Curtain Read online

  I considered Allerton next. Could there be any reason for doing away with Allerton? If we had to have a murder I would prefer to see Allerton the victim! One ought to be able to find motives easily for doing away with him. Miss Cole, though not young, was still a good-looking woman. She might, conceivably, be actuated by jealousy if she and Allerton had ever been on intimate terms, though I had no reason to believe that that was the case. Besides, if Allerton was X –

  I shook my head impatiently. All this was getting me nowhere. A footstep on the gravel below attracted my attention. It was Franklin walking rapidly towards the house, his hands in his pockets, his head thrust forward. His whole attitude was one of dejection. Seeing him thus, off guard, I was struck by the fact that he looked a thoroughly unhappy man.

  I was so busy staring at him that I did not hear a footfall nearer at hand, and turned with a start when Miss Cole spoke to me.

  ‘I didn’t hear you coming,’ I explained apologetically as I sprang up.

  She was examining the summer-house.

  ‘What a Victorian relic!’

  ‘Isn’t it? It’s rather spidery, I’m afraid. Do sit down. I’ll dust the seat for you.’

  For it occurred to me that here was a chance to get to know one of my fellow guests a little better. I studied Miss Cole covertly as I brushed away cobwebs.

  She was a woman of between thirty and forty, slightly haggard, with a clear-cut profile and really very beautiful eyes. There was about her an air of reserve, more – of suspicion. It came to me suddenly that this was a woman who had suffered and who was, in consequence, deeply distrustful of life. I felt that I would like to know more about Elizabeth Cole.

  ‘There,’ I said with a final flick of the handkerchief, ‘that’s the best I can do.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She smiled and sat down. I sat down beside her. The seat creaked ominously but no catastrophe occurred.

  Miss Cole said: ‘Do tell me, what were you thinking about when I came up to you? You seemed quite sunk in thought.’

  I said slowly: ‘I was watching Dr Franklin.’

  ‘Yes?’

  I saw no reason for not repeating what had been in my mind.

  ‘It struck me that he looked a very unhappy man.’ The woman beside me said quietly: ‘But of course he is. You must have realized that.’

  I think I showed my surprise. I said, stammering slightly: ‘No – no – I haven’t. I’ve always thought of him as absolutely wrapped up in his work.’

  ‘So he is.’

  ‘Do you call that unhappiness? I should have said it was the happiest state imaginable.’

  ‘Oh yes, I’m not disputing it – but not if you’re hampered from doing what you feel it’s in you to do. If you can’t, that is to say, produce your best.’

  I looked at her, feeling rather puzzled. She went on to explain: ‘Last autumn Dr Franklin was offered the chance of going out to Africa and continuing his research work there. He’s tremendously keen, as you know, and has really done first-class work already in the realm of tropical medicine.’

  ‘And he didn’t go?’

  ‘No. His wife protested. She herself wasn’t well enough to stand the climate and she kicked against the idea of being left behind, especially as it would have meant very economical living for her. The pay offered was not high.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. I went on slowly: ‘I suppose he felt that in her state of health he couldn’t leave her.’

  ‘Do you know much about her state of health, Captain Hastings?’

  ‘Well, I – no – But she is an invalid, isn’t she?’

  ‘She certainly enjoys bad health,’ said Miss Cole drily. I looked at her doubtfully. It was easy to see that her sympathies were entirely with the husband.

  ‘I suppose,’ I said slowly, ‘that women who are – delicate are apt to be selfish?’

  ‘Yes, I think invalids – chronic invalids – usually are very selfish. One can’t blame them perhaps. It’s so easy.’

  ‘You don’t think that there’s really very much the matter with Mrs Franklin?’

  ‘Oh, I shouldn’t like to say that. It’s just a suspicion. She always seems able to do anything she wants to do.’

  I reflected in silence for a minute or two. It struck me that Miss Cole seemed very well acquainted with the ramifications of the Franklin ménage. I asked with some curiosity: ‘You know Dr Franklin well, I suppose?’

  She shook her head. ‘Oh, no. I had only met them once or twice before we met here.’

