Flowers Stained With Moonlight Read online

  ‘Sylvia must have a lawyer,’ I said quickly. ‘You know that she has the right to one, and that the lawyer would necessarily be allowed to accompany her to all police interrogations.’

  ‘It is impossible – I have not the means to pay for a private lawyer, and the court will not appoint her one as long as she has not been formally accused. Furthermore, it seems to both Sylvia and me, and Camilla agrees, that it would appear to be a sign of guilt on her part to thus defend herself; we believe that she should behave exactly as though her innocence were perfectly clear – as indeed it should be – and she believed the police were questioning her merely in order to advance their researches. At least, that is the plan we put together at first, but I am not at all sure that Sylvia has the strength of character to keep up such an appearance, when in truth she is grievously distressed and frightened. Besides, the inspector is due to arrive very shortly, and we must act immediately. That is why I wish to propose something to you. It is rather daring, but not illegal, and I believe that you are a rather daring person. The police have already visited us and they know who is presently in the house, except for you; they have no idea of your visit, as you arrived only today. I want to ask you, when they ring, to slip into the library and conceal yourself in the gallery. If, as I fear, they refuse to question Sylvia in my presence, I will show them into the library for the interrogation, and if I cannot intervene to assist her, I can at least know the worst from an objective viewpoint, which Sylvia cannot have. Not to mention the fact that there are many things she would not tell me, out of natural reserve, allied with a mistaken but understandable desire to protect me. Now I ask you: can you, will you do this?’

  ‘Certainly,’ I replied unhesitatingly. Thus, before we entered the dining room, she quickly showed me into the library and indicated the twisted little carved wooden staircase leading up to the gallery above, which ran right round three sides of the large room, and was almost filled with bookshelves jutting out perpendicularly from the walls, leaving only the smallest passage for the prospective reader to squeeze past the railings.

  This explains why, the moment I heard the front door opening, I slipped into the dining room adjoining the parlour where we were taking our tea. As soon as I heard Mr Huxtable introducing the police officers (two of them, it seemed to me) into the parlour, I left my teacup on the sideboard – I had carried it off with me in order to prevent the police from detecting the presence of another person (as well as for the purpose of taking at least one or two comforting sips before starting off upon my adventure) – darted swiftly across the hall, slipped into the library whose door we had left ajar, scurried up the winding staircase and settled myself into a nook, well back between two of the jutting bookshelves. As quietly as I could, I pushed a heap of books in front of me, leaving only a cranny through which I could make out the group of burnished leather armchairs in the centre of the large room below.

  I waited for a few minutes, and from across the hall, I heard the tones of slightly raised voices. Then the parlour door opened sharply.

  ‘We’re very sorry, madam,’ said a stern masculine voice. ‘It is absolutely impossible. Mrs Granger appears to be in tolerable health, and we must speak with her alone.’

  I heard Mrs Bryce-Fortescue’s low tones without making out her words, and the unyielding response.

  ‘You are aware that Mrs Granger can refuse to answer any of our questions, if she wishes. This would naturally produce a very negative impression, but such is her right. It is up to her. Now, let us begin.’

  ‘Let me show you into the library, then,’ said Mrs Bryce-Fortescue with an audible sigh, and I knew by the approaching sound of her voice that she was already crossing the hall. The two men followed her, and ushered Sylvia into the room before entering it themselves and shutting the door firmly behind them.

  The inspector, the sergeant and Sylvia installed themselves in the armchairs in silence. From my hiding place, I could see Sylvia’s face directly; it wore a sulky, rather childish expression of stubbornness mingled with helplessness. The officers addressed her with a certain gentle respectfulness which made me think, at first, that they must, after all, believe her innocent. I realised later that their caressing tones were a mere technique to soothe her or lull her into revealing as much as possible, much as one coaxes an obstinate child, knowing that roughness will only increase its resistance.

  ‘Now, Mrs Granger,’ began the inspector, the more important of the two, ‘we would like to go over your statement once again.’ He shook out some papers and smoothed them rather ostentatiously over his knee.

