It was after ten when Frank Abbott walked in upon Miss Silver knitting and Cicely making stormy music at the piano. She stopped on a crashing chord, let the sound die away, and got to her feet.
“Has anything happened?”
“No.”
Bramble got up from the fire and came to sniff at Frank’s ankles.
“Have you had anything to eat?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Have some coffee?”
“Oh, don’t bother.”
“I’ll go and make it.”
She went out, and Bramble after her.
Frank sat down by the fire. He was cold, he was tired, he had had a very bad dinner. He had never hated a case so much. He began to tell Miss Silver about it to the soothing accompaniment of warmth, the click of her knitting-needles, and a prospect of hot coffee.
Cicely, coming back with the tray, heard the murmur of their voices from the other side of the morning-room door. She set the tray down on one of those uncomfortable carved chairs so wisely relegated to halls. Then she did what Agnes had done on a previous occasion—she turned back the handle very slowly, evenly, and gently until the latch was free and the door swung in a little. If they noticed it, she was coming in with the tray. If they didn’t, she meant to know what was going on. When you’ve been properly brought up you don’t listen at doors. It was a revolting thing to do. She was going to do it. Something much stronger than anything she had been taught cried in her and was afraid. Something was happening, and she had to know what it was.
Almost at once she knew, because Frank was saying, “I’m clearing out of here tomorrow morning. They couldn’t give me a room at the hotel tonight. The Chief offered to send me back to town and have someone else down, but I said I’d rather go through with it.”
Miss Silver coughed delicately.
“I think that was judicious. To retire from the case would be tantamount to a public admission of Mr. Hathaway’s guilt.”
Cicely’s left hand held the door knob. With her right she leaned hard against the jamb. Frank Abbott said,
“I can’t stay here. He is Cicely’s husband. If he did it, it’s frightful for her, and for Monica.”
“Do you think he did it?”
“He could have. I haven’t got as far as thinking whether he did. Albert Caddie could have done it too. That little fancy bit of his gives him three lovely alibis, but I shouldn’t think a jury would look at any of them—at least not after they’d looked at Maisie. Then there’s Mark Harlow. The three of them were together at the Bull on the night of the fourth when Louise Rogers saw and recognised the hand of the man who robbed her. The bother is, we don’t know just what it was that she recognised. The lad Ferrand who gave us the lowdown doesn’t know either. He could only say she was quite sure she would know the hand again, and that she did know it. Whoever it was, dropped a lighter in the yard at the Bull and switched on a torch to find it. Louise saw his hand in the beam and was prepared to swear to it. She was undressed. By the time she had put on some clothes and got down, two men and a chauffeur had driven away. One of them dropped an envelope addressed to Grant Hathaway. That’s why she came down here. We now know that she had an interview with Hathaway between half past four and five on the eighth—that is, just before she was murdered. Agnes overheard part of it, and when Mrs. Barton gave her notice today she had a scene with Hathaway and rushed off to denounce him. It is pretty obvious that she was crazy about him and—”
Miss Silver coughed, and observed primly that hell had no fury like a woman scorned.
“As you say. Well, Grant has no alibis for the three important times. He could have killed Louise then and there in the study, though it would have been very risky. Agnes only heard part of the interview, but from the distance to which she then retired she heard the front door open and shut and the car drive away. Grant could have driven away in it—Louise may have been dead, or she may have been alive. Or his story may be true. He says that Louise drove away by herself, and that a few minutes later he went out, walked round by Tomlin’s Farm to the church, sat there listening to Cicely playing the organ for about an hour and a half, and then came home.”
Cicely pushed open the door with the flat of her hand, turned round for the tray, and walked into the room, her face colourless, her eyes amber-bright. She put the coffee down at Frank’s elbow and went back to shut the door. Then she came round in front of him and said,
“I’ve been listening. If it’s got to do with Grant, it’s got to do with me. I want to know the bits I’ve missed.”
Frank’s fair eyebrows lifted.
“My dear child—”
She said very distinctly,
“I am not your dear child—I am Grant’s wife. If you can tell Miss Silver you can tell me. I can hold my tongue, but I’ve got to know.”
