Patricia Wentworth - Out of the Past

With a slight preliminary cough Miss Silver ventured a remark on this. She did not herself feel the heat-the English summer was so sadly short that it was a pity not to take advantage of it-but she was not averse from the protection of an old black umbrella so much more often in use against the rain. She said,

“You do not feel the sun, Lady Castleton?”

“Oh, no.”

There was a hint of surprise that the question should have been put-almost of surprise that Miss Silver should have addressed her at all. There was certainly nothing to encourage a continuance of the conversation. Yet Miss Silver continued it.

“You do not find that it gives you a headache?”

“No, I do not.”

Miss Silver went on knitting.

“Mrs. Hardwick mentioned that you had been suffering from headaches, and I wondered whether it was really prudent to expose yourself so freely to this heat.”

Adela Castleton looked out over the sand to that bright stretch of sea. The shingle ended, the sand ran out, the tide was coming in. The Black Rock showed like a distant speck. Without taking any notice of what Miss Silver had said or so much as looking at her she got to her feet.

“Well, I think I shall go in,” she said, and strolled towards the hut. “Are you coming, Esther? James and Carmona are down by the pools, but she isn’t going to swim. It’s a pity you never had her taught properly.”

She raised her voice to carry the last few words, and so came to the beach hut and went in. The door stood open to the sun and to the air. The floor had been scrubbed. A new gay strip of matting lay across it. Under it, stubborn and enduring, the stain of Alan’s blood.

As she watched, Miss Silver could not see that there was either hesitancy or avoidance. Lady Castleton crossed the threshold with an even step and shut out the sun.

Turning her head again, she saw that Esther Field was folding her white embroidery and wrapping it in an old soft handkerchief.

“I don’t really care to walk so far down the beach, but Adela never can bear to wait. If she wants a thing, it has to happen at once. But I’m not like that. I don’t mind how long I wait if there is something worth while at the end of it.”

She too went up the beach, and she too was watched. But at the closed door there was again no hesitation. Her hand came up and knocked. Then she lifted the latch and went in.

Lady Castleton was the first to come out-black bathing-suit modelling the perfect figure, black and emerald scarf hiding the close-bound hair, a bright green towelling robe across her arm. She went down the beach without looking back, passed Miss Silver without a glance or a word, and so down to the water’s edge, where she stood talking to James and Carmona.

Esther Field followed her. She too wore a plain black suit, but conscious that she no longer had a figure slim enough to display, she hugged her robe about her and only handed it to Carmona at the water’s edge.

Carmona came up with it over her arm. She looked relaxed and happy. Her brief sun-bathing suit was splashed and wet. Its colours contrasted gaily with the bare brown of her skin. She slipped into the matching overdress and buttoned it. Then she sat down to watch the three swimmers who were making for the Rock. The hot, lazy time went by.

Frank Abbott was finding his assignment a pleasant one. The temperature was probably climbing towards the nineties. Colt and the Superintendent were stewing in it, and the hotter it got, the more passionately would they feel about arresting Miss Anning. And here he was, in the water where they couldn’t get at him. He had now for many years considered Miss Silver to be unique, but seldom had he experienced such a glow of admiration as when he reflected that it was her beneficent hand which had plucked him from being a fellow sufferer with the Superintendent and Colt and plunged him into this cool buoyancy. He began to assemble a suitable tribute, enhanced by quotation from Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

“Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy cliffs, O Sea-or was it crags?

And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me.”

After which he would, of course, do his best to utter them.

As he rounded the point, the Black Rock came into view, looking small and far away. It would take him another quarter of an hour, he judged. Having all but reached it early yesterday morning, he had been near enough to identify it as one of those chimneys which rise up suddenly in prolongation of a headland. On the landward side it rose sheer from the water, but towards the sea where the tides had fretted it there was a series of ledges, accessible to swimmers at any but the highest of the spring tides and a pleasant basking-ground in weather like this.

As he drew nearer, someone dived from the rock and began to swim towards the shore-a woman in a black bathing-suit.

She swam strongly and without turning her head. There was no reason to suppose that she had seen him.

He came to the shoreward side of the rock and skirted it, paddling gently. He might be too early, or too late. There might have been no need for him to have come at all. Miss Silver had not really told him very much. He was to swim out to the Black Rock, and he was to avoid being seen. There might be two people there. What passed between them could be of vital importance.

He paddled slowly. So far only one person had shown up, and she was making for the shore. Then, as the thought passed through his mind, the sound of voices came to him, a man’s first, and then a woman’s. That was all for the moment. He must come nearer if he was to hear what was being said. Another silent stroke or two and the sound carried words. It was the man speaking, and he was James Hardwick. He said,

“I don’t see that I can do anything else.”

The woman laughed.

“You can hold your tongue.”

“Not if they arrest Miss Anning.”

“And why not?”

“I tell you, I saw you. I followed Pippa, and I saw her go down to the hut. She must have given you the fright of your life, but she didn’t see you. I suppose you were close up against the cliff where the path comes down. As soon as she had passed you and got on to the shingle you came up the path, running.”

She laughed again.

“Oh, not I! I was in bed and asleep-I just don’t qualify. You see, I went up early with a headache and took a couple of sleeping-tablets. Carmona was there. And when you all came up to bed she looked in just to make sure that I was really asleep-as of course I was.”

James Hardwick said,

“Carmona brought you the tablets and saw you drink something out of a tumbler. She came into your room somewhere after half past ten and heard you breathing as if you were asleep. There was still plenty of time for you to keep your appointment at the hut-perhaps an hour, perhaps even longer. You had all the time you needed, but you overran it. Of course you didn’t know that Pippa had an appointment too. A minute or two earlier and she might have been a very inconvenient witness.”

Her voice hardened.

“This is all quite absurd. You cannot seriously suppose that I went to the hut at midnight to meet Alan Field. That sort of thing is hardly in my line. Really!”

He said,

“No of course not. I didn’t mean anything like that.”

“Then what did you mean?”

“I think he was probably blackmailing you.”

“I can assure you that there is nothing in my life which would give him the opportunity.”

“There are things that can be twisted-there are things which affect other people. All I know is that you came up from the beach on Wednesday night just after Pippa went down. She cried out when she came to the hut, and I started to go down after her. Then I heard you running. I only just managed to get out of your way before you passed me.”