“I suppose it was when she pushed him out of the window.”
It was Square Bear’s face that showed most emotion. He screwed up his eyes, went red, and made little imploring signs with his fur-mittened hands, causing him to look more bear-like than ever. This time the protest was not at his friend, but at me. Silver Stick put up a hand to stop him saying anything, but his face had changed too, with a sharp V on the forehead. The voice was a shade less gentle.
“When who pushed him out of the window?”
“His wife, Mrs. McEvoy.”
I wondered whether to add, “The woman you bowed to last night,” but decided against it.
“Did you see her push him?”
“No.”
“Did you see Mrs. McEvoy at the window?”
“No.”
“And yet you tell me that Mrs. McEvoy pushed her husband out of the window. Why?”
“Everybody knows she did.”
I knew from the expression on Square Bear’s face that I’d gone badly wrong, but couldn’t see where. He, kindly man, must have guessed that because he started trying to explain to me.
“You see, my dear, after many years with my good friend Mr.
Holmes…”
Yet again he was waved into silence.
“Miss Jessica, Dr. Watson means well but I hope he will permit me to speak for myself. It’s a fallacy to believe that age in itself brings wisdom, but one thing it infallibly brings is experience. Will you permit me, from my experience if not from my wisdom, to offer you a little advice?”
I nodded, not gracious now, just awed.
“Then my advice is this: always remember that what everybody knows, nobody knows.”
He used that voice like a skater uses his weight on the blade to skim or turn.
“You say everybody knows that Mrs. McEvoy pushed her husband out of the window. As far as I know you are the only person in the world who saw Mr. McEvoy fall. And yet, as you’ve told me, you did not see Mrs. McEvoy push him. So who is this ‘everybody’ who can claim such certainty about an event which, as far as we know, nobody witnessed?”
It’s miserable not knowing answers. What is nineteen times three?
What is the past participle of the verb faire? I wanted to live up to him, but unwittingly he’d pressed the button that brought on the panic of the schoolroom. I blurted out: “He was very rich and she didn’t love him, and now she’s very rich and can do what she likes.”
Again the bear’s fur mitts went up, scrabbling the air. Again he was disregarded.
“So Mrs. McEvoy is rich and can do what she likes? Does it strike you that she’s happy?”
“Holmes, how can a child know…?”
I thought of the gypsy music, the gleaming dark fur, the pearls in her hair. I found myself shaking my head.
“No. And yet she comes here again, exactly a year after her husband died, the very place in the world that you’d expect her to avoid at all costs. She comes here knowing what people are saying about her, making sure everybody has a chance to see her, holding her head high. Have you any idea what that must do to a woman?”
This time Square Bear really did protest and went on protesting.
How could he expect a child to know about the feelings of a mature woman? How could I be blamed for repeating the gossip of my elders? Really, Holmes, it was too much. This time too Silver Stick seemed to agree with him. He smoothed out the V shape in his forehead and apologized.
“Let us, if we may, return to the surer ground of what you actually saw. I take it that the hotel has not been rebuilt in any way since last year.”
I turned again to look at the back of the hotel. As far as I could see, it was just as it had been, the glass doors leading from the dining room and breakfast room onto the terrace, a tiled sloping roof above them. Then, joined onto the roof, the three main guest floors of the hotel. The top two floors were the ones that most people took because they had wrought-iron balconies where, on sunny days, you could stand to look at the mountains. Below them were the smaller rooms.
They were less popular because, being directly above the kitchen and dining room, they suffered from noise and cooking smells and had no balconies.
Silver Stick said to Square Bear: “That was the room they had last year, top floor, second from the right. So if he were pushed, he’d have to be pushed over the balcony as well as out of the window.
That would take quite a lot of strength, wouldn’t you say?”
The next question was to me. He asked if I’d seen Mr. McEvoy before he fell out of the window and I said yes, a few times.
“Was he a small man?”
“No, quite big.”
“The same size as Dr. Watson here, for instance?”
Square Bear straightened his broad shoulders, as if for military inspection.
“He was fatter.”
“Younger or older?”
“Quite old. As old as you are.”
Square Bear made a chuffing sound and his shoulders slumped a little.
“So we have a man about the same age as our friend Watson and heavier. Difficult, wouldn’t you say, for any woman to push him anywhere against his will?”
“Perhaps she took him by surprise, told him to lean out and look at something, then swept his legs off the floor.”
That wasn’t my own theory. The event had naturally been analyzed in all its aspects the year before and all the parental care in the world couldn’t have kept it from me.
“A touching picture. Shall we come back to things we know for certain? What about the snow? Was there as much snow as this last year?”
“I think so. It came up above my knees last year. It doesn’t quite this year, but then I’ve grown.”
Square Bear murmured: “They’ll keep records of that sort of thing.”
“Just so, but we’re also grateful for Miss Jessica’s calibrations. May we trouble you with just one more question?”
I said yes rather warily.
“You’ve told us that just before you turned round and saw him falling you heard him shout ‘No.’ What sort of ‘No’ was it?”
I was puzzled. Nobody had asked me that before.
“Was it an angry ‘No?’ A protesting ‘No?’ The kind of ‘No’ you’d shout if somebody were pushing you over a balcony?”
The other man looked as if he wanted to protest again but kept quiet. The intensity in Silver Stick’s eyes would have frozen a brook in mid-babble. When I didn’t answer at once he visibly made himself relax and his voice went softer.
“It’s hard for you to remember, isn’t it? Everybody was so sure that it was one particular sort of ‘No’ that they’ve fixed their version in your mind. I want you to do something for me, if you would be so kind. I want you to forget that Dr. Watson and I are here and stand and look down at the ice rink just as you were doing last year.
I want you to clear your mind of everything else and think that it really is last year and you’re hearing that shout for the first time.
Will you do that?”
I faced away from them. First I looked at this year’s skaters then I closed my eyes and tried to remember how it had been. I felt the green itchy scarf round my neck, the cold getting to my toes and fingers as I waited. I heard the cry and it was all I could do not to turn round and see the body tumbling again. When I opened my eyes and looked at them they were still waiting patiently.
“I think I’ve remembered.”
“And what sort of ‘No’ was it?”
It was clear in my mind but hard to put into words.
“It…it was as if he’d been going to say something else if he’d had time. Not just no. No something.”
“No something what?”
More silence while I thought about it, then a prompt from Square Bear.
“Could it have been a name, my dear?”
“Don’t put any more ideas into her head. You thought he was going to say something after the no, but you don’t know what, is that it?”