Patricia Wentworth - The Catherine Wheel

Frank nodded.

“I expect you’re right. But we shan’t be able to prove anything-unless somebody turns King’s evidence.”

It was at this moment that there was the sound of running feet. They came from the direction of the lounge. The communicating door was thrown open and Jane Heron appeared, her eyes startled, her colour coming and going. She checked on the threshold with an “Oh, Miss Silver!” and then came out with,

“I can’t find Eily!”

Miss Silver knew then what she had been afraid of. She rose to her feet and put her knitting down upon the table.

Jeremy had come up behind Jane. Mildred Taverner was straying towards them across the lounge. There was a horrid similarity to the scene before the door of Florence Duke’s room that very morning. Mildred said in a trembling whisper,

“Things always happen in threes-first Luke, and then Florence, and now Eily. Oh, why did I come to this horrible house!”

Miss Silver said, “Hush!” And then, to Jane, “Was she not with you?”

“We went out just for a little-really only up and down on the cliff. Eily said she was going to help Cousin Annie. When we came in she wasn’t there. She isn’t anywhere-we’ve been all over the house.”

“You do not think that she has gone to meet John Higgins?”

“No-he’s just been up asking for her. He’s outside now. He didn’t want to come in. That is why I was looking for Eily.”

Miss Silver acted with decision.

“Please go and fetch him. Miss Taverner, will you go back to the lounge.”

She shut the door upon herself and Frank Abbott.

“Frank, this may be serious. Inspector Crisp should be here, and enough men to take charge. There are dangerous criminals involved. If Eily has really disappeared, it means that one of them has played his own hand and is risking the safety of the others. I don’t need to tell you just how dangerous that may be.”

“Crisp should have been here by now. He may be here at any minute.”

She said in as grave a voice as he had ever heard her use,

“We have no minutes to spare. That man Luke White is not sane about Eily. If, as I have suspected, he has the secret of the other passage, and is somewhere in the house-”

“You think he has carried her off? But the risk-”

“My dear Frank, when did the thought of risk deter a man with a crazy passion?”

The door on to the passage was thrown open and John Higgins came in, Jane and Jeremy a little way behind. It was clear that he had run and outstripped them.

“Where’s Eily?” he said.

Miss Silver went up to him and put her hand on his arm.

“We will find her, Mr. Higgins, but everyone must help.”

“Help?” He gave a sob. “What do you mean?”

She said, “I will tell you,” and at the same moment Frank Abbott touched her.

“There’s Crisp. What do you want-the Castells rounded up?”

“Everyone rounded up. I think one of the Mr. Taverners has returned. I thought someone came in while we were talking. I want everyone together, and at once. There must be no delay. It is extremely urgent.”

He said, “All right-everyone in the lounge,” and went out that way.

Miss Silver spoke to the three who remained.

“Mr. Higgins-Captain Taverner-Miss Heron-if any one of you know anything at all about this house, you must disclose it now. Mr. Jacob Taverner showed you a passage between the cellars and the shore. I think that it was shown to you as a blind. It may have been shown to him in the same way- I do not know. But I am sure that there is another passage, or at the very least a secret room, perhaps communicating with that passage to the shore. If Eily has disappeared she will be in this room, and the entrance must be found without delay. It was Albert Miller who was murdered on Saturday night. Luke White is alive. This is the first time since Saturday that the moon and the tide would be favourable to his being put across the Channel. Eily’s disappearance looks as if the attempt was to be made tonight and he was making a crazy bid to take her with him. Now if one of you knows any single thing that will help us to discover the entrance to this second passage or room, you will see that you must not hold it back.”

A few minutes later she was saying this all over again to a larger audience. There were present Inspector Crisp, the plain-clothes detective Willis, a constable at either door of the lounge, Castell, and, of the Taverner connection, Annie Castell, Jane, Jeremy, Mildred Taverner, and her brother Geoffrey looking as neat as she was dishevelled and a good deal concerned.

“Most unfortunate-there must be some mistake. Surely the girl may have gone out to meet a friend-I really can’t imagine-”

Most of these sentences were addressed to Jane, who merely received them with a shake of the head, upon which they petered out and led to nothing.

Inspector Crisp rapped upon the table at which he had seated himself and said,

“Eily Fogarty has disappeared. She is not in the hotel. Her outdoor coat and shoes are not missing, and it seems improbable that she would have gone out without them. Miss Silver has something which she wishes to say. I don’t take any responsibility for it, but I am willing to give her the opportunity of saying it. Miss Silver-”

Miss Silver rose to her feet and looked about her. Mildred Taverner was sniffing into a damp handkerchief. Her brother Geoffrey had a bewildered air. Annie Castell sat large and shapeless upon a chair which disappeared from view beneath her bulk. Her face was pale and without any expression, the eyelids faintly rimmed with pink. Her hands lay one on either knee. Every now and then the thumbs twitched. Castell, beside her, bobbed up like a jack-in-the-box.

“What a lot of nonsense is this? Eily is not in the house? Eily is out? Does a young girl never go out? Am I a slave-driver that I always keep her in? Does she not have a boy friend-a lover? Does John Higgins think he is the only one she meets? If he does, I tell him he can have another think coming!” He gave an angry laugh. “That she even runs away, how do I know? There has been a murder-there has been a suicide-she has a crisis of the nerves-and she goes off-with this one, that one-how do I know?”

Crisp said sharply,

“Sit down and hold your tongue, Castell!”

Miss Silver said what she had already said to John Higgins and to Jeremy and Jane.

When she had finished there was a silence which was broken by Jeremy.

“You are right about there being another passage. My grandfather told me enough to make me feel sure of that. And I think the entrance is on the bedroom floor, because a wounded man was brought up through it and died in the room which Eily has now.”

Frank Abbott said,

“How do you know that?”

“It was a corner room at the back. The younger children slept there to be near their parents, but on that occasion they had been turned out. My grandfather told me what his mother had told him. The whole thing was very hush-hush-I don’t think they could have risked carrying that wounded man through the house. That’s all I can tell you.”

Castell snapped his fingers.

“What you call an old wives’ tale!”

Miss Silver coughed reprovingly.

“It agrees with what Miss Taverner’s grandfather told her about being frightened at seeing a light come out of a hole in the wall when he was a little boy. He was one of the children who slept in what is now Eily’s room. But it is clear that he had left the room before he saw this light. It is impossible to believe that he went down to the cellar.”

John Higgins said heavily,

“I don’t know where it is, but there is a room. My grandmother told my father, and he told me. I’ve never spoken of it till now. I don’t know where it is.”