The Catherine Wheel (13 page)

Mrs. Bridling left with regret. She didn’t know when she’d enjoyed anything more, but like all the great moments of life it was over too soon. There was a hymn they used to sing in Sunday school:—

“Fleeting ever, fleeting onward,

Earthly joys will never stay.”

The lines came to her mind regretfully. Over it was, but it would be something to tell Mr. Bridling when she got home.

She came through the door between Castell’s office and the lounge and sat down to wait until they should be finished with John Higgins. After due consideration she had rejected the idea of going through into the kitchen to see Annie Castell. For one thing, here she was in her best, and with Annie working it wouldn’t seem hardly friendly not to give her a hand. She wasn’t ever one to stand by and watch other people work, but risk spotting her best dress was more than could be expected. The lounge was empty. She picked a comfortable chair and sat down to wait.

John Higgins was in the office, sitting with a hand on either knee, his fair hair standing up in a shock, and his blue eyes steady on the Inspector. Frank Abbott thought, “Solid, dependable chap. Hope he didn’t do it. Not the type to stab a man in the back. Unless—” Suppose the fellow had caught hold of Eily Fogarty and John Higgins had come upon them struggling. No, that wouldn’t do. There was no doubt where the knife had come from—that trophy on the chimney-breast in the dining-room. Whoever used it had got to get it from there. It wouldn’t be lying about in the hall to be snatched up on the spur of the moment.

John Higgins said,

“Yes, I walked over last night to see Miss Fogarty.”

Crisp balanced his pencil.

“Mrs. Bridling told you that there had been a scene with Luke White?”

“Yes. I went over to tell Miss Fogarty that she must leave in the morning. It wasn’t fit for her to be there. We are going to be married, and I told her she could stay with Mrs. Bridling while I got it all fixed up.”

“Did she tell you that the key of her room was missing?”

Angry colour swept up to the roots of the fair hair.

“Yes. I told her to go along to Miss Heron’s room and ask if she could stay there.”

Crisp’s bristling dark eyebrows rose.

“Do you know Miss Heron? Is she a friend of yours?”

John Higgins said, “I was sure that she would let Eily stay with her.”

Crisp stabbed at the blotting-paper.

“You had quite a talk with Miss Fogarty, didn’t you?”

“We talked.”

“For how long?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“An hour?”

John Higgins shook his head.

“Not near so long.”

“Half an hour?”

Another slow head-shake.

“More like a quarter, but I won’t swear to it.”

“And where did this conversation take place?”

“Eily was up at her window.”

“And you?”

“Down underneath.”

“Sure she didn’t let you in?”

The blue eyes looked at him very directly.

“She wouldn’t do that, and I wouldn’t ask her to.”

“That’s no answer. Did she let you in last night?”

“No, she did not.”

“Sure about that?”

John Higgins said in a hard, steady voice,

“It’s five years since I’ve been over the threshold of this house till I came here today.”

“Why?”

He gave the same answer that he had given in John Taylor’s office.

“That’s my business.”

Crisp stabbed at him with his pencil.

“Nobody’s got any private business in a murder case. Mrs. Castell is your aunt, isn’t she? What’s your quarrel with her?”

“I’ve no quarrel with my Aunt Annie.”

“Then with Castell—what’s your quarrel with him?”

“I’ve no quarrel with him. I don’t like his company. He would tell you that he doesn’t like mine. We go our own ways.”

Crisp shifted impatiently in his chair.

“We’ve got away from the point. You know that a man was murdered here last night—the barman, Luke White?”

John Higgins nodded.

“That kind of news travels fast.”

“You had a quarrel with the man, hadn’t you?”

“I had no quarrel with him.”

“Not after you’d heard what Mrs. Bridling had to say?”

The muscles of the big hands lying on either knee tensed, the knuckles stood up white. John Higgins said in his steady, deep voice,

“He was an evil-liver. It wasn’t fit for Eily to be under the same roof. I’d have fetched her away as soon as it was day.”

