The Catherine Wheel (22 page)

Half an hour later Randal March sat looking across the table with something very like exasperation dominating his thought. He now possessed all the information with which a zealous and efficient subordinate could supply him. The medical evidence was not to hand, but as Crisp had put it, “When a woman has broken her neck you can’t get from it. And if she hadn’t done it herself, it looks as if the law would have had to do it for her. A clear case of murder and suicide—and how anyone can make out anything else, well, it passes me.”

March was inclined to agree with him. But there sat Miss Maud Silver with that mild air of deferring to authority which, as he very well knew, could mask a quite incalculable degree of obstinacy. He had sent the estimable Crisp to take statements from other members of the party, and was now alone in the office with Frank Abbott propping the mantelshelf and Miss Silver who sat with her hands folded in her lap upon little Josephine’s completed dress. On his first entrance she had risen to go, but he had detained her. Crisp, undeterred by her presence, had expressed himself quite vigorously on the subject of amateur detectives and their theories, to all of which Miss Silver had listened with unruffled calm. She had not, as a matter of fact, advanced any theories of her own. She had actually hardly opened her lips, but she undoubtedly conveyed an impression of uncompromising disbelief in the theory advanced by Inspector Crisp. She sat there with folded hands and waited in very much the same way in which she had been used to wait when she was governess to the March family and Randal did not know his lesson. He was Chief Constable of the county now, and she was a little elderly person with no status at all, but the atmosphere of that schoolroom and its moral values persisted.

Randal March’s exasperation proceeded from the fact that he found himself influenced by them. Whatever his reason said, he could never quite rid himself of the old feeling of respect with which Miss Silver had managed to imbue a singularly disrespectful little boy of eight. There were reinforcements in the shape of all those subsequent times when Miss Silver had taken her own line in the face of other people’s theories and earned a good deal of credit, not for herself but for the police.

Frank Abbott, watching the two of them, was being a good deal diverted. His affection and admiration for his Miss Silver did not at all stand in the way of his considering her entertainment value to be high. He was perfectly well aware of what she was waiting for, and could spare a rather sardonic sympathy for Randal March. With all the evidence on one side and Maudie on the other, he was certainly in for a bad time.

It was really only a minute or two before March said,

“You know, Miss Silver, Crisp is perfectly right—no jury in the world is going to hesitate about its verdict.”

Miss Silver looked at him mildly.

“I have not said anything, Randal.”

He gave a half-angry laugh.

“Not in words perhaps, but the amount of solid disapproval with which you have been filling the room—”

“My dear Randal!”

He laughed again.

“Are you going to tell me you don’t disagree, disapprove, and thoroughly dissociate yourself from Crisp and all his works?”

She gave her prim little cough.

“No, I shall not say that.”

“Then what have you got to say? I would rather hear it, you know. There’s the evidence—part of it resting on your own statement. You saw the woman with the murdered man’s blood on her hands, and you heard her say that she didn’t care if anything happened to her or not, and that if anyone offered her a glass of poison she’d be glad of it. On the top of that, don’t you believe she murdered Luke White and then committed suicide?”

“No, Randal.”

“On what grounds? You must have reasons for refusing to accept all this evidence we’ve just been through. Do you expect me to disregard it?”

“No, Randal.”

“Then what do you expect me to do?”

She coughed reprovingly.

“It is not a case of expecting. It would, I think, be advisable—”

“Yes?”

“There are points upon which further evidence should be obtained.”

“Are you going to tell me what they are?”

She inclined her head.

“I have mentioned them before. I should like, if I may, to urge them very strongly now. There should be more evidence as to where the first murder was committed. I have repeatedly asserted my belief that it did not take place in the hall, where the body was found. I suggested yesterday that there should be a careful examination of the carpet in this room. I think it extremely probable that the crime was committed here, in which case traces of blood may still be found. That is my first point.”

Randal March looked at her gravely.

“Well, I have no objection. What else?”

Miss Silver met his look with one to the full as grave.

