Through The Wall (17 page)

Crisp said, “I could have told you she’d back him up. She’s fond of him—it sticks out all over her.”

“Oh, quite. But she was speaking the truth, you know.”

“Oh, I daresay he put up a tale to her. He would of course. And all that about pushing her over but not beating her head in—well, it doesn’t mean a thing. When a man’s crazy jealous and lets himself go he can’t always stop himself. You get a case like that any day in the papers, and the chap says he doesn’t know what happened. There’s a bit of evidence came up last night from Farne. There was a girl and a young fellow up on the cliffs round about half past six the evening before the murder—Ted Hollins and Gloria Payne. Gloria Payne is a sister of Sergeant Jackson’s wife. She told her sister what she and Ted had heard, and when Mrs. Jackson told her husband, he brought the two of them along to see me.”

“Well?”

“They say they were up on the cliffs between Farne and the cove. Ted is a mechanic at Waley’s garage in Farne. He’s a very respectable boy, and he and Gloria have been going together since they were kids. They were half way down one of those combes that lead to the beach. They heard a man’s voice coming from down below, very angry. There was a woman talking too. They didn’t hear what was said, only the voices—the man angry and the woman talking back at him. But what she said at the end they both of them heard quite plain, and it was, ‘All right—go on and do it! You’ve said you’re going to often enough. Go on and murder me if you feel like it!’ And the man said, ‘I will when I’m ready—you needn’t worry about that,’ and went off in the direction of the cove.”

“Did they see him?”

“No, they didn’t—didn’t see either of them. The cliff cuts under there. But it’s all shingle, and they could hear him going off.”

“You can’t identify him with Felix Brand on that.”

Crisp said stubbornly,

“It’s a private beach. It belongs to Cove House. The whole lot of them were out in the cove having this picnic. Mrs. Brand and Miss Remington both say that Miss Silver and Miss Adrian took a stroll together, and shortly after they returned Miss Silver got up to go. She caught the bus that passes Cove House at six-thirty. Meanwhile, they say, Miss Adrian strolled off again—this time with Felix Brand. They went round the next point in the direction of Farne and were out of sight for the best part of twenty minutes. Then Brand came back alone and in a very bad temper, Miss Adrian following about a quarter of an hour later. Miss Remington says it was quite obvious that they had quarrelled.”

“Very anxious to hang her nephew, isn’t she?”

“Very anxious to explain that he isn’t her nephew,” said Crisp grimly. “Same with Mrs. Brand. He’s only her stepson, and she’s taking care to let everyone know it. The fact is he’s one of those moody chaps—artistic temperament and all that, and they’ve got fed up with him. I grant you Miss Remington is spiteful—sticks out all over her. But she’s telling the truth about Brand and Miss Adrian going off for this walk. She didn’t know there had been anything overheard, and it all fits in. By what Gloria and Ted say they were out on the cliffs by a quarter to seven, and that was when they heard the voices from the beach. It all fits in. I’d say there was enough for an arrest.”

March shook his head.

“You say it all fits in, but it doesn’t. I don’t think he did it. To start with, we know she was going to marry someone else. She told Miss Silver she had made up her mind to leave Cove House in the morning and tell her fiancé she was ready to marry him as soon as he liked. Presumably that is what she told Brand while they were out of sight of the others for those twenty minutes. I can well believe that he made a blazing row about it on the lines reported by Ted and Gloria, after which he flung off and came home alone. What I find difficult to believe is that, after all that, she slipped out of the house in the middle of the night and went down to that lonely terrace to meet him. Why on earth should she? She had had her scene with him and got it over. They were staying in the same house. If she had wanted to speak to him she could have done so. From supper-time till after they went to bed he was here in the drawing-room taking out his feelings on the grand piano. By all accounts nobody else uses this room. She had only to come to him here, and they could have a reconciliation, or another quarrel, or whatever they wanted. She wasn’t romantic or passionate. She was a hard-headed girl with a keen eye to the main chance. I simply don’t see her going down to that terrace in the middle of the night to meet Felix Brand.”

“There’s no saying what girls will do,” said Crisp in a resentful tone. He was thinking of Ethel Sibley who had walked out on him and married an ironmonger. It was five years ago, but it still rankled. In moments of gloom he would tot up what he had spent taking her to the pictures. Only last week he had run into her in Ledbury High Street looking prettier than ever, with the twins in a double pram. That was the sort of thing that made you feel what a much better world it would be if there didn’t have to be women in it messing things up.

