The Gazebo (13 page)

WHAT ARE WE going to do, Nicky?’

They sat close together on the deep sofa in the drawing-room. They were not leaning back; Althea’s left hand rested palm downwards on the stuff of the seat. Nicky’s right hand covered it. He said.

‘There isn’t anything very much that we can do.’ He didn’t like to say, ‘It will pass,’ but the thought was in his mind. They would have to get through the inquest and the funeral, and then they could get married and he would take her away. He wondered if she would want to sell the house, and whether the two lots of people who were after it would still be so anxious to buy now that there had been a murder there. The sooner he could get Allie away the better – right away. These things filled his mind, but it was a bit soon to start talking about them to Allie, so he just said there wasn’t much they could do and left it at that.

He wasn’t so stupid as to think they were clear out of the wood either. Miss Cotton’s statement was all right in a way and as far as it went. Fortunately, it did go far enough to make it clear that Allie had taken her mother back into the house and shut the door. It also made it perfectly clear that there had been a frightful row. He had an unpleasantly sharp impression in his mind of Mrs Graham screaming out that he wanted to kill her, and a few other helpful things like that. There really wasn’t any way out of the police having their eye on him as suspect number one. And he couldn’t blame them, since look where he would, he couldn’t for the life of him think of reasons why Nicholas Carey should want Mrs Graham out of the way, but as far as he could see, no reason at all why anyone else should.

He said abruptly,

‘It’s frightful for you, but it won’t go on being so bad. We’ve just got to go through with it – the police and everything. They’ll either find out who did it, or they won’t. Whether they do or not, there will be a lot of talk, and then there won’t be so much, and presently something else will happen and everyone will switch on to that. Miss Silver is staying on with you for a bit?’

‘Yes.’ Her voice became suddenly warmer. ‘Nicky, do you know, Mrs Justice rang up and said would I come to them. I do think it was terribly kind of her. Only when she heard I’d got Miss Silver here she said I couldn’t have anyone better, and I think she actually was a little bit relieved.’

‘You’d rather be here?’

‘Much rather. Mrs Justice is so kind, but she talks all the time, and she would keep wanting me to have cups of Ovaltine and things like that. It used to drive Sophy crazy.’

A shudder went over her. Mrs Graham was devoted to Ovaltine. She had it in the middle of the morning, and she had it the last thing at night in bed. She was very particular indeed about the way it was made. Althea had had to make it twice a day for years. She would never have to make it again.

This train of thought was broken in upon by Nicholas. He said in what seemed to be an entirely irrelevant manner,

‘I had better clear out of the Harrisons’.’

Althea’s hand jerked under his.

‘Why?’

He had several reasons, but he only gave her one of them.

‘Well, it’s involving them in what isn’t any affair of theirs. I expect the police will want me to be somewhere handy whilst they are clearing things up, and I can get a room at the George.’

An hour or two later Ella Harrison looked round an open bedroom door and found him packing. She came in and said ‘Hullo, what’s all this?’ A suitcase was open on the bed, right on one of the new covers. Really, men were the limit! He pushed a pair of socks into a corner and turned round.

‘Oh, I was coming down to see you… I thought I had better clear out.’

Eye-shadow, mascara, powder, lipstick, she had them all on. The reinforced eyebrows rose.

‘What on earth for?’

‘Well, I’m a bit conspicuous, don’t you think? I don’t think it’s quite fair to you and Jack.’

‘My dear Nicky – what nonsense! We won’t hear of your going! Besides the police will expect you to hang around until after the inquest.’

‘I could get a room at the George.’

‘We wouldn’t hear of it! Jack would be furious. Besides it would look so bad – as if we had turned you out. It might do you quite a lot of harm – as if we believed the kind of talk that’s going round. That’s what I really came up to see you about.’ She went back a step, pushed the door so that it shut and latched, and came back again. ‘You see, Nicky, you could be in a bit of a spot, couldn’t you?’

She was being kind, and the trouble was that he couldn’t take it. He disliked her too much – the brassy hair and all that make-up, her laugh, the way she picked on Allie, the way she treated poor old Jack. She was a handsome woman. The eyes that were smiling at him were undeniably fine. He didn’t dislike people as a rule, but he disliked Ella Harrison.

