What they all saw was there to see for the briefest possible space. There was a fading out, a smoothing over, a swift assertion of control. It was in a bewildered voice that Masterson said,
“Mr. Bellingdon, I don’t know what all this is about. You were calling out—Moira said you were dreaming—she said she would get you another pillow—we came to help you—”
“With a mask over your face?”
There was no killer there now, only a young man with a deprecating smile.
“Well, sir, that was rather stupid, I know, but I’d come to see Moira, and if I ran into anyone I didn’t want to be recognized. You see, we weren’t quite ready to give out our marriage.”
Moira had let the pillow fall. When Lucius turned to her and said, “Have you married this man?” she said, “Yes.” There was a pause. Then he said,
“What am I going to do with you?”
She tilted her head and looked up at him.
“You won’t really like the headlines in the papers.”
Miss Silver said,
“Mr. Bellingdon, this has been an attempt upon your life. In view of the other deaths which have occurred it cannot be hushed up.”
Moira turned upon her.
“Hold your tongue, damn you! What’s it got to do with you?”
Lucius came in harshly.
“I am not concerned with anything in the past. I have to deal with what has happened tonight. In the morning I shall report to the police and everything will be in their hands. For now, you and your husband will leave this house. You can go to your room and bring away whatever you can carry. I presume he came in a car. You can go away in it. Masterson will remain here while you fetch what you want.”
She looked down at her green house-coat.
“I can’t go like this.”
“You have ten minutes. Make the most of them!”
Half way to the door she turned and came back.
“Look here,” she said in her old drawling voice, “we might as well do a deal. Let me have the necklace and I’ll clear off for keeps.”
The blood rushed to Lucius Bellingdon’s head. He swung round and picked up the hand-telephone from the table beside his bed.
“I give you ten minutes! If you’re not out of the house by then, I shall call the police!”
“Well, you needn’t be so cross about it,” she said and turned again towards the door. Clay Masterson’s voice followed her.
“Not very clever, my sweet. That damned necklace is about as safe as an atom bomb.”
She said contemptuously.
“You haven’t any guts. He won’t prosecute.” She went out of the room, and the door fell to behind her.
Lucius turned to Clay Masterson.
“There is no question of my prosecuting or not prosecuting, as you very well know. Murder isn’t a private matter, and you have both done murder and attempted it.”
“Prove it!”
It was the last thing any of them said before Moira came back. If the occasion had not been a tragic one somebody might have laughed. She had dressed, and she was wearing two fur coats and carrying a miscellaneous armful of suits and dresses. A crammed suit-case gaped in the doorway.
Lucius Bellingdon spoke to David, on guard over Clay Masterson.
“You can let him go.”
The cord of Miss Silver’s dressing-gown was unknotted, the crossed wrists were set free. Masterson stretched, went over to the door, and picked up the suit-case, forcing it to close. On the threshold he turned.
“Moira’s right, you know, about the headlines and the general stink. And you won’t be able to prove a thing. Better let dead men lie.”
They came down to the car which waited at the turn of the drive. It stood in deep shadow, and in this shadow someone moved. Masterson dropped the suit-case and reached for and found an arm. Even in the dark it was beyond cavil the limp and undermuscled arm of Arnold Bray. He quailed, cried out, and tried to twist away, but Masterson held him.
“What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see you. I knew you would come back to the car. I want my money.”
“And what are you supposed to have done for it?”
“I did what you told me—I loosened the nuts on his car.”
“And you will stand in the dock for it if you start blabbing!”
“I’ve got to have the money!”
“I haven’t got it to give you. You’ll have to wait for it.”
The grip that held him had loosened. Arnold stepped back.
“You’re clearing out—the two of you? I wish I had never had anything to do with you and your dirty work! For the last time—do I get what you promised me?”
Clay Masterson reached for him, swung him about, and knocked him sprawling amongst the bushes. Moira was already in the front seat, her armful of garments tossed in behind. He threw the suit-case in after them, slid into the seat beside her, and started the car.
As the sound of the engine died away, Arnold Bray got to his feet. He had a deep scratch on his cheek and quite a few bruises. His eyes were overflowing with weak vindictive tears. He shook his fist in the direction which the car had taken and cursed it. Presently he slipped a hand into his pocket and brought out three hexagonal objects. He could not see them, but it gave him great pleasure to feel them there. The fingers that ran over them came away greasy. He stooped down and wiped off the grease on the leaves and pine needles under the trees. He had taken off three of the nuts from Clay Masterson’s off front wheel and he had loosened the others. He had, in fact, repeated exactly what he had done under Masterson’s orders to Lucius Bellingdon’s car. He had a long score to settle with Masterson. He thought that he was in the way of settling it. What?—he was to be the dogsbody, to do what he was told, to take the most damnable risks, and to get nothing—nothing after all? When he thought of the risks he had run, a cold sweat came out on him and trickled down his back. He lifted the hand which held the nuts and flung them wide and far among the bushes which bordered the drive. He had been a fool and he was getting a fool’s payment, but he could do some paying too. Clay and Moira were gone and he could whistle for his money. But how far would they get before the wheel came off?
