The police car which contained Detective Inspector Abbott and Sergeant Hubbard turned into Rillington High Street and approached the Square. Held up by the red light before they reached it, Frank Abbott noted the Arcadia on the right and thought briefly that a cup of tea would be agreeable but they had probably better not stop and anyhow there wouldn’t be anywhere to park. As his gaze travelled back across the street it rested upon the crowded island just ahead of them. It looked as if a lot of people had crossed from the side where the café stood and been caught up there. The red light ahead had changed to amber, and as his eye reached it the green came on. The whole line of traffic began to move and their own car with it.
It was at this moment that Frank saw and recognized the Blounts. Mrs Blount was on the very edge of the island. There was a woman next to her in a black coat and skirt and a black hat with a red ribbon round it. Mr Blount was not next to his wife nor immediately behind her. Frank opened the nearside door and got himself and his long legs out on to the pavement. He called out to the astonished Sergeant Hubbard, ‘Get her parked and come back!’ and proceeded across the traffic in the direction of the island in a highly dangerous and exasperating manner. So far his actions had been largely automatic. Looking back upon them, he was aware that they had been prompted by the simultaneous and vivid appearance in his mind of a number of pictures. There was Miss Silver saying earnestly, ‘I am deeply concerned about Mrs Blount.’ There was Mrs Blount herself on the edge of a stream of traffic which would presently be going very fast. There was the crowd on the island behind Mrs Blount. And there was Mr Blount, not so near his wife as to come under suspicion but near enough to exert pressure at a critical moment. And away in the mental background but still discernible, Mr Blount’s father who had broken his neck falling down the stairs in his own house, and the first Mrs Blount who had gone down under a train. Money in it for Mr Blount on both these occasions, and money to come to him if anything were to happen to the present Mrs Blount. Dead men tell no tales. If Mrs Blount had a tale that she might tell, she wouldn’t be able to tell it. Not if she was dead.
All these things were suddenly and menacingly present as he came up out of the traffic and stood in the lee of the island. There was no standing-room on the island itself. He didn’t want to attract Mr Blount’s attention, but he had got to be within reach of Mrs Blount. He began to edge along in front of the island. Two women looked at him angrily, and a man said, ‘Where are you shoving to!’ The cars that had been waiting for the lights to change had all got away now, and the oncoming traffic behind them had put on speed to get across the Square before they changed again. Everyone was watching them go by. Time was getting short – the lights would go again at any moment. A scarlet bus was speeding up to get across in time. It was going to pass so near the island that the people in the front row made an involuntary movement to step back. Only there wasn’t any room to step back. The people behind began shoving in order to keep their places. Somebody shoved Mrs Blount so hard that she lost her footing on the stone kerb and plunged forward just as the bus came roaring past. Lizzie Pardue screamed and made an ineffectual snatch at her coat sleeve. Mrs Blount herself didn’t scream. She felt a paralysing terror, a paralysing certainty that this was death. And then, quick and hard, the grasp of a hand upon her outflung arm. It was a man’s hand and it was strong. It held her back from where she would have fallen under the front wheels of the bus. It jerked her sideways past Lizzie Pardue and the bus went by. The scarlet paint on the side of it brushed her shoulder and left it sore and hot right through the stuff of her coat. When her mind began working again the lights had changed and the traffic had stopped. Room had been made for her on the island. The man who had saved her had his arm about her shoulders, holding her up. Lizzie Pardue was sobbing and crying, and Sid was standing looking at her and saying,
‘What happened, Milly – what happened?’
Milly Blount said, ‘You pushed me.’
FORTY-THREE
FRANK ABBOTT CAME to The Lodge in the evening and told Miss Silver all about it.
‘If you hadn’t managed to put the wind up me about Mrs Blount she’d have been dead by now. There we were just driving along peaceably through Rillington, when I saw her on the island and had a come-over. There she was, and there Blount was, and there was the traffic, and it up and hit me in the eye that if I was a crook and wanted to get rid of a woman who had a packet in the bank and who knew too much about me, I couldn’t possibly ask for a better opportunity. The next thing I knew I was out of the car and half way across the road. I should have felt all sorts of a fool if nothing had happened, but as you know something did. Blount and I were twin souls with but a single thought. The possibility of a jam on an island and a shove at the right moment had not escaped him. As a matter of fact the whole thing must have been very carefully planned. He had never taken his wife and the aunt to anything in Rillington before, and when they searched him at the police station he had one of those folding-up rulers in his pocket. Just the sort of thing to slip through the row between him and Mrs Blount. Opened to a foot length it would be quite long enough and strong enough to do the trick. She said he pushed her, you know, and she said her back hurt her, so the police surgeon had a look at it, and there was the mark where the ruler had bruised her. I told you Hubbard turned up just after it happened. Blount tried to carry the whole thing off with his wife being suicidal. Well, he’d planned for that too. Tucked away in his wallet there was a scrawled sheet in Mrs Blount’s writing which said, “I can’t go on with it. It’s no use. I don’t feel I can.” She says he was writing a letter in the kitchen. He pretended it was about a deal he had thought of going into, but he’d made up his mind not to go on with it on account of having heard something he didn’t like about the fellow. All of a sudden he said his thumb joint had slipped and he would have to get her to finish the letter for him. He dictated that “I can’t go on” stuff, and then snatched it away from her and said he couldn’t send anything so badly written and he’d have to ring the man up. She says he had made her so nervous beforehand that she could hardly hold the pen. And you know, if that wretched scrawl had been produced at an inquest any jury in the world would have brought in a verdict of suicide. As it is, he has been charged with the attempted murder of his wife, but as soon as the Harrisons ’ statements have been gone into he will probably be brought here and charged with the murder of Mrs Graham. They’ve got some fingerprints off the metal rod he dropped when he tripped in the yard. If they are identical with his own, he’ll be for it all right.’
Miss Silver coughed gently.
‘Mrs Blount has indeed had a providential escape.’
‘I think she’s been afraid of him for a long time. I don’t think there’s much doubt that he contrived the deaths of his father and his first wife. That gave him the idea that he could get away with anything.; I should think Worple may be encouraged to come across and give some useful information. By the way, we’re all set to investigate the gazebo on Monday morning. Whether Mr Warren’s gold plate will be found there or not, I imagine that both Worple and Blount were convinced it was there for the finding, and that they meant to be the finders. For that they would have to be in lawful possession of the premises. I don’t know what an eighteenth-century service of gold plate would be worth in the market. It couldn’t very well be sold here for what it was, and it would be difficult to get the gold out of the country if it was melted down. Of course there are ways! Crooks are always thinking up new ones. But that seven thousand Blount was offering for the house – you know, that sticks in my throat. I can’t bring myself to believe that the money would ever have been paid over. Of course they would expect to get some of it back on a re-sale, but I shouldn’t have said that the market price of the house would be more than four thousand. And they couldn’t count on getting that.’