“Whose work?” she said.
“You mean, what made him like that?”
“Well, what has made any of them like that-Clay Masterson-Moira Herne-Arnold Bray? Any criminal, at any time and anywhere? Small causes a long way back-small faults that were never checked and have grown into great ones and crowded out justice, humanity. As Lord Tennyson so truly says:
Prone as he was to indulge his sense of humour in the matter of what he irreverently termed Maudie’s Moralities, Frank was bound to admit the aptness of the quotation. After a slight reverential silence he said,
“How right you are.” And then, “When are you leaving here?”
Miss Silver coughed gently.
“I am travelling up to town this afternoon. It will be very pleasant to be back at Montague Mansions. I can return for the inquest if my presence is considered desirable.”
They were in the schoolroom at Merefields. He leaned back in a comfortable shabby chair and said with some accentuation of his usual coolness of manner,
“Well, you never can tell. We can find you if we want you, but I have a faint prophetic feeling that we’re not really very likely to try. I may be wrong, or I may just conceivably be right, but when there is nothing to be gained by a public scandal about an Influential Person it is surprising what a lot can be kept out of the papers.” He sat up with a jerk. “That, my dear ma’am, was a scandalously heretical observation and one which should never have been permitted to pass my lips. In fact I expect you to bury it in oblivion.” There was a sardonic gleam in his eye as he added, “In point of fact I shouldn’t be surprised if the inquest didn’t result in a good many things being buried in oblivion.”
“My dear Frank!”
One of his fair eyebrows twitched.
“Well, why not? Two people have been murdered, and Lucius Bellingdon’s life has been attempted. The people who conspired in that business are both dead. What point would there be in involving the wretched Bellingdon in a public scandal? My guess is that there will be a verdict of accidental death, and that that will be that. You are no doubt about to say that someone must have loosened the nuts on the wheel and so brought about the accident, and there will certainly be talk about the coincidence that two cars from the same garage should each have lost a wheel on Emberley Hill, one on Sunday afternoon and the other during Monday night. It certainly suggests a nut-twiddling addict on the premises, and as I said, if I was asked to pick anyone for the job I should plump for Arnold Bray. It’s the sort of creeping, fiddling crime which would be right up his street. But how is anyone going to bring it home to him? I’m told there are no fingerprints in either case, so he either took care to wipe them off, or else he wore gloves for the job. So there’s no evidence against him, nor against anyone else.”
Miss Silver made a highly unprofessional remark. She said,
“Well, it would certainly save a great deal of trouble.”
Frank got to his feet.
“To Arnold,” he enquired-“or to the law?”
She smiled indulgently.
“Perhaps to both,” she said.
Chapter 38
THERE were two other interviews that day. The first was between Lucius Bellingdon and his secretary. It took place at the East Lodge in Hubert Garratt’s sitting-room. Lucius walked down there and walked in. He found a grey-faced man sitting at his writing-table. He was holding a pen, but there was no writing on the sheet that lay before him. His eyes were fixed and he paid no heed to the opening of the door. There was a moment when his stillness and his ghastly look offered a suggestion against which Lucius reacted with vigour. He spoke his name loudly and harshly as he tapped him on the shoulder. Hubert turned like a man in a dream. He said in a vague, abstracted voice,
“She’s dead-”
The hand on his shoulder weighed there heavily.
“Yes, she’s dead. What’s that to you?”
“Everything. Nothing.”
“And what do you mean by that?”
“I’d have sold my soul for her. Perhaps I did.”
“And just what do you mean by that?”
Garratt turned dull eyes on him.
“It doesn’t matter what I tell you now, does it? She’s gone-everything is finished. You see, I’ve known all along that she never cared a snap of her fingers for me and never would. Why should she? I had nothing to offer her. There were always other people. There was Arthur-but she was through with him. And there was Clay. And she was all set to get off with David Moray. I know the signs by now. And whoever it was, or whatever she did, she knew I would hold my tongue. She didn’t want me, but she knew she could count on me for that.”
Lucius released him and stood back a pace.
“And just what have you been holding your tongue about, Hubert?”
Garratt said again,
“It doesn’t matter if I tell you now-she’s dead. You see, I’ve known all along that she was in this business somewhere. She knew that I was going to fetch the necklace, and she knew when, and she got the snuff out of the old snuffbox and put it on my pillow-”
“How do you know that?”
“She must have slipped down here sometime during the evening. I knew she’d been here because of the scent she uses. No one else who comes here uses scent, so I knew she had been here, and I wondered why. Afterwards I knew. She put the snuff there to knock me out, and of course it did-she could count on that all right.”
“And why should she want to knock you out?” said Lucius Bellingdon.
Garratt’s face twitched.
“She wanted to get me out of fetching the necklace. She wouldn’t ever have cared for me, but I’ve always been around, and I suppose she didn’t quite-didn’t quite-” His voice petered out. He put up a hand to his shaking lips.
Lucius sat down on the edge of the writing-table. He said in a cool, hard voice,
“She didn’t quite fancy putting you up to be shot at by Masterson? I’ve been around quite a long time too, but she doesn’t seem to have had any scruples about me.”
Garratt’s hand dropped. He said on a startled tone,
“About you?”
“Yes, me. Wake up, Hubert! Who was the most likely person to fetch the necklace if you were knocked out? Me, every time. And I should have fetched it-I was all set to fetch it -but I was doing some garden planning with Annabel, and when I saw it was going to take a bit longer than I thought I sent Arthur Hughes instead. A last minute decision, and one that nobody knew about until it happened. So who do you think was really meant to be crossed off the list when the necklace changed hands? Not you, Hubert, and not Arthur, but me. That’s been borne in upon me for some time now. Miss Silver got on to it right away, but I wasn’t admitting it. I haven’t admitted it now-not to anyone but you, and I think we’ll keep it that way. They were flying for higher game than the necklace all the way through. I was to be got out of the way before I could marry Annabel and alter my will. My plans must have been obvious enough. So the bargain was made. I was to be eliminated, and Clay and Moira were to go shares in the proceeds. Marriage and a half share for him, the necklace and the other half for her. That of course is why it was returned -whatever happened, she had to have the necklace. Not many scruples about all that, are there?”
Hubert said, “She wouldn’t-” but his voice fell away from the words and let them drop into a gulf of silence. It was so deep that it seemed to be bottomless, but in the end Lucius said,