“Thank you, Randal. The second point concerns the identification of the body.”

Frank Abbott’s colourless eyebrows rose perceptibly. There was a brief but startled pause before March said,

“Luke White’s body was seen by everyone in the house. Castell has made the formal identification. Do you suggest that there is any doubt about the matter?”

“Yes, Randal, I do.”

“My dear Miss Silver!”

She coughed.

“You say that the body was seen by everyone. There were three, or at the most four, people present to whom Luke White was not a complete stranger. They were Castell, Eily, Florence Duke, and perhaps Mr. Jacob Taverner. To the others—and I include myself—what they saw was a dead man lying face downwards dressed as they had all the previous evening seen Luke White dressed, in dark trousers and a grey linen coat. Let us now take the three or four people who really knew Luke White. Mr. Jacob Taverner did not go near the body. Eily was overcome with horror and half fainting. Castell identifies the dead man as Luke White, and it is his identification that is in question. Florence Duke actually handled the body. We have no means of knowing whether her subsequent condition of shock was due to the fact that she accepted it as that of her husband, or—” She paused.

March said,

“Or what?”

“Or that she did not.”

“You suggest?”

“That the body was not that of Luke White. If she had realized this she would, I think, have known that her husband must be a party to the murder. She knew him to be a most unscrupulous man. She may have known more than that, but she had once cared for him very much, and she had suddenly to decide whether she would shield him or give him away. I think all her behaviour is accounted for if you accept the theory that she made up her mind to shield him.”

“But, my dear Miss Silver—” March broke off. “Are you suggesting that the murdered man was—”

“Albert Miller.”

Frank Abbott straightened up. March leaned forward.

“Albert Miller!”

“I think it possible.”

“But—was there any likeness?”

“Oh, yes, a very strong one. They were both grandsons of the disreputable Luke, old Jeremiah Taverner’s fourth son. Luke White was the elder, and much the stronger character, but the resemblance was very decided. I was struck by it as soon as I saw them.”

“You did see them together?”

“They were practically side by side whilst we were having coffee in the lounge on Saturday night. Even the difference in dress and the fact that one man was drunk and the other sober could not disguise the likeness. I do not mean that I would have mistaken one for the other in life, because there was a very obvious divergence of character, but if I had been shown the dead body of one dressed in the clothes of the other, I cannot say whether I would have suspected anything.”

“Then what makes you suspect anything now?”

Miss Silver gazed at him thoughtfully.

“The fact that Albert Miller should have such a perfect alibi and then disappear completely. It struck me as so extremely odd that I was unable to believe it had no bearing upon the murder. Yesterday evening I saw Albert Miller’s landlady and discovered the following facts. There was no light in the passage or on the stairs on Saturday night when her lodger came in, and both were still dark when he left in the morning. Mr. Wilton spoke to him at the bedroom door, but he was dazzled by the beam of a small torch which, as Mrs. Wilton put it, ‘that Albert kept flickering across his face.’ Mr. Wilton identified the man with the torch as Albert Miller because they were expecting Albert Miller and he was singing a song which they associated with Albert. I myself and everyone in the hotel had heard Albert singing snatches of this song, the well known Irish air ‘Eileen alannah.’ ”

March said,

“Albert Miller may not have been seen by the Wiltons, but he was seen at Ledlington station.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“In what circumstances? From what Inspector Crisp said, the man supposed to be Albert Miller arrived at Ledlington station soon after seven o’clock, when it would still be dark. He was wearing Albert Miller’s clothes, and had all the appearance of a person who has been drinking heavily and is not yet sober. He did not go on duty, but shouted out that he had had enough of his job and of Ledlington, and that he was not coming back. If this man was really Albert Miller, why did he go near the station at all? Why did he not simply leave the Wiltons’ house and disappear? But if he was Luke White, his appearance at the station was part of the plan to make it quite clear that Albert Miller had disappeared of his own free will.”

