‘She wasn’t a bird, was she? Or was she?’
Eunice Ainsley’s remarks never quite came off. She was too eager to make an impression. Andrew entirely ignored this one, and she turned to Nigel.
‘Here comes Sherlock. Are you looking for footprints in the snow? You’ll find a good assortment.’
‘Why do you call him Sherlock?’ asked Priscilla.
‘Because he’s a detective, of course, you half-wit,’ said John amiably.
‘Quite right, infant chee-ild,’ said Miss Ainsley. ‘Go to the top of the class.’
John turned away to his snowball, scowling. Andrew was now beginning to fashion it as the base of the statue. Miss Ainsley stuck a cigarette into her mouth and puffed at it nervously. She said:
‘I hope brother Hereward doesn’t disapprove of all this.’
‘Why should he?’
‘Well, he’s such a stickler for etiquette. And the books of etiquette are very firm about gentlemen not making snowmen when their sisters have just –’
‘Shut up, Eunice!’ Andrew’s tone was level, but remarkably forbidding.
‘You look quite handsome when you’re sweating,’ she tried again presently. ‘It makes the Restorick profile look almost human, doesn’t it, Mr Strangeways?’
Nigel gave an equivocal murmur. Eunice glanced challengingly at Andrew.
‘You can get away with anything, with a face like that. What a marvellous confidence-trickster Andrew would make! But perhaps he is one already. One never knows, with these dark horses.’
‘How you do prattle, Eunice,’ said Andrew, busily moulding the snow.
‘Well, if I’ve got to sit here shivering, I suppose I can be permitted to talk. Feel my hands, they’re icy.’
‘There are plenty of fires indoors.’
Miss Ainsley flushed unbecomingly. She turned to Nigel and said:
‘Andrew’s a very hard sort of character, don’t you think? It must be because he’s so self-centred. I mean, things that would appeal to you or me just bounce off him. Betty was quite different. She could never refuse anyone anything.’
There was a vicious little stab of resentment in her last phrase. Andrew, smiling at her gently, walked up, tipped her off the chair, took a handful of snow and rubbed it into her mouth. The children shrieked with delight, and began to pelt everyone indiscriminately with snowballs. Eunice was laughing, too, but in a different manner, as she got to her feet and wiped the snow off her face.
‘Oh, you beast!’ she exclaimed. ‘You just wait!’ She threw a snowball, in a half-hearted manner, at Andrew. Something about her manner, or her voice, or the smouldering look of her eyes, stopped the children ragging.
Andrew said equably:
‘Now you’re warmer, aren’t you, Eunice? You ought to take more exercise.’ His mild mercilessness gave Nigel a disagreeable sensation. ‘I think we’d better use this chair for Queen Victoria,’ Andrew went on. ‘She needs a throne.’ He took the chair, and began building up the snow around it, quite, impervious apparently to Eunice Ainsley’s black looks.
The snowman grew apace. Andrew was extraordinarily skilful with his fingers, and soon a recognizable figure was taking shape beneath them. Miss Ainsley recovered her form sufficiently to remark that the Good Queen would get piles from sitting on a cold, wet chair. When Andrew was giving the snowman its finishing touches, she went into the house and reappeared carrying a widow’s bonnet with flowing black streamers, which she had unearthed from the acting-cupboard.
She placed this upon the effigy’s head, and they all stood back to admire their handiwork. The dumpy snow-figure sat there, larger than life, regally surveying the façade of Easterham Manor, the crêpe streamers of its bonnet fluttering in the east wind. Andrew gave John and Priscilla a halfpenny each, to insert in the blank eye-sockets. It was at this moment that Hereward Restorick, emerging from the house, strode towards them.
‘Hallo, children. Been making a snowman?’
‘Yes, daddy. It’s a super one, isn’t it? Bet you can’t guess who it is.’
‘Well now, let’s see. Is it cook?’
‘Oh no,’ cried Priscilla. ‘It’s Queen Victoria.’
‘Queen Victoria? H’m, I see.’ Hereward’s tone had frosted up quite perceptibly.
‘Oh, dear,’ murmured Eunice. ‘We’ve committed lèse majesté!’
