Eternity Ring (22 page)

“You see how it was.” And then, “Why don’t you say something?”

Frightful echo of the old Mark. He had given a performance, now he wanted her applause. How and in what words did you applaud murder? She said,

“You thought you were perfectly safe.”

She saw him flush angrily.

“And so I would have been if it hadn’t been for that damned girl! Everybody thought she had made the whole thing up, or else they thought she’d seen a ghost. She hadn’t seen me, and I thought I was perfectly safe. It was the most frightful shock when she came up with the butter and eggs this last Saturday morning and tried to blackmail me.”

Saturday the sixteenth—last Saturday… So that was what had happened. Mary Stokes had tried to blackmail him—and in the evening she was dead—

He made an impatient movement.

“Of course she was a perfect fool to try it on. I was coming in the back way when she came down from the house. She stopped and said good-morning. I stopped too. I saw her looking at my hands. I didn’t try to hide them or anything like that. She went on looking. Then she said just what the other girl said—‘So it was you. I thought so.’ I said, ‘My dear girl, what do you mean?’ and she said, ‘Come off it! I could swear it was you. Do you want me to?’ I said, ‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,’ and she said, ‘All right, then I’ll go and talk about it to the police.’ She began to walk on, and when she’d gone a little way she turned her head round over her shoulder and said, ‘They’ll be interested when I tell them about the cellar, won’t they?’ Well, of course, I couldn’t let her go after that. I said, ‘We can’t talk here,’ and she said, ‘Where would you like to talk?’ So then we fixed it up. She was going into Lenton, and Joe Turnberry was seeing her home. She said she would go in and shut the door, and when he had cleared off she could slip out again, only she wasn’t coming any further than the porch.” He gave an angry laugh. “She thought she was being frightfully clever about that—thought she’d be within call of old Stokes in case I got rough. What did she think they taught us in the Army?” He laughed again. “She never had a chance to call out. She never even knew I was there until she felt my hands round her throat.”

Cicely shuddered from head to foot—just the one long shudder. Then the cold again, and the stiffness. It was Mark who was saying these things—Mark. He went on saying them.

“I couldn’t possibly let her go round tattling, could I? You must see that. From beginning to end the whole thing was forced on me—absolutely. I don’t see how anyone can blame me. It was just sheer bad luck—you must see that.” He paused, and then said in exactly the same voice, “And now there’s you.”

Cicely said, “Yes—”

He threw out his hands.

“What on earth did you want to come back here for? I couldn’t possibly have foreseen that you would do a thing like that! Grant was absolutely certain to be arrested as soon as the police found out that he had seen this Rogers woman, and then they were bound to search the house. And when they did that they would find the missing earring. It was dropped when I shifted the body. I went back and looked for it as soon as it was safe, and there it was. I thought it would come in useful—and it’s going to.”

Cicely repeated the last words.

“It’s going to?”

“Of course. They’ll find it clutched in your hand. That will make everything quite clear—you came on it by chance, and he killed you.”

Cicely said, “He?”

“Grant of course. He killed the other two, and he killed you because you found out. Then he’ll hang. That was part of the plan. I had to get him out of the way. I wanted to marry you— I really did want to marry you.”

A quick, tingling life was driving away the stiffness and the cold. Kill her, and hang Grant—brush them out of his way as if they were a couple of flies… Everything in her rose up to make a fight for it. She was less than two yards from the writing-table. It was large and massive. If she could get to it and dodge round it she might be able to get out through the glass door, and then—

She would have no chance in the open. Make time—make as much time as you can—someone might come—

She said, “I don’t call that very clever.”

It was the voice which always nettled him when they had their arguments. It nettled him now. He flushed.

“How do you mean, ‘It’s not very clever’?”

“Well, is it? Grant is supposed to kill me because I find the earring. Well, he wouldn’t be likely to leave it for the police to see. He isn’t a fool, you know.”

