Althea ran down the stairs and got out of the kitchen window. The mist lay heavy on the garden. She couldn’t even see the gazebo until she was halfway up the path. She couldn’t see it clearly then. It was just a shadow against the shadowy hedge. It was in her mind that her mother had come out to make sure that Nicholas had gone. She had come out in a hurry, and than she had had an attack of some kind and fainted and not been able to get back to the house. This was the worst thing that came to her. She went up the steps into the gazebo and saw her mother’s body flung down on the right-hand side of the door.
There was a solid oak table in the middle of the room. There was a wooden bench, and some deck-chairs stacked against the wall. The floor boards were dusty and in the corners there were cobwebs. There was the body of Winifred Graham. It lay on its face, bare ankles showing beneath the black cloth coat. From the very first moment Althea had no doubt that her mother was dead, but she knelt down, found an ice-cold hand and wrist, and felt for a pulse that wasn’t there.
It wasn’t there. It hadn’t been there for hours. She went on kneeling on the floor of the gazebo whilst the intolerable certainty of this made its way along the channels of thought until everything else was blotted out. She got to her feet with just one instinctive feeling. She must have someone to help her. She must call Dr Barrington.
When she looked back on it afterwards there was a dull background of fear and confusion like a sea under fog, and rising out of it, strangely and horribly distinct, the things she would never be able to forget. Her hand in the pocket of the black coat, feeling for the keys. Her own voice without any expression speaking to Dr Barrington on the telephone – ‘Will you come at once? My mother is dead,’ and the surprised protest in his voice when he said, ‘No!’ Something moved dully behind the numbness in her mind. He hadn’t expected her mother to die. Did that make it more her fault, or less?
When he came into the house it was she who was calm. She could move about but she didn’t seem able to feel anything. Dr Barrington was a big man, and he had been in practice for thirty years. It was he who ought to have been calm, but he wasn’t, he was very definitely upset. She thought, as she had sometimes thought before, that he was very fond of her mother, even perhaps a little in love with her. He was going towards the stairs, when she stopped him.
‘She isn’t up there,’ she said.
He turned.
‘Down here? You haven’t told me what happened.’
‘I don’t know. I found her in the gazebo at the top of the garden.’
He said in a stupefied voice,
‘In the garden? What do you mean?’
‘I found her there. She was dead. I called you up.’
His face worked angrily.
‘You ask me to believe that she went out into the garden at this hour and in this weather?’
‘I think she went out in the night. She – isn’t – dressed…’
He stared, as if she had said something monstrous, then turned and led the way through the house to the back door. They went up the path without a spoken word. When they came to the gazebo she put her foot on the bottom step and drew it back again. He went past her, and she stood there waiting for what he would say – for what she knew he must be going to say. She knew what it would be, but to hear it said aloud would be like a blow, and just for a moment she held back from it. But when the words came they were not what she expected. They were quite dreadfully and incomprehensibly worse. He stood in the doorway and said in a terrible voice,
‘It’s murder – she has been murdered! Who did it?’
SEVENTEEN
MISS MAUD SILVER had finished her breakfast, but there was a second cup of tea on the table beside her and she was taking a little longer than usual over the more frivolous of the two newspapers for which she subscribed. She was reflecting on the rapidity with which news is transmitted, and wondering what prompted the selection of such items as ‘Film Star Weds Fifth Husband,’ and, ‘Mother Says I Love My Baby Son,’ when the telephone bell rang from the next room. She put down the paper and, neglecting her cup of tea, went through to answer the call. A voice which she did not recognize spoke her name. She did not recognize the voice, but she was immediately aware that its owner was quite desperately afraid. There is the fear that makes the voice tremble, and there is the fear which makes it rigid. The voice which said, ‘Miss Silver…’ was stiff with fear. When she said, ‘Who is speaking?’ there was a pause before it said,
‘Althea Graham. I saw you yesterday. Something dreadful has happened. My mother is dead.’
Miss Silver was aware of the force which controlled the words. She said,
‘If there is anything I can do to help you…’
Althea said in that unnatural voice,
‘They say she was murdered. Will you come?’ The line went dead.
Miss Silver did not attempt to recover the connexion. She congratulated herself on having taken Althea Graham’s address, and she went into her bedroom and packed a suit-case. She might be required to stay, or she might not. Certainly that poor girl must not be left alone. Having just completed a most exciting case, she had beent hoping for an interval in which to catch up with her correspondence, but this was not an appeal she could neglect. Within twenty minutes of the time when she had taken up the receiver she was seeing her suit-case into a taxi at the Marsham Street entrance to Montague Mansions and saying goodbye to Hannah Meadows who had come down to see her off.
The case already referred to having been of an extremely lucrative nature, she decided to drive the whole way to Grove Hill.
She arrived to find Dr Barrington gone and the police in possession. The local Detective Inspector informed her that a couple of officers would be coming down from Scotland Yard, beyond which he had nothing to say, except that Miss Graham would be wanted for questioning when they arrived, and that she ought not to leave the house. She was in the drawing-room, he added, and stood aside for Miss Silver to pass.
Althea turned round from the window, her face white and strained. It was hard to recognize her as the girl who had left Montague Mansions yesterday, her eyes bright with hope. She said,
‘You’ve come…’
‘Yes, my dear. I told you that I would come.’
Althea said in a dazed voice,
‘Nothing happens the way you think it is going to…’
Miss Silver looked at her very kindly indeed.
‘You have had a great shock. Let us sit down and see what can be done to help you. Do you feel able to tell me what has happened?’
Althea did not look at Miss Silver. She stared down at her straining hands.
‘I don’t know what did happen – nobody does. I’ll tell you as much as I can. She went to have her bath about nine. Then Nicky rang up. I think she must have gone across to her bedroom and listened in on the extension. He said he wanted to see me, and I said he couldn’t. There is one of those old-fashioned summerhouse places which they used to call gazebos at the top of the garden. We used to meet there – long ago…’ Her voice failed. After a little she went on again. ‘He said he would be there at half past ten, and if I didn’t come out he would come in. He is like that – you can’t stop him if there’s something he wants to do.’
A feeling of apprehension was growing in Miss Silver’s mind. The word murder had been used, and the police were in the house. Scotland Yard was taking over, and Nicholas Carey was a young man who would stick at nothing to get his own way. She said,
‘You went to meet him?’
The hands in Althea’s lap strained more tightly.
‘If I hadn’t gone he would have come in. If I had locked the door he would have broken a window. He is like that. It wouldn’t have been any use saying no, and I wanted to see him. My mother would be asleep by half past ten. I took up her Ovaltine before ten, and I waited until the half hour had struck, but I am afraid that she waited too. I met Nicky and we talked. I told him about your Miss Chapell, and I said we could be married today. And then – she came…’