Out Of The Past (15 page)

“I suppose you listened!”

Miss Silver looked extremely shocked.

“I hope you do not suppose anything of the kind, Miss Anning. I could not avoid hearing the words beneath my window, nor recognizing the voices on the stairs, but it was not my business to listen to what was said.”

“My mother was restless—you have said so. She wandered out into the garden, and she did not wish to come in. When she is in one of these moods she talks—at random. Her mind goes back into the past. What she says often has no connection with things that are happening now.”

“But that is not always the case. What I heard Mrs. Anning say on Wednesday night referred, I believe, to Mr. Alan Field.”

Darsie Anning laughed, if so harsh and bitter a sound can be called laughter.

“What rubbish!”

“I think not. It was in just such terms that Mrs. Anning had referred to Mr. Field upon more than one previous occasion.”

“And what business was it of yours to question her?”

“I had none then. And I can assure you that I did not do so. She spoke of his being wicked and deserving of punishment, and I endeavoured to turn her thoughts into pleasanter channels.”

Darsie Anning was not listening. She had heard no more than the initial sentence. She broke out almost with violence.

“What do you mean by then—you had no business then? What business have you now—or what business do you think you have?”

When Miss Anning had refused to be seated, Miss Silver had remained standing. She repeated her former suggestion now.

“Pray, will you not sit down? It will be best if we can talk this over quietly.”

“I have nothing to say.”

“But you asked me a question, did you not?”

With an impatient movement Darsie Anning reached for the chair at her writing-table, jerking it back. If she could have gone on standing she would have done so, but the room had begun to waver before her eyes. It was not possible for her to relax, but the chair would at least hold her up. She felt the hard seat under her, leaned her arm along the rail, and said,

“What do you want to say?”

Miss Silver had seated herself also. She spoke in a grave, steady voice.

“Just this, Miss Anning—what was not then my business has now become so. In case my professional activities are not known to you, I must inform you that I am a private enquiry agent, and that I am engaged upon the Field case in that capacity.”

Through the rushing sound that was in her ears Darsie said,

“Then I have nothing to say to you.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“You will, I think, be well advised if you will listen to me. I have spoken to no one of what I heard from my window on Wednesday night, but I do not think that I can preserve this silence to the point of allowing Mrs. Maybury to be arrested.”

Darsie Anning stared.

“Pippa Maybury?”

“There is a case against her. She had an appointment with Alan Field in the beach hut at a little after midnight. He was blackmailing her, and she was to bring him her pearls. She states that she kept the appointment, but found him lying there dead. You must see that any evidence—any evidence at all—which corroborates her statement, or which serves to narrow down the time at which the murder must have taken place, is of such grave importance that it is not possible to neglect it.”

“Blackmail—” The word was barely audible. And then, with the extreme of bitterness, “Why not?”

Miss Silver said,

“You will see that I can no longer undertake to be silent. I must tell you that the police already know from Marie Bonnet that you were overheard to say to Mr. Field in a very vehement manner, ‘I could kill you for that!’ ”

“Marie!”

“It was on the Tuesday. She was passing through the hall when my niece opened the door. They both heard what you said, and if called upon to do so, Ethel will be obliged to corroborate Marie Bonnet’s statement. The police are also aware that you were once engaged to Mr. Field, and that it was considered that he had not conducted himself at all well in the matter. I am very far from wishing to distress you, but your mother has talked quite freely upon more than one occasion of how badly he had behaved, and of her conviction that he would be punished for it. You must see that this exposes you to some suspicion in the matter of his death. When it is learned that Mrs. Anning was out on the cliff that night, and that you either followed or preceded her there—”

Darsie Anning lifted her head.

“There is no question of either of us being out on the cliff. It was a hot night, and my mother went into the garden for a breath of air. She often sits up late in her room, and when she found she could not sleep she went into the garden. I heard her, and I went after her to persuade her to come back. You are making a mountain out of a molehill. Now will you please go.”

Miss Silver’s small neat features were composed and stern.

“In a moment, Miss Anning. I have something else to tell you first. Just before you came into your mother’s room she was speaking of Mr. Field. I would like you to believe that I had not so much as mentioned his name. I had only told her that I was staying at Cliff Edge. She mentioned Mrs. Hardwick and passed at once to speaking of Mr. Field. She said Carmona Hardwick was engaged to him, and that he left her too. After that she went off into saying he was wicked, and that was why he had to be punished. She became very much excited and went on to say, ‘He has been punished, you know! Somebody stabbed him, and he is dead! The knife was sticking up out of his back!’ ”

Darsie Anning began to lift her hand from where it lay. It moved a little and fell again, as if she lacked the power to raise it. She did not speak.

