The Chinese Shawl (17 page)

Sylvia remained gazing at the door which had just closed behind Miss Silver. She had the look of someone who has seen or heard something which they are quite unable to believe. As Laura came to sit beside her, she turned a little and said in a whispering voice,

“Who is she—how does she know—was she there?”

Laura shook her head.

“She doesn’t have to be there. She knows things. I don’t know how she does it.”

Carey pulled a chair up close and sat down, bringing himself nearer to Sylvia’s level. Her pale hair glinted like silver gilt between him and the light from the big new window— a grey light glancing in under old dark beams. He said,

“Would you like to talk about it, Sylvia? Was it like that?”

Her left hand had caught at Laura’s. She put out the other to him in a childish gesture.

“Oh, yes! Oh, Carey, how did she know? She must have been there! How did she know about my following Tim and being afraid of letting him get too far ahead—and afraid of getting too near—and afraid to use my torch? Oh, you don’t know how awful it was—you don’t know!” Her hands shook, her whole body shook.

Carey said insistently,

“Look here, Sylvia—did you hear the shot? Don’t answer unless you’re sure. Take time to think. Did you hear it?”

The trembling ceased. She became rigid. Her voice went strained and thin, like a fine wire stretched to breaking-point.

“I don’t know. I thought—it was someone—shooting. They do. I thought it was that.”

Carey’s grasp on her hand tightened.

“Sylvia, listen! Where were you when you heard this shot?”

She said “I don’t know” again, in a mechanical fashion.

“Nonsense! You must know. You’ve got to think. Was it while you were in the lane?”

“No—oh, no—it wasn’t.”

“No, you wouldn’t have heard it with all that wind. You must have been nearer than that—a good deal nearer. Was it before you came to the Priory gate, or after?”

“Oh, it was before,” said Sylvia, coming to life a little.

“Good girl! Keep right on remembering! Where do you think you were when you heard it?”

She pulled her hand away.

“Oh, I remember. It was at the corner, just after the crossroads. Why do you make me remember it? I don’t want to.”

Carey and Laura looked at one another. The corner beyond the crossroads… In a direct line it was only a hundred yards from the ruined Priory church. A few hundred yards as the crow flies, but nearly double that distance by way of footpath and drive. And by footpath and drive Tim Madison and Sylvia would have to take their way, since the Priory grounds were enclosed by a high stone wall. Which meant that Tanis Lyle was dead before Tim Madison so much as set foot inside those grounds.

Carey turned back to Sylvia. Her face was working and she had begun to cry.

“Just one more question,” he said. “Did you hear any other shot—after you were in the grounds—quite near the Priory— when you were in the ruins?”

“No, no—I didn’t. How could I? She was dead. Oh, please, please, please don’t ask me any more!”

As she sobbed out the words, the door was flung open, and there strode in upon them Tim Madison, his red hair in a shock and his blue eyes blazing. His voice as he enquired what was going on in his house was forcible enough to have dominated a hurricane. That he was in a towering temper was evident. He stood over Sylvia and shouted at Carey.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing here, frightening her into fits? You and your tame detective! I met her in the lane, and if I’d known what she’d been up to I’d have broken her neck!”

Carey grinned suddenly.

“That would have been a lot of help, wouldn’t it?” he said. “Don’t make more of an ass of yourself than you can help, Tim. I didn’t bring Miss Silver here—she came. And I think she came to do you a service. Also if anyone’s frightening Sylvia into fits, it’s you. We’ll be going now. See you later. Come along, Laura!”

Laura had never been readier to go in her life. She pressed Sylvia’s trembling hand and, true to her upbringing, sent a murmured goodbye in the direction of an unwilling host.

When the door had shut on her and Carey, Tim Madison swung round upon his wife.

“What’ve you been saying? Do you hear? What’ve you said? What’ve you told them?” The sentences were shot at her like bullets.

Sylvia stared at him, the tears running down. With a smothered ejaculation he caught her wrists and jerked her to her feet.

