Death Among the Sunbathers (24 page)

‘Aw, cheese it,' Bobs-the-Boy retorted contemptuously, ‘it ain't Owen at all. You've got that bloke on the brain all right, haven't you? Cut it out, ma'am, cut it out... Owen ain't there... it ain't no Yard man at all... it ain't no man either.'

‘Not a man? What do you mean?' Dodd asked, and Bryan said almost simultaneously,

‘Stop playing the fool... tell us what you mean.'

Even Hunter lifted his head that he had hidden in his hands as though he would try to conceal his own terrors from himself, and Miss James repeated the name that seemed by now the only word she had power to pronounce,

‘Owen... Owen.'

‘Lumme,' cried Bobs-the-Boy, exasperated, ‘like a blooming grammyphone, ain't you? I tell you Owen ain't there, not him. There's no man there, neither, same as I told you before.'

‘If it's not a man–' Bryan began.

‘So it ain't,' Bobs-the-Boy interrupted, ‘and for why? Because it's a girl, that's why.'

‘A girl...?' Bryan repeated, ‘a girl... what girl?' It was plain neither he nor the others quite understood. ‘What do you mean... what girl?' he said again.

‘That other one's sister,' explained Bobs-the-Boy. ‘Her sister. Sybil Frankland, that's who it is.'

‘Sybil Frankland,' Dodd repeated, ‘but... but–'

‘Her... her sister?' Miss James asked in a kind of bewildered whisper.

‘That's right,' Bobs-the-Boy answered.

‘If it's her,' Miss James said slowly, ‘if it is... why, then I would almost rather it was Owen instead.'

‘Oh, it's her all right,' Bobs-the-Boy repeated, ‘fainted she has... most likely when she knew she had given herself away knocking the chair and tilings over, then she was so scared she just fainted, and there she is.'

He made a slight movement aside as if inviting them to look for themselves. Bryan got up and looked past Bobs-the-Boy, standing sideways in the door. Drawing back again, Bryan said,

‘It's her all right... what was she doing there?'

‘Do you think she heard what we were saying?' Dodd asked slowly; ‘if she's fainted...'

‘She heard it all first,' asserted Bobs-the-Boy, ‘that's why she fainted when she knew as she had give herself away. You can bet on that, you can hear every word in there what's said in here.' He added meditatively, ‘That's why the little fool fainted when she knew she had give herself away, because she had heard every word you spoke.'

‘Perhaps it makes it easier, that she's fainted,' remarked Bryan, who had gone back to where he had been sitting before.

Bobs-the-Boy turned his head to look at him. For a moment, a long and dreadful moment, their eyes met... and understood... understood the secret message that flashed between them.

‘That's right,' Bobs-the-Boy said at last, ‘makes it easier in a manner of speaking, so it does.'

He made a gesture, his hand with outspread fingers circling his throat, and looked at Bryan. Almost imperceptibly Bryan nodded. More deliberately still, while the others watched him, he took a large, dirty, red silk handkerchief from his pocket and twisted it into a noose. Again he looked at Bryan and again Bryan nodded slightly, more slightly even than before. Bobs-the-Boy stepped back into the inner room once more, softly closing the door behind him.

He had not been gone more than a second or two, they were still watching the closed door behind which he was hidden, when they heard a step in the corridor without. Not only did the lips of Miss James open to give vent to a startled scream. Dodd, too, jumping to his feet, had a cry of terror and alarm hovering on his lips. As for Hunter, only the choking, strangling feeling in his throat prevented him from screaming out aloud. But then the furious and frantic gesture Bryan made, one of intense command, held them silent, checked their cries still unuttered. The door opened and Maurice Keene stood there, watching them doubtfully.

‘Is Sybil here?' he asked. ‘Miss Frankland, I mean, Sybil Frankland?'

When he had said this he remained standing in the doorway, darkly watchful, almost in the same attitude, almost with the same expression, as Bobs-the-Boy had shown when he stood there shortly before. It might have been indeed that he had come again, though in different guise.

