Nothing Like Blood (10 page)

“You stay where you are,” said his wife. “You've done quite enough. It isn't as though she could be alive after that, is it?”

I hacfa feeling that someone ought to go with Steve Lawson and was glad when Jerrison came in just then.

Christine was very calm. “There's been an accident,” she told Jerrison. “Sonia Reid has fallen from the balcony
of the tower room. Steve Lawson has gone down. Do you think you could? The police will be here in a few minutes.”

Jerrison nodded and left us.

“That path is dangerous at night,” said Mrs Derosse.

“They both know it. Jerrison will surely take a torch,” Christine told her.

“It's a nasty thing to run into on anyone's holiday,” said the man.

“And what'll happen to the boat I don't know,” said his wife.

“I just pulled it up on the sand as best I could, but if the tide comes up a bit it'll soon be carried away, I suppose.”

“Then you'll have to pay for it. It'll serve you right for not doing as I said and rowing straight back to the camp.”

“I couldn't do that. Not with someone
gone
like that. I had to come up and tell you what had happened. I was the only witness, remember.”

“You'll get witness when you have to spend the rest of your holidays giving evidence.”

“If you pulled the boat up,” said Christine, “I wonder you didn't walk along the beach to where she had fallen.”

“Couldn't,” said the man. “The water was up near the headland.”

Christine nodded. “It wasn't deep,” she said. “But you couldn't know that. It's just where the rocks jut out.”

“He did the best he could,” said the woman resentfully, “and very likely lost the boat for his trouble. I should have thought anyone would be satisfied. How we're to get home I don't know. The children will be out of their minds. Well, it's the last time I go moonlight boating, that's one thing.”

“Whatever made her do it?” asked the man of Mrs
Derosse. “She must have been out of her mind. Diving off like that.”

“There's one point,” I ventured to say, “which you all seem to be taking rather for granted. I suppose it
was
Sonia Reid?”

This made Mrs Derosse and Christine turn towards me.

“But it was from her room,” said Christine.

“I know. Still …”

At last the bishop appeared, opportunely I considered. Hasty explanations were made and he at once volunteered to make a round of the house and see who was missing. Christine rose to accompany him.

“The police are a long time,” reflected the man. “It's always the way when you want them.”

“They have to come from Belstock,” Mrs Derosse told them. I must say she seemed very cool for a woman who had just heard of-the violent death of one of her guests.

“To think we might have been back at the camp and asleep now,” said the woman. “What we shall tell Mr and Mrs Wickers I don't know—leaving them with the children till all hours.”

“Tell them the truth,” said the man. “They can't blame you when they hear what's happened, can they?”

Did I see a faint smile on the woman's sunburnt and peeling face? Perhaps the thought of the story she would have to tell tomorrow was some compensation to her.

The bishop and Christine came back.

“The door is locked,” said Christine. “Sonia's room, I mean. All the rest are in their rooms, except Steve Lawson and Jerrison, of course. I'm afraid most of them will come down now.”

“Locked? “repeated Mrs Derosse.

“Yes. I wanted to break it in but the bishop thinks we should wait for the police.”

“There!” said the woman. “That shows she meant to
do it, doesn't it? Locking herself in, like that. You'd think people would have more consideration.”

This brought no reply.

The rest of that night I shall describe briefly, though it seemed endless at the time and there was daylight before we eventually got to bed.

Two plain-clothes men arrived from Belstock and seemed reasonably efficient. They took statements from everyone, including the man and woman, who were afterwards taken back to their camp in a police-car, the police promising to see what could be done about their boat. It was recovered, I heard afterwards, and returned to its owner.

The door of Sonia's room was opened, but no one except the police was allowed to enter. They spent a considerable time there that night, and early on the following morning others were there for an hour or mpre, looking for fingerprints I presumed.