If they had had to come away in all that of a hurry they would be making for the coast and a quick get-away across the Channel. That meant the Emberley road. Let Clay Masterson find out what it felt like to plunge down Emberley Hill on three wheels. Let him find out!
THEY were perhaps a quarter of the way down the hill, when Masterson became aware that there was something odd about the steering. He might have noticed it sooner if he and Moira had not been engaged in so violent a quarrel. If she had not been such a fool as to drag in the necklace, if he had not been such a fool as to tie that wretched handkerchief over his face, if each of them had had the sense to steer clear of the other, if they had never met—on some such mud-slinging lines recriminations were being bandied, until in their sound and fury normal perception was blotted out. It was only when the car swerved dangerously and his automatic attempt to right it failed that Masterson came back with a shock to the fact they they were on the most dangerous hill in the county, and that the car was out of control. Moira came to it no more than a panic moment later. She screamed, he cursed her, and the car ducked and swerved to the right.
They had not Lucius Bellingdon’s luck. They were on the steepest part of the hill with a sheer drop into the old Pit quarry on the right. While the wheel which Arnold Bray had loosened went bounding on down the descending road the car lurched to the brink, hung there for a moment, and plunged to the rocks below.
The news came through in the early morning hours. Someone had seen the gap in the low bank and reported it. There was splintered glass on the edge, and a gold shoe which had belonged to Moira Herne. It must have been among the welter of things she had thrown in at the back of the car, but just how it had been flung clear when everything else went down was one of those happenings which no one can explain. The Emberley police certainly did not attempt to do so. They came out to investigate, and they found the off front wheel at the bottom of the hill, and Clay Masterson and Moira Herne at the bottom of the quarry, both of them dead and the car mere scrap. From the police station they rang up Lucius Bellingdon and told him what they had found. Moira Herne was well enough known in Emberley. She was a careless driver, and had been before the magistrates there on more than one occasion —parking on the wrong side of the road, crossing against the lights, driving without due care and attention. There would be plenty of gossip as to why the wheel of Mr. Masterson’s car should come off on Emberley Hill not much more than twenty-four hours after the same thing had happened to Mr. Bellingdon, and how it came about that Mrs. Herne was there with most of her clothes all thrown in loose as if she had left home in an almighty hurry.
Lucius Bellingdon took the news with a set face. He turned from the telephone and went to find Miss Maud Silver. She was in her room and she was packing. Their last interview had been strained in the extreme. He had set his mind upon an attempt at hushing up what had happened in the night, and she had told him that she could not be a party to it. If the attempt upon his life had stood alone it might have been possible, but so far from standing alone, this attempted crime was the fourth in a series which comprised the murders of Arthur Hughes and Paulina Paine and the previous attempt upon himself. Whether it was possible to bring these crimes, or any of them, home to Clay Masterson would be a problem for the police, but to withhold what information they possessed and thereby set so dangerous a criminal free to continue to prey upon society would not only be a moral offence, but would place each one of them in the position of being an accessory after the fact. Miss Silver’s unswerving rectitude of character forbade her to consider the possibility of such a course. The utmost concession to which she could force her conscience was to defer communicating with the police until she had left Merefields. Hence the packing interrupted by Lucius Bellingdon’s knock upon her door.
It came at the moment when she had folded her warm blue dressing-gown and was disposing it lightly but firmly at the top of her suitcase. She said, “Come in!” without turning her head, supposing that one of the daily maids had come up to do the room. Lucius came a step or two inside the door, closed it behind him, and spoke her name.
“Miss Silver—”
She had straightened the bed, her suit-case was packed, her coat and hat lay ready to put on. If he had come with the purpose of trying to induce her to change her decision, he would find her inflexible. He would have discerned as much from her composed and resolute manner if he had had any thought to spare from what was on his mind, but her own, always alert and receptive, informed her immediately that he had not come to argue or persuade.
“Mr. Bellingdon—something has happened?”
On the brink of telling her what it was he paused to say,
“Yes.”
She came towards him.
“What is it?”
His voice, his look, were stiff and steady as he said,
“They are dead—both of them—Clay and Moira. His car went over the edge on Emberley Hill.”
Miss Silver said, “How?”
“A wheel came off.”
“Mr. Bellingdon!”
He looked back at her with hard eyes.
“Someone had tampered with it. Someone had tampered with mine. I came to tell you that there is no need for you to go. You can ring Abbott up from here.”
He turned and went out of the room.
INSPECTOR ABBOTT was of the opinion that the elimination of Mr. Masterson and Mrs. Herne was, to use a favourite word of Miss Silver’s, providential. His present use of it, however, drew from her a look of reproof which stimulated him to defend himself.