“Stop crying and answer me! Did you talk to that woman? She’s a detective, I tell you. Did you tell her anything? My God, Sylvy—what did you tell her?”

Sylvia stopped crying. The awful silence which had hung between them like a piece of ice was broken. She didn’t care how angry he was. He was thinking of her—angry with her— calling her Sylvy again, instead of making her feel like a ghost, unseen, unfelt, unwanted. His very anger warmed her. Life and loveliness flowed back. She looked at him, not afraid any more, and said,

“I didn’t tell her anything. She knew it all. She told me.”

The angry colour went out of his face. He said, “What!” in a voice that choked and failed.

Sylvia nodded.

“She did—really. You can ask Carey and Laura—they were here. And they didn’t bring her, you know. They found out that she was coming, and she let them come on ahead and tell me. And Carey said I needn’t see her, but—” Her voice began to waver. “Oh, Tim—I dropped my handkerchief— so when they told me she’d got something she wanted to return to me—I knew—what it was.”

He said sharply, “Where did you drop it?”

“In the ruins. She found it there. Oh, Tim—it’s stained.”

“Where is it?”

“She took it away.”

His grasp tightened until it hurt.

“You might have dropped it any time—anywhere. With that wind, it could have blown in from the road. You must say your nose bled on Wednesday whilst we were out. I’ll back you up.”

She shook her head.

“Tim, it’s no use. She knows. She told me everything just the way it happened.”

“And what did you tell her?”

“Nothing.”

“D’you mean that? D’you mean you didn’t say anything at all?”

“I couldn’t—I was too frightened.”

“You didn’t tell her she was right—anything like that?”

She shook her head.

He held her harder than ever for a moment, and then let go.

“Thank the Lord for that!” he said, and started for the door.

“Tim—where are you going?”

He said, “To get your handkerchief back,” and went out of the room and out of the house, banging the doors behind him. The house shook and quivered.

Everything round Sylvia seemed to shake and quiver. She sat down again in the corner of the sofa and shut her eyes.

After encountering the tempestuous Mr. Madison, Miss Silver pursued a homeward way. “Something accomplished, something done,” as she herself might have quoted, had earned, if not a night’s repose, at any rate that inner sense of well-being which is the reward of effort. Entering the Priory, she removed jacket and hat and descended to the morning-room, where she found Miss Lucy Adams sitting close to the window to catch the waning light. On this dark January day there really was little enough to read by after three o’clock in the afternoon.

Miss Adams put down her book in a somewhat self-conscious manner.

“Where have you been, Maud? Not out, surely? Such a bitter day. But of course it does make a break, though it wouldn’t do for me to leave the house. People would talk— you know how it is in the country, and you always meet someone when you don’t want to. There’s a lot of gossip in a village. But you can’t just sit, can you, so I took up a book to pass the time a little—but of course one can’t keep one’s mind on anything, and it’s a stupid book really.”

Miss Silver’s very serviceable eyes had already informed her that the work in question hailed from the Ledlington branch of a famous library, and that it was entitled The Clue that Failed. She remarked mildly that she found a good thriller very enjoyable herself.

“You always liked them, I remember, Lucy, and they have really improved out of all knowledge since we were girls.”

Miss Adams put the book down upon an already crowded table. There was something pettish about the action, and a tinge of the same quality in her voice as she said,

“Oh, I don’t know about that. I don’t remember caring for them specially. I read them—everyone does—there are such a lot of them. But as for caring for them specially—” she gave a little jerky laugh—“it is Perry who does that. You wouldn’t think it to look at her, would you, but if one of my library books is missing, I always know where it has got to. Perry will sit up to all hours to finish a thriller.”

Miss Silver had produced a ball of wool from her knitting-bag, and was casting on the right number of stitches to provide a pink bootee of the same size and pattern as the pale blue pair which she had just completed. Without lifting her eyes she enquired,

“And Agnes—does she read them too?”

