Through The Wall

Chapter 25

For the second day ru

Once arrived, she proceeded to settle down and become part of the household. From the study windows the Chief Constable was observed to emerge from the glass door of the drawing-room in the other house and, accompanied by Inspector Crisp, to proceed across the lawn to the steps descending to the cove. Sometime after his return he rang the front door bell on this side and asked to see Miss Brand and Mrs. Felton.

Miss Silver, offering to leave the room, was invited to remain. He asked them no more than a few questions, relating chiefly to such small points as the time of their return from the shore and the locking up of the house. Marian replied that they had come in between seven and a quarter past, and as it was turning chilly, she had herself shut the doors and windows.

“When you say shut, Miss Brand, do you mean that they were locked? I see you have the same glass door into the garden that they have in the next house.”

She said, “Yes-it was locked. I’ll show you.”

She jumped up, went to the open door, and drew it to. As the handle turned it drove an iron bolt into a prepared socket, an old-fashioned arrangement which took him back to the house which his mother had had in his schoolroom days.

He said, “I see. And the front door?”

“Eliza will know about that. It was locked when I let Mr. Cu

“And you locked it after him?”

“Oh, yes.”

Eliza, sent for, asserted that the front door had been locked from the time the party went down to the beach. She didn’t hold with leaving it open, and always turned the key if she was alone in the house.

“And the door to the kitchen-it’s at the side, isn’t it?”

“It was locked.”

The next question was addressed to everyone there.

“Then there was no door or window open on the ground floor after you came up from the beach?”

Marian said, “No-it was getting cold.”

To which Eliza added that she had shut the upstairs windows a good half hour before.

“And the doors between the two houses?”

Marian answered this.

“They are kept bolted. Until today they hadn’t been opened since we came. Eliza will tell you the same.”

Eliza told him.

Ina Felton was leaning back in one of the big comfortable chairs. She looked small and frail. Her dark hair appeared to melt into the brown leather upholstery. Her face was white against it. She had not spoken at all, but when March asked her if she agreed with the others she found an exhausted voice and said, “Yes.” Just the one word, but it sounded as if it was too much trouble to say. He thought the girl was ill, and reflected that Miss Silver would look after her.

A few questions about Marian Brand’s raincoat and scarf elicited no more than he already knew. The coat had been down on the beach, but the scarf left hanging on its peg by the door through to the other house. The bolted door. Richard Cu

When this point had been established the Chief Constable got up and went away.

Miss Silver was no stranger to an atmosphere of unhappiness and suspense. It had often been her professional duty to move amongst those who had sustained some shock of terror or of grief. She had sat at many a table where members of the same household looked at one another in fear and looked away again in haste lest they should see what they could not afterwards forget. She had a fund of quiet small talk which served to mitigate these occasions. She knew how to impart a soothing sense of the commonplace. Her presence made a small oasis of cheerfulness and afforded relief from strain.

Before the evening was over she had come to comfortable terms with Eliza over the desirability of inducing Pe

“Which if you’ll take on Mrs. Felton, I’ll go in next door and see to Pe

Ina drank the milk because she didn’t like to be rude, and because it was less trouble than going on saying no. She dropped asleep after it, and could not remember that she had dreamed, only there was a crushing sense of fear that went with her into her sleep.

Rightly concluding that Miss Brand and Mr. Cu

It was easy to see that her presence was not desired. Mrs. Brand sat blankly immobile with a newspaper on her lap. She did not read it, she did not turn a page. She just sat there and made no attempt to talk. Miss Remington, on the other hand, was voluble. It was indeed difficult to imagine any circumstance which would reduce her to silence. She rehearsed the events of the day, repeating what Mrs. Woolley had said, what she had felt like when she heard her say it, what they had all felt, said, done, from Inspector Crisp to “poor little Pe

Miss Silver said mildly that she had not noticed it. She had produced Derek’s stocking and was knitting comfortably.

Cassy Remington gave a shrill protesting cry.

“No stamina at all! The least strain and they give way! Look at Ina Felton! She has collapsed in the most ridiculous ma

Miss Silver coughed.

“It is sometimes better to leave people alone after a shock.”

Miss Cassy jingled her chain in a contemptuous ma