In the morning paper Diana read the short paragraph dealing with the suicide of the young Indian, Abdulmajid Haji. Knowing nothing as yet of his connection with the Amsterdam pawnbroker, her first thought was that Bream would be badly hit by the news. For her part, she could not see in what way the dead man was important. Even his attempt to enter the house in Floyd’s Square need not, to her thinking, bear any relation to Elsie Dilworth, while his presence in the restaurant seemed only a rather surprising coincidence.
By the evening, the press had got hold of a plausible reason for the suicide. Some months ago a German girl, Frieda Klapp, had been taken ill in Haji’s rooms and had died, screaming out that Haji had poisoned her. Owing to tales spread by other occupants of the house, an inquest was ordered, and although natural death was the verdict, Abdulmajid was said to have brooded over the suspicion under which he had rested, chiefly because of the trouble is caused with his family in Bombay. After living as best he could on borrowed money, he had finally been ordered home. He had bought his ticket—it was found on him—but having deposited his luggage in his cabin had come ashore and failed to return. His landlady stated that on leaving he had seemed gravely upset, perhaps at the prospect of facing parental wrath.
For something to do, Diana visited The Times newspaper office, and in the back files looked up the inquest reports on Frieda Klapp. They told her little. The girl, then living with Haji, had fallen ill with what appeared to be ptomaine poisoning. Haji had administered mustard and water as an emetic, and a dose of castor oil, in spite of which remedies she had sunk rapidly into coma, dying just as the doctor reached her side. Only her drunken accusations had led to her body being examined, and nothing whatever was found to suggest foul play. Diana shook a despondent head, and unenlightened returned to Queen’s Close, to find Inspector Headcorn once more on her doorstep.
“You spoke the other day,” he began, “about Miss Dilworth’s looking for something in this flat. You’ve looked too, I take it?”
“Of course. What else have I to occupy me?” She spread her hands apart with a gesture of despair. “I don’t suppose there’s a corner of this place I haven’t explored. I imagined it would be some kind of paper, just because I saw her going through Mr. Blundell’s files. I’ve even thought it might be a written confession she wanted to get back, though that’s ridiculous, isn’t it?”
He did not answer. Slowly glancing about, he asked if she minded his making a search, and, scarcely waiting for her eager consent, began prowling round, pulling out drawers, tapping walls, measuring spaces with a pocket foot-rule. She watched him, at one moment thinking he had some definite idea in mind, at the next convinced he was as hopelessly at sea as herself. His painstaking search took over an hour, and at the end when he picked up his hat and stood looking at her, what she saw in his plodding face bewildered her, then threw her into panic.
It was pity.
All at once she understood. The Inspector did believe Elsie Dilworth implicated in both murders, but only as an accessory, a spy who, having played her part, had suffered an emotional revulsion, turned informant, and then, terrified lest something damaging to her had been left behind, had completely lost her nerve and made off. In his view Adrian was the principal, not only in Rose’s death but in her mother’s as well. Her mother’s! No wonder he was sorry for her. Even Scotland Yard inspectors have hearts.
After all, to expect a different opinion had been imbecile folly. Every one but herself had seen clearly the crushing weight of evidence arraigned against Adrian, and believing him guilty of one crime led by logical steps to this second, monstrous belief, for which she alone was responsible. In giving Headcorn all that gratuitous information about Elsie she had started him off on a new and unforeseen track. He might quickly see his mistake; but would he? Not if any uncertainty was found in Adrian’s movements after she left him that Tuesday night in the Strand. A taxi would have taken him to Seymour Square well in advance of her slow-moving bus. He, no less than Elsie, knew about the automatic buttons, the time her mother was due back from the theatre. Elsie could have told him the fact of the jewels having been presented to Margaret, though that was unimportant. Any murderer, on the chance, would have taken the handbag, regardless of what it might or might not contain.
