She had already come to that conclusion herself. How could she deny it to him?
He was still looking at her, his hands clumsy at his sides, searching her face as if trying to see what was in her mind, trying to think of what might mollify her.
For both of them the real object of her being there seemed entirely incidental to the cautious readjustment of their relationship.
He said: “I gave the Chilterns the securities that were in the folder. Mrs. Chiltern’s bonds and some stock belonging to Mr. Chiltern too. Apparently there was some speculation he’d made—he didn’t tell me much about it—but it’s all right, he said. You mustn’t worry about them financially. I mean, there’ll be enough for the family to live.”
Senselessly Kay found herself memorizing the line of his jaw, as she thought: So Gilbert’s little flutter which had caused him so much anguish and doubt had saved the day after all. Fate had at least handed them that one ironical break.
Tim’s voice sounded again: “Kay, I asked you here because I wanted you to hear the truth before the Major comes back.”
“The Major.” That pulled her out of her strange, absent-minded dream. Things were real again, only too real, and she remembered what she had incredibly forgotten—that she was there to learn who had killed Ivor Drake and Alice Lumsden.
Vividly there returned the picture of Elaine, white-faced and numb. It’s all over now.
She faltered: “You really know the truth?”
“Yes.” He hesitated. “I’ve got a signed confession here in my pocket—a confession for the Major.”
A confession! That was so cruelly final. She felt an insane impulse to cry: Don’t tell me. Don’t let me ever know.
In a thin little voice she said: “How—how did you guess?”
“It was really all over when I realized what Alice had found out. I was quite sure when I heard about the rowlock. I saw that the truth had to come out and that the most painless way was to use the evidence against Terry to make Elaine talk.”
Elaine… She said, clinging to little facts: “So the rowlock was used in Ivor’s murder.”
“Yes. And the Major’s reconstruction was almost entirely right. The murder did take place just off the island jetty. Someone did hail Ivor from the water. He did stop to pick them up. The Major was only wrong on one point. The murderer wasn’t in another boat. The murderer was—swimming.”
“Swimming!” Kay remembered the swimmer whom Terry had seen outside the mainland beach just before the murder, the swimmer he had thought was Elaine because of the silver bathing cap, gleaming in the moonlight. She said: “The murderer swam and—and borrowed Elaine’s cap.”
“It was all quite simple really. While Ivor was talking to Elaine on the dock, his murderer was already swimming out toward the island. Ivor left Elaine and started for the island too. His murderer was waiting, in the water, just off the jetty. He hailed Ivor. Hearing his name called, Ivor naturally stopped the boat but didn’t bother to turn off the engine. He went to the gunwale and saw someone in the water. He didn’t suspect a thing. He bent over to help his murderer into the boat. With one hand the murderer gripped his arm, with the other he struck him on the temple with the iron rowlock. Ivor tumbled into the water unconscious. He was left to drown. The rowlock was dropped in the water. The murderer swam away.”
“I see.” Kay felt a cold chill sliding through her. “And Ivor’s leg caught in the aquaplane rope and the boat drifted with him to the island beach—just the way the Major said.”
Tim nodded. He looked a little sick.
The terrible picture was slowly building itself up in Kay’s mind. She said: “And—and in the struggle Ivor’s hand clutched at the bathing cap and pulled it off the murderer’s head. That’s it, of course. And it was the cap Elaine was looking for when she swam over to the island later.” Then: “She knew, didn’t she? I should have realized. She knew who the murderer was all along and she helped. That’s why she could never tell the truth.”
“Yes, Kay.” Tim’s voice was very low. “Elaine was on the mainland beach, looking for the diary in the yuccas, when the murderer swam back to shore. She was told part of the truth, that Ivor was dead, but that it had been an accident. Ivor had tried to pull the murderer into the boat, slipped, hit his head on the gunwale, and drowned before he could be saved. She never dreamed it was murder until tonight when Alice was killed and the Major produced the rowlock as a murder weapon. Poor kid, it was a nightmare for her at first, thinking it was an accident, not daring to incriminate someone she loved by telling the truth, watching the others, one after another, being suspected of murder—and not being able to lift a finger to help.”
