The Chinese Shawl (14 page)

It was some time later that Carey was called to the telephone. A woman’s voice said his name, but it was so strained and choked that it took him a moment to recognize Sylvia Madison.

“Oh, Carey—is that you?”

“Yes. Good lord, Sylvia—what’s the matter?”

The voice shook, and choked again.

“Carey—I’m—so frightened.”

“What’s the matter, my dear?”

She gave a helpless little sob.

“It’s Tim—he went out hours ago and he hasn’t come back. I’m so frightened.”

He got a vivid flash-back to Tim Madison going past them in the field above the Grange. How long ago? Three hours— three and a half? No great matter anyhow if it hadn’t been for his face. He said,

“Yes—I met him when I was out with Laura. All set for a good long tramp, I should say. I shouldn’t worry, Sylvia.”

There was a breathless “Oh!” And then, “Did he speak to you?”

Carey made his voice as casual as he could.

“Oh, no. He was a good way off. We were coming back. He didn’t speak.”

Sylvia’s voice became a wail.

“He doesn’t. It—it frightens me. He sits and stares and doesn’t say anything. And he’s been gone for hours.”

Carey became uneasily conscious of the fact that a telephone conversation is not always private. If the girl at the exchange was at a loose end she might at this moment be hanging on Sylvia’s every trembling syllable. He said,

“Look here, my dear, you’ve just got the wind up. Whatever it is, he’ll walk it off and come home like a lamb. I tell you what, I’ll give you a ring about half past eight, and if everything isn’t O.K. by then, I’ll come over. Like me to bring Laura?”

“Oh, no—I mean, I liked her awfully, but—well, perhaps you’d better. Tim might think—oh, I don’t know, Carey— perhaps you won’t have to come—but do just what you think.” She sounded helpless and distracted.

Carey, a little tickled at the idea that Tim Madison might regard an unchaperoned visit with suspicion, found himself thinking, “He’d raise Cain if he was jealous. A scene about Sylvia would put the lid on. I’ll take Laura.”

When he called up again, it was to hear that Tim had just come in. In a hardly audible whisper Sylvia said,

“It’s all right. Bring Laura some other time. Goodnight.”

It was a relief, though he had been looking forward to the walk in the dark with Laura. They had now a perfectly ghastly evening before them—Alistair staring moodily at nothing at all; Robin with a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica in which he read with admirable pertinacity; Petra talking too much, too brightly, and then falling into a distressed silence; Miss Silver knitting placidly and conversing with steady cheerfulness; whilst he and Laura got what comfort they could from the fact that they were in the same room, and that occasionally their eyes could meet. Everyone was glad when ten slow strokes from the clock in the hall made it decently possible to go to bed. It seemed incredible that it was not yet twenty-four hours since those other goodnights had been said in which Tanis Lyle had had her part. It must have been in everybody’s thoughts, but no one spoke of it— in fact they hardly spoke at all.

Carey’s hand rested for a moment upon Laura’s shoulder. The hard pressure said more than words could have done. They went up slowly and in silence to their rooms.

Miss Fane and Miss Adams did not appear at breakfast next day, but by the middle of the morning both were downstairs again, taking up their accustomed routine. Miss Fane’s chair made its way to the north wing, where she held her usual interview with Mrs. Dean in the housekeeper’s room. Tearful sympathy was graciously accepted and then set aside. After the first few minutes there was nothing to distinguish the conversation from that of any other Saturday morning. Miss Fane wished a couple of economy dishes recommended by the Ministry of Food to be substituted for those suggested by Mrs. Dean.

“Carrots are extremely rich in vitamins, and this potato and onion curry should be palatable as well as nourishing. We’re really most fortunate in having such a good stock of onions…”

Mrs. Dean agreed as to the onions, but maintained a considerable reserve on the subject of the Ministry’s recipes. The dishes, having been ordered, would duly appear, but—“I’m sure I don’t know how they’ll turn out, ma’am.”

Miss Fane passed to another subject.

