‘A really dreadful young man – quite like one of those spivs you hear about in the papers. I saw them with my own eyes going into Sefton’s. I had to go in myself for some buns, and there they were in one of those little alcoves at the end of the shop. I came home and told my sisters that I could not believe they had only just met.’
‘Oh, yes, she did!’ said Nettie.
‘And it turns out I was perfectly right. And who do you think he really is? You may have noticed the house-agents in the High Street, Martin and Steadman – well, old Mr Martin, the present Mr Martin’s father, married a Mrs Worple as his second wife, and this is her son, Fred Worple. He went into the business when he first grew up, but he wasn’t at all satisfactory, and after a little he disappeared and the Martins stopped talking about him. Getting on for ten years ago that must be, and now here he is back again and quite well off. Our daily maid Doris had it from Mrs Lane who works for the Martins – all these dailies will talk, you know. And I don’t know where Fred Worple knew Mrs Harrison, but it seems they are quite old friends, and they have been seeing each other every day.’ Nettie came darting in. ‘I wonder Mr Harrison likes it!’
‘Perhaps he doesn’t,’ said Lily Pimm.
TWENTY-SIX
MISS SILVER WALKED back to The Lodge in a thoughtful frame of mind. The Miss Pimms certainly had an unusual talent for gathering information. The amount with which they had furnished her provided much food for thought. Mrs Harrison had been the subject of Mabel’s most serious strictures – her dress, her bridge manners, her addiction to members of the opposite sex, her treatment of her husband. She had lost her temper with him during a bridge party at Mrs Justice’s only about a fortnight ago. Of course he was not a good player, and she made him worse by continually criticizing his play, but when she called him a fool with an adjective in front of it which Mabel felt she could not repeat, and finished up by throwing her cards in his face, it really did pass all bounds. A supplement by Nettie deprecated the fact that similar exhibitions were said to be not uncommon at Grove Hill House. Mrs Harrison couldn’t bear to be crossed. If Mr Harrison said a word, she would flare right up. On one occasion she had thrown a decanter at his head. If it had hit him he might have been killed, but he ducked and it went smashing into a big mirror on the dining-room wall. Nettie had also quite a lot to say about the dead set that had been made at young Dr Hamilton, and at the curate at St Jude’s – ‘Such a nice young man, and we found that we had met an aunt of his at Brighton before the war.’ There was indeed plenty for Miss Silver to turn over in her mind.
Althea had given her a key to the front door. As she came into the hall the murmur of voices in the drawing-room informed her that Nicholas Carey was still there. She hoped to see him before he took his leave, but she did not think he would be in any great hurry to go. She had reached the foot of the stairs, had indeed already laid her hand on the baluster, when she checked and remained for some moments without moving. When she did move it was to go up to her bedroom, but with a changed purpose. Leaving the door ajar, she removed her gloves and put them neatly away in the left-hand top drawer of the chest of drawers. Then, opening the right-hand top drawer, she took out a powerful electric torch, a useful gift from Frank Abbott, and putting it in the pocket of her coat made her way downstairs again. The immediate purpose of the torch did not appear. It would not be dark until eight o’clock, and it was now no more than a quarter past six.
Miss Silver went through the house into the garden and up the flagged path to the gazebo. The windows of Althea’s bedroom and of the bathroom looked out this way, as did those of the kitchen, scullery and larder, but failing a spectator at any of these the place was private, a ten-foot hedge screening it from the road on the one side and massed trees and shrubs intervening to shield it from the house next door.
Miss Silver was a person whose actions were prescribed by principle, reason, and common sense. She would have claimed no other impulsion, and would have ascribed her success in the field of detection to no other cause. Yet at this moment she was obeying what Frank Abbott might have called a hunch. She would herself have repudiated the term, but there were times in her experience when thoughts and impressions too vague to attract attention would suddenly combine to form an arresting picture. Looking back upon it afterwards, she could find no better explanation for her presence in the gazebo. It would have been carefully and competently searched by the police. She had visited it herself immediately after her arrival. Every trace of the tragedy had been removed. Yet she stood at the entrance and subjected the whole interior to as careful a scrutiny as if it had never been examined before. The structure was of brick and stucco, the door, the floor, the window-frames, and some panelling, of oak. All the workmanship was very good indeed, and the woodwork had lasted well. There were four windows with glass in them, two on either side of the door so as to afford the widest possible view. In the days when the only buildings to be seen from this point would be a rustic cottage or some distant farmstead the prospect must indeed have been delightful.
In the centre of the floor there was a table. Against the farther wall was a solid bench with some quite modern deck-chairs stacked on one side of it. The floor had been swept after the removal of Mrs Graham’s body, and screened as it was by trees and a tall hedge, no fresh dust had drifted in.
After some time Miss Silver stepped inside and turned on her torch. Although still quite light in the garden, the interior of the gazebo held shadowed patches, notably under the windows and where the heavy bench cast its own shade. The powerful electric beam slid to and for across the floor under the table and the bench. She laid the torch down while she shifted the deck-chairs. The police had been thorough. There was no dust where they had stood, nothing but the swept floor and the panelling that came smoothly down to meet it. The ray moved steadily until every inch of the floor had been explored.
When the whole circuit of the place had been made and she had come back to the entrance she stood there, her hand with the torch in it hanging down, the beam switched on. Her eye, following it, had its first impression that there had been dust in the gazebo, and that it had been swept out this way. The weathering of the floor-board next the door had left a crack between itself and the sill. The beam dazzled on the crack and showed it filled with dust. She went down upon her knees and laying the torch on its side extracted a hairpin from her neat plaits and began to clear the crack.
There was grit and dust in plenty, there were a couple of small dead spiders, there was a pin, there was a strand of cobweb, there was the upper half of a press-button, there was more grit, there was fine powdered dust, there was something that the sideways-stabbing ray of the torch pricked into light. She took it up between finger and thumb and laid it in her palm. She had had no reasonable expectation that she would find it – there was no reason to suppose that it would be there to be found. She could form no certain idea as to how it had come into the crack. It might have rolled there as it fell and been covered by the dust that was later swept across the threshold. It might have been lying on the floor unnoticed when Althea found her mother’s body. It might have been her desperate flying feet that flicked it into the crack, it might have been the feet of any of those she summoned. However it came there, it had remained unnoticed until now. Miss Silver looked at it with grave composure. Whatever else might be in doubt, she had no doubt at all that the small bright object in her palm was the missing stone from Ella Harrison’s ring.