Lucy Adams tossed her head and set her pince-nez straight again.

“She wouldn’t admit it if she did, though I don’t see that there’s anything to be ashamed of myself. Oh, no—Agnes reads all sorts of highbrow books. Dull as ditch water, I call them. So we each have our own subscription, and if I do find that one of my novels has got into Agnes’s room, well, of course it is always Perry who has left it there, and I have to look as if I believed that, which I don’t. You know what Agnes is.”

Miss Silver cast on another stitch, and remarked in a soothing voice that everyone liked a change now and then.

“Agnes leads a sadly restricted life, poor thing.”

It was at this point that Dean opened the door and announced that Mr. Madison would like to see Miss Silver— “And I don’t know if it was right, madam, but I have shown him into the study. He said he had come on a matter of business.”

Miss Silver said, “Quite right, Dean.” She had a very alert look as she gathered her knitting-bag and her pink ball and crossed the passage.

She found Tim Madison pacing the floor and in no mood to be trifled with by an inquisitive old maid with a taste for amateur detection. Without any preliminaries he explained his presence, using a louder voice than is usual in a private house.

“I have come for my wife’s handkerchief. She told me you were putting up some cock-and-bull story about it. I shall be glad if you will exercise your imagination on someone else’s affairs. The facts are these. My wife is not strong. When we were out on Wednesday afternoon she had an attack of nose-bleeding. She felt faint, and I had to help her home. Afterwards she missed the handkerchief she had used. It seems that the wind carried it into the Priory grounds.”

Miss Silver had remained standing, her knitting in one hand, her knitting-bag in the other. She now permitted a very faint smile to touch her lips as she said,

“Does it, Mr. Madison?” And then, “Will you not sit down?”

He was about to refuse, and in no measured tone, when something checked him. He didn’t know quite how he had expected her to behave, but not like this. He had made a furious onslaught, and it was met with the complete calm, the poise, the hint of smiling superiority which swept him back to the schoolroom, almost to the nursery. Somehow— by what means, he had no idea—this little dowdy woman put him in his place, the place of a raging little boy confronted by authority. And the authority checked him. As she seated herself after a gentle, leisurely fashion, he jerked one of the upright chairs towards him and straddled it, folding his arms on the back and facing her.

She said, “Thank you. I do not care to carry on a conversation for long in a standing position. Now, I think, we had better talk. Mr. Madison—what makes you so sure that your wife shot Tanis Lyle?”

Only once before in his life had Tim Madison received so great a shock. For a moment his face went grey. The next the blood rushed violently to his head. His ears sang, and the room went round. Through this confusion came Miss Silver’s voice, quiet and perfectly kind.

“You are quite wrong, you know. She did not do it.”

His head cleared. The drumming in his ears ceased. He said in a voice from which all the angry ring had gone,

“What did you say? Will you say it again?”

Miss Silver said it again—the same words, the same voice.

She had begun to knit. Her manner was as composed as anything he had ever seen in his life. He gazed at her and said with the simplicity which comes after shock,

“How do you know?”

She smiled a little.

“Has she ever handled a pistol in her life? Would she know how to fire one? Would she in any conceivable circumstance have left her home in the middle of the night and come down that dark lane and through these grounds alone? Really, Mr. Madison, you should know her better than that. No—what she did was to follow you.”

“She followed me?”

Miss Silver gave him the bright, pleased nod which approves a correct answer from a backward pupil.

“Exactly. She had guessed at your appointment with Miss Lyle. She followed you, keeping as close as she dared. I do not, of course, know how near the house you were when the shot was fired, but I think you must have heard it. In a country district a shot in the night is a common enough occurrence. You probably thought nothing of it at the time, but when you came to the foot of the steps leading to the octagon room you found Miss Lyle lying there dead. I think you must have turned on your torch. Your wife probably saw you there, kneeling over the body, or standing over it.”

He said in a hoarse, changed voice,

“Why do you say probably? Didn’t she tell you?”

Miss Silver’s needles clicked.

