by M. M. Kaye
‘Because,’ said Steve gently, ‘it means that someone is due for the shock of their life, and I would most earnestly advise you, Miss Moon, not to mention to anyone that you did not go out this afternoon.’
‘Young man,’ said Miss Moon, drawing herself to her full height, ‘I do not understand you. Naturally Lady Cooper-Foot and all those who attended her bridge party are fully aware that I remained at home.’
‘Then that’s torn it!’ said Steve.
Miss Moon looked from Amanda to Steve, and her eyes, despite the heaviness that pain and drugs had lent them, were suddenly sharp and shrewd:
‘Tell me what has happened,’ she demanded crisply. ‘Why would it have been advisable to conceal the fact that I have not left the house?’
‘Because,’ said Steve softly, ‘less than an hour ago a woman was murdered in the room directly below this one—by someone who had every reason to believe that there was no one else in the house.’
13
Awaking late on the following morning, Amanda lay for several minutes staring idly at the misty folds of the mosquito net and wondering why the room seemed so airless. She felt drowsy and relaxed and curiously stupid. It can’t be more than six, she thought; the room is still dark.
But the air was always cool and fresh in the early morning, not hot like this. Turning her head she saw that the dimness of the room was due to the fact that the shutters, which were always thrown back at night and only used during the heat of the day, were closed and bolted, and she frowned at them; realizing, from the bright chinks of sunlight that showed between the slats, that it was far later than she had supposed, and puzzled by a vague recollection that it was she herself who had insisted on closing those shutters.
A moment later she was sitting bolt upright with all trace of drowsiness gone, for she had remembered why it had seemed so necessary to lock herself into her room last night.
Amanda pushed back the mosquito net and went over to open the shutters, aware as she did so that it was at least midday. And also that someone must have given her a strong sleeping draught, for her head felt unaccountably heavy.
Steve Howard, of course! He had made her drink a cup of coffee. It had been black and sweet and had left a faintly unpleasant taste on her tongue. That must have been late last night, after the police and the doctor had left and an ambulance had taken Monica Ford’s body away to the Nicosia General Hospital, and the endless questions were over at last.
There had been so many questions.
The man she had telephoned for, the man with an odd name, had arrived while they were still explaining the ugly situation to Miss Moon. Steve had gone down to meet him, and Amanda, who had remained with Miss Moon, had not been present at that interview. She had come out onto the upper landing just as he was leaving and had heard him say: ‘All right; we’ll play it on those lines. It’s your deal. I can stack the deck at my end, and____’ He had heard Amanda’s sandals click on the stairs and had stopped.
‘This is Miss Derington,’ said Steve. He did not complete the introduction and Amanda found herself shaking hands with a slim, quiet man who seemed a little shy and very ordinary. The sort of man, thought Amanda, whom one might meet a dozen times and still not remember. There was nothing in any way remarkable about him except perhaps his eyes, which were as cool and quiet and yet as disconcertingly observant as Steve Howard’s own.
A moment later he had gone. It was after that that Steve had telephoned for the police and the doctor, and when they arrived he had gone into the drawing-room with them and shut the door. After what seemed a very long time they had sent for Amanda and Miss Moon and had questioned them. Two of the police officers had been British. C.I.D. men from Nicosia. The third had been a Cypriot who spoke excellent English.
Miss Moon had little to tell them. A migraine had descended upon her with sudden and all too familiar severity, and she had telephoned her excuses to Lady Cooper-Foot and retired to bed in a darkened room with an ice-pack and sedatives. Yes, she had been aware of voices in the drawing-room some time during the afternoon. She could not say when. Three-thirty perhaps? Four? She had been in considerable pain and had paid little attention beyond wishing that whoever was speaking would use a less hysterical tone. Oh yes, it had been a woman, and she had sounded upset. No: Miss Moon had not gone down. She had imagined that it must have been Euridice returned unexpectedly, but soon afterwards the drugs had taken effect and she had slept until past seven o’clock and had barely arisen when Amanda and Mr Howard had burst into her room.
