Dalgliesh, feeling like a candidate at a viva voce examination, said calmly: “Sylvia Kedge is an orphan who lives alone in a cottage in Tanner’s Lane. She is said to be a highly competent shorthand typist. She worked chiefly for Maurice Seton but she does quite a bit for Miss Calthrop and Bryce. I know very little about her, about any of them.”
“You know enough for my needs at present, Mr. Dalgliesh. And Miss Marley?”
“Also an orphan. Her aunt brought her up. At present she’s at Cambridge.”
“And all these people are friends of your aunt?”
Dalgliesh hesitated. Friendship was not a word his aunt used easily and he thought it doubtful whether she would in fact speak of more than one person at Monksmere as a friend. But one does not willingly deny one’s acquaintances when they are about to be suspected of murder. Resisting the temptation to reply that they knew each other intimately but not well, he said cautiously: “You had better ask my aunt. But they all know each other. After all, it’s a small and isolated community. They manage to get on together.”
Reckless said: “When they’re not killing each other’s animals.” Dalgliesh didn’t reply. Reckless added: “They weren’t particularly upset were they? Not a word of regret the whole evening. Being writers you’d think one of them might have managed a stylish little epitaph.”
“Miss Kedge took it badly,” suggested Dalgliesh.
“That wasn’t grief. That was shock. Clinical shock. If she isn’t better tomorrow someone should get a doctor to her.”
He was right, of course, thought Dalgliesh. It had been shock. And that in itself was interesting. Certainly the evening’s news had been shocking enough, but would it have been quite so shocking to someone to whom it wasn’t news? There had been nothing faked about that final faint and it hardly suggested guilty knowledge.
Suddenly Reckless got up from his chair, looked at his empty cup as if uncertain how it came to be in his hand and replaced it with slow deliberation on the coffee tray. Sergeant Courtney, after a moment’s hesitation, did the same with his. It looked as if they were at last preparing to go. But first there was something which Reckless had to be told. Since it was a perfectly straightforward piece of information which might or might not prove to be important, Dalgliesh was irritated at his reluctance to get it out. He told himself that the next few days were going to be difficult enough without letting Reckless inveigle him into a mood of morbid self-analysis. Firmly he said: “There’s something you ought to know about that fake manuscript. I may be wrong-there’s not a lot to go on-but I think I recognise the description of the nightclub. It sounds like the Cortez Club in Soho, L. J. Luker’s place. You probably remember the case. It was in 1959. Luker shot his partner, was sentenced to death, but was released when the verdict was quashed by the Court of Criminal Appeal.”
Reckless said slowly: “I remember Luker. Mr. Justice Brothwick’s case wasn’t it? The Cortez Club would be a useful place to know if you were hoping to pin a murder on someone. And Luker would be as good a man to pin it on as any.”
He walked to the door, his Sergeant following him like a shadow. Then he turned for a last word. “I can see that it’s going to be a great advantage having you here, Mr. Dalgliesh.”
He made it sound like an insult.
8
The contrast between the brightness of the sitting room and the cool darkness of the autumn night was absolute. It was like stepping into a pit. As the door of Pentlands closed behind them Celia Calthrop experienced a moment of blind panic. The night pressed around her. She breathed darkness like a physical weight. It was as if the air had thickened with night, had become a heaviness through which she had to fight her way. There was no longer direction nor distance. In this black and numinous void the sullen, melancholy thudding of the sea sounded on all sides, so that she felt menaced and rooted like a lost traveller on some desolate shore. When Latham shone his torch on the path the ground looked unreal and very far away like the surface of the moon. It was impossible that human feet could make contact with this remote and insubstantial soil. She stumbled and would have lost her balance if Latham hadn’t gripped her arm with sudden and surprising force.
They started together on the inland path. Celia, who had not expected to walk home, was wearing light, high-heeled shoes which alternately skidded on the smooth sea pebbles which littered the path or sank into soft patches of sand so that she lurched forward in Latham’s grip like a graceless and recalcitrant child. But her panic was over. Her eyes were getting accustomed to the night and with every stumble forward the roar of the sea grew fainter and less insistent.
But it was a relief when Justin Bryce spoke, his voice unaltered, ordinary: “Asthma is a peculiar complaint! This has been a traumatic evening-one’s first contact with murder-and yet one feels quite well. Yet last Tuesday one had the most appalling attack with no apparent cause. One may get a reaction later of course.”
“One certainly may,” agreed Latham caustically. “Especially if Forbes-Denby doesn’t confirm one’s alibi for Tuesday night.”
“Oh, but he will, Oliver! And one can’t help thinking that his testimony will carry rather more weight than anything your sleeping partner may say.”
Celia Calthrop, gaining confidence from their nearness, their normality, said quickly: “It’s such a comfort that Adam Dalgliesh happens to be here. After all, he does know us. Socially I mean. And being a writer himself I feel that he belongs at Monksmere.”
Latham gave a shout of laughter. “If you find Adam Dalgliesh a comfort I envy your capacity for self-deception. Do tell us how you see him, Celia! The gentleman sleuth, dabbling in detection for the fun of it, treating his suspects with studied courtesy? A kind of professional Carruthers, straight out of one of Seton’s dreary sagas? My dear Celia, Dalgliesh would sell us all to Reckless if he thought it would enhance his reputation one iota. He’s the most dangerous man I know.”
He laughed again and she felt his grip tighten on her arm. Now he was really hurting her, hurrying her forward as if she were in custody. Yet she could not bring herself to shake free. Although the lane was wider here, the ground was still uneven. Stumbling and slipping, her feet bruised and her ankles aching, she had no chance of keeping up with them except in Latham’s remorseless grip. And she could not bear to be left alone.
Bryce’s voice fluted in her ear. “Oliver’s right you know, Celia. Dalgliesh is a professional detective and probably one of the most intelligent in the country. I don’t see that his two volumes of verse, much as I personally admire them, can alter that.”
“Reckless is no fool though.” Latham still seemed amused. “Did you notice how he said hardly a word but just encouraged us to babble on in our childish, egotistical way? He probably learned more from us in five minutes than other suspects would tell him in hours of orthodox questioning. When will we learn to keep our mouths shut?”
“As we’ve nothing to hide I don’t see that it matters,” said Celia Calthrop. Really Oliver was extraordinarily irritating tonight! One might almost imagine that he was a little drunk.
Justin Bryce said: “Oh, Celia! Everyone has something to hide from the police. That’s why one is so ambivalent about them. Wait until Dalgliesh asks why you kept referring to Seton in the past tense, even before we heard that his body had been found. You did, you know. Even I noticed it so it must have struck Dalgliesh. I wonder whether he’ll feel it his duty to mention the matter to Reckless.”