“How is Florrie Mumford doing? Do you find her satisfactory?”

Mrs. Dean bridled a little, emphasizing a double chin. Her large fair face lost the look of passive resistance which it had acquired at the mention of an entrée made chiefly of carrots, and became human again.

“Well, ma’am, satisfactory is a lot to say about any girl these days. I’ve no fault to find with her work.”

“With what then, Mrs. Dean?”

“Well, ma’am, it’s the way she carries on outside. She’s quick at her work, and she don’t have to be told anything twice—I’ll say that for her. But she’s taking up a kind of a giggling friendship with that girl upstairs—Gladys Hopkins, Mrs. Slade’s sister.”

Miss Fane said, “Oh, well—” with dignified indulgence. “They’re only girls after all.”

Mrs. Dean tossed a head whose abundant sandy hair was tightly and neatly coiled after a fashion long extinct.

“If it stopped at that—” she said darkly.

Neither of the girls was seventeen. Miss Fane considered it her duty to probe farther.

“I don’t like hints, Mrs. Dean. I think you had better tell me what you mean.”

Mrs. Dean responded with alacrity.

“That Gladys, she’s off down to the village every evening and doesn’t care who she picks up with. I’ve told Mrs. Slade she ought to keep a tighter hold on her, but it’s no good— she’s a poor thing and the girl’s beyond her. Florrie’s afternoon out they go off together dressed up to the nines, rouge and lipstick and all. And Florrie’s got into a way of being late back. Ten sharp is the rule, and she’s been anything five to twenty minutes over it regular. And that boy of hers that brings her home, young Shepherd, he comes right up the drive with her and round to the back door, and the two of them there in the yard, giggling and whispering. If girls wasn’t so hard to get, I’d have asked you to give her her notice. But there it is, we might go farther and fare worse. And she’s good at her work.”

Miss Fane observed that the Shepherds were respectable people, and that she disliked unnecessary changes in her household.

“I asked you about the girl because I passed her in the passage just now. There was something about her expression—I hope you don’t find her impertinent?”

Mrs. Dean’s buxom form appeared to expand. In a few well-chosen words she gave Miss Fane to understand that impertinence from girls was what she never had put up with and never meant to.

This concluded the audience. Miss Fane departed as she had come, in her self-propelling chair. She betook herself to a room not as a rule in use. The study having been allotted to Superintendent March, she had given orders that this small morning-room, which was next to the dining-room, should be prepared.

She found Miss Silver there reading the Times, and enquired,

“Where is Lucy? I hope she has come down. The longer she shuts herself away, the harder she will find it to come back to ordinary life again.”

Miss Silver assented.

“That is quite true. But it is not so long, Agnes. You must remember that.”

“Am I likely to forget it?” said Agnes Fane. “But if I can appear as usual, Lucy can too.”

“You have great strength of character,” said Miss Silver. “But as a matter of fact Lucy came down just after you did. She is with the Superintendent in the study. He wished to see her.”

As she spoke she folded and proffered the Times, which was graciously accepted. It was Miss Fane’s invariable practice after glancing at the headlines to read first the correspondence, and then the three leading articles.

She was half way through a letter from a gentleman with whom she cordially disagreed, when the door opened and Lucy Adams came in. Like her cousin, she was in black, but in her case the garment had obviously done service before.

Shapeless and unbecoming, it had the rusty, battered look peculiar to old mourning. Her auburn front sat slightly awry. Her brooch of Whitby jet was crooked. But her face, though still puffed with yesterday’s weeping, was composed, and the reddened eyes were dry. She was straightening her gold-rimmed pince-nez as she entered. It occurred to Miss Silver that there was a faint tinge of triumph in her manner.

“My dear Maud, what a charming man your friend is— the Superintendent. An extraordinary profession to choose, but he really is a very charming man. Don’t you agree with me, Agnes?”

Miss Fane raised her eyes from the paper for as brief a space as possible.

“I have no doubt that he is an efficient officer,” she remarked, and returned to the Times.