  ‘But he has talked to you about himself, I suppose?’ Again she shook her head. ‘No, what I have just told you I learnt from your daughter Judith.’

  Judith, I reflected, with a moment’s bitterness, talked to everyone except me.

  Miss Cole went on: ‘Judith is terrifically loyal to her employer and very much up in arms on his behalf. Her condemnation of Mrs Franklin’s selfishness is sweeping.’

  ‘You, too, think she is selfish?’

  ‘Yes, but I can see her point of view. I – I understand invalids. I can understand, too, Dr Franklin’s giving way to her. Judith, of course, thinks he should park his wife anywhere and get on with the job. Your daughter’s a very enthusiastic scientific worker.’

  ‘I know,’ I said rather disconsolately. ‘It worries me sometimes. It doesn’t seem natural, if you know what I mean. I feel she ought to be – more human – more keen on having a good time. Amuse herself – fall in love with a nice boy or two. After all, youth is the time to have one’s fling – not to sit poring over test tubes. It isn’t natural. In our young days we were having fun – flirting – enjoying ourselves – you know.’

  There was a moment’s silence. Then Miss Cole said in a queer cold voice: ‘I don’t know.’

  I was instantly horrified. Unconsciously I had spoken as though she and I were contemporaries – but I realized suddenly that she was well over ten years my junior and that I had been unwittingly extremely tactless.

  I apologized as best I could. She cut into my stammering phrases.

  ‘No, no, I didn’t mean that. Please don’t apologize. I meant just simply what I said. I don’t know. I was never what you meant by “young”. I never had what is called “a good time”.’

  Something in her voice, a bitterness, a deep resentment, left me at a loss. I said, rather lamely, but with sincerity: ‘I’m sorry.’

  She smiled. ‘Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. Don’t look so upset. Let’s talk about something else.’

  I obeyed. ‘Tell me something about the other people here,’ I said. ‘Unless they’re all strangers to you.’

  ‘I’ve known the Luttrells all my life. It’s rather sad that they should have to do this – especially for him. He’s rather a dear. And she’s nicer than you’d think. It’s having had to pinch and scrape all her life that has made her rather – well – predatory. If you’re always on the make, it does tell in the end. The only thing I do rather dislike about her is that gushing manner.’

  ‘Tell me something about Mr Norton.’

  ‘There isn’t really much to tell. He’s very nice – rather shy – just a little stupid, perhaps. He’s always been rather delicate. He’s lived with his mother – rather a peevish, stupid woman. She bossed him a good deal, I think. She died a few years ago. He’s keen on birds and flowers and things like that. He’s a very kind person – and he’s the sort of person who sees a lot.’

  ‘Through his glasses, you mean?’

  Miss Cole smiled. ‘Well, I wasn’t meaning it quite so literally as that. I meant more that he notices a good deal. Those quiet people often do. He’s unselfish – and very considerate for a man, but he’s rather – ineffectual, if you know what I mean.’

  I nodded. ‘Oh, yes, I know.’

  Elizabeth Cole said suddenly, and once more the deep bitter note was in her voice: ‘That’s the depressing part of places like this. Guest houses run by broken-down gentlepeople. They’re full of failures – of people who have never got anywh
ere and never will get anywhere, of people who – who have been defeated and broken by life, of people who are old and tired and finished.’

  Her voice died away. A deep and spreading sadness permeated me. How true it was! Here we were, a collection of twilit people. Grey heads, grey hearts, grey dreams. Myself, sad and lonely, the woman beside me also a bitter and disillusioned creature. Dr Franklin, eager, ambitious, curbed and thwarted, his wife a prey to ill health. Quiet little Norton limping about looking at birds. Even Poirot, the once brilliant Poirot, now a broken, crippled old man.

  How different it had been in the old days – the days when I had first come to Styles. The thought was too much for me – a stifled exclamation of pain and regret came to my lips.

  My companion said quickly: ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing. I was just struck by the contrast – I was here, you know, many years ago, as a young man. I was thinking of the difference between then and now.’

  ‘I see. It was a happy house then? Everyone was happy here?’