She was saying in a voice as brassy as the hair,

‘Lucky for you and for Thea that Nurse Cotton should have been passing after you’d had that dust-up in – what do you call the place – the gazebo. A bit of nonsense giving it an outlandish name like that, but that was just Winifred Graham all over!’

He shook his head.

‘The name is much older than Mrs Graham – eighteenth – nineteenth century – at least a hundred years before her time.’

She laughed.

‘Well, that’s not what we were talking about anyhow. I said it was lucky Nurse Cotton could swear that Thea took her mother into the house and left you there in the garden. What the police are going to want to know is why did she come out again.’ He said,

‘You seem to know a lot about it all.’

She made an impatient movement.

‘Do you suppose that people don’t talk? Nurse Cotton made a statement to the police, didn’t she? She’s friendly with a Miss Sanders who teaches at that little preparatory school in Down Road. Miss Sanders has an aunt who used to be governess to the Miss Pimms. I met Lily Pimm this morning, and she told me all about it. And all about what Miss Cotton said to the police. And as I said, it’s a good thing for you that Nurse Cotton says Thea went into the house with her mother and left you there in the garden. She says she came back the same way about half an hour or three quarters of an hour later, which is about the time the murder must have been done, and she says she didn’t see anything or hear anyone then. It gives one a creep to think poor Winifred Graham may have been lying there dead just the other side of the hedge in that – what did you call it – gazebo, when Nurse Cotton went by. Of course what puzzles everyone is, why should Winifred have gone into the house with Thea and then come out again as I suppose she must have done.’

She had come up close to him. He could smell the heavy scent she used. He loathed women who scented themselves. He made an excuse to go over to the washstand and collect toothbrush, nailbrush, a tube of toothpaste, and a face-cloth. He was rolling them up in paper, when Ella Harrison exclaimed,

‘You ought to have a case for those! You can’t pack them like that! I’ll get you one next time I’m in the High Street! Men really do want looking after!’ Then, breaking off, ‘Of course what the police will want to know is, what did you do after Thea took her mother away.’

He was irritated every time she said Thea. For one thing it reminded him of Mrs Graham, and for another it wasn’t for her to play tricks with Allie’s name. The thought went through his mind and stiffened it against her as he said,

‘I told the police what I did. I went for a walk.’

He tossed his parcel into the suitcase from the other side of the bed, but she was edging round it towards him again.

‘Nicky, that is no good. You went for a walk! At that hour? It’s too thin! What you want is someone to say what time you got back here! It would probably take Thea half an hour to get her mother back to bed and settled down after the upset she had had – at least she can always say it did. Nurse Cotton is supposed to have left her cottage at half past ten, and it would take her until about a quarter to eleven to get to the top of Hill Rise and start listening in to the row that was going on in the gazebo. Well, it wouldn’t be a lot short of eleven by the time Thea got her mother indoors and up into her room, and it would be a good deal after that before she got her to bed and was able to leave her. So if someone could say that you were back in this house by eleven – well, that would let you out, wouldn’t it?’

‘And who is supposed to be going to say that?’

She had been moving along past the foot of the bed. Now she turned the corner and was on the same side as he was. She said,

‘Suppose I was to say it…’

She looked at him between the long mascaraed lashes. It made her angry too. The pleasure and the anger were stimulating.

He said,

‘You certainly couldn’t do anything of the sort! I didn’t look at the time, but it must have been all of twelve o’clock before I came back here.’

She laughed.

‘Well, I shouldn’t tell that to the police, darling!’ Then, with a change of manner, ‘Nicky, you know you might be in quite a tight place over this. There’s Nurse Cotton to say you had a row with Winifred Graham, and that she said things like you wanting to kill her. And then later on she’s found dead in that damned gazebo – well, there you are! There wasn’t anyone else who had quarrelled with her. There wasn’t anyone else who had a motive for killing her, unless it was Thea – and that doesn’t let you out, because if Thea was in it you would be bound to be in it too.’

‘We weren’t either of us in it.’

She stood there smiling.