The thought of her almost complete isolation suddenly struck her. This luxurious flat might as well have been an island remote in the South Seas. Although daily she was receiving kind notes and offers of hospitality from friends, to all these her answer had been the same—that she was going away for a few months to recover from the shock of her mother’s death. Thus quite deliberately had she cut herself off from every former tie; and now she realised the reason. It was because if any one guessed her connection with Adrian she would have to face what she had just seen in Inspector Headcorn’s eyes. Not even to her father could she write with any freedom, so that Herbert Lake remained ignorant of how a certain matter touched herself. Apart from Michael Hull, the two detectives, and Colin Ladbroke, she had contact with no person save the man whose generosity surrounded her like a smothering cloak. With him increasingly she suffered from constraint.
All these crimson and mauve tulips, expensive, out of season! The bottle of port, sent up to-day because she was growing so pale. . . . Why must he? And last night, when against her will she had dined with him, why had he thought it necessary to try to divert her, showing off his pet staircase, as though she were an ailing child? It occurred to her she might have taken some interest in that exhibit if Aunt Rose’s death had been more mysterious. As it was, having to exclaim over it only irritated her. Uncle Nick’s watchful eyes had held pity—the pity of superior knowledge, like the Inspector’s. . . .
As generally happened now when mental anguish became unbearable she reached mechanically for a cigarette. She had never smoked much before, but here she was at it most of the time, simply because after a few cigarettes she managed to attain a species of numbed and deadened calm. This enforced idleness—the trial creeping on her by inches and nothing being accomplished was driving her mad. She understood for the first time why people smoked opium. . . .
Colin Ladbroke peered into a darkened hall. In the doorway Diana blinked at him hazily.
“Did I wake you? I was about to go away, but I thought I’d just ring once more.”
“Was I asleep? I didn’t realise it. Do come in. I’ll make some tea.”
“Not for me, thanks. It’s six o’clock. You’ll have had yours long ago. Oh, well, if you insist.”
She seemed not to take in what he was saying. He followed her into the kitchen, and noticed that used tea-things stood on the table. She was filling the kettle, taking rather a long time over it.
“Look out! You’re getting splashed.”
He took the kettle from her hand. It was brimming over. She laughed deprecatingly when he emptied the silver teapot of its cold leaves, but made only vague efforts to help.
“Go and sit down,” he bade her. “I’ll see to this. You’re still half asleep, aren’t you?”
She wandered out obediently but with so dazed an air that he frowned after her, puzzled. When he carried the fresh tea into the smoky drawing-room he saw she had tidied her rumpled hair and powdered her nose. Women did these things automatically, he reflected, and recalled a young girl brought into the casualty ward of whom it was said that her first action, on being drawn from under a bus, was to reach for her vanity-case.
“How stupid of me! Did I really let you make tea? No, I’ll mend the fire. Have you any news about—him?”
Even as she asked the question she yawned heavily.
“A little, through Hull, of course. Nothing much, I’m afraid. He’s putting in his time assembling his material for the monograph he’s been preparing. That’s like him, isn’t it? You know he was much annoyed over not dissecting the pituitary tumour that came in just before his arrest. He hated like hell to miss it.”
“Oh, Colin! At a time like this?”
“Hull says he has practically nothing to say on the subject of the evidence. No doubt of it, he’s argued in circles till he’s all tied up. He sees how futile it is to prove his story, so he’s saving his breath.”
Diana sat on the low stool before the fire, for long moments not speaking. At last she drank the tea Ladbroke had poured out and winced as at some delayed pain.
“He must hold some opinion,” she said. “About who did this, I mean. It’s inhuman not to. Isn’t it?”
The doctor hesitated. “I’m sure he does hold an opinion which he feels it’s useless to mention. It’s what he meant when he said that the harder he reasoned the less sense it made.”
“Does he suspect Elsie, and thinks his suspicion can never be proved?”
“He’s never said so. I tell you, from the first he’s refused to commit himself.” Colin stared down at the rug. “He keeps repeating he’s sewn up in a bag, and that soon we’ll all know it.”
“I suppose he would think that, seeing it was Elsie who got him arrested. Or does he mean something different?”
