Out Of The Past (20 page)

“You are a good swimmer?”

“Well, I rather flatter myself—”

“Then—” She spoke rapidly for a minute or two. He received his instructions. Even if the weather had not rendered them extremely agreeable, there was an urgency in voice and manner which he would have hesitated to neglect. As it was, it was easy and pleasant enough. He had not been fool enough to come down to the sea in this heat without providing for at least a swim before breakfast, and the George on the sea front was no more than an easy distance from the private beach which served the houses on the cliff.

At her end Miss Silver rang off, and with her mind somewhat relieved picked up her knitting-bag and went to join the others.

Lady Castleton and Mrs. Field were in their accustomed place. Since there was at this hour nothing to be gained by such close proximity to the beach hut, the sun being now directly overhead and no shade obtainable, Miss Silver found herself a little surprised that they should not have preferred to be at a greater distance from the scene of Wednesday’s crime. The surprise deepened when she learned that both ladies intended retiring into the hut in order to change. Some of this surprise must have been apparent, as Esther Field remarked,

“You think that strange. But isn’t it really better that we should just go on using everything before there are any foolish stories? They start so easily, and are so hard to get rid of. A friend of mine found that to her cost. There was a violent death in the house—a relative committed suicide there. She had a feeling about using the room, and in less than no time people were saying it was haunted and no one would sleep there. It was very inconvenient, as it left them a room short, and in the end she had to give up her own bedroom and move into it. But it was quite a long time before the talk died down. So we thought—”

Miss Silver measured the foot of her little pink bootee.

“Yes, that was wise of you. Especially as Mrs. Hardwick tells me they are anxious to sell the house.”

Esther Field tilted the large sun-umbrella which shaded her. Having never been able to acquire a fondness for glare, she had been delighted to discover this antique object in a corner of the hall amongst a collection of sticks which had belonged to Octavius Hard wick. She found the holland cover and green lining a very comfortable protection from the heat. But Adela Castleton sat in the eye of the sun and looked out over the bright water which reflected it.

With a slight preliminary cough Miss Silver ventured a remark on this. She did not herself feel the heat—the English summer was so sadly short that it was a pity not to take advantage of it—but she was not averse from the protection of an old black umbrella so much more often in use against the rain. She said,

“You do not feel the sun, Lady Castleton?”

“Oh, no.”

There was a hint of surprise that the question should have been put—almost of surprise that Miss Silver should have addressed her at all. There was certainly nothing to encourage a continuance of the conversation. Yet Miss Silver continued it.

“You do not find that it gives you a headache?”

“No, I do not.”

Miss Silver went on knitting.

“Mrs. Hardwick mentioned that you had been suffering from headaches, and I wondered whether it was really prudent to expose yourself so freely to this heat.”

Adela Castleton looked out over the sand to that bright stretch of sea. The shingle ended, the sand ran out, the tide was coming in. The Black Rock showed like a distant speck. Without taking any notice of what Miss Silver had said or so much as looking at her she got to her feet.

“Well, I think I shall go in,” she said, and strolled towards the hut. “Are you coming, Esther? James and Carmona are down by the pools, but she isn’t going to swim. It’s a pity you never had her taught properly.”

She raised her voice to carry the last few words, and so came to the beach hut and went in. The door stood open to the sun and to the air. The floor had been scrubbed. A new gay strip of matting lay across it. Under it, stubborn and enduring, the stain of Alan’s blood.

As she watched, Miss Silver could not see that there was either hesitancy or avoidance. Lady Castleton crossed the threshold with an even step and shut out the sun.

Turning her head again, she saw that Esther Field was folding her white embroidery and wrapping it in an old soft handkerchief.

“I don’t really care to walk so far down the beach, but Adela never can bear to wait. If she wants a thing, it has to happen at once. But I’m not like that. I don’t mind how long I wait if there is something worth while at the end of it.”

She too went up the beach, and she too was watched. But at the closed door there was again no hesitation. Her hand came up and knocked. Then she lifted the latch and went in.

