The Ivory Dagger (7 page)

Bill Waring heard the half-hour strike from the village clock, two single notes so faint that if his ears had not been on the stretch he would not have heard them. The wind was setting that way, or he would not have heard them at all—a soft wind, rather high up. It drove the low cloud which darkened the face of the sky, and it moved and rustled the tree-tops, but down on the level of the drive, under the shadow of the pillared portico which screened the front door, the air scarcely stirred.

Bill stood in the shadow of the portico. He could see the front door, the windows of the rooms on either side of it, and the windows of the flanking wings to the east and to the west. None of these windows showed any light at all. If he crossed the wide sweep of the drive and stood back from the portico he could see the whole front of the house. There was not a light in any of the rooms, nor had there been since he came. He had left his car outside the gate because turning it on the gravel was going to make too much noise, and if he left it in the drive it wouldn’t be facing the right way.

He had been waiting a bare ten minutes, when the clock struck. It was a bit early for everyone to be asleep in a house like this, so he didn’t really expect Lila to be punctual.

His will was set to see her. It was a tough and obstinate will. It was set. But against it, and not for the first time, there moved a small, cold breath of doubt. It would not affect what he did, but quite insensibly it changed his thought about what he was doing. Adrian Grey’s sister Marian had said to him a year ago, speaking of Lila, ‘She’s very lovely, and she’s very sweet, but the man who marries her will have to be her father, and her brother, and her nursemaid, as well as her husband.’ He hadn’t cared then, but he wasn’t so sure that he didn’t care now. A vague daunted feeling of what life with Lila would be like had begun to tinge his thoughts. He had not been two months out of the country before she had let herself be pushed into saying she would marry Herbert Whitall. Well, he was here to see that she had fair play. If she wanted to marry the man she could marry him. If she didn’t want to marry him, he would take her to Ray. After that he supposed they would be married. The thought did not raise his spirits at all. They remained dark and clouded. He began to think about Ray, and found it a relief. She would know what to do, and she would look after Lila. He found himself wishing strongly that she was here.

It was about this time that he thought he heard something, or someone, moving. The sound came from the direction of the drive. Afterwards he was to be pressed as to just what kind of a sound it was, and for the life of him he couldn’t say. It wasn’t anything as definite as a footstep, and it was overlaid‘ by the continual soft stirring of the wind in the tops of the trees. It might have been someone coming up the drive on the grass verge and going off by the path which led round to the other side of the house, but neither he nor anyone else would have thought of that if every moment of the time when he stood waiting under the portico had not been sifted out again and again. And in the end all that you could say was that someone could have come up the drive in that way. What he heard was no evidence that anyone had done so. Any creature of the night could have been about its own secret business—cat, dog, fox, badger, owl.

He listened, but the sound didn’t come again. Four notes sounded faintly from the village clock, and then the twelve strokes of midnight. He waited a little longer and then began to walk along the front of the house, taking the left-hand turn. The gravel gave place to a wide paved walk. It was old and mossy, and his feet made no sound.

As he came round the corner and up on to the terrace he was quite out of the wind. It was not very dark. He could distinguish the stone balustrade and see how the ground dropped ledge by ledge. The woods on either side moved in the wind he could no longer feel. He turned from the prospect, and saw that there was a light in the corner room.

He did not know that the room was Herbert Whitall’s study. He had never been in the house in his life except that evening, when he had waited in the room to the left of the front door. That was where he had asked Lila to meet him. She was to come down, and she was to show a light, and he was to knock three times so that she would know it was he. There had been no light in the room outside which he had waited, but there was a light in this corner room. He wouldn’t put it past Lila to have muddled the whole thing up. He would have to investigate. There were two windows which showed a light. One of them was a long glass door. The real window showed only a dim glow, but the curtains of the door had been carelessly drawn. They left a two-inch gap, and a long, narrow streak of light came through it to lie in a crooked shaft on two descending steps and the damp stone beyond. The reason he had not seen it at once when he came round the corner was that there was a great dark bush of something on either side of the steps. As he passed between them, his sleeve brushed the right-hand bush and the smell of rosemary came out on the soft night Mr.

He looked through the gap in the curtains, and he saw Lila’s gold hair underneath the light. She was turned a little away, so that he did not see her face—only the hair, the line from cheek to chin, and her white neck a little bent as if she were looking down. She was wearing a long white dress.

He must have pressed on the door, because it moved under his hand. It had been ajar, opening towards him, and he had pushed it to. Well, that made everything quite simple. He groped for the handle, moved to avoid the swing of the door, and stepped into the lighted study.

