She stood like that and let the minutes go by. If Miss Cara was awake and afraid, surely she would have put on the light. She wouldn’t just lie in the dark and do nothing about it. After what seemed quite a long time Candida drew back and closed the door. She did not know, she could not have known, how bitterly she was going to regret this most reasonable action. Go over it as she would, she did not see how she could have done anything but what she did. And yet it hurt her at her heart, and always would.
It may have been the faint jar of the closing door that touched Miss Cara’s sleeping thought. It may have been the next wild gust that shook the house, or it may have been an earlier one. It may have been the sense of Candida’s presence. No one was ever to know. Sometimes a very small thing slips into a dream and troubles it, or the utmost raging of a storm may leave it untroubled and apart. At some time during that night of wind and rain Cara Benevent rose up out of her bed, put slippers on her feet, and wrapped a dressing-gown about her. There was no means of telling whether she had a light to see by. It was certain that she left her room, but whether she went walking or sleeping no one could know. She went, and she did not return.
Candida went back to her room and slept until the cold grey dawn came up. She was awake when Anna burst into the room. She was dressed, but she carried no tray. The tears ran down her cheeks and her eyes were wild. She fell down on her knees by the bed, her arms flung out and the breath catching in her throat.
‘My Miss Cara – oh, my Miss Cara! Why did I leave her – why did I not stay with her!’
Candida pulled herself up in the bed.
‘Anna, what is it? Is Aunt Cara ill?’
Anna gave a long wailing cry.
‘If she were ill, I would nurse her, I would stay with her – I would not come running to anyone else! She is dead! My Miss Cara is dead!’
Candida felt a coldness creep over her. It slowed her movements, her words. Her tongue stumbled as she said,
‘Are – you – sure?’
‘Would I say it if I were not sure? Would I not be with her? I leave her because there is nothing we can do any more! She lies there at the foot of the stairs and she is dead! The storm frightens her – she walks in her sleep – she falls and strikes her head! The old houses – the stairs are not safe – they are so narrow and so steep! She falls, my poor Miss Cara, and she is dead! And will you tell me how I am to tell Miss Olivia?“
‘She doesn’t know?’
‘How should she know? She is expecting me to bring the tea! How can I go to her and tell her, “Your tea is here, and Miss Cara is dead”? The hardest heart in the world could not do it – I cannot do it!’
Candida was out of her bed, slipping into her clothes, running a comb through her hair, putting on a grey and white pullover and a grey tweed skirt because they were warm and everything in her seemed to have turned to ice. They went down the stairs to the hall. Miss Cara lay in a twisted heap where the left-hand newel met the floor. One arm was doubled up under her and she was cold and stiff. There could not be any doubt at all that she was dead.
Candida, on her knees by the body, found herself whispering, ‘Did you move her?’
Anna had sunk down upon the bottom step. She sat bowed forward, her head in her hands. She said on a low sobbing breath,
‘No – no – I only touch her cheek, her hand. I know that she is dead – ’
‘Yes, she is dead. We mustn’t move her.’
‘I know – it is the law.’
‘We must send for the doctor.’
Anna caught her breath.
‘He is away – only yesterday Miss Cara said so. It is his partner who will come, Dr. Gardiner – but what can anyone do now?’
Candida said, ‘Fetch Mr. Derek!’
He came, as shocked as she was herself. They knelt on either side of Miss Cara and spoke low, as if she were asleep and must not be disturbed.
‘You must ring up the doctor. You had better go and do it now.’
‘Has anyone told – her?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘Someone must.’
‘And who is to do it?’ said Anna on a sobbing breath. ‘It should be you who are of the family, Miss Candida.’
Candida steadied herself. If she must she must, but it would come better from Anna – perhaps even from this weeping, shaken Anna who had gone back to her crouched position on the bottom step – not from the girl who came between Olivia Benevent and all that she was accustomed to look upon as her own. She said, ‘Anna, you have been with her forty years,’ and Anna wailed, ‘Do not ask me – I cannot!’
There was a silence, and then a sound. It came from the stair above them, and it was made by the heavy tassel of Miss Olivia’s dressing-gown dropping from step to step as she came slowly down. It was a purple tassel on a cord of purple and black, and the gown was purple too.
Olivia Benevent came down at a measured pace, her hand on the balustrade. Not a hair of her smooth waves was out of place. There was no expression in her face or in her eyes, but Candida, looking up, could see where a muscle jerked in the side of the throat. She came right down to the floor of the hall and stood there staring at her sister’s body. Then she said,
‘Which of you killed her?’
Chapter Twenty-four
Dr. Gardiner sat looking at Inspector Rock. They made a sharp contrast – Gardiner thin, dark, alert, and the Inspector a big fair man who would be massive by the time he was fifty. At present he was a likeable thirty-six with a pleasant blue eye and a humorous mouth. They were in the study, and somehow they made it seem crowded. Too many pictures on the walls, too much china, too many nicknacks. Gardiner said,
‘Well, I can only go on saying what I have said all along. If she fell down the stairs and was killed, then someone arranged the body in the position in which we found it. The back of her head – well, you saw it for yourself – completely crushed. But she was found lying on her face, and everyone swears they didn’t turn her over. And why should they? The other way round and there would have been some sense in it. If you find a woman lying on her face, you might turn her over, but if she’s lying on her back, why should you? No sense in it at all.’
He had pulled a chair sideways to one of the windows and sat there, one knee over the other – Rock conventionally at Miss Olivia’s writing-table, but with his chair slewed about to face the doctor. He made one of those non-committal sounds, and Gardiner went on.
‘I won’t dogmatise about the time she died. Your man will be able to tell you more about that after the post-mortem, but if Burdon and Miss Sayle and the maid are all telling the truth about when they found her, then they couldn’t have had any hand in arranging the position. To have been done with any chance of deceiving anyone it must have been done soon. It wasn’t much after half past seven when they rang me, and I was here by ten minutes after eight, and she had certainly been dead a good many hours then. As you know, I rang you up at once, and here we are. I take it the rest of your gang will be along at any time. You won’t want me any more.’
‘I thought you might stay until Black gets here. I thought he might like to see you.’
Gardiner’s shoulder lifted.
‘Nothing I can do,’ he said.
‘Well, you were the first on the spot. I was going to ask you what you thought of it all.’
The shoulder jerked again.
‘Not my business.’
‘Oh, just for my own private consideration and strictly off the record.’
Gardiner had a twisted smile for that.
‘Oh, well, plenty of animus knocking about. Miss Olivia very determined about someone having killed her sister. Miss Sayle very quiet and shocked. Burdon a good deal distressed. And the maid Anna as temperamental as they come. She’s been with them for forty years, so I suppose she has a right to be upset. The butler is her husband – a whole lot younger, and not so long in their service – a mere fifteen or twenty years. He appears to be normally affected. That’s the best I can do.’