Hereward tugged at his moustache. ‘Sorry,’ he said abruptly. ‘I don’t much like that bonnet. John, be a good chap and put it back where you found it.’
‘Poor little me! Guilty again! It was I, sir, who bonneted the Queen. But don’t you like it really? I think it’s the making of her. So artistic.’
Andrew was glancing quizzically at the two of them. His brother said:
‘I wasn’t talking about artistic effect, Eunice.’
‘Oh, don’t be an old curmudgeon.’ Miss Ainsley tried hard, but she was incapable of the light touch. Hereward frowned.
‘If I must speak plainly, I don’t think that bonnet is very good form – under present circumstances.’
‘It is a little démodé, perhaps,’ said Eunice, flushing angrily.
Hereward removed the offending article and tossed it to his son.
‘Take it in, old man. Run along with him, Priscilla, there’s a good girl.’ When the children were out of earshot, he said to Eunice, ‘I think you’re deliberately misunderstanding me. No doubt I’m old-fashioned, but I call it rank bad taste to use that bonnet when Betty’s lying in there dead. Now have I made myself clear?’
‘Yes, indeed, Hereward.’ Eunice was lighting a cigarette with shaky fingers, but her voice had taken on an unwonted firmness. ‘Your feelings do you justice. De mortuis nil nisi bonnet. I say, that’s rather bright, isn’t it? Eunice is coming on. But you forget Betty was a friend of mine. And I wasn’t ashamed of her when she was alive. I didn’t go about trying to hush her up. Aren’t you forgetting, too, how she died?’
‘Really, Eunice, I fail to see –’
‘Betty was murdered. I know it was rank bad taste for someone to murder her in Easterham Manor. But there it is.’
‘I must remind you that you’re a guest of mine here.’
Miss Ainsley removed a shred of tobacco from her tongue. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And so was Betty.’
A long pause followed. Hereward’s blue eyes flinched away from her. ‘I really can’t conceive what you’re driving at.’
‘No?’ she said sweetly. ‘We must have another little chat about it some time, then. In private.’
She walked off towards the house, a queer sort of triumph in her gait, her fur boots stepping delicately through the snow.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘And when I found the door was shut
I tried to turn the handle, but –’
LEWIS CARROLL
THERE IS SOMETHING particularly sinister, reflected Nigel as he paced up and down the snow-laden terrace, about the turning of a worm. It has a nightmare quality, both in its reversal of natural law and in the impression it gives of some puny object swelling to grotesque proportions. Not that I believe a worm ever does turn. Has anyone seen a worm rearing up and biting its oppressors? I doubt it. Unless ‘worm’ means ‘snake’ in this context. Eunice Ainsley is a bit of a snake, no doubt about that. Her little scene with Andrew can probably be disregarded. She is attracted to him, her rather gauche advances are not so much repulsed as ignored, and she naturally tries to get her own back for this public humiliation by striking at his weakest point – Betty. She reminds Andrew, by innuendo, that his beloved sister was a promiscuous bitch, and very properly gets her mouth filled with snow. All O.K. Nothing unnatural about that. Though n.b. that Andrew has not altogether lost the priggish, puritanical, idealist – call it what you will – streak, which estranged him from Betty when the scandal broke in America.
But the Eunice-Hereward barney was quite a different kettle of fish. Eunice, for once, knew she had the upper hand, and she couldn’t resist demonstrating it, which was unfo
rtunate for them both, since she was hinting plainly that Hereward knows more about the murder than he has admitted, and that she herself is in a position to make things very awkward for him. What other interpretation can one give to her remark about Betty having been a guest of his too, and her ‘we must have another little chat about it some time?’ Has she got as far as actual blackmail yet, I wonder.
At any rate, we see now why Hereward has been looking so worried. I shouldn’t like to have Eunice on my track. That’s the trouble about the worm turning. When the strong cut up rough, we can be pretty sure – if we know them at all – what lines they’ll work on. But when the weak become aggressive, there’s hell to pay: it’s like being suddenly attacked by a lunatic, a blind man, or a total stranger – one simply can’t plot out their course or anticipate their next move; they probably don’t know it themselves. I think I’d better have a word with Hereward before anything else happens.