  ‘I really don’t see why we need to, Inspector Gregory,’ said Sylvia in a small, childish voice. ‘It’s still quite the same as before. Nothing has changed in what I can tell you.’ I thought that her main strength must lie in a kind of quiet but efficacious obstructionism which can be extremely trying, and that knowing her well, her mother had probably coached her carefully.

  ‘We need to check with you, because certain new elements have come up – certain information which alters some of the factors corroborating your statement.’ He paused for effect, but as she remained perfectly dumb, he gave a little cough and took a breath. I thought he would proceed to tell her what had changed, but instead, he said silkily,

  ‘Mrs Granger, you know that the medical evidence places your husband’s death very close to one hour after his luncheon, which by the evidence of the cook means very close to two-thirty in the afternoon.’

  ‘Well, of course I know that, I’ve already been told it several times,’ said Sylvia, without raising her voice.

  ‘Yes, to be sure. Now, your statement claims that after luncheon, you retired to your room, and remained there until six o’clock.’

  ‘That is exactly what I did.’

  ‘Two days ago, we told you that your evidence as to your movements was corroborated by that of your housekeeper, who claims that you could not possibly have left the house without being seen, as the only exits are the main door leading to the entrance lobby, the marble floor of which was being washed by the housemaid for a good two hours starting directly after luncheon, or through the kitchen, which was occupied for the whole time by the cook and the kitchen maid doing the dishes.’

  He looked at Sylvia, but she did not feel the need to waste a single word, and sat waiting rather provokingly.

  ‘Sergeant Barker, read Mrs Granger the new pieces of evidence which have come to light since Thursday,’ said the inspector, looking rather disgruntled. The sergeant, a thickset, youngish man, took out a pad, licked his finger, and turned a few pages with care. He read slowly, and unlike the inspector, quite expressionlessly, staring all the while down at the page before him.

  ‘Evidence given on the 10th inst. by witnesses remaining anonymous,’ he enunciated dutifully. ‘Statement of Witness Number One: “It’s not difficult to climb down from the balcony that Miss Sylvia’s bedroom gives onto. I did it many a time myself as a lad, though it’s been a while. Yes, I’m sure I could still do it.” The witness then proceeded to give a demonstration, by climbing onto the roof of the veranda at the side of the house, and from there to the first-floor balcony, then down again. The veranda opens onto the side garden which is separated from the woods by a low fence.’

  Again Sylvia said nothing, but a faint, rather tense smile appeared on her face. I thought that decidedly, her mother must have given her strict injunctions not to speak unless she was asked specific questions – unless it was in her own nature to be so passive, for the desire to make some sharp response was certainly strong within my breast! The sergeant licked his forefinger again and turned another page.

  ‘Evidence of Witness Number Two,’ he read. ‘“I was walking along the high road which borders the part of the woods that lies on manor property. The time was about twenty or twenty-five minutes after two o’clock. I know because just about five minutes later I came over the top of the crest and saw the steeple, it comes into sight just at that point, and
then I heard the chimes. I saw a figure flitting among the trees, coming away from the direction of the house. I recognised the figure as that of Mrs Granger. I thought nothing of it at the time.”’

  This time Sylvia stirred, and flushed faintly.

  ‘It’s nonsense,’ she said, but without excitement. ‘Nobody can have seen me when I never left my room.’

  It seemed to me that the inspector became faintly annoyed at his failure to shake or frighten her. He began to speak, then stopped and motioned his colleague to continue.

  ‘The evidence from the ballistics experts has arrived,’ said Sergeant Barker stolidly. ‘The bullet is French-made and very probably French-bought. It was fired from a small French-made gun of a type intended for personal use and defence. Such guns can be bought quite easily in France, but also, although somewhat less easily, in London.’

  Now the inspector breathed deeply and beamed the full force of his personality onto Sylvia.

  ‘You spent a large part of last winter in Paris, did you not, Mrs Granger?’ he said in a tone of accusation.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ she replied calmly.

