Our Jubilee is Death (10 page)

Carolus did as he was told, and in a few minutes was back at Wee Hoosie, where Mrs Stick was waiting for him with her severest expression.

“There's been someone hanging round,” she said. “I was afraid this would start, sir.”

“What kind of person?”

“Not at all the sort of person Stick and me would expect to see where we work, sir. A nasty, trampy-looking man with a squint.”

“Oh, that one,” said Carolus. “Did he come to the door?”

“I should think not,” said Mrs Stick. “Your dinner will be ready in twenty minutes.”

“M
ISS
P
INK
,” said Carolus firmly when he faced the Secretary next day, “if you are going to tell me that you went up to bed at eleven on the night of Mrs Bomberger's death, and slept until eleven the next morning without hearing anything in the night, don't let us waste our time talking. I know it's not true, and I'm tired of being told lies by people I'm supposed to help.”

“I … really … I don't think you should speak to me like that. I haven't told you any lie.”

“Yet,” said Carolus. “But you were going to tell me the one I've just described.”

“I scarcely know…. Perhaps it
would
be as well if you did not question me if it is going to be in this very hectoring manner.”

“I'm sorry if I was rude,” said Carolus. “But really it is rather exasperating to hear what one knows isn't true.”

“I'm not the one….Surely you should put your questions to Mrs Bomberger's nieces. Or to Mr Cribb.”

Miss Pink writhed. One might almost use the dangerous adverb and say she ‘literally' writhed. She twisted her thin body about on the settee in alarming nervousness.

“What time did you go to bed?”

“It must have been quite midnight. I had many little things to do before retiring. I like to tidy up.”

“What was there to tidy up that evening? In the sitting-room where you had all been, I mean?”

“Oh, just glasses. A cup and saucer. Ash-trays. But I usually leave those on a tray for Mrs Plum in the morning. It is more the books and newspapers which I looked after. Mrs Bomberger was very particular about those.”

“Were there glasses, cups and ash-trays in the big sitting-room that night?”

“Yes.
No!
No. None at all.”

Carolus sighed.

“You see what I mean? You're determined not to tell me the truth. ‘Yes', you said quite normally and of course truthfully. Six people had not spent three hours of an evening in a room without leaving them. ‘Yes' was the truth. Then suddenly you remember something you have prepared yourself to say. Or been told to say. You shout ‘No!' and now you're going to stick to it.”

Miss Pink twirled and knotted herself desperately.

“There weren't any glasses. Not one. Nor ash-trays. I don't know why. Perhaps no one had smoked or had a drink or coffee. Perhaps they cleared up before they went to bed. There wasn't one!”

“Let's leave that. At last, at about midnight, having finished downstairs, you went up to your room?”

“Yes. It must have been.”

“And then?”

“I retired,” said Miss Pink bashfully.

“You didn't go first to Mrs Bomberger's room?”

“Just to the door. I heard her sleeping.”

“You mean she snored?”

“Frequently, yes. That night it was just a light stertoration.”

“So you didn't go in?”

“No.”

“What next?”

“Well, nothing really. Sleep,” said Miss Pink, adding in a dubious melancholy voice, “the cool kindliness of sheets that soon smooths away trouble.”

“Bomberger?”

“No. Rupert Brooke.”

“What awoke you?”

“Me? When? Oh, it's hard to say. I …”

“Come, Miss Pink. I've told you I won't listen to a
fairy tale about a beautiful night's sleep ending at eleven next morning.”

“It was … I don't know the time … I had taken a drop of my Bromaloid, of course. I can't think …”

“Yes, you can. You're thinking now of what answer you should give. What happened during the night?”

“During the night?”

“You needn't sound as though the question was such an extraordinary one. After all, at some time during the night Mrs Bomberger, alive or dead, went or was taken from her bedroom to the beach. It isn't very surprising that I should ask you, who slept in the next room, what you heard of it.”