Crisp repeated the last words.

“As soon as it was day. But what about last night? You came out here hotfoot after you’d seen Mrs. Bridling. Are you going to say Eily Fogarty didn’t let you in?”

“I’ve said so.”

“And you sent her along to Miss Heron’s room and didn’t see her again?”

“I didn’t see her again.”

“Do you think she stayed with Miss Heron?”

“Of course she did.”

Crisp gave another of those darting stabs.

“Then how do you account for the fact that she was found down in the hall in her nightgown, and Luke White not a yard away from her with the knife in his back?”

The blood rushed powerfully to John Higgins’ face. He sprang to his feet and stood there, his hands on the table edge, gripping it hard.

“Eily—” he said. His voice caught on the name. He tried for it again, and as he did so, the hot blood drained away and left him ashy pale.

Miss Silver laid her knitting down on the floor beside her chair and got up. At the touch of her hand on his arm he turned and looked at her, an agonized question in his eyes. She said in a kind, cheerful voice,

“You have no need to be anxious, Mr. Higgins. Eily is quite safe.”

His look went blank for a moment.

“Safe—”

“She is perfectly safe, Mr. Higgins. Nothing has happened to her—nothing at all.”

He said in a stumbling voice,

“She was down there—with that man—”

“She heard a noise and came down and found him. It was a shock of course, but she is quite safe.”

Frank Abbott had a moment of unreasoned admiration for his Miss Silver. At what she considered the dictates of humanity she would without hesitation sacrifice a point in the game. She had in fact just done so, and it was annoying Inspector Crisp very much. He said with an angry edge to his voice,

“I think you had better leave this to me, Miss Silver. We have no evidence to support Eily Fogarty’s statement. If I may say so, you had no business to repeat it.”

Miss Silver turned a look of calm rebuke upon him.

“I beg your pardon, Inspector.”

Nothing could have been more proper than the words, yet in some singular manner Inspector Crisp had the feeling that his collar was too tight, and that he did not quite know what to do with his hands and feet. These were sensations which had afflicted him in his teens, now many years behind him. He had hoped never to experience them again, but during the moments that he had to support Miss Silver’s gaze they were uncomfortably prominent. It was with a good deal of relief that he saw her turn back to John Higgins. She gave a little cough and said in a confidential voice,

“You really need not be troubled about Eily. Miss Heron is with her all the time. They are doing the bedrooms together.” After which she resumed her seat and her knitting.

Inspector Crisp’s collar returned to its normal size. He felt an urgent need to assert himself. His tone was brusque as he said,

“Sit down, Higgins! Eily Fogarty says she heard a noise and came downstairs. If that’s true, the noise may have been made by the murderer. Suppose there was a window open in the lounge. I’m not saying who opened it, or for what purpose. I’m not saying it was Eily Fogarty, but it could have been. I’m not saying anyone came in that way, but you can see for yourself that someone might have done, and you can see for yourself that it might have been you. Eily Fogarty was seen to come out of the lounge with Luke White lying dead in the hall. She could have been shutting that window after you.”

John Higgins shook his head.

“I neither came in nor went out,” he said.

Crisp made a sharp thrust with his pencil.

“There was a window unlatched in the lounge.”

There were a good many more questions and answers, but the result was the same. In a perfectly deliberate manner John Higgins stuck to it that somewhere about eleven o’clock he had stood under Eily Fogarty’s window and talked to her for something like a quarter of an hour, and that he had then gone home. He had not then or at any time during the past five years set foot inside the Catherine-Wheel. He had not at any time during the past twenty-four hours either seen Luke White or had any communication with him.

When they had let him go Crisp said in his most didactic manner,

“You may depend upon it that’s the way it was. There was that window unlatched—the one just through there.” He pointed at the door going through to the lounge. “All the others were hasped—that one wasn’t. Castell says he checked them all over when he shut up for the night.”

Frank Abbott gazed abstractedly at his beautifully polished shoes.

“I don’t know that I should want to hang a dog on Castell’s evidence,” he observed.