  ‘Indeed you did. Now, Mrs Granger, I would like you to understand the danger of your position. The police are precise workers. You understand that if you purchased that gun in Paris, the fact will be traced and confirmed – if you left your house by the balcony and the veranda, and went into the woods, that fact will be uncovered and sworn to by witnesses. None of your movements have any chance of remaining hidden, Mrs Granger. Therefore, I urge you to speak up now, and tell us before it is too late if you have anything to add to the statement you already made.’

  It is hard for me to express how much pressure and threat the inspector communicated through these words, by his deliberate and intense manner of speech, although taken literally, as I have written them down, they do not in themselves appear to be so dreadfully frightening.

  ‘No,’ Sylvia replied, but a strange look had come into her eyes; not fear, but something closer to anguish, as she felt her inclination to reserve being forcibly overcome. ‘I bought no gun in Paris, I have never had a gun, I do not know how to shoot a gun. If I had had a gun, I suppose the servants would have known it, so why don’t you ask them?’

  ‘If you had had a gun, it would be natural for you to keep it very carefully hidden, wouldn’t it?’ said the inspector. His tone was smoothly challenging, as though he were encouraging her to keep on speaking. Once again, to my dismay, she responded.

  ‘Nothing is ever hidden from servants,’ she answered, with a sudden bitter animation which boded ill for discretion, and therefore pleased the inspector highly. ‘Especially George’s. They were always spying on me.’

  ‘Spying on you?’ He pounced on her words. ‘Do you think your husband asked them to do that?’

  ‘I don’t know, perhaps,’ she said, growing wary, a little too late.

  ‘Now, why would he have done that? He suspected you of something, maybe? Could that be it?’

  ‘Oh – I don’t know! What should he suspect me of? I don’t know. He was jealous of my time, I think. He left me very little liberty, and it grew worse after I returned from France. He was greatly displeased when I telegraphed him to tell him that I was extending my stay, and came over without telling me, to fetch me back himself. He appeared at the door of my hotel room one morning, and seemed quite as angry as if … as if he had something to be angry about! But there was nothing. So he had to bluster around and insist I return with him, and so I went, so he had nothing to be angry about really, but he remained angry anyway. It annoyed me at first, but then I left off thinking about it.’

  There was something shocking in Sylvia’s words and attitude, although I would be hard put to explain exactly what – some indifference, some detachment that ill-suited her position as bereaved widow, allowing her to speak thus of the dead. The inspector looked more and more like a Cheshire cat who has had cream.

  ‘This is all most interesting, Mrs Granger,’ he said silkily. ‘Now, come – surely you must have some idea of what bothered Mr Granger so, and made him angry. Can you not think what it might be?’

  She hesitated, torn between the conflicting desires of obeying her mother’s injunctions, yielding to the inspector’s charismatic pressure, and surely influenced also by the idea that refusing to speak would tell against her, whereas speaking too much might lead to the same result …

  ‘I’ve really no idea,’ she said finally. ‘I never dreamt of asking him. I thought he was just a … a jealous husband, you know, as many men are. He was not young and perhaps he was worried … about me, worried that I should, oh, I don’t know. Fall in love, or something. Meet some young, dashing handsome man and run off with him, for instance. But that’s all such nonsense, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it? Did you never meet any nice, pleasing young men? Not even in Paris?’

  ‘Not in Paris or anywhere,’ she replied coldly. ‘“Nice, pleasing young men” do not interest me.’

  ‘Well, that’s very virtuous, to be sure. And surprising, too, for a lovely young woman like you. The contrary would be most natural and understandable, I assure you. Suppose you tell me more about this trip to Paris. You did not travel alone, I suppose?’

  ‘Of course not. I travelled with my friend Camilla Wright, who is here now. We meant to go for six weeks, but then we enjoyed ourselves so much that we wanted to stay on, but as I said, my husband came and fetched me back.’

  ‘Ah. And Miss Wright remained in Paris?’

