect, with an occasional tinge of impatience. She had a way of cropping up in the middle of a case and disrupting it. The fact that she was so often right did not really make things any better.

As he answered her warm enquiries he could not help wondering whether her call was a purely friendly one. He would like to see her, Rietta would like to see her, and they would both like to exhibit George in the breath-taking performance of pushing himself up on to his feet, staggering three steps, and sitting down bump with a fat face wreathed in smiles. So far the natural man. But the Chief Constable could not help remembering that a rather well-known young woman had just been murdered no more than a mile from Farne. Crisp was investigating the affair. There should, of course, be no connection with Miss Silver, but if there were, he felt sorry for Crisp, who had encountered her before. A most excellent, zealous, and efficient officer—his mouth would always twist a little over the commendation.

Miss Silver’s discreet cough came to his ear. The social preliminaries were over.

“I should be glad of an opportunity of talking to you, Randal.”

He thought, “Now we’re getting down to brass tacks,” and said aloud,

“About anything special?”

“About Miss Adrian.”

“Don’t tell me you are mixed up with that affair!”

“To some extent, Randal. She approached me professionally just before I came down here at the beginning of the week. I did not see my way to undertaking the case. I met her yesterday morning in Farne. We had some further conversation. I was subsequently invited to a picnic that afternoon, I went. I was there for some hours. I met a number of people in whom you will now be interested, and I had another conversation with Miss Adrian in the course of which I advised her to leave at once and go back to town. I have today accepted an invitation to stay at Cove House with Miss Marian Brand.”

The reaction of the natural man to this was, “The devil you have!” The Chief Constable suppressed it. After no more than a moment’s pause he said,

“I think I had better see you before you go.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“Thank you, Randal. I think it would be as well. I shall be catching a bus at the station just before four.”

He could picture her, neat, shabby, indefatigable, suit-case in one hand, handbag in the other, the flowery chintz affair with her knitting hanging from a wrist. She was probably going to be a nuisance. Crisp was certainly going to be very much annoyed. But when all was said and done, she was the one and only Miss Silver. He said in an affectionate voice,

“You can give the bus a miss. I’ll drive you out when we’ve had our talk. I’m telling Crisp to meet me there. I want to see the lay-out.”

An hour later she had told him what she had already told Richard Cunningham, with some additions.

“I do not know if you are aware that Miss Adrian was engaged to be married.”

They were in Muriel Lester’s bare, bright sitting-room, Miss Silver in the sofa corner, March in the least uncomfortable of the chairs. A narrow strip of orange linen framed the wide window without offering any suggestion that it formed part of a curtain or could contribute to screening the room at night. There was nothing on the walls except distemper, but the narrow mantelshelf supported a writhing torso. There was no clothing, there were no arms or legs, there was no head. Miss Silver regarded it with philosophic detachment, but little Josephine still said “Poor!” whenever it attracted her attention.

March shifted his chair so as not to have to look at it.

“Engaged to be married, was she?”

She was knitting briskly.

“To a Mr. Fred Mount, a well-to-do business man a good deal older than herself. He and his family hold strict views about morality. It was on this account that Miss Adrian would neither go to the police nor take my advice and tell her fiancé the whole story.”

He looked at her quizzically and said,

“And what was the whole story?”

“I do not know. She did not admit that there had been anything between her and Felix Brand, but his feeling was very obvious, and I have no doubt that she had encouraged it. Just at the end she said to me, ‘It’s no good hanging on to things when they’re over, is it?’ That was when I took that walk with her during the picnic. She had asked me for my impressions, and I gave them to her for what they were worth.”

“And what were they?”

She repeated the words which she had quoted to Richard Cunningham.

“‘Envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness.’”

“On the part of Felix Brand?”