After a moment Miss Silver said,

“You must see what this means. No description of the wound has appeared in the press. Mrs. Anning was describing something that she had seen.”

Darsie made the kind of effort which it is painful to watch.

“My mother lives—in a dream. She describes what she sees there. No importance—can be—attached—” Her voice just faded out.

The two young people who stood hesitating outside the police station appeared to be a good deal on edge. Frank Abbott observed them because the girl was rather out of the way graceful and well put on. She was, as a matter of fact, Miss Myrtle Page, and she worked in the local beauty parlour. Her companion, Norman Evans, was a clerk in the solicitor’s office over the way. They were in the middle of an argument, and as Frank approached he heard the girl say, “I said I’d meet you here, but I didn’t say I’d go in.” To which Mr. Evans replied that she ought to make up her mind and not keep chopping and changing.

“Well then, I have made it up! Let the police find out about their own murders! It’s no business of ours!”

Frank slackened his pace.

“But Myrtle—”

“I don’t care what we heard her say! We didn’t see her do anything, did we? And he wasn’t pushed over the cliff either! If he had been, perhaps you’d have had something to come bullying me about! Yes, I did say bullying, and I meant it! And of all things I do hate a bully, so you had better have a good think over that!”

Frank Abbott came up with them and addressed himself to Mr. Evans.

As it happened, he had an assignation with Miss Silver a little later on. She was at once aware that he had something to tell her. He lost no time in letting her know what it was.

“I am afraid the scales are being weighed down against Pippa Maybury,” he said.

The heat was dropping out of the day. Miss Silver had spread out a rug and had spent the hour before he joined her with a book, her knitting, and her thoughts. She was serious, though not unduly disturbed, as she enquired,

“Pray, what makes you think so?”

He sat down on the sand beside her.

“Just a little piece of corroborative evidence. Two young people who were walking on the cliff on Tuesday night overheard part of what was probably Alan Field’s blackmailing interview with Pippa Maybury. Anyhow they heard her say, ‘I can’t think why someone hasn’t murdered you, Alan.’ To which he replied ‘My dear Pippa, you surprise me.’ And then, ‘Look out—someone is coming!’ ”

She maintained what appeared to be a placid silence for a moment or two before she said,

“Has it not occurred to you to wonder how often such things are said? They pass unnoticed, and are, in fact, just a part of the exaggerated style of speaking common to the young and sometimes persisting into later life. They have no real significance, and it is very improbable that they would be employed by anyone who was seriously contemplating the crime of murder.”

He ran his hand over hair already immaculately smooth.

“In general I will agree. In this case I don’t know. Here are two stubborn facts. On Tuesday night Pippa Maybury is heard to wonder why no one has murdered Alan Field, and on Wednesday night he is murdered. Since there is already a good deal of evidence against her, this certainly does add some corroborative detail, and I must warn you that her arrest is not likely to be long delayed.”

Miss Silver opened her lips to speak. She closed them again as he forestalled her.

“You will, of course, remind me that Darsie Anning went a step farther on that same Tuesday when she was heard to say, ‘I could kill you for that!’ but we have no evidence to show that she took any steps to carry this sentiment farther than words.”

The little pink coatee was now almost completed. Another row and she would be casting off. Miss Silver laid the knitting down upon her knee and said in a reluctant voice,

“I am afraid, my dear Frank, you may feel that I owe you an apology.”

“Now what have you been up to?”

Her glance reproved this levity.

“There is something which you will feel I should have communicated to you before.”

“And are you going to communicate it to me now?”

“I do not feel justified in withholding it any longer.”

With careful accuracy she repeated her conversations with Mrs. and Miss Anning, and proceeded.

“She had on several previous occasions referred to what she called Alan Field’s wickedness and the fact that he ought to be punished. This afternoon she used these words, ‘He has been punished, you know! Somebody stabbed him, and he is dead! The knife was sticking up out of his back!’ ”

Those rather pale eyes of Frank Abbott’s had become intent. He said quickly,

“The knife—you’re sure she mentioned the knife?”

“Yes, Frank. I found the inference quite inescapable.”

“That she had seen the body?”

“I feel sure that she had done so.”

He whistled softly.

“That looks like throwing a spanner into the works! You don’t think she—Look here, how mad is she?”

Miss Silver contemplated him and the question in a very thoughtful manner.

“I am not, of course, qualified to give you an opinion, but I would not like to say that Mrs. Anning was out of her mind. She has seemed to me to be suffering from the effects of some shock or strain too great for her to bear. They have robbed her of initiative and kept her thoughts imprisoned in the past. The return of Alan Field revived some very painful memories, and if I may so express it, the barrier between past and present was broken down.”

“You think she may have killed him?”

