I stared at the words for a moment longer; then I folded the paper with care and slid it back under Norah Tattersall’s door. I stood up.
Someone else—the killer, perhaps?—had figured out that Norah might have seen something she shouldn’t have out on that terrace.
That was one possible scenario.
A second one came to mind. Perhaps one of my fellow authors, knowing that Norah was aware of his or her dirty little secret, was simply warning her not to talk about it.
Either way, Norah Tattersall probably knew something that might help get this mess resolved.
But where is Norah? I wondered as I walked back down the hall toward my own room.
As I closed the door of my room behind me, I dismissed the notion that I should have kept the note to show to Robin Chase. For one thing, I didn’t want to face a lecture on my interference with his investigation. Better to let Norah find it, I thought, then try to accost her shortly afterward and question her.
In order to make that ploy work, though, I had to find Norah. To that end, I picked up the telephone and punched in the number for the admirable Dingleby’s extension. It was not Dingleby who answered, however. Another servant, who failed to identify herself, took my request to locate Miss Tattersall and send her to my room.
While waiting for Norah Tattersall to appear at my door, I busied myself with finishing some of the notes I wanted to make on a couple of the more promising manuscripts I had read. About fifteen minutes after I had called downstairs, I heard a knock on my door.
“Enter,” I called.
The door opened, and Norah Tattersall stuck her head in. “You were looking for me?” She hesitated in the doorway.
“Yes, Miss Tattersall,” I said in my most charming tones. “I apologize for summoning you in this manner, but I had a request to make of you.”
She pushed the door farther open and took a step inside the room. She wouldn’t come all the way in, and she kept casting furtive glances over her shoulder, as if someone were at her back.
“What do you want?” Her tone was brusque to the point of rudeness. Given the scene earlier in the day with Giles, I couldn’t blame her attitude, though it wouldn’t be of much help in getting me what I wanted.
I had an idea, though, how to get her to lower her guard. “Miss Tattersall, I’ve read the portion of the manuscript you submitted, and I wondered whether you have a bit more of it with you that I could read.”
“You want to read more of it?” The sheer incredulity in her voice almost gave me pause at the thought that I was going to be raising her hopes falsely. No doubt I was the first person in quite some time who actually wanted to read more of her horrible work.
I made the not terribly difficult decision to quash my finer feelings as I nodded. “If that wouldn’t be too much trouble.”
“Certainly not,” she said, her face lighting up with pleasure. “I’ll be right back.”
“Shall I come with you? No need for you to have to traipse back here.”
She was too excited at the thought of my reading more of her work to think about the oddity of my going with her, since my room was nearer the stairs than hers. She practically ran out of the room, and I made haste to follow her.
I was right on her heels as she paused to open her door. She stepped inside, putting one foot square in the middle of the folded paper lying on the floor. In her excitement she didn’t seem to have noticed it. I coughed and drew her attention to it.
Norah stared blankly down at the paper. “What’s this, I wonder.”
She stooped over to retrieve it, unfolding it as she straightened up. Her lips moved as she read the words. The color drained from her face.
She crumpled the paper in her hands and moved jerkily away from the door, toward one of the chairs in the room.
“What’s the matter, Miss Tattersall? Is it bad news of some kind?” I came and squatted beside her chair. “Is there anything I can do?”
Mutely she shook her head. I held out a hand toward the paper balled up in her fist. Her fingers tightened around it as she realized what I was trying to do.
“Nothing you need concern yourself with, Dr. Kirby-Jones,” she said, attempting a firm tone and failing.
“You look like you’ve had a shock, Miss Tattersall. Are you certain there isn’t something I can do for you?” I stood up, gazing down at her with an earnest expression of helpfulness on my face. “Perhaps I should ring for some hot tea?”
“No, just someone’s attempt at a joke,” she responded, her voice less tremulous.
“It’s a trifle close in here, don’t you think?” I said, striding away from her, toward one of the windows overlooking the terrace.
“I beg your pardon?” she said.
“Perhaps if we could open one of these windows,” I said, bracingly cheerful. “The fresh air would perk you up.”
She said nothing more, just continued to look at me oddly. I made an effort at opening one of the windows but gave up quickly. Then I turned to her, as if struck by a new notion. “Your window overlooks the terrace.”
“Yes,” she said, puzzled.
“You must have been here, looking down on the terrace, when you saw my assistant arguing with Miss Harper.”
As she stared at me, the color once again drained from her face. Her mouth opened and closed several times, but no sound came out.
“Was it from here that you saw them talking?” I said, coming to crouch beside her chair again.
She gazed into my face, and I could feel the fear emanating from her. “Yes, I suppose I must have been,” she finally said, though she did it unwillingly.
“Then perhaps you saw someone else talking to Miss Harper,” I said. “After, of course, Giles had left her?”
I made it a question. She licked her lips with her tongue, and her breath was coming in short gasps. “Did you see someone else, Miss Tattersall?”
She nodded.
“When?”
“Before.” She stumbled over the word. “Not after.” I frowned. This wasn’t going to help much, but I also thought she might be lying to me about the “before.”
