Eternity Ring (21 page)

In the Superintendent’s office at Lenton police station Chief Inspector Lamb read over the statements in the case. If it is asked where the Superintendent was, he was in bed with a chill, and very sorry for himself as far as that went, but perhaps not so sorry to be out of an affair which threatened to involve two highly respected local families.

Lamb went through his sergeant’s neatly typed sheets from one end to the other, his face without expression, his big fingers turning the pages methodically and without haste. When he had finished he looked up and said in measured tones,

“I thought I’d come to him with everything fresh in my mind, but it makes no difference-—looks worse if anything. The Commissioner was surprised we hadn’t made the arrest. Gave me the feeling I’d made a fool of myself, going up there with the papers and getting that. ‘What are you waiting for?’ he said. ‘An eyewitness? They come a bit short in murder cases.’ ”

He sat there with his bowler hat a little on the back of his head and his big overcoat taken off and thrown over the arm of a chair. He had been up to town and down again since breakfast. Outside a grey, cold day was settling into rain. But the police know how to make themselves good fires. The Superintendent’s office was hot enough to remind Lamb of his mother’s kitchen on baking day. He took off his hat and tossed it over on to the coat.

“Well,” he said, “we’d better have him in. I don’t quite know why you got him over here, but it’ll save us going to get him.”

Frank Abbott said, “Just a moment, sir—”

“Well, what is it?”

“Just something Miss Silver asked me to pass on.”

He got a suspicious look, and a quick “Well, well—out with it! Pack of nonsense, I expect.”

“That is for you to judge, sir. Mark Harlow came up to Abbottsleigh last night—he does quite often drop in in the evenings. He likes to play over his stuff to my cousin Cicely Hathaway—she’s musical, you know. Well, last night he didn’t see her, because she’d packed up and gone home.”

Lamb pricked up his ears.

“How do you mean, gone home?”

“A gesture. It had come to her notice that things were rather piling up against Grant Hathaway, so she packed a bag and went home.” This was thin ice. He skated on rapidly. “So Mark didn’t get as far as playing the piano, but he did have a heart-to-heart talk with our Miss Silver. If you want to know why, I’ve got my own ideas.”

Lamb gave a formidable grunt.

“Where’s all this getting to?”

“I’m telling you, sir. Harlow seemed very much upset at the idea of Cicely going back to her husband—said that Grant was in this business up to the neck, that I knew it, and that I had no business to let my cousin go back to him. He said I ought to have stopped her. I may say that nobody could possibly have stopped her. Miss Silver asked him what made him think Hathaway was going to be arrested, and he gave her his version of the affair at the Bull, with a fancy touch about Grant putting something in his pocket when he turned up late at the car. Mark said he hadn’t the slightest doubt it was the lighter which ‘this Rogers woman’—his expression—said she saw him looking for in the yard. Harlow then said, ‘On the top of that she comes down here after him. Well, I ask you!’ Miss Silver echoed his words discreetly, and he enlarged upon them. He said, ‘I suppose Caddie and I ought to be thankful it was his address she got hold of and not mine, or the police might be trying to stick it on to one of us. We were both in France along with about a million other people, and we were both at the Bull that night. But it was Grant Hathaway she came down here to see—and that lets us out.’ ” He made an impressive pause.

The Chief Inspector’s eyes bulged.

“And what are you and Miss Silver cooking up out of this? Sounds like a lot of tittle-tattle to me.”

“Yes, sir. But who told Harlow that Louise came down here to see Grant Hathaway? How many people knew about it? You and I and Smith, Hathaway himself, and Agnes Ripley—that’s the lot. Which of them told Mark Harlow? Not you, or I, or Smith. Miss Silver asked me that at once—had we told Harlow that Louise Rogers had got hold of Grant’s name and address on a dropped envelope—that she had come down here to see him, and that he admitted having an interview with her not very long before she was murdered. I said most definitely we had not. Did Agnes Ripley tell him? She had her scene with Grant about five o’clock yesterday evening and came blinding out here. Not likely she told anyone before that. She had a crush on him—she only talked because he turned her down, and she came straight out here to us. Can you believe for a moment that she had any communication with Mark Harlow? She was more or less in a state of collapse when I took her round to her friend Mrs. Parsons. That leaves Grant Hathaway. Why should he tumble over himself to tell Harlow that he had had a highly compromising interview with Louise? And if he didn’t tell him, there’s only one person who could have told him, and that is Louise herself.”