He hesitated: “And then tonight it was even more of a nightmare. She realized that the person whom she’d protected as the innocent victim of a ghastly accident was in fact a murderer—a murderer who had killed not only Ivor but Alice Lumsden too.”
Kay could understand Elaine’s frightful dilemma. No wonder her statements had never been more than a jumble of half-truths and lies.
She stared at Tim’s gaunt face. Her desire to know the truth and have done with it was shrilly insistent now. And yet she couldn’t bring herself to take the irrevocable step of asking: Who is it?
She sensed an equal reluctance in Tim. It was rather horrible, as if they were two fencers in a duel which Tim was fated to win but in which he could not steel himself to deal the lethal blow.
“Elaine would have shielded the murderer anyway, because she loved him,” he said jerkily. “But her feeling went even deeper than that. You see, she was indirectly responsible. If it hadn’t been for her, it might never have happened. She had gone to him with the diary; she had told him she was going to break with Ivor. He knew Ivor well enough to realize what would happen. They’d lose Bermuda and all that it meant to them, of course. They’d have to go back to near-poverty. But there was something else far worse. He knew only too well that the moment Elaine broke her engagement, Terry’s life was doomed. Ivor would inevitably strike back at the family by exposing his forgery, by having him sent to prison.”
His voice was husky. “That’s really why the murder was committed. It was a desperate, crazy attempt to save Terry’s life by taking Ivor’s.”
Kay deliberately asked no more questions, for she knew it would have to come soon. It was better for Tim to take her there along the road of his own choosing.
“He had no chance to get a swimming suit, so he swam over in his pajama pants. After Elaine tried to retrieve the cap and failed, she took the pajamas, washed them and ironed them so that no one would find out they’d been in salt water. You saw her doing that, of course.”
He looked down at his hands. “That was their pathetic attempt to keep their secret. It might have worked if it hadn’t been for Alice Lumsden. She knew too much to begin with. As soon as she learned the marks in the sand hadn’t been made by someone dragging Ivor’s body, the rest was easy. She wasn’t fooled by the ironed pajamas because the burn Elaine had made on them gave them away. Then, when she found the green cushion, damp and stained, hidden under the other pillows on the library couch…”
He broke off with a helpless little gesture. “I realized too when you told me about that cushion and we saw it had gone. It was a cushion I knew as well as Alice did and which I associated with one thing and one person alone. I don’t have to tell you any more, do I? I don’t have to tell you the actual name?”
Kay stared at him, feeling weak and rather faint. Someone who had known the whole story of Terry’s forgery. Someone whom Elaine had been with last night, someone to whom she had shown Rosemary’s diary and revealed her intention of breaking with Ivor. A thought drifted into her mind, small but ominous as the first gathering storm cloud in a clear sky. It was a memory of the maid coming to the bridge table last night and saying to Alice: You won’t be needed any more tonight. Miss Elaine is helping Mr. Chiltern to bed.
Tim’s dark face seemed oddly blurred as realizati
on of the truth welled up in her like an ice-cold geyser.
“Elaine was with him last night,” she said. “Of course she never mentioned it to the Major, but he must have been the first person she went to after she’d read the diary. She told him everything. Tim—that’s it, isn’t it?”
She paused and in a strained, faltering voice, she whispered: “It’s—Gilbert.”
Chapter Twenty-One
FOR A MOMENT Tim looked at her in silence. Then slowly he inclined his head. “As a doctor I should have guessed, just the way Alice guessed because she was a nurse. Mr. Chiltern had gone to the hospital yesterday morning for his weekly checkup. I’d been in conference with Dr. Barnes there the day before and we’d both decided that, although he’d never walk again, he had recovered sufficiently to take exercise by swimming. In cases like that, where only the legs are paralyzed, the patient is always encouraged to swim.”
Through the haze of shock, that came back to Kay too. She remembered the first glimpse she had ever had of Alice Lumsden, stalking onto the terrace behind Gilbert’s wheel chair and saying to Maud: At the hospital they report Mr. Chiltern’s range of motion has not increased. But he’ll soon be able to get exercise swimming.
