Agatha Christie - A Caribbean Mystery

"We're not going to do any browbeating," said Weston. "We've just got to get the facts clear. We won't disturb her at present, but as soon as the doctor allows us, we'll have to see her." His voice was gentle – inflexible.

Tim looked at him, opened his mouth, but said nothing.

Evelyn Hillingdon, calm and composed as usual, sat down in the chair indicated. She considered the few questions asked her, taking her time over it. Her dark, intelligent eyes looked at Weston thoughtfully.

"Yes," she said, "I was talking to Mr. Kendal on the terrace when his wife came up the steps and told us about the murder."

"Your husband wasn't there?"

"No, he had gone to bed."

"Had you any special reason for your conversation with Mr. Kendal?"

Evelyn raised her finely pencilled eyebrows. It was a definite rebuke.

She said coldly: ''What a very odd question. No, there was nothing special about our conversation."

"Did you discuss the matter of his wife's health?"

Again Evelyn took her time.

"I really can't remember," she said at last.

"Are you sure of that?"

"Sure that I can't remember? What a curious way of putting it. One talks about so many things at different times."

"Mrs. Kendal has not been in good health lately, I understand."

"She looked quite all right – a little tired perhaps. Of course running a place like this means a lot of worries, and she is quite inexperienced. Naturally, she gets flustered now and then."

"Flustered." Weston repeated the word. "That was the way you would describe it?"

"It's an old-fashioned word, perhaps, but just as good as the modern jargon we use for everything. A 'virus infection' for a bilious attack-an 'anxiety neurosis' for the minor bothers of daily life." Her smile made Weston feel slightly ridiculous. He thought to himself that Evelyn Hillingdon was a clever woman. He looked at Daventry whose face remained unmoved and wondered what he thought.

"Thank you, Mrs. Hillingdon," said Weston.

"We don't want to worry you, Mrs. Kendal, but we have to have your account of just how you came to find this girl. Dr. Graham says you are sufficiently recovered to talk about it now."

"Oh yes," said Molly, "I'm really quite all right again." She gave them a small nervous smile. "It was just the shock. It was rather awful, you know."

"Yes, indeed it must have been. I understand you went for a walk after dinner."

"Yes. I often do."

Her eyes shifted, Daventry noticed, and the fingers of her hands twined and untwined about each other.

"What time would that have been, Mrs. Kendal?" asked Weston.

"Well, I don't really know – we don't go much by the time."

"The steel band was still playing?"

"Yes. At least I think so. I can't really remember."

"And you walked, which way?"

"Oh, along the beach path."

"To the left or the right?"

"Oh! First one way- and then the other. I-I really didn't notice."

"Why didn't you notice, Mrs. Kendal?"

She frowned.

"I suppose I was- well- thinking of things."

"Thinking of anything particular?"

"No. No. Nothing particular. Just things that had to be done- seen to- in the hotel."

Again that nervous twining and untwining of fingers.

"And then I noticed something white in a clump of hibiscus bushes and I wondered what it was. I stopped and- and pulled-" She swallowed convulsively. "And it was her- Victoria- all huddled up- and I tried to raise her head up and I got- blood- on my hands." She looked at them and repeated wonderingly as though recalling something impossible: "Blood- on my hands."

"Yes. Yes. A very dreadful experience. There is no need for you to tell us more about that part of it. How long had you been walking, do you think, when you found her?"

"I don't know. I have no idea."

"An hour? Half an hour? Or more than an hour?"

"I don't know," Molly repeated.

Daventry asked in a quiet everyday voice: "Did you take a knife with you on your walk?"

"A knife?" Molly sounded surprised. "Why should I take a knife?"

"I only ask because one of the kitchen staff mentioned that you had a knife in your hand when you went out of the kitchen into the garden."

Molly frowned.

"But I didn't go out of the kitchen- oh you mean earlier- before dinner. I-I don't think so."

"You had been rearranging the cutlery on the tables, perhaps."

"I have to, sometimes. They lay things wrong, not enough knives, or too many. The wrong number of forks and spoons, that sort of thing."

"And did that happen on this particular evening?"

"It may have done something like that. It's really automatic. One doesn't think, or remember-"

"So you may have gone out of the kitchen that evening carrying a knife in your hand?"

"I don't think I did- I'm sure I didn't." She added: "Tim was there- he would know. Ask him."

"Did you like this girl – Victoria – was she good at her work?" asked Weston.

"Yes- she was a very nice girl."

"You had had no dispute with her?"

"Dispute? No."

"She had never threatened you – in any way?"

"Threatened me? What do you mean?"

"It doesn't matter. You have no idea of who could have killed her? No idea at all?"

"None." She spoke positively.

"Well, thank you, Mrs. Kendal." He smiled. "It wasn't so terrible, was it?"

"That's all?"

"That's all for now."

Daventry got up, opened the door for her, and watched her go out.

"Tim would know," he quoted as he returned to his chair. "And Tim says definitely that she didn't have a knife."

Weston said gravely: "I think that that is what any husband would feel called upon to say."

"A table knife seems a very poor type of knife to use for murder."

"But it was a steak knife, Mr. Daventry. Steaks were on the menu that evening. Steak knives are kept sharp."

"I really can't bring myself to believe that the girl we've just been talking to is a red-handed murderess, Weston."

"It is not necessary to believe it yet. It could be that Mrs. Kendal went out into the garden before dinner, clasping a knife she had taken off one of the tables because it was superfluous – she might not even have noticed she was holding it, and she could have put it down somewhere – or dropped it. It could have been found and used by someone else. I, too, think her an unlikely murderess."

"All the same," said Daventry thoughtfully, "I'm pretty sure she is not telling all she knows. Her vagueness over time is odd, Where was she? What was she doing out there? Nobody, so far, seems to have noticed her in the dining room that evening."

"The husband was about as usual, but not the wife…"

"You think she went to meet someone? Victoria Johnson?"

"Perhaps – or perhaps she saw whoever it was who did go to meet Victoria."

"You're thinking of Gregory Dyson?"

"We know he was talking to Victoria earlier. He may have arranged to meet her again later. Everyone moved around freely on the terrace, remember -dancing, drinking – in and out of the bar."

"No alibi like a steel band," said Daventry wryly.

If anybody had been there to observe the gentle-looking elderly lady who stood meditatively on the loggia outside her bungalow, they would have thought she had nothing more on her mind than deliberation on how to arrange her time that day. An expedition, perhaps, to Castle Cliff; a visit to Jamestown; a nice drive and lunch at Pelican Point – or just a quiet morning on the beach.

But the gentle old lady was deliberating quite other matters. She was in a militant mood.

"Something has got to be done," said Miss Marple to herself.