Return to the Scene

by Patrick Quentin

  Maud made a small, sad grimace. “I hate having to put you in this position. Keeping all this back, we’re breaking the law. You realize that.”

  “Do you suppose it makes any difference to me?”

  “It will make a difference to all of us unless we manage to go on breaking the law efficiently.” Maud’s lips tightened. “If we make any mistakes we’ll put Elaine, all of us, in a far worse position than we are already.”

  “I realize that too.” Kay added uncertainly: “What’s the best thing to do now?”

  “The first thing is to destroy Rosemary’s diary.” Maud’s voice was definite. “All Major Clifford knows is that Elaine was to have married Ivor and that we were all very pleased about it. So long as he doesn’t read the diary, there’s no reason why he should think anything different.”

  That was sensible, of course. Ever since she had got it back, Kay had realized the importance of destroying the diary.

  “You think we should do it now?”

  “The sooner the better.”

  “Here in the playhouse?” Kay was suddenly on edge again, conscious of the fact that they were on forbidden territory.

  Maud’s eyes moved to the fireplace. “No. We’ll have to burn it and we mustn’t leave ashes in the hearth here. Let’s take it outdoors. I know a place.”

  Maud moved to the door. As Kay followed, she thought of the folder of securities, still hidden under the mattress. If she retrieved it now, Maud would see it and ask questions which would give away the whole episode which Gilbert had been so anxious to keep from her. And yet, if she left it in its hiding place, the police might search the bedroom and find it. The whole point of her mission to the island would be wasted.

  Maud had paused by the door. “We should hurry, dear. If the Major comes and finds we’re not at the house it’ll be awkward.”

  Kay made up her mind quickly. The most important thing was to destroy the diary. Once that was done, she could make some excuse to slip away from Maud and return for the folder.

  They moved through the living room and out of the blue Dutch door onto the little flagged terrace above the dock.

  “I hid my canoe in an inlet around the promontory.” Maud gazed across the deserted strip of water to Hurricane House. “If the Major’s arrived, he doesn’t seem to be coming over here. There’s a little clearing in the trees above the playhouse where we picnic. We’ll be safe there.”

  She skirted the side of the house and started up a narrow track which led through the stunted cedars. Kay followed until they reached a small turf-covered plateau jutting precariously out above the turquoise of the water. A tall outcrop of yuccas made the bay visible only in individual vistas, while, behind, a semicircle of jungular century plants made a natural wall. Apart from the little path winding through, the clearing was entirely encircled—the ideal spot for children’s make-believe conspiracies.

  Maud, her face pale and intent, glanced through the yuccas toward Hurricane House. “It’s all right here, Kay. The path runs down to the far end of the island across from Dr. Thorne’s house. No one’s going to come from there.” She turned, holding out her hand in a gesture which was unconsciously theatrical. “Give me the diary. We’ll tear it up and make a bonfire. I’ve got matches.”

  Still caught in that queer mood of childish conspiracy, Kay took the little green book from her bag and handed it to her sister. Maud opened it, glancing at a page, her lips tightening as she read. Slowly she closed it again and, ripping off the back green cover, tore it into strips and placed it in a pile on the turf. With a deliberation that grated Kay’s already overwrought nerves, she started to tear off the back pages, one by one, mincing them into little scraps and adding them to the pile at her feet.

  The sunlight streamed down from the blue gap of sky above them. Somewhere close by a twig snapped. Kay was vaguely conscious of it, but only vaguely. Her whole anxious attention was fixed on Maud.

  Another page was destroyed, and then another.

  Rather shrilly Kay said: “Hurry, Maud. If you do it that thoroughly it will take all night. Here. Let me…”

  She took a step forward. Her hand went out to snatch the little book.

  A twig snapped again. Then another. Kay’s eyes left Maud’s face and focused on the gap where the path ran on through the century plants. Her hands fell at her sides. Her lips, half parting, started to say something which ended up as a feeble: “Oh!”

  On the threshold of the clearing, like very solid ghosts suddenly materialized from the astral plane, stood two men. One, a slight, dark figure in a white Palm Beach suit, was Dr. Thorne.