It was a good notion. But Nigel, as it happened, had been forestalled. When he entered the house and inquired for Mr Restorick, the butler returned with a message from Mrs Restorick asking him to defer the interview for half an hour. Nigel decided to improve this shining half-hour by a show-down with Eunice Ainsley.
At first she was inclined to be defiant or sullen. But Nigel’s patience, his calmness, the air of expert and unshockable impartiality which was his professional manner, soon broke down her resistance. He realized what an unhappy woman she was, and she sensed a certain sympathy behind his impersonal approach to her.
‘I thought I’d better see you at once,’ he was saying. ‘I was interested by your remarks to Hereward.’
‘Oh?’ She scrutinized him warily.
‘Yes. You gave me the impression of having something up your sleeve – about him and Betty.’
‘I was very fond of Betty,’ Eunice said tonelessly.
‘I believe you were. Now don’t get the idea that every man’s hand is against you. Mine isn’t. But I don’t think Betty would like you to be doing to Hereward – what I think you’re doing.’
‘And what am I supposed to be doing to Hereward?’
‘Blackmailing him.’ Nigel’s pale blue eyes opened at her in mild astonishment. ‘That was obvious, wasn’t it?’
‘I must say you do get queer ideas. Just because I said –’
‘My dear girl, don’t let’s start a fencing-match. I’ll put it this way, if you like. If you have some information which makes you suspect that Hereward knows more about Betty’s death than he’s told the police, you should come out with it. Suppose,’ he continued, in his flattest voice, ‘suppose Hereward did murder Betty –’ Miss Ainsley gasped, and fingered her lip ‘– it would be extraordinarily dangerous for you to keep your information to yourself. If, on the other hand, you are acting under a misconception or malice, you’re also in danger. Hereward will go to the police and you’ll get a stretch for blackmail.’
Miss Ainsley’s answer to this well-meant, if laborious advice, was to burst into tears. She was not a woman who wept gracefully: she gulped and sniffled peevishly, as if resenting the weakness that made her do it. At last, controlling her voice, she said:
‘Oh, damn and blast it all! I lose, as usual. It isn’t fair. It was my money, really.’
‘Your money?’ Patiently questioning her, Nigel elicited the statement that Betty had recently promised to leave Eunice her money if she died, and had for some time been helping her with generous sums. But Betty had put off making a will till it was too late; now, since she had died intestate, her capital would go to her next of kin. After Betty’s death, Eunice had approached Hereward and told him of Betty’s promise, but he had refused to admit it. Eunice’s own small income having considerably diminished as a result of the war, she was desperate.
‘So you put the screw on Hereward? Well, don’t let’s worry about that any more. But you must tell me how.’
‘No. Please, I can’t. You wouldn’t understand. Ask him yourself first, anyway, and, if he won’t tell you, come back to me again.’
‘Very well. Just one thing. Did Hereward know, before Betty’s death, of her intention to leave you her money? Did she ever tell you she’d mentioned it to him?’
‘No. Not as far as I know. After all, why should she? She wasn’t expecting to die.’
Nigel believed Eunice to be telling the truth now, but she was an unreliable witness at the best of times, and he could not forget how, during the interview with Blount, she had seemed to hint at Betty’s money as a possible motive for the crime.
It was now time for his talk with Hereward. Entering the study, he was rather nonplussed to find Charlotte Restorick there as well as her husband. In her black mourning-robe she looked more impressive than ever, her figure and assurance both dwarfing the thin and uneasy Hereward. With one of her impresario gestures, she motioned Nigel to a chair and made a brief announcement.
‘I hope you don’t mind my being here, Mr Strangeways. Hereward has been telling me about what happened just now – and other things. He wants to make a clean breast of it.’
Hereward’s expression was a comical blend of the guilty schoolboy and the man who deprecates female interference.
