“Yes.”
“You don’t want me to walk round the ramparts while you think about it?”
She smiled faintly. “You needn’t do that. It would take you half an hour. Yes, I—I think we’re over the first fence. What’s the second one? And what did you mean by—trouble?”
He took a deep breath. He felt he had started well, for without her complete confidence his assistance would be negligible. One thing he had already learned, although another man—Inspector Kendall, for instance—might have waited for confirmation before making up his mind. Dora Fenner knew nothing of the tragedy at Haven House.
“Do you trust me enough, on this very short acquaintance, to answer a few questions?” he asked.
“Yes—I think so,” she replied.
“But you’re not sure.”
She considered her answer before she gave it.
“I’m as sure as one could be, in the circumstances.” Suddenly she shot a question of her own. “You said you are a writer. Is that all?”
“I added yachtsman. You must see my boat some time.”
“You know I didn’t mean that.”
“What did you mean?”
“Are you—I mean—yes, are you anything to do with the police?”
“What makes you ask that?”
“I don’t know. It just came into my mind.”
“Well, Miss Fenner, I’m not. I’m just exactly what I said—plus, I hope, a good friend.”
“All right. Ask the questions. Of course, it may depend on what they are.”
He realised that she was trying hard not to let her anxiety get the better of her, and although he was banking on her ignorance of the major tragedy, he was convinced that the anxiety had existed before this interview. He was convinced of this both from her attitude and from the time-table of her movements on the previous day, as reconstructed by Inspector Kendall.
“O.K. We’ll begin. Is your uncle here with you?”
“Oh! You know about him, too?” she replied.
“I know you’ve got an uncle—Mr. Fenner.”
“Do you mean, is he in Boulogne?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, he’s in Boulogne. But not here at this moment.”
“Where is he at this moment? Do forgive me if my questions sound a bit blunt—”
“That’s all right. I don’t know where he is. He went out after lunch.”
“But you expect him back soon?”
“Yes.”
“And I suppose he came over here with you?”
She did not answer at once. He watched a frown dawn. The cheeks that lacked make-up became a little flushed.
“No, we didn’t cross together,” she said. “I don’t suppose it matters why we didn’t. It was just—well, rather a mix-up. He crossed yesterday on the 4.30 boat—I mean, the train leaves Victoria at that time—but I only came over this morning.”
“I see,” murmured Hazeldean. “Your uncle was in Boulogne all night, then?”
“Of course.”
“And you’re quite sure of that?”
“Why, yes. Madame Paula—she runs this pension where we’re staying—she’ll tell you so.”
Hazeldean raised his eyes, and looked beyond the seat at the small grey-stone building that climbed up from the encircled town to lean its chin on an inner edge of the wall. A little door, in a dark porch, was ajar. For the first time he noticed the name “Pension Paula” over it.
“If this is going to be a long conversation, hadn’t you better sit down?” suggested the girl.
“Thank you, that’s a good idea,” he nodded and sat beside her. For some indefinable reason, he did not like having that half-open door behind them.
“It’s a pension, then, is it?”
“Yes.”
“Are there many people staying there?”
“No, only my uncle and me.”
“You and your uncle and Madame Paula?”
“She runs it. Oh, I said that. She and her husband.”
“Oh, there’s a Monsieur Paula?”
“I don’t know why you’re asking—”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, I am. I forgot for a moment I was letting you.” She gave him a quick nervous smile, in a pathetically obvious attempt to wipe out her doubts. “What was the last one? Oh, yes. Monsieur Paula.” She smiled again, momentarily becoming the child in the picture—laughing away the ogre with a joke. “Actually, his name is Jones. He’s a doctor, but Madame Jones sounds funny, I suppose, so she calls herself Madame Paula.”
“And Dr. Jones completes the party?”
“Nearly. Do you want the rest?”
“Might as well—while we’re at it.”
“There’s a girl, a sort of maid—Marie. And there’s an old man who does odd jobs—Pierre. That makes six, and that’s all. I’m doing my best, aren’t I?”
“You’re doing wonderfully,” he replied. “Please go on as you’ve begun. Apart from your uncle, is everybody at home?”
“Not Dr. Jones,” she answered. “I’ve not seen him at all yet—and I don’t want to!” The next moment she looked astonished at herself and a little ashamed. “Please pretend I didn’t say that! I—I don’t know why I did.”
“You didn’t say it,” Hazeldean assured her. “What you said was, ‘Dr. Jones is terribly, terribly nice, and I can hardly wait for him to turn up.’ By the way, Miss Fenner, I’d better tell you something else about myself. I’ve an awful habit of making jokes in the middle of serious matters. They just come and go, and they don’t mean anything, excepting that I adore fun. Once I got caught in a terrible storm at sea. I thought it was all up with the Spray. That’s my boat. And all up with me, too. I was puffing and blowing and half-naked, and all at once I thought how funny I must look. It gave me a good moment. I grinned—and I pulled through.”
“I’ll remember that,” said Dora Fenner gravely. “I expect you meant me to.”
