The Gazebo (15 page)

‘I hope so.’

Miss Pimm unfastened the top button of her coat. It was one of her characteristics that she never found any room to be at quite the right temperature. If she felt it too warm she unbuttoned her coat. If she did not feel it warm enough she buttoned it up. In either case she said just what she thought. She said it now.

‘Warm rooms are enervating. This room is a good deal too warm. Are you an old friend? It don’t remember having heard your name before.’

Miss Silver pulled on the ball of pale pink wool. She said, ‘Indeed?’ in so mild a tone that Frank Abbott cocked an eyebrow.

Mabel Pimm turned a shoulder and addressed Althea.

‘Lily and I have come here because we feel it to be our duty. We would in any case wish to express our condolences, but there was also something we felt we ought to let you know without delay. It is perhaps fortunate that the Detective Inspector is here, as he would certainly have to be informed about it.’ She sat stiffly upright, her eyes small and bright, her nose jutting, her gloved hands folded in her lap. Then, as Althea turned a pale look in her direction, she continued. ‘It is something which I feel may be of the greatest importance – something which my sister Lily happened to overhear.’

Lily Pimm nodded her head in the shapeless black hat.

‘In the fish queue,’ she said.

Frank’s lips twitched. His sense of humour was sometimes a trouble to him, but he had it under control. Miss Silver sent him a glance.

‘Perhaps if Miss Graham and I were to leave you…’ she said.

Even before his slight shake of the head Althea was speaking.

‘No, it’s very kind of you, but I’d rather stay.’ She turned away from Mabel Pimm. ‘What is it, Miss Lily?’

It really was a wonderful day for Lily. She was quite sorry for Althea Graham, quite kindly disposed towards her, but it was wonderful to have such an interesting story to tell. It wasn’t very often that anyone listened to her with attention – it wasn’t very often that anyone listened to her at all. But today everyone was listening. First Mabel and Nettie at home, and now Althea and the friend who was staying with her, and the police officer, and Mabel. They were all listening with the greatest interest and attention. Agog – that was what they were – agog. Such a curious word! She couldn’t think why it should come into her mind, but it did. There they all sat, looking at her and waiting for her to speak.

She began to tell them what Mrs Traill had said to Mrs Rigg, and what Mrs Rigg had said to Mrs Traill, going right through the conversation and not missing a word, and finishing up with,

‘And I asked Mrs Jones in the fish shop where Mrs Traill lived, and she said with her daughter-in-law at No. 4 Holbrook Cottages.’

She looked round the circle, as an actor for applause, and was disappointed to find that no one seemed to realize how clever she had been.

Miss Silver had laid her knitting down upon her knee. Mabel of course, had heard the story before. The Scotland Yard Inspector was looking her way, but there was something about his expression which she didn’t care about at all, something that reminded her of a cold draught and getting her feet wet. And Althea Graham looked dreadful. Of course she had been engaged to Nicholas Carey, and people were saying perhaps they would make it up again now he had come home, only they couldn’t possibly get married if he had murdered her mother. No, no – of course they couldn’t! It shocked her very much to think of it.

The Inspector’s voice broke in upon these thoughts. It surprised her a good deal, because it wasn’t at all the sort of voice you would expect a policeman to have. It reminded her of a B.B.C. announcer, only not so friendly. He said,

‘Are you sure Mrs Traill mentioned the time at which she left this house on Hill Rise?’

Mabel Pimm answered for her sister.

‘It is No. 28, and Mr and Mrs Nokes live there. He is in a shipping office and goes up to town every day. And they have a young baby, so that if they want to go out in the evening they have to employ a babysitter, though I shouldn’t myself have described Mrs Traill as at all suitable – a most untidy person.’

The Inspector looked her way.

‘You know her?’

Mabel Pimm showed offence.

‘Certainly not! I should not dream of employing a person like that. I was going by what my sister said.’

He turned back again to Lily.

‘I just wanted to know whether you heard Mrs Traill say at what time she left the house on Hill Rise.’

‘No. 28,’ said Mabel Pimm.

Lily was not at all flustered. She said,

‘Oh, yes, I did. Mrs Nokes had a headache, so they came straight back from the cinema instead of going out to supper. There wasn’t anything for Mrs Traill to stay for after that so she got her money and came away, and it was twenty past eleven when she came out of the front door, because she looked at the clock in the hall and made out she could just catch the bus at the corner of Belview Road.’

He had begun to wonder whether it was going to be possible to stop or deflect her until she had gone through the whole story again. He struck in with a ‘Thank you, Miss Pimm,’ and from behind him on his right heard the sister say with an edge on her voice,

‘Miss Lily, if you please, Inspector. I am Miss Pimm.’

