The Listening Eye (15 page)

THE thunder crashed overhead. What the flash had disclosed was a moving door. Doors don’t move unless someone is moving them. This door was opening and someone was coming through. The lightning flared again. For a moment the place was as bright as day. She saw David Moray coming towards her, and he may have been frowning at the lightning or he may have been frowning at her, but he was certainly frowning. The frown went with her into the dark that followed the flash, and she thought that it was for her. She wondered why David should look as if he hated her. He came down the passage and spoke through the noise of the storm.

“What are you doing here?”

He had his hands on her shoulders and was bending down to her ear, or she would not have heard him. The rain banged on the roof over their heads. They stood there together, and there was anger between them. Sally said, stiffening the words with her anger so that they would reach him,

“There’s a cloudburst—I suppose you haven’t noticed it.”

The lightning lit them up again. The passage swam in the blue fire. He reached over her shoulder and pushed the door. Then he had her by the arm and was taking her down the passage. She caught bits of what he was saying. Something about not being deaf, and then,

“Come and look at this damned place. I don’t know what to do about it.”

They went through to the room from which he had come. It was the kitchen. There was just enough light to distinguish the wooden table and a chair or two, and the range. There was a dresser against the farther wall and linoleum on the floor. The next flash of lightning was not as vivid as the others had been, and the thunder was farther off. The kitchen led into a kind of lean-to scullery. Outside the back door there was a narrow flagged passage with the rain splashing down into it, and on the other side of the passage a large dark structure which she guessed to be the studio erected by the late Hodges. It was as nearly dark as makes no difference in the scullery, and the noise was deafening. David had her by the arm. When she realized that she was expected to walk out into the rain she stopped walking and lifted her voice against the weather.

“No, David!”

His voice did better than hers, for she heard his “What?” quite distinctly.

“I’m—not—going—out—into—that—rain.”

He must have caught some of that, because he bent right down to her ear and shouted.

“It’s only a step! Come along!”

And with that his arm came round her waist and she was being swung right off her feet and jumped across the passage into the open doorway on the other side.

He was laughing when he set her down.

“There! We’re all right now and out of the wet!”

“I’m drenched.”

“You can’t be—you weren’t out in it long enough. But I don’t know why you hadn’t the sense to bring a coat.”

“I didn’t know there was going to be a storm.”

He turned a considering eye upon her.

“How did you get here anyway? You didn’t know I was going to be here.”

“Of course I didn’t know!”

The fury of the rain had lessened, or else the roof of this place didn’t help it to make as much noise. Suprisingly, they could hear themselves speak. The indignation in Sally’s voice didn’t seem to register. He said,

“No, you couldn’t have known, because I didn’t know myself. It just seemed a good idea to bring my stuff straight here, so I dropped off my bus at the corner and came along. But now I’m not sure that it’s going to do.”

Sally said, “Why?”

They couldn’t really see each other, though it wasn’t as dark as it had been in the lodge. They were just shadows against the screen of the two big windows which looked north—a shadow David and a shadow Sally. She didn’t need a light to tell that the shadow David was frowning again. He said,

“Well, I don’t know. The place is all right—very good light—”

She couldn’t resist an interruption.

“Darling, it’s practically pitch dark.”

He resumed with vigour.

“I’m not talking about now. I came and saw it this morning—naturally.”

“Of course—you would! Did Moira come with you?”

“Why shouldn’t she?”

“No reason at all. You are going to paint her here, aren’t you?”

His voice lost some of its vigour.

“Well—I don’t know—”

“You don’t know if you’re going to paint her?”

He said angrily, “Of course I’m going to paint her! What I’m not sure about is doing it here. It’s—it’s a bit out of the way.”

It occurred to Sally with pleasure that he was not unaware of the mousetrap of Wilfrid’s metaphor. He might want the cheese, but his Scottish caution was aroused. She said in her sweetest voice,

“But darling, isn’t that just what you want—no interruptions—nobody coming in and out to see how you’re getting on—just you and Medusa? What more could you possibly want?”

Her wrist was caught in a bruising grip. He said, “Stop it!” and Sally said, “Stop what?”

“The way you are going on! As if I wanted to be alone with the damned girl! I don’t! I want to paint that picture! I’m going to paint it, and it’s going to be good—it’s going to be damned good! And you are going to come and see fair play!”

“I’m going to what?”

“You’re going to come to the sittings and see that she doesn’t get up to any of her tricks.”

