Through The Wall

“All these young people are the same. Look at Felix! He loses his head over this girl and rushes off to drown himself. Most selfish, most inconsiderate! My sister and I have this dreadful tragedy happening in our house, and we do not collapse-we behave with dignity, we carry on. Nobody pampers us.”

Miss Silver continued to knit. She murmured that it was all very sad, very distressing.

Cassy Remington sent her a darting glance.

“Half an hour ago I met Eliza Cotton going up to Pe

Miss Silver murmured in a non-committal ma

“Not that our house is our own in any way at present.” She repeated the last words with malice. “Not in any way. I’m sure the police walk in and out as if the whole place belonged to them. That horrid Inspector Crisp was here again just as we were sitting down to tea. And brought the Chief Constable! And there they were, out and down to the cove, and up on every floor, looking at the doors going through to the other side of the house, and Crisp going round to open them, though what it’s got to do with them how many locks and bolts and bars there are, I’m sure I can’t see. I may be stupid-I suppose I am-”-the head was tossed again- “but I can’t see what a purely domestic arrangement like that has got to do with the police. I’m sure it’s bad enough having one’s own niece bolting doors against us as if we were a lunatic asylum or a menagerie of wild beasts!”

Mrs. Brand came out of her silence with a “Really, Cassy!” Her voice was heavy with resentment. She said,

“Marian Brand is my niece by marriage only. She is your second cousin twice removed. The houses were originally two. They have now been divided again.”

Cassy Remington’s colour rose to an angry flush.

“Oh, if you like it, Florence, there’s no more to be said. I’m sure I have no desire to claim relationship with Marian and Ina-or perhaps you think I should speak of them as Miss Brand and Mrs. Felton.”

Florence Brand made no reply. Her large pale face showed nothing. Presently, however, she intervened with a remark about Miss Silver’s knitting and Cassy Remington’s complaints were interrupted.

Miss Silver stayed for an hour, and had managed to draw Mrs. Brand into a slight show of interest over a pattern for long-sleeved vests and the address of a shop where the wool suitable for making them could be bought. It transpired that Florence had always worn wool next to the skin, and had now arrived at measurements which made it practically impossible for her to procure the necessary underwear. She got as far as saying that she might have some wool upstairs in the box-room, and Miss Silver offered to help her look for it in the morning.

Chapter 26

Pe

She went through into the next house by the door on its attic floor, and when Pe

She locked her door and lay down again. The bed was close up to the window and she could look out over the sea. She lay there watching it. She couldn’t see the other side of the cove. She couldn’t see the place where the steps came down and Helen Adrian had fallen and died. Her view began where the fine shingle changed to sand. The tide was out. Dry sand, wet sand, and shoaling water. Rock, and pool, and orange seaweed. The sky losing its blue, paling before it darkened.

Time went by. No one came near her. The tide turned. There were sounds in the house below-Cassy Remington’s voice, Florence Brand’s heavy step, the sound of water ru

Pe

She went down the attic stair to the landing, and from there to the hall without making any sound at all. She moved in the silence without jarring it. No one could possibly have heard her pass from the hall to the drawing-room. The chairs were all still there in the dark, turned from their usual places to face the table behind which Inspector Crisp had sat and questioned them. Pe

When she opened the door and came down the two steps to the paved path at the back of the house she had a sense of escape. It was dark outside, but not with the enclosed darkness of the house, and it was cool, but not with the heavy chill of the room she had left. There was no breeze, only a faint movement of the air setting in from the sea with the flowing tide.

She went across the lawn and sat on the stone steps which went down to the next terrace. The tide was coming up fast. She sat there listening to the movement of the water. All day she had been calling Felix. That was why she had wanted to be alone. Everything in her called to him. Now perhaps he would come.

There was a story which she had heard Eliza tell when she was a child. She hadn’t been meant to hear it. Eliza wouldn’t have told it if she had known that Pe