Patricia Wentworth - Pilgrim’s Rest

Miss Silver coughed.

“There are four staircases from this floor to the next, and two to the attic floor. It is extremely confusing and makes a great deal of work.”

Randall March agreed.

“It makes it impossible to check what Robbins says. Mrs. Robbins corroborates him, but of course she would-says he was only away a few minutes. The daily girl had gone home. Of course there’s not the slightest reason to suspect the Robbinses of anything. Thirty years service is a character in itself.”

Miss Silver looked up.

“A great many things may happen in thirty years,” she said.

He returned her look with one half startled, half protesting.

“And what do you mean by that?”

“I will tell you presently. Pray proceed.”

“Robbins says that Miss Freyne was still there when he was in his room, which is next door to the attic where the papers were being sorted. I asked him how he knew, and he said he could hear the voices. I said, ‘You could hear people talking, but how do you know that one of them was Miss Freyne? It might have been somebody else.’ He said it was Miss Freyne, because his window was open and he had to lean out to shut it-it’s one of those casements, as you know. He says the next-door window was still open and he could see Miss Freyne. She was sitting on the window-seat with her back to him, and Roger was standing by her. He says he heard her say, ‘Oh, Roger, you can’t do it-you mustn’t!’ and then he shut his window and came downstairs. I asked Miss Freyne what about it, and she said yes, Roger told her he was going to sell, and she felt very upset about it. She doesn’t remember exactly what she said, but it would be something like that. I asked her why the window was open, and she said Roger had an oil stove up there and they got hot. You do, you know, when you’re sorting things. I asked her if there was any quarrel, and she said oh no, of course not. And I asked her how soon after this she came away, and she said almost at once. Which to some extent corroborates Robbins, because she originally said she left at a quarter past six, and Robbins says it was ten past when he went up to his room. The trouble is that we don’t know the actual time of the fall. Nobody seems to have heard anything. And that’s odd.”

Miss Silver’s needles clicked.

“It is not as strange as it appears. The bedrooms which look out upon the garden are old Mr. Pilgrim’s and the one which Roger used to occupy, neither of which is in use, the one into which Roger had moved, and on the other side of the stairs an empty room and the one occupied by Captain Jerome Pilgrim. On the ground floor there are the two unused drawing-rooms and the study. Miss Day’s room and the one I am occupying, Miss Elliot’s and the two Miss Pilgrims’ rooms, all look towards the street.”

He nodded.

“Yes, I have seen the rooms. Jerome should have heard something, but I understand that he had the wireless going. Even so, you would have thought-” He broke off with a frown, looked down at the paper in his hand, and went on again. “Pell found him when he went to lock the gates just before seven. Daly says he might have been dead half an hour or three quarters when he saw him, which was at five minutes past seven, as he happened to be in and had only to walk about a hundred yards down the street when Miss Columba’s call came through. You see how fluid it leaves the time. According to Robbins, Roger was alive and talking to Miss Freyne at ten minutes past six. According to Miss Freyne, he was alive when she looked at her watch and left him at a quarter past. I pressed Daly as to whether he might have been dead before that, and he said it was a thing nobody could swear to one way or the other. He doesn’t think he’d been dead for more than three quarters of an hour, but-he might have been. If it was suicide it probably happened as soon as Miss Freyne had gone. I don’t mind telling you that’s what I’m inclined to think. Daly said he was in a very nervy state. He had screwed himself up to selling the place against a good deal of opposition from the family. What Miss Freyne said about it was the last straw. He waited until she was gone and threw himself out.”

Miss Silver coughed and said,

“No, Randall, it was not suicide.”

“You sound very sure about that.”

“I feel very sure about it.”

“Why?”

“He did not want to die. He wanted to sell this place, get away from it, and live in a small modern house. He was not engaged, but he had an attachment. He looked forward to marrying and settling down. I feel quite sure that it was not suicide.”

“Accident then. Those windows come down to within a few inches of the floor-that window-seat affair is only a low step up. It would be easy enough to over-balance if he had any kind of a turn.”

Miss Silver shook her head again and said,

“No.”

He looked at her with good-tempered exasperation.

“Then I suppose you are going to tell me just what happened.”

She rested her hands upon the now voluminous mass of Ethel’s jumper and said gravely,

“No, I cannot do that. But it was murder, Randall. Roger Pilgrim was murdered.”

There was one of those silences which are not noticed because thought talks so loudly. Murder is a word to which no amount of use can quite accustom us. The voice of blood calling from the earth must always be a dreadful voice, and one before which all others fall to silence.

Randall March broke this one, his voice dry and official as he said,

“What proof have you that it was murder?”

Miss Silver picked up her needles and began to knit again very composedly. She said,

“I have no proof. But I have a good many interesting things to tell you. To begin with, I am here in my professional capacity because Roger Pilgrim believed that two attempts had been made upon his life.”

“What were they?”

She told him very succinctly.

“You can go and look at the two rooms for yourself. The fallen ceiling was attributed to an overflowing sink, the burnt-out room to a spark from the wood fire setting light to the papers which Roger Pilgrim had been sorting. In the first case, the sink is twelve feet away on the other side of a passage the ceiling of which did not come down, and I shall be greatly surprised if you do not agree with me that the amount of wet still traceable under the floor of the room immediately over Roger’s points to water having been deliberately applied there. In the second case, Roger was convinced that he had been drugged. He fell heavily asleep after taking a small whisky and soda, and awoke to find the room blazing and, as he declared to me, the door locked on the outside. He said he had been keeping the key there because of having these confidential papers spread about. It was his habit, apparently, to lock the room as he went out. By the time the fire had been got under, he told me, the door had been unlocked again. But he couldn’t get out that way. He had to break a window.”

“Did you believe that his life had been attempted?”

She was knitting rapidly.

“I kept an open mind. There was no real evidence, as Frank Abbott told him.”

“Abbott?”

“They were at school together. Frank has relatives in the neighbourhood. He advised Roger to come and see me.”

Randall March said abruptly,

“What would the motive be?”

“To prevent him from selling the property.”

“What!”

“He was about to do so. In similar circumstances his father also met with a fatal accident.”

Miss Silver frowned upon an exclamation which she considered profane. In a reproving voice she informed him of what the old groom William had told Roger about the presence of a thorn under his father’s saddle.