  Curious, sometimes, how one’s thoughts seemed to swing in a kaleidoscope. It happened to me now. A bewildering shuffling and reshuffling of memories, of events. Then the mosaic settled into its true pattern.

  My regret had been for the past as the past, not for the reality. For even then, in that far-off time, there had been no happiness at Styles. I remembered dispassionately the real facts. My friend John and his wife, both unhappy and chafing at the life they were forced to lead. Laurence Cavendish, sunk in melancholy. Cynthia, her girlish brightness damped by her dependent position. Inglethorp married to a rich woman for her money. No, none of them had been happy. And now, again, no one here was happy. Styles was not a lucky house.

  I said to Miss Cole: ‘I’ve been indulging in false sentiment. This was never a happy house. It isn’t now. Everyone here is unhappy.’

  ‘No, no. Your daughter –’

  ‘Judith’s not happy.’

  I said it with the certainty of sudden knowledge. No, Judith wasn’t happy.

  ‘Boyd Carrington,’ I said doubtfully. ‘He was saying the other day that he was lonely – but for all that I think he’s enjoying himself quite a good deal – what with his house and one thing and another.’

  Miss Cole said sharply: ‘Oh yes, but then Sir William is different. He doesn’t belong here like the rest of us do. He’s from the outside world – the world of success and independence. He’s made a success of his life and he knows it. He’s not one of – of the maimed.’

  It was a curious word to choose. I turned and stared at her.

  ‘Will you tell me,’ I asked, ‘why you used that particular expression?’

  ‘Because,’ she said with a sudden fierce energy, ‘it’s the truth. The truth about me, at any rate. I am maimed.’

  ‘I can see,’ I said gently, ‘that you have been very unhappy.’

  She said quietly: ‘You don’t know who I am, do you?’

  ‘Er – I know your name –’

  ‘Cole isn’t my name – that is to say, it was my mother’s name. I took it – afterwards.’

  ‘After?’

  ‘My real name is Litchfield.’

  For a minute or two it didn’t sink in – it was just a name vaguely familiar. Then I remembered.

  ‘Matthew Litchfield.’

  She nodded. ‘I see you know about it. That was what I meant just now. My father was an invalid and a tyrant. He forbade us any kind of normal life. We couldn’t ask friends to the house. He kept us short of money. We were – in prison.’

  She paused, her eyes, those beautiful eyes, wide and dark.

  ‘And then my sister – my sister –’

  She stopped.

  ‘Please don’t – don’t go on. It is too painful for you. I know about it. There is no need to tell me.’

  ‘But you don’t know. You can’t. Maggie. It’s inconceivable – unbelievable. I know that she went to the police, that she gave herself up, that she confessed. But I still sometimes can’t believe it! I feel somehow that it wasn’t true – that it didn’t – that it couldn’t have happened like she said it did.’

  ‘You mean –’ I hesitated – ‘that the facts were at – at variance –’

  She cut me short. ‘No, no. Not that. No, it’s Maggie herself. It wasn’t like her. It wasn’t – it wasn’t Maggie!’

  Words trembled on my lips, but I did not say them. The time had not yet come when I could say to her: ‘You are right. It wasn’t Maggie . . .’

  Chapter 9

  It must have been about six o’clock when Colonel Luttrell came along the path. He had a rook rifle with him and was carrying a couple of dead wood-pigeons.

  He started when I hailed him and seemed surprised to see us.

  ‘Hullo, what are you two doing here? That tumble-down old place isn’t very safe, you know. It’s falling to pieces. Probably break up about your ears. Afraid you’ll get dirty there, Elizabeth.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right. Captain Hastings has sacrificed a pocket handkerchief in the good cause of keeping my dress clean.’

  The Colonel murmured vaguely: ‘Oh really? Oh well, that’s all right.’

  He stood there pulling at his lip and we got up and joined him.

  His mind seemed far away this evening. He roused himself to say: ‘Been trying to get some of these cursed wood-pigeons. Do a lot of damage, you know.’