Sally laughed.

“Darling, chaperones are extinct! Anyhow I don’t feel as if I should like the part. And how Moira would love me!”

The pressure on her wrist increased.

“Do you want her to love you?”

She said in a taunting voice, “Don’t you?”

He let go of her with such a furious gesture that she cried out.

“What’s the matter?”

“You nearly broke my wrist—that’s all.”

He said, “You shouldn’t say things like that. You know perfectly well—you know perfectly well—”

His voice stopped. It was as if they had come abruptly upon the edge of something there in this darkened place. Another step, another word, and they might be over that edge. If Sally could have got her breath she would have asked what it was she was supposed to know, but she couldn’t get her breath, or at least not enough to carry the words.

David went past her to the door and said.

“We’d better be getting along.”

Sally stood where she was. There were bright candles in her mind—big shining ones as bright as stars. She found a handful of everyday words.

“I don’t want to get wet.”

David found a handful too.

“It has stopped raining.”

She came to stand beside him and looked out. The eaves of the lodge dripped into the passage and the flags ran like a brook, but there really wasn’t any more rain. David swung her across as he had done when they had come, and then turned back to stand in the wet and lock the studio door. He said briefly, “I’ll fetch my things in the morning. The house will be better.” And then they came through into the kitchen and he opened the kitchen door.

The passage beyond was dark. Just for a moment a flicker of light showed that the door on the right was ajar. The flicker came from the room behind the door. Someone could have used a lighter, or struck a match, or switched on an electric torch. Sally put out a hand and clutched at David’s arm, and before anything else could happen someone laughed where the flicker had been. No one who had heard that laugh before could possibly mistake it. It belonged to Moira Herne, and at the thought of Moira finding her here with David in the dark Sally was shaken with a fierce anger. She had known Moira long enough to know exactly what she would say and what sort of story she would make of it. It served her right for ever coming down to Merefields, but there is no consolation in knowing that you have asked for trouble and tumbled right into the middle of it. At the moment the one bright spot was that David was having the sense to hold his tongue. It would have been quite dreadfully like him to call out to Moira and let them in for whatever was coming. Mercifully, he just stood there and neither said nor did anything at all.

Sally pushed the kitchen door to screen them, and she pulled on David’s arm to get him to come back across the kitchen and through the scullery and out by the back door. If they could get clear away. She might have known that it wouldn’t be any good. David was going to be the sort of husband who demands loudly why he is being pinched or his foot trodden on, when you are trying to give him a hint. He now said in what he doubtless supposed to be a whisper,

“Why are you pulling me?”

Sally said, “Ssh!” and the door on the right of the passage swung in. They could not see anything, but they could hear. And first, along there at the end of the passage, there was the swing of the door and someone coming through, and the someone was Moira Herne. No one could mistake that drawling voice. It was Moira, and she stopped in the open doorway and spoke to someone behind her in the dark front room. It must have been quite dark there, because the blinds were down as Sally had seen them when she came up the path. And Moira said,

“You’re sure it will come tomorrow— absolutely sure? Because I won’t go on until it does—I can tell you that.”

There was the murmur of a man’s voice, but nothing to tell who the man might be.

Moira stood where she was and said,

“Well, I’m just telling you—that’s all. As to David, I’ve told you you needn’t worry. I can fix it all right. I’ll just tell him this place isn’t suitable. Come along, or I’ll be late!”

She went out of the front door, and there was another footstep that followed her. It was a man’s step. They didn’t see him, they didn’t hear him speak. They heard Moira go out, they heard him follow her, and they heard the front door shut.

Sally and David walked up the drive in silence, as they had stood in silence on the flagged path to the lodge and heard Moira and the man who was with her turn the other way and go down to the gate and out into the lane beyond. There must have been a car waiting there, for after a minute or two they could hear the purr of the engine and the sound of it dying away.

They did not move for quite a while after that. Moira might have been just seeing the man off and coming back herself. They stood in the dripping garden and waited to see whether she would come. It was strange to stand so close together and have nothing to say.

When quite a long time had passed David said, “She’s gone with him—she won’t come now,” and they went out of the little creaking gate and shut it behind them, and so on and up the drive. It wasn’t until they could see the lights of the house that Sally said,

“You never finished what you were saying back there in the lodge, David.”

“Didn’t I?”

“No, you didn’t. You said I hadn’t any business to say what I was saying.”

He said in his frowning voice, “I haven’t the slightest idea what you were saying.”