‘Yes. Quite so. H’m, ’m,’ he said. ‘Afraid I rather put Miss Ainsley’s back up just now. Nervy sort of woman.’ He glanced at Nigel, with a mute appeal for sympathy. Nigel’s face, however, was at its most non-committal. ‘Fact is,’ Hereward floundered on, ‘fact is, as I dare say you gathered, she’s got the edge on me. Nothing discreditable, of course. Total misunderstanding. But looks bad. What I mean –’
Charlotte Restorick, like a ship of the line, bore down to his rescue. ‘What Hereward wants to tell you is that Miss Ainsley is in possession of certain facts which she has misinterpreted. On the night poor Betty died –’
‘All right, Charlotte. I can speak for myself,’ interrupted Hereward irritably. ‘I’m afraid I slightly misled the police about my movements that night. I told them I went up to bed at 11.30. So I did. But, when I got to my dressing-room, I thought I’d go along and say good-night to Betty. As you know, her room is in the opposite wing. To get there, I had to pass Miss Ainsley’s door, and apparently she heard me, looked out, and saw me walking towards the opposite wing.’
‘Why?’
‘Eh? What?’
‘Why did she look out of her room? Does she peer out whenever anyone passes her door?’
‘Blessed if I know. Does sound a bit odd, now you mention it. Just a coincidence, I dare say.’
‘Nothing of the sort, Hereward,’ interposed Charlotte. ‘I hate to say anything against Eunice, Mr Strangeways, but she does suffer from morbid curiosity.’ (True enough, thought Nigel, considering the number of things she has ‘overheard’ already in this case.) ‘She was genuinely fond of Betty, but terribly jealous of Betty’s men friends. That was why she and Mr Dykes didn’t get on. Now, Mr Dykes’ room is next to Hereward’s dressing-room. Eunice may easily have thought it was Mr Dykes going along to the other wing.’
‘I see. Yes, that’s possible. Did all of you make a habit of going to say good-night to Elizabeth?’
‘Oh no,’ said Hereward. ‘Fact is, I’d had a bit of a row with her earlier that day – afraid I spoke rather sharply – wanted to make it up, you know.’
‘A row? What about?’
‘Oh, nothing really, storm in a tea-cup, nothing to do with –’
‘The police will want to know.’
Hereward tugged his moustache, visibly ill at ease. ‘Well, I disapproved of her language in front of the children. Poor Betty – swore like a trooper – I’m not a prude, I hope, but I don’t like to hear a lady swearing; couldn’t have it with my children, anyway – you know the way they pick things up. Wish I hadn’t parted from Betty that way, though.’
‘You went to say good-night to her and make up the quarrel, and Miss Ainsley saw you pass into the west wing,’ prompted Nigel. ‘You went straight to her room?’
‘Yes.??
?
‘So you’d get there between 11.30 and 11.35?’
‘About that.’
‘Didn’t see anyone else on your way?’
‘No. I prowled along quietly, you know – didn’t want to wake people up – I dare say, that’s what put it into Miss Ainsley’s head that –’ Hereward broke off in some confusion.
‘Leave it a moment. You got to her room. What happened then?’
‘Well, the door was locked. I tapped gently and called her name, very quietly, once or twice. There was no reply, so I assumed she was asleep and returned to my own room.’
‘How long did all this take?’
‘My husband was not gone more than three minutes when I heard him come back into the dressing-room,’ said Mrs Restorick.
‘I take it you would have seen a light under the door if the light had still been on in Miss Restorick’s room.’
‘Yes. Her light was out. No question about that. She generally read in bed till midnight, but of course she’d been out of sorts lately.’
‘Did anyone else but your wife hear you return to your room?’
‘Couldn’t say, I’m sure.’
‘Miss Ainsley’s curiosity didn’t extend as far as watching for you to come back?’
‘Apparently not. Wish it had, in a way. Devilish awkward – you see, she’s got the impression that – well, that, in the light of what did happen that night, there was something suspicious about my movements.’
‘Why didn’t you tell this to the police?’
‘That is scarcely an ingenuous question, Mr Strangeways,’ said Charlotte. Her smile was friendly enough, but there was a touch of haughtiness in her voice. Nigel shrugged.
‘You didn’t want to be mixed up in the affair?’ he said.
‘Afraid that was it. Feel a bit ashamed of myself now. But, honestly, I couldn’t conceive that the information could get the police any forrarder. After all, I didn’t hear anything in her room, or see anyone about. So I just kept mum.’
Charlotte, who had been watching her husband with the fond anxiety of an impresario watching an infant prodigy at his first public début, leant back with a sigh.