Patricia Wentworth - Pilgrim’s Rest

She didn’t look at him, but she heard him get to his feet.

“My room’s full of policemen, Aunt Collie. I don’t suppose I shall find it very restful.”

“Policemen? In your room?”

“You gave them leave, didn’t you? And so did I.”

She stood there frowning, her corduroy slacks stained with earth, the great fisherman’s jersey emphasizing her bulk. Lesley saw the square hands shake. But next moment they had gone for shelter to pockets which harboured a clasp knife, odd lengths of tarred twine, labels old and new.

The hands had shaken, but the voice did not shake. She said gruffly,

“What do they want? What do they think they’re going to find?”

“I don’t know.”

The catch of the window had jammed-Robbins couldn’t move it. He heard Mr. Jerome go limping into the hall to let Miss Lesley out. Went right down the passage with her to the glass door on the street. If his mind hadn’t been so much taken up he would have wondered about that, but all he wanted now was to get through with this fiddling job, to get away upstairs, to get Mr. Jerome alone if he could and have it out with him. He couldn’t go on this way. If Miss Collie would go away, he could catch Mr. Jerome on his way back from the door. But Miss Collie didn’t go. She stood there with the mud on her and her hands in her pockets and waited for him to finish with the catch. Murder in the house, and the Day of Judgment-the secrets of all hearts opened. And Miss Collie stood there and waited for him to finish with the catch of the window! He wrenched at it with desperate hands and it came over, and there was Miss Collie telling him to get a drop of oil and ease it.

As he passed through the hall, the big door stood wide. Mr. Jerome and Miss Lesley were in the glazed passage talking. If he made haste he might be able to catch Mr. Jerome before he went upstairs.

But when he came back with the oil the door was shut. Only Miss Collie stood just where she was, with her hands in her pockets, frowning.

Even then she kept him. While he was about it he could oil the other catches and make sure of them. As it turned out, there was another as stiff as the first. He had to stand and loosen it with her eye on him. Queer sort of way she’d got of looking at you as if there wasn’t anyone there. It didn’t mean anything, it was just Miss Collie’s way. But it put thoughts into your head. The secrets of all hearts-he’d never really liked to hear that read. A man’s thoughts were his own if anything was. What he had in them was his own business. But Miss Collie didn’t mean anything-it was just her way.

It was a quarter to four by the morning-room clock, all pink enamel and gilt amoretti, before he got away and went upstairs. By that time Frank Abbott and the police sergeant were on the top floor, engaged in searching his room. It is on record that he went to the door of Jerome Pilgrim’s room but did not get speech of him. After which he went up into the attic from which Roger Pilgrim had fallen just under forty-eight hours before.

At between ten minutes and five minutes to four he fell from the same window, and to the same death.

Frank Abbott and the police sergeant from Ledlington heard a cry, and immediately on that the shock and sound of the fall. They had the drawers out of the chest in Robbins’ room, and they had them stacked one over the other between them and the window. The sergeant barked his shin and brought the top drawer down. They had to shift them before they could get to the window, and then they had to get the two leaves of the casement open.

By the time they had done all this Judy Elliot was looking out of a window on the floor below, staring down at the body of Alfred Robbins, which lay on the flags where Roger Pilgrim’s body had lain. Pell was stooping over it and saying, “He’s dead, certain sure.”

Abbott called out, “Don’t touch him-don’t touch anything! We’ll be down.” And with that he drew back and made for the door.

But the door was locked. Frank stared at it, and the sergeant stared at him. There was no key on the inside.

The Ledlington sergeant stooped down and looked through the keyhole.

“It’s there, on the other side. That’s a queer start. It was this side all right when we came in-I’d swear to that.”

Frank nodded.

“I thought so too, but I don’t know about swearing. You didn’t hear the door open, did you?”

The sergeant stood up.

“We shouldn’t-not if it was when we were shifting those papers.”

The contents of the bottom drawer lay out across the floor-piles of old papers, newspaper cuttings yellow with age-the Pioneer, the Civil and Military-Indian papers, dusty with thirty-year-old news of the last war-nothing later than 1918-the whole making an uneasy bed for the dead man’s shirts. And, dropped down across them where it had fallen from Frank Abbott’s hand, a brown leather wallet.

He turned for it as the sergeant stepped back for a kick at the door. The crack of the breaking lock came as he stooped to pick it up, taking it gingerly by the edges with the handkerchief he had let fall beside it. If it was what he thought it was, there wasn’t any mystery about Alfred Robbins’ death. Most men would prefer a drop from a window to a drop at the end of a rope.

He knotted the corners of the handkerchief and followed the sergeant down the crooked stair.

Pell had been perfectly right-Robbins was dead. But the death must be certified, reported, put on record. Police procedure must take its course. At the Pilgrim’s Rest end of the telephone the police sergeant called up its ordered activities. His voice could be heard from the study by anyone standing in the passage or at that end of the hall-a good firm voice with a rasp in it, but matter-of-fact, as if what he had to report was mere routine.

“Superintendent there?… Yes, get him on the line… Smith speaking, sir. There’s been another death… Yes, the butler, Robbins-suicide… Yes, the same window as Major Pilgrim… No, nothing’s been touched. Sergeant Abbott and I were next door when it happened… You’ll be out? Very good, sir.”

In this twentieth century, murder holds as exact a state as a medieval monarch. The exists and entrances are all laid down. Surgeon, photographer, fingerprint expert make their bow and play an appointed part.

Randall March played his. Once more he sat at the study table to hear statements and put questions. The two sergeants first with their report, Smith leading off.

“We’d finished in Captain Pilgrim’s room. Nothing there. Then we went up to this attic bedroom, which is where we should have begun by rights, only Captain Pilgrim asked us to do his room first so that he could get back to it-and being an invalid, that seemed reasonable.”

March said, “How long were you up there before the fall?”

The sergeant looked at Frank Abbott and said,

“Ten minutes?”

Frank nodded.

“About that.”

Smith went on.

“We’d got the drawers out of the chest. Bottom drawer full of old newspapers and cuttings, which would account for us not hearing when he locked us in.”

March exclaimed.

“Locked you in!”

“That’s right, sir. We’re both quite sure the key was on the inside when we got there. He must have come along, opened the door without making any noise, seen what we were up to, and reached round the edge of the door for the key. Then he pulled it to, locked us in, went through to the next room and chucked himself out. He knew his number was up all right, but he’d a nerve opening the door and getting the key the way he did.”

Frank Abbott said in his detached voice,

“It was what he saw when he opened the door, I imagine, which told him his number was up. I don’t think his suicide was premeditated, or he wouldn’t have come near us. He was scared stiff of course-too scared to keep away, so he came to see what was happening, and what he saw showed him the game was up. I don’t think anyone would have planned to lock the door. It was done on the impulse, so as to give him time to take the drop his own way. After what he must have seen he’d know he was for it one way or the other.”