Lawson and Jerrison returned and, though Lawson was almost incoherent, Jerrison was able to give the police a description of what they had found. It was not, I was told, for me to hear, though Mrs Jerrison later gave me very horrid descriptions of it.

My informant was again Mrs Jerrison when I heard that, after considerable searching, the original key of Sonia's room was found on the rocks not far from the body, which meant, according to Mrs Jerrison, that it had been in her hand when she fell.

I did not see the couple again before the inquest, when I heard that their name was Grimburn—Lionel and Freda Grimburn, of Grays, Essex. But already on the night of the tragedy I gained a hint of how the story would develop with their growing narrative enthusiasm as time went on. As we heard it first it was fairly simply that of a girl sitting quietly on a balcony then diving—this word was never
omitted—into space. The police got a rather more vivid version. “There she was, framed in the lighted window like someone in a picture one minute and in the next she had gone crashing to her death on the rocks below.” “How do you know that?” asked one of the policemen, for this was before the return of Lawson and Jerrison. “Well, it stands to reason,” said Mr Grimburn. “From that height, I mean.”

By the time the coroner heard the story it had further embellishments. She had looked peaceful up there. The Grimburns couldn't help noticing how peaceful she looked. Then—ough, it was like a bird taking off. Only she wasn't a bird, poor thing. She went straight down. Like a stone. To be killed instantly on the rocks. It was horrible. The Grimburns would never get over it. Never. The most horrible thing they'd ever seen.

I wondered, in my no doubt heartless way, how many times they had already told the story in the Merrydown Holiday Camp, and how many more times they would tell it to reporters and to friends when they returned to Grays.

Meanwhile, I myself said nothing about Sonia's visit to me that evening and I was relieved to find that no one, so far as I could judge, had any inkling of it. I suppose it was my duty to give full details of it to the police, but I was able to answer their few questions without lying and salved my conscience that way. I did not want to become any further involved and if this had, as it seemed, been suicide, I did not see what purpose would be served by anyone knowing that she had tried to leave some document with me.

But I wondered what had become of it. Had she hidden it somewhere in the house or persuaded another guest or one of the Derosses to take charge of it?

I tried Mrs Jerrison. “I wonder what became of her
bag,” I said. “That would surely help to show whether it was suicide or not. A woman wouldn't jump to her death with her bag in her hand, would she?”

“She didn't,” said Mrs Jerrison positively. “I know that because I saw one of the policemen taking it out of the house with him. They must have found it in her room. Though what they found in it I can't say.”

Perhaps the strangest part of the whole thing was the silence in which it took place. The Grimburns heard no sound from Sonia and, if she had made any, surely Mrs Derosse in the room below, with an open window, would have heard it. But she says she heard nothing.

T
HESE
were the last words in Helena Gort's journal and Carolus put it down and looked at his watch. Twenty past three. He did not hesitate or ponder over what he had read but reached for the switch and, leaving himself in darkness, turned over to sleep.

Helena Gort came down to breakfast, moving as usual without hesitation.

“What do you think about it? “she asked at once.

“I'm going there,” said Carolus. “I'm distinctly interested. But I don't think you'd better come with me. Send for your things and go somewhere else.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“You know just what I mean. It's dangerous.”

Helena laughed. “Oh don't be absurd. What danger can there be for me?”

“My dear Helena, that is precisely what Sonia Reid
thought. You yourself describe her, on the very night of her death, as being apparently quite unafraid.”

“Then you think she was murdered?”

Carolus was silent a moment. “Unlike the coroner's,” he said at least, “mine would be an open verdict at this point.”

“If so, there was some
reason
in her case. What reason could there possibly be in mine?”

“You say ‘possibly'. I can tell you a possible reason straight away. I don't say probable, mind you. Suppose there is someone in that house to whom the document Sonia wanted you to take means life or death. Suppose that he or she—shall we say?—caused Sonia's death in order to obtain possession of it. Suppose in the meantime she had handed it to someone else or hidden it, so that the murderer failed to obtain it. Suppose the murderer knew she went to see you that evening. None of those suppositions are far-fetched and they do point inevitably to danger for you.”