“I believe she saw him lying dead. I do not know who killed him.”

He was sitting up straight, his arms clasped about his knees.

“I should say it was much more likely to have been Darsie. Look here, what time was it when you were at your window and saw them come up the garden?”

“I cannot say.”

“You must have some idea.”

Miss Silver shook her head.

“I could not put a time to it. There was no reason to suppose that the incident had any importance. I found myself unable to sleep. My room had become very much heated by the afternoon sun, and I got up to enjoy the breeze at the window, but I did not put on the light or look at my watch. In such circumstances one’s sense of time can be very misleading, and I should not care to hazard a guess.”

“Well, that’s unfortunate, because it all turns on the time. Pippa Maybury’s appointment was at twenty past twelve. She says someone had been there before her, and Field was already dead. If it was the Annings, then the odds are one of them killed him, but if they came along after Pippa ran away, then all they did was to find the body. Now what are the probabilities at the Sea View end? Field could have gone along to the hut at any time before, let us say, five or ten past twelve. There doesn’t seem to be any reason for Mrs. Anning to go there unless she followed him—or her daughter. Look here, what about this? Field has another appointment at the hut—an earlier one with Darsie Anning. She keeps it, and her mother follows her. There is another bitter quarrel and one of them stabs him. That’s the most likely way of it, you know.” He glanced at his wrist-watch. “ ‘Brief are the moments of repose which duty’s day affords,’ as Lord Tennyson would doubtless have said if he had thought of it. I must now go and hunt the wretched Colt, who will be very far from pleased. You haven’t any more evidence up your sleeve, I take it?”

“I have no more evidence, Frank.”

He went away over the shingle, and she watched him go. Surmise and suspicion were not evidence. After a brief pause she picked up the little pink coatee, knitted the last row and cast off.

Marie Bonnet was in two minds. One had to make the best bargain for oneself, naturally. If one neglected to do so, one was a fool and had no one to blame but oneself. On the other hand it is sometimes extremely difficult when two bargains present themselves to decide on which will suit one best. As far as Cardozo went she knew pretty well where she was. He would have to dance to her tune, or he would find himself in a very uncomfortable place. She had only to waver, to weep, to say to the police yes it was true they were together, but it was also true that she had dropped asleep for a little there on the grass. She could not say for how long. Perhaps there would have been time for Cardozo to slip down to the beach and return again. She had only to say that and he would be lucky if they did not arrest him for the murder. No, he must give her what she asked, but the question was just how much could she ask? He had got the paper he wanted—the paper which he swore had been stolen from his brother by Alan Field. In that moment of triumph and terror when he stood up from searching the body with the wallet in his hand he had not been able to contain himself. He had told her it was a fortune for both of them and the proof that it was Alan who had murdered Felipe Cardozo. He was, in effect, in so great a transport of emotion that she had had her work cut out to get him away before anyone came. But this paper which he had recovered, and the fortune which it was to bring him, they were at the moment very much in the air. Before the one could produce the other, José must go to South America—that he had been obliged to confess. And once he was a few thousand miles away… Contemplating her chances of getting anything out of a José on the other side of the Atlantic, she thought very little of them.

To come down to hard facts—what could she get from him here and now? Perhaps fifty pounds—perhaps a hundred. He would need all the money he could raise if he was to get hold of the fortune. A hundred pounds was not enough. What else could she get out of him? Marriage perhaps. But suppose he did not get hold of the fortune after all…She would have to think very seriously before she took a step like that.

She would have to think very carefully about the other bargain which presented itself. She had not taken any steps in the matter as yet. It required to be handled with the greatest delicacy, and she had needed time to consider the matter. In the beginning it had seemed to her that there was a choice to be made, and that it would be a hard one. Now it came to her that there was, after all, no need of any choice. She would get what she could from José, and from the other as well. Faced with such evidence as she could produce, there could be no refusal.

She had been walking slowly along the hot street, stopping to look in at a shop window here and there, remaining apparently entranced in front of a display of beach-suits. Now she made her way to the call-box at the corner.

Her conversation was a short one. She had to wait whilst the person for whom she asked came to the telephone, after which there were very few words. She said,

“I saw you on Wednesday night. I can tell you where you were and what you were doing. I have not told anyone yet, but my conscience is troubling me.”

To this there was no reply at all. With an impatient jerk of her shoulder Marie Bonnet said,

“It will be better if we meet.”

This time there was a single word, spoken low. The word was “Yes.”

Marie said, “Where?” And then, quickly and before there could be any answer, “Upon the cliff or on the beach I do not go! From the house I do not go! It must be there!”

There was a little silence that seemed long. Then the voice said,

“Why not?”

The appointment was made.