Death Among the Sunbathers (16 page)

It was under the first influence, however, that early in the afternoon she ran down from her mother's room where she had been sitting, to answer a knock she thought she recognized. But it was John Curtis who was there, and when she saw him she exclaimed,

‘Oh, it's you, I thought it was Maurice.'

Curtis came by her into the house. She closed the door and he said to her,

‘Have you seen him?'

‘Maurice?' she asked quickly, and shook her head; and Curtis went on,

‘I'm looking for him, I thought he might be here. I want to find him.'

‘What for?' she asked with quick apprehension, and Curtis said,

‘He and that fellow, Hunter, they had a big row this morning.'

‘A row? They quarrelled?' she asked, and when he nodded she said with something like fresh terror in her eyes, ‘Why? What about?'

‘I don't know,' Curtis said. He added with sudden violence, ‘I want to know. I've got to know.'

They were still standing in the hall. Apparently it did not occur to either of them to enter one of the rooms. The hall was no more than a narrow passage leading from the front door to the little drawing-room at the back of the house, and Curtis with his heavy, massive body and broad shoulders seemed to fill it, to dominate, too, the small, shrinking figure of the girl. She said in a low voice,

‘Why? Why do you want to know?' and then when he did not answer but only looked at her gloomily, ‘How do you know Maurice and Mr Hunter have quarrelled?'

‘I heard them at it,' Curtis answered. ‘I went to Deal Street this morning. I wanted to see Keene. There was no one in the shop. That girl he has wasn't there, or the shop boy or anyone. But I heard him and Hunter shouting at each other in the room behind. Hunter was carrying on like a madman, swearing and threatening. He – I think he was accusing Keene of – of something.' He paused. ‘I've got to know what he meant by what he said, what Hunter said,' he finished slowly.

Sybil did not answer. Even if there had been anything she wished to say, her mounting terror would have held her silent. Curtis said,

‘She was your sister... will you... I mean... will you help find out who killed her?'

Still Sybil was silent, for indeed all power of speech had left her. He stared at her intently, his gaze never wavering, and yet it was as if he saw not so much her herself, but rather some far-off vision of which she was but a part.

‘I've got to know what they were quarrelling about,' he went on. ‘I want to know what Hunter meant when he talked about something Keene had – done. Something... I've got to know... but they were shouting at each other, and both at once, and there was something, too, about that hang-dog looking fellow Keene's had working there – Bobs– the-Boy they call him. Only then they woke up to it someone was there. Hunter opened the door and looked out, and when he saw me he gave a sort of jump. He didn't say anything. He just put his head down and rushed by as quick as he could. He looked half mad. In the war, years ago, I remember seeing men look like that, under a barrage, wondering where the next shell would go. Keene came out after him. He didn't know me at first, at least, he didn't seem to. He said, “Anything I can do for you?” Then he seemed to cotton to it who I was. He said, “Oh, it's you.” I asked him what he and Hunter had been rowing about, and he gave just the same sort of jump Hunter did when he saw there was someone there, and then that girl who works there came in. He said to her all in a hurry, as if he were trying to say it all at once, in one word, “Oh, you attend to Mr Curtis, will you?” and then he bolted right out of the shop just as he was, without a hat or anything. I ran after him, but he was too quick, he was across the road at once and a lot of traffic came up and I lost him. I went back to the shop and waited, but he didn't come. Has he been here?'

‘No,' Sybil answered.

‘Do you expect him?'

‘I don't think so, no. Why?'

‘Jo was your sister,' Curtis said. ‘You ought to help.'

‘I don't know what you mean, why do you say that?' she almost whispered, and then, more loudly, ‘Maurice doesn't know anything... not about that.'