‘Well, that’s what you say, but no one is going to believe it – unless you can prove that you just weren’t there. It all turns on that. And when you say there isn’t anything I could do about it, that’s just where you’re wrong, because I could. Look here, Nicky, why won’t you be friends with me? I could help you a lot, you know – and I would if you’d stop glaring at me and looking as if you’d like to murder me too.’

He was so angry that he couldn’t trust himself to speak. Instead he went over to the walnut chest on the other side of the room, opened the top long drawer, and came back with a pile of underclothes, which he dumped in the suitcase on the bed. By this time he was able to manage a tone of deadly politeness.

‘It is very kind of you, but I am afraid there isn’t anything you can do.’

It wasn’t Ella’s way to beat about the bush. She never had and she never would. She came right out into the open with a frank,

‘I can say you got back here by eleven o’clock, and that you couldn’t have gone out again because you were with me. Come along, Nicky, isn’t that worth being nice to me for? Or isn’t it? But you can’t expect me to do it if you keep on looking at me as if I could go to hell and be damned to me!’

He restrained himself. When he had fetched half a dozen shirts and packed them, he was able to achieve a conversational tone.

‘It’s a kind thought, but I’m afraid I’ve already told the police that I went for quite a long walk and didn’t get in until fairly late.’

‘That, darling, was only because of your being Jack’s cousin and a perfect gentleman and not wanting to give me away. Quite good reasons for saying you took that walk. Nobody will believe in it anyhow. It’s just a question of whether you would rather they believed you were waiting in Winifred Graham’s garden to lure her out and murder her, or that you were here having fun and games with me. People always like to believe the worst, you know, and there’s quite a good chance they could be got to believe it about you and me.’

‘And what are Jack and Althea supposed to think about it?’

She shrugged her shoulders.

‘I don’t give a damn!’

‘Perhaps I do.’

She sat down on the end of the bed. Her voice dropped.

‘I meant that, you know – all of it! I suppose you haven’t been here all this week without tumbling to it that Jack bores me stiff? Well, you don’t. We could have a good time together, you know. I like travelling – going places. We’d get on like a house on fire if you’d only let yourself go. And you needn’t bother about Jack – all he really wants is what he calls a quiet life. But I haven’t got any use for being poor. If I swear you were with me on Tuesday night it’ll clear you, but Jack will probably divorce me – and I should have to reckon on that. If I don’t do it, you’ll probably hang, and it would be up to you to see I didn’t suffer for saving your neck, wouldn’t it? We could go abroad till it all blew over – travel and have a good time.’

Oh, they could travel, could they? He found his thought straying to some of the places to which he might conduct Ella Harrison and dump her. There was an Asian desert scourged by Polar winds. There were leech-infested swamps. There was a tribe of head-hunters. He said in a perfectly civilized voice,

‘I’m afraid there’s nothing doing, Ella. You see, if it hadn’t been for Mrs Graham’s death Althea and I would be married by now.’

AS HAS ALREADY been said, the Miss Pimms were in the habit of spreading their net as widely as possible. Even if they caught the same bus down into the High Street and took the same bus back, they would after alighting each take her separate way, dividing the errands between them and neglecting no chance of conversation. Lily, who was the middle Miss Pimm, was as a rule the least enterprising and successful of the three. She had neither Miss Mabel’s keen nose for a scandal nor Nettie’s passionate and persistent attention to detail. Her only gift was, in fact, one which seldom survives the impact of education. She could reproduce word for word a conversation which she had overheard, or a communication which had been made to her. It is to this faculty that we owe the great traditional tales and ballads which have been handed down by word of mouth through countless generations. Most literates have lost it, most children possess it. Miss Lily Pimm, distressingly impervious to the efforts of the excellent Miss Sanders, their one-time governess, had retained it. She entered a greengrocer’s shop, where she bought apples and a cauliflower. She met the youngest Miss Ashington and inquired solicitously after her mother, to which Louisa replied that she was very well, thank you. She seemed in a hurry to get away, so Miss Lily let her go, a thing which neither of her sisters would have done. Mabel’s louder voice and dominant manner would have compelled a more satisfying answer, Nettie’s bright darting questions would have extracted one, but Lily Pimm, though quite as well aware that Mrs Ashington was now practically off her head, could manage nothing better in the way of delaying tactics than a word and a smile which had no effect at all.