But surely, said a police officer, she must have been aware of some sounds, however slight? The woman had been murdered____
‘“Strangling is a very quiet death,”’ murmured Steve Howard meditatively.
Apparently Miss Moon was familiar with The Duchess of Malfi, for she had looked at Mr Howard with a distinct gleam of appreciation in her eye and said: ‘Exactly! No, I not only heard no other sounds, but I have no idea—if the woman whose voice I heard was indeed Monica Ford—whom she can have been addressing.’
‘Glenn,’ said Amanda. And explained that Mr Barton had mentioned meeting his secretary and had added that Miss Ford had wished to see her—Amanda—and that she had seemed upset.
They had questioned her as to her previous meeting with Miss Ford on the day of her arrival in Cyprus, and made her repeat as much of their conversation as she could remember. And then they had asked her to tell them again exactly what Glenn Barton had said on the subject of his secretary at the picnic that afternoon, and having received corroboration from Mr Howard, they had sent for Mr Barton.
Glenn had arrived shortly after half past nine, having driven from Nicosia at a speed considerably in excess of the recognized limits. He had looked grey and drawn and somehow apathetic. Steve had poured him out a stiff portion of Miss Moon’s liqueur brandy and he had swallowed it gratefully.
Yes, he had been to the Villa Oleander that afternoon and had spoken with Miss Ford in this room. He explained the circumstances and agreed that his secretary had been upset. She had recently lost her only brother and sole close relative. And there had been other things on her mind____He checked abruptly and frowned.
What other things?
Glenn’s tired face seemed to grow greyer and he had explained in a halting, difficult voice something of what he had told Amanda in that same room on the previous afternoon: of Anita’s suggestions concerning the relations between Miss Ford and himself.
‘Of course there was nothing in it,’ he explained wearily. ‘My wife could never believe such a thing. She only spread that story in order to—well, to make trouble I suppose. They had quarrelled and Miss Ford had probably been rude to her.’
‘Anita,’ put in Miss Moon crisply, ‘was well aware that people would be only too willing to believe that Monica had fallen in love with her employer, but that no one in their senses would believe that he was in love with her. So that from Monica’s point of view the story would be doubly wounding.’
‘Was she in love with you?’ asked a police officer.
The colour came up into Glenn’s haggard face and his mouth tightened and set hard. He looked at the man who had asked the question and his eyes did not waver.
‘No.’ The single word was curt and entirely final.
But they had not finished with him. They went back again to the quarrel between his secretary and his wife, and again and again to his conversation with Miss Ford in the Villa Oleander that afternoon. Was he quite sure of the time? Why was he sure? So he had seen the green scarf? Why, having heard a sound from one of the upper rooms, had he still said at Hilarion that the house was empty?
‘I didn’t know that Miss Moon was in,’ said Glenn wearily. ‘I thought it must be a pigeon or the cat.’
He turned to look at Miss Moon. ‘I’m sorry, Mooney. If I’d known you were ill I’d have come up.’
‘I wouldn’t have let you in,’ said Miss Moon tartly, and departed to cut sandwiches and brew hot coffee.
They turned back to the picnic at Hilarion:
How many people had been present when Mr Barton had spoken of his secretary and mentioned that there was no one at home in the Villa Oleander? At what time had Mr Barton left Hilarion, and where had he gone?
‘To Nicosia,’ said Glenn tiredly. ‘Prove it? Well as a matter of fact I can. The Normans saw me go. We all left at the same time—except Howard and Miss Derington. There were only four cars there. Gates and Mrs Halliday went ahead of my car and turned left for Kyrenia. I turned up right, and the Normans and Major Blaine were behind me and must have seen me turn. They went down to Kyrenia too, of course. I drove straight to the Nicosia office, and as it happens I can prove that too, because I gave a lift to a couple of troops. You can probably check with them. I dropped them off in the centre of the town just after six. Anything more you want to know?’
There appeared to be a great deal more. But they left at last, and it was just as they were leaving that one of the police officers found the little linen flower.