He seemed to wrestle with that. It was the way he had planned it. Mark always hated to give up anything he had planned.

“He might not have seen it—clutched up in your hand.”

“Then why does he kill me?”

It was a crazy parody of one of their old arguments. He wasn’t quick really—she always got the better of him, and he resented it. The resentment was in his voice.

“You think you’re so clever! But there’s a very good answer to that. He kills you for the same reason that Mary Stokes was killed—because you know too much. You haven’t shown him the earring—you’ve got it clutched in your hand. But you’ve told him you know, and he kills you—to shut your mouth. Like this.”

At the horrible change in his face and his sudden stride forward Cicely sprang. She reached the table and ran round it to the other side. She didn’t know that she had screamed until she heard the light, high sound. She screamed again, much louder.

Mark Harlow leaned across the table with grabbing hands, and missed her by an inch. She put a desperate edge on to the next scream. Then she had no more breath. She was dodging, twisting, doubling, and he wasn’t Mark any more but a mad wild beast, clutching, cursing, doubling when she doubled— horribly, ruthlessly set on her destruction. He touched her sleeve, he caught it. She wrenched free. On the outer edge of sound, beyond his trampling feet, their panting breath, beyond the cruel beating of her heart, there was something, she didn’t know what. It might have been a throb in the air. It might have been a car.

She took all the breath she could and screamed again. She saw him swing a chair above his head and poise it. Her hand found the heavy glass inkstand. She threw it straight in his face. Then she turned and ran out through the glass door and into Grant Hathaway’s arms.

About the time that Cicely was finding the afternoon intolerably long Grant Hathaway was entering the Superintendent’s office at Lenton and wondering whether he would still be a free man when he came out again.

Frank Abbott followed him into the room and shut the door. He sat down, and Frank sat down. Old Lamb sat there looking stuffed and florid, and no wonder. There was a raging fire. Grant put the temperature round about seventy. All very appropriate, since he was certainly going to be grilled.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Hathaway. There are just one or two points, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, certainly.”

“In the course of your conversation with Louise Rogers, did she mention how she obtained your name and address?”

“Yes. She said I had dropped an envelope. Someone picked it up and gave it to her when she made enquiries.”

“That was how she came to you?”

“That is what she said.”

“Did she ask who was with you in the car?”

“Yes.”

“Did you tell her?”

“Yes.”

“And then she went away.”

“And then she went away.”

“Did she give you the impression that she meant to follow the matter up?”

“She didn’t say.”

“You gave her Mr. Mark Harlow’s name, and the name of his house. Did you tell her how to get there?”

“She asked me where he lived, and I told her.”

“She didn’t say she was going to see him?”

“No.”

“Did you think she meant to?”

“I didn’t think about it—I wasn’t interested.”

“Did you ring Mr. Harlow up and let him know she was coming?”

There was a faint effect of surprise. Grant said,

“Certainly not.”

“You might have done?”

“I didn’t.”

“You were on friendly terms with Mr. Harlow?”

“I’ve never had any quarrel with him.”

“That doesn’t sound very enthusiastic.”

“I’ve never quarrelled with him. He’s not much in my line.”

“But you accepted a lift from him on January the fourth.”

Grant smiled.

“Ever try those cross-country trains from Ledlington? I wanted to get home.”

Lamb grunted.

“So you didn’t ring Mr. Harlow up and warn him there might be trouble coming his way?”

“No.”

“To whom did you mention this visit of Louise Rogers?”

“I didn’t mention it to anyone.”

“Sure about that?”

“Quite sure.”

“Sure you didn’t mention it to your wife?”

“Why should I?”

“I’m asking you if you did.”

“I didn’t.”

“You didn’t mention it to anyone?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Grant smiled again.

“Three reasons—all good ones. I wasn’t interested. I’m a busy man. I was a good deal taken up with my own affairs.”