Sally laughed.

“Darling, you know perfectly well. And you should stick to telling the truth, because you don’t tell at all a convincing lie. I said how Moira would love me if I came and chaperoned her sittings. And you said, ‘Do you want her to love you?’ and I said, ‘Don’t you?’ And then you nearly broke my wrist and said something about my knowing. Well, now I should like to be told what it is I’m supposed to know.”

There was one of those silences. Sally wasn’t going to break it, and David wasn’t going to break it, so where did you go from there?

Sally came up close and slipped a hand inside his arm. It didn’t get any encouragement, but at least it didn’t get pushed away. So far so good, but at any moment there might be an explosion. There was a tingling feeling from her fingertips up to her shoulder. She rubbed her cheek against the rough stuff of his sleeve and said,

“David, tell me—”

She heard him take a deep angry breath. The arm which she had been holding was jerked away from her touch. Her own arm was taken and gripped.

“You know perfectly well what I started to say, and I’m not saying it! And you know why! When I’m in a position to say it, it will be said, but it won’t be said before!”

Sally wanted to laugh, she wanted to cry, and she wanted quite dreadfully to slap his face just as hard as she could. The trouble about slapping is that to be at all satisfactory it has to be spontaneous, because the minute you begin to think about it the civilized bit of you gets up and won’t let you do it. Well, if you’ve got to be civilized you might as well take the smooth with the rough. She gave a nice little modern laugh, and said,

“Darling, how fierce you are! And of course you don’t know it, but you’re hurting me. You know, we really shall have to hurry, or we shan’t have time to change, and Elaine will be in a fuss.”

MISS BRAY was certainly in a fuss, but it wasn’t about them. Lucius Bellingdon had rung up to say that his car had broken down at Emberley, which was fifteen miles away, and he and Annabel were therefore going to be late.

“And he said not to wait supper, because they would have something there, and of course I said it would be quite all right whenever they came, because with everyone out on Sunday evening we always do have cold. Most inconvenient, but there it is. But he just said, ‘We’re dining here,’ and rang off. What I can’t understand is why the car should have broken down.”

Wilfrid said in his light malicious voice,

“My dear Miss Bray, what did you expect it to do? It’s the oldest dodge in the world. All the best cars are trained to oblige.”

Elaine looked at him, first puzzled and then cross.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. But they are bound to be frightfully late, and if Lucius says not to wait, we had better go in.”

Moira walked in just as they were sitting down. She had been home long enough to change into a pale green housecoat and to make up her face. When she heard that Lucius and Annabel had been stuck at Emberley she lifted her eyebrows and remarked that they were probably bearing up. After which she slid into her place, addressed David as “My sweet,” and said that cold food was foul, and too early-Victorian to be expected to eat it on Sunday evening, but as there wasn’t anything else, he could give her some chicken-salad. As he complied he was considering that she must certainly have taken a lift in the car which they had heard driving away.

Aware of his silent gaze, she met it with her own light stare and said,

“Well, what is it? I’ll give you a penny for your thoughts—tuppence if they’re worth it.”

They were waiting on themselves. He brought round her plate of salad and set it down.

“I don’t think they are. I was just wondering how long it took you to dress.”

She said, “Ages.” And then, in exactly the same voice, “Oh, by the way, the North Lodge is a wash-out as far as my sittings go. We’ll have them up here at the house. There’s quite a good sort of attic place—”

Elaine raised a protesting voice.

“Oh, Moira, no—not the attic!”

“And why not?”

“My dear, it’s so dusty—and things spread about all over the floor!”

Moira dismissed the topic with a casual “It’ll do.” She turned to David, who had gone back to his seat on the other side of the table. “Did you get your stuff all right?”

It was a curious little passage. Sally wondered about it. First Moira had been all over the idea of having the sittings at the North Lodge, and now she was calling them off. And she was calling them off because the man whom she met at the lodge had told her to call them off. As to his reason, it could be one of two, or it could be both of them together. He might want to keep the North Lodge for his own private meetings with Moira, or he might be cutting up rough at the idea of her meeting anyone else there. Whichever it was, Moira could hardly have appeared more indifferent than she did.

Lucius and Annabel were very late. To all enquiries he merely said that they had dined, and that they had had to leave the car in Emberley and hire one to come home. But to Miss Silver in the study he was more communicative. A touch on her arm indicated that he wished to see her there, and after a discreet interval she had followed him.

