She cried out, “Not so much of the husband! I was through with him. I came down to see Luke White.”
“I thought so! And then you quarrelled.”
She said flatly, “That’s a lie! He wasn’t there.”
Crisp said, “What!”
Florence nodded.
“Nice to think there’s something you don’t know. He wasn’t there.”
He looked furiously at her. Before he could speak Miss Silver coughed and said,
“Pray, Mrs. Duke, how did you know which room to go to?”
She turned her head, and seemed for the first time to be aware of Miss Silver’s presence. She said, with all the heat gone from her voice,
“I asked that girl Eily where he slept. Not just like that, you know-she’d have thought it funny. The way I put it was, how many bedrooms did they have, and where had everyone been put.”
Frank Abbott’s hand moved to and fro across the paper. Crisp tapped with his pencil. He said impatiently,
“That doesn’t matter! You say you went to Luke White’s room and he wasn’t there.”
She shook her head.
“No, he wasn’t there.”
“Sure you struck the right room?”
“Yes. There’s only the one bedroom-opposite the kitchen.”
“How long were you there?”
“I don’t know. I thought he’d be coming. I looked round a bit. Then I thought I’d wait in the kitchen. That was all right what I said before. I went in the kitchen and had a look round and a couple of glasses of sherry like I said-there was a bottle on the dresser.”
“How soon did Luke White come along?”
She shook her head.
“He didn’t come. I got tired of waiting and went through to the hall like I told you. He was laid there with the knife in him, and that girl coming out of the lounge. I went to see if he was dead, and got my hands all messed up. Then Eily screamed, and everyone came down.”
He went on asking his questions, but he got nothing more from her. She had come downstairs to see Luke White, but she hadn’t seen him. She hadn’t set eyes on him until she saw him lying dead in the hall. She hadn’t laid hands on the knife or used it. She hadn’t stabbed Luke White.
Crisp let her go in the end. He was at once complacent over what he had got, and irritated because he had got no more. He stabbed with his pencil at the blotter and broke the point as he said,
“She did it all right. It couldn’t be anyone else.”
Frank Abbott looked up from his neat shorthand notes. He used the voice which Crisp stigmatized as B.B.C. to say,
“I don’t know.”
The Inspector fetched a knife from his pocket, released the blade with a jerk, and attacked the damaged pencil. Between slashes he said,
“Of course she isn’t Castell! It’s got to be Castell, hasn’t it?” He laughed harshly. “No substitutes accepted!”
Miss Silver coughed in a hortatory manner.
“Pray, Inspector, is there no news of Albert Miller?”
CHAPTER 28
Jeremy and Jane drove down from London. It was one of those grey afternoons when the clouds are low and a seeping vapour comes out of the ground to meet them. It wasn’t a fog yet, but there was no saying when it might take a turn that way. They ran through Cliff just after four, and out on the other side within sight and hearing of the sea. Jeremy was looking to his right, watching, as he had watched before, for the pair of tall stone pillars which marked the entrance to Cliff House. As they came in sight, weather-beaten and damaged, the one topped by an eagle, the other with the bird and half the capital gone, he slowed down.
“I’m taking you to tea with Jack Challoner.”
Jane said, “Oh!” in rather a startled manner, and then, “Why?”
“He’s a pal of mine. I rang him up. He said, ‘Bring her along to tea,’ and I said, ‘Right you are!’-just like that.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t want you to say no. It’s a mouldy old place, but I’d rather like to see it. Jack’s a good chap.”
“Isn’t Inspector Abbott staying there?”
“Yes. He’s some sort of cousin. I don’t suppose he’ll be there. Anyhow we’re not suspects.”
They had passed between the pillars and were pursuing a long, neglected drive with a tangled shrubbery on either side, windswept and stunted. The house when they reached it was gaunt and forbidding-a square, bare eighteenth-century block with the same neglected look as the drive.
An old man admitted them to an icy cavern of a hall, took them across it, and down a passage to a small room with a blazing fire, curtains already drawn, and two oil lamps giving out plenty of light, heat, and smell. A red-haired young man with rather a flat, freckled face heaved himself out of a shabby armchair and clapped Jeremy on the shoulder.
“Hullo, hullo! How do you do, Miss Heron? It’s frightfully good of you to come-it really is. I get the pip when I’m here by myself. Frank’s out chasing murderers, and I don’t suppose he’ll be back for tea, so you and Jeremy are probably going to save my life. Do you like muffins? Matthews always keeps them going because he likes them himself. I say, these lamps do stink, don’t they? That’s me, I’m afraid. Matthews always tells me not to turn them up, and then I forget and they smell to heaven. Of course, what this place wants is about ten thousand pounds spent on it. Nothing’s been done for donkeys’ years. My great-greatgrandfather ruined himself playing cards with the Prince Regent, and nobody’s had a penny ever since. He married an heiress and got rid of every farthing she had. Fun whilst it lasted!”
He was pulling chairs round as he spoke. The one Jane got had a broken spring. The curtains were Victorian-maroon velvet gone the colour of old blood, with a ball fringe ripped and hanging in loops. The carpet looked unswept, but that may have been merely an effect of age and decay. Jane thought how grim it would be to be saddled with a house like this. Jack Challoner seemed to bear up, but she felt sorry for his wife when he married.
As if her thought reached him, he laughed and said,
“What we want is another heiress-only I’d have to keep her carefully away from the place till it’s too late to draw back. No girl in her senses would take on a mouldy old ruin like this. I mean, she’d have to be frightfully in love, wouldn’t she? And I’m not the sort that girls fall frightfully in love with. Look here, would you like to see how bad it is? Jeremy said he’d like to-I can’t imagine why.”
Jeremy hadn’t sat down. He was leaning against the mantelpiece looking down into the fire. He turned now and said,
“Tales of my grandfather. His mother used to tell him stories about your people. It was Sir Humphrey Challoner in her time- somewhere in the eighteen-forties. I’d like to see the family portraits, you know.”
“All right. But we’d better go now, or there won’t be any light. “ He turned to Jane. “What about you? Wouldn’t you rather stay by the fire? I say, I do call you Jane, don’t I? I’ve known Jeremy for centuries.”
He was about the same age as Jeremy, but he seemed younger. He reminded Jane of a large friendly puppy.
They went back through the icy hall to a stark dining-room full of dreadful Victorian furniture. Above a massive sideboard hung the portrait of a gloomy gentleman in a stock and side-whiskers.
“That’s old Humphrey,” said Jack Challoner. “What sort of stories did your great-grandmamma hand down about him? He was my great-grandfather.”
Jeremy said slowly,
“He disinherited his son, didn’t he?”
“Yes-his eldest son, Geoffrey. Nasty family scandal. Geoffrey took after his grandfather, the old boy who ruined us-went the pace-was mixed up in some smuggling affray and got himself bumped off. After which everyone breathed more freely, and my grandfather, John, came in for the title and the place.”
Jeremy said, “My grandfather said his mother used to talk about Geoffrey.”