Miss Silver looked at him very kindly.
“That is more than anyone can say. You cannot know it. Do not torment yourself by thinking of what might have been. I do not see how you could have interrupted an interview between Mrs. Welby and her solicitor. Can you tell me how long he stayed?”
“It seemed like hours, but it wasn’t more than twenty minutes. He came out, and got into his car and drove off.”
Miss Silver coughed.
“You say ‘he,’ and ‘his car,’ but could you swear to this ‘he’ being Mr. Holderness, or could you swear to the car?”
He gave a jerky nod.
“Both. I saw him by the hall light when he let himself out, and I saw the number of the car, last night, and on the Wednesday night. When he had gone I went on walking up and down for a bit. Then there were some people coming along, and I cleared out and went home.” He dropped his head in his hands and groaned, “If I’d stayed-if I’d only stayed-I’d have known there was something wrong when her light didn’t go out.”
CHAPTER 41
At half past nine o’clock on Monday morning Mr. Holderness gathered his letters together and rose from the breakfast table. A childless widower of many years standing, his house had been kept ever since his wife’s death by an unmarried sister, a faded invalidish person with an expression of chronic discontent. As her brother picked up the Times and put it under his arm, she looked up with a puckered brow.
“Are you going already?”
“It is half past nine.”
“Did you have your second cup of tea?”
He laughed.
“You poured it out yourself.”
Miss Holderness clasped her head.
“Did I? I’m sure I hardly know what I’m doing. I didn’t sleep a wink. I can’t think how I came to run out of my tablets-I thought the box was half full.”
“You probably had a glorious burst and took them all the night before.”
Miss Holderness looked shocked.
“Oh, no-it would have been dangerous.”
“Well, my dear, danger is the spice of life.”
He had reached the door, when she asked him if he would be in for lunch. He said, “No,” and went away out of the room, and out of her life.
He did not very often drive to the office. His house was the one in which he had been born, and his father and his grandfather before him. Standing at what had been the edge of the town when it was built, there was still a garden behind it, but the open spaces beyond were now all quite built over. Since the distance of the office was under half a mile, he was used to making the journey on foot.
This day did not differ from any of the other days, running into uncounted numbers, on which he had shut the door briskly behind him, stood for a moment to savour the air, and then come down the two shallow steps on to the pavement and, turning to the right, set off in the direction of Main Street, his hat a little on the side of his head and a small leather case in his hand. At a quarter to ten he would be at the near end of Main Street, and by the time the clock of St. Mary’s was striking the hour he would be at his table looking through the morning’s mail.
This Monday morning was no different from all the other Mondays. A dozen people could remember afterwards that they had seen him and bidden him good-morning. Each of them severally made the same comment in varying tones of wonder-“He looked just as usual”-“He didn’t look no different”-“You wouldn’t have thought there was anything wrong.”
Mr. Holderness wouldn’t have thought it himself. It was a fine September morning. He felt alert and vigorous, and very much on the top of the world. His forebears came from the North of England. If it had been their fortune to be born as much farther north as the Highland line, his state of mind might have been described as “fey.” He had been in very great danger, he had taken a very great risk. Risk is the spice of life. He had pulled success out of failure, security out of danger, and he had done it by the cleverness of his brain, by the swiftness of his thought and the strength of his right hand. Not so bad for a man of sixty-five. Younger men than he might have gone under. He had saved himself, and he had saved the firm. The world was a good enough place.
He called Allan Grover in and asked him for the Jardine papers. When he had brought them and gone away again, Mr. Holderness looked after him, frowning. The boy looked like nothing on earth-eyes bunged up, hand shaking. His frown deepened. He hoped to goodness Grover hadn’t been drinking. Wouldn’t do if he was going to start that sort of thing-wouldn’t do at all. Always seemed a particularly steady young fellow, but you never could tell.
He was bending his mind to the Jardine case, when he heard the footsteps on the stair-heavy steps of more than one person, coming up the stairs and along the passage to his room. He looked up, and that is how they saw him as they came in, the Chief Constable and Inspector Drake. Behind them Constable Whitcombe closed the door and stayed outside.
The door was shut. They stood just inside it looking at him, seeing the upright figure in its well cut suit, the thick grey hair, the dark eyebrows arching over fine dark eyes, the florid colour. Except for the modern dress he might have been his own great-grandfather. The thought went through Randal March’s mind-eighteenth century, that’s what he is. “That they should take, who have the power, and they should keep who can.” He couldn’t remember where the lines came from, but they fitted.
The shadowy Stanway above the hearth gloomed on the room. There was just a moment’s silence. A great deal can happen in a moment. The whole towering structure built up in pride, self-will, and arrogance can come to a crashing fall- a crashing and irrevocable fall.
Randal March came forward and said gravely,
“We have come on a painful errand, Mr. Holderness-”
He showed nothing, except that his colour had deepened. He said, “Indeed?” and he said it without a tremor.
Inspector Drake came up to the table and stood there. He brought out a notebook and read from it.
“Is the number of your car XXM. 312?”
“Certainly.”
“We have information that it was parked on the grass verge outside the drive of Melling House between ten and ten-twenty p.m. on the night of Wednesday last, and again for about twenty minutes between nine-thirty and ten o’clock on Saturday night.”
Mr. Holderness remained in his upright position, one hand on the table edge, the other holding the paper which he had been perusing.
“May I ask who has given you this information?”
“Someone who knows the car. It will be sworn to.”
There was a faint crackling sound from the paper in Mr. Holderness’s hand. His fingers had closed upon it. The sound must have attracted his attention, for his eyes turned that way. His grip relaxed. He smoothed the paper out and laid it down. When this had been done he said,
“My clerk Allan Grover in fact-he lives in Melling. Well, gentlemen, I called upon Mrs. Welby on both those evenings. It is not a criminal offence to call upon a pretty woman. One may not be anxious to advertize the fact, especially to a tattling village, but I am quite willing to admit that I paid those two calls. What of it?”
Drake said sharply, “You were in the neighbourhood of Melling House between ten and ten-thirty on the Wednesday night.”
Mr. Holderness smiled.
“I was calling on Mrs. Welby.”