“I did,” he admitted, “though I don’t really think you need the reminder. That picture I saw of you—the one in the dining-room”—he was steering the conversation to its next phase—“I rather fell for it. I hope you don’t mind? You looked so full of fun yourself.”
“That was painted a long time ago.”
“Oh, not so very long. And I’ve a theory that we never really change. Only our circumstances.”
“What’s the next question?”
“May I know why you came to Boulogne?”
“We do sometimes.”
“Always to Madame Paula’s pension?”
“Yes.”
“Then there was no special reason why you came this time—and why you left Haven House yesterday morning in rather a hurry, even though you only arrived here to-day?” She stared at him. “Yes, I know quite a lot,” he went on, “but I wish you’d tell it to me. I’ve only got details, and what I want are reasons. For your sake, remember. You might even be able to give the reason for an old cricket ball on a silver vase—”
He stopped abruptly at her expression. Her book slipped to the ground.
“You even know—about that?” she gasped.
“Is it important?” he asked seriously.
“I—don’t know!” she answered. Her voice was unsteady. “Please wait a moment. This is all so confusing.”
“Of course it is. I’ll wait as long as you like,” he replied.
He got up from the seat and strolled across the grass to the parapet. He believed it might help her to sort out her feelings if he removed himself for a few seconds. Below the parapet was an almost sheer green slope that dropped to the ribbon of road encircling the wall. In the distance were the roofs of outer Boulogne and gleams of water, but as his eyes began to travel farther afield they suddenly returned to the road. A familiar figure had come
into view round the curve.
He left the parapet abruptly and returned to the seat. “Can we finish our chat inside?” he asked. “I think it would be a good idea, if you could arrange it.”
The figure in the road below was the omnipresent vendor of coloured silks.
Chapter VIII
In the Little Parlour
She led him through a dark green doorway from the leafy dimness of the ramparts to the greater dimness of a hall. As she paused to peer for an instant towards a curtain at the back he had a sense that he had left pure air for an atmosphere less salutary, and a vision of that unnaturally tragic room a hundred miles away came to him suddenly with macabre vividness. What had this girl, standing momentarily in a strained position, to do with such horror? And why was her position strained? He was the one who should have caused her uneasiness, but he was convinced she felt far less easy about somebody beyond that curtain. In the dark silence of the hall he heard her heart beating.
Then she moved—away from the curtain. She turned into a narrow passage that ended in a staircase, a short one of only half a dozen steps. The top step led almost immediately to a small door.
“You’ll have to stoop, or you’ll bump your head,” she said.
A moment later they were in a parlour, and the door had been quietly closed.
It was a low-ceilinged room, quaintly proportioned, and almost as dim as the passage. The one little window had diamond panes, and half its meagre area was screened outside by the branches of a tree. A quick glance told him that it looked out upon the ramparts. He saw one end of the seat.
“No one will disturb us here,” murmured the girl. “Please sit down.”
He took a chair near the window. She took another by a small table. In the little silence that followed, each seemed to be waiting for the other to begin. The atmosphere between them had subtly changed. It was as though the closer walls had focused the unnamed mysteries that separated them, demanding with painful insistence that the mysteries should now be shared.
“Well—you want me to tell you things,” she exclaimed suddenly, with a nervous raising of her voice.
“Yes, and you want me to tell you things, too,” he answered. “But first can we settle a few preliminaries?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said no one would disturb us. Would it be awkward for you if any one did?”
“I see. Yes. Well, wouldn’t it? I’d have to explain you.”
“And you wouldn’t know how to, because you’re waiting for the explanation yourself! Is there a map of Boulogne in this room? Guide-book? Anything of that sort?”
“Yes.”
“Can I have it?”
“On the shelf at your elbow. A map.”
“Thank you.” He turned and drew it out. “Fine! I’m a tourist, and I asked you if you could direct me to the Cathedral of Notre Dame. ‘Certainly,’ you said. You said it so nicely that I went on: ‘It was built by Bishop Haffreingue, wasn’t it?’ And you said, ‘Yes, it was.’ And as you still hadn’t snubbed me, and I was all alone in a strange town, I got most frightfully bold, and I said, ‘I don’t suppose you could also tell me where La Beurrière is? I don’t even know what it is, but I’ve been told I simply must go there.’ ‘That’s the fishermen’s quarter,’ you laughed. ‘Do you want to go anywhere else, too?’ ‘Lots of places,’ I answered. ‘Then I think you’d better come in and consult my map,’ you said. It was frightfully kind of you. And I came in. And here I am. And here’s the map.” He opened it on his lap. “And now, please, while I’m studying all these confusing roads and names, tell me everything that happened yesterday, and after that I’ll tell you why I want to know.”
“There’s one thing I want to know now,” she replied after a short pause.
“What is it?”
“Why I’m trusting you like this?”
“But that’s easy, Miss Fenner! You’re trusting me because you know you jolly well can.”