At first none of them made any effort to reply to Keene's question. They were too conscious of what their imaginations pictured to them as occurring on the other side of that closed door through which Bobs-the-Boy had just vanished with his knotted, noosed handkerchief in his grasp. Keene's sudden appearance at that moment of all others held them indeed appalled. Even Bryan was shaken dreadfully; the merest trifle, one way or another, would have sent them all flying in a panic-stricken madness of terror, or launched them in a wild attack on Keene himself, or indeed hurled them into other extremity of action of any sort or kind in which their overwrought and quivering nerves could have found relief. To all of them it seemed certain that the next thing that would happen would be that Keene would cross the floor of the room and tear open the closed door that alone laid what was passing in the adjoining room. This seemed to them so obvious a thing for him to do that they could not understand why he delayed, and he on his side could not understand why they all sat there, so strangely watching him, so silent and so still.

‘Well, now then,' he said at last, looking from one to the other, ‘now then, can't you say something?' He turned his gloomy, questioning gaze on Hunter. ‘I didn't expect to find you here,' he said. ‘Have you seen Sybil?'

By a great effort, Hunter succeeded in making a negative gesture with his head. He was quite incapable of speech, nor could he keep his eyes from wandering towards that closed door behind which – he jerked his thoughts away, he jerked his gaze back towards Keene, and then he shut tight his eyes for fear they should betray his awful knowledge.

Bryan spoke then in a voice that was fairly calm and well controlled.

‘Miss Frankland? Miss Sybil Frankland?' he asked. ‘She's not here, I don't think she's been here to-day, has she, Miss James? How did you get in, Mr Keene, if I may ask? It's long past our hours, we closed long ago.'

‘I knocked, I rang, there was no answer,' Keene replied, ‘so I pushed the door open and came in. I heard voices and I came up here. Are you sure Miss Frankland has not been here?'

‘I think so,' Bryan answered. ‘Miss James, you haven't seen Miss Frankland, have you? Her name's not in the visitors' book, is it?'

Miss James shook her head and her gaze, too, because she could not control it, went wandering in torment and in terror to the closed door of the inner room.

‘What made you think the young lady was here?' Bryan asked Keene.

‘I was told,' Keene answered, ‘someone said–'

He hesitated and did not complete his sentence. It was fairly evident that now he was definitely suspicious, though of what he did not know. But in his heavy and gloomy gaze, a question was now apparent, and in turn he stared at each one of them, as though trying to extract an answer to what as yet he had not asked.

‘Well, I'm afraid we can't help you, we know nothing of the young lady here,' Bryan went on in tones and with a manner that by now he had made nearly normal again. ‘She's not one of our members, and I'm pretty sure she's not visited us to-day. If you found the door downstairs open, did you shut it again after you came in?'

‘Sybil came to Leadeane by the seven-seventeen from town,' Keene said, ignoring Bryan's question, which indeed he had hardly heard or noticed, since only what affected Sybil and his search for her had power just now to enter his mind or awaken his attention.

But Bryan turned to Dodd.

‘Zack,' he said, speaking rather slowly and loudly, ‘you might go and see to the door, will you? Goodness knows who else may come walking in or out.' He tossed a bunch of keys across to Dodd. ‘They are labelled,' he said, ‘so you can pick the right one out. It's not safe to have doors open. Sometimes it's not safe to have them locked either.'

He laid a slight emphasis on these last words as he spoke them, that his associates understood well enough. It was the key of the outer door of the adjoining room, of the door that opened on the corridor, that he was giving Dodd, so that Dodd could unlock it and allow the imprisoned Bobs-the-Boy to escape, carrying with him as he did so what there was need should not be allowed to remain there.

Dodd was not over quick of apprehension, but he understood all that well enough. He rose and lumbered heavily to the door, where Keene was still standing. Keene, though plainly more puzzled and uneasy with every passing minute, stood aside almost mechanically to let him pass on what was to all seeming so harmless and so necessary an errand. They all heard his heavy step lumbering down the passage without for a moment or two, and then pause as a fit of coughing took him. They all heard that equally plainly, and all of them, except Keene, knew that under the cover of that fit of coughing Dodd was unlocking the outer door of the adjoining room. Then they heard his heavy step go lumbering on, and they knew that now the way of escape was open to Bobs-the-Boy. Bryan began to talk in order to distract Keene's attention.

