The Brading Collection (20 page)

“Oh, Mr. March, I didn’t shoot him. He was dead when I came.”

There was a definite feeling of shock in the room. Miss Silver said, “Dear me!” Standing beside Miss Grey, she observed her with the closest attention. She was no longer collapsed and unstrung. It was as though the shock produced by her words had had the effect of steadying her. She was trembling a little, but she no longer sagged in her chair. She had ceased to sob.

Randal March said,

“Do you wish to make a statement to that effect?”

“Yes—yes—of course I do. I must. I can’t let anyone think—oh, it’s horrible!”

“Brading was dead when you came into this room on Friday afternoon?”

Her words came with feverish energy.

“Yes, yes, of course! Don’t you see, that’s why I couldn’t tell you what he said, or what I said. He was dead. It was the most horrible shock I’ve ever had. I just came into the room, and he was dead.”

Miss Silver came quietly back to her seat and took up her knitting. Miss Grey was quite steady now. She would not become hysterical again. This one most startling admission made, the rest would be easy. She quoted a French proverb to herself—“Ce n’est que le premier pas qui coûte.”

Randal March was going over the arrival at the annexe.

“Who let you in, Miss Grey?”

“The door was ajar,” she said.

“Did that surprise you?”

“Yes—no—I thought Lewis had left it like that for me.”

“Was there a light inside?”

“Yes—like it was today.”

“Only one light burning?”

A shiver went over her.

“Yes—it was dark coming in—”

“Was the passage beyond lighted?”

“Yes—just like today.”

“And the laboratory?”

The shiver again.

“Oh, yes—dreadfully bright.”

“Tell me exactly what you saw when you came in.”

Inspector Crisp was writing it all down, but she didn’t mind. She couldn’t get it out fast enough now that she had begun.

“I came round the door, and just for a minute I thought he was asleep. His head was down on the table. I came a little nearer, and I saw that he had been shot.”

“Why didn’t you give the alarm?”

She said in a queer slow voice,

“I—don’t—know. It was—a shock. I just stood there—I didn’t seem to be able to move.”

“But that passed—you did move?”

She said, “Yes. I went to see if he was—dead.”

“Will you show me just how he was lying.”

“His head—was just on the edge—of the blotting-pad.”

March pushed back his chair and got up.

“I should like you to come round and show me just how the body was lying.”

She came round the table and showed him, taking up very exactly the position in which Lewis Brading had been found.

“Thank you, Miss Grey.”

She went back to her seat, and he to his.

“The right arm was hanging down?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Did you see the weapon?”

“It was lying there on the floor—as if he had just dropped it. I thought he had shot himself.”

“Did you know of any reason why he should shoot himself?”

“Oh, no.”

“But you thought it was suicide?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Then why didn’t you give the alarm?”

“I—I—”

“Miss Grey, the first shock had passed. You had begun to reason. Your mind was sufficiently active to formulate the theory that Brading had committed suicide. Your natural course would be to run over to the house and give the alarm. Why didn’t you do so?”

Her hands were picking at her wet handkerchief.

“I was afraid.”

“Why?”

“I was afraid they’d think—” She stuck there.

“You were afraid they would think you had shot him?”

She caught her breath.

“Well, you did think so, didn’t you?”

“Because a very strong motive had emerged.”

Miss Silver coughed. She addressed the Chief Constable with polite formality.

“Pray forgive me—may I ask Miss Grey a question?”

“Oh, certainly.”

She looked across the pink wool and said,

“Had you any reason to suppose that this motive would appear? When Mr. Brading talked to you on the telephone, did he tell you that Mrs. Constantine had seen you take the Marziali brooch?”

There was a moment when March feared a recurrence of the hysterical sobbing. But it passed. Lilias Grey said, “Oh!” on a note of outrage. Then she drew herself up and had recourse to words instead of tears.

“Myra Constantine is a vulgar, interfering old woman. She thinks everyone has the same low motives as herself. And Lewis has always listened to her. He was most unkind, most unfair.” She tried for, and actually achieved, an air of dignity. “I borrowed the brooch because it interested me very much and I wanted to make a sketch of it. I was thinking of writing some articles on jewelry. I didn’t ask Lewis, because he was sure to make difficulties. I meant just to make a joke of it and return the brooch next day. And then he rang up and was most disagreeable. And of course I knew Myra would make mischief about it if she could. So when I found Lewis dead like that I thought it would be much simpler if I just slipped away and didn’t say anything.”

It was at this moment that March really began to believe that she was speaking the truth. Only the natural processes of a completely inconsequent mind could have produced so perfect an example of unreason. He could not bring himself to believe that it could be simulated. He had to make an effort in order to focus his own thought again.

“You made up your mind that you would just go away and say nothing?”

She said in quite a pleased voice,

“I thought it was the best thing to do.”