  The other, impressive, towering, inescapably real, was Major Clifford himself.

  Chapter Twelve

  KAY THOUGHT: SO IT’S ALL OVER NOW. From behind shaggy brows Major Clifford’s keen blue eyes had moved to the diary in Maud’s hand and then to the pile of torn paper on the ragged turf at her feet. He said: “Well, ladies, this is a surprise,”

  Kay’s gaze met Dr. Thorne’s. His dark face, with its lean cheekbones, its quiet reassuring mouth, and its black, faintly ironical eyes, was sympathetic, friendly. And she felt a queerly disproportionate pleasure at seeing him—as if he were no longer a mere stranger; as if their brief, extraordinary conversation of the night before coupled with this new menace of the diary, which affected him as well as her, had accelerated them into intimacy.

  His eyes shifted from her face to the diary. Kay looked at it too, clinging to the desperate hope that her sister might still find some way of keeping it from the Major.

  But she knew it was a hope without foundation. Peremptorily Major Clifford stretched out a large hand.

  “Since you were tearing that book up, Mrs. Chiltern, you presumably won’t be needing it. Perhaps you’d give it to me.”

  Maud seemed entirely unruffled. Placidly, almost as if she were presenting him with a glass of iced tea at a garden party, she stepped forward and handed him the diary.

  For one paralyzing moment Major Clifford stared at its green cover. Then he tucked it under his arm. His face, rugged as the gray coral rocks jutting up out of the grass, was grim and set.

  “I think you owe me an explanation, ladies. Last night I made it plain that no one was to come to this island. What are you doing here?”

  Kay’s pulses were throbbing. She glanced rather wildly at Maud. Her sister’s mouth had moved in a little social smile.

  “I know we shouldn’t be here, Major. But it’s all quite simple. Until yesterday my son was sleeping in the playhouse, and last night when Ivor decided to use it there was no time to move Terry’s clothes out. He hasn’t a thing to wear, so my sister and I came over to get him a clean shirt and some shorts. We didn’t think you’d mind.

  That lie, so preposterously innocent-sounding, could only have been thought up by Maud. Probably it was the only one which could have rattled the Major. Obviously he did not believe it and yet its very weakness made it difficult to refute. He cleared his throat and then took the diary from under his arm and looked at it again. By that gesture he seemed tacitly to be conceding the first round to Maud and gathering his forces for victory in the second.

  “Perhaps you’d explain to me, Mrs. Chiltern, since you came to the island to get a shirt for your son, why you’re up here destroying this book.”

  “Oh, it’s just something we didn’t want the children to see,” explained Maud easily. “While we were here, we thought we’d destroy it where they weren’t likely to find us.”

  The gentle candor with which she delivered that second, very thorough lie was amazing. But its efficacy against the Major was doubtful. His eyes unflinchingly on Maud’s face, he said: “Since I’m not a child, I presume there’s no reason why I shouldn’t look at it.”

  Without waiting for her reply, he bent his head over the diary, turning to the flyleaf. His large fingers, grasping it, made the little book seem infinitesimal, something far too small for its vast potentialities for danger.

 
; Kay glanced at Dr. Thorne again. All hope had gone now. Even Maud’s desperately calm deceptions would not be able to conceal the truth from Major Clifford once he had read even a few paragraphs of that bitter, tragic story.

  The Major, massively immaculate in his white drill uniform, had imposed his own ominous stillness on the peace of the little clearing. Every now and then the intimidating silence was broken by a rustle as he turned a page. Dimly, behind her sharp anxiety, Kay wondered how they should have been discovered just at the most critical moment. Maud had said the path led to the end of the island opposite Dr. Thorne’s house. Presumably the two men had rowed over from there.

  Maud should have thought of that. Not that it mattered much. Nothing much mattered now.

  Abruptly the Major looked up, the diary still open in his hand. A faint smile played around his lips.

  “I understand why you weren’t eager to have the children read this, Mrs. Chiltern. I imagine you weren’t very eager to have me read it either.”