Lady Castleton was the first to come out—black bathing-suit modelling the perfect figure, black and emerald scarf hiding the close-bound hair, a bright green towelling robe across her arm. She went down the beach without looking back, passed Miss Silver without a glance or a word, and so down to the water’s edge, where she stood talking to James and Carmona.

Esther Field followed her. She too wore a plain black suit, but conscious that she no longer had a figure slim enough to display, she hugged her robe about her and only handed it to Carmona at the water’s edge.

Carmona came up with it over her arm. She looked relaxed and happy. Her brief sun-bathing suit was splashed and wet. Its colours contrasted gaily with the bare brown of her skin. She slipped into the matching overdress and buttoned it. Then she sat down to watch the three swimmers who were making for the Rock. The hot, lazy time went by.

Frank Abbott was finding his assignment a pleasant one. The temperature was probably climbing towards the nineties. Colt and the Superintendent were stewing in it, and the hotter it got, the more passionately would they feel about arresting Miss Anning. And here he was, in the water where they couldn’t get at him. He had now for many years considered Miss Silver to be unique, but seldom had he experienced such a glow of admiration as when he reflected that it was her beneficent hand which had plucked him from being a fellow sufferer with the Superintendent and Colt and plunged him into this cool buoyancy. He began to assemble a suitable tribute, enhanced by quotation from Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

“Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy cliffs, O Sea—or was it crags?

And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me.”

After which he would, of course, do his best to utter them.

As he rounded the point, the Black Rock came into view, looking small and far away. It would take him another quarter of an hour, he judged. Having all but reached it early yesterday morning, he had been near enough to identify it as one of those chimneys which rise up suddenly in prolongation of a headland. On the landward side it rose sheer from the water, but towards the sea where the tides had fretted it there was a series of ledges, accessible to swimmers at any but the highest of the spring tides and a pleasant basking-ground in weather like this.

As he drew nearer, someone dived from the rock and began to swim towards the shore—a woman in a black bathing-suit.

She swam strongly and without turning her head. There was no reason to suppose that she had seen him.

He came to the shoreward side of the rock and skirted it, paddling gently. He might be too early, or too late. There might have been no need for him to have come at all. Miss Silver had not really told him very much. He was to swim out to the Black Rock, and he was to avoid being seen. There might be two people there. What passed between them could be of vital importance.

He paddled slowly. So far only one person had shown up, and she was making for the shore. Then, as the thought passed through his mind, the sound of voices came to him, a man’s first, and then a woman’s. That was all for the moment. He must come nearer if he was to hear what was being said. Another silent stroke or two and the sound carried words. It was the man speaking, and he was James Hardwick. He said,

“I don’t see that I can do anything else.”

The woman laughed.

“You can hold your tongue.”

“Not if they arrest Miss Anning.”

“And why not?”

“I tell you, I saw you. I followed Pippa, and I saw her go down to the hut. She must have given you the fright of your life, but she didn’t see you. I suppose you were close up against the cliff where the path comes down. As soon as she had passed you and got on to the shingle you came up the path, running.”

She laughed again.

“Oh, not I! I was in bed and asleep—I just don’t qualify. You see, I went up early with a headache and took a couple of sleeping-tablets. Carmona was there. And when you all came up to bed she looked in just to make sure that I was really asleep—as of course I was.”

James Hardwick said,

“Carmona brought you the tablets and saw you drink something out of a tumbler. She came into your room somewhere after half past ten and heard you breathing as if you were asleep. There was still plenty of time for you to keep your appointment at the hut—perhaps an hour, perhaps even longer. You had all the time you needed, but you overran it. Of course you didn’t know that Pippa had an appointment too. A minute or two earlier and she might have been a very inconvenient witness.”

Her voice hardened.

“This is all quite absurd. You cannot seriously suppose that I went to the hut at midnight to meet Alan Field. That sort of thing is hardly in my line. Really!”

He said,

“No of course not. I didn’t mean anything like that.”

“Then what did you mean?”

“I think he was probably blackmailing you.”

“I can assure you that there is nothing in my life which would give him the opportunity.”

“There are things that can be twisted—there are things which affect other people. All I know is that you came up from the beach on Wednesday night just after Pippa went down. She cried out when she came to the hut, and I started to go down after her. Then I heard you running. I only just managed to get out of your way before you passed me.”