March said, “Oh, well, that’s how it looks to me. But putting all that on one side, there’s this matter of Marian Brand’s raincoat and scarf. I don’t see my way to arresting Felix Brand until we’ve got it cleared up. Richard Cunningham is positive that he brought the coat up from the beach soon after seven and hung it on the same peg with the scarf. He is quite positive that the scarf was there. Everyone next door is quite positive that from that time onwards all the doors and windows in the house were shut, with the exception of bedroom windows opened when the occupants were ready for bed. With this exception everything was still shut when Mrs. Woolley gave the alarm next morning. How did Marian Brand’s raincoat get down on to the terrace where it was found? How did her scarf become stained with blood? And after being stained, how did it get back upon the peg where Jackson found it within an hour of the alarm being given? Felix Brand couldn’t have taken the raincoat or the scarf. He had no access to them. No one on this side of the house had access to them. In the confusion after the alarm had been given I suppose it is just possible that someone could have slipped in next door with the scarf and hung it up where it was found, but it certainly wasn’t Felix Brand, who was miles away at the time on the yacht that had picked him up.”

Crisp was an honest man. It was not in him to suppress evidence however little he liked it. He said in an unwilling voice, “That scarf couldn’t have been put back after the alarm. It was put back with the blood on it wet enough to soak into the plaster round the peg. It’s a dark corner, but if you shine a torch on it you’ll see for yourself.”

March said, “Well, there you are—we can’t arrest Felix Brand. When is that fellow Felton coming back?”

“Felton? We’ve got his address. We can get him back.”

“Yes, I think so. He was blackmailing Helen Adrian. She went to Miss Silver about it, as I told you. There’s no absolute proof that the blackmailer was Felton, but she was convinced of it herself, and it seems likely enough. One of the last things she said to Miss Silver was that she meant to have it out with Cyril. She was going to offer him ten pounds down and tell him that once she was married he could do as he liked, but her husband would break his head if he bothered her. Miss Silver was trying to dissuade her from seeing Felton herself, but she had planned the interview and was determined to have it. Now when was it going to take place? Felton wasn’t in the same house. He wasn’t at her beck and call. She couldn’t see him in the presence of his wife or sister-in-law. She couldn’t ask him over here and have a private interview with the two old ladies watching and Felix Brand on the premises. She would really have a reason for leaving the house in the middle of the night to meet Cyril Felton, and no particular reason for being afraid of doing so. There were no passionate feelings involved—it was just a commercial transaction. It seems to me it would be quite in character for her to meet him like that.”

Crisp made a sharp movement. He wanted to have his say—he had been wanting to have it for some time. He came out with it now.

“You’re saying he killed her. Where’s his motive? More likely if it was the other way round. I’ve never heard of the blackmailer doing the killing.”

“She told Miss Silver that if he gave any trouble, she was going to threaten him with the police. You’ve seen him—I haven’t. Is he the kind that might panic and lose his head?”

“Goodlooking young fellow, and knows it. Never done a stroke of work he could help, I should say. Fancy manners. I can believe the blackmailing part of it all right. He’s the sort that must have money, and don’t care for the sweat of earning it.”

March said,

“That’s the sort that might panic and hit out. It wouldn’t have been planned. Say she threatened him. He pushed her, she went over the drop. And then he went down and finished her off for fear of what she would say. It looks to me as if it had been like that.”

“What about Miss Brand’s raincoat and scarf?”

March was frowning.

“Easy, as far as having access to them goes. He had only to fetch them, leave the coat lying across the back of the seat, get the stain on the scarf, and bring it back to where he took it from.”

Crisp looked up, brightly intent.

“And why would he want to do that?”

March said drily, “If Miss Brand were out of the way, his wife would come in for a very considerable sum of money which was left to her sister by the late Mr. Martin Brand.”

“Mrs. Felton didn’t get any of it?”

“No. I gather that Mr. Brand hadn’t much opinion of Cyril. He left everything to his niece Marian.”

Crisp jerked a nod.

“I remember hearing something about it—it made a lot of local talk. The next-door people didn’t get anything either— it all went to the one niece. It’s the sort of thing that makes bad feeling in a family. But if Miss Marian Brand was out of the way?”

“Then Mrs. Felton gets half, and the next-door people get half between them. Miss Silver is my informant. She always knows everything. And Marian Brand confirmed it to me yesterday, so it’s all according to Cocker.”

“Then all the relations on both sides of the house would have some sort of a motive for putting a murder on Miss Marian Brand.”

March said very drily indeed,

“But only someone on her own side of the house could have taken her coat and her scarf to the scene of the crime and put the bloodstained scarf back again.”

