Patricia Wentworth - Out of the Past

“It must by then have been getting on for midnight. They are moving off, when Marie pulls him by the sleeve. She puts her lips to his ear and whispers. Someone else is getting out of that convenient dining-room window. They stand perfectly still, and a man drops to the ground and goes off round the house in the direction of the cliff path. When he has gone, Marie says, ‘That was Monsieur Field,’ and Cardozo is angry. He wishes to follow and have it out with him, and that doesn’t suit Marie at all. She tries to persuade him to put it off-to wait till tomorrow. She says he is angry, he will make a scene, she will get into trouble-perhaps even it may be a matter for the police, and what would he say to that? Cardozo admits that he would think very poorly of it, and he cools down. They talk a little longer, and then he says that he will be prudent and control himself, but why should they not walk along the cliff and see what has happened to Alan? Well, they do. Figuring it out, they must have just missed Mrs. Anning, who left by way of the glass door in the drawing-room. She must have been on her way down the path to the beach before they came to the place where it leaves the cliff path. They went on beyond that, and so they did not see Lady Castleton come along from Cliff Edge and go down too. But they didn’t go very far. All at once Cardozo saw the flash of a torch on the beach-Field put on his torch when he went into the hut, and so did Lady Castleton. When Cardozo saw the light he took it into his head that Field was down there, and that it was a place where they might talk and no one disturb them. He turned back, went down the path to the beach, and came to the hut just as Mrs. Anning describes. Extraordinary thing, that statement of hers, don’t you think? Now you heard it twice. Did she vary it at all?”

“By scarcely a word, Frank. But to me that seems natural. Ever since her illness her mind had remained unoccupied. When, once more startled into action, it began to receive and record impressions, I should expect them to be simple, factual, and enduring. She told her story as a child does or an uneducated person, without the distraction of other and competing thoughts. The result, a clear and truthful narrative.”

He said,

“Yes. As usual, you hit the nail on the head. Well, that’s all about Cardozo, I think. He got the paper he was looking for of course, just as Mrs. Anning says. And if she hadn’t made her simple factual statement, it might have cost him his life. No one-no one would have believed he was innocent if that paper had been found on him actually stained, as it was, with Field’s blood. He could wash his hands, as Marie very prudently insisted on his doing, but he could not wash the blood off that piece of paper, and if he had been picked up with it on him-”

“Where was it, Frank?”

He laughed.

“In the heel of his right boot. He must have known he was risking his neck by keeping it on him, but there wasn’t a soul in the world he would trust with it. And now he’ll be off to collect the treasure-if it really exists. Ill-gotten goods don’t seem very lucky to handle. This particular lot has the usual trail of blood and crime.”

Miss Silver quoted from a very much older author than her favourite Lord Tennyson:

“ ‘He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent.’ ”

Frank lifted a hand and let it fall again.

“Well, Solomon knew a thing or two,” he said. “And now, what about you? Are you staying on, or are you coming back to town?”

“I shall be returning to Sea View for a few days. Miss Anning has been able to get temporary help, a very nice woman who was with them for some years before her marriage, and she will, I think, be glad to have me there, though now that Mrs. Anning is so much better she will be more of a companion.”

“I am afraid this business will have hit her financially.”

“To a certain extent that is unavoidable. But she has a number of September bookings which she hopes will not be affected. There are three Miss Margetsons who come down every year for the whole of the month. She has rung them up, and they would not think of altering their arrangements. There are also some friends of theirs, a Mr. and Mrs. Bunting, to whom they had recommended Sea View, and who are most unlikely to change their plans. So I hope that Miss Anning will not be too much inconvenienced.”

Frank Abbott, stretched comfortably on the small of his back, remarked that she would be lucky if she got out of it so well.

“I hope she knows that if it hadn’t been for you she would have been arrested before Lady Castleton showed her hand. In fact if it hadn’t been for you, I suppose the hand just wouldn’t have been shown at all. Now, how on earth did you come to suspect her? I’ve been wondering about that.”

“The sleeping-tablet,” said Miss Silver. “When I found that she had not only taken them in Mrs. Hardwick’s presence, but had asked her to look in again and make sure that she was sleeping, the idea of a carefully prepared alibi suggested itself. The whole thing was out of character in anyone so obviously assured and self-reliant as Lady Castleton. I went on to consider her relation to the other people in the house. She had known them all for a very long time. She was beautiful, gifted, and successful, but she did not seem to inspire affection. She was bound to Mrs. Field by old ties of friendship, but the link appeared to be more one of habit than of anything else. There did not seem to have been any warmth in her marriage. Mrs. Trevor informs me that the only person to whom she had ever been truly attached was her sister Irene, drowned ten years ago. There was, I found, a general feeling that she took her own way and did what she chose. One of those dominant women who do not allow themselves to be deflected from whatever purpose they may have in hand. In fact a very dangerous person to blackmail.”

“But you did not know that she was being blackmailed.”

She said in her most precise manner,

“It became apparent. Mrs. Field talked to me a good deal. It was clear that her stepson had been trying to get money out of her. She did not say that the letters which he was threatening to publish involved Lady Castleton’s young sister. She merely told me that girls always would run after her husband, and that he was too kind-hearted to snub them. She said there was one in particular who had behaved very foolishly, and that it had all been very distressing, because she was drowned whilst bathing, but of course that must have been due to an attack of cramp. It was Mrs. Trevor who supplied the link, when she told me of Lady Castleton’s devotion to a sister who had met with this tragic fate. It is difficult in retrospect to reckon up all the small things which confirm suspicion and add to it. If the letters mentioned by Mrs. Field were of equal concern to Lady Castleton, would Alan Field have neglected this farther opportunity of blackmail? Was she the kind of woman who would submit to such pressure to allow her sister’s name to be damaged? I was sure that she was not. Continuing my observations, I discerned what interested me very much. Everyone in the house showed signs of increasing strain. Pippa Maybury was very near to breaking-point. But Lady Castleton, described as suffering from severe headaches on Tuesday and Wednesday and being obliged to go off early to bed and take a sleeping-draught, appeared now to be in perfect health. Under a controlled manner I was aware of something to which it is difficult to give a name. Triumph is, perhaps, too strong a word-satisfaction not in quite the right vein. Perhaps the nearest I can get to it is accomplishment. It kept on getting stronger all the time, and in the end it alarmed me profoundly-” She broke off with a slight smile, adding, “You see, it is all very simple.”