Lamb maintained a perfectly stolid gaze. That this was often a screen behind which the mind worked forcibly and intelligently, Frank was well aware. He was not therefore discouraged. He stopped talking himself and awaited results.

After a considerable pause a remark arrived on a growling note.

“Might be something in it—might be nothing at all. We don’t know enough about Agnes Ripley to say right off that she wouldn’t have told Harlow. If they were strangers, it isn’t likely. If there was any link, she might. She was in that state when she might have done anything. I don’t think the ordinary rules would apply. She wanted to hit back at Hathaway. The same thing that made her come to us might have made her want to damage him with his friends. It’s all of a piece with the thing that makes people write anonymous letters. I won’t say it’s likely she rang Harlow up, but I won’t rule it out.” He shifted in his chair and went on speaking slowly and impressively. “I won’t rule out Hathaway either. He might very easily have rung Harlow up himself. Say it was this way. Louise Rogers asks him about the men he was with at the Bull—if she didn’t recognise Hathaway himself she’d have asked him about the others, wouldn’t she? She’d made up her mind it was one of those three—well, she’d ask about the other two.”

A faint gleam came into Frank Abbott’s eye.

“You are supposing that Grant is innocent?”

Not a muscle of Lamb’s face moved.

“Just for the purposes of argument. Take it she asks who the others are, and he tells her. She goes off in her car. He might ring up a neighbour and warn him that trouble is on the way. She could have bumped into Caddie going in by the back way past the garage, or she could have bumped into Harlow, if he knew she was coming.”

“And Albert’s alibi?”

The Chief Inspector waved it away.

Frank Abbott said, “That theory doesn’t seem to come out so very different from Miss Silver’s, sir. If Grant was the murderer he’d hardly have rung Harlow up. So we’re back at Harlow’s knowledge that Grant had had an interview with Louise being guilty knowledge.”

“That’s going a bit far.”

Frank leaned forward.

“Look, sir—Harlow knows what no one outside the police, Hathaway, and one witness knows. It’s guilty knowledge, because he must have linked it up with the murder. Why didn’t he give it to the police? He didn’t know that we knew.”

Lamb grunted.

“Friendly with Mrs. Hathaway. People do keep things to themselves. If he’s guilty, why did he let it out to Miss Silver like that?”

“He was a good deal worked up, and—you know how it is when you don’t know her—I expect he thought she was negligible. If he’d been talking to you, or even to me, he’d have watched his step, but just Miss Silver, sitting there and knitting, he let himself go and slipped up. What he was trying to put across was the idea that Hathaway was the murderer, and—he slipped up.”

The Chief Inspector said,

“H’m—” Then after an interval of some length, “Putting Agnes Ripley on one side for the moment, it is difficult to reconcile Harlow’s knowledge with Hathaway’s guilt. If Hathaway were guilty he would not have informed Harlow that he had seen Louise Rogers. He might have rung him up if he was innocent. We’ll have him in and ask him if he did. We will also ask Harlow how he knew that Hathaway had seen Louise. We can’t count on either of them telling the truth, but now and again there’s quite a lot of information to be got out of a lie. Just step along and ask Mr. Hathaway to come in.”

As her hand came up, Cicely turned quite automatically and instinctively to the light. It was rather dark in the study, because outside the clouds were low and it was raining—not hard, but with the fine drizzle which thickens the air. Even before she turned she could see what she was holding. She saw the earring, a quite round platinum ring set continuously with small bright diamonds. She saw it, but it didn’t mean anything yet. There had been some kind of a shock, and the part of her that was going to think about the earring wasn’t doing its job—it wasn’t thinking. It left her to her eyes, which went on looking at the round, bright ring. Somewhere deep down inside her she was afraid.