There was a massive carved chest in the hall, black with age and decorated with medallions of beaten silver, and the small white flower had caught on a rough edge of metal at a level where the hem of a woman’s skirt might have brushed past it.
The officer reached down and removed it and turned it over between his fingers. There was a thread hanging from the centre of it as though it had been torn from something.
Amanda said incredulously: ‘But that’s____’ and saw Glenn Barton’s face, and stopped.
Glenn was staring at her with a tense and desperate appeal in his eyes. Amanda looked away quickly and became aware that Steve had been watching them.
The police officer said: ‘This is yours, then?’
‘Yes,’ said Amanda without hesitation. She saw Glenn shut his eyes for a brief moment and catch at the edge of the chest as though to steady himself, and she held out her hand for the flower.
The police officer looked at her long and thoughtfully, and then put it into his pocket. ‘If you do not mind, I will keep it. It will be returned of course.’
And then they had gone. Glenn first, and the three police officers perhaps five minutes later. The doctor had already left in the ambulance that had taken Monica Ford’s body to Nicosia an hour earlier.
Miss Moon departed to the kitchen to make more coffee and Amanda would have followed her except that Steve Howard stood between her and the door that led through to the kitchen, and he did not look as though he intended to move aside for her as he had moved for Miss Moon.
‘Amanda,’ said Steve softly, ‘you are a damned bad liar and several kinds of a fool into the bargain. What possessed you to do such an idiotic thing?’
Amanda did not pretend to misunderstand him. ‘I couldn’t do anything else,’ she said unhappily. ‘You didn’t see his face____’
‘Oh yes I did,’ interrupted Steve brusquely. ‘But that is no reason why you should have laid claim to the thing.’
‘What else could I have done? If I’d said it wasn’t mine, they’d have asked Miss Moon; and as it wasn’t hers, they would have traced it.’
‘They’ll trace it all right,’ said Steve grimly. ‘And when they do you are going to find yourself in an exceedingly unpleasant position.’
‘Why?’ said Amanda defensively.
‘There is such a thing as being an accessory after the fact,’ pointed out Steve dryly.
‘I can’t help it,’ said Amanda. ‘I–I owed him something.’
‘For saving your life?’ said Steve with an edge to his voice. ‘Perhaps. But he had no right to let you do it.’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Amanda. ‘He’s in love with her.’
‘And are you by any chance in love with him?’ inquired Steve unpleasantly. ‘Is that the real reason for this quixotic gesture?’
Amanda hit him.
She had not meant to do it or known that she would do so. The gesture had been an entirely unexpected and instinctive reaction born of the accumulative terror and shock and emotional strain of the past hours and the last few days. This time he either did not anticipate the action or did not trouble to avoid it.
Amanda stared in stunned dismay at the red mark that her palm had left on Steven Howard’s hard cheek; her grey eyes very wide and young.
‘I–I’m sorry,’ she said in a small, unsteady voice. ‘I didn’t mean to do that. I____’
‘Don’t apologize,’ interrupted Steve sardonically. ‘After all I did offer you a second try, didn’t I?—and they say that practice makes perfect.’
‘You’re very angry, aren’t you?’ said Amanda in a subdued voice.
‘If I am, it’s probably with myself,’ said Steve curtly.
And then Miss Moon had reappeared with a fresh pot of coffee and they had drunk it sitting round the dining-room table because none of them wanted to go into the drawing-room again, and because Amanda flatly refused to go to bed.
Amanda had not wanted the hot coffee either, and had asked for a cold drink instead. Steve had ignored the request and had poured out a cup of black coffee to which he had added sugar and, undoubtedly, some drug that he had presumably obtained off Miss Moon or the doctor, and had handed it to her without further words. Amanda had looked at his coolly unemotional eyes and uncompromising mouth and had been too tired to argue. She had drunk it, and it had left an unpleasant taste on her tongue.
Steve had embarked on a long conversation with Miss Moon who, it was soon obvious, had entirely revised her first opinion of him and was already addressing him as ‘dear boy’. He had not spoken directly to Amanda again, and presently his voice and his face had begun to fade into a misty background in which only a flight of pseudo-Japanese storks and the jingle of Miss Moon’s bracelets stood out at all clearly.
