Lady Marian was in excellent looks and spirits. She had enjoyed nearly ten hours of refreshing sleep, and by lunchtime the Catherine-Wheel and its unpleasant happenings would have gone to join all those other past events which served her as an inexhaustible source of anecdote. Even the fact that Freddy with another painful business meeting before him was in a state of suicidal depression raised no more than a ripple upon the surface of her mind. She showed, in fact, some zest in explaining how low he was. “But, as I said to him, ‘Something always does turn up, and as to being ruined, well, who isn’t? And I can’t see it makes any difference whether the creditors have your money, because it all goes in income tax anyhow, and when you haven’t got any more they do have to stop, so we shan’t have to go on filling up any more of those dreadful forms.’ ”
Miss Silver, who was nearest to the door, had not been attending very closely to these remarks. From where she stood she could see the landing and the top of the stairs.
At this moment Eily came round the corner carrying three or four pairs of shoes newly cleaned. She put Jane Heron’s inside her room, Lady Marian’s and Freddy Thorpe-Ennington’s beside their door, and then crossed over with the remaining pair in her hand-shabby patent leather with bulging toes and exaggerated heels. She had put them down at Florence Duke’s door and was straightening up again, when Miss Silver stepped into the passage and addressed her.
“Just knock on the door, Eily, and see whether Mrs. Duke is up.”
Eily tapped on the panel, waited for a moment, and tapped again. When there was no reply she looked round at Miss Silver in a hesitating manner.
“Do you think she is asleep?”
Miss Silver stepped forward, put her hand on the knob of the door, and turned it gently. The door was locked, as it had been when she tried it last. She knocked herself this time, so loudly that Mildred Taverner and Marian Thorpe-Ennington came out into the passage to see what was going on. But from behind that locked door there was neither voice nor answer.
Miss Silver turned from it, her face grave.
“I am afraid that there must be something wrong. I think, Eily, that you had better fetch Mr. Castell.”
Eily looked scared.
“Should I just take a look through the keyhole?”
Miss Silver coughed.
“The key will be in the lock-”
But Eily was already stooping down.
“But it isn’t,” she said. “I can see right over the bed… Oh, Miss Silver, she isn’t there-it’s not been slept in!”
“Can you see any sign of Mrs. Duke?”
“Oh, no, I can’t! There’s the bed turned down-like I left it-”
Miss Silver said in a quiet voice,
“Go and fetch your uncle.”
As they stood waiting, Geoffrey Taverner came along the opposite passage from his room and crossed the landing to join them.
“Is anything wrong, Miss Silver?”
“I am afraid that there may be. I think you had better take your sister away.”
But Mildred refused to go-or at any rate no farther than Miss Silver’s room, where she sat trembling on the edge of the bed and shed weak, forlorn tears. They dripped upon the Venetian beads, and so down into her lap as she listened whilst Castell enquired of all and sundry why heaven should be thus afflicting him.
“My respectable house!” he groaned. “Mrs. Duke-are you there? If you are asleep, will you wake up and speak to us! We are getting alarmed. I shall have to break in the door if you do not answer.” He raised his voice to a bellow-“Mrs. Duke!” then turned away with a gesture of despair. “It is no good. She may be ill-she may have taken too much of a sleeping draught-she does not hear-we shall have to break the door-”
Jeremy and Jane had arrived to swell the crowd. Jacob Taverner came across the landing wrapped in his greatcoat. Freddy Thorpe-Ennington, fully dressed but with his fair hair wildly unbrushed, stared from the threshold of his room. Jeremy said,
“Wait a bit-don’t any of these other keys fit?”
“Fool!” said Castell, smiting himself upon the breast. “Idiot- imbecile! Why did I not think of that? I tell you I am out of my senses with all this trouble! The key of the cupboard at the end of the passage, perhaps that will fit-I do not know. It fits one of these rooms, but I have forgotten which. It may be this one, or it may be one of the others-I do not know any more. I have no memory left-the brain gives way-I am distracted!”
In this state of distraction he precipitated himself along the passage, wrenched the key from a cupboard door, rushed back with it, and forced it violently into the lock. It grated, creaked, and under the utmost pressure turned.
Castell jerked at the handle and threw the door wide open. Every inch of the rather dingy room was visible. One side of the curtains had been pulled back. The daylight which entered was not bright, but it was sufficient. It showed the bed as Eily had described it, stripped of its coverlet and turned down for the night. It showed the space beneath it quite empty. It showed a worn square of carpet on the floor, a chest of drawers, a washstand, and two chairs. It showed a hanging-cupboard with the door fallen open. Inside it hung the bright blue coat and skirt and the sheepskin coat in which Florence Duke had arrived. But of Florence Duke herself there was no sign whatever. Except for its ordinary furniture the room was empty.
CHAPTER 35
It was the police who had found her getting on for an hour later. She had gone over the cliff at its highest point, about a hundred yards beyond the hotel. She had fallen upon the rocks, and must have been killed immediately. The body had not been in the water, since this heaped and tumbled mass of rocks was covered only at the highest tides. She was wearing what she had worn the night before, the brightly flowered dress of artificial silk, the silk stockings, and indoor shoes. One of the shoes had come off and had been caught up on a small straggling bush about half way down.
A little later in Castell’s office Inspector Crisp was giving it as his opinion that it was a plain case of suicide, and that in the circumstances it was as good as a confession to the murder of Luke White.
“Clears the whole thing up, if you ask me. Can’t see any reason for putting the other inquest off myself, but the Chief Constable seems to think it would be better.”
Frank Abbott nodded.
“Yes-I think so.”
“Well, I can’t see it myself. But there, I’m not the Chief Constable-as I expect you were going to say.” He laughed quite good-humouredly.
Miss Silver, who had so far contributed nothing to the conversation, now gave a slight dry cough. Frank Abbott turned his head as if expecting her to speak, but she did not do so. For the moment her eyes were upon her knitting. The blue dress approached completion. He turned back to Crisp.
“You are satisfied that it was suicide?”
Crisp made a gesture.
“What else? She killed Luke White-jealousy over that girl Eily-and when I rang her up and told her she would have to identify the body she got the wind up. Wouldn’t face it-went and chucked herself over the cliff. “ He gazed complacently at the London man who couldn’t see a simple solution when he’d got it right under his nose. “Psychology,” he said-“that’s what you’ve got to bear in mind, especially when you’re dealing with women. This Florence Duke-you’ve got to put yourself in her place, look at it from her point of view. She was jealous of Eily Fogarty. This Luke White, he’d got the name for being able to get round any woman, and by all accounts he got round a good few of them. He got round Florence Duke, married her, and left her. Then she comes here and finds him making love to this girl Eily. On her own admission she went down to meet him the night he was murdered, and she was found practically standing over the body with his blood on her hands. Well, a woman will stab a man she’s been fond of if she’s jealous enough. But this is where psychology comes in. She’s done the murder when she was all worked up, but when she’s told she’s got to come in cold blood and look at the corpse she just can’t face it-she goes and chucks herself over the cliff. That’s psychology.”