“Felton? We’ve got his address. We can get him back.”
“Yes, I think so. He was blackmailing Helen Adrian. She went to Miss Silver about it, as I told you. There’s no absolute proof that the blackmailer was Felton, but she was convinced of it herself, and it seems likely enough. One of the last things she said to Miss Silver was that she meant to have it out with Cyril. She was going to offer him ten pounds down and tell him that once she was married he could do as he liked, but her husband would break his head if he bothered her. Miss Silver was trying to dissuade her from seeing Felton herself, but she had planned the interview and was determined to have it. Now when was it going to take place? Felton wasn’t in the same house. He wasn’t at her beck and call. She couldn’t see him in the presence of his wife or sister-in-law. She couldn’t ask him over here and have a private interview with the two old ladies watching and Felix Brand on the premises. She would really have a reason for leaving the house in the middle of the night to meet Cyril Felton, and no particular reason for being afraid of doing so. There were no passionate feelings involved-it was just a commercial transaction. It seems to me it would be quite in character for her to meet him like that.”
Crisp made a sharp movement. He wanted to have his say-he had been wanting to have it for some time. He came out with it now.
“You’re saying he killed her. Where’s his motive? More likely if it was the other way round. I’ve never heard of the blackmailer doing the killing.”
“She told Miss Silver that if he gave any trouble, she was going to threaten him with the police. You’ve seen him-I haven’t. Is he the kind that might panic and lose his head?”
“Goodlooking young fellow, and knows it. Never done a stroke of work he could help, I should say. Fancy manners. I can believe the blackmailing part of it all right. He’s the sort that must have money, and don’t care for the sweat of earning it.”
March said,
“That’s the sort that might panic and hit out. It wouldn’t have been planned. Say she threatened him. He pushed her, she went over the drop. And then he went down and finished her off for fear of what she would say. It looks to me as if it had been like that.”
“What about Miss Brand’s raincoat and scarf?”
March was frowning.
“Easy, as far as having access to them goes. He had only to fetch them, leave the coat lying across the back of the seat, get the stain on the scarf, and bring it back to where he took it from.”
Crisp looked up, brightly intent.
“And why would he want to do that?”
March said drily, “If Miss Brand were out of the way, his wife would come in for a very considerable sum of money which was left to her sister by the late Mr. Martin Brand.”
“Mrs. Felton didn’t get any of it?”
“No. I gather that Mr. Brand hadn’t much opinion of Cyril. He left everything to his niece Marian.”
Crisp jerked a nod.
“I remember hearing something about it-it made a lot of local talk. The next-door people didn’t get anything either- it all went to the one niece. It’s the sort of thing that makes bad feeling in a family. But if Miss Marian Brand was out of the way?”
“Then Mrs. Felton gets half, and the next-door people get half between them. Miss Silver is my informant. She always knows everything. And Marian Brand confirmed it to me yesterday, so it’s all according to Cocker. [4]”
“Then all the relations on both sides of the house would have some sort of a motive for putting a murder on Miss Marian Brand.”
March said very drily indeed,
“But only someone on her own side of the house could have taken her coat and her scarf to the scene of the crime and put the bloodstained scarf back again.”
Chapter 29
Cyril Felton came back on Sunday morning. He had spent all the money with which Marian had provided him, and returned with a hangover to the only place where he could be sure of free quarters and free meals. If he expected a welcome he did not receive one. There seemed to be a consensus of opinion that his room would have been preferred to his company. And quite literally, since all four bedrooms were now occupied and Marian refused point-blank to allow Richard to turn out.
A curious little family scene followed. Miss Silver was about to walk down the hill into Farne in order to attend the morning service at St. Michael and All Angels, a new and very ugly red brick church with a new and very energetic Vicar whose sermons were the last word in frankness. They shocked everyone so much that people who hadn’t been to church for years flocked there to hear them. She stood there practically unnoticed whilst Cyril went over to lean on the back of his wife’s chair and say in what he intended to be a caressing tone,
“Oh, well, I can go in with Ina.”
Ina Felton was already so pale that it would have been very difficult for her to turn any paler. What did happen was that the muscles under the bloodless skin became stiff and rigid, as if she braced herself to take a blow. Her eyes went to Marian, and Marian said,
“No, you can’t do that. She isn’t sleeping, and you would disturb her. There’s a camp bed in the attic, and the little front room by the dining-room isn’t being used. I’ll have it put there for you.”
It was Richard Cunningham who asked, “What about the audition? How did it go off?”
Cyril said in an injured voice that it was a washout.
“The whole thing’s off. The backer backed out at the last moment. Of course I wasn’t to know that.”
Miss Silver found herself wondering whether there had ever been any prospect of an audition. She smoothed the black kid gloves which she wore on Sundays and proceeded on her way to church. On her return she was able to edify the party at lunch with quotations from the Vicar’s sermon. It appeared that in the main it had met with her approval. She was not sure that it was altogether in good taste to refer to Miss Adrian’s murder-“A shocking crime which has been perpetrated in our midst”-but she agreed very strongly with his subsequent remarks. He was an ugly, forceful young man, and he did not mince his words. “You have just heard the fifth commandment read. I’m not going to tell you that it is wicked to commit murder. You all know it’s wicked. You are all shocked when somebody else does it, but every single one of us every single day of our lives thinks, and says, and does the things which are the seed from which murder springs.” Miss Silver had been much struck by the fact that he went on to quote the very words which she had used herself- “envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness.”
When lunch was over Ina went up to her room. Miss Silver on her way to her own room saw her go in and heard the key turn in the lock.
When she came down again she found Cyril Felton alone in the study and very much at a loose end.
“Marian’s gone off down to the beach with that fellow Cunningham. They’re very thick, aren’t they? As good as told me they didn’t want me along. I shouldn’t call it the thing myself, having a lot of strangers staying in a house when there’s just been a murder there.”
Miss Silver preferred a chair without arms. She settled herself and opened her knitting-bag. As she did so she considered Mr. Cyril Felton, who lounged upon the couch from which he had not troubled to rise when she entered. His skin was pasty, and he was heavy about the eyes. But quite a goodlooking young man, and not without ability. Possibly an only child-probably unwisely indulged. Certainly of very little use to himself or to anyone else in the world. A pity- a very great pity.
In this kind but firm attitude of mind she looked at him across Derek’s stocking, now of considerable length, and said,
“Do you include me among the strangers, Mr. Felton?”
“Oh, well, you know what I mean. You needn’t take it personally. But after all I’m Marian’s brother-in-law and Ina’s husband, and I should have thought-I mean, I just don’t get the idea. You don’t usually go and have a house-party when there’s been a murder-I mean, do you?”