Patricia Wentworth - Through The Wall

It was Miss Silver who enquired after Cyril Felton. Ina was stretching out her hand to take the cup of tea which Marian had just poured out for her. She stopped like that to look at Miss Silver.

“He said he was going to lie down in his room. He had a headache. He was up very late last night. He said he wanted a good sleep.”

Marian said, “He might like some tea. Richard, perhaps you wouldn’t mind seeing if he is awake. It’s the little room on the left of the front door as you come in.”

He said, “Of course,” put down his cup, and went out.

There was some talk between Miss Silver and Marian about Eliza’s tea-cake and Eliza’s superlative raspberry jam.

“Such a light hand. You may have the best recipe and the best materials, but there is a lightness of touch which, I believe, cannot be taught. My housekeeper, Hannah Meadows, has it, and I feel I am indeed fortunate. So much good food is wasted by bad cooking.”

Richard Cunningham opened the door and stood there.

“Miss Silver, someone wants to speak to you for a moment. Could you come?”

But when she reached the hall and the door was shut again he drew her away from it and said,

“I’m afraid I’m the person who wants to speak to you. Can you stand a shock?”

“What has happened?”

“Someone has stuck a knife into Cyril Felton. He’s dead.”

Randal March was called to the telephone in the middle of his wife’s tea-party. As he had been buttonholed by old Lady Halbert who knew more people who had undergone operations than anyone else in England and loved to rehearse the particulars of each case with a terrifying command of detail, he was not really sorry to disengage himself.

The voice which met his ear when he took up the receiver was that of Inspector Crisp. It said in an exasperated tone,

“We’ve just had a call from Cove House. There’s been another death.”

“What!”

“That young fellow Felton. They’ve just found him dead in his bed. Stabbed. No weapon.”

“Who found him?”

“Mr. Richard Cunningham. Says he went to call him to tea and found him like that.”

“It was he who telephoned?”

“Yes, sir. I’m just off out there now. I thought I’d better let you know.”

March said, “Right-I’ll be along,” and hung up.

He found Crisp at Cove House, getting going with the business of looking for the weapon, taking fingerprints, taking preliminary statements. Not that the Inspector himself was personally concerned with anything but the statements, having brought with him two underlings and the police surgeon whom he had snatched from his Sunday tea. He had questioned Richard Cunningham, Miss Silver, and Eliza Cotton, but so far it had been possible to induce him to give Ina Felton a little more time.

Coming through the hall March encountered Miss Silver. Since it was impossible to believe that the meeting was accidental, he stopped and spoke to her.

“What has been happening? You did not ring me up yourself.”

“No. I thought it would be better to give Inspector Crisp the opportunity. I am very glad to see you. Randal, that poor girl Ina Felton-Inspector Crisp has not seen her yet. I have been hoping that he would wait until you came.”

“Where is she?”

“In her room, and her sister with her. I was going to ask you if I might be present when you see her.”

“Oh, yes-there should be someone there. And I’d like your opinion. I don’t pretend to know as much about girls as you do. But I’ll have to see Crisp first, and the surgeon.”

She went back into the dining-room, from which she had emerged to meet him. With the door just ajar, she sat there, her hands busy with her knitting, her ears attentive to every sound in the house beyond. Men’s feet tramping across the hall to the little room on the other side of the front door where Cyril Felton lay on his bed with a sheet thrown over him. She knew what they would see when the sheet was lifted, for she had stood there and seen how he lay on his right side with his knees a little drawn up, as a man lies when he is asleep. He had taken off his coat and hung it over a chair. He had pulled up the light coverlet of the bed as far as his waist. There was a rent in his blue shirt just below the left shoulder-blade where a knife had been driven home. The shirt, and the coverlet, and the blanket were soaked and red. But there was no knife. The head of the bed stood against the front wall of the house, fitting in awkwardly amongst furniture not intended for a bedroom. It was a light truckle bed, old-fashioned but serviceable, and easy to handle. A tall mahogany bookcase occupied the whole of the left-hand wall. A Victorian overmantel reached from the mantelpiece to the ceiling. A pedestal table in figured walnut had been pushed into a corner. There were chairs. There was a Brussels carpet. There was a whatnot with pampas grass in a Japanese jar. There was a wallpaper with what had been a bright pattern of roses, but was now a drab background for the photographs, watercolours, etchings, and engravings which did their best to cover it. An ugly, haphazard room, with a murdered man in it, and the warm May air coming in through the open casement window.

The tramp of feet went back again across the hall. There was presently a knock on the dining-room door. At Miss Silver’s “Come in!” it opened and disclosed a fresh-faced young constable.

“If you please, miss, the Chief Constable would be glad if you would come to the study.”

Miss Silver was, perhaps, inclined to describe quite small things as providential. The fact that during this time of waiting she had been able to finish off the second stocking of the pair she was making for Derek Burkett did undoubtedly present itself in this light. She put the completed stocking away in her knitting-bag and followed the young constable to the study, where she found the police surgeon just about to take his leave of Randal March. “Any kitchen knife-” he was saying as she came into the room. They had met before, and he broke off to greet her.

“How are you, Miss Silver? I was just telling the Chief Constable that I didn’t think they’d find the weapon. It might have been any kitchen knife, and if you want my guess, that’s what it was. Used, cleaned, and put back-that’s about the size of it. Well, as you were probably just going to say, it’s not my business to guess, and I’ll be getting along.”

He went out, and Crisp went with him to the front door, where they stood talking for a minute.

March turned to Miss Silver.

“He puts the time of death not earlier than three o’clock, and not later than five. Well, we know he was alive just after three, because Eliza Cotton heard him talking to his wife in her room about that time. Mrs. Felton will be able to tell us when he left her. Cunningham says he found him dead just after five, so there’s very nearly two hours for him to have been murdered in, with a probability that it was somewhere about the middle of that time-say between four and half past. But of course that’s guesswork. Doctors don’t like committing themselves, and it’s a hot afternoon. Now look here, we’ve got to see Mrs. Felton. She’s the last person known to have seen him alive. I want to see her, and I want to see her without the sister. It’s easy to see she has always taken the lead, and I don’t want anyone prompting Mrs. Felton or answering for her. Do you think you could go up and persuade her to come down? Or if she isn’t equal to that, we will come up. But you’ll have to get rid of Marian Brand.”

“I will do my best, Randal.”

“It is a very efficient best. Just give me a call from the top of the stairs if we are to come up. I will wait in the hall.”