  ‘You’re a very fine shot, I hear,’ I told him. ‘Eh? Who told you that? Oh, Boyd Carrington. Used to be – used to be. Bit rusty nowadays. Age will tell.’

  ‘Eyesight,’ I suggested.

  He negatived the suggestion immediately. ‘Non-sense. Eyesight’s as good as ever it was. That is – have to wear glasses for reading, of course. But far sight’s all right.’

  He repeated a minute or two later: ‘Yes – all right. Not that it matters . . .’ His voice trailed off into an absent-minded mutter.

  Miss Cole said, looking round: ‘What a beautiful evening it is.’

  She was quite right. The sun was drawing to the west and the light was a rich golden, bringing out the deeper shades of green in the trees in a deep glowing effect. It was an evening, still and calm, and very English, such as one remembers when in far-off tropical countries. I said as much.

  Colonel Luttrell agreed eagerly. ‘Yes, yes, often used to think of evenings like this – out in India, you know. Makes you look forward to retiring and settling down, what?’

  I nodded. He went on, his voice changing: ‘Yes, settling down, coming home – nothing’s ever quite what you picture it – no – no.’

  I thought that that was probably particularly true in his case. He had not pictured himself running a guest house, trying to make it pay, with a nagging wife forever snapping at him and complaining.

  We walked slowly towards the house. Norton and Boyd Carrington were sitting on the veranda and the Colonel and I joined them whilst Miss Cole went on into the house.

  We chatted for a few minutes. Colonel Luttrell seemed to have brightened up. He made a joke or two and seemed far more cheerful and wide awake than usual.

  ‘Been a hot day,’ said Norton. ‘I’m thirsty.’

  ‘Have a drink, you fellows. On the house, what?’ The Colonel sounded eager and happy.

  We thanked him and accepted. He got up and went in.

  The part of the terrace where we were sitting was just outside the dining-room window, and that window was open.

  We heard the Colonel inside opening a cupboard, then heard the squeak of a corkscrew and the subdued pop as the cork of the bottle came out.

  And then, sharp and high, came the unofficial voice of Mrs Colonel Luttrell!

  ‘What are you doing, George?’

  The Colonel’s voice was subdued to a mutter. We only heard a mumbled word here and there – ‘fellows outside’ – ‘drink’ –

  The sharp, irritating voice burst out indignantly: ‘You’ll do no such thing, George. The idea now. How do you think we’ll eve
r make this place pay if you go round standing everybody drinks? Drinks here will be paid for. I’ve got a business-head if you haven’t. Why, you’d be bankrupt tomorrow if it wasn’t for me! I’ve got to look after you like a child. Yes, just like a child. You’ve got no sense at all. Give me that bottle. Give it to me, I say.’

  Again there was an agonized low protesting mumble. Mrs Luttrell answered snappishly: ‘I don’t care whether they do or they don’t. The bottle’s going back in the cupboard, and I’m going to lock the cupboard too.’

  There was the sound of a key being turned in the lock.

  ‘There now. That’s the way of it.’

  This time the Colonel’s voice came more clearly: ‘You’re going too far, Daisy. I won’t have it.’

  ‘You won’t haveit? And who areyou

  I’d liketoknow? Who runs this house? I do. And don’t you forget it.’

  There was a faint swish of draperies and Mrs Luttrell evidently flounced out of the room.

  It was some few moments before the Colonel reappeared. He looked in those few moments to have grown much older and feebler.

  There was not one of us who did not feel deeply sorry for him and who would not willingly have murdered Mrs Luttrell.

  ‘Awfully sorry, you chaps,’ he said, his voice sounding stiff and unnatural. ‘Seem to have run out of whisky.’

  He must have realized that we could not have helped overhearing what had passed. If he had not realized it, our manner would soon have told him. We were all miserably uncomfortable, and Norton quite lost his head, hurriedly saying first that he didn’t really want a drink – too near dinner, wasn’t it – and then elaborately changing the subject and making a series of the most unconnected remarks. It was indeed a bad moment. I myself felt paralysed and Boyd Carrington, who was the only one of us who might conceivably have managed to pass it off, got no opportunity with Norton’s babble.