Frank Abbott said,

“If there was a plan to murder Albert Miller and cover it up in the way you suggest, Luke White would have to disappear— permanently. Well, there might be quite good reasons for that. Things were getting a bit hot for him at this end. He may have thought he’d be safer in France. I’ve always thought that if there was any funny business going on here, any backstairs traffic in dope and diamonds, that Luke would be in it up to his eyes.”

March turned in his chair.

“If the dead man was Luke, Albert Miller couldn’t have killed him. But the alibi works both ways. If it was Albert who was murdered, you can’t pin it on Luke. Whichever of them it was who was keeping Mrs. Wilton awake by tossing and turning overhead whilst she heard the church clock strike twelve, and one, and two, he wasn’t murdering the other somewhere between half past twelve and half past one at the Catherine-Wheel.” He turned back to Miss Silver. “This is a very interesting theory, you know, but where is the motive? If the murdered man was Luke White, there is a very strong jealousy motive both for John Higgins and for Florence Duke, and the bare possibility of a blow struck in self-defence by the girl Eily. But what motive would there be for the murder of Albert Miller?”

“A very strong one, Randal. I cannot offer any proof of it, but I suspect that he was engaged in a highly dangerous attempt at blackmail. He threw out hints to Mrs. Wilton that he might soon be rich. I think he knew too much, and was attempting to use his knowledge.”

“What could he have known?”

“My dear Randal, from first to last in the case there has cropped up the question of a secret passage or a secret room. That it was not the passage between the cellars and the shore is proved by the fact that Mr. Jacob Taverner not only knew all about this passage but was quite willing to display it to his guests and to the police, whereas he continually plied the Taverner cousins with carefully contrived questions as to what they might have heard from the grandparents with whom each had been rather closely associated. These questions strongly suggest a second passage, or perhaps merely a secret chamber, the existence of which was known to Mr. Jacob Taverner, but of whose whereabouts he was ignorant. I have thought all along that this second passage might prove to be of immense importance in the case. I think most of the Taverner cousins know something about it. Florence Duke may have passed her knowledge on to her husband, and so may Annie Castell. If these two men were making money out of their knowledge, and Albert Miller was using what he knew to blackmail them, you have a motive which would account for the events of the last few days.”

There was a hint of humour in March’s eyes, but he said quite gravely,

“Since you know everything, are you going to tell us who killed Al Miller?”

Miss Silver shook her head.

“I am afraid I do not know.”

Frank Abbott allowed himself a short laugh.

“Not Castell?”

“Possibly. But there was more than one person concerned. I am quite sure that the murder was not committed where the body was found. Albert Miller was more than half drunk when I saw him in the lounge. He became very noisy, and was hustled through into this room by Luke White and Castell. I do not think he ever left it alive. It would have been easy to complete the process of making him drunk, to give him a wound on the back of the hand corresponding to that which Luke White had received when he tried to kiss Eily and she picked up Jane Heron’s scissors to defend herself, and then, when the right time had arrived, to inflict the fatal stab and convey the body to the hall. As I have said before, I think that two people must have been involved in this. There is no one in the house of sufficiently powerful physique to make sure of moving a dead body from this room to the hall without noise.”

Randal March said,

“I agree to that. But all the rest is, if you will let me say so— well, pure hypothesis.”

Miss Silver smiled.

“I only ask that you should put it to the test. I suggest that Mrs. Wilton should be approached. She was a friend of Mrs. Miller’s, and must therefore have known Albert from a child. She might be aware of some distinguishing mark. Then, as to the scene of the murder, the carpet may provide you with evidence.”

She put little Josephine’s dress into her workbag and rose to her feet.

“I feel sure that I can leave the matter in your hands. But with regard to Florence Duke there is a point which deserves your attention. If she committed suicide shortly after I had seen her lock herself in her room, can you tell me why she did not just walk to the edge of the cliff behind the house and throw herself over? The tide was high and she would have fallen into the water. Do you think it possible that any woman would climb in the dark to the top of the cliff and throw herself down upon rocks?”