They carted her outside. She wasn’t dead. A bout or two of artificial respiration brought her round, shuddering and moaning. She kept her eyes tight closed, but tears were streaming down her cheeks. Her mouth worked continually in sobs that didn’t come.
‘Why didn’t you let me die… why didn’t you… why didn’t you…!’
‘You must try to pull yourself together, Miss Brent.’
‘I want to die… why didn’t you let me die!’
‘You have behaved rather foolishly. There’s no need for this sort of thing.’
‘I don’t want to be hung… why didn’t you let me die!’
Dutt saw the tired expression that came over Gently’s face.
‘Shall I run down and phone for an ambulance, sir?’
‘Yes, Dutt… she’ll have to have a check-up.’
‘And a man to keep an eye on this place?’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
They carried her back into the bungalow and Dutt went off in the Wolseley. She lay quite still on a couch, tucked up in a couple of blankets. Gently went into the kitchen. ‘A mild stimulant’, the textbook said. He filled up the kettle and brewed a pot of the stimulant in question.
‘Here… do you think you can manage this?’
She put out a shaking, automatic hand.
‘You shouldn’t have done this, you know… it isn’t going to help you.’
She sipped the tea without replying, almost as though what he said didn’t register. Her eyes were still glazed with tears. Her lips twisted and trembled over the edge of the cup.
‘At the worst, it was worthwhile to see it through.’
Now she was looking at him.
‘There’s a lot you wouldn’t have to answer for. That’s absolutely certain! Whatever the rest is, you don’t have to throw in the sponge yet.’
Big, staring eyes looking at him from a frenzied inner world, a lonely world, a hopeless world. Eyes which saw nothing but horror.
‘Tell me!’
The words seemed to be spoken for her.
‘Have you got him?’
It was hard to believe she knew what she was saying.
‘Who?’ whispered Gently. ‘Who is it you’re referring to?’
In some way there was a shift of expression in the very depths of those haunting eyes. A shutter closed somewhere. He had lost a momentary contact with her naked confidence.
‘You don’t know!’
A sort of ethereal triumph was welling up.
‘You don’t know, and I shall never tell you!’
‘Miss Brent!’ Gently cursed himself for the slip he had made. ‘Miss Brent… it is in your vital interest to tell us all you know!’
She wasn’t listening.
‘Unless you cooperate, you will be in a very serious position.’
A fey smile shone through her tears like hectic storm sunshine.
‘It doesn’t matter now. You may hang me, if you like. I shall never, never tell you!’
‘Please consider what you are saying.’
‘You may hang me, if you like!’
It was too late. He had let her know what she wanted. There was a positive radiance in the beautiful, tear-flooded face. And as she saw him about to frame another question her lips tightened and she feebly shook her head.
He didn’t know — and she wasn’t going to tell him!
Gently covered quite a lot of ground up and down that meagre lounge during the half-hour it took the ambulance to arrive. Never had a case seemed such an unholy mess to him. There was so much that was coherent, if you shut it up in airtight compartments. But once you took it as a whole… Then it stopped being coherent. Then it became like a job-lot of pieces out of several different puzzles, with odd bits everywhere that wouldn’t fit at all. Yet there was a governing principle somewhere. There had to be! However square the facts looked, one knew that at a certain moment on Friday evening they formed a complete and unbroken circle.
What wasn’t he seeing, in all that hotch-potch of motive and opportunity? What was the dynamic factor that he kept passing over, time and again?
Right at the beginning he had had a hunch that something obvious was staring him in the face. It was time now he saw it! Hadn’t he got all the facts?
‘There’s only the shover to pick up now, sir,’ Dutt reminded him soothingly. ‘We must get him soon — it only stands to reason.’
Gently grunted without conviction. Somehow, the chauffeur had never impressed him as being more than a cipher in the business.
‘He’s got the worst motive of the lot of them. He may have guessed that Lammas had some money on him!’
But that was no reason. As often as not it wasn’t the motive that made the murder. People kill for the most pitiful of motives, often so petty and obscure that one could hardly believe in them. Lammas had once checked Hicks and that was quite enough for motive. It could rankle for years until it found an opportune moment.
‘Anyway, this is too clever. There’s intelligence and character behind what went on here.’
Such intelligence as Marsh had, for example. Or Paul. Or Mrs Lammas. Or all three in conjunction… what sort of murdering conference had taken place at ‘High Meadows’ that evening, while the ‘loyal and discreet’ Hicks stood by, the perfect tool, the perfect fall-guy? Marsh, to gain a rich bride! Mrs Lammas, to foil an escaping husband! Paul, to lay for ever the spectre of National Service and an honest job! It was just a happy coincidence that killing Lammas would be pleasant work for Hicks also.
But then there was this damned woman here, somehow up to her neck in it. Gently cast a none-too-friendly glance at the still, apparently sleeping form on the couch. In what possible capacity could she have been of the faction? And which was the ‘him’ she was carrying the torch for? Not Marsh, that was certain. It rested with Hicks and Paul. And Paul was the one you were compelled to cast for the part. And if she knew it was Paul, then Paul must have communicated with her… it was the only way she could possibly know.
Gently came to a full stop in his restless pacing.
They hadn’t found any letters… but Paul had been out on his motorcycle yesterday!
‘Stay here — I’ll be back in a moment.’
He went striding out of the bungalow.
Next door a family party had just returned from the beach. They were a middle-aged couple with three young children and they were spreading out towels and costumes, and shaking the sand out of their shoes.
‘Just a minute! I’d like a word with you.’
They all looked round at him.
‘I’m a police officer making certain investigations… you may be able to help me.’
After some moments of suspicion, they were almost over-helpful. No detail was so trifling, but one or other of them could add it to the tally. Yes, they could remember Miss Brent arriving at the bungalow on the Friday. It was just after little Ernie had cut his foot on a piece of glass, by deduction just after 8 p.m. and he ought to have been in bed… oh yes, she was quite alone and carrying two cases, she was, and wearing one of those posh dresses and etc., etc.
‘She hasn’t left the bungalow since she came?’
No, of that they were certain. They had palled-up at once. She hadn’t any side, though she did speak la-di-da. They had even had meals together and gone shopping in the village… the kids were quite attached to her, she’d put some plaster on little Ernie’s foot and bought them all ice-creams.
‘She wouldn’t have had any visitors?’
No, she’d always seemed rather lonely.
‘Yesterday evening, for example?’
It was quite impossible, since they had all gone to a travelling film show in the village hall together.
‘One more question… it’s about the mail. Does the post office deliver up here?’
It did. It came in the mornings. Every morning they had a letter from their daughter Marge, who they’d left at home.
‘And Miss Brent has had letters?’
Miss Brent had had none. She had looked out for the postman, but no letter had ever arrived.