She looked at the ring. It was about three-quarters of an inch across. There was the mark of an almost invisible hinge at one side and a tiny catch at the other. They wouldn’t show at all when the earring was on.

With a piercing suddenness thought began again. This was the missing ring. Louise Rogers had worn a pair of eternity earrings, and Mary Stokes had seen the murderer tossing over the dead girl’s hair to look for the one that wasn’t there. He hadn’t found it. Slowly and draggingly her mind repeated the word “then.” He hadn’t found it—then. Had he found it afterwards? The body had been hidden in the wood. It had lain there between Friday and Saturday evening. She thought he would have gone back to the place where it had been and looked for the earring, turning the leaves to and fro as he had turned the dead girl’s hair. He would go on looking for it until he had found it.

Her thought halted there—seeing the dark trees, the dark wood, and a hand going to and fro, turning the leaves.

Whose hand?

He would have had a torch—dark wet leaves dazzling under the light—the ring dazzling—

He must have found it, because it was here—she had it in her hand. The deep-down thing that was afraid began to rise up towards the surface of her mind, like a bubble coming up through dark water. All at once she was shaking. She had seen Grant in this room last night—Grant with his back to her over by the mantlepiece, lifting his arm, doing something to the bowl of pot-pourri. She had wondered then if he was stirring it. It was that recollection which had put it into her mind to stir it now. The picture rose quick—the raincoat with the new patch upon the sleeve, the movement of the shoulder and the arm.

Something in her said, “No!” It was a thing she couldn’t believe. There are things you can believe, and things you can’t. She stopped shaking. There was nothing to shake about. The thing which had said “No!” spoke again quite loudly and firmly. It said, “Grant isn’t such a fool.” Of course it ought to have been, “Grant isn’t a murderer.” Perhaps that was just taken as said.

What the voice kept repeating in tones of scorn was, “Grant isn’t such a fool.” Would he, would anyone, bring a thing like that into his own house and keep it there? It had only been brought last night. The body already found, the other earring in the hands of the police—what sort of a fool would you have to be to bring the missing ring home with you and hide it in your own room, when you could drop it in the Lane or in the wood and be safely quit of it?

She was still looking at the earring. The light changed on it, darkened. With a little click the right-hand window which was a door swung in. She looked up and saw Mark Harlow come into the room. His raincoat glistened and there were beads of moisture in his dark hair. He said,

“I did ring, but I couldn’t make anyone hear.”

She said, “No—Grant’s in Lenton and Mrs. Barton has gone down into the village.”

He had an agitated air.

“Cis—I had to see you—”

At the first sound she had closed her hand. The ring was hard against her palm. Her “Oh!” was just the escape of startled breath.

He said, “I’m too wet—I’ll get rid of my coat,” and went towards the door.

It was then she saw the new dark patch on his sleeve. She saw it as he turned—shoulder and sleeve of a raincoat, and a new dark patch on the sleeve. Everything in her mind became quite clear and plain. She had been groping in the dark, but now there was a very cold, bright light. She said,

“No, Mark—wait! It doesn’t matter about the wet. I want to speak to you.”

He turned. She thought he was surprised. Perhaps it was something in her voice. She looked at him, and remembered that they had been friends, and remembered that he had said he loved her. The words she had been going to speak wouldn’t come. She tried for them, but they wouldn’t come. She heard herself say,

“You could have let yourself in—you’ve got my key, haven’t you? Will you let me have it back?”

He looked so exactly the same. How could you do—that sort of thing—and go on looking the same? He looked just the same. He said,

“Your key?”

“You took it out of my bag. I’d like to have it back.”

“I?”

“Yes, Mark. You let yourself in last night, didn’t you? You see, I came back while you were here—I saw you.”

“Cis!”

“I was going to let myself in, but my key was gone, so I did what you did just now, I came round to the study window. There was a light inside. The curtain always hangs crooked over that door, so I looked in. I saw you, and I saw what you were doing.”