Lila stood looking down at her right hand, which was red with blood. There was blood on her dress—a long smear. On the floor at her feet was a dagger with an ivory handle. It lay there as if it had just dropped from her hand. There was blood upon the hilt and upon the blade. And a couple of paces away Herbert Whitall lay dead in his evening clothes with blood on his shirt.

The eye may receive an impression too quickly for the brain to deal with it. The impact is too shocking. Reason and common sense rebel—the sense which is the common heritage from centuries of law and order. It is difficult immediately to believe in a violent breach of the common law.

Bill Waring stood where he was, his shoulder brushing the curtain which he had pushed aside. It came to him that Lila hadn’t moved or turned her head. He had pushed the curtain, the runners had gone swooshing back along the rail, but she hadn’t turned her head. He looked past her to the far side of the room and saw that the door stood open into a passage. There was a light in the passage, but not a bright one. The study light was very bright. It showed everything. It showed Adrian Grey in dressing-gown and pyjamas coming into the room and putting a hand behind him to shut the door. When he had shut it he said, ‘Lila—’ in just his quite usual way.

She moved for the first time, for the first time looked away from her bloodstained hand and the fallen dagger. A long, cold shudder ran over her. When Bill came forward, when he too said her name, she looked at him quite blankly, and looked away.

Adrian did not move. He put out his hand as he might have done to a child, and all at once she ran, crying and sobbing, to throw herself into his arms.

They closed about her. The sobbing stilled. He looked at Bill Waring across the golden head that was pressed against his shoulder and said in his quiet voice,

‘He’s dead, isn’t he? Did you kill him?’

Bill stood where he was. He had that stunned feeling. It showed in his voice as he said,

‘No—did you?’

Adrian shook his head.

Bill said, ‘Did she?’ And then, with mind and voice waking from their shocked stupor, ‘No—no—it’s not possible!’

Adrian didn’t speak. He felt Lila draw a long trembling breath. He felt her suddenly a dead weight in his arms. If he had not been holding her so closely, she would have fallen. He picked her up and carried her over to the deep couch which stood at an angle to the fire. When he straightened himself after setting her down, it was to find that Bill had come across and was looking down over the back of the couch.

‘What is it?’

‘She’s fainted. It’s just as well. Why are you here?’

‘I came to take her away. I told her to meet me. I said I’d be outside the room to the left of the hall.’

‘Then why are you here?’ He emphasized the last word.

‘She didn’t come. I thought I would walk round the house. I saw a light—I saw Lila. The door was ajar. I came in.’

‘You’re sure you didn’t kill him?’

‘My God, no! He was dead. She was standing there, like you saw her, with the blood on her hand.’

They faced each other across the sofa with Lila between them, much too intent upon her and upon one another to be aware of anything else. If the handle of the door had turned, if the door had swung gently in, the movement would not have reached them.

It did not reach them.

Bill said, ‘What are we going to do—get her back to her room? There’s her dress—there’s nothing to be done with a stain like that.’ His mind baulked. All that blood wouldn’t wash out without leaving a mark. If they burned the dress it would be missed. But Lila must be got out of it.

Adrian shook his head. He said quietly,

‘No. It can’t be hushed up. Whatever we did, the dress would give us away. Too many people saw her in it tonight. You’ve got to clear out, and at once. If you don’t you’re for it—and it drags Lila in. Where are you staying?’

‘The Boar. But I checked out at half past ten. I wasn’t going back. If Lila was coming with me, I was taking her to Ray Fortescue. If she wouldn’t come, there wasn’t anything for me to stay for. I’ve got my car.’

‘You were going back to town?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then go—and get a move on! It’s the only thing you can do. This is my story. I couldn’t sleep, and I heard someone moving. My room is across the landing from Lila’s, and when I opened my door I saw her going down the stairs. I knew she sometimes walked in her sleep, so I followed her.’

Bill’s eyes were hard on his face.

‘Does she walk in her sleep?’

‘Oh, yes. She used to do it when she was at school—that’s a solid bedrock fact. I followed her and saw her go into the study. Herbert Whitall was lying there on the floor with that ivory dagger a little way off. Lila was bending over him. I wasn’t a moment behind her, so she couldn’t possibly have stabbed him. She got the blood on her hands and dress touching him. He had been dead some time—his hand was cold when I felt it.’

‘Is it cold?’

Adrian said, ‘It will be before the police get here.’

‘Will it?’

‘Of course. Let me finish. Lila woke up and fainted with shock. Push off, Bill! It’s the only think you can do. My story will stick all right—it’s quite a good one. In fact, except for a minor detail or two, it happens to be the truth.’

Eric Haile came into the room and shut the door behind him.