Althea had neither spoken nor moved. The dump on which she was sitting afforded no back against which she could lean. She sat in what had been an easy attitude but which had gone on stiffening until all its grace was lost. She wore no make-up, and the black dress dictated by custom robbed her skin of its last vestige of colour. The eyes which could take the sea tints, brightening into green or softening from it, were now a frozen grey. They stared before her as if the people and the room were not really there at all. They had gone away into a mist like the one through which she had passed to find her mother dead. Her mind struggled with what Lily Pimm had been saying. She tried to fit it in with the things which were already there. Nicky ringing her up and saying she must meet him at half past ten. It was half past ten when she slipped out of the back door and went up the garden to the gazebo. And then her mother had come. She had come, and she had called out, ‘How dare you, Nicholas Carey!’ and there was a scene and they had gone back into the house together. But Lily Pimm said that this Mrs Traill had come out of the Nokes’s house at twenty past eleven and when she was passing on the other side of the hedge from the gazebo she had heard her mother call out those very same words. She had heard her say, ‘How dare you, Nicholas Carey!’ None of these things seemed to fit in at all, and the mist in the room got thicker. She knew Mrs Nokes quite well by sight. The baby had fair hair sticking up all over his head, and a jolly grin. Something said to her, ‘You weren’t any time in the gazebo – hardly any time at all. You were back in the house making Ovaltine and putting your mother to bed long before eleven. Mrs Traill couldn’t have heard her in the gazebo at twenty past – she couldn’t possibly have heard her say “How dare you, Nicholas Carey!” ’

Miss Silver put down her knitting on the sofa beside her and got up. She addressed Frank Abbott formally.

‘I think this is too much for Miss Graham, Inspector. Perhaps you will take the Miss Pimms into the dining-room.’

ALTHEA DID NOT quite lose consciousness but she came very near it. She lay on the sofa and felt vaguely how strange it was that she should be lying there with a soft rug over her and a cushion beneath her head. A small firm hand lifted the rug and felt her wrist. She opened her eyes a little way and said, ‘I’m all right.’ There was still a lot of mist in the room. Miss Silver’s voice came through it.

‘Yes, you are quite all right. Just lie still and rest.’ It would be lovely to let go of everything and slip into a dream. But there was something she had to do first. No, it was something she had to say, only she couldn’t quite get hold of it – it seemed to be just out of her reach. And there was an urgency about it – she couldn’t let it go. She had to think what it was – she had to say it. Her hand caught at Miss Silver’s.

‘There was something – I had to say.’

‘Don’t trouble yourself now, my dear.’ She began to say, ‘I can’t remember…’ and then it came to her. It was about Nicky – there was something she must tell them about Nicky. She tried to lift her head, but the giddy feeling was too strong. She said in an exhausted voice,

‘It was about Nicky – you must tell them. He didn’t do it – he really didn’t. You will tell them, won’t you?’

Miss Silver did not take her hand away. She said,

‘I will tell them just what you say, my dear.’

Althea drew a long breath. She had done what she had to do. The hand that was holding Miss Silver’s relaxed. She drifted into sleep.

When Frank Abbott returned to the house she was still sleeping. Miss Silver took him into the dining-room, where he drew the curtain across that side of the bay which faced the porch, coming back to pull out one of the chairs and sit down across the corner from Miss Silver. He looked at her with affection. The neatly netted hair with its Alexandra fringe in front and its plaits behind, the little vest of tucked net with the boned collar, the grey dress with its faint black and mauve pattern, the brooch of bog-oak in the form of a rose with an Irish pearl at its heart, the grey thread stockings, and the neat black glacé shoes with little ribbon bows on them, made up a picture which delighted him. She had brought her knitting with her. A small pale pink garment depended from the plastic needles.

He said in a lazy voice,

‘You are really a very demoralizing associate for a police officer, you know.’

She gave him a half smile and continued to knit.

‘In what way do I demoralize you?’

‘My dear ma’am! I find it impossible to look at you and to remember that there is such a thing as crime. You diffuse an atmosphere of security which forbids it.’

‘My dear Frank!’

‘I know, I know – crime exists, and we are here on a murder case. Let’s get down to it. I have been interviewing the untidy Mrs Traill, and you may take it from me untidy she is. And so is No. 4 Holbrook Cottages, and her daughter-in-law, and the three little Traills under school age. But quite respectable and cooperative. I give the Miss Pimms top marks. Lily appears to be the human phonograph. Mrs Traill as reported by her being if anything rather more accurate than Mrs Traill as reported by Mrs Traill.’