His face changed. It went on changing. The colour went out of it, and the careless, confident look. He said in a voice she had never heard from him,

“There wasn’t anything to see.”

“I think there was. You see, I saw you. You were over here by the fireplace, and you were putting something into the bowl on the mantelpiece—into the left-hand bowl. I could see your arm going up—I could see the patch on your raincoat. I knew you were doing something to the bowl. I’ve just found out what it was.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She felt rather sick—not frightened but just sick, because they had been friends. The thought struggled into words.

“The police will have to know. I’ll have to tell them, but I’m telling you first. I thought we were friends—I’m telling you first.” She opened her hand and held it out with the earring on the palm.

He looked at it, and looked at her, and went on looking. At last he said,

“So that’s the way of it? And you’re going to tell the police?”

“I must.”

He nodded.

“Of course. And Grant—you’ll have to tell Grant. Oh, Cis, what a fool you are!”

She said, “I must—” Her voice wavered.

He gave an impatient jerk.

“Haven’t I said ‘Of course’? You know, that’s where it has you—you don’t set out to do things, they do themselves. Something pushes you and you start off, and then you can’t stop. It wasn’t as if there was any harm in it. It was all just sheer bad luck. A woman with a bag full of diamonds on a road that was being bombed to blazes—she wasn’t going to be able to get away with them anyhow. Why, her chances of survival were just about nil. If you’d seen the road choc-a-block and the bombs coming down! And she’d nothing but her flat feet to get away on. I had a motorbike—what was the sense of leaving the diamonds for the Boche?”

“So you took them?”

“Of course I did! Anyone would have! Why, the chances of her surviving—”

“Yes, you said that before. But she did survive.”

“It was rotten bad luck. And then, after all these years, for her to turn up again, and to recognise me! Why, she only heard me speak once. She said I swore, and when I dropped that damned lighter at the Bull I swore again, and she said I used the same words and she recognised my voice. And my hands—now, for God’s sake, what is there about my hands that a woman who’s seen them once should say she could swear to them again?” He stretched them out towards her tense and quivering.

Cicely, who had seen them a hundred times, saw them now for the first time as Louise Rogers had seen them—the long, thin forefinger quite overtopping the other two—the thumbs splayed out, splayed back—the abnormal stretch. It seemed to her no longer strange but inevitable that they had been recognized.

He must have read her face. With an angry gesture he drove them deep into the pockets of his raincoat.

“If I hadn’t lost my head I’d have told her to go on and do her damnedest. She couldn’t have proved a thing. If Grant had rung me up and told me she was coming, if I’d had time to think, if I hadn’t been taken by surprise—I owe him something for that— perhaps he’ll think of it when he’s being paid. It’s all been the rottenest luck. I tell you I came out just to get a breath of air, and there was the car coming down the Lane. The headlights caught me, and she stopped. If it hadn’t been for that, she’d have gone up to the house, and I’d have been out. You can’t fight luck like that. I’d forgotten the whole damned thing—how could I imagine it would crop up again? I tell you it was all forced on me. She stopped the car and put on the light inside. All I saw was a good-looking woman in black. I hadn’t the least guess I’d ever seen her before. I went up to the car, and she put the window down and said, ‘That gate that you have come out of— what house is there?’ I noticed that she had a French accent, but I didn’t think anything about it. I said, ‘It’s called the Grange.’ She said, ‘That is the name he told me—Mr. Grant Hathaway— the Grange. It is where Mr. Harlow lives—Mr. Mark Harlow?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ She said, ‘Are you Mr. Mark Harlow?’ and I said I was. She was sitting in the car with the lights on, and I was standing a little way back—not far, you know, but she couldn’t really see me. She said, ‘You were with Mr. Hathaway and your chauffeur at the Bull at Ledlington at nine o’clock in the evening on January the fourth?’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘suppose I was?’ She gave a sort of smile and said, ‘Perhaps I saw you there. Perhaps you dropped your cigarette-lighter under my window, and perhaps I have seen you pick it up.’ I thought she was just making a pass at me, so I laughed and said, ‘You couldn’t have seen me—it was much too dark.’ And she laughed and said,‘You had a torch—I think perhaps it was you. It was not the Mr. Grant Hathaway who has dropped an envelope with his name and address—that is how I find him.’ ” He mimicked a French accent, a quick, light way of speech. “ ‘I have talked with him at his house, and it is not he. So I think perhaps it is you. Come a little near and I will be sure.’ I came right up to the car. She had the window down. I put my hand on the ledge. She stared at it and she said, ‘O mon dieu—it is you!’ I didn’t like the way she said it at all. I began to think if I had ever seen her before, and those damned earrings caught my eye. I thought, ‘It isn’t possible! Nobody’s luck could be as rotten as this.’ And then she was screaming at me in French, saying I’d taken her jewels, and calling me every dirty name she could lay her tongue to—‘Infâme—scélérat—assassin!’ Well, I had to stop her, hadn’t I? Anyone might have heard her. I knocked her out—what else could I do? And then I finished the job with a stone. I couldn’t let her come round and start screaming all over again. It was just the worst luck in the world.”