There was a silence. Lamb’s gaze dwelt on him. The temperature of the room was now certainly well over seventy. In all the best thrillers the villain developed beads of perspiration upon the brow. Grant became aware that he now displayed this attribute of guilt.

The silence went on, the gaze became overshadowed by a frown.

Lamb said, “Harlow knows you saw her.”

“Not from me.”

Lamb pushed back his chair.

“Well, I think we’d like to know where he got it from. He knows, and you say you didn’t tell him—you say you didn’t tell anyone. I think we’ll go and ask him how he knows, and I think you can come along.”

They drove down the Lane in the police car, Constable May at the wheel. Just before they came to Deepside Grant said abruptly,

“If you’re going to detain me, can I go and get some things?”

Nobody could have known what hung in the balance whilst Lamb considered this. It was in his mind to say, “Who said we were detaining you?” It was in his mind to say, “You can get what you want on the way back.” He didn’t say either of these things, and he never knew why. What he did say was,

“All right—it won’t do any harm.”

Miss Maud Silver was afterwards to describe this as providential.

They drove in, and heard the distant insistent barking of Bramble, shut in the kitchen. They drove round to the front of the house, and just as Constable May stopped the car and shut off the engine, Grant heard Cicely scream. Three doors were wrenched open, and in a moment four men were running— Grant and Frank because they had heard the scream, Lamb because he thought Grant was getting away, and the constable because he was of an age to run when he saw other people running.

The scream had come from the study. The glass door was ajar. As they came up, it was pushed wide and Cicely ran out. She ran straight into Grant Hathaway’s arms and he lifted her off the ground and held her. Frank Abbott, coming to the door, saw two things. First the eternity earring lying on the floor where it had dropped from Cicely’s hand. And then, on the other side of the table, Mark Harlow getting to his knees. He had come down with the chair on top of him, the chair which he had swung up over his head to strike Cicely down. He was struggling to his knees, struggling to free himself. His face was a mass of ink and blood. His hands groped.

Frank went forward. Lamb, a good second, halted on the threshold. He heard Cicely say between panting breaths, “He killed them both—he was trying to kill me too!” His eyes focussed on the eternity earring and passed to Mark Harlow, on his feet now, leaning on the table, dashing the blood and ink from his eyes. His mind ruminated on these things. He said,

“What’s been happening here?” and went straight on into the official warning.

Mark Harlow heard it, as you hear something shouted at you in the teeth of a high wind. The blood was pounding in his ears and he was dizzy with pain. The words came to him in snatches—“Anything you say… taken down and used…”

He cleared his eyes and stared at Lamb out of a ghastly face.

“What’s the good of that? I’ve said it, haven’t I?” He cursed Cicely and his luck. If Louise Rogers had been there she would have recognised voice and words.

Lamb said equably, “Well, I’ve warned you. Mrs. Hathaway says you tried to kill her. Is there anything you would like to say about that? Or about Louise Rogers? Or Mary Stokes?”

Mark Harlow said, “Oh, I killed them. I’m through. You can’t fight your luck.”

They had gone. Cicely had made her statement, and they had gone. It was half an hour since the last sound of the car had died away, taking them back to Lenton with Mark Harlow handcuffed beside Frank Abbott on the back seat, and the Chief Inspector sitting in front with Constable May.

After the violent interruption, all the normal things had begun again at Deepside—Bramble being let out of the kitchen, where he was screaming his head off; Grant going to and fro, getting out of his raincoat, hanging it up; Cicely bringing in tea. The sooner you get down to doing things like that, the sooner the nightmare things slip away back to their own horrible place. They were in the study now, with the fire bright on the hearth and the curtains drawn. By being very careful indeed Cicely had got them to meet. Tonight if she had stood on the other side of the glass door and tried to look in, there wouldn’t have been any chink.

The police had taken away the eternity earring, and Grant had picked up a few splinters of glass. There was a dark stain on the carpet where the ink had gone, but it wasn’t going to show very much when it was dry. The inkstand was back in its place with fresh ink in it. No one would have noticed that it was chipped.