Amanda’s eyelids had begun to feel strangely heavy and she found that she could no longer prevent them from closing. She slid down a little lower in her chair and a voice that seemed to come from the other end of a long tunnel had said faintly but distinctly: ‘I think, dear boy, that she is almost asleep now,’ and another voice, equally far away said: ‘And about time too!’
Amanda had forced open her eyes in order to see who was asleep, and had looked up into Steven Howard’s face and remembered that he had been angry about something; something to do with Glenn Barton. She must explain about that. Steve had not understood. She found that it was an effort to speak, and said drowsily and with difficulty: ‘Glenn____’ and the face above her was suddenly blank and hard and completely expressionless.
Then her eyes closed again and Steve had lifted her and carried her up a long dark flight of stairs, and she had turned her face against his shoulder and clung to him with terrified desperation, because these were the ruined stone steps of Hilarion once more, and she was afraid of falling.
* * *
The door opened with a faint creak of hinges and Amanda turned quickly to see Miss Moon peering cautiously around it.
Miss Moon, a vision in lemon yellow, brightened at the sight of her and said approvingly: ‘So you are awake at last! I have looked in several times, but did not wish to wake you. How are you feeling, my dear?’
‘A bit stupid,’ said Amanda with an attempt at a smile. ‘Is it very late?’
‘Ten minutes to one, dear. Luncheon will be ready in a moment. I expect you are hungry. I do trust that you feel no ill-effects from those sleeping powders? I have always found them remarkably effective, although I confess I have never taken more than one. But Mr Howard thought that in the circumstances two would be advisable. Such a dear boy! So thoughtful—and so well read. How few people one meets who have read Il Conte de Carmagnola in the original and can discuss it intelligently! Dear Papa would have enjoyed conversing with him. I will tell Euridice to run you a bath.’
‘Miss Moon,’ said Amanda in a halting voice, ‘I–didn’t dream it by any chance, did I?’
Miss Moon’s face changed and her mouth closed for a moment
into a tight line.
‘No my dear. I am afraid not. We have had the police here the whole morning. I would not permit them to wake you, since you could have told them nothing more than you told them last night. Several people called to inquire after you. That young Captain Gates, and a Mrs Halliday—American I think, and very striking. And Glenn has been here too. There will have to be an inquest, of course, but the police have satisfied themselves as to the reason for poor Monica Ford’s dreadful end.’
Amanda sat down rather suddenly on the edge of her bed. ‘Who–who do they think did it?’
‘A thief of course,’ said Miss Moon, and wrung her hands so that the bracelets jingled. ‘Oh, Amanda dear, I fear it was all my fault!’
‘Darling!’ said Amanda, jumping up and giving her hostess a sudden impulsive hug. ‘Don’t be silly! How could it possibly be your fault?’
‘Well you see, dear, there are a great many valuable things in this house. My dear Papa was a great collector. And of course I have never kept anything under lock and key, and everyone knows that I never lock the house up—except of course at night. Euridice insists on that. It must have been a temptation. I see that now. Some dishonest person must have come to hear that the house would be empty yesterday afternoon, and have crept in intending to steal what they could. They would not have expected to find anyone in the drawing-room, and may not have noticed Monica until she had time to see and perhaps even recognize the thief. They think that he lost his head and picked up the scarf only intending to stop her from calling out, and did not mean to kill her—I do hope he did not!’
Amanda said: ‘But nothing was missing.’
‘Oh yes there was, dear. Several of the smaller and more valuable items from dear Papa’s collection had been removed from the cabinets in the drawing-room. There are so many things there that I did not immediately realize it.’
Amanda was aware of a sudden and overwhelming wave of relief.
She could not have told why she should be so inexpressibly relieved. Surely she could not have believed that one of a small group of people who were personally known to her could have deliberately strangled poor, harmless, unhappy Monica Ford? No of course she had not. All the same she felt as if a black, crushing weight had been lifted off her shoulders.