Cicely said nothing at all. Her hand had closed on the earring and dropped to her side. She stood quite still and listened to what sounded like Mark’s voice talking about things which couldn’t possibly have happened except in a nightmare. The dreadful thing was that he didn’t talk about them like that. He talked about them as if they were quite ordinary and natural.

He went on talking.

“I put her in the wood out of the way. And then of course I had to get rid of the car. I took it to Basingstoke and left it outside a garage there, and then I caught the six-twenty back to Lenton and went into the Empire. I walked out to a call-box at half past eight and put through a call to the garage telling them to look after the car for two or three days and I’d pick it up. I don’t remember what name I gave—not my own of course. I just didn’t want them reporting a stranded car to the police. You see, I thought of everything. I went back and saw the rest of the picture, and walked home. Then of course I had to think out a way of getting rid of the body. I remembered the Forester’s House. My uncle had a book with stories about it, written by Miss Grey’s father when he was Rector here. I remembered reading them when I was a boy. The last time I stayed here when my uncle was alive we got on to the subject. He took me into the wood and showed me the house. He showed me how to open the catch of the cellar door. He knew about it because his grandmother was a Tomalyn and all the papers about the house came into the family with her. You know, he disputed the title with the Abbotts, but in the end they settled it between them. I expect you knew that.”

Cicely said, “Yes.”

It might have been quite an ordinary conversation. They might have been talking about any of the things which gave him that familiar intolerant look. They were talking about how he had murdered Louise Rogers and buried her body in the cellar under the Forester’s House.

His hands were out of his pockets now. He used one of them to push back his wet hair.

“Then I had my second bit of bad luck. I waited till it was dark and I opened up the cellar and took along the tools I should want. I’d got it all most carefully planned, but you just can’t fight your luck. It wasn’t any too easy getting the body from where I’d put it, but I managed. I had to put my torch on at the Forester’s House to find the doorway, and when the beam fell on her I saw that one of those earrings was gone. That put the wind up me and I started looking for it, and right away I heard someone give a sort of gasp. Well, I knew she was dead, but just for the moment it knocked me out. And then I heard someone running—I tell you she went like a racehorse. By the time I’d pulled myself together and got started I knew I couldn’t catch her. I got the body down into the cellar and shut up the door and went home. Whoever it was, couldn’t have seen me—I knew that. I sat tight. In an hour or two the whole village was buzzing. Mrs. Green and Lizzie came home full of what Mary Stokes had seen and what everyone was saying about it. Fortunately she’d lied about where she’d seen the body, so they hadn’t found anything. I went back in the middle of the night and made a good job of burying it under the cellar floor. I thought I was perfectly safe.”

With a sudden change of tone he spoke to Cicely directly. She wasn’t just an audience any more. He looked at her and he spoke to her.