What a woman! Well, he must get what he could out of her.

“Now, Miss Grey, you were here for about ten minutes. What did you do after you had made up your mind to say nothing?”

“I put the brooch into that second drawer. It was open.”

“Was there a revolver in the drawer?”

“No—it was on the floor.”

“Did you see a second revolver anywhere?”

She looked surprised.

“Oh, no. I’m sure he only had the one.”

“Well, you put the brooch in the drawer. What else did you do?”

A startled expression came and went. It was so slight, so fleeting, that only Miss Silver noticed it.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You have ten minutes to account for. I don’t think you have accounted for them yet. What did you do after you put the brooch in the drawer?”

This time he was aware that she was rattled. She said,

“I came away.”

March shook his head.

“Oh, no, not immediately. You have that ten minutes to account for. Perhaps I can help you. Did you see a metal tray on the table?”

“I—I don’t know—I may have done.”

“Come, Miss Grey, I think you must have seen it. Where was it?”

“Over—over there.” She pointed to an empty space on his left hand.

“Was it empty?”

“I—I think so.”

March said, “You see it’s all coming back. Just go on trying. Did you see Brading’s will?”

She said, “Oh!” like someone who has missed his footing.

“Did you see it, Miss Grey?”

She stared at him helplessly and burst into tears.

Miss Silver laid down her knitting and said very firmly indeed,

“Miss Grey, if you do not tell the truth you will, I believe, bring very serious trouble on yourself. I think you did see Mr. Brading’s will. I believe that it was lying there on the table. You saw it, and you read it. It made you very angry to think that Mrs. Robinson would come in for all that money. I do not suppose that you reasoned any farther than that. If that will were destroyed, the money would come to Major Forrest, and if the money came to Major Forrest, you would certainly get a share of it. Shall I tell you what you did? The will-form was not very large. You took out your handkerchief and you lifted the metal tray across to the far right-hand corner of the table. You were collected enough to remember that you must avoid leaving fingerprints. You laid the will-form on the metal tray, and you struck a match—since you smoke you would probably have matches in your bag.”

“How do you know that I smoke?”

Miss Silver coughed.

“I asked Mrs. Constantine. You struck a match, set light to the will-form, and watched it burn. That is what you did, did you not?”

Lilias threw out her hands. The shredded handkerchief dropped to the floor.

“Oh—oh—oh!” she cried. “How did you know?”

Well, what do you make of that?”

March was alone with Miss Silver. They were in the laboratory. Lilias Grey, at Miss Silver’s suggestion, had been invited to retire to Lewis Brading’s room, where there was a very comfortable couch. An elderly chambermaid had been placed in charge of her. Miss Grey made no objection. She had cried a good deal, but dried her eyes when it was suggested, also by Miss Silver, that she might care to have a cup of tea. Crisp went away when she did, leaving March alone with Miss Silver. She was considering how difficult it was to disentangle the lie that was half a truth from the truth that was half a lie. She recalled with admiration the lines in which Lord Tennyson had dealt with this fact. Leaning back in one of those low armless chairs which she preferred, she continued to knit. She answered March’s question with another.

“What do you make of it yourself?”

He lifted a hand and let it fall again.

“It all depends on whether she is telling the truth. Is she?”

“I think so, Randal.”

His voice took a cynical tone.

“All that rubbish about the brooch being borrowed, and wanting to make a sketch of it?”

Her needles clicked.

“Oh, no, of course not. That was just a smoke-screen. She is the type who will never look a fault in the face and admit to it. It is the common shop-lifting type. They must excuse what they do, put a good face on it, and keep their self-respect. It is a kind of muddled thinking which corrodes the whole character. Miss Grey exemplifies it at every turn. She stole Mr. Brading’s brooch, but I am quite sure that she did not shoot him.”

He was inclined to agree. He said,

“Your reasons?”

She was knitting with a certain brisk cheerfulness.

“My dear Randal, this crime was very carefully premeditated, very cleverly plotted. It bears the marks of a clever mind working swiftly and ruthlessly—quick to turn circumstances to account. Can you see Miss Grey’s mind operating in any such manner? Pray consider the situation in which she found herself. She had robbed Mr. Brading. He had found her out. She knew that Mrs. Constantine was aware of her theft. Mr. Brading had rung up to tell her she must bring the brooch back. She did so. Do you suppose for a moment that she had provided herself with a weapon and had come down here with the intention of shooting him? I do not suppose that she had ever handled a firearm in her life. With her capacity for self-deception it would be impossible for her to believe that Mr. Brading really meant to expose her. She expected an unpleasant scene, but not that he would proceed to extremities. Had he convinced her that she was in real danger, she would have had recourse, not to Major Forrest’s revolver, but to Major Forrest himself. She would have informed him in a deluge of tears of the cruel and unsympathetic attitude which Mr. Brading was taking up. I can assure you, Randal, that she is—though for different reasons—quite as incapable of shooting anyone as I am myself. The sight of Mr. Brading’s dead body terrified her, and, true to her type, her sole idea was to pretend that nothing had happened. She does not think clearly or intelligently at any time. Under the influence of shock she does not really think at all. She acts from instinct and habit. I am sure it did not occur to her that by stating Mr. Brading was alive when she left him she would be throwing suspicion on Major Forrest.”