She found him with his back to her, looking out of the window. At the sound of the closing door he turned and came towards her. Her attention was at once engaged by the way he looked. There was a hardness and severity which exceeded anything which she had seen in him. The effect was formidable indeed. Without any preliminaries he said,

“The car was tampered with.”

Miss Silver gave no indication of surprise. She said in a very composed manner,

“Let us sit down, Mr. Bellingdon.”

It was like having tepid water splashed in his face. The check affronted him, but he was sufficiently master of himself to set a chair for her and to take one himself. When she was seated she looked at him thoughtfully and said,

“You have reason to believe that the mishap to your car was not accidental?”

“I know it wasn’t. There is a steep hill just out of Emberley. A wheel came off there. Fortunately, we had almost reached the bottom. If it had happened a little sooner, we should probably have both been killed. The hill takes two bad corners, and there is a sheer drop into a quarry. If we hadn’t been past the danger points we should have had it. As it was, we crashed into a bank and pretty well wrecked the car.”

“Mr. Bellingdon, are you sure that the wheel had been tampered with?”

He said, “Perfectly—if you mean am I sure in my own mind. I couldn’t prove it.”

“How would it have been done?”

“Anyone with a spanner could loosen the nuts. I suppose you’ve seen a wheel changed —well, it’s as easy as that. Anyone who wanted me to have an accident could have done it. Parker could have done it.” He gave a short laugh. “He has driven for me and looked after my car for fifteen years, but he could have had a sudden urge to kill me. It would have to be a particularly strong one, because whatever he feels about me, I should have said he worshipped the car, and it was bound to be pretty badly damaged. There’s negligence of course, but I’ve never known him negligent yet. And there’s no chance of its having happened in a strange garage, because we haven’t been near one, and if we had, Parker has a deep-rooted distrust of mechanics and he’d have checked everything over.”

Though much of this was Greek to Miss Silver, she continued to look intelligent. After a brief pause Lucius Bellingdon said harshly,

“Well, where do we go from there? Anyone could have done it, but I don’t believe it was Parker. There’s no way of proving anything, but I think someone has made an attempt upon my life—” He paused, and added on a harder note, “and Annabel’s.”

“You have indeed had a providential escape.”

He got up, drove his hands into his pockets, and went over to the writing-table. After standing there for a moment he turned and said,

“It doesn’t seem to surprise you that there has been an attempt on my life?”

“No, Mr. Bellingdon.”

“Why?”

She regarded him with composure.

“I have feared that such an attempt might be made.”

His “Why?” was repeated as sharply as before.

“Because I have not been able to feel any assurance that one such attempt has not already been made.”

“What do you mean?”

“Has it never occurred to you that the person who induced Mr. Garratt’s fit of asthma may quite reasonably have supposed that, your secretary being incapacitated, you would fetch the necklace yourself?”

He bent a hard frowning gaze upon her.

“It was Arthur Hughes who was shot.”

“I have never been able to believe that his death was intended.”

“Then why shoot him?”

“The necklace was in any case a tempting prize, and the person who took it could not risk being recognized. But I have always thought it possible that the theft of the necklace was originally intended to cover a darker and more ambitious crime.”

His laugh conveyed no idea of mirth.

“What’s the good of wrapping it up? You might just as well say straight out that someone wanted to kill me. I take it that is what you meant?”

“Yes, Mr. Bellingdon, that is what I meant.”

“Then don’t let us beat about the bush any longer. The theft of the necklace was a blind. I was to be murdered. Perhaps you can tell me why.”

She observed him mildly.

“Yes, the motive is of the first importance. Setting on one side those cases where a sudden impulse may produce a fatal result, and considering only those which involve premeditation, there are, generally speaking, three main motives for what the law calls wilful murder—love, hatred, and the desire for gain. I use the word love in the sense in which the murderer would doubtless use it, and not in my own understanding of it. I should, perhaps, have employed the term jealousy instead, since what is involved is what the French would call the crime passionnel.”

A momentary gleam of humour passed across his face.

“Well, I think you may count that one out. And I can’t think of anyone who hates me enough to kill me—not off-hand—” He broke off with an effect of suddenness.

After waiting to see if he would proceed she said,

“The third motive remains. You have great worldly possessions.”

There was a silence. He turned back to the table and stood there, straightening the pen-tray, lifting a stick of sealing-wax, a pencil. After a little he turned back again.

“You may just as well say what you mean.”