Miss Silver gave the slight cough with which she was wont to draw attention to an inaccurate or exaggerated statement.

‘My dear Frank…’

He put up a hand.

‘No – pause before you accuse me. I am prepared to prove the point. There were two occasions when Mrs Traill’s version of what happened on Tuesday night differed slightly from Lily Pimm’s account of the conversation in the fish queue. Pressed by me, Mrs Traill immediately discarded her own version and agreed that what she had said to Mrs Rigg outside the fish shop was the right one. Her own expression, I may say, and very handsomely conceded, was “That’s right!” I felt that for tuppence she would have called me “ducks”. It was all very matey.’

Miss Silver pulled on the pale pink ball.

‘I have no doubt as to the accuracy of Lily Pimm’s account. I do not believe her capable of inventing anything.’

He nodded.

‘Well, she didn’t in this case. So there we are with the missing link we were talking about when I looked out of the window and saw Mabel and Lily on the step. As far as I remember, I was saying that the chances were about fifty-fifty as regards Nicholas Carey. He couldn’t prove that he didn’t come back and murder Mrs Graham, and we couldn’t prove that he did. Well, Mrs Traill’s evidence alters all that, doesn’t it? As reported by Lily and confirmed by herself, Mrs Traill states that she came out of 28 Hill Rise at twenty past eleven, walked approximately a hundred and twenty feet along the pavement until she was level with the gazebo, and then heard Mrs Graham call out, “How dare you, Nicholas Carey!” He is not going to find it easy to explain that away, is he? Miss Graham took her mother into the house at, shall we say, a quarter to eleven. She and Carey had an assignation for half past ten. They had to meet. Her mother had to get up, put something on, and come and find them. After which there had to be time for a row, persuasions, and getting Mrs Graham back into the house. Say a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes – but we should still be well this side of eleven o’clock. Carey says he went off at once, walked for a long time, and got back to Grove Hill House he can’t say when. Mrs Traill, who can’t have any axe to grind, is prepared to swear that she heard Mrs Graham call out to him in an angry voice at somewhere between twenty and twenty-five past eleven. So one of them is lying, and only Carey has a motive for that particular lie.’

Miss Silver gave a gentle cough.

‘I think that you are assuming more than is warranted by Mrs Traill’s statement. Mrs Traill heard a voice say, “How dare you, Nicholas Carey!” and in view of the other evidence we are, I suppose, justified in assuming that it was Mrs Graham who was speaking. The words are the same as those heard half an hour previously by Nurse Cotton. But whereas Nurse Cotton was able to identify the voice as that of Mrs Graham, Mrs Traill is in no position to do so. Still it is a fair assumption that the speaker was the same in both cases. What I do not feel we are entitled to assume is that the person she addressed was necessarily the same.’

‘She used his name!’

Miss Silver knitted briskly.

‘It was about half an hour since she had gone into the house, leaving Nicholas Carey in the gazebo. Miss Graham had put her to bed and retired to her own room, where, as she tells me, she fell instantly and deeply asleep. We do not know what it was that took Mrs Graham back to the gazebo. There must have been some evidence of an intruder – probably the flash of a torch. There seems to be no doubt that what she saw convinced her of Mr Carey’s continued presence in the garden, and she could place only one construction on it, that he was waiting there to see her daughter. Hurrying out, she reaches the gazebo, is aware of the intruder, and calls out, using the words overheard by Mrs Traill, “How dare you, Nicholas Carey!” But do you suppose that she really saw and recognized him? I think the most she would see would be an impression that there was someone moving there. I went up the garden last night just after eleven o’clock. The weather was very much the same as it was on Tuesday. There was no moon, and there are overhanging trees at the top of the garden. As I came up to the gazebo it was very dark indeed. The interior was like a black cave.’

He said,

‘There was a flashlight in the pocket of Mrs Graham’s coat.’

Miss Silver’s voice reproved him.

‘If she had been using it, it would not have been found in her pocket. It was probably her sense of hearing which told her there was someone in the gazebo, and I maintain there is no proof that it was Nicholas Carey.’

There was a pause before he said,

‘I shall have to go up and report to the Chief. I think he will say that the evidence must go to the Public Prosecutor. You are predisposed in Carey’s favour, but you don’t need me to tell you that Mrs Traill’s evidence looks bad for him. On the other hand no one will want to be in too much of a hurry. Those “Rolling Stone” articles of his made a big splash. But they are pretty tough, you know, and life in the sort of places they describe would be calculated to rub off some of the finer scruples. I think it might be just as well if you didn’t give Althea Graham too much encouragement to expect a happy ending.’