March said drily,

“She was capable of sufficient thought to destroy the will.”

Miss Silver shook her head in a very decided manner.

“Not thought, Randal—instinct. Her whole course of conduct shows her to have been strongly acquisitive. She read the will, and saw that Mr. Brading had left everything to Mrs. Robinson. She had only to strike a match in order to counteract what must have appeared to her to be a monstrous injustice. You have seen her and heard her. Is it not perfectly clear that she would consider such a course to be quite justifiable?”

“Oh, she would justify anything.”

“Exactly.”

After a moment he said,

“If you’re going to take her evidence, it clears Charles Forrest. That’s what you came down here to do, isn’t it?”

Miss Silver did not rise. She said sedately,

“I came down here to serve the ends of justice and to discover the truth. You know me too well to believe that I could have any other motive.”

He smiled.

“You have just produced an extremely able piece of special pleading.”

She coughed.

“You asked for my opinion. I have given it.”

He sat for a moment, chin in hand, studying her.

“It has not occurred to you that there might be quite another explanation for, shall we say, this variation from Miss Grey’s original statement?”

She returned his look with bright intelligence.

“What explanation do you suggest?”

“She is Forrest’s adopted sister. She is supposed to be devoted to him. As you have said, she is not a very clear thinker. At the time that she made her statement it would not occur to her that to say she left Brading alive at ten past three would be liable to throw suspicion upon Forrest, who says he found him dead at twenty past. When she does begin to realize it she is frightened, and when she finds that Forrest is on the brink of arrest she comes out with this story of Brading having been dead when she got here just before three.”

Miss Silver smiled in a perfectly amiable manner.

“That is quite ingenious, Randal, but it will not do. In the first place, I do not suppose for a moment she knew that Major Forrest was in danger of being arrested. In the second, she did not come out with the statement about finding him dead. She was surprised and startled into admitting it. And in the third, I really do not see Miss Grey thinking of anyone’s interests in an emergency except her own.”

“You think she was surprised into making that admission?”

“Certainly. I was watching her very closely when she came in. Did you not see how she checked involuntarily as she came in sight of the writing-table? She checked. Her eyes dilated. She stared at you in a horrified manner. She found it difficult to advance. I was quite sure then that she had seen Mr. Brading lying there shot. You asked me whether I thought she was telling the truth when she admitted this was the case. I think the fact that she was doing so is corroborated by her description of the position of the body. It was correct in every detail, was it not?”

He nodded.

“Forrest might have told her that.”

“It is not very likely. He would not describe such a distressing scene to a person of so hysterical a temperament.”

“Well, I agree with you there. I am not sure that I do not agree with you all along the line, in which case Forrest is in the clear.” He smiled. “You are a very efficient advocate.”

The pale pink vest revolved. She coughed reprovingly.

“Major Forrest does not need an advocate. The facts speak for themselves. Have you considered, Randal, that the changing of the revolvers is an actual proof of his innocence?”

“My dear Miss Silver!”

She coughed again.

“If you have not considered it, pray do so. Mr. Brading’s visitors on Friday afternoon all came from Saltings. Any one of them might have obtained possession of Major Forrest’s revolver, the one with the scrape on it, and have exchanged it for the one which had been given to Mr. Brading and which bore his initials. Since Mr. Brading’s revolver was on the spot—and it is agreed that this fact was generally known—why was it not used for the murder? As an attempt was made to pass the death off as suicide, we must agree that Mr. Brading’s own revolver was not used because it could not be used. The murderer would have been unable to take it out of the drawer and fire it at the very close quarters necessary to support the idea of suicide. He, or she, had therefore to provide another weapon, and, in the event, to use it. But, alone amongst those four visitors, Major Forrest had no need to provide himself with another weapon. He could have stood by his cousin’s side, turned the conversation to the revolver he had given him, and found some pretext to open the drawer and take it out. It would all have been perfectly natural and easy. Major Forrest could have shot his cousin without arousing the slightest suspicion. He did not need his own revolver, and he is a good deal too intelligent to have employed it.”

March was looking at her very intently.

“Someone employed it. Who are you suggesting?”