It was observable that Miss Maud Silver sat up very straight. There was an unwonted tinge of colour in her cheeks. After pressing her lips together and saying nothing for a moment, she got up and went out of the room.

Across the passage at the half open study door stood the charming man and efficient officer who had just been damned with faint praise by Agnes Fane. He beckoned to Miss Silver, and she went over to him.

“I was just wondering how I was going to get hold of you. Come along and listen. I’ve got plenty to tell you.”

Miss Silver did not hurry herself. She took a seat, but her carriage remained extremely upright. Her first remark appeared irrelevant.

“Really, Agnes Fane can be extremely rude.”

Randal March made a good enough guess. He could not help laughing as he exclaimed,

“What—has she been calling me a policeman?”

Miss Silver took no notice of this. She was opening her knitting-bag, from which she produced an embryo bootee. The wool was of the pale blue dedicated to male infancy, and the pattern intricate. She busied herself with it for a moment before she said,

“Lucy considers you a most charming person, my dear Randal.”

He made a wry face.

“There are people whom I would rather charm. But I’m sorry for her, poor thing. Now listen. The ballistics man says there’s no doubt at all that the bullet taken from Tanis Lyle’s body was fired from the pistol found in the open drawer of her bureau. The medical evidence is that it was fired on the level from not less than a yard away, and that death must have been instantaneous. You see what that means—she was shot whilst she was standing at the top of that flight of steps leading to the church. If she had been on one of the lower steps, the bullet would have entered at an angle. She had opened the door, and she was standing there looking out. She could have been shot from the lift, or from the drawing-room, or from the doorway to her sitting-room. A variation in her own position would make any of them possible.”

Miss Silver knitted. Then she said,

“Why should the door have been open?”

“I think she opened it herself.”

“Probably. But why?”

“The obvious answer is that she was expecting someone.”

She nodded.

“And then?”

“I don’t know. Someone came up behind her and shot her dead. I don’t know who it was.”

Miss Silver frowned.

“She came downstairs to admit someone to her sitting-room—that is what you suggest?”

“Well, it seems obvious.”

“And someone else—I think you did mean someone else— came in through her sitting-room and shot her from behind?”

March nodded.

“Through the sitting-room or the drawing-room, or from the lift. I don’t think the drawing-room at all likely—the door was shut and the handle had not been wiped. But there are those three possibilities.”

She shook her head.

“She would have heard the lift coming down. And what about the handle there?”

“Perry’s prints all over it. She came down that way as soon as the alarm was given.”

“And the sitting-room door?”

“Dean’s prints on the outside handle of the door from the hall. He came in that way. Fortunately he didn’t touch the inner handle or any part of the door between Miss Lyle’s sitting-room and the octagon room, or of the oak door to the church. The inner handle had been wiped clean. The other two doors had not been wiped. They both show Miss Lyle’s own finger-prints. The same with the bureau drawer. She opened it and those two doors herself, but the murderer had wiped the pistol and the inner handle of the sitting-room door. You see the picture that gives—she comes downstairs in her pyjamas and dressing-gown—”

Miss Silver coughed. “You say the stairs, Randal, but she might have used the lift. Unlikely, I grant you, as even the best kept machinery will make some sound.”

“She used the stairs,” said Randal March. “Desborough saw her.”

Miss Silver narrowly escaped dropping a stitch. She said,

“Dear me!”

“Ah! That interests you. It interests me quite a lot. I told you I’d got things to tell you. He says the wind kept him awake and he read till he had finished his book. Then he thought he’d go down and get another. When he came out on the gallery overlooking the hall he saw Tanis Lyle on the bottom step of the stairs. There is a low-powered bulb burning in the hall all night—he could see her quite well. She was in her black dressing-gown, and she was just stepping down into the hall. She went across it, opened her sitting-room door, and went in. All this I am prepared to believe—he could have no possible motive for making it up. But here we come to debatable ground. He says he went no farther. He didn’t want to meet her, so he gave up any idea of getting himself a book and went back to bed. He looked at his watch, and, he says, the time was five minutes to two.”