“Oh that. Nothing, really. Mrs Bomberger could move very softly when she wished. I've
always
thought she left the house that night of her own volition.”

“You're going to tell me you heard
nothing?”
asked Carolus savagely.

Miss Pink wilted, performed a couple of convolutions which a professional contortionist would have envied and seemed to think very hard.

“There was my dream, of course.”

“I do not want to hear dreams. There is nothing in the whole world so boring as an account of someone's dream unless it's a story of the intelligence of his dog. I want to know what you heard or saw.”

“It may not have been
quite
a dream,” said Miss Pink coyly.

“You mean, it happened?”

“You shall hear for yourself. I am not really altogether certain. I went to sleep for a while and then—I scarcely know if I was awake or asleep—then I seemed to hear a voice.”

“Whose?”

“Mrs Bomberger's.”

“That must have been nice for you.”

“On the contrary. I had had the experience before. She was a very domineering person, as no doubt you have
realized. More than once I had suffered from nightmares in which she was calling me insistently. On one or two occasions I went hastily to her room to see what she wanted. That made her most annoyed, because it was only my imagination and she wasn't calling me at all. This time it was different.”

“In what way?”

“The call did not seem to come from her room.”

“Where did it come from?”

“It seemed to be on the wind. ‘A voice on the wind at even.' ”

“Brooke?” said Carolus.

“No. Bomberger,” admitted Miss Pink.

“How do you mean, ‘on the wind'?”

“Out of the night, Mr Deene. ‘A voice whose sound was like the sea.' That's Wordsworth.”

“Was it like the sea?”

“It seemed to come from the sea. Or from near the sea. My window faced that way. It was a breezy night with no moonlight much. My window was open. ‘Alice!' I seemed to hear. ‘Alice!'”

“Seemed to hear or heard?”

“I can't quite draw the distinction. I am still not sure if I was asleep or awake. ‘Alice!' it seemed to call in a sad, despairing way.”

“So what did you do?”

“I was never quite awake, I think. The Bromaloid, you know. I must have dropped off properly.”

“At what time did this happen? The voice, I mean?”

“Oh, I couldn't possibly say. I'm not even sure there was a voice.”

“Then you slept till eleven and were woken by Mrs Plum saying the police were here? I've heard it all before.”

“No. Not that,” said Miss Pink confidentially. “As a matter of fact I did rather oversleep that morning. But I woke at ten. I looked at my watch and thought, I must get
up quickly. Mrs Bomberger's bell might ring at any moment, and I had not sorted her post or prepared her breakfast or anything. I dressed as quickly as I could and was just going downstairs when Mrs Plum announced the police.”

“It's a small variation,” admitted Carolus.

“That's all I can remember of that night.”

“What did you feel about Mrs Bomberger?”

“Feel about her? Oh. It's very hard to answer that. She was such a dominant personality. In a way I was most attached to her. I had been with her for ten years. But she was so overbearing. She had no respect for other people's feelings. She could treat one in the most humiliating way.”

Carolus nodded slowly and said no more.

“It was you who answered the door to Mr Stump that evening?”

As though relieved at escaping from other topics, Miss Pink answered eagerly.

“Yes. And it was I who took that phone call from an unknown man.”

Again Carolus was silent and again Miss Pink looked uncomfortable.

“Is that all you want to know?” she asked at last.

“No, Miss Pink, it is not. But it is all I have any intention of asking you. It is evidently not the slightest use expecting to hear the truth. ‘All I want to know?' No. I want to know how Miss Stayer came to spoil a nearly new pair of black velvet shoes that night and why her sister lies about it. I want to know why the ash-trays and glasses were removed from the big sitting-room and cleaned at some time in the small hours. I want to know who took the key of the drinks cupboard from Mrs Bomberger's room and who drank the whisky.”

Alice Pink gave a kind of convulsive jerk as each of Carolus's points went home. It was evident that she was near hysterics.