“I asked her no questions, and she has told me nothing. I am giving you the result of my own deductions, but they do not go all the way. I do not, for instance, know whether you went into the house or not. You had had a severe shock. There must have been a moment when you realized that your position was one of great danger, and you made your way home. When you were gone Mrs. Madison nerved herself to approach the body. It must have cost her a very great effort. She did not know that Miss Lyle had been shot. She was past reasoning. She thought that she had been killed by you. I believe that it was a womanly instinct which made her overcome her fear in order to see if there was anything she could do. When she found that Miss Lyle was really dead she came away, in what state of helpless terror you can best imagine. She dropped the handkerchief which she had used in an attempt to stanch the wound. Fortunately the wind carried it to a place where it was overlooked by the police but where I discovered it. I say fortunately, because as soon as I found that handkerchief I was able to deduce from it the story which I have just given you, and to feel assured not only of your wife’s innocence, of which I never had any doubt, but also of your own—a very different matter.”

He stared at her, his blue eyes fixed and straining.

“I’d like to know how you make that out.”

She was knitting steadily. Half an inch of pink bootee stood out from the needles like a little frill.

“It is very simple, Mr. Madison. I have trained myself to observe character, and your wife is not hard to read. She is simple, gentle, affectionate, and timid. When I found her handkerchief I knew that she had been in the ruins shortly after the murder. Only one thing could possibly have brought her there—she had followed you. But she would never have allowed you to get far enough ahead to enter Miss Lyle’s sitting-room, quarrel with her, and secure the pistol. You see, there must have been a quarrel, or Miss Lyle would not, after having admitted you, have opened that outer door again. She could only have done so if she had either become alarmed and was trying to escape—an explanation quite at variance with her character—or if she had lost her patience with you and was sending you away. In either case some time must have elapsed. A quarrel does not work up to the point of murder in a moment. By all accounts you were on the best of terms with her during the preceding evening. Now, admitting the necessity for sufficient time for such a violent quarrel to develop, what would your wife have been doing meanwhile? Can you believe for a moment that she would have stood outside alone in the dark? The emotion which was strong enough to induce her to follow you would, I am convinced, have taken her up those steps and into the sitting-room to confront you and Miss Lyle. She would not have stayed out there in the dark alone whilst you were in a lighted room with another woman—I am quite sure of that. Therefore, Mr. Madison, you did not shoot Tanis Lyle. But when you reached home and discovered that your wife was not there and her bed not slept in, and when presently you heard her creep into the house—heard, as I am convinced you must have heard, her terrified breathing and her smothered sobs— you jumped to the dreadful conclusion that it was she who had done so. In your normal state of mind you would never have entertained such an idea. But under the influence of shock we are not normal.”

He said in a humble voice, and with evident emotion,

“I’ve been the damndest fool.”

Miss Silver smiled at him kindly.

“Go home and comfort your wife. You will have to take care of her, I think. She has a fragile look.”

He got to his feet and stood there shamefaced.

“I was rude to you when you came in. I’m sorry. Carey said you had come to do us a service. He was right—you’ve done us a very great one. Thank you very much.”

He was going towards the door, when she called him back.

“Two questions, Mr. Madison. You did hear the shot, didn’t you? Where were you?”

“Just past the crossroads. I didn’t think about it until afterwards.”

She nodded.

“Just one thing more. Did you enter the house?”

He shook his head.

“No—I never thought about it. I was knocked clean out, and then it was just like you said. I thought, ‘If anyone comes, I’m done.’ ”

She rose on that and offered him her hand.

He said, “What about Sylvia’s handkerchief? Aren’t you going to give it to me?”

Miss Silver coughed. Her hand felt small and firm in his. She withdrew it.

“Oh, no, Mr. Madison. I shall have to show it to the Superintendent. I could not be a party to concealing evidence. But I hope that he will take the same view of the matter as I do. And now pray go home to your wife.”

A much chastened Mr. Madison went home.