‘Hullo, Waring!’ he said. ‘I don’t know whether you’ll agree with me, but I don’t think Grey’s story is quite good enough.’

Nobody spoke for a moment. The feeling of being in some incalculable kind of nightmare deepened. The ordinary link between cause and effect was gone. Anything might happen at any moment.

Adrian had turned. Bill came round the end of the sofa. Then he said,

‘What exactly do you mean by that Haile?’

Eric Haile smiled.

‘Just what I said—the story isn’t quite good enough.’ He moved to stoop over the body and touch the lifeless wrist. ‘Not quite accurate either. He’s still warm. Whenever it was done, it wasn’t so long ago. And I really don’t think that anyone who was in the drawing-room this evening can have any difficulty in guessing who did it. You weren’t there, Waring, but Adrian was. Also some people called Considine, and a Professor Richardson. Mrs. Considine has a passion for John McCormack, and we put on a record of his from Lucia di Lammermoor. Mrs. Considine was at some pains to give us the story of the opera—Lucy Ashton going mad on her wedding night and stabbing the bridegroom who had been forced upon her. The lovely Lila was considerably affected. She undoubtedly perceived that there was a certain parallel. Adrian had to hold her hand. Very agreeable for both of them. Just previous to this interesting scene the ivory dagger with which poor Herbert seems to have been stabbed had been a good deal in evidence. Well, I ask you! It does all rather hang together, doesn’t it?’

Adrian left the couch and came forward.

‘Look here, Eric—’

‘My dear Adrian, I’m not looking anywhere—I’m ringing up the police.’

‘I don’t know how much you heard, but what I said was true. I did see Lila come out of her room, and I did follow her down the stairs. Everything else apart, there simply wasn’t time for her to have stabbed him.’

Eric Haile walked round the body to the writing-table and took up the telephone receiver.

‘You can tell that to the police,’ he said.

Ray Fortesque woke in the night with the sound of the telephone bell in her ears. It had stopped ringing before she was really awake, and for a moment she wasn’t sure whether she had heard it or not. She had time to blink at the darkness and to wonder who could possibly be calling her up in the middle of the night before it rang again. She said, ‘Blast!’ jumped out of bed, turned back to snatch the eiderdown, and groped her way to the little hall, where she put on the light. It was so exactly like Cousin Rhoda to have a wall-instrument immediately opposite the door of the flat, thus achieving the minimum of privacy and the maximum of discomfort. She clutched the eiderdown round her with one hand, lifted the receiver with the other, and heard Bill’s voice say, ‘Ray—’ She knew it was his voice, because it did things to her, but if it hadn’t been for that, she wouldn’t have known it. She stopped bothering about the draught under the front door or whether the eiderdown was slipping. She only thought about Bill.

‘What is it?’

‘Ray? It is Ray?’

‘Yes, Bill. What is it?’

‘Something has happened.’

‘What?’

‘Whitall is dead—murdered.’

A most awful icy calm that had nothing to do with draughts drove in on Ray. She said, ‘How?’ and Bill said,

‘He was stabbed.’

She had begun to shake so much that she could hardly hold the receiver. There was a rushing sound in her ears. Through it Bill’s voice came urgently.

‘Ray—Ray—are you there? Don’t go away!’

‘I’m here.’

Whatever happened, she would always be there if Bill wanted her.

‘Then, listen! You’ve got to help! Nobody knows who did it—but Lila was there. I don’t mean at the time, but it must have been soon afterwards. Adrian says she was walking in her sleep. We’re afraid she touched the dagger—there was blood on her hand and on her dress.’

‘Bill, how do you know?’

‘Oh, I was there too. I was going to take Lila away.’

She said on a sharp frightened note,

‘Bill, for God’s sake don’t say things like that! Not on the telephone—not to anyone!’

‘My dear, we’re past all that. Haile walked in on us. He isn’t quite sure whether Lila did it alone, or whether I helped her, but I rather gather he thinks we were in it together.’

‘Bill!’

‘Never mind about that. Listen, because the police will be here any moment, and then I probably shan’t be able to telephone. I want you to come down here. There’s a train at eight-thirty. I’ll meet you if I can, but you may have to take a taxi to Emsworth. Lila’s had the most dreadful shock, and you are the only person who can help her. You and Lila have always been like sisters. No one has the right to keep you out.’

‘I’ll come, Bill.’

He said, ‘Thanks,’ and hung up.

When she had put back the receiver she picked up the eiderdown and went into the bedroom. It was dark, it was cold. Her feet were like ice, and so was her heart. She got into bed, pulled the clothes about her. Herbert Whitall had been murdered, and everyone was going to think that Bill had done it. He had come back from America to find that Lila was going to marry Herbert. He had gone down to Vineyards to take her away, and whilst he was there in the middle of the night Herbert Whitall had been stabbed. What else could anyone possibly think?