Cyril Felton came back on Sunday morning. He had spent all the money with which Marian had provided him, and returned with a hangover to the only place where he could be sure of free quarters and free meals. If he expected a welcome he did not receive one. There seemed to be a consensus of opinion that his room would have been preferred to his company. And quite literally, since all four bedrooms were now occupied and Marian refused point-blank to allow Richard to turn out.

A curious little family scene followed. Miss Silver was about to walk down the hill into Farne in order to attend the morning service at St. Michael and All Angels, a new and very ugly red brick church with a new and very energetic Vicar whose sermons were the last word in frankness. They shocked everyone so much that people who hadn’t been to church for years flocked there to hear them. She stood there practically unnoticed whilst Cyril went over to lean on the back of his wife’s chair and say in what he intended to be a caressing tone,

“Oh, well, I can go in with Ina.”

Ina Felton was already so pale that it would have been very difficult for her to turn any paler. What did happen was that the muscles under the bloodless skin became stiff and rigid, as if she braced herself to take a blow. Her eyes went to Marian, and Marian said,

“No, you can’t do that. She isn’t sleeping, and you would disturb her. There’s a camp bed in the attic, and the little front room by the dining-room isn’t being used. I’ll have it put there for you.”

It was Richard Cunningham who asked, “What about the audition? How did it go off?”

Cyril said in an injured voice that it was a washout.

“The whole thing’s off. The backer backed out at the last moment. Of course I wasn’t to know that.”

Miss Silver found herself wondering whether there had ever been any prospect of an audition. She smoothed the black kid gloves which she wore on Sundays and proceeded on her way to church. On her return she was able to edify the party at lunch with quotations from the Vicar’s sermon. It appeared that in the main it had met with her approval. She was not sure that it was altogether in good taste to refer to Miss Adrian’s murder—“A shocking crime which has been perpetrated in our midst”—but she agreed very strongly with his subsequent remarks. He was an ugly, forceful young man, and he did not mince his words. “You have just heard the fifth commandment read. I’m not going to tell you that it is wicked to commit murder. You all know it’s wicked. You are all shocked when somebody else does it, but every single one of us every single day of our lives thinks, and says, and does the things which are the seed from which murder springs.” Miss Silver had been much struck by the fact that he went on to quote the very words which she had used herself— “envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness.”

When lunch was over Ina went up to her room. Miss Silver on her way to her own room saw her go in and heard the key turn in the lock.

When she came down again she found Cyril Felton alone in the study and very much at a loose end.

“Marian’s gone off down to the beach with that fellow Cunningham. They’re very thick, aren’t they? As good as told me they didn’t want me along. I shouldn’t call it the thing myself, having a lot of strangers staying in a house when there’s just been a murder there.”

Miss Silver preferred a chair without arms. She settled herself and opened her knitting-bag. As she did so she considered Mr. Cyril Felton, who lounged upon the couch from which he had not troubled to rise when she entered. His skin was pasty, and he was heavy about the eyes. But quite a goodlooking young man, and not without ability. Possibly an only child—probably unwisely indulged. Certainly of very little use to himself or to anyone else in the world. A pity— a very great pity.

In this kind but firm attitude of mind she looked at him across Derek’s stocking, now of considerable length, and said,

“Do you include me among the strangers, Mr. Felton?”

“Oh, well, you know what I mean. You needn’t take it personally. But after all I’m Marian’s brother-in-law and Ina’s husband, and I should have thought—I mean, I just don’t get the idea. You don’t usually go and have a house-party when there’s been a murder—I mean, do you?”

If Miss Silver considered this speech to be conclusive evidence of the faulty upbringing which she suspected she did not allow this to appear.

“Your sister-in-law and your wife are two young girls. I hope that my presence is some comfort and support to them. Mrs. Felton has had a great shock.”

He stared and said,

“It’s been a shock to us all. Why pick out Ina? It’s not as if she and Helen were friends. They never set eyes on each other before this week, and no love lost when they did.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“That is not a very prudent remark, Mr. Felton.”

He made a pettish gesture.

“Oh, well, I didn’t mean anything. Ina wouldn’t murder a mouse—she’d be much too scared of hurting it. Nobody but a fool would imagine she’d do anything to Helen. She just didn’t like her. Other girls didn’t, you know. She got off with their men, and you couldn’t expect them to like it. Jealous, you know, and wondering what she’d got that they hadn’t. Not that I went in off the deep end about her myself. Not my type, if you know what I mean—and certainly not Ina’s.” He was getting out a cigarette and lighting it as he spoke, pitching the match in the direction of the fireplace without bothering where it fell. He inhaled a mouthful of smoke and let it out again slowly. “Now that chap Felix—he was in off the deep end all right. Funny thing his coming back like that. I mean it’s practically committing suicide, isn’t it? And if he was going to commit suicide, why didn’t he just let himself drown instead of coming back here and waiting to be arrested—and then all that filthy business of being stood up in the dock, and all the stuff in the papers. Something odd about it, don’t you think? I mean, why bother? Much simpler and easier to drown, don’t you think?”