“I'm certainly going back,” said Helena Gort. “For one thing, I doubt if you would get in without me. You're my nephew or my stepson or something. Mrs Derosse has her niece to ‘put things right', surely I can have a nephew to look after me?”

“I see your point. I still think you should move.”

“No one will know who you are,” went on Helena Gort as though she had not heard him. “It isn't as though you were one of these really famous investigators. You just come to stay and use your eyes and ears. I'm going back anyway, so if you really think there's danger in the place you ought to come.”

“I will.”

When Carolus told Mrs Stick that he would like her to have a good holiday and therefore intended to close the house, her feelings seemed to be mixed.

“I'mnot saying we shouldn't like a bit of a holiday,” she said. “Especially if we can get down to Clacton. Stick dearly loves a day's shrimping and there's nothing does his sciatica good like the salt water. Only how are we to enjoy ourselves when we daren't so much as pick the paper up in the morning for fear of seeing you mixed up in something? I was only saying to Stick, we shan't be able to see a paper next, not without not knowing whether you haven't got yourself into trouble. I did think this lady, a friend of your mother's and that, would know better than to lead you into anything, but no, there it was,' suspects'. I heard it as plain as could be. What
are
we to think?”

“You go and have your holiday,” said Carolus. “You won't see my name in any papers, I promise you.”

“I'm sure I hope not, sir.”

At eleven o'clock Carolus and Helena drove off in his Bentley Continental, the car which one of his colleagues on the school staff had called ‘a piece of sheer exhibitionism'.

“You know,” said Carolus, “I don't think your idea of my being your nephew is a very good one. I think I'd rather chance Mrs Derosse not admitting me, but say straight out that you have invited me because I've got a certain amount of experience of this sort of thing. After all, unless she has anything to conceal she ought to be glad rather than sorry.”

“And her guests?”

“It's not as though I am a policeman. They'll probably want to talk—most of them.”

“Just as you think, Carolus. I have a feeling that Christine won't be too pleased.”

“Oh. Why?”

“I don't know. She has a reputation for being able to handle things herself.”

“We can only try.”

They were successful but perhaps only because Christine was out when they reached Cat's Cradle and they interviewed Mrs Derosse alone.

“There
is
a room, isn't there?” said Helena at once. “The one Christine had before she moved into the room in the tower.”

“Yes, there is a room. I wasn't thinking of letting it while things are like this.”

Carolus longed to ask ‘like what?' but resisted it.

“Mr Deene is a very old friend of mine, Mrs Derosse. In fact I knew his mother. He has a flair for clearing up mysteries of this sort and I've no doubt would soon have your place back to its old self.”

“You mean, he's a detective?”

Carolus wished his least favourite pupil Rupert Priggley could hear this. It would make him wince.

“Nothing so old-fashioned,” said Helena. “He just seems to sense how these things happen.”

“I don't think Christine would be very pleased. She wants to clear this up herself.”

“Oh come now, Mrs Derosse. I'm simply asking you to let a room to my old friend Carolus Deene.”

“I don't see how I can refuse. But I do hope it's not going to cause more trouble.”

“You do want the whole thing dissipated, don't you?”

Mrs Derosse tried a feeble retort. “But it is. Sonia's death has been proved suicide and Lydia Mallister's we know was her heart.”

“Then why, if there is nothing strange about all this, are your guests in a state which I can only call one of terror? Why does everyone lock his door and watch every move of the others? Why have they all got the jitters?”

Mrs Derosse sat down rather heavily.

“I know,” she said.

Helena followed her advantage.

“Do you think Lydia Mallister died naturally? Do you believe Sonia committed suicide?”

“No,” admitted Mrs Derosse. “Yet I don't see how either of them could be murder.”