She bought soap in a packet at a grocery store, and toilet soap from the old-fashioned chemist’s shop at which her parents had always dealt. She met Mrs William Thorpe who wanted to find homes for three female kittens of uncertain looks and ancestry, Miss Brazier who was earnestly trying to collect enough money to provide somebody’s eleventh child with a school outfit, and old Mr Crawley who was telling everyone he met what his newspaper had that morning told him about foreign affairs. Since this was not the sort of gossip which interested the Pimm family, she got away from him as soon as she could and went to stand in the fish queue, where she was overtaken by a horrid uncertainty as to whether Mabel had told her to get fresh haddock or finnan. If she had been listening at the time she would have remembered, but that was the trouble – she had allowed her thoughts to wander, and if she bought the wrong sort Mabel wouldn’t be pleased.

And then, there in the fish queue, a bare-headed woman in a shabby coat said to the woman in front of her, ‘I don’t rightly know what to do about it, and that’s a fact.’ The other woman had on slacks and a headscarf and she was smoking a cigarette. She said, ‘Fancy that, Mrs Traill!’

Lily Pimm’s memory began to record what they were saying. By the time she had reached the head of the queue and bought fresh haddock and got half way to the bus stop and then remembered that Mabel really had said finnan and gone back and changed it, Mabel and Nettie were waiting for her and not too pleased about it. Each had already asked the other more than once how on earth Lily managed to take so much longer over her shopping than they did. Her arrival almost at a run and with flushed cheeks did nothing to placate them. If they had missed the bus it would have meant another half hour’s wait.

Fortunately they had not missed the bus. All the way up the hill Lily Pimm sat hugging herself with pleasure. What she had got to tell her sisters as soon as they got home really was news, and the woman in the fish shop had been able to give her Mrs Traill’s address. She hoped Mabel would realize how clever it was of her to have thought of getting it. Mabel and Nettie always treated her as if they didn’t think she was clever at all. Everyone always treated her like that, but this time she had been very clever indeed, and they would have to admit it.

She didn’t say anything as long as they were on the bus, just sat there and hugged herself. They got off at the end of Warren Crescent as they always did, but she hadn’t a chance of beginning about the fish queue then, because Nettie was telling Mabel about seeing Mrs Stock at the butcher’s. ‘And do you know, the meat she was getting was the very cheapest they had – and if she meant to make it do the four of them for even one day, no wonder they always looked half starved!’

Lily offered the suggestion that there might have been something left over from the Sunday joint, to which Nettie replied, ‘Rubbish!’ but without any rancour, and went on talking about the Stocks. Lily had to wait until they were inside their own hall door before she got a chance to say,

‘I heard the most dreadful thing in the fish queue.’

‘About Mr Browning breaking his leg? I always did say he would have an accident if he went on climbing up ladders at his age!’

Lily shook her head.

‘Oh, no, it was something much worse than that – something about Mrs Graham being murdered – something dreadful!’

Mabel opened the drawing-room door and beckoned the others in. As she shut it behind them she said in a cautionary tone,

‘Doris Wills listens! I’ve always been sure she did. If she wasn’t such a good worker…’ She broke off and came directly to the point. ‘What did you hear in the fish queue?’

This was Lily’s moment of triumph. They were both waiting for her to speak – listening with all their ears. She felt warm and pleased like a purring cat.

‘Well, there was a woman in front of me. I know her by sight, but I didn’t know her name until the other woman said it. She is quite an elderly person and rather untidy. She had a very shabby old coat on with a worn place on the elbow. She was talking to the woman in front of her, that Mrs Rigg who goes about everywhere in trousers and never has a cigarette out of her mouth. The first thing I heard, Mrs Traill was saying, “I don’t rightly know what to do about it and that’s a fact,” and Mrs Rigg said, “Fancy that!” Mrs Traill sounded quite cross. She said “No fancy about it, it’s what I heard – I know that! What I don’t know is what I ought to do, and when I asked my husband all he could say was not to let myself get drawn in to things that weren’t any business of mine.” That Mrs Rigg laughed – she’s got a silly sort of laugh, like a child that’s showing off – and she said, “That’s all men ever do say, isn’t it – keep your own side of the fence – don’t get mixed up in things – mind your own business! And what I say is you might as well be dead!” Mrs Traill said, “Yes, you might.” And then she dropped her voice right down and I shouldn’t have heard what she said only for leaning forward as far as I could without touching her and then it was all I could do, but I heard her say, “I just can’t get it out of my mind, Mrs Rigg, and that’s the fact. First thing in the morning and last thing at night it comes back to me, that poor thing calling out like she did, and me hearing her and not doing anything about it.” ’