Miss Silver said, “Very interesting indeed. But I find no difficulty in believing that he did in fact go back to his room. If he had anything to conceal he had only to hold his tongue about the whole episode. It seems to me that he had every possible reason for wishing to avoid an interview with Tanis at such a compromising hour.”

March looked at her.

“Some reasons,” he agreed. “We know what they were. But there may have been others which forced him to an interview. We have only his own word for it that there had been a reconciliation. I don’t know if I told you about that. He says they danced together on the Thursday evening, and that she gave in all along the line—promised to tell Miss Fane there was no engagement and all that. But, as I said, we’ve only got his word for it. A woman like Tanis Lyle would not allow an open quarrel to spoil her house party. She might dance with him, play the perfect hostess, and yet be threatening him—or Laura Fane. Perry heard her say something on the lines of ‘Your Laura’s name will be mud.’ By the way here’s her statement. You had better read it.”

She took it from him, read it through, and laid it down with an expression of distaste.

“The type of witness who would twist the most innocent remark into something sinister,” was her comment. “It is curious and salutary that hatred should invariably betray itself.”

“Why should she hate Carey Desborough?”

Miss Silver shook her head.

“Not Carey Desborough, Randal—Laura Fane.”

“But why?”

“She has been with Agnes for forty-one years. She was with her when Laura’s father broke their engagement to marry Lilian Ferrers. The present situation bears a misleading resemblance to that unhappy affair—she sees Laura as another Lilian. She hates her, and her hatred puts a twist on everything. As Lord Tennyson so truly says, ‘A lie that is half a truth is ever the hardest to fight.’ I do not think that Perry can be considered at all a reliable witness.”

He had a quizzical, affectionate look for her quotation.

“No,” he said. “But Desborough admits to a good deal of what’s in that statement of hers. They did quarrel, and he was pressing her to tell Miss Fane that there was no engagement between them. She did call him darling and invite him to make love to her. He says that this was sarcasm and over Perry’s head.”

“That is very likely. Tanis Lyle had a cynical, sarcastic vein.”

Randal March made a kind of sweeping gesture with his right hand.

“Well, there you are. It’s like that all through. He admits the bit about saying he’d like to murder her too, only he says it wasn’t a threat, just sarcasm.”

“I expect he felt like wringing her neck,” said Miss Silver placidly. “He had considerable provocation according to Perry. But since he restrained himself at the time, I am unable to believe that he went downstairs more than twenty-four hours later in the middle of the night and shot her in the back. That would imply an assignation, and—”

He interrupted her.

“Not necessarily—in fact not at all. He admits to having seen her go downstairs. Suppose he followed her down, pressed her again about this engagement business—the quarrel flared up. She had a very offensive tongue, you know. That bit in Perry’s statement about Laura Fane and the piece at the end where she twitted him with having lost his nerve— they got him on the raw all right.”

“I am not surprised.”

“Nor am I,” he said. “Well, it might have happened that way.”

“My dear Randal!” Her tone was one of mild reproof.

“And why not?”

“The door,” said Miss Silver more in sorrow than in anger “—the door into the church. If she was quarrelling with Mr. Desborough, can you think of any reason why she should have opened that door and stood there on the top step with her back to him looking out?”

He frowned meditatively.

“I can’t think of one—”

Her needles clicked.

“Nor can I.”

“But neither you nor I are omniscient. We can’t think of everything.”

Miss Silver pressed her lips together. It was not her place to reprove a man of thirty-six, but she considered this use of the word omniscient slightly profane. She allowed the silence to speak for her.

Randal March broke it.

“There’s something else,” he said. “And that’s why I called you in. You know I have just seen Miss Adams. Well, she has made a statement which brings Laura Fane into the picture.”

Miss Silver said nothing. Her lips remained pressed together.

He said in good-humoured exasperation,

“Oh, I knew you wouldn’t like it—but there it is. I’ve got to see the girl, and I’d like you to be here, if she doesn’t object. She can of course. Is she likely to?”