Tim went on: “Naturally Elaine went to her father first last night after she’d read the diary. It was really for his sake that she’d forced herself to marry Ivor. And now that she’d decided she couldn’t go through with the wedding, he was the person she had to tell. When he saw the diary, he was horrified, but not as surprised as he might have been. Ivor had dispelled his illusions a few moments before when he’d gone to Mr. Chiltern raging about Terry.”
Kay remembered then. Gilbert himself had told her of that scene after dinner when Ivor had threatened to expose Terry. That was when Gilbert’s eyes had been opened. With odd clearness she remembered Gilbert’s face when he had told her, very white and grim, remembered his voice: I hated him so much then that I would gladly have killed him myself if I had been able.
If he had been able…!
Tim was saying: “Because of that scene with Ivor, Mr. Chiltern had a very clear picture of what would happen when Elaine broke the engagement. What he did was crazy, terrible, of course. But it seemed to him the only way to repay a debt. Terry had made it possible for him to have those hospital treatments. He had risked ruining his own life to save his father’s. Now, when Terry was in danger, Mr. Chiltern had one chance of saving him—by killing Ivor. He says the idea came to him right then when Elaine was in the room, and I believe him. He knew Ivor was planning to sleep on the island. The lawn sloped from the French windows of his room right down to the swimming beach. The doctors had told him he could swim. Well, he would swim.
“He had Elaine help him into pajamas as if he was going to bed. Then, after she’d gone, he wheeled himself in his chair out of the windows, down the lawn to the beach. He hid the chair in the shadow of the oleanders. He took off his pajama coat, so that he would get as few things as possible wet. He climbed out of the chair and dragged himself down the beach into the water.”
“The marks on the sand!” Kay breathed. “We should have guessed. The marks of his paralyzed legs and his fingers, digging in, dragging him along.”
Tim nodded. “I’ve really told you the rest, Kay. He’d been a great athlete in his day. You know that. Even now he has an athlete’s torso and an athlete’s power of endurance. He swam to the mainland dock and pulled Elaine’s bathing cap down from the jetty. He wore it so that his hair wouldn’t get wet and give him away. He swam past the rowboat, and took the rowlock. He waited there in the water by the island jetty for Ivor. And—and everything worked the way he’d planned.” He paused. “The scheme had a terrible sort of ingenuity. One arm pulling Ivor in, the other arm striking him with the rowlock. That’s almost the only way a paralyzed man could have committed the murder—in the one element where his strength would be equal to that of a normal man.”
She saw now how all he had already told her applied remorselessly to Gilbert, and she felt a sudden, almost overwhelming sense of tragedy. That Gilbert, who had gone through life pretending responsibilities didn’t exist, should in the end have taken the awful responsibility of murder on his shoulders for the sake of his son!
Tim was saying: “Ivor pulled the bathing cap off his head as he was struggling. But otherwise nothing went wrong. Once the murder had been committed, all he had to do was to swim back to the beach. It was late. There was every chance that no one would see him. But Elaine was there. You can imagine how she felt, seeing her father, whom she thought of as doomed to the wheel chair, dragging himself up out of the sea, naked except for his sodden pajama pants. He told her that fake story of its having been an accident. She helped him up the beach along the same tracks he had made going down. She helped him into the wheel chair and wheeled him back across the lawn to his bedroom.”
His voice was a little steadier now. “Although she thought it had been an accident, Elaine realized that suspicion was bound to fall on her father if the truth came out. That’s why she swam over to the island and tried to retrieve the bathing cap which you had picked up. And that’s why she washed and ironed the pajamas. She had been hoping the tide would wash away the marks in the sand, but they were discovered too soon. There was another thing, also, a thing which was as potentially dangerous as everything else put together.”
He paused. “You know how much salt there is in Bermuda water, how much it stains. Later they found that the green cushion of the wheel chair was soaked in sea water. Anyone, seeing it, would realize that Mr. Chiltern had been in the sea. Elaine couldn’t wash it the way she could wash the pajamas. A cushion’s a hard thing to destroy in a hurry. So she did what seemed to be best at the moment. She hid it under the other cushions on the library couch and replaced it by one of the yellow ones.”