  He didn’t have to say any more. From the slight but unmistakable note of triumph in his voice, Kay realized that he had appreciated the implications of the diary, splitting wide open, as it did, their feeble pretense that Elaine’s wedding to Ivor had been a matter for general rejoicing. Last night Major Clifford had deduced from the evidence that Ivor had been murdered. Now he was holding in his hand something which provided them all, potentially, with motives for murder.

  He was winning—and he knew it.

  “I gather this is a diary written by Drake’s late wife.” His eyes segregated Kay for special observation. “Your name is Kay, Miss Winyard, isn’t it? From the note on the flyleaf I assume this book is your property.”

  What was the use of denying it? Kay nodded. “Rosemary Drake was a friend of mine. She sent it to me before—before she died.”

  “She did, eh?” The Major was still smiling. “The picture it paints of Drake isn’t any too attractive.” With terrifying accuracy of deduction he added: “I’m not surprised you came straight to Bermuda with it when you heard your niece was planning to marry him.”

  That had not been a question, something she could admit or deny. It was a sheer statement of fact. And relentlessly he continued: “It makes you an interesting figure in the case, Miss Winyard. Until now I thought you were just a visiting aunt. But you’re much more than that, eh?” His penetrating gaze was still on her face. “I don’t imagine you were particularly heartbroken at Drake’s death last night. And if you’d shown this diary to anyone else in the family, I don’t imagine they would have been heartbroken, either.” His large thumb tapped the little book. “Just who, apart from you, has read this?”

  Once again Kay was very conscious of Dr. Thorne’s dark eyes watching her with a kind of desperate attention. She knew the Major was trying to lure her into a trap. But she was helpless because she could not possibly tell the truth—tell him that Elaine had stolen the diary from her room last night and that later it had been returned to her by Dr. Thorne.

  Uncertainly she faltered: “No one read it but me. I spoke to my sister about it last night. But she never saw it, until just now when we decided it should be destroyed.”

  The Major’s scrutiny was even closer. “Isn’t that rather odd, Miss Winyard? You had certain facts in your possession about Mr. Drake—facts which you must have felt obliged to tell the Chilterns before the wedding. And yet, although you were here all day yesterday, you showed this diary neither to your niece nor to her mother and father.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why? Was it because you’d decided to tackle the whole thing through Drake himself?” Major Clifford’s voice was unexpectedly soft. “Last night you told me that at the time of Drake’s death you were paddling around the bay in a canoe with Miss Morley. Are you sure that is the truth?”

  “Why, y-yes.”

  “If you hadn’t been with Miss Morley, you might have gone to the dock with the diary. You might have confronted Drake with it, trying to use it as a weapon to force him into breaking the engagement. There might have been a quarrel. Drake might have fallen, struck his head…”

  He broke off, and in the split second of silence that followed, his tall figure seemed to loom over her, blotting out the white cockades of the yuccas and the vivid blue of the sky. “If you hadn’t been with Miss Morley, something like that would fit with the evidence, wouldn’t it? And it would have been quite a logical thing to have happened. Of course, Mrs. Chiltern claims that she saw Mr. Drake leave the dock in the speedboat alone and alive.” His massive teeth showed again in a smile. “But, after all, Mrs. Chiltern is your sister.”

  Kay had never thought things would turn out quite like this. By an ironical quirk of fate, the Major had built up against her exactly the same case which she and Maud had just built up against Elaine. That it was false did not make the situation any less precarious. She could not tell the truth which involved Elaine so damningly. She could not even prove that she had been with Simon—because that whole flimsily contrived alibi was untrue.

  For one confused moment she hoped that Dr. Thorne would admit his part in the saga of the diary. She glanced at his face and read in its pale intentness the fact she should have realized for herself, that he was unable to help her. All he could say, at the risk of jeopardizing his own position, was that he had picked the diary out of the yuccas by the swimming beach and returned it to Kay. Nothing would be gained by that. It would only prove that someone had in fact been at the dock with the diary. It would make the Major’s theory even more dangerously plausible.