‘Well, Mr Keene,' he said, ‘I really don't see, even if Miss Frankland did leave by the seven-seventeen from town, why you should think she was coming here. Did she express any intention of paying us a visit? And if she did, did she say why she was coming so late? She has been here once or twice, I think, and she seemed interested, but she never became a member. Are you sure she was coming to Leadeane at all? The seven-seventeen goes to other places as well, you know. Anyhow, I don't see what we can do to help you. Of course, if we could, anything in our power, anything at all, we should be delighted. We all feel very keenly her sister's dreadful murder, and that this was the last place she visited before it happened. Indeed, I may as well tell you that affair's done us a lot of harm; illogical of course, but an establishment of this kind can't afford even the most indirect association with anything criminal, with anything not entirely and absolutely above board and respectable. You see it has meant visits from the police and questioning and what not – most upsetting. I'm not complaining, of course, very necessary no doubt and quite natural, but also very upsetting for our members, most upsetting and disturbing.'

‘I believe Sybil may have thought,' began Keene slowly, ‘in fact I was told–'

‘Who told you?' Miss James interrupted him in a high, shrill, unnatural voice, ‘who told you... was it Owen... Owen?'

‘Owen... who is Owen?' Bryan asked blandly, though the look he shot at Miss James was anything but bland. ‘I don't know that name, do I? Not one of our members, I think?'

‘Owen–' began Keene, and again Miss James interrupted him.

‘If he told you, then you've seen him? Have you seen him?'

‘Why, no,' Keene began once more, and yet a third time Miss James interrupted him.

‘No one ever has,' she said, ‘no one... no one at all. But some day we shall all see him, all of us.'

Keene, more puzzled than ever, dimly aware of an atmosphere of suppressed terror and emotion there seemed little to account for, was again about to speak when now it was Bryan who interposed,

‘But really, Mr Keene, if you have never seen this Owen person, whoever he may be and certainly not a member here, how did he manage to tell you Miss Frankland might be visiting us to-night?'

‘He came to my place in Deal Street one time when I was out,' Keene answered. ‘He asked a lot of questions of the girl I have there to look after things for me. She's pretty quick... she thought he meant... I don't know if she was right, but she's quick at spotting things.'

‘What things?' Bryan asked, and the door opened and Zack came back into the room. He had regained now something of his natural, heavy swagger; the terror that had oppressed him so visibly before seemed to have passed away, and to have been replaced by a kind of ponderous insolence as of one who now felt himself secure.

‘That's all right now,' he rumbled. ‘All safe now,' he declared, grinning at that closed door of the adjoining room, which till now had seemed to all of them so frail a barrier between them and the discovery of the dread horror it concealed.

Even Bryan could not help drawing a long breath of relief. It was to all of them like a reprieve from a discovery that had seemed as imminent as inevitable, for what had there been to prevent Keene at any moment from walking across to that door and flinging it open and perceiving what lay behind? But now that opportunity had passed and gone for ever, passed by without his having even been aware of what to all of them had seemed so strangely obvious. Hunter lay back in his chair and shut his eyes, collapsed indeed, quite exhausted by his emotions and no longer with sufficient strength to sit upright. Zack's attitude of triumph he hardly troubled to conceal; it was as if he stood there and visibly snapped his fingers at defeated Fate. Miss James, experiencing suddenly a need for more air, flung back the curtain that had been drawn before the window, and leaned out a little that the cool air might bathe her throbbing temples and flushed, fevered face. Her action was just in time to permit her to see in the patch of light thus thrown abruptly on the lawn below, a man who ran heavily, and yet with speed, across it towards the shelter of the trees beyond, and who bore over his shoulder the body of a woman, limp and still and helpless, her head and feet dangling.

For one moment the two of them, the bearer and the borne, were plain there on that illumined patch of grass. Then they vanished into the shadows beyond. One last glimpse remained with Miss James of two feet in high-heeled shoes that hung down aimlessly, swinging a horrible tattoo against the ribs of the man, and then she sank back upon her sofa.