‘Your mother?’
Althea made a very slight movement and said,
‘Yes. She was angry – very, very angry. I was afraid she would make herself ill. She said I wouldn’t care if I killed her – she said I only thought about myself. Nicky did his best, but it wasn’t any good. He didn’t lose his temper – he didn’t really. He said he was sorry he had to see me like that, but she wouldn’t let him come to the house. He said he would come round and see her in the morning, and she said he wanted to kill her and he wasn’t to come. So I made him go, and I got her back to the house and put her to bed. I wouldn’t talk about it. When I had settled her down I went to bed myself. I didn’t think I should sleep, but I slept like a log. And then when I woke up she wasn’t in her room. She wasn’t in the house.’
‘What time was it when you waked?’
‘It was half past six.’
‘What did you do?’
‘When I had looked everywhere in the house I went up the garden to the gazebo.’
‘Why did you do that?’
For the first time Althea looked at her. Her eyes had a puzzled expression.
‘I don’t know. I thought she might have gone back to see if Nicky had really gone. She liked – to make sure. I thought she might have gone back to make sure about Nicky and – and fainted. I thought she must have been in a hurry. She hadn’t put on her stockings or underclothes like she had the first time – only a skirt and a coat over her night things.’
‘Could she see the gazebo from her window?’
‘No, but she could see it from the bathroom. She must have seen something to make her go out like that. And she had locked the front door and the back door and taken the keys – they were in the pocket of the coat. I had to get out of the kitchen window.’
She looked away again. They had come to the part which had got to be told, and she didn’t know how to find words for the telling. It was like digging in the ground for something very hard and heavy and pushing it up a hill. It was the sort of thing you cannot do unless it has got to be done.
It had got to be done. She said,
‘She was in the gazebo. Lying on the floor. She was dead. I thought it was her heart, but Dr Barrington said she had been murdered. He said – someone had – strangled her.’
She had got the words out. Even the last and the worst of them. There was no more strength in her. No more strength at all. She lifted her eyes to Miss Silver’s face and said in an exhausted voice,
‘It couldn’t be Nicky. It couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t be Nicky.’
Miss Silver was very grave indeed. She said,
‘How much of this have you told to the police?’
‘I told them…’
‘Have they seen Mr Carey yet?’
‘No. I rang up. He had gone out. He was going to arrange – about – our getting married.’ A little more life came into her voice. ‘You won’t – you won’t let them think he did it. He was keeping his temper – he had promised me he would keep his temper. He couldn’t have done a thing like that! Oh, you will help us, won’t you?’
Miss Silver took the hand that was suddenly and impulsively held out to her.
‘My dear, I will do all that I can to help you. But there is no help in anything except the truth. I must say to you what I say to every client. I cannot take a case in order to prove this person innocent or that person guilty. I can only do my best to arrive at the truth. If Mr Carey is innocent, the truth will clear him. I cannot undertake to prove either innocence or guilt. I can only serve the ends of justice and say, what I most earnestly believe, that in the end mercy and justice are the same.’
Althea drew her hands away. They were so numb that she could not feel them. For a moment her startled glance remained fixed upon Miss Silver, then it turned towards the door. From beyond it the front door banged. There was a sound of voices raised and a rapid step in the hall. The drawing-room door was flung open and Nicholas Carey strode into the room. He did not trouble to shut the door. The local Inspector stood there watching him.
Althea got to her feet. They moved together. She put her head down on his shoulder and he held her close. Detective Inspector Sharp and the Detective Sergeant behind him both heard her say,
‘Oh, Nicky, tell them you didn’t do it – you didn’t!
EIGHTEEN
DETECTIVE INSPECTOR FRANK Abbott was of the opinion that the Yard had got the dirty end of the stick again. You expected it when you were brought in on a country job, but as near in as Grove Hill you might with a bit of luck have hoped to be on the spot in time to get the first reactions of at least the principal suspect. What annoyed him most was that he would have been in time if the Chief, otherwise Chief Superintendent Lamb, had not delayed him over some inquiries as to the winding up of the case against the Callaghan gang, which could perfectly well have waited for a more convenient occasion. Added to which the Chief’s rather bulging brown eyes, sometimes irreverently compared with the smaller kind of peppermint bullseye, having discerned a certain impatience to be off with the old case and on with the new, he was treated to one of Lamb’s well known homilies on the duty of junior officers to behave themselves lowly and reverently to their betters, and to bear in mind the proverb that more haste made worse speed. Ensuing upon which, he arrived at No. 1 Belview Road about ten minutes after Nicholas Carey had made his dramatic entrance.
He had with him Detective Sergeant Hubbard, a young man whose ambition it was to mould himself in every way upon Inspector Abbott – this becoming so evident in the course of the case that the goaded Frank was driven to remark to Miss Silver that if there was going to be a second murder she wouldn’t have far to look for either the victim or the assassin. But all that lay in the future. He knew Detective Inspector Sharp, and had nothing but praise for what had been done up to date. When he had put him in possession of the facts as he knew them Sharp said,
‘It’s an odd story – a very odd story. Here’s a woman who is supposed to be an invalid, and she goes out not once but twice in the night to see if her daughter isn’t meeting a chap in the garden.’
‘They will do it.’
‘Well, there’s rather more to it in this case. This fellow Carey and Miss Graham were going together – oh, it must be the best part of seven years ago. He had a shocking old car, and I’ve seen them out in it myself. Everyone said they were engaged. Then about five years ago it was all off and he went abroad. The mother played up being an invalid – I don’t think there was much the matter with her, but she made the most of what there was. Selfish old woman by all accounts. Didn’t want her daughter to marry and worked her to the bone. A pretty clear case of slave-driving, if you ask me.’
‘You say she went out twice?’
‘If the daughter is telling the truth. She says she went out to meet Carey because her mother wouldn’t let him come to the house and he said if she didn’t come out, he was going to come in. He has the name of being a determined sort of chap. She says they were going to be married, and they wanted to discuss the arrangements. He had come back after five years, and I gather they were going to get on with it and not tell her mother until it was too late for her to do anything to stop them. There’s a sort of summerhouse at the top of the garden. That’s where they met, and that’s where Mrs Graham was murdered. Miss Graham says her mother came out and found them there and made a scene, but she sticks to it that she sent Carey away and took her mother in and put her to bed. If that is true, Mrs Graham must have gone out again. She may have thought Carey was still hanging about and wanted to make sure her daughter didn’t meet him. If it isn’t true and she only went out once, then she was killed when she surprised them, and they are both in it up to the neck. However it was, she was choked by a pair of strong hands and the scarf she was wearing twisted round her neck to make sure.’