Nettie Pimm said, ‘Oh, Lily!’ her voice twittering. But Mabel said, ‘Go on!’

Lily Pimm went on.

‘Mrs Rigg said, “Gosh! Whatever do you mean, Mrs Traill?” And Mrs Traill told her she was baby-sitting for that Mr and Mrs Nokes on the top of Hill Rise. She expected to be there until twelve o’clock because the Nokes were going to the cinema and supper with a friend afterwards. But it seems Mrs Nokes had a headache coming on, so they cried off the supper and came along home. There wasn’t anything for Mrs Traill to stay for after that, so she got her money and came away down Hill Rise. It was twenty past eleven when she came out of the front door, because she looked at the clock in the hall and made out she would catch the bus at the corner of Belview Road. But just as she came to where the path runs along by the Grahams’ garden she heard someone call out from the other side of the hedge.’

Lily Pimm looked first at one of her sisters and then at the other. She looked first at Mabel, because Mabel was the eldest and she always came first in everything. Mabel’s bony nose jutted out from her long thin face, her eyes were avid and her mouth was tight. She looked at Nettie, the smallest and youngest of the three. Nettie’s head was cocked a little on one side and her eyes were bright, like a bird that is just about to peck at a worm. For once in a way it was Lily who had something worth the telling, and she couldn’t tell it fast enough to please them. They urged her, and she went on.

‘Mrs Traill said it was Mrs Graham she heard calling out, and then she stopped and said she didn’t know that she ought to say any more. Mrs Rigg said, “Oh, but you can’t stop here. Come on, Mrs Traill, be a sport!” and she went on in a kind of whisper and said what she heard was Mrs Graham calling out, “Nicholas Carey – how dare you!” ’

Mabel Pimm repeated the name.

‘Nicholas Carey!’

Nettie said ‘Oh!’ in a frightened voice. And then, ‘She didn’t say that right out in the fish queue!’

Lily nodded. She was the plump one of the family. She had a round pale face and round pale eyes and a little button nose like a baby.

‘Yes, she did! And there wasn’t anyone to hear her except Mrs Rigg and me, because the next one beyond Mrs Rigg in the queue was old Mr Jackson, and he is as deaf as a post. And she wouldn’t know I was listening, because I don’t think she as much as knew I was there, and she was whispering, so she wouldn’t think anyone would hear what she said, only you know how quick I am that way. And what she said was that she heard Mrs Graham calling out and saying, “Nicholas Carey – how dare you!” Mrs Rigg gave a sort of scream and said, “Oh, she never!” And Mrs Traill said, “Oh yes, she did, poor thing, and I can’t get it out of my mind do what I will. It gave me a real start, and what with that and hearing the bus coming, I took and ran and caught it by the skin of my teeth. But I just can’t get it off my mind. That poor thing calling out and me only the other side of the hedge! And when I seen in the paper what’s happened to her it come over me if I’d called out something it might have saved her.” And Mrs Rigg said, talking back over her shoulder, “More likely he’d have murdered you too, Mrs Traill.” And just then Mr Jackson had got to being served by the young man in the shop, and the woman came over to Mrs Rigg, so she started buying kippers and Mrs Traill didn’t talk to her any more. She waited outside the shop though, and they went away together, but I don’t suppose there was anything much more for Mrs Traill to tell.’

Her voice fell to a deprecating tone. She didn’t see how she could have managed to find out any more than she had. She was used to being blamed by Mabel and Nettie when things went wrong, but in this case she really had felt sure of being praised. She looked at Nettie, and Nettie shook her head. She looked at Mabel, and Mabel said in her firmest voice,

‘You should have followed them.’