Agatha Christie - And Then There Were None

Was it her voice that had answered?

"Of course you can, Cyril, really. I know that."

"Can I go then, Miss Claythorne?"

"Well, you see, Cyril, your mother gets so nervous about you. I'll tell you what. Tomorrow you can swim out to the rock. I'll talk to your mother on the beach and distract her attention. And then, when she looks for you, there you'll be standing on the rock waving to her! It will be a surprise!"

"Oh, good egg, Miss Claythorne! That will be a lark!"

She'd said it now. Tomorrow! Hugo was going to Newquay. When he came back - it would be all over...

Yes, but supposing it wasn't? Supposing it went wrong? Cyril might be rescued in time. And then - then he'd say, "Miss Claythorne said I could... Well, what of it? One must take some risk! If the worst happened she'd brazen it out. "How can you tell such a wicked lie, Cyril? Of course I never said any such thing!" They'd believe her all right. Cyril often told stories. He was an untruthful child. Cyril would know, of course. But that didn't matter... And anyway nothing would go wrong. She'd pretend to swim out after him. But she'd arrive too late... Nobody would ever suspect...

Had Hugo suspected? Was that why he had looked at her in that queer far-off way...? Had Hugo known?

Was that why he had gone off after the inquest so hurriedly?

He hadn't answered the one letter she had written to him...

Hugo...

Vera turned restlessly in bed. No, no, she mustn't think of Hugo. It hurt too much! That was all over, over and done with... Hugo must be forgotten...

Why, this evening, had she suddenly felt that Hugo was in the room with her?

She stared up at the ceiling, stared at the big black hook in the middle of the room.

She'd never noticed that hook before.

The seaweed had hung from that...

She shivered as she remembered that cold clammy touch on her neck...

She didn't like that hook on the ceiling. It drew your eyes, fascinated you... a big black hook...

Ex-Inspector Blore sat on the side of his bed.

His small eyes, red-rimmed and bloodshot, were alert in the solid mass of his face. He was like a wild boar waiting to charge.

He felt no inclination to sleep.

The menace was coming very near now... Six out of ten!

For all his sagacity, for all his caution and astuteness, the old judge had gone the way of the rest.

Blore snorted with a kind of savage satisfaction.

"What was it the old geezer had said?"

"We must be very careful..."

Self-righteous smug old hypocrite. Sitting up in court feeling like God Almighty. He'd got his all right... No more being careful for him.

And now there were four of them. The girl, Lombard, Armstrong and himself.

Very soon another of them would go... But it wouldn't be William Henry Blore. He'd see to that all right.

(But the revolver... What about the revolver? That was the disturbing factor - the revolver!)

Blore sat on his bed, his brow furrowed, his little eyes creased and puckered while he pondered the problem of the revolver...

In the silence he could hear the clocks strike downstairs.

Midnight.

He relaxed a little now - even went so far as to lie down on his bed. But he did not undress.

He lay there, thinking. Going over the whole business from the beginning, methodically, painstakingly, as he had been wont to do in his police officer days. It was thoroughness that paid in the end.

The candle was burning down. Looking to see if the matches were within easy reach of his hand, he blew it out.

Strangely enough, he found the darkness disquieting. It was as though a thousand age-old fears awoke and struggled for supremacy in his brain. Faces floated in the air - the judge's face crowned with that mockery of grey wool - the cold dead face of Mrs. Rogers - the convulsed purple face of Anthony Marston...

Another face - pale, spectacled, with a small straw-coloured moustache...

A face he had seen sometime or other - but when? Not on the island. No, much longer ago than that.

Funny, that he couldn't put a name to it... Silly sort of face really - fellow looked a bit of a mug.

Of course!

It came to him with a real shock.

Landor!

Odd to think he'd completely forgotten what Landor looked like. Only yesterday he'd been trying to recall the fellow's face, and hadn't been able to.

And now here it was, every feature clear and distinct, as though he had seen it only yesterday...

Landor had had a wife - a thin slip of a woman with a worried face. There'd been a kid too, a girl about fourteen. For the first time, he wondered what had become of them...

(The revolver. What had become of the revolver? That was much more important...)

The more he thought about it the more puzzled he was... He didn't understand this revolver business...

Somebody in the house had got that revolver...

Downstairs a clock struck one.

Blore's thoughts were cut short. He sat up on the bed, suddenly alert. For he had heard a sound - a very faint sound - somewhere outside his bedroom door.

There was some one moving about in the darkened house.

The perspiration broke out on his forehead. Who was it, moving secretly and silently along the corridors? Some one who was up to no good, he'd bet that!

Noiselessly, in spite of his heavy build, he dropped off the bed and with two strides was standing by the door listening.

But the sound did not come again. Nevertheless Blore was convinced that he was not mistaken. He had heard a footfall just outside his door. The hair rose slightly on his scalp. He knew fear again...

Some one creeping about stealthily in the night...

He listened - but the sound was not repeated.

And now a new temptation assailed him. He wanted, desperately, to go out and investigate. If he could only see who it was prowling about in the darkness.

But to open his door would be the action of a fool. Very likely that was exactly what the other was waiting for. He might even have meant Blore to hear what he had heard, counting on him coming out to investigate.

Blore stood rigid - listening. He could hear sounds everywhere now, cracks, rustles, mysterious whispers - but his dogged realistic brain knew them for what they were - the creations of his own heated imagination.

And then suddenly he heard something that was not imagination. Footsteps, very soft, very cautious, but plainly audible to a man listening with all his ears as Blore was listening.

They came softly along the corridor (both Lombard's and Armstrong's rooms were farther from the stair-head than his). They passed his door without hesitating or faltering.

And as they did so, Blore made up his mind.

He meant to see who it was! The footsteps had definitely passed his door going to the stairs. Where was the man going?

When Blore acted, he acted quickly, surprisingly so for a man who looked so heavy and slow. He tiptoed back to the bed, slipped matches into his pocket, detached the plug of the electric lamp by his bed, and picked it up winding the flex round it. It was a chromium affair with a heavy ebonite base - a useful weapon.

He sprinted noiselessly across the room, removed the chair from under the door handle and with precaution unlocked and unbolted the door. He stepped out into the corridor. There was a faint sound in the hall below; Blore ran noiselessly in his stockinged feet to the head of the stairs.

At that moment he realized why it was he had heard all these sounds so clearly. The wind had died down completely and the sky must have cleared. There was faint moonlight coming in through the landing window and it illuminated the hall below.

Blore had an instantaneous glimpse of a figure just passing out through the front door.