Crisp nodded quite good-humouredly.

“Oh, yes. But that’s what you’re down here for, isn’t it—to find something against Castell? He’s a slippery customer, and British subject or no British subject, he’s got foreigner written all over him.”

Frank said, “Cosmopolitan, if you want to be polite—mongrel, if you don’t. Portuguese father, Irish mother. Born more or less by accident in some London purlieu, and brought up for the most part in Marseilles, where his parents kept what may pass for a boarding-house.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“That would account for the fact that his turn of speech is often decidedly French.”

Crisp gave a short laugh.

“Give a dog a bad name!” he said. “You can’t hang Castell because his mother was no better than she should be. He may have a finger in this dope-smuggling pie that you people are so set on, but for that very reason he’d keep clear of a thing like murder. And where’s the motive? The two men were as thick as thieves.”

Frank Abbott smiled.

“You’ve said it—they were as thick as thieves. Haven’t you ever heard of rogues falling out?”

When John Higgins left the office he walked through the lounge into the hall. It was five years since he had been in the house, but he knew his way. He took a look round the screen at the dining-room door, found the room empty, and then walked up the stairs. On the half-way landing he checked, and stood for a moment listening. There was the sound of voices. He knocked on the door of the room in which Jeremy had slept the night before and went in.

Eily and Jane Heron were making up a bed on the old-fashioned couch. Jeremy was at the table writing. Eily gave a cry of surprise. She stood where she was, very pale, and made no move to come to him, not even when he said, “Eily!”—only caught her breath and moved a step closer to Jane. There was a short uncomfortable silence. Then Jeremy said,

“Hullo! I suppose you’ve heard?”

John nodded.

“The police sent for me, and for Mrs. Bridling. Seems we were both here last night. Along with a good few other people.” He turned to Jane. “Miss Heron, I’ve to thank you for helping Eily. That Miss Silver that was down with the police, she told me you were looking after her.” He put a hand on Eily’s arm. “Will you come down into the dining-room,” he said. “There’s things I want to say to you, and you to me.”

She went out with him and down into the dining-room. Seen by daylight it was like a gloomy cave, the light all at one end where two straight windows faced the door. Dark panelling drank the light. Nothing had been done about the fire. The ash of last night’s logs stirred in the chimney draught.

There is a natural drift even to a dead hearth. John and Eily came up to it and stood there, a little apart. Behind them, masking the door to the hall, was one of those screens covered with pictures cut from old papers and magazines, some coloured and some plain, but all glazed this hundred years in a varnish which time had deepened to amber. It served to keep the worst draughts from the room when the front door stood open. It did very little to mitigate them. A cold current of air moved in the room, appearing to come now from the hearth, now from the windows, and now from the masked door.

John Higgins didn’t notice it at all, but Eily shivered as if the air could move her bodily. She looked frail enough, standing there and holding out shaking hands to the cold hearth. His arms came round her.

“Eily—darling—what is it? He didn’t hurt you? Say he didn’t hurt you!”

She stood quite passive in his embrace, not yielding to it at all, but stiff, as if she was holding herself against the shaking and against him. She said in a faraway voice,

“He didn’t hurt me. He was dead when I came down. They think I hurt him.”

“Eily, what made you come down?”

He felt the beginning of a shudder, and the way she wouldn’t let it come. He was reminded of a creature shamming dead because it was so frightened. Wild things would do that if you got your hands on them, but Eily had nothing to be frightened of with him.

He laid his cheek against her hair.

“What is it? What’s frightening you? I must know, or how can I help you? Tell me, my little dear. You went along to Miss Heron like I told you?”

“Yes—” It was more like a sigh than a word.

“Then why didn’t you stay there? Eily, I told you to stay.”

Her head had been bent so that he couldn’t see her face. She lifted it now and stared up at him.

“You—know—”

“I?”

“You—called me—”

“Eily!”

“You came under the window whistling. I heard you, and I went along to my room. When I looked out of the window you were going round the corner of the house—”

He stopped her.