“A particularly cool and dangerous murderer, and one of the most callous young women I have ever encountered as his accessory before, during and after two murders and two attempted murders—and I don’t suppose it would have been possible to get up a case against either of them! We might have nailed them on this last attempt, but you can’t even be sure about that. The girl was in her own home—she had married Masterson secretly, and he was visiting her. By the way, I’m sorry the evidence about the marriage didn’t come through yesterday—not that it would have made any particular difference if it had. But what put you on to the idea that there might have been a marriage?”
“The fact that whoever was acting with Mrs. Herne must be very sure of his hold over her. I felt convinced that there must be some legal tie. It might have been that Oliver Herne had survived the wreck of his car. Or Mrs. Herne might have made a second marriage. I asked you to ascertain if there was any record of such a marriage at Somerset House because I felt the urgent necessity of discovering the identity of Mrs. Herne’s male associate.”
“Yes, it would have been useful. But the fact that they were married could have been used to cover up this last attempt at any rate. Since they are both dead, it doesn’t matter, but if it had ever come to a trial he had his excuse ready. He was in her room, they heard Bellingdon cry out, and they ran in to see what was the matter. Counsel for the defence could have made a lot of play with that, and there is no proof—absolutely none—that he shot Arthur Hughes, or that anyone pushed Paulina Paine. Of course we might have dug something up, but then again we mightn’t. After that smash there’s not much chance of an identification by Pegler. Bray, of course, comes into it somewhere as jackal, toady, what-have-you. I’ve thought all along that he was the most likely person to have tampered with Bellingdon’s wheel. It’s the sort of sneaking trick he’d be good at. No risk, no responsibility, just a few turns with a wrench and some easy money. But if he played that trick once, then he certainly played it again, and on his associates this time. Masterson probably tried to bilk him, and he wasn’t standing for it. Of course there’s no evidence there either, and never will be. An immoral suggestion, but I should say it would pay Bellingdon to give him a small allowance which would cease at his death or if Arnold ever showed up again. He’s a slimy bit of work and best kept at a distance.”
Miss Silver looked at him gravely and steadily.
“Whose work?” she said.
“You mean, what made him like that?”
“Well, what has made any of them like that—Clay Masterson—Moira Herne—Arnold Bray? Any criminal, at any time and anywhere? Small causes a long way back—small faults that were never checked and have grown into great ones and crowded out justice, humanity. As Lord Tennyson so truly says:
‘Put down the passions that make earth Hell!
Down with ambition, avarice, pride,
Jealousy, down! Cut off from the mind
The bitter springs of anger and fear;
Down too, down at your own fireside,
With the evil tongue and the evil ear,
For both are at war with mankind!’ ”
Prone as he was to indulge his sense of humour in the matter of what he irreverently termed Maudie’s Moralities, Frank was bound to admit the aptness of the quotation. After a slight reverential silence he said,
“How right you are.” And then, “When are you leaving here?”
Miss Silver coughed gently.
“I am travelling up to town this afternoon. It will be very pleasant to be back at Montague Mansions. I can return for the inquest if my presence is considered desirable.”
They were in the schoolroom at Merefields. He leaned back in a comfortable shabby chair and said with some accentuation of his usual coolness of manner,
“Well, you never can tell. We can find you if we want you, but I have a faint prophetic feeling that we’re not really very likely to try. I may be wrong, or I may just conceivably be right, but when there is nothing to be gained by a public scandal about an Influential Person it is surprising what a lot can be kept out of the papers.” He sat up with a jerk. “That, my dear ma’am, was a scandalously heretical observation and one which should never have been permitted to pass my lips. In fact I expect you to bury it in oblivion.” There was a sardonic gleam in his eye as he added, “In point of fact I shouldn’t be surprised if the inquest didn’t result in a good many things being buried in oblivion.”
“My dear Frank!”
One of his fair eyebrows twitched.
“Well, why not? Two people have been murdered, and Lucius Bellingdon’s life has been attempted. The people who conspired in that business are both dead. What point would there be in involving the wretched Bellingdon in a public scandal? My guess is that there will be a verdict of accidental death, and that that will be that. You are no doubt about to say that someone must have loosened the nuts on the wheel and so brought about the accident, and there will certainly be talk about the coincidence that two cars from the same garage should each have lost a wheel on Emberley Hill, one on Sunday afternoon and the other during Monday night. It certainly suggests a nut-twiddling addict on the premises, and as I said, if I was asked to pick anyone for the job I should plump for Arnold Bray. It’s the sort of creeping, fiddling crime which would be right up his street. But how is anyone going to bring it home to him? I’m told there are no fingerprints in either case, so he either took care to wipe them off, or else he wore gloves for the job. So there’s no evidence against him, nor against anyone else.”
Miss Silver made a highly unprofessional remark. She said,
“Well, it would certainly save a great deal of trouble.”
Frank got to his feet.
“To Arnold,” he enquired—“or to the law?”
She smiled indulgently.
“Perhaps to both,” she said.