It was a long time before Curtis spoke again, and the tension in the narrow passage grew almost unbearable. Then Curtis said abruptly,

‘There's something he knows or Hunter knows or both of them. I've told the police so. I went straight there and told them when I couldn't find Keene or Hunter either, though I tried his place in Howland Yard.' He added, as if in concession to her tortured, panic-stricken eyes, ‘The police-inspector or superintendent or whatever he is, Mitchell his name is, he seemed to think it might be all about something else. There's one of his men he called Owen, he seemed to think he knew more about the case than anyone else, he says he's on special duty following it up – Mitchell said this Owen chap had made a report and they were trying to check up on Keene's movements the' – he hesitated – ‘the afternoon when Jo...' Again he hesitated, and then went on more quickly, ‘Well, Keene was there, at that sun bathing place, I mean, that afternoon. So was Hunter. Looks as if they were meeting there, so it wouldn't be noticed. Well, where did Keene go when he left just before Jo arrived? What he says is, he meant to drive out to see a prospective client somewhere near Rugby, but half way he remembered the client was on the continent, and so he turned back and went home. He says he only drove slowly, and that accounts for the time he took; but if that's so, he drove very slowly indeed, and why should he? He didn't stop anywhere for tea or anything, he met no one likely to know him, he hasn't a scrap of evidence to confirm his story.'

Sybil interrupted sharply, throwing out a hand against him.

‘Maurice didn't do it,' she said, ‘if that's what you mean.'

 ‘Well, then, who did?' Curtis retorted. ‘What were they quarrelling about? We've got to know that to be sure.'

 ‘You've no right to suspect Maurice,' she flashed at him, the kind of terrified composure she had shown before breaking out into a protesting cry. ‘How dare you suspect him?'

‘He's not the only one; the police suspect me,' Curtis answered with a touch of wildness in his manner. ‘You know, that's tough – to have people think you murdered your own wife when – when you loved her. But they do, at least some of them do. I'm not sure about the Owen fellow whose report Mitchell showed me. He seemed to have an idea – I couldn't understand what, and Mitchell wouldn't say even if he knew himself. The other night they were just going to arrest me, only they changed their minds... I don't know why... they said it was a photograph in the
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... eye-wash, of course, but they must have had some reason... most likely they're only waiting... I don't care much about being hanged, but I don't want to be hanged for killing Jo, while the man who did it stops all right... that's all... well, will you find out what Hunter and Keene were quarrelling about... where Keene really went that afternoon after he left the sun bathing place?'

‘Do you know where Mr Hunter was?' Sybil asked, though with obvious effort.

‘They're trying to check his movements as well,' Curtis answered, ‘at least I think so, I think this Owen man has that in hand as well. Hunter's story is that he went back to town by train, and when he got in he went to keep an appointment with a man on business, and then changed his mind, because he didn't want to seem too eager and thought instead he would wait for the other fellow to make the first move. He got some tea at a tea-shop, and then went into a news cinema for an hour, and didn't get back to Howland Yard till late, after everyone else had gone. He did some work in his own office and then went home, and all it comes to is that his story just rests on what he says himself. He can't produce any evidence to confirm it. None of us can, us three I mean. I daresay the police don't believe it's true I went straight back to the flat and stopped there till I was dead drunk. No one saw me, any more than anyone saw Keene or Hunter. And one of the three of us may be lying. But Hunter's out of it, I suppose, he hardly knew Jo, he could have no motive.'

‘No,' agreed Sybil in her low, almost whispering voice, ‘no, he couldn't, could he?'

‘What do you mean?' Curtis asked sharply. ‘Why, he didn't know her, not to speak of.' He went on without waiting for a reply, ‘She was your sister and she's been murdered... it's up to you... are you going to help to find out who did it?'

‘Yes,' she said, and the soft monosyllable seemed to linger strangely in the quiet, still air of the tiny hall where they yet stood.

‘Well, now then,' he muttered, staring at her afresh, as if he recognized in that little word some strange quality he did not fully understand.