She said it.

“Mr. Bellingdon, who would profit by your death?”

He said without any change of expression.

“To a limited extent quite a number of people.” Then, as if the sound of his own voice had touched something off, look and manner betrayed a mounting intensity of feeling. “What are you suggesting? You’ll have to come out with it. I’ve never had any patience with hints, and you’ve gone too far to draw back. If you suspect anyone, you must come out with your suspicions. If you have an accusation to make, you must make it.”

Miss Silver maintained her quiet manner.

“Mr. Bellingdon, I have asked you who would profit by your death. You have not answered my question. You have asked me to be plain with you, and I am prepared to do as you ask. If, as I suppose, Mrs. Herne would benefit very largely under your will, I think you may have to consider whether she may not be the object of some design—”

He broke in as if he could no longer control himself.

“What do you mean by some design? You wrap everything up! Are you accusing Moira of trying to kill me?”

Miss Silver coughed in a reproving manner.

“That was not my intention. If Mrs. Herne were your heiress, that might provide a motive for a man who believed that she would be willing to share her inheritance with him.”

With a quick impatient gesture he said,

“A prospective son-in-law is usually prepared to wait for the decent course of nature. I don’t know which of Moira’s young men you imagine would risk a hanging to anticipate it. People do these things in melodrama, not in real life.”

She said soberly,

“Can you pick up a newspaper without finding material for a melodrama? The passions of greed and lust are essentially crude. They do not change.”

He said in a more moderate tone,

“The whole thing is preposterous. To start with, your hypothetical murderer would have to be pretty sure of Moira before he risked his neck by bumping me off. As far as I can see, there isn’t anyone in that position. Men come round her and she amuses herself with them, but there’s never been the slightest sign of anything serious since her husband’s death— not on her side at any rate.”

She did not answer him. She could have told him that he was arguing against his own fear, his own inward doubt, but she remained silent. It was only after an uneasy pause, when he said on a sharpened note, “Well, haven’t you anything to say?” that she spoke.

“Mr. Bellingdon, we are dealing with facts, not fancies. May I remind you of some of them? There was a plan to steal your necklace. The plan provided for the death of the person in charge of it. Mr. Garratt, who was to have been that person, was incapacitated, I believe deliberately. The most likely person to have taken his place was yourself. The person who did take his place was murdered. The whole plan could only have been devised and carried out by someone who was in close touch with your household. So much for the first crime. There has now been an attempt at a second. In this case not only you yourself were clearly aimed at, but Mrs. Scott was involved. Can you neglect the possibility that there may be further attempts, and that she may be involved in those?”

He made an abrupt movement.

“No, I can’t. She must go away.”

“Do you think that she will go?”

Lucius Bellingdon said, “No.”

“Your car has been tampered with and you have had a narrow escape. I gather that the accident which occurred was rendered especially dangerous by the fact that it took place on this particularly steep hill.”

“Yes.”

“Then the question would seem to arise as to whether it would have been possible for the person who tampered with your car to count on your driving down such a hill.”

“Yes, that question might arise.”

“May I ask whether you had planned to go the way you did, and whether anyone knew that you had made such a plan?”

“Yes, it was known. I spoke of it in the drawing-room before lunch. I think you were not present.”

“Will you tell me who were present?”

He said in an even voice,

“I think all the rest of the party.” He ran over the names in an undertone, “Elaine—Hubert—Arnold Bray—Sally Foster and that young Moray—Moira—Wilfrid Gaunt—Annabel—”

She said,

“You see, there is the same pattern. Anyone could have tampered with the car, but only certain people knew that you would be driving down this dangerous hill.”

He walked past her to the window, flung the curtains rattling back, and pushed the casement wide. The wind had dropped and the sky was clear. The smell of the damp earth came in, and a faint herby tang from the rosemary bush against the wall. When he was a boy he had had an ungovernable temper. He had learned to govern it, to harness it to his purposes, to make it do his bidding. It was there at his call. Not for years had it come so near to breaking loose. He stood there mastering it. When he turned and came back to his table he had the look of a man who has the upper hand of himself. His voice was grave and resolute as he said,

“Miss Silver, I offered you a professional engagement, and you accepted it. You have formed certain opinions—you are within your rights in expressing them. I invited you to come down here, and I told you that you would have a free hand. On my part, I have to decide whether I desire the arrangement between us to continue. In the event of my doing so, what have you to offer me in the way of advice?”