  Kay watched Major Clifford, waiting for his next move. He tucked the diary under his arm again and said surprisingly: “Well, it’s been instructive meeting you, ladies. Thorne and I were going to take a look at the playhouse. But that can wait until we’ve rowed you back to the mainland.”

  Maud said: “You needn’t worry, Major. We can paddle our own canoes back.”

  “I assure you it’s no bother. It’s a pleasure.” The Major’s gaze, embracing them both, was unyielding. Clearly he was not letting either of them out of his sight. Somehow that quiet solicitude and his unexpected decision to carry his interrogation of Kay no further were even more alarming than if he had actually, in so many words, accused her of murder.

  He produced an envelope from his pocket and carefully shoveled into it the torn pages of the diary which were strewn at Maud’s feet. He straightened, the ominous smile making his teeth flash again.

  “Ready, ladies? Or should we go to the playhouse first and get young Chiltern a pair of shorts?”

  From the sarcasm in his voice it was obvious that he had given up any pretense now of believing Maud’s explanation for their presence on the island. But Maud chose to take his words at their face value. She said calmly: “I think we should, Major. After all Terry has to have something to wear.”

  “In that case, Dr. Thorne and I will be glad to take you there.”

  They walked down the path to the playhouse—all four of them.

  Ever since the moment when Major Clifford appeared in the clearing, Kay had realized that her original purpose in coming to the island was doomed to failure. His arrival had eliminated any chance of retrieving Gilbert’s securities from their hazardous place of concealment under the mattress. Her only hope now was that there would be another opportunity to slip over before the police searched the place too thoroughly. At least she had achieved something in taking the folder out of the suitcase and hiding it.

  Even so, the second trip to the playhouse was rather excruciating. As Major Clifford led the way through the living room into the bedroom, every nerve in Kay’s body was taut. Instinctively she glanced at the bed. Thank heavens Maud had straightened the spread. There was nothing there to arouse suspicion.

  The Major had moved to the cedar bureau. While Maud waited passively at his side, he opened drawers and stared from beneath bushy brows at the neatly folded linen inside. The smile in his eyes was almost mischievous
now. Solemnly he selected a white shirt and a navy-blue pair of shorts. He turned to Maud, holding them out to her.

  “How’s that for a combination, Mrs. Chiltern? You know your son’s taste better than I. A little too conservative, d’you think?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  DR. THORNE HAD ROWED the Major over to the island from his house in a small, blunt-nosed punt which he had moored at the farthest tip of the island. Major Clifford conducted them to it with the solemn attentiveness of a nursemaid in charge of naughty children. When they reached the boat, he packed Kay and Maud in the stern and took massive possession of the central thwart. Dr. Thorne perched on the bow and the Major started to row through the sparkling blue water back toward Hurricane House.

  To Kay there was something faintly ludicrous in the picture of the four of them crammed in that tiny boat like carefree holiday makers. Holiday makers! When the man who was rowing was a policeman and she, Kay Winyard, whose sandaled toes were in frivolous contact with the Major’s large oxfords, was his principal suspect in a murder case.

  None of them spoke as the little boat bobbed reluctantly toward Ivor’s dock. Maud, her face placid as ever, was nursing Terry’s clothes in her lap as if they were some limp doll. Dr. Thorne took out a package of cigarettes and offered it to Kay and Maud. Maud refused, but Kay took one, vaguely surprised that she could want to smoke at a time like this.

  Puffing slightly with exertion, the Major gave a final stab at the oars and nosed the punt up to the jetty. Dr. Thorne jumped out and helped the ladies up. As his fingers, dry and warm, steadied Kay’s arm, he smiled at her. It was a smile of commiseration and understanding. She knew he was trying to let her know how sorry he was that he had not been able to help about the diary. She smiled back, feeling exaggeratedly comforted.

  The Major joined them and started down the jetty with the solemn impressiveness of a one-man procession. They followed. As they reached the little cliffs above the swimming beach, a man hurried toward them from the direction of Don’s cottage. It was the tall colored policeman who had left his post so precipitously earlier that morning. He joined the Major, important and rather breathless.