Miss Silver said, “No,” and said no more.

They sat in silence after he had rung the bell. A maid came—a dark-eyed girl with a sidelong look, Florrie Mumford the under-housemaid, the girl Agnes didn’t very much care about. She was sent to ask Miss Laura Fane if she would come to the study, and presently Laura came, in the black dress which Agnes Fane had given her.

March said, “Come in.” And then, “I want to ask you some questions, Miss Fane, and if you have no objection, I should like Miss Silver to be here. You are not obliged to answer me, and you are not obliged to have Miss Silver here—you can do just as you please about that.”

Laura stood just inside the door, which she had shut behind her. She looked very white, and there were smudges under her eyes. She said in a young, defenceless way,

“Oh, I should like her to stay. And I’ll tell you—anything I can.”

He pulled up a chair for her, and she came round the table and sat down there with her hands in her lap. He took up one of the papers which lay before him and said,

“Miss Fane, did you leave your room at any time during the night on which the murder took place?”

She lifted those beautiful candid eyes to his and said,

“Yes.”

“Will you tell me why?”

“Yes. I woke up and remembered that I hadn’t brought my Chinese shawl upstairs. I went down to get it.”

“In the middle of the night?”

Something in his tone brought a little colour to her cheeks.

“I know—it sounds silly. But I couldn’t get to sleep again. I kept wondering where I had left it, and then I remembered, so I went down.”

Miss Silver knitted steadily, but she was watching them both.

“And where had you left it?” said Randal March.

“Hanging on the newel-post at the foot of the stairs.”

He came in very quick with “Right, or left?” But there was no hesitation in her reply.

“The right-hand side going down.”

He glanced at the statement in his hand.

“And you went down, and fetched it, and came back again?”

She shook her head.

“No, I didn’t fetch it. It wasn’t there.”

In a way he was relieved. There had been a moment when he thought she was going to lie, looking him straight in the face with those wide, truthful eyes. Because Lucy Adams had said that Laura Fane came back to her room at three o’clock in the morning, and that she came empty-handed. He said gravely,

“The shawl wasn’t there—”

“No, it wasn’t there.”

“But you went on looking for it—”

“Yes—in the hall, and in the drawing-room.”

“Not anywhere else?”

“No.”

“Not in Miss Lyle’s sitting-room?”

All her colour went, but the eyes did not waver. She thought, “If I had, I should have found that open door—and Tanis dead—”

He saw a shudder go over her. She said,

“No, I didn’t go in there. I was thinking—how dreadful if I had—because I suppose—I should have found her—”

It was disarming, but he must not be disarmed. He said quickly,

“How do you know that you would have found her then? What time was it?”

She wasn’t frightened. She was puzzled.

“The clock struck as I was going upstairs. I think it struck three.”

“Then how do you know that the murder had taken place? How do you know that Miss Lyle was already dead?”

“I suppose I don’t. I didn’t think about that, but—well, I suppose we all thought—it must have been—earlier than that—” Her voice trailed away, like a voice that is being faded out. When it was quite gone March said,

“I see. You are sure you didn’t go into Miss Lyle’s sitting-room?”

“Yes, I’m quite sure.”

“You didn’t open the door from the hall?”

“Oh, no.”

“Or the door between the drawing-room and the octagon room? You were in the drawing-room, weren’t you?”

“Yes, I was in the drawing-room. But I didn’t open the door.”

“Why didn’t you?”

The question leapt at her, but she only looked puzzled.

“Why should I? I was looking for my shawl. I thought I had left it in the hall, but it might have got back into the drawing-room. I never thought of looking anywhere else.”

He leaned back in his chair.

“You say you thought you left this shawl hanging on the newel-post. Actually, where did you leave it? Where was it found?”

Laura leaned forward. Colour came into her face and into her voice. She said,

“I did leave it on the newel-post—I’m sure I did. And it hasn’t been found at all.”

“What?”

Miss Silver’s eyes became intent.

Laura repeated her words.

“It hasn’t been found at all.”