‘No, I didn’t. Mr Carey is a gentleman and he spoke like one – kept his temper and said he was sorry but she wouldn’t let him come to the house and he had to see Allie, meaning Miss Graham, and he would come back and talk to her tomorrow. There wasn’t anything to make Mrs Graham say what she did. She was right down hysterical, that’s all.’
‘And you are sure that Miss Graham took her mother back to the house?’
‘I heard them all the way down the garden, and I heard them go in and shut the door. When I got to the corner I looked down Belview Road and I saw the light go on in Mrs Graham’s bedroom.’
‘Then it seems as if Mrs Graham must have gone back to the summerhouse later on. Are you quite sure you didn’t see or hear anything on your return journey when you walked the length of the garden as far as the crest of the hill?’
‘I didn’t see anything or hear anything.’
‘And there was no light on in the house?’
She stopped for a moment before she answered that – looking back – trying to remember. Then she said,
‘If the landing light was on, I wouldn’t see it – there’s a thick curtain there. The house looked dark.’
TWENTY-ONE
WHAT ARE WE going to do, Nicky?’
They sat close together on the deep sofa in the drawing-room. They were not leaning back; Althea’s left hand rested palm downwards on the stuff of the seat. Nicky’s right hand covered it. He said.
‘There isn’t anything very much that we can do.’ He didn’t like to say, ‘It will pass,’ but the thought was in his mind. They would have to get through the inquest and the funeral, and then they could get married and he would take her away. He wondered if she would want to sell the house, and whether the two lots of people who were after it would still be so anxious to buy now that there had been a murder there. The sooner he could get Allie away the better – right away. These things filled his mind, but it was a bit soon to start talking about them to Allie, so he just said there wasn’t much they could do and left it at that.
He wasn’t so stupid as to think they were clear out of the wood either. Miss Cotton’s statement was all right in a way and as far as it went. Fortunately, it did go far enough to make it clear that Allie had taken her mother back into the house and shut the door. It also made it perfectly clear that there had been a frightful row. He had an unpleasantly sharp impression in his mind of Mrs Graham screaming out that he wanted to kill her, and a few other helpful things like that. There really wasn’t any way out of the police having their eye on him as suspect number one. And he couldn’t blame them, since look where he would, he couldn’t for the life of him think of reasons why Nicholas Carey should want Mrs Graham out of the way, but as far as he could see, no reason at all why anyone else should.
He said abruptly,
‘It’s frightful for you, but it won’t go on being so bad. We’ve just got to go through with it – the police and everything. They’ll either find out who did it, or they won’t. Whether they do or not, there will be a lot of talk, and then there won’t be so much, and presently something else will happen and everyone will switch on to that. Miss Silver is staying on with you for a bit?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice became suddenly warmer. ‘Nicky, do you know, Mrs Justice rang up and said would I come to them. I do think it was terribly kind of her. Only when she heard I’d got Miss Silver here she said I couldn’t have anyone better, and I think she actually was a little bit relieved.’
‘You’d rather be here?’
‘Much rather. Mrs Justice is so kind, but she talks all the time, and she would keep wanting me to have cups of Ovaltine and things like that. It used to drive Sophy crazy.’
A shudder went over her. Mrs Graham was devoted to Ovaltine. She had it in the middle of the morning, and she had it the last thing at night in bed. She was very particular indeed about the way it was made. Althea had had to make it twice a day for years. She would never have to make it again.
This train of thought was broken in upon by Nicholas. He said in what seemed to be an entirely irrelevant manner,
‘I had better clear out of the Harrisons ’.’
Althea’s hand jerked under his.
‘Why?’
He had several reasons, but he only gave her one of them.
‘Well, it’s involving them in what isn’t any affair of theirs. I expect the police will want me to be somewhere handy whilst they are clearing things up, and I can get a room at the George.’
An hour or two later Ella Harrison looked round an open bedroom door and found him packing. She came in and said ‘Hullo, what’s all this?’ A suitcase was open on the bed, right on one of the new covers. Really, men were the limit! He pushed a pair of socks into a corner and turned round.
‘Oh, I was coming down to see you… I thought I had better clear out.’
Eye-shadow, mascara, powder, lipstick, she had them all on. The reinforced eyebrows rose.
‘What on earth for?’
‘Well, I’m a bit conspicuous, don’t you think? I don’t think it’s quite fair to you and Jack.’
‘My dear Nicky – what nonsense! We won’t hear of your going! Besides the police will expect you to hang around until after the inquest.’
‘I could get a room at the George.’
‘We wouldn’t hear of it! Jack would be furious. Besides it would look so bad – as if we had turned you out. It might do you quite a lot of harm – as if we believed the kind of talk that’s going round. That’s what I really came up to see you about.’ She went back a step, pushed the door so that it shut and latched, and came back again. ‘You see, Nicky, you could be in a bit of a spot, couldn’t you?’
She was being kind, and the trouble was that he couldn’t take it. He disliked her too much – the brassy hair and all that make-up, her laugh, the way she picked on Allie, the way she treated poor old Jack. She was a handsome woman. The eyes that were smiling at him were undeniably fine. He didn’t dislike people as a rule, but he disliked Ella Harrison.
She was saying in a voice as brassy as the hair,
‘Lucky for you and for Thea that Nurse Cotton should have been passing after you’d had that dust-up in – what do you call the place – the gazebo. A bit of nonsense giving it an outlandish name like that, but that was just Winifred Graham all over!’
He shook his head.
‘The name is much older than Mrs Graham – eighteenth – nineteenth century – at least a hundred years before her time.’
She laughed.
‘Well, that’s not what we were talking about anyhow. I said it was lucky Nurse Cotton could swear that Thea took her mother into the house and left you there in the garden. What the police are going to want to know is why did she come out again.’ He said,
‘You seem to know a lot about it all.’
She made an impatient movement.
‘Do you suppose that people don’t talk? Nurse Cotton made a statement to the police, didn’t she? She’s friendly with a Miss Sanders who teaches at that little preparatory school in Down Road. Miss Sanders has an aunt who used to be governess to the Miss Pimms. I met Lily Pimm this morning, and she told me all about it. And all about what Miss Cotton said to the police. And as I said, it’s a good thing for you that Nurse Cotton says Thea went into the house with her mother and left you there in the garden. She says she came back the same way about half an hour or three quarters of an hour later, which is about the time the murder must have been done, and she says she didn’t see anything or hear anyone then. It gives one a creep to think poor Winifred Graham may have been lying there dead just the other side of the hedge in that – what did you call it – gazebo, when Nurse Cotton went by. Of course what puzzles everyone is, why should Winifred have gone into the house with Thea and then come out again as I suppose she must have done.’