He looked involuntarily at Miss Silver, and received a slight nod.
Cicely stamped her foot.
“If you don’t tell me I shall drive over to Lenton and see the Chief Inspector!”
He reached forward, touched her hand, and found it icy.
“All right, Cis—sit down. I don’t know how much you heard, but this is how it stands.”
She listened, sitting up straight and never taking her eyes from his face. Miss Silver knitted with an even click of the needles. She had heard some of Frank’s narrative before, but it was interesting to hear it again. Her thoughts went to and fro as methodically as her needles, noting a loophole here, a small discrepancy there, a definite possibility somewhere else. Frank had an orderly mind and a lucid way of putting things.
Cicely listened, not just with her ears but with the whole of her. Everything except that listening was blotted out. The familiar room, her companions, Bramble illicitly curled up in Monica Abbott’s chair, the firelight, the warmth, Frank pouring out the coffee she had brought and drinking it, the click of Miss Silver’s needles—with all these things her contacts were broken. No sound reached her, no image, no sensation. Only Frank’s voice, only the things it said—these were crystal clear.
He came down to the point at which she had entered the room.
“So there you have Caddie with three alibis which may or may not be fakes, and Grant with no alibis at all. Mark Harlow hasn’t any either.”
Cicely spoke for the first time.
“Mark?”
“He was one of the three at the Bull. We went on to him after seeing Grant. Well, on the Friday he says he went out for a walk and didn’t meet anyone. Of course he might have met Louise and murdered her. He says he walked right into Lenton and went to a cinema. On the Saturday, when Louise’s body was being shifted, he threw another walk and didn’t meet anyone. On Saturday the sixteenth he lunched with people in Lenton and did a flick with them afterwards. Home by car, driving himself. Staff out—cold supper. He says he was in by half past seven, which of course would give him plenty of time to nip round to Tomlin’s Farm on a bicycle and kill Mary Stokes— don’t suppose he’d have risked taking the car. To sum up, Grant and Harlow had every possible opportunity of killing Louise on Friday, shifting the body on Saturday, and disposing of Mary Stokes on the Saturday following. There’s only Maisie Traill’s word to say that Caddie’s opportunities were not just as good. Of the three, Grant leads a little as a suspect, because we know that he had an interview with Louise, and there’s nothing to say that either of the others did. But if it comes to a show of hands, then I think Caddie has it. Louise Rogers told Ferrand that she would know the hand of the man who robbed her and recognise it anywhere. Well, Caddie has lost the top joint of his left forefinger—that’s a thing you couldn’t possibly forget. Grant has a scar which shows up white, and Harlow hasn’t any noticeable mark. He had some sticking-plaster on the back of his right hand, but he peeled it off, and there’s nothing but a deep scratch under it. He says he got it on some barbed wire—there’s absolutely nothing to suggest that it was done to cover up an old scar. But he has got rather odd-shaped hands. The forefinger is longer than the others, and the thumbs—well—”
Cicely said with stiff lips,
“That’s what gives him his stretch on the piano—they’re double-jointed.”
“The question is, would a thing like that show enough to impress itself on Louise Rogers all in a moment by the light of a torch? No—I think Albert definitely has the lead there. A whole joint gone would fairly hit you in the eye.”
Cicely got up. She said, “Thank you, Frank,” and went out of the room.
After a short silence Frank said,
“It’s a nasty mix-up. You see, the murderer is bound to be a local man, because no one else would have known about the Forester’s House, let alone the cellar under it, and no one else would have had any motive for killing Mary Stokes. He is almost bound to have been one of the three men who were at the Bull on the evening of the fourth. That is to say, he is almost bound to be Albert Caddie, or Grant Hathaway, or Mark Harlow.”
Miss Silver coughed.
“What did you think of Mr. Harlow?”
Frank gave her a cool, shrewd look.