Cicely was glad of the hot tea. She didn’t want to talk or do anything. Presently she would have to go and wash up the tea things, but not just now. The wood fire made small comfortable sounds. Bramble lay stretched in front of it with his nose on his paws and his hind legs out behind him.

Grant lay back in his chair with his head against one of the old brown tapestry cushions. Into the calm of release from danger there came seeping an ineradicable dislike for brown tapestry. For tapestry in the mass, and for brown tapestry in particular. People used to get it because it wore for ever, and as it would always look dirty when it was clean, they could go on pretending it was clean when it was dirty.

In a dreaming, drifting sort of way Cicely began to do the study over. The wallpaper must be at least thirty years old—blue and brown chrysanthemums on a dingy ground. She substituted cream distemper, and was trying to decide between green and claret for the curtains, when Grant opened his eyes and said,

“Like to talk?”

Cicely said, “No.”

He stretched a little and sat up.

“I expect we’ll have to.”

She shook her head.

He got up, moved the tea-table out of the way, and came back again to sit on the arm of his chair and look down on her.

“We’ll have to talk, Cis. Better get it over. All this nonsense of your going away and wanting a divorce—we’ve never had it out. Don’t you think it would be better if we did?”

She shook her head again. A most deadly, weary loathing of the last few months rose up in her like a physical sickness. When she thought Grant was going to be arrested—when she thought Mark would kill her and Grant would hang for it—what had she cared for the things which she had built up into a barrier between them? They were like something that had happened in another world, in another life—they no longer had any substance. She shook her head.

Grant’s voice came back with a determined ring in it.

“I’m afraid we must. I want to know what started the rot. Everything was lovely one minute, and the next you were walking out and giving me to understand that I had married you for your money, and that you had found me out. Now, apart from any natural feelings I might be supposed to have, I really should like to know what put it into your head.”

Cicely sat up too. There was still fire in the embers. They began to glow.

“You can’t sit there and say you don’t know!”

“I do sit here and say I don’t know. Now what about it?”

“Grant! When you gave me the letter with your own hands!”

“What letter?”

“From that cousin of yours—the one that was brought up with you, Phyllis Shaw. You said, ‘Here’s a letter from Phil—with any luck they’ll be home by Christmas. She’s a good sort—I hope you’re going to like her,’ and you opened the top right-hand drawer and rummaged about and got out a letter and threw it over to me. You were just going off for the day.”

He nodded.

“Yes, I was going over to see James Roney. And when I got back you were gone, and there was a note to say you didn’t intend to come back. After which you refused to see me, or to answer my letters, or to behave in any sort of a reasonable way.”

Cicely’s eyes sparkled.

“I didn’t feel reasonable.”

“No—I noticed that. And now do you mind telling me what it was all about?”

“You don’t remember what was in the letter?” Indignation put an edge on to her voice.

“I don’t remember anything to set you off like that.”

“You’ve got a very short memory!”

He sat there very much at his ease, one foot on the ground, the other swinging. His tone hardened a little.

“I don’t remember anything that could possibly have upset you. If there was anything I missed, don’t you think you’d better tell me what it was?”

“You really don’t remember?”

“If there was anything in that letter, it was something I hadn’t read. Be reasonable—should I have shown it to you if I had? And now perhaps you’ll tell me what it was.”

Cicely sat up straight. She had been pale, but now her colour flamed. She said,

“I don’t see how you can forget a thing like that! I don’t know why you showed it to me. I’ve thought and thought, but I couldn’t ever make out why. It was at the top of the second page. You had just gone. I came back from the window and began to read the letter. The beginning was all nothing— about how hot it was. Then I turned over the page. Your cousin writes a very clear hand. She said, ‘A pity about Cis Abbott. I mean, I know you like them fair. Your “She’s just a little brown thing” doesn’t sound very enthusiastic, but I hear she’s quite nice. One of Gerald’s sisters, the fat one, Mary, was at school with her. That’s how I heard about Lady Evelyn Abbott leaving her all that money. There aren’t too many heiresses going, and you’ll get used to her looks. Mary says she isn’t what you’d call really plain.’ ”

Grant Hathaway’s face, which could express as much or as little as he pleased, was now only too revealing. That he recollected the passage quoted was evident. That it evoked a lively horror and a desire to laugh was perfectly plain. He said,

“Oh, Cis!”