“I would not say that. He was in a state of jealous passion and despair. She was tormenting him by paying as much attention as possible to the other two men. But he was not the only unhappy person there. Mrs. Felton was obviously in a state of deep depression. She was unhappy about her husband, about their relationship, about the financial demands he was making on her sister. She hardly spoke or raised her eyes. Penny Halliday was equally unhappy. She has been brought up with Felix Brand, and she loves him with all her heart. She is a young girl, very single-minded and devoted. She has had to stand by and see another woman playing havoc with his health, his career, his whole character.”

“It was like that?”

“I think so. He has shown promise as a composer, but he has left everything go for Miss Adrian. Then there is Mr. Felton, an insincere young man a good deal concerned with the impression he wishes to produce. He does not support his wife, and objects to supporting himself if anyone else can be induced to do so. I think there is very little doubt that it was he who was blackmailing Miss Adrian. And there are the two older ladies, Mrs. Brand and her sister Miss Remington. They are full of resentment at the disposition of Mr. Martin Brand’s fortune. Apart from this, Mrs. Brand appears indifferent to the members of her family, whilst Miss Remington’s behaviour suggests that she feels an active dislike for them.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“My dear Miss Silver!”

“ ‘Envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness,’ Randal.”

There was a pause, during which it was obvious that he was considering what she had said. For her part she continued to knit. After a minute or two he said,

“Helen Adrian was being blackmailed. I think you said there were letters and a telephone call. Did she identify either the writing or the voice on the telephone?”

“The letters were printed, the telephone voice disguised. Her reason for suspecting Cyril Felton was to be found in the subject matter of these communications. Two episodes were referred to, the first at Brighton in May a year ago, the second in June. Miss Adrian told me that Felix Brand and Cyril Felton were the only ones who knew of these episodes, and she did not think that blackmailing was in Felix’s line.”

“The episodes were damaging?”

Miss Silver coughed.

“In the first she arrived with Mr. Brand, who was her accompanist, to find that the friend with whom they were to stay had been called away but had left her flat at their disposal. They stayed there for the week-end. There was a professional engagement involved.”

“Well, there need have been no harm in that.”

“She declared that there was not, or in the June episode, when she and Felix Brand were cut off by the tide and were obliged to stay there all night. They had gone out to swim by moonlight, and when they came back to the house in the morning it was merely supposed that they had been out for an early dip. But she told Cyril Felton—”

March raised his eyebrows.

“She seems to have been on pretty intimate terms with him.”

“I think so, Randal.”

He said, “Well, none of this seems to give grounds for any very serious blackmail.”

“I agree. But you have to remember that Mr. Mount is rich, strict, middle-aged, and jealous. Miss Adrian was nervous about her health. She had a delicate throat, a very serious thing for a singer. She made no secret of the fact that she wished to be married to a man who could provide for her. In the ordinary way she would, I think, have snapped her fingers at Cyril Felton, but she was nervous of a possible threat to her marriage. She told me Cyril would take ten pounds to hold his tongue. What she meant to do was to leave Cove House this morning, meet her fiancé in town, and tell him that she was willing to marry him without delay. Once they were married, I think she felt quite confident that she could dispose of any further attempt at blackmail.”

“She was going to leave Cove House this morning?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“And she intended to have an interview with Felton before she left?”

“Yes, Randal.”

He said in a thoughtful voice,

“I wonder if she did have that interview.”

For the second day running Miss Silver arrived at Cove House in time for tea. She was glad to avail herself of the lift which Randal March had offered, but, like Mrs. John Gilpin, she arranged for the conveyance to stop somewhat short of its destination—not, as in the case of the eighteenth-century lady, because she would not have the neighbours think her proud, but because she considered it unnecessary to advertize the fact that she had driven out from Farne with the Chief Constable. She therefore allowed him to precede her, and then walked leisurely in between the rough pillars at the gate and deposited her suit-case on the mat before using the heavy old knocker on the right-hand front door.

Once arrived, she proceeded to settle down and become part of the household. From the study windows the Chief Constable was observed to emerge from the glass door of the drawing-room in the other house and, accompanied by Inspector Crisp, to proceed across the lawn to the steps descending to the cove. Sometime after his return he rang the front door bell on this side and asked to see Miss Brand and Mrs. Felton.