“Oh, Rome can burn as long as no one interferes with his fiddling—his music matters, and nothing else does. He writes revue tunes, and these nasty rough murders have put one of them out of his head. Too disastrous. If he had been Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms all rolled into one, I should have thought he was making rather too much of the catastrophe. We interrupted him when he was producing horrid sounds from a piano. He had an attack of artistic temperament, but rallied sufficiently to promise us his kind assistance. As he seems to be the sort of chap who never knows what o’clock it is or what he was doing yesterday, the result didn’t amount to very much. Honestly, you ought to have seen the Chief. He reached an all time high in the colouring line, and I was afraid his eyes were going to pop out when Harlow said artlessly that he wasn’t sure which cinema he went to on the all important Friday the eighth, or what picture he saw. Said he very often didn’t look at the picture at all, just sat and thought about tunes. The old boy asked me seriously afterwards if I thought Harlow was quite all there. I told him there were lots more where he came from, and that it was mostly pose—very much so in this case, because when judiciously prodded he came off it sufficiently to identify the Empire, and to remember quite a lot about the film, including the fact that there was a new girl with marvellous legs. You won’t have heard of her, but—is he right!”
Miss Silver smiled.
“Perdita Payne?”
He burst out laughing.
“You do know everything! Well, he condescended to remember Perdita’s legs—and they’re worth remembering.”
A very slight frown replaced Miss Silver’s smile. She considered that the emphasis on legs had been sufficient. She said,
“I heard the police message which was broadcast after the six o’clock news. It was given out just as I came in.”
Frank sat up.
“Oh, yes, I was going to tell you—a café at Ledlington rang up at once. Louise lunched there rather late—didn’t leave till half past two—asked the way to Lenton. She was alone, so bang goes Smith’s engaging theory that she brought someone down to murder her at Deeping—the unfortunate Ferrand for choice.”
“What is Mr. Ferrand like, Frank?”
“Are you going to join Smith? I thought he was a harmless youth—fond of her, and very much upset. I don’t think there’s anything there.”
“No—perhaps not.”
She coughed, and was about to speak, when the door opened and Cicely came a little way into the room. Her head was bare, but she was wearing a fur coat. Beyond her, where she had just set it down, a suit-case stood. Bramble jumped out of Monica Abbott’s chair and ran to meet her, bobbing up and cocking his head on one side. She dropped a hand for him to nibble and said,
“Will you tell the parents when they come in—I’m going home.”
Miss Silver said, “Dear me!”
Frank pulled round in his chair.
“Cis!”
She stood there, her colour brilliantly heightened, her eyes glowing.
“You heard what I said—I’m going home.”
After his one surprised ejaculation Frank returned to the detached manner.
“Does one ask why? Monica will. Return of tigress—where is my cub?”
Cicely’s foot tapped the carpet.
“You can tell her I’ve gone home.”
“A little repetitive, aren’t you? Hadn’t you better wait and tell her yourself?”
She came slowly over to the hearth, bent down, put a log on the fire, and said,
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t want a fuss.” She straightened up and looked from him to Miss Silver. “You can tell her. It’s quite simple. Grant and I have got our own quarrel—it’s got nothing to do with anyone else, it’s between ourselves. If he’s going to be suspected of these murders, then I’m going back. We can go on with our quarrel afterwards. I won’t have people thinking I believe he’s got anything to do with murdering people.”
Miss Silver continued to knit, the pink wool revolved.
Frank Abbott got up. You couldn’t drive Cicely—you never could even when she was a baby—but Monica would expect him to have a stab at it. He cursed the Rector, and the Rector’s chess, and Uncle Reg. Let Monica do her own dirty work and get bitten by her own daughter. He said,
“Cis, it’s one of those three men. Hadn’t you better wait?”
She looked at him steadily.
“It’s not Grant.” She turned to Miss Silver. “Will you help us?”
“My dear—”
“Frank says you always know. You take cases professionally, don’t you? I want you to take this one for me— and Grant.”
The needles were momentarily still. Miss Silver looked up, and Cicely looked down.
“My dear, I can’t take any case for this person or for that. I can only have one object, which is to find out the truth.”
Cicely said, “That is what I want too.”
“You are very confident.”
“Yes.”
“Suppose your confidence were misplaced. Suppose I took the case and the truth was a very unwelcome one—”
All Cicely’s bright colour was gone. Under the brown skin there was a cold pallor. She said,
“Lies aren’t any good. I want the truth. Will you take the case?”