Presently he went on,

‘If the murderer stopped Jo's car after Mitchell says they saw it go past him, then it was probably someone she knew. She wouldn't be likely to stop for any stranger. But if she had been murdered before, and her body was hidden in the car, and the murderer was driving it, in her hat and coat he had put on as a disguise – then most likely she was shot in the Grange car park by someone waiting there to do it. Only who? And why?'

Sybil made no answer.

After a long silence he said loudly, and roughly,

‘I've told you what you can do.'

After saying that, he turned and went away, banging the front door behind him. Sybil waited a little and then went upstairs.

‘Mother,' she said, entering her mother's room, ‘I'm phoning for a nurse to come in this evening. I think I shall have to be out late to-night.'

In his room at Scotland Yard next day Superintendent Mitchell sat before his desk, regarding it with a melancholy and indeed despairing eye. It was a large desk, of the very latest pattern, provided with all those latest conveniences which make mislaying the document you specially require so fatally easy, and only recently had it been wangled, with some difficulty, from the competent authority. Now it was covered with files, files to the right, files to the left, files in front; even the wonderfully designed drawers on each side bulged with more files, reports, correspondence. Mitchell's brow perspired spontaneously just to look at them.

Yearningly he wished he were the ideal detective of popular imagination, chiefly engaged on examining the scene of the crime through a large magnifying glass, identifying invisible finger-prints, brilliantly deducing from infallible signs on a burnt match-stick the age, height, name and address, and political opinions of the user. Whereas what he had to do was to toil through all these masses of reports and try to abstract those relevant facts that might perhaps indicate in what direction the truth might best be sought.

Yet though both to himself and to the casual onlooker he presented the appearance of any ordinary business man dealing with the morning's correspondence on an extra busy day, nonetheless as he sat there with his files, his letters, his carbon copies, his card index, his desk telephone, he was just as much the grim huntsman, fierce upon the trail of the flying murderer, on the clearness of whose vision lay the issues of life and death, on whom it depended whether the spilt blood still unavenged should cry to heaven in vain or no, as the sleuth of imagination more dramatically engaged on the scene of the crime. For it was he who held the threads that ran between his desk and the score or more of busy agents, checking this fact, verifying that, putting this other to the proof, who were engaged on the case; and his was the task of weaving from the mass of disconnected, unnecessary facts presented to him the inevitable pattern that would mean life with honour for one, and for another a death of shame upon the scaffold. To the understanding eye indeed this that seemed just the everyday spectacle of a business man occupied with his letters and his files had about it something more intense and daunting and dramatic than any such scene as the fancy might conjure up of the hawk-eyed detective, strangely disguised, poring over signs indistinguishable to all others.

Not that Mitchell felt like that himself. He was wondering how any human being could bear up under this barrage of reports and documents, and thinking how jolly it would be to shove the whole lot into the waste-paper basket and get out into the open air. Enviously he thought of his juniors whose duties did not keep them tied all day to an office chair. There was that lucky young devil, Owen, for example, running round the whole time, and never any need to soil his fingers with a fountain pen except when he sat down at night to write another report to be added to the pile upon this nice new overloaded desk it had been such a triumph to get through.

Owen's last report indeed was at this moment in the hands of the only other occupant of the room, Inspector Ferris, for whom Mitchell had just sent in order that he might read it over before starting out on the day's round.

‘Well, what do you make of it?' Mitchell asked when Ferris, having read it twice, put it down thoughtfully.

‘Difficult to say,' answered Ferris prudently, ‘but it does show I was right about seeing Sybil Frankland there, since Owen says he saw her, too, dodging round just in the same secret way.'

Mitchell glanced over his laden desk, and then, by virtue probably of a sixth sense much dealing with reports had developed, made a grab at the very one he wanted.

‘From the chap we have watching the Ealing house,' he explained; ‘it says she got back last night late, arriving by the last train probably. So anyhow she didn't come to any harm there.'

‘Did you think she might?' Ferris asked, a little startled.

‘Her sister did,' Mitchell answered grimly. He added after a pause, ‘I would give quite a lot to know what she's up to.'