“Someone who could not count on getting hold of Mr. Brading’s own revolver. Someone who planned the whole thing very carefully, but was so hurried in the performance that the fingerprints which were to convince the police that Mr. Brading had committed suicide slipped and were smudged. Someone who was obliged to remove Mr. Brading’s revolver and leave the other because Mr. Brading’s revolver was fully loaded and there is simply no place in this room where he could have got rid of a shot.”

March put up a hand.

“My dear Miss Silver!”

She smiled at him, kindly but with gravity.

“It is all true, is it not? Whilst you are thinking it over I would suggest that you send for Mr. Moberly.”

His brows drew together.

“Moberly?”

She coughed.

“There are one or two questions I should like to ask him. I have abstained from putting them until I could do so in your presence.”

He said, “Moberly—” again in a meditative voice. And then, “Oh, well, I don’t mind seeing Moberly myself. He’s got the wind up, and we may get something out of him. I’ve an idea there’s something to get.”

He picked up the house-telephone and spoke into it.

After he had laid it down again he turned round smiling a little and said,

“Observe—I send for him first and ask questions afterwards. What do you want to ask him about?”

She coughed.

“The letters which came by the second post on Friday.”

“What letters?”

“You will remember the waiter’s excuse for having overheard part of a conversation between Mr. Brading and Mr. Moberly. He said he was bringing in Mr. Brading’s letters.”

He looked at her with a faint shade of surprise.

“Is there any reason to suppose—”

“I think so.” She was knitting steadily and briskly, her small neat features composed, her aspect purposeful. “You see, one of those letters was from Mrs. Robinson.”

“How do you know?”

“I asked the waiter.”

March was frowning.

“Would he know her writing?”

“Oh, yes—he seemed to be quite familiar with it. She has been here a great deal. She has written letters and given them to him to put in the post-box. It is down by the gate.”

“But—”

She inclined her head.

“I know, Randal. Mrs. Robinson was here until fairly late on Thursday evening. She was one of the party to whom Mr. Brading showed his Collection. She walked home along the cliffs with Major Forrest. This letter must have been written after she reached Saltings. That is why it interests me. I find that there is a pillar-box about a quarter of a mile from Saltings where a lane comes out upon the main road. Anything posted there after five in the afternoon would be collected early next day and delivered locally by the second post. This would count as a local delivery. I am indebted to Miss Snagge for these particulars. She sorted the letters when they came in on Friday, and she corroborates Owen in saying that one of Mr. Brading’s letters was from Mrs. Robinson. I think we are entitled to conclude that it was written after she got back to Saltings.”

He said, “Oh, well, they were engaged. People do that sort of thing.”

She coughed rather sharply.

“I think there is more in it than that. Mrs. Robinson walked home with Major Forrest. He has said that she told him Mr. Brading had asked her to marry him and had executed a will in her favour. You will observe the form of her communication—he had asked her to marry him. I think it is possible that she had not up to that time given him a definite answer.”

“He wouldn’t have signed a will in her favour if she hadn’t.”

“Then perhaps it was merely that she herself was still hesitating. I must tell you that Mrs. Constantine, who is very acute, and Miss Dale, who is an indefatigable gossip, have both been at some pains to inform me that Mrs. Robinson is very much attracted by Major Forrest.”

March laughed.

“And you believe everything you hear?”

She said primly, “I do not find that at all difficult to believe. Major Forrest is an extremely attractive man.”

“And what conclusion do you draw from that?”

“None at present. But that is where I hope Mr. Moberly may help us. She had that walk with Major Forrest, and then she wrote and posted a letter to Mr. Brading. After he had received it he put through two angry telephone calls. We know that one was to Miss Grey. We do not know whether the other was to Mrs. Robinson. I suspect that her letter was either a refusal or a definite acceptance. In neither of these cases does it account for what followed.”

March nodded.

“Look here, I think we’ll have Forrest in before we see Moberly.”

He spoke into the house-telephone again.

“Just keep Mr. Moberly back till I ring. And ask Major Forrest to come over.”

Charles Forrest came into the room rather wondering what he was going to find there. Crisp had left him some time before, but he had been asked to remain in the writing-room, and he had done so. There seemed to be some constabulary activity. From the window sounds reached him of comings and goings. Opening the door, he could observe a policeman in charge of the house-telephone. Stacy was not in sight. He shut the door again and remained alone with his own thoughts until summoned to the laboratory, where he was received by Miss Silver with a smile, and by the Chief Constable with a pleasant “Come and sit down, Forrest.”

The last thing he had expected was to be taken through that embarrassing walk with Maida, but he came out of it without going beyond what he had said in his statement. She had told him that Lewis Brading had asked her to marry him, and that he had made a will in her favour. The will was to be signed next day. They had discussed the whole thing. He had remarked that she would not find his cousin very easy to live with, but he had been very definitely under the impression that she intended to accept him. When March said, “You didn’t think she had already done so?” he replied, “Well, as near as makes no difference.”