“It was not I who passed you.”

He was silent. Her voice came again with an edge to it.

“It was the middle of the night. How can you pretend that you could recognize anyone in the dark like that?”

“I did recognize you.”

She drew a sharp breath.

“How?”

“How does one recognize anyone! By your height. By the way you walked—no, I should have said by the way you ran. And that is a more individual thing than a walk, especially in a woman. So few women run well.”

“And when have you seen me run?”

“Last year, when we stayed with Esther at Woolacombe. The very first day—you came running down over those sands. I thought then that I had never seen a woman run so well. And on Wednesday night you came up that path at the same smooth pace, where Pippa was stumbling and choking for breath. Besides, these summer nights are not really dark, you know—I recognized you as you went by. Afterwards, when I had been down to the hut and found that Field had been stabbed—”

She broke in, still with that edge to her voice.

“It seems to me that you will have something to explain to the police yourself!”

“I suppose so. I should, of course, have rung them up at once.”

“They will want to know why you did not.”

“Yes.”

After a moment’s silence he went on.

“I didn’t know why you had stabbed him—I didn’t want to know. I thought there might have been—well, pardonable circumstances. You were a guest in my house. I made up my mind that I would hold my tongue unless someone else was arrested—I didn’t see how I could go farther than that. And then you killed the girl.”

She laughed.

“Are you wasting pity over her? How like a man! She was a cheap blackmailer concerned with nothing but making a good purse for herself. She came to the hut with that foreign man whom the police had up for questioning. I heard them on the shingle and hadn’t time to get away. I stood behind the towels that were hanging to dry at the back. If they were going to give the alarm, I thought I could get away whilst they went to telephone. But they had business of their own. The man bent over the body and began to search it. He was looking for some paper, and when he had found it, that was all he seemed to care about. But once the torch tilted, the beam struck me across the face. The towel had slipped, and that girl saw me. Of course I didn’t know it at the time. She didn’t call out, or say anything to the man. When he stood up, she said they must find a pool, and he must wash, and not risk going up the same path again in case there was anyone about. The tide was low enough for them to get round the next point, and they could take another way up. So I waited until they were gone. And then, before I could get away up the path, I heard Pippa coming down.”

She might have been talking of the most everyday occurrence—so tiresome to have missed the bus, or have failed to fit in some casual appointment. But Frank Abbott, listening to the easy cultured voice, was aware that it sounded a warning note. Not in itself, but just because it had fallen on this easy tone. He began to move round to the seaward side of the Rock with the echo of an old tag sounding in his mind— “Dead men tell no tales.” Were you quite as frank as all that came to if there was going to be any risk of the tale being told again?

On the other side of the rock Adela Castleton and James Hardwick sat side by side on a ledge that was just above water. The sun shone down on them, and a slow ripple lapped their feet.

“Well,” she said, “that is really all. You can now go and find the police and do the thing handsomely. I think, perhaps, I won’t come with you.” There was a faintly mocking inflection on the words.

James looked down, frowning. Yes, it was over—or would be soon, and the sooner the better. He did not see Adela Castleton’s hand go up to the green and emerald scarf which was bound about her head. It came away with the small heavy spanner which had been hidden under the bow. He did not see it come down hard and strong. He felt the blow, but not the deep cool plunge into green water.

And Adela Castleton laughed—not loudly, but with a singular note of triumph. There had been three dangers in her path, and this was the third and last. Two men and a woman, all quite sure of their own safety and of their power to injure her, each eliminated after a separate and careful plan. And now it was she who would be safe. As she let herself down into the water after James Hardwick she had it all mapped out. How he had slipped climbing on the Rock, how he had fallen and struck his head, how she had dived in after him and done all she could to save his life. Presently she would swim round to the other side of the Rock and try desperately to attract attention. It was a completely foolproof plan. All these thoughts were exultantly present as she watched James Hardwick slide down off the Rock into the sea. The sun was so hot that it would be pleasant to be in the water again. She let herself down off the ledge, dipped under, and came up to see Frank Abbott no more than a couple of yards away.