Miss Silver was knitting briskly.

“People do not always do the simplest and easiest thing, Mr. Felton. Sometimes they do what they believe to be right. That surprises you?”

He hardly troubled to put a hand to hide a yawn.

“Oh, no—no—no. What I mean is, it’s all very odd. I mean, why don’t the police arrest him?”

“They may not believe that there is sufficient evidence.”

He was leaning back in the sofa corner. With his eyes half shut, he drew in another mouthful of smoke.

“Oh, well, I just thought it was odd.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“Mr. Felton, do you believe that Miss Adrian was murdered by Felix Brand?”

The eyes opened vaguely.

“Don’t ask me. Anybody’s guess is as good as mine.”

The eyes closed again. The hand with the cigarette drooped towards the floor. Ash fell upon the carpet. The cigarette fell too. Miss Silver rose, picked it up, and dropped it on to the unlighted fire. She also picked up the match. Then she sat down again and went on knitting. Mr. Felton was asleep.

He was not, however, permitted to repose in peace. Sunday afternoon or no Sunday afternoon, Inspector Crisp was on the doorstep, the news of Mr. Felton’s return having reached him at one o’clock. Cyril was obliged to wake up and answer a great many questions, which he did with the utmost vagueness and inattention. He yawned, he smoked, he fidgeted. He had constantly to be recalled to the point.

Crisp got nothing out of him.

“He’s either much sharper than he looks, or he doesn’t know a thing,” he told the Chief Constable, who had arrived a little later.

March said thoughtfully,

“Well—he’s an actor—”

“Not much of a one by all accounts.”

“You never know—he may be better off the stage than he is on it. He didn’t show any signs of nervousness?”

“Not a sign. Smoked and yawned most of the time. Didn’t even seem interested.”

March’s look became alert.

“That’s not natural.”

“Well—”

“Overplaying the part. I’d say there’s more in Cyril than meets the eye. Hang it all, man, he’s blackmailing a woman, she’s murdered within a stone’s throw of him, and the police have got him on the mat—he ought to be nervous. And he simply can’t help being interested. Indifference to the extent you describe just isn’t possible. If it isn’t genuine it’s a smokescreen. And if it is a smoke-screen, what is behind it? You didn’t mention the blackmail?”

“No—I thought I’d hold that up. There’s no evidence of course. She must have destroyed those two letters Miss Silver describes. She was going to get married, and she wouldn’t want them about. No, I just took him through the picnic, the return to the house, the business about the doors and windows, and whether he had heard anything in the night.”

“And what has he got to say to all that?”

“Nothing that amounts to anything. He saw Felix Brand go off with Miss Adrian at the picnic and noticed him coming back alone, but didn’t see Miss Adrian come back. Says there were some raincoats and rugs about down on the beach, but doesn’t know who they belonged to, and doesn’t remember who brought any of them in. Says he only got up once during the night to go across to the bathroom and went straight off to sleep again. Says everything was quiet—no unusual sounds anywhere.”

“What does he mean by unusual?”

“I asked him that. He said he could hear the sea.”

“That means he was up somewhere between twelve and two. Do you know, I’m wondering about this visit to the bathroom. It’s just the sort of story he might put up if he’d been out meeting Helen Adrian and was afraid he might have been heard. There’s a creaking board just outside the room he was in then. He is new to the house, and might easily have stepped on it coming or going. If he did he’d be afraid and look round for a cover up. Which is just a lot of theory without a square inch of fact to balance on. We want to dig up some facts. What about this fellow Mount Helen Adrian was engaged to?”

Crisp nodded.

“He’s been on the telephone. He was up in Scotland on business and didn’t know a thing till he saw it in the papers this morning. Very upset and all that, but I gather he doesn’t mean to come down. There was a lot about his business, and their not being officially engaged. If you ask me, I’d say he wanted to keep out of the limelight. You can’t blame him of course—a business man doesn’t want to get mixed up in a murder case. And there’s no question of his being implicated. I asked Glasgow to check up on what he said about his movements, and it’s all right. He registered at the Central Hotel on Thursday morning before breakfast, and he’s been there ever since. Well, she was murdered between twelve and two on Thursday night, so it wasn’t Mr. Mount that did it. Not that he was a very likely suspect, but just as well to get him out of the way.”

March said, “Nice to get somebody out of the way. Well, we’d better get on with Cyril Felton. Let’s have him in.”