‘Are you sure Mrs Traill mentioned the time at which she left this house on Hill Rise?’
Mabel Pimm answered for her sister.
‘It is No. 28, and Mr and Mrs Nokes live there. He is in a shipping office and goes up to town every day. And they have a young baby, so that if they want to go out in the evening they have to employ a babysitter, though I shouldn’t myself have described Mrs Traill as at all suitable – a most untidy person.’
The Inspector looked her way.
‘You know her?’
Mabel Pimm showed offence.
‘Certainly not! I should not dream of employing a person like that. I was going by what my sister said.’
He turned back again to Lily.
‘I just wanted to know whether you heard Mrs Traill say at what time she left the house on Hill Rise.’
‘No. 28,’ said Mabel Pimm.
Lily was not at all flustered. She said,
‘Oh, yes, I did. Mrs Nokes had a headache, so they came straight back from the cinema instead of going out to supper. There wasn’t anything for Mrs Traill to stay for after that so she got her money and came away, and it was twenty past eleven when she came out of the front door, because she looked at the clock in the hall and made out she could just catch the bus at the corner of Belview Road.’
He had begun to wonder whether it was going to be possible to stop or deflect her until she had gone through the whole story again. He struck in with a ‘Thank you, Miss Pimm,’ and from behind him on his right heard the sister say with an edge on her voice,
‘Miss Lily, if you please, Inspector. I am Miss Pimm.’
Althea had neither spoken nor moved. The dump on which she was sitting afforded no back against which she could lean. She sat in what had been an easy attitude but which had gone on stiffening until all its grace was lost. She wore no make-up, and the black dress dictated by custom robbed her skin of its last vestige of colour. The eyes which could take the sea tints, brightening into green or softening from it, were now a frozen grey. They stared before her as if the people and the room were not really there at all. They had gone away into a mist like the one through which she had passed to find her mother dead. Her mind struggled with what Lily Pimm had been saying. She tried to fit it in with the things which were already there. Nicky ringing her up and saying she must meet him at half past ten. It was half past ten when she slipped out of the back door and went up the garden to the gazebo. And then her mother had come. She had come, and she had called out, ‘How dare you, Nicholas Carey!’ and there was a scene and they had gone back into the house together. But Lily Pimm said that this Mrs Traill had come out of the Nokes’s house at twenty past eleven and when she was passing on the other side of the hedge from the gazebo she had heard her mother call out those very same words. She had heard her say, ‘How dare you, Nicholas Carey!’ None of these things seemed to fit in at all, and the mist in the room got thicker. She knew Mrs Nokes quite well by sight. The baby had fair hair sticking up all over his head, and a jolly grin. Something said to her, ‘You weren’t any time in the gazebo – hardly any time at all. You were back in the house making Ovaltine and putting your mother to bed long before eleven. Mrs Traill couldn’t have heard her in the gazebo at twenty past – she couldn’t possibly have heard her say “How dare you, Nicholas Carey!” ’
Miss Silver put down her knitting on the sofa beside her and got up. She addressed Frank Abbott formally.
‘I think this is too much for Miss Graham, Inspector. Perhaps you will take the Miss Pimms into the dining-room.’
TWENTY-FOUR
ALTHEA DID NOT quite lose consciousness but she came very near it. She lay on the sofa and felt vaguely how strange it was that she should be lying there with a soft rug over her and a cushion beneath her head. A small firm hand lifted the rug and felt her wrist. She opened her eyes a little way and said, ‘I’m all right.’ There was still a lot of mist in the room. Miss Silver’s voice came through it.
‘Yes, you are quite all right. Just lie still and rest.’ It would be lovely to let go of everything and slip into a dream. But there was something she had to do first. No, it was something she had to say, only she couldn’t quite get hold of it – it seemed to be just out of her reach. And there was an urgency about it – she couldn’t let it go. She had to think what it was – she had to say it. Her hand caught at Miss Silver’s.
‘There was something – I had to say.’
‘Don’t trouble yourself now, my dear.’ She began to say, ‘I can’t remember…’ and then it came to her. It was about Nicky – there was something she must tell them about Nicky. She tried to lift her head, but the giddy feeling was too strong. She said in an exhausted voice,
‘It was about Nicky – you must tell them. He didn’t do it – he really didn’t. You will tell them, won’t you?’
Miss Silver did not take her hand away. She said,
‘I will tell them just what you say, my dear.’
Althea drew a long breath. She had done what she had to do. The hand that was holding Miss Silver’s relaxed. She drifted into sleep.
When Frank Abbott returned to the house she was still sleeping. Miss Silver took him into the dining-room, where he drew the curtain across that side of the bay which faced the porch, coming back to pull out one of the chairs and sit down across the corner from Miss Silver. He looked at her with affection. The neatly netted hair with its Alexandra fringe in front and its plaits behind, the little vest of tucked net with the boned collar, the grey dress with its faint black and mauve pattern, the brooch of bog-oak in the form of a rose with an Irish pearl at its heart, the grey thread stockings, and the neat black glacé shoes with little ribbon bows on them, made up a picture which delighted him. She had brought her knitting with her. A small pale pink garment depended from the plastic needles.
He said in a lazy voice,
‘You are really a very demoralizing associate for a police officer, you know.’
She gave him a half smile and continued to knit.
‘In what way do I demoralize you?’
‘My dear ma’am! I find it impossible to look at you and to remember that there is such a thing as crime. You diffuse an atmosphere of security which forbids it.’
‘My dear Frank!’
‘I know, I know – crime exists, and we are here on a murder case. Let’s get down to it. I have been interviewing the untidy Mrs Traill, and you may take it from me untidy she is. And so is No. 4 Holbrook Cottages, and her daughter-in-law, and the three little Traills under school age. But quite respectable and cooperative. I give the Miss Pimms top marks. Lily appears to be the human phonograph. Mrs Traill as reported by her being if anything rather more accurate than Mrs Traill as reported by Mrs Traill.’
Miss Silver gave the slight cough with which she was wont to draw attention to an inaccurate or exaggerated statement.
‘My dear Frank…’
He put up a hand.
‘No – pause before you accuse me. I am prepared to prove the point. There were two occasions when Mrs Traill’s version of what happened on Tuesday night differed slightly from Lily Pimm’s account of the conversation in the fish queue. Pressed by me, Mrs Traill immediately discarded her own version and agreed that what she had said to Mrs Rigg outside the fish shop was the right one. Her own expression, I may say, and very handsomely conceded, was “That’s right!” I felt that for tuppence she would have called me “ducks”. It was all very matey.’
Miss Silver pulled on the pale pink ball.
‘I have no doubt as to the accuracy of Lily Pimm’s account. I do not believe her capable of inventing anything.’