Miss Silver, offering to leave the room, was invited to remain. He asked them no more than a few questions, relating chiefly to such small points as the time of their return from the shore and the locking up of the house. Marian replied that they had come in between seven and a quarter past, and as it was turning chilly, she had herself shut the doors and windows.

“When you say shut, Miss Brand, do you mean that they were locked? I see you have the same glass door into the garden that they have in the next house.”

She said, “Yes—it was locked. I’ll show you.”

She jumped up, went to the open door, and drew it to. As the handle turned it drove an iron bolt into a prepared socket, an old-fashioned arrangement which took him back to the house which his mother had had in his schoolroom days.

He said, “I see. And the front door?”

“Eliza will know about that. It was locked when I let Mr. Cunningham out at half past ten.”

“And you locked it after him?”

“Oh, yes.”

Eliza, sent for, asserted that the front door had been locked from the time the party went down to the beach. She didn’t hold with leaving it open, and always turned the key if she was alone in the house.

“And the door to the kitchen—it’s at the side, isn’t it?”

“It was locked.”

The next question was addressed to everyone there.

“Then there was no door or window open on the ground floor after you came up from the beach?”

Marian said, “No—it was getting cold.”

To which Eliza added that she had shut the upstairs windows a good half hour before.

“And the doors between the two houses?”

Marian answered this.

“They are kept bolted. Until today they hadn’t been opened since we came. Eliza will tell you the same.”

Eliza told him.

Ina Felton was leaning back in one of the big comfortable chairs. She looked small and frail. Her dark hair appeared to melt into the brown leather upholstery. Her face was white against it. She had not spoken at all, but when March asked her if she agreed with the others she found an exhausted voice and said, “Yes.” Just the one word, but it sounded as if it was too much trouble to say. He thought the girl was ill, and reflected that Miss Silver would look after her.

A few questions about Marian Brand’s raincoat and scarf elicited no more than he already knew. The coat had been down on the beach, but the scarf left hanging on its peg by the door through to the other house. The bolted door. Richard Cunningham had brought the coat in and hung it up on the same peg as the scarf at a quarter past seven. In the morning the coat was on the seat near the place from which Helen Adrian had fallen. The scarf was still on the peg, but most horribly stained with blood. And all the house was shut. Not a door had been opened when Mrs. Woolley ran up screaming from the bottom terrace to say that Miss Adrian was dead.

When this point had been established the Chief Constable got up and went away.

Miss Silver was no stranger to an atmosphere of unhappiness and suspense. It had often been her professional duty to move amongst those who had sustained some shock of terror or of grief. She had sat at many a table where members of the same household looked at one another in fear and looked away again in haste lest they should see what they could not afterwards forget. She had a fund of quiet small talk which served to mitigate these occasions. She knew how to impart a soothing sense of the commonplace. Her presence made a small oasis of cheerfulness and afforded relief from strain.

Before the evening was over she had come to comfortable terms with Eliza over the desirability of inducing Penny and Ina to have a good drink of hot milk and get off to bed.

“Which if you’ll take on Mrs. Felton, I’ll go in next door and see to Penny. They haven’t eaten enough to keep a mouse alive since it happened, and we don’t want illness in the house on top of everything else. I can stand over Penny till I get it done, because I’ve had her from a child, but I think you’d be best for Mrs. Felton. She just keeps on saying, ‘No,’ or ‘Let me alone,’ to Miss Marian and me, but you’ve a kind of a firm way with you, and I think if you was just to walk right in and not take no for an answer—”

Ina drank the milk because she didn’t like to be rude, and because it was less trouble than going on saying no. She dropped asleep after it, and could not remember that she had dreamed, only there was a crushing sense of fear that went with her into her sleep.

Rightly concluding that Miss Brand and Mr. Cunningham did not really require the society of a third person, Miss Silver proceeded to pay a call of condolence next door. This visit may be considered as an instance of the power of character to triumph over environment.

