There was something odd about the terrace, too — far more people on it than would normally be the case on a cold morning. There must have been two dozen or so standing round in stiff little groups, talking to each other, waiting.
“Where’s Mr. Holmes?”
Square Bear looked at me, eyes watering from the cold.
“The truth is, my dear, I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing. He gave me my instructions at breakfast and I haven’t seen him since.”
“Instructions about me?”
Before he could answer, the scream came. It was a man’s scream, tearing through the air like a saw blade, and there was a word in it.
The word was “No.” I turned with the breath choking in my throat and, just as there’d been last year, there was a dark thing in the air, its clothes flapping out round it. A collective gasp from the people on the terrace, then a soft thump as the thing hit the deep snow on the restaurant roof and began sliding. I heard “No” again and this time it was my own voice, because I knew from last year what was coming next — the slide down the steep roof gathering snow as it came, the flop onto the terrace only a few yards from where I was standing, the arm sticking out.
At first the memory was so strong that I thought that was what I was seeing, and it took a few seconds for me to realize that it wasn’t happening that way. The thing had fallen a little to the side and instead of sliding straight down the roof it was being carried to a little ornamental railing at the edge of it, where the main hotel joined onto the annex, driving a wedge of snow in front of it. Then somebody said, unbelievingly: “He’s stopped.” And the thing had stopped. Instead of plunging over the roof to the terrace it had been swept up against the railing, bundled in snow like a cylindrical snowball, and stopped within a yard of the edge. Then it sat up, clinging with one hand to the railing, covered from waist down in snow. If he’d been wearing a hat when he came out of the window he’d lost it in the fall because his damp hair was gleaming silver above his smiling brown face. It was an inward kind of smile, as if only he could appreciate the thing that he’d done.
Then the chattering started. Some people were yelling to get a ladder, others running. The rest were asking each other what had happened until somebody spotted the window wide open three floors above us.
“Her window. Mrs. McEvoy’s window.”
“He fell off Mrs. McEvoy’s balcony, just like last year.”
“But he didn’t…”
At some point Square Bear had put a hand on my shoulder. Now he bent down beside me, looking anxiously into my face, saying we should go in and find Mother. I wished he’d get out of my way because I wanted to see Silver Stick on the roof. Then Mother arrived, wafting clouds of scent and drama. I had to go inside of course, but not before I’d seen the ladder arrive and Silver Stick coming down it, a little stiffly but dignified. And one more thing. Just as he stepped off the ladder the glass doors to the terrace opened and out she came.
She hadn’t been there when it happened but now in her black fur jacket, she stepped through the people as if they weren’t there, and gave him her hand and thanked him.
At dinner that night she dined alone at her table, as on the other nights, but it took her longer to get to it. Her long walk across the dining room was made longer by all the people who wanted to speak to her, to inquire after her health, to tell her how pleased they were to see her again. It was as if she’d just arrived that afternoon, instead of being there for five days already. There were several posies of flowers on her table that must have been sent up especially from the town, and champagne in a silver bucket beside it. Silver Stick and Square Bear bowed to her as she went past their table, but ordinary polite little nods, not like that first night. The smile she gave them was like the sun coming up.
We were sent off to bed as soon as we’d had our soup as usual.
Amanda went to sleep at once but I lay awake, resenting my exile from what mattered. Our parents’ sitting room was next to our bedroom and I heard them come in, excited still. Then, soon afterward, a knock on the door of our suite, the murmur of voices and my father, a little taken aback, saying yes come in by all means. Then their voices, Square Bear’s first, fussing with apologies about it being so late, then Silver Stick’s cutting through him: “The fact is, you’re owed an explanation, or rather your daughter is. Dr. Watson suggested that we should give it to you so that some time in the future when Jessica’s old enough, you may decide to tell her.”
If I’d owned a chest of gold and had watched somebody throwing it away in a crowded street I couldn’t have been more furious than hearing my secret about to be squandered. My first thought was to rush through to the other room in my nightdress and bare feet and demand that he should speak to me, not to them. Then caution took over, and although I did get out of bed, I went just as far as the door, opened it a crack so that I could hear better and padded back to bed.
There were sounds of chairs being rearranged, people settling into them, then Silver Stick’s voice.
“I should say at the start, for reasons we need not go into, that Dr.
Watson and I were convinced that Irene McEvoy had not pushed her husband to his death. The question was how to prove it, and in that regard your daughter’s evidence was indispensable.
She alone saw Mr. McEvoy fall and she alone heard what he shouted.
The accurate ear of childhood — once certain adult nonsenses had been discarded — recorded that shout as precisely as a phonograph and knew that strictly speaking it was only half a shout, that Mr.
McEvoy, if he’d had time, would have added something else to it.”
A pause. I sat up in bed with the counterpane round my neck, straining not to miss a word of his quiet, clear voice.
“No — something. The question was, no what? Mr. McEvoy had expected something to be there and his last thought on earth was surprise at the lack of it, surprise so acute that he was trying to shout it with his last breath. The question was, what that thing could have been.”
Silence, waiting for an answer, but nobody said anything.
“If you look up at the back of the hotel from the terrace you will notice one obvious thing. The third and fourth floors have balconies.
The second floor does not. The room inhabited by Mr. and Mrs.
McEvoy had a balcony. A person staying in the suite would be aware of that. He would not necessarily be aware, unless he were a particularly observant man, that the second-floor rooms had no balconies.
Until it was too late. I formed the theory that Mr. McEvoy had not in fact fallen from the window of his own room but from a lower room belonging to somebody else, which accounted for his attempted last words: “No…balcony.”
My mother gasped. My father said: “By Jove…”
“Once I’d arrived at that conclusion, the question was what Mr.
McEvoy was doing in somebody else’s room. The possibility of thieving could be ruled out since he was a very rich man. Then he was seeing somebody. The next question was who. And here your daughter was incidentally helpful in a way she is too young to understand. She confided to us in all innocence an overheard piece of adult gossip to the effect that the late Mr. McEvoy had a roving eye.”
My father began to laugh, then stifled it. My mother said “Well”
in a way that boded trouble for me later.
“Once my attention was directed that way, the answer became obvious. Mr. McEvoy was in somebody else’s hotel room for what one might describe as an episode of galanterie. But the accident happened in the middle of the morning. Did ever a lady in the history of the world make a romantic assignation for that hour of the day?