Ella Harrison left the hearth and came forward.
‘And now we can get on with it!’ Her voice was loud and dominant.
She was furiously angry, but she had got past smashing china. There were other things that could be broken, and she was out to break them. She came up to one of the easy chairs and stood there, resting her hands on the back.
‘You…’ she said, addressing Frank Abbott, ‘you’ve been free enough with your questions. Now you’re going to listen to me! I’ve got something to say!’
‘You wish to make a statement?’
‘If that’s what you like to call it! I’ve got something to say, and if you want to write it down you can!’
Inspector Sharp found himself a chair. He got out a notebook and propped it on the edge of the table where the diamond had lain.
Frank said, ‘Perhaps you would like to sit down, Mrs Harrison.’
She stared angrily.
‘I’d just as soon stand! It won’t take long! Quite a nice change it’ll be me talking and you listening, instead of your popping off questions at me for all the world as if you were a cross-talk comedian and I was your stooge! Now, you get this, Mr La-di-da policeman – I’m nobody’s stooge! And if you think you can pin anything on me, you can just set to work and think again, because I’ve got an alibi! And you, Mr What’s-his-name Sharp, you can write that down and be damned to you!’
The veneer was clean stripped off. This was the woman who had grown up in a drunken home and learned her language from hearing her father and mother swear at one another in their not infrequent rows, who had played as a child in the gutter, who had fought and clawed her way into a children’s act in pantomime, and from there with the help of good legs and a resonant voice into a variety turn. She hadn’t taken anything from anyone then, and she wasn’t taking anything from these policemen now. She said so at the top of her voice.
‘I don’t know what you think you’re getting at with your was I down at the Grahams’ on Tuesday night! Well then, I wasn’t, so you can put that in your pipe and smoke it! And why wasn’t I? You see, I’m asking the questions this time, and here’s the answer to that one! I wasn’t down at the Grahams’ because I’d got other fish to fry! And if you want to know who I was frying them with, it was Nicholas Carey! He came to this house as the clock struck eleven, and he didn’t go out of it again – I can answer for that. Here he was, and here he stayed, and neither of us wanted it any different. Jack was off to bed at ten o’clock, and the servants sleep out, so there wasn’t anyone to interfere with us, and that’s how we wanted it to be. So now you know!’
Frank Abbott’s cool detached gaze rested upon her. He was wondering how much of this was to Jack Harrison’s address. Just another and more effective way of hitting him where it hurt? Some of it no doubt, and the rest the alibi foreshadowed by Miss Silver. He said,
‘When you were questioned before, you stated that you were in bed by eleven, and that you had no idea when Mr Carey came in. Now you say he was in by eleven, and that you remained together.’
She had gone back to tapping with her foot.
‘Yes, you don’t put everything in the shop-window right away, do you?’
‘Meaning that you don’t always tell the truth unless it suits you?’
‘Don’t you go trying to make out I’ve said what I haven’t!’
‘By your own account you have said first one thing and then another with regard to your movements on Tuesday night.’
‘I didn’t see it was anyone’s business – not then. But if you’re trying to pin something on me, then it’s my business to see you don’t get any wrong ideas! Nicky was here with me from eleven o’clock and for the best part of the night. It didn’t suit either of us for it to come out – not then. But that’s how it was, and you can’t get from it!’
Her flush was one of triumph now. She had flung her stone and killed two birds with it. If she had an alibi, they couldn’t make out she’d been down at the Grahams’ on Tuesday night, and if the alibi was going to hit Jack where it hurt, well, he’d asked for it – chipping in to say he’d seen the ring on Tuesday evening and none of the stones missing! Anyone else would have had the sense to hold his tongue, with the police in the house and a murder charge flying round. But not Jack Harrison, not her poor boob of a husband – oh dear, no! He must come chipping in with having seen the ring and noticed that all the stones were there! Well, if he liked to divorce her he could, and a good riddance to him!
The local Inspector wrote down what she had said and read it over to her. When she had signed it they both went out of the room. She heard them go across the hall to the front door. She heard it open and shut again behind them.
The warm satisfied anger in her began to die down.
THIRTY-ONE
NICHOLAS CAREY SAT at the dressing-table of his room at the George, but he was not engaged with the affairs of the toilet. The old-fashioned dressing-mirror with its five drawers, two on each side and one in the middle to take rings, trinkets, and what have you, had been pushed on one side to make way for the typewriter upon which he was rapidly tapping out his latest article. The room was furnished in a heavy mid-Victorian style, the only change which it had suffered since the days when the George was a posting inn being the substitution of up-to-date spring beds for the gloomy four-poster of a hundred years ago. If the carpet had been renewed, Mr Pickwick himself would not have been able to swear to it, and the general air of gloomy respectability remained intact.
When the telephone bell rang Nicholas stopped tapping, crossed to the space between the beds, and took up the receiver. A voice informed him that there was a gentleman to see him, ‘Name of Abbott – Mr Abbott.’ He said, ‘Send him up,’ and went back to the dressing-table, where he stood gathering up a couple of sheets already typed. He was frowning at the one still in the typewriter, wondering whether he would be allowed to finish it if they arrested him, and whether the Janitor would want it if they did.
There was a knock at the door before he could make up his mind. Frank Abbott came in and shut it behind him. He was alone, and the official manner was in abeyance.
Nicholas raised his eyebrows, laid down his sheets of typescript, and said,
‘Mr Abbott? Is that tact or…’
‘Well, perhaps unnecessary to give the hall porter anything fresh to talk about.’
‘But I take it you haven’t just dropped in to pass the time of day?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Well, we might as well sit down.’
He gave Frank Abbott the armchair, sat on the side of the nearer bed, and waited. If police officers chose to come butting in they could break the ice for themselves.
Frank leaned back, crossed his long legs, and said easily,
‘I thought it might be useful to have your views on Mrs Traill’s evidence. Miss Graham has told you about it?’
‘She has.’
‘Would you care to comment on it at all? You need not of course – I expect you know that. If you do, I suppose I ought to caution you.’
‘That anything I say may be taken down and used in evidence? All right, we’ll take it as said. About this Mrs Traill’s statement – I certainly wasn’t in the gazebo at twenty past eleven on Tuesday night. I left as soon as Althea had taken her mother into the house.’
‘You are sticking to that?’
‘It happens to be true.’
‘Mrs Traill heard Mrs Graham use your name. She is prepared to swear to hearing her say, “How dare you, Nicholas Carey!” ’
Nicholas nodded.
‘Yes, that’s what she said before when she came out and found us in the gazebo. But you know, she couldn’t have seen who it was this second time. All she could possibly have done was to see or hear that there was someone in the gazebo, and to jump to the conclusion that it was me.’