Ladbroke shrugged, but did not reply. His blue eyes were now fixed on the display of tulips. Diana watched him, and all at once leant forward.
“Colin!” she whispered. “I think I understand. I’ve had that feeling too, and somehow it’s mixed up with Adrian’s not being frank with me. Now I want the truth. Is it connected with my being, in a way, under Uncle Nick’s protection? Is it? Is it?”
“He’s never said so.”
She sprang to her feet.
“Oh, why didn’t I guess? It is that! Here, I’ll leave this flat, take a room on my own. I came here only to save money, thinking I could at least help pay for the private detective. He doesn’t know that, I hope? Hull hasn’t let him guess?”
“Naturally not.” Ladbroke looked troubled. “See here, Diana, don’t do anything stupid, will you? Take every scrap of help you can get, no matter who offers it. Besides, if you cleared out now, mightn’t it be a tactical error?”
A wordless message passed between them. Diana caught her lower lip between her teeth and choked down an hysterical laugh.
“It can’t be!” she argued, as though to some spoken statement. “Why should Uncle Nick—? Oh, don’t think I haven’t thought of all this! I can’t find one ghost of a reason, not one. It just doesn’t make sense.” She gasped slightly, finding she had repeated Adrian’s own words. Defiantly she continued: “It doesn’t—does it? What would have been the object?”
“If you don’t know of any, I’m certain I don’t either.”
“There can’t have been an object. She couldn’t have wanted to use a hold over him, even supposing she had one—which I’m positive she hadn’t. Almost her dying words, to my mother, were full of admiration and affection for him. You see?”
“Adrian sees. That’s why he holds his tongue. No, it’s no good, unless we can show a strong, convincing motive—and even that of itself won’t release Adrian. Not while we’ve that will staring us in the face.”
“You’re right, it wouldn’t. Colin, we must think! Harder than ever. About Elsie. About Felix Arenson. About that Indian who’s shot himself. You know about that, I suppose? Oh, yes, I wrote you! That’s why you’ve come. I suppose little Mr. Bream considers that the Indian’s being dead dishes that line of inquiry. Why are you staring at me?”
“Nothing.” He laid a firm hand on her arm. “Diana,” he said quietly, “if you’re not sleeping or anything, promise me not to take any sort of sedative without consulting me first. Understand?”
“Sedative? I’ve never taken one in my life. What a dear you are, worrying about me like this! You mustn’t.”
“How are you sleeping, then?”
“Oddly enough, quite well. I’m astonished, but I can’t quarrel with it.”
“That’s the stuff. I’m glad.”
When he had left her, she wondered a little at his solicitude and his relief over her answer. She must have been behaving rather strangely a moment ago. It was the helpless irony of Adrian’s suspecting not Elsie but Uncle Nick. Uncle Nick, who was the means of obtaining Sir Kingsley Baxter for Adrian’s defence. Why, if any power could save the situation, it was—
Who now? A sharp, stabbing ring at the bell—an imperious ring it sounded—sent her nerves quivering afresh. She went to the door, opened it, and stared dumbfounded at the slim, fur-clad figure whose immense black eyes, rayed round with spiky lashes, stared back at her. The visitor wasted not an instant.
“Are you Diana Lake?” she demanded, hard, swift, and with an American accent. “I guess there’s been some mistake. I’ve got a letter evidently intended for you. I found out where you were from a lawyer called Hull. Here, take it. Blanche Ackland’s my name—not that it matters. Good-bye.”
She turned, ran quickly down the stairs. Diana was left with a whiff of Chanel scent in her nostrils and in her hand a plain white envelope bearing the typed inscription: Miss Ackland, Ritz Hotel, London, W.1. At the lower corner was the word Private.
Mistake? Too late to ask an explanation. The lower street doors had slammed, a car outside was whirring. Diana drew forth from the envelope already slit across the top a typed enclosure, saw the signature below, and stared again.
Elsie Dilworth! Writing to her? No, to Blanche Ackland. Or was this some stupid hoax?