  ‘No, she didn’t want to remain alone. She bought a ticket and returned to England just after.’

  ‘And what did you and Miss Wright do in Paris which was so very interesting and amusing that you didn’t want to return on the date you had planned?’

  ‘Oh, nothing! We were free, that’s all – free and far from everything! We went out, to theatres and restaurants and dances. We met interesting families and practised our French. We had café au lait and croissants for breakfast on the Rue de Rivoli. We had no household duties. We just enjoyed ourselves!’

  ‘You just enjoyed yourself – far from your elderly, severe and jealous husband.’

  The inspector’s remark cast a pall over Sylvia’s conversation, which had become cheerful, almost frivolous. After an uncomfortable silence, she spoke again, but now her tone was somewhat pinched.

  ‘If you are trying to dig up some secret enmity between my husband and myself, for which I wished to kill him, you are barking up the wrong tree,’ she said. I thought, and surely the inspector thought also, that Sylvia’s personality was more complex than the innocent, sulky child she so easily played at being. ‘There was no conflict between my husband and myself,’ she went on. ‘When he came over to Paris to fetch me, there was no quarrel, as I quite simply acceded to his request. If I sometimes felt that he and his servants seemed to be observing me, I believed that it was because he was worried, not because he suspected me, and I tried my best to reassure him.’

  ‘Quite so, quite so,’ said the inspector in a tone of irony, exchanging glances with the sergeant. ‘Well, Mrs Granger, we shall return to the subject when we have learnt more. For the moment, I will bid you good day.’ I believe that according to his lights, he had succeeded in what he had set out to do, namely to surprise Sylvia out of her initial pose and to jerk her into making some unplanned statements. Seeing his drift, she had now recovered control, and he no doubt thought that he had obtained as much as he needed for one day, and that continuation in the same direction would only encourage her to further harden her present mask. He must certainly have hoped that his threats would contribute to ripen the grain of fear he had sown within her. He arose, and opened the door for her courteously. They took leave of each other in low tones, wasting no words, and I found myself alone.

  After a few moments, I returned to the parlour, and found the three ladies together, talking about quite other things. Mrs Bryce-Fortescue asked no questions, of course. I gave her a complete acco
unt of all that had occurred later on in the evening, and she exclaimed with anger and annoyance when she heard all that Sylvia had said. ‘Drat the girl!’ she cried. ‘Could she not have the sense to hide George’s trip to Paris, or at the very least the fact that he was extremely angry at her not returning?’

  I wondered very much if Sylvia would mention the interview during the afternoon, but she volunteered nothing. I suppose that if she spoke about it at all, it would be to Camilla. I dearly wished to know if she would do so, and determined to keep my eye on her carefully for the rest of the day. But as it turned out, there was nothing to keep my eye on, for we remained sociably together, talking and working, until supper, and at supper Mrs Bryce-Fortescue persuaded Sylvia to take a sleeping draught, telling her that she looked quite worn out, as indeed she did. As a result, Sylvia retired before any of us, and I talked with Mrs Bryce-Fortescue as Camilla went out for a turn in the gloaming. I went to bed quite early, and heard Camilla come up into her room and go to bed. I admit that I opened my secret door and listened to hear if the two girls would join each other for a nocturnal talk, but they did not; Sylvia was no doubt deeply asleep. Perhaps they will talk when she awakens; they may not, as Sylvia seems a very introverted type of person, but if they do, I feel I simply must know about it! Which explains why I am up already, well before the arrival of my morning cup of tea (although not so early that the birds have not yet begun their day), sitting in my narrow bed with the cosy quilt drawn all around me, writing on my knees, with my ears pricked up like an eager hound’s for any sound from next door. How dreadful – I sound like some pointy-nosed old maid, desperately curious about her neighbours’ activities! Ah well, one cannot be a detective (and how much, how sincerely I hope that I am a detective, however amateur, and am not merely playing at being a detective) without a dose of natural curiosity. If you do not think me very bad, Dora dear, then it must be all right.