“I want to know who cleaned Mrs Bomberger's bath-chair and why? I want to know how Mrs Bomberger came to take that quantity of sleeping-pills and at what time she died. A great deal of this you could tell me, but you have decided not to. All right. I've warned all of you of the danger.”

“Danger?”

“The danger of not speaking the truth when it's a matter of life and death. The danger of hoodwinking the police, who are the people responsible for your safety. The danger of concocting a wholly false and incomplete story and sticking to it through thick and thin. The danger of a conspiracy, Miss Pink. Of a conspiracy.”

Miss Pink had twisted herself so violently during these last words that Carolus was becoming quite alarmed. However, she found a safety-valve by bursting into tears and dashing from the room.

Carolus remained alone for a time, smoking and thinking. From the window he saw Primmley the gardener at work and remembered that he had to interview him and Graveston. But he felt disinclined to ask more questions at present. He was, as he had rather brutally told Miss Pink, tired of hearing lies.

However, he was not given a respite, for there was a tap at the door, followed by the entrance of Graveston.

Mrs Plum had described him as the oddest man she had ever seen, and it may well have been no exaggeration. Tall and lugubrious, he was dressed in a dark suit and wore a starched collar and black tie. The top of his head was bald but, as though ironically, hair grew with uncontrolled luxuriance elsewhere about him, his eyebrows beetled, his ears were the pink environments of tangled brush, his nostrils bristled, the backs of his hands were dark with wiry growth. From the depths of his long throat came a cavernous voice.

“I understand you want to question me, sir. I'm not at liberty to tell you much.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“I have my duty. I know what is right and what is wrong.”

“You're a lucky man.”

“I was strictly brought up. My father used to say, ‘Now you know the difference between Right and Wrong. Do Right.' ”

“And did you?”

“I did, sir. I have no intention of doing other. That is why I say I am not at liberty to tell you everything you may wish to know.”

“I see. I suppose we start with the old grind about you going to bed at eleven and sleeping until eleven o'clock next morning?”

“That would be inaccurate, sir. I should not wish to say anything like that. What I say will be right. I did not reach the house till nearly one o'clock in the morning.”

Carolus sat up.

“Oh, you were
out
that evening?”

“I was, sir. It wouldn't be right for me to say anything else.”

“May I ask where you were?”

“At a meeting of the Elders of the Mount Sion Revealed Persuasion and Band of Charity. We have our little meeting-place in Blessington. You may have noticed it? A redbrick building opposite the old fish market.”

“That kept you late?”

“I knew that the last bus left at ten, but I felt it was only right to stay to the end of the meeting. So I walked home.”

“Did you go straight to bed?”

“I felt I owed it to myself to make a cup of tea before doing so. I should not wish to deny that.”

“So it must have been half-past one before you were finally between the sheets?”

“I should not for a moment claim such accuracy. I cannot be sure just what time I went to bed and would not
pretend to. But if I may guess I should say it was about then, about one-thirty.”

“Which way did you come home?”

Graveston appeared startled by the simple question.

“I hardly feel called upon …”he began.

But Carolus interrupted sharply.

“Nonsense. There are three ways you could have come from Blessington: along the sands, over the cliffs or inland by the road. Which did you take?”

Graveston did not move a muscle, yet Carolus felt that his inner writhings were no less than Miss Pink's outward ones had been.

“It's not for me …”

“Which one?”

“Along the sands. I wouldn't tell you anything else.”

“You didn't want to tell me at all. Why not?”

“I want to do right. I …”

“Oh, very well. Did you meet anyone as you came that way?”

“Several persons. Two courting couples I remember distinctly because I couldn't approve of their attitudes.”

“No one you knew?”

“No, sir.”

“You're sure you came by the sands, Graveston?”

“I certainly should not say so if I wasn't. I should not feel it right to deceive you on any point, though there may be some questions I cannot answer.”

“So your shoes must have been sandy when you came in?”

“I had been walking on dry sand above high-water mark. This would not cling to boots at all.”