It was easy to see that her presence was not desired. Mrs. Brand sat blankly immobile with a newspaper on her lap. She did not read it, she did not turn a page. She just sat there and made no attempt to talk. Miss Remington, on the other hand, was voluble. It was indeed difficult to imagine any circumstance which would reduce her to silence. She rehearsed the events of the day, repeating what Mrs. Woolley had said, what she had felt like when she heard her say it, what they had all felt, said, done, from Inspector Crisp to “poor little Penny who is quite crushed. No stamina, no courage, no will-power. Now I am sure you have noticed that about the young people of the day. I don’t know whether it was the war, or what, but I am sure you must have noticed it. They simply cannot confront an emergency.”

Miss Silver said mildly that she had not noticed it. She had produced Derek’s stocking and was knitting comfortably.

Cassy Remington gave a shrill protesting cry.

“No stamina at all! The least strain and they give way! Look at Ina Felton! She has collapsed in the most ridiculous manner. She hardly knew Miss Adrian—unless, of course, there was something going on that we don’t know about. But I suppose the police will make full enquiries. I wouldn’t like to accuse her of anything—you must understand that. Then there’s Penny. No one can pretend that she had any affection for Helen Adrian. In fact quite the reverse—we all know that. But she is just giving way. I’m sure if I have told her once that it is her duty to rouse herself, I have told her fifty times. But no, she just gives way—goes off to her room and shuts herself up there.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“It is sometimes better to leave people alone after a shock.”

Miss Cassy jingled her chain in a contemptuous manner.

“All these young people are the same. Look at Felix! He loses his head over this girl and rushes off to drown himself. Most selfish, most inconsiderate! My sister and I have this dreadful tragedy happening in our house, and we do not collapse—we behave with dignity, we carry on. Nobody pampers us.”

Miss Silver continued to knit. She murmured that it was all very sad, very distressing.

Cassy Remington sent her a darting glance.

“Half an hour ago I met Eliza Cotton going up to Penny’s room with a cup of hot milk. Pampering I call it! And how she has the face to come over here leaving us the way she did—”

Miss Silver murmured in a non-committal manner which did not soothe. There was a toss of the head with its well-arranged waves.

“Not that our house is our own in any way at present.” She repeated the last words with malice. “Not in any way. I’m sure the police walk in and out as if the whole place belonged to them. That horrid Inspector Crisp was here again just as we were sitting down to tea. And brought the Chief Constable! And there they were, out and down to the cove, and up on every floor, looking at the doors going through to the other side of the house, and Crisp going round to open them, though what it’s got to do with them how many locks and bolts and bars there are, I’m sure I can’t see. I may be stupid—I suppose I am—”—the head was tossed again— “but I can’t see what a purely domestic arrangement like that has got to do with the police. I’m sure it’s bad enough having one’s own niece bolting doors against us as if we were a lunatic asylum or a menagerie of wild beasts!”

Mrs. Brand came out of her silence with a “Really, Cassy!” Her voice was heavy with resentment. She said,

“Marian Brand is my niece by marriage only. She is your second cousin twice removed. The houses were originally two. They have now been divided again.”

Cassy Remington’s colour rose to an angry flush.

“Oh, if you like it, Florence, there’s no more to be said. I’m sure I have no desire to claim relationship with Marian and Ina—or perhaps you think I should speak of them as Miss Brand and Mrs. Felton.”

Florence Brand made no reply. Her large pale face showed nothing. Presently, however, she intervened with a remark about Miss Silver’s knitting and Cassy Remington’s complaints were interrupted.

Miss Silver stayed for an hour, and had managed to draw Mrs. Brand into a slight show of interest over a pattern for long-sleeved vests and the address of a shop where the wool suitable for making them could be bought. It transpired that Florence had always worn wool next to the skin, and had now arrived at measurements which made it practically impossible for her to procure the necessary underwear. She got as far as saying that she might have some wool upstairs in the box-room, and Miss Silver offered to help her look for it in the morning.