“Yes—I think that must be it. Well, where shall I begin? Perhaps it had better be over breakfast. Yesterday, you know. My uncle and I—” She hesitated, then went on, with a faint flush on her pale cheeks. “We almost had a row. It sounds silly. I mean, the subject of it. He wanted to come to Boulogne, and I didn’t want to.”
“Well, I suppose you had some reason,” prompted Hazeldean.
“Yes, of course. But that may sound stupid to you, too. I—I didn’t care for the people here.” She had dropped her voice, and she glanced towards the door. “It was just that.”
“And did you have any special reason for not caring for the people?”
“Do you want that, too?”
“Not if you don’t want to tell me; but I think it would be wise.”
“Yes, only—only I don’t think I can. At least—no, that can’t have anything to do with what you’ve come here about.”
“Then we’ll let it drop,” said Hazeldean, “and I won’t refer to it again unless we both think it necessary. May I ask this, though? Did your uncle have any particular reason himself for coming to this pension? I mean, you could have gone to some other place, couldn’t you?”
She shook her head.
“He’d never do that. We always come here.”
“I see. Had you been here before, lately?”
“Not for about a month.”
“And was it a sudden decision of your uncle’s to come here this time?”
“Yes, quite sudden. I didn’t know anything about it till he suddenly spoke of it over breakfast. It sort of—caught me on the wrong foot. I mightn’t have made a fuss if there’d been longer to think about it. We’ve never had a quarrel before—I mean, a serious one. But, anyway, after breakfast I went back on myself… No, wait a moment. Something else happened first. The—cricket ball.”
“Ah, the cricket ball,” murmured Hazeldean, his interest tightening. “What about the cricket ball? Did your uncle hurl it at you in a rage?” She looked astonished. “Sorry, Miss Fenner,” he smiled. “I was just trying to be funny. It’s that bad habit.”
She answered, rather unexpectedly, “No, it’s a good habit—one ought to do it more.” It was the little child speaking again—the child who had forgotten how to laugh. Something tugged at Hazeldean’s heart. He wished he could have dissolved the ugly facts that had brought him to her, and taken her to a dance. “Where was I? No, my uncle didn’t throw it. He didn’t have it. Somebody else threw it. It came through a window… All this sounds ridiculous.”
“Perhaps it is. Did it break the window?”
“No, it was open.”
“Which window was it?”
“My bedroom window. I was making my bed.”
“Doesn’t the maid make your bed?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“You know as well as I do. I am trying to find out, very subtly, whether you keep a maid.”
“You needn’t be subtle,” she responded. “We don’t keep a maid.”
“But a cook?”
“Not even a cook. I look after things. Not here in Boulogne, of course. Where was I?”
“Still at the cricket ball,” he answered. “I hope you don’t mind all my interruptions. The ball has just come through your open bedroom window—and, naturally, you immediately rush to the window and look out.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Why on earth not? That’s what I’d have done.”
“I dare say; but I’m not you. People don’t always do the same things.”
“That’s true.”
“Besides, I was startled—and then upset, too, from the row. I hate rows. I always feel I’m in the wrong. I mean, with everybody, whether I’m really in the wrong or not. I didn’t used to. When my father was alive I remember I always thought I was in the right… I don’t know why I’m saying all this. Where—oh,
yes. Anyhow, what I did was to stare at the ball. It came right on the bed. A horrid old thing. It looked as though it had come up from the bottom of the sea! I don’t know why it gave me such a shock—I mean, even apart from coming in suddenly like that—but it did. When I did go to the window—at last, you know—I couldn’t see anybody. Whoever had thrown it had gone.”
“Your window’s at the back, isn’t it?”
“Yes, how do you know?”
“That’ll come presently. What did you do then?”
“I took the ball to Uncle John—to my uncle.”
“And what did he do?”
The worry in her half-shadowed face, a worry that only retreated temporarily when he joked, became more definite.
“It—it was very queer,” she said. “I mean, he seemed even more startled than I was. He looked at it for a few moments without saying anything. I got a funny feeling—oh, well, that wasn’t anything—”
“Please tell me,” he interposed. “I believe in funny feelings!”
“Well—this is silly—I felt as if he was looking at a ghost!”
“The ghost of a cricket ball,” murmured Hazeldean. “Why not? That ball was dead enough to have one.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“Yes.” He responded quickly to a startled light in her eyes. “No, I didn’t throw it! At present I know as little about it as you do—almost. Yes? And then?”
“He ran to the window.”
“What room were you in then?”
“Oh, I see. I’m afraid I’m telling this very badly. We were in the drawing-room. That’s where I took the ball to him. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. The drawing-room. You were using the drawing-room, then?”
“Yes. Why not?”
“Only that when people manage without servants they sometimes close a room up. You know—fasten the shutters and lock the door, and have one less room to look after. But you didn’t do that.”
She gave him a swift, shrewd glance before replying, “No.”
“Well—Uncle John ran to the window. By the way, which one?”
“All these details are important, aren’t they?”
Seven Dead Page 6