Cicely pressed her lips together until they were just a scarlet line.

“My poor child, I’m so sorry. It was the wrong letter.”

“Yes? That doesn’t make it any better.”

“Darling, did you happen to notice the date?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Have you got this frightfully incriminating document?”

Her eyes blazed at him.

“Of course I haven’t! Do you think I’d keep it for a single second!? I tore it into shreds and burnt them!”

He said in a laughing voice,

“Moral tract about losing your temper, Cis! If you’d looked at the date you’d have seen it was written last January.”

She came stabbing back at him.

“January! She said how hot it was!”

“So it is in South Africa. Didn’t they teach you anything at that school of yours?”

She said, “Oh!”

“Yes, my child. Now listen to me! When I came here I wrote and told Phil I didn’t see how I was going to pay the death-duties, let alone make a go of running the place. She wrote back that of course I would have to marry money— there were lots of nice girls. She instanced you—practically next door—old schoolfellow of Gerald’s sister Mary—what could be nicer? When I answered the letter I had met you once at a perfectly frightful tea-party with Mrs. Bowse in full cry. You had obviously been dragged there. You were in a foul temper. You never uttered.”

Cicely stuck her chin in the air.

“I was in a rage with Mummy. She wouldn’t let me wear a hat I’d just bought. It was pretty fierce, but I’d bought it all by myself, and you know how it is—if you let yourself be downed, well, there you are, a slave for life.”

“Poor Monica!”

“It wasn’t—it was poor me!”

“All right—poor you. Let’s say you weren’t looking your best—people don’t when they’re having a hate. I wrote to Phil that evening and said you were a little brown thing who never uttered, and some more kind words like that, on receipt of which she wrote the fatal letter.”

“And then?” She couldn’t manage quite enough breath. The words were there, that was all.

“Then, my child, I fell in love with you.”

He got up and stood over her, reaching down to take her hands.

“Cis—look at me! This matters a lot. If you don’t believe me, we’re through. Now think! Think of us together! Think of everything!”

He pulled on her hands and she stood up.

“I fell in love with you. I’m going to be dead honest—if you hadn’t had a penny, I should have tried not to fall in love with you, because I wasn’t in a position to marry a girl who hadn’t got a penny. I should have kept away. Anyhow I should have tried to—it mightn’t have come off. I weathered the death-duties by selling a lot of old jewellery that had been put away in the bank for about forty years. That was one of the things I hoped wasn’t going to come out when the police got busy.”

Cicely said, “Oh—”

He gave a sudden laugh.

“There was quite enough piled up against me without that, wasn’t there? And now, Cis, that gets us right down to bed rock. We’re here safe and sound, but it’s only by the skin of our teeth. If old Lamb had been a little bit later, or if we hadn’t come in here at all, where would you and I be at this minute? Just take a look at it. It isn’t pretty, but it’s—” He paused for a word, and made it “sobering.”

“You’d be dead, and I’d be in jail, and they’d be calling the evening papers to the tune of ‘Triple Murderer Arrested.’ ”

Her hands went cold in his, her face went white.

“Don’t!”

“Take a look at it. And now look at me! Do you believe that I love you? Truth and honest, Cis!”

She looked at him gravely, steadily. Then she said,

“Yes.”

“And do you love me?”

She said, “Yes,” again.

He dropped her hands and picked her up as he had done when she ran to him.

“Oh, Cis—what a lot of time we’ve wasted!”