Herbert Whitall had been stabbed.

Bill wouldn’t stab a man. It just wasn’t a possible thing. He could have hit Herbert Whitall—he could have hit him hard enough to kill him. But he couldn’t possibly have stabbed him.

The thought was like a little glow of warmth at her heart. Through all the dreadful days to come it never went away. She began to think, to plan.

She switched on her bedside light and looked at the time. It was just after half-past twelve. Eight hours before she could catch that train. She would get up and begin to pack at six. There were one or two telephone calls she would have to make. Fortunately, nothing ever waked Rhoda. She would have to allow a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes for telling Rhoda and letting her fuss. Not more, because her temper wouldn’t stand it, and Rhoda was really frightfully kind. She could manage with one suit-case. She kept her mind on what she would have to take, and she had got as far as house-shoes, when the telephone bell rang again. This time she ran to it eagerly, because it might be Bill.

It was Sybil Dryden. The hard, clear voice was unmistakable.

When you were with her there was a sort of sweetness that lay on the surface like polish, but on the telephone the sweetness was gone. You felt that you were being told what to do, and that it was up to you to get on and do it, even if you were only being invited to tea.

It wasn’t an invitation to tea. The voice said,

‘Ray, is that you?’

‘Yes, Lady Dryden.’

‘Mr. Waring has told you what has happened. We are all in the study waiting for the police, so I heard what he said. Mr. Haile thought it best that we should stay together.’ A touch of the grand manner here. Even at a moment like this Sybil Dryden could convey how much she appreciated the dictatorship of Eric Haile. She went on now without a pause. ‘Mr. Waring rang off before I could stop him. I heard him telling you to come down by the eight-thirty. That won’t do.’

‘Lady Dryden—I’ve got to be with Lila—you mustn’t try and stop me.’

‘I am not trying to stop you. The house is not mine, and I have no say in what goes on here, but I imagine that Mr. Haile will hardly object to your coming. I want you to take a later train, because I want you to get Miss Silver to come here with you.’

Ray didn’t think she had ever heard the name before. She echoed it.

‘Miss Silver?’

‘You won’t know her name—it never gets into the papers. She is a private detective. I have known about her off and on for years. She has helped friends of mine, and she is absolutely reliable. Here is the address—write it down! Miss Maud Silver, 15, Montague Mansions, West Leaham Street. Ring through at half past seven and make as early an appointment as you can. You have got to see her, and you have got to persuade her to come down here with you. She is fond of young people. Tell her about Lila and enlist her sympathies.’

‘Lady Dryden, I don’t really know what has happened.’

The voice came back insistently.

‘I heard what Mr. Waring told you. Lila was walking in her sleep. She found the body—a most dreadful shock. You understand—Miss Silver must be persuaded to come down. You must ring me up when you have seen her and let me know the result, and your train. I will see that you are met.’

In the study at Vineyards Lady Dryden hung up the receiver and turned from the table. No more than a yard away one of Herbert Whitall’s lifeless hands lay palm upwards on the dark carpet. Nothing could be moved until the police came, and none of them must leave the room. Someone had spread a handkerchief over the dead man’s face, but he must not be moved. The ivory dagger must not be moved. The blood must not be washed away. The dark carpet had swallowed it up, but it was there, and there it must stay.

Sybil Dryden skirted the body and came back to the upright chair from which she had risen to go to the telephone. She was wearing a flowered dressing-gown—pale colours on an ivory ground. Her hair was hidden under a lace cap. Her face was pale and set.

Lila was still on the sofa where Adrian had laid her down. He sat beside her with a hand on her shoulder. Every now and then she gave a stifled sob. When this happened he bent and said something which no one else could hear. But she never answered him or lifted her face from the cushion into which it was pressed.

Bill Waring stood with his arm along the stone mantelshelf looking down into the fire. There was an old-fashioned clock on the shelf with a slow, heavy tick. It marked the interminable minutes one by one.

Eric Haile sat on the arm of one of the big leather chairs. Whether by accident or design, he was between the rest of the party and the door. His bright malicious glance went to and fro.

Marsham was in the hall, waiting to admit the police. Mrs. Marsham had been told to dress and make coffee. Frederick had not been roused. The whole house waited. Nobody spoke.

Then all at once everyone stirred. Bill Waring straightened himself. Lady Dryden turned her head. Eric Haile got to his feet. There was a tramp of feet in the passage. Marsham opened the door and announced,

‘Inspector Ncwbury—’