‘She thinks it belonged to the dead girl. I think it was one of the things she bought when she landed. She had very little with her-I don’t know what she had, but she didn’t have a bag.’
‘You don’t know that the bag didn’t belong to the other girl?’
‘Well, I don’t know anything-but I’m guessing. It seems reasonable the way I’m telling it.’
‘Look here, what actually was there in that bag?’
‘A handkerchief, a letter from my aunt Lilian, notes to the amount of ten pounds in the middle, and a little change in the small purse at the side. There was a torch. Anne said she got it out and looked at the dead girl, then she put it away again. That’s the lot.’
Frank was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘And you found this bead in the cellar of a house in Lime Street?’
‘Yes- 37 Lime Street.’
‘And you’re sure that bead you found is from the girl’s necklace?’
Jim said, ‘Look here, I’m not sure about anything. If we were in Russia, there wouldn’t be anything to be sure about-every second girl might be wearing a necklace of that sort. As we’re in London -’ He made a gesture with his hands. ‘It tots up, doesn’t it? There’s this Russian bead on the floor of an empty house, just out of sight-doesn’t that say anything to you? And the floor had been swept and washed as far as the boards leaning up against the wall in the corner. I tell you the girl was murdered there, and I want to know who murdered her. And why’
CHAPTER 16
Jim came down to Chantreys the following morning. He was received by Harriet with indifference, by Lilian with an intensification of her usual somewhat fluttered and inconsequent manner.
Left alone with Anne for a moment, he said in a low voice, ‘I want to talk to you. Get your hat on and come out.’
When Lilian reappeared he said, ‘We’re going out.’
Lilian said, ‘Oh?’ and then quickly, ‘Well, it’s not very convenient, not at all convenient, but if you want-only after lunch would be much better.’
‘I shan’t be here after lunch. I’ve just come down for an hour to see Anne. It is Anne and I who are going out.’
‘Oh?’ Lilian looked cross and offended. ‘Of course, if that is what you want you must do just as you like.’
He turned to Anne.
‘Put on your things and come along, will you?’
Lilian said in a quick waspish way, ‘You’re very sure of who you want, aren’t you? You’re very sure about everything.’
Anne hurried to be gone. She heard Jim’s voice behind her as she went, but she couldn’t hear what he said. She fetched a scarf and her coat, and came back to find Lilian writing and Jim looking out of the window. There was a heavy feeling in the air as if there had been a quarrel between them. At the sound of her light footstep he turned and went out with her, up through the garden and out through a low wicket gate upon the green empty slopes of the hill.
They had not spoken until they were clear of the garden. Then he turned to her and said, “This is a first-class place for confidences. Ideal. I don’t like doors and walls very much. And I don’t like bushes and trees where you can’t see-there may be nothing, or there may be anything. The best place for talking secrets is a mountain top with no trees, or a boat on the sea without anyone to overhear what you are saying. But this is good enough.’
If he had been a little uncertain about Anne, her presence was convincing. She had walked beside him in a silence which was without constraint. It was most like the silence of intimacy, the silence into which two old friends may fall when they walk together. There was a restful quiet about it. She did not answer him now, only waited, looking not at him, but at the slopes of bare green turning rusty, and at the trees which surrounded the house which they had left. He had not been able to make up his mind what to say to her, and then all at once his mind was made up, set, and fixed. What he knew she could know-it was as simple and as easy as that. He said, ‘I went to see Miss Silver yesterday.’
‘Yes?’
It was just one word, but he knew when he heard it that that was how it was to be between them.
‘We found the house-’
She said ‘Oh-’ It was more a breath than a word.
‘The floor of the cellar had been swept and washed, but in the corner there were some boards. They hadn’t been moved. I moved them. This was lying underneath them.’ He held out his palm with the bead upon it-a small blue bead-evidence of murder-
She met his eyes. Something seemed to pass between them. She said very low, ‘Her beads were like that.’
‘You saw them?’
‘Yes. They had been-round her neck. The string was broken-’ She was looking back into the dark cellar. The light came from the torch in her hand, the light dazzled on the beads. She said, ‘I saw them there in the cellar-I did see them-’
He spoke insistently.
‘You’re sure you saw them-the beads?’
‘Yes, I’m sure.’ A shudder shook her. “They were there- the beads-but the string was broken-’
He said, ‘We were there-Miss Silver and I. The house is to let furnished. The old lady it belonged to died. Which way did you go down to the cellar from the hall-right or left?’
‘I don’t know.’ She shook her head. And then it came to her. ‘I don’t know about going down-but coming up-the door was on my right. There was the flight of steps-and then the door- it was half open-but no light in the hall. There was a table between me and the outside door-I had to go round it-the door was a little open. I went out and shut the door behind me. It was a dark road, but there were a lot of lights at the far end of it. I went along to the lights. I got into the first bus that stopped.’
He was frowning intently.
‘You don’t remember going to the house-who let you in?’
She shook her head.
‘I don’t remember anything like that-’ She paused. ‘If I had seen anyone-anyone at all-wouldn’t I remember them?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I think I should. I don’t think I saw anyone in that house. I think we were alone there-the dead girl and myself. I don’t think there was anyone else. If there was, why didn’t they come and kill me too? I think the house was empty.’
He thought so too, but he said nothing. It was a moment before he spoke.
‘How many steps were there from the ground floor of the cellar to the hall?’
All this time she had been looking at him. Now her expression altered. She shut her eyes, and her lips moved. It came to him that she was counting the steps. She was back in the cellar, sitting on the steps with the torch in her hand and the faintness passing away. Six steps down-and the floor-and the girl’s body-lying there-dead-six steps down. How many steps up from where she had been sitting, trying to control fear-the horror of being alone with the dead? There were more steps above her than below.
She opened her eyes, met his, and said, ‘It was six steps down from where I was-and six or seven steps up-I can’t tell exactly.’