“Who was it?” I asked.
She swallowed. “I can’t say.”
“You didn’t recognize the person?” My tone scoffed at the idea.
She just sat there and stared at me. She knew perfectly well whom she had seen, but she wasn’t going to tell me. Her hand tightened convulsively around the threatening note.
“Very well, Miss Tattersall,” I said, standing up. “But if you won’t talk to me, then you’d better go downstairs right now and talk to Detective Inspector Chase. You could be shielding the murderer.”
She drew back at that, her eyes blinking rapidly. “Don’t be foolish,” I said as gently as I could. “Are you certain you don’t want to confide in me?”
“No! I mean, yes!”
“So be it,” I said. Foolish, stubborn woman! She was well on her way to becoming corpse number two. “Think about what I said, about talking to the police. For your own safety, if nothing else.”
I got no further response from her, and so I went out the door, shutting it none too gently behind me.
Of all the aggravating, impossible, stubborn women! I shook my head over Norah Tattersall’s intransigent stupidity as I strode down the hall toward my room. Unless she told Robin what—or more important, whom—she had seen, and right away, she could be putting herself in danger. I wondered whom she was protecting.
One possible answer occurred to me as I thought quickly back over some of the events of the past two days. Might as well kill two birds, and all that
I paused near the end of the hallway and looked at the doors across the passageway from my own door, keeping in mind what Dingleby had told me. Then I stepped up to the door that I thought belonged to George Austen-Hare and knocked briskly.
“Who is it?” I heard him call.
“Kirby-Jones,” I responded.
I heard some shuffling about inside, and moments later the door opened. George stared at me, his face blank of expression.
“Could I speak with you for a moment, George?” I smiled disarmingly.
He shrugged and stood aside. Taking that as an invitation, I walked past him into the room. A quick glance around assured me that this chamber was just as appallingly decorated as my own, with an abundance of maroon velvet and gold trimmings.
George motioned toward a chair, one of a pair near one of the windows. I sat down, and he seated himself opposite me.
He still hadn’t spoken, and I took a quick moment to examine him. He didn’t seem at all frightened. Wary, if anything. I doubted he suspected me of being a murderer, but he didn’t quite trust me.
“I need your advice, George,” I said, attempting to look as if I might be at my wits’ end. I twisted my hands in dramatic fashion. “What am I going to do about Norah Tattersall?”
His eyes widened. “What d’ye mean, Simon? What’s Norah done now?”
I glanced away, as if I were embarrassed to look him straight in the eye. “It’s not so much what she’s done, George.” I pretended to take a deep breath, and I could feel his apprehension coming to the fore.
“What has she said?” George’s hands tightened on the arms of his chair.
“I thought I had better consult you, George,” I said, still not looking at him, “because, well, because you seem to have known her for quite some time. And also because Norah seems to be rather fond of you.” I did my best to load that one word with as much suggestive significance as I could.
I risked glancing at George’s face, and it was slowly suffusing with red. I was on to something here, as I had suspected I might be.
“I rather got the idea,” I continued, “that you and she had, um, well, that you had had a relation-ship that was, shall we say, a bit warm?”
“Blast the woman!” George said gruffly. “Can’t ever keep her business to herself, nor mine either!” That’s what a little fishing will get you, I thought in satisfaction. “Not everyone can be discreet, George,” I said sadly. “But I can assure you that I will be.”
He harrumphed at that “A feller makes mistakes sometimes, Simon, and demmed if they don’t come back to haunt him.”
“Like Norah?” I said in a jocular, man-of-the-world tone.
George nodded emphatically. “Man in my position gets approached all the time. Because of my books, you see. Women get the idea that I’m like one of the heroes in my books. They just throw themselves at me sometimes.”
“And Norah did that, too?”
“Made no secret of it, first time I met her, a few years ago here at Kinsale House.” George snorted in derision. “Like a cat in season, she was. Took me a bit longer than it should have to see that she wanted me to help her with that blasted book of hers as much as anything.”
I shook my head in sympathy. “Amazing what some will try, just to get published, isn’t it?”
George shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Shouldn’t have gotten involved with her, no doubt about that. But she was so damned admiring, acted like I’d hung the moon and the stars, and all that rot!” The self-mockery in his voice was plain.
“It appears to me that she still has feelings for you, George.”
“She keeps pestering me,” George admitted, “even though I broke it off with her two years ago. And she keeps trotting out that manuscript, waving it at me.”
“I guess she hasn’t quite given up on you, George.” I winked at him, and he blushed. “Though I got the distinct impression you hadn’t let the grass grow under your feet, once she was out of the picture. If you know what I mean.” I grinned broadly.
The color drained from his face. “You shouldn’t listen to Norah, Simon. No telling what she’d say, if she’d a mind to.”
“Really, George?” I stared at him, my eyebrows quirked up. “Sounded rather plausible to me, I must say. Even though it might not look good for you.”
That was a stab in the dark, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.
George stood up, radiating anger. “I didn’t kill that silly woman, no matter what Norah may have told you about my relationship with her!”