Kay kept her fingers clenched tightly to steady herself. So that was it. And she might have guessed it too. Yesterday she had noticed that the cushion in Gilbert’s wheel chair was light green and dark green; today it had been yellow.
“It was all very makeshift. And gradually Alice pieced together the truth. She knew, as I did, that it was possible for Mr. Chiltern to swim. As soon as the Major announced that the marks in the sand were not made by Ivor’s body, she must have thought of Mr. Chiltern and his paralyzed legs. As his nurse, she attended to his clothes. Yesterday evening she had put out a pair of white pajamas for him and yet later that night after the murder when the Major arrived he had been wearing blue ones. That must have aroused her suspicions. Then, when she looked through his drawers and found the white pajamas which she had put out for him neatly ironed again— and scorched—it was easy. Particularly when she saw the yellow cushion in the wheel chair. All she had to do was to find the regular green one. She found it, damp and stained, in the library this afternoon. She had more than enough evidence then to have Mr. Chiltern arrested.”
The whole story seemed so inevitable now. Kay tried to see forward into what still had to come. Hesitantly she asked: “But, Tim, how did he do that other thing? How could he possibly have killed Alice. He was there in the library with me.”
Tim Thorne passed a hand across his dark, unruly hair. “He killed her almost under your nose, Kay. He hadn’t planned to use you, he hadn’t planned anything. That was the amazing thing. He knew, of course, that she was going to expose him, but he wasn’t going to lift a finger to stop her. You see, in his own eyes, he wasn’t really a murderer. In a queer way he felt he had justice on his side when he killed Ivor and, once he’d done it, he was ready to take the consequences.
“But, without realizing it, you submitted him to a terrible temptation. You were in the library together just after the storm started. The rain was splashing in through the window. You tugged open the screen, tried to pull the window down and couldn’t. And, while you were there, you actually told him that Alice was taking her bicycle out of the shed. You left him alone to find someone to help you with the window. On t
he table at his side was a tray of drinks and a full soda-water bottle.
“He had done nothing, and yet the golden opportunity for murder had fallen into his lap. Alice would ride her bicycle down the drive just outside the library window. All he had to do was to pick up the bottle, wheel himself to the window, and then throw the bottle at her as she pedaled by—only a few yards away from him. The aim had to be accurate, of course, and the bottle thrown hard. It was the one thing he could do. We all knew he had been an outstanding amateur baseball pitcher; his room was full of pictures”—he paused—“too simple to resist.”
Kay stared at him. “And then you and I came in a few seconds later. The rain, splashing on our faces, kept us from seeing anything. We shut the window. We—we gave him a perfect alibi.”
“Exactly. It happened so quickly and easily. One minute he had been resigning himself to having her expose him, the next minute he had killed her and been given an alibi—almost before he realized what he had done.”
The slave cottage with its two glaring reading lamps seemed suddenly bare and cheerless.
“And I was the one who made it possible,” she faltered. “Poor Alice! And then, when I found her dead, I went on, I didn’t stop…”
“Even if you had stayed with her, you couldn’t have helped her.” His voice was soft, steadying. “You know that, Kay.” He added: “Later, Mrs. Chiltern found her.”
“Maud!” Kay suddenly remembered. “So—so it was Maud who moved the body.”
He nodded. “Until this evening she had no idea that it was her husband. When the storm had slackened, she happened to look out of the library window and she saw Alice. She ran out into the rain. Alice was lying there just outside the library window. Mrs. Chiltern knew her husband had been in the library. She saw the brown-paper package lying there, opened it, and found her husband’s pajamas in it. She found the soda-water bottle too. And she realized exactly what must have happened. It was pretty shattering for her, I guess. Then the idea came that if she moved the body away from the library window, the Major could never possibly suspect her husband. There was just a chance that the whole thing might pass for a bicycle accident. She threw the bottle into the bushes, she picked up the pajamas, she moved the body and the bicycle to the other side of the shed. It was just after she’d done it that we caught her.”
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