“Eily, what are you saying?”

She said it again, like a child that repeats a lesson.

“You went by whistling. When I saw you go round the corner of the house I came downstairs. I was going to open one of the windows in the lounge and tell you to go away—but he was there in the hall—he was dead. John, why did you do it?”

He lifted his big hands and put them on her shoulders.

“Why, my little dear, what made you think that of me? Do you think I’d touch you like this if I’d blood on my hands? No, no—don’t you think it! I won’t deny when I heard what Mrs. Bridling had to say that the old Adam got up in me pretty strong, and I thank the Lord I didn’t meet him then. Not but what he deserved a good hammering, for he did, and if I’d met with him, that’s what he’d have got. But not a knife in the back, my dear—don’t you think it! Don’t you let it trouble you, for that’s a thing I couldn’t do, not how ever much my blood was up. I’m not denying I might have struck him and found it hard to be sorry afterwards. The servant of the Lord mustn’t strive, but there’s times when it comes hard—I’m not denying that. But not knives and suchlike, and stabbing a man in the back. You’ve no call to be frightened I’d do anything like that.”

Insensibly his warmth, his voice were reassuring her. When she spoke her tone was more natural.

“Why did you come back?”

“I didn’t, my dear, I didn’t.”

“I heard you.”

He said grimly, “You heard someone whistling my tune. It might be someone who wanted you to come down, but it wasn’t me. After I’d said good-night to you I went right back to Cliff and stayed there. I knew you’d be safe with Miss Heron for the night, and I was coming to fetch you in the morning. Why should I come back?”

“It—wasn’t you?”

“No, my dear.”

He put his arms round her again, and this time she came close to him and put up her face to be kissed. After a little he said,

“Tell me, my dear. You said you saw someone go round the corner of the house, and you thought it was me, and you were going to open one of the windows in the lounge and tell me to go home. Did you open that window?”

“Oh, no, John.” The shudder took her. “He was there in the hall—he was dead.”

He held her warm and close.

“You didn’t go into the lounge?”

She said, “Oh!” and then, “Yes, I did.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I told the Inspector it was because there had been drinks there, and I thought about getting something for Luke. I don’t know if it was true—I don’t really. I just said it, but I don’t know whether I thought about it or not. I couldn’t tell him about seeing you go round the corner of the house and wanting to tell you to go home—I couldn’t tell him that.”

“You should have told him the truth, my dear.”

She had begun to cry, tears flooding up into the dark blue eyes and brimming over.

“You can’t tell what you don’t know. I was too frightened to know why I did it. I did think about the drinks, but I did think about you being there and wanting to get to you. And then it came over me that you’d done it, and I was too frightened to go on. So I went back, and seeing him—like that, dead—” She clung to him, sobbing.

“There, there, my dear, don’t you take on. You’re coming back with me now like I said, and Mrs. Bridling will look after you till we’re married, and then I’ll look after you myself.”

She pulled away from him at that, rubbing at her eyes with the sleeve of her overall.

“Oh, John, I can’t!”

“Eily—”

She shook her head.

“But we’re ever so short-handed. I can’t—not with all these people in the house. Miss Heron’s helping me.” She smiled suddenly and dabbed her eyes again. “She says to call her Jane, because we’re going to be cousins—if I marry you.”

He said indulgently, “Aren’t you going to marry me, Eily?”

Her smile came, and went, and came again.

“Not with all this going on in the house. There’s no need for me to go away now that I can see. I’ll be all right. It was Luke I was afraid of, but he’s dead.”

Her movement as she pulled away from him had left him facing the door and the screen which partly covered it. As he stood he could see the panelling above the door. He should have been able to see an inch or two of the door itself. But there was nothing there— Only two fingers of emptiness. The door was open, and a draught blowing in from the hall. Just when it had opened, or who had opened it, there was nothing to show. Eily and he had been too far away to know or care.

He left her and ran out into the hall. Mildred Taverner was on the stairs.