“Do you think she stayed with Miss Heron?”
“Of course she did.”
Crisp gave another of those darting stabs.
“Then how do you account for the fact that she was found down in the hall in her nightgown, and Luke White not a yard away from her with the knife in his back?”
The blood rushed powerfully to John Higgins’ face. He sprang to his feet and stood there, his hands on the table edge, gripping it hard.
“Eily-” he said. His voice caught on the name. He tried for it again, and as he did so, the hot blood drained away and left him ashy pale.
Miss Silver laid her knitting down on the floor beside her chair and got up. At the touch of her hand on his arm he turned and looked at her, an agonized question in his eyes. She said in a kind, cheerful voice,
“You have no need to be anxious, Mr. Higgins. Eily is quite safe.”
His look went blank for a moment.
“Safe-”
“She is perfectly safe, Mr. Higgins. Nothing has happened to her-nothing at all.”
He said in a stumbling voice,
“She was down there-with that man-”
“She heard a noise and came down and found him. It was a shock of course, but she is quite safe.”
Frank Abbott had a moment of unreasoned admiration for his Miss Silver. At what she considered the dictates of humanity she would without hesitation sacrifice a point in the game. She had in fact just done so, and it was annoying Inspector Crisp very much. He said with an angry edge to his voice,
“I think you had better leave this to me, Miss Silver. We have no evidence to support Eily Fogarty’s statement. If I may say so, you had no business to repeat it.”
Miss Silver turned a look of calm rebuke upon him.
“I beg your pardon, Inspector.”
Nothing could have been more proper than the words, yet in some singular manner Inspector Crisp had the feeling that his collar was too tight, and that he did not quite know what to do with his hands and feet. These were sensations which had afflicted him in his teens, now many years behind him. He had hoped never to experience them again, but during the moments that he had to support Miss Silver’s gaze they were uncomfortably prominent. It was with a good deal of relief that he saw her turn back to John Higgins. She gave a little cough and said in a confidential voice,
“You really need not be troubled about Eily. Miss Heron is with her all the time. They are doing the bedrooms together.” After which she resumed her seat and her knitting.
Inspector Crisp’s collar returned to its normal size. He felt an urgent need to assert himself. His tone was brusque as he said,
“Sit down, Higgins! Eily Fogarty says she heard a noise and came downstairs. If that’s true, the noise may have been made by the murderer. Suppose there was a window open in the lounge. I’m not saying who opened it, or for what purpose. I’m not saying it was Eily Fogarty, but it could have been. I’m not saying anyone came in that way, but you can see for yourself that someone might have done, and you can see for yourself that it might have been you. Eily Fogarty was seen to come out of the lounge with Luke White lying dead in the hall. She could have been shutting that window after you.”
John Higgins shook his head.
“I neither came in nor went out,” he said.
Crisp made a sharp thrust with his pencil.
“There was a window unlatched in the lounge.”
CHAPTER 21
There were a good many more questions and answers, but the result was the same. In a perfectly deliberate manner John Higgins stuck to it that somewhere about eleven o’clock he had stood under Eily Fogarty’s window and talked to her for something like a quarter of an hour, and that he had then gone home. He had not then or at any time during the past five years set foot inside the Catherine-Wheel. He had not at any time during the past twenty-four hours either seen Luke White or had any communication with him.
When they had let him go Crisp said in his most didactic manner,
“You may depend upon it that’s the way it was. There was that window unlatched-the one just through there.” He pointed at the door going through to the lounge. “All the others were hasped-that one wasn’t. Castell says he checked them all over when he shut up for the night.”
Frank Abbott gazed abstractedly at his beautifully polished shoes.
“I don’t know that I should want to hang a dog on Castell’s evidence,” he observed.
Crisp nodded quite good-humouredly.
“Oh, yes. But that’s what you’re down here for, isn’t it-to find something against Castell? He’s a slippery customer, and British subject or no British subject, he’s got foreigner written all over him.”
Frank said, “Cosmopolitan, if you want to be polite-mongrel, if you don’t. Portuguese father, Irish mother. Born more or less by accident in some London purlieu, and brought up for the most part in Marseilles, where his parents kept what may pass for a boarding-house.”
Miss Silver coughed.
“That would account for the fact that his turn of speech is often decidedly French.”
Crisp gave a short laugh.
“Give a dog a bad name!” he said. “You can’t hang Castell because his mother was no better than she should be. He may have a finger in this dope-smuggling pie that you people are so set on, but for that very reason he’d keep clear of a thing like murder. And where’s the motive? The two men were as thick as thieves.”
Frank Abbott smiled.
“You’ve said it-they were as thick as thieves. Haven’t you ever heard of rogues falling out?”
When John Higgins left the office he walked through the lounge into the hall. It was five years since he had been in the house, but he knew his way. He took a look round the screen at the dining-room door, found the room empty, and then walked up the stairs. On the half-way landing he checked, and stood for a moment listening. There was the sound of voices. He knocked on the door of the room in which Jeremy had slept the night before and went in.
Eily and Jane Heron were making up a bed on the old-fashioned couch. Jeremy was at the table writing. Eily gave a cry of surprise. She stood where she was, very pale, and made no move to come to him, not even when he said, “Eily!”-only caught her breath and moved a step closer to Jane. There was a short uncomfortable silence. Then Jeremy said,
“Hullo! I suppose you’ve heard?”
John nodded.
“The police sent for me, and for Mrs. Bridling. Seems we were both here last night. Along with a good few other people.” He turned to Jane. “Miss Heron, I’ve to thank you for helping Eily. That Miss Silver that was down with the police, she told me you were looking after her.” He put a hand on Eily’s arm. “Will you come down into the dining-room,” he said. “There’s things I want to say to you, and you to me.”
She went out with him and down into the dining-room. Seen by daylight it was like a gloomy cave, the light all at one end where two straight windows faced the door. Dark panelling drank the light. Nothing had been done about the fire. The ash of last night’s logs stirred in the chimney draught.
There is a natural drift even to a dead hearth. John and Eily came up to it and stood there, a little apart. Behind them, masking the door to the hall, was one of those screens covered with pictures cut from old papers and magazines, some coloured and some plain, but all glazed this hundred years in a varnish which time had deepened to amber. It served to keep the worst draughts from the room when the front door stood open. It did very little to mitigate them. A cold current of air moved in the room, appearing to come now from the hearth, now from the windows, and now from the masked door.
John Higgins didn’t notice it at all, but Eily shivered as if the air could move her bodily. She looked frail enough, standing there and holding out shaking hands to the cold hearth. His arms came round her.
“Eily-darling-what is it? He didn’t hurt you? Say he didn’t hurt you!”