They Found Him Dead Read online

  ‘You may see for yourself, miss,’ replied Pritchard, leading the way to Silas Kane’s room.

  The sight of the bedclothes turned neatly back, the un-crushed pillow, the pyjamas laid out, was oddly frightening. There could be no doubt that Silas had not slept in his bed. Miss Allison pulled herself together, and said briskly: ‘Have you sent out to search the grounds? Mr Kane went for his usual walk last night, I know. He may have had a heart attack.’

  ‘Yes, miss, I thought of that at once. There’s no sign of him been seen yet, but I’ve sent Edwards and Pullman along the cliff walk. I believe the master generally went that way. I thought it best to tell you at once, on account of the mistress.’

  ‘Quite right. There’s no need to say anything to alarm Mrs Kane until we know more. Did you see Mr Kane go out last night?’

  ‘Not precisely, miss. I saw him when Mr James left, and I understood from him that he meant to take his usual walk. I happened to mention the fact of there being a considerable sea-fret, but the master made nothing of it. You know his way, miss. He told me I need not wait up, and I consequently went up to bed, and thus did not actually see him leave the house.’

  Miss Allison nodded, and went back on to the landing. Her appearance there coincided with the opening of Timothy Harte’s bedroom door. Timothy stuck a tousled head out, and desired to be told what all the row was about.

  Miss Allison allowed this grossly unfair description of her quiet colloquy with the butler to pass unchallenged, and merely said that nothing was up. Timothy looked severely from her to Pritchard, and said with a marked nasal intonation: ‘Say, sister, get wise to this! You can’t put nothin’ across on me!’

  ‘Say, brother,’ retorted Miss Allison, not to be outdone, ‘let me advise you to scram!’

  Timothy grinned, and, apparently construing this request as an invitation, came out on to the landing. ‘I thought you looked as though you might be sporting,’ he remarked. ‘Honestly, what is up?’

  Pritchard gave a warning cough, but Miss Allison judged it wisest to admit Mr Harte into their confidence. ‘We don’t quite know, but we’re afraid Mr Kane may have been taken ill on his walk last night, or have met with some accident. He doesn’t seem to have come home.’

  Timothy’s eyes grew round, but the most partial of observers could scarcely have supposed his expression to denote anything but profound relish of these disturbing tidings. ‘I say!’ he gasped. ‘I jolly well told you so! I bet I had a kind of instinct about it!’

  ‘Don’t be so absurd!’ said Miss Allison rather irritably. ‘How could you have had an instinct, as you call it, that Mr Kane would have a heart attack? Besides, you never told me anything of the kind.’

  ‘Yes, I did!’ said Timothy. ‘At least, not about a heart attack. But I distinctly remember saying that I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if someone was murdered here in the night. Actually, I never thought about it being Uncle Silas, but I probably had a sort of premonition all the same.’

  The butler looked outraged and startled, but Miss Allison, unimpressed, said: ‘If that’s your idea of a joke, it’s a bad one. There’s no question of murder, but we are rather worried about your uncle, and that kind of suggestion isn’t in the best of good taste.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Timothy. ‘As a matter of fact, he isn’t my uncle, though. Actually he isn’t any relation at all.’

  ‘Well, you go and get dressed,’ replied Miss Allison. ‘Then you can help look for him.’

  It seemed good to Timothy to follow this advice. He said: ‘Sure thing!’ and disappeared into his room again.

  ‘I’ll do the same,’ said Miss Allison. ‘You’ve warned Ogle not to say anything to Mrs Kane, I hope? Not that I think she would.’

  ‘The female staff knows nothing as yet, miss. I thought it best to speak to you first.’

  ‘Don’t tell them anything, then, till we know just what’s happened. I’ll be down in a few minutes.’

  She dressed in haste, but was beaten in the race by Mr Harte, who was downstairs ten minutes ahead of her, having decided that excessive ablutions in a moment of stress would be frivolous.

  He did not await her arrival, but went out at once to take part in the search for his host. Just as Miss Allison reached the hall he came into the house with a very white face, and said jerkily: ‘I’ve met them. I say, it’s pretty ghastly, Miss Allison. He’s dead.’

  She did not say anything for a moment. Silas Kane’s death was a possibility she had already realised; the news of it merely confirmed her fear.

  ‘They’re bringing him up to the house,’ said Timothy. ‘Honestly, I didn’t think anything like this would happen, Miss Allison.’

  ‘No. Of course not.’ She turned as Pritchard came into the hall from the servants’ wing, and said as quietly as she could: ‘Master Timothy has told me, Pritchard. How did it happen? Have you any idea?’

  The butler looked very much shaken. ‘They found him at the foot of the cliff, miss. Just where the path runs along the edge. He must have missed his way in the fog. You’ll excuse me, miss, but I’m a bit upset. I do not know when I have been so upset. To think of us lying in our beds with the poor master smashed up like that on those wicked rocks! Not that one could have done anything. If only he hadn’t gone out! That’s what I keep on saying to myself, over and over. It’ll just about kill the mistress, this will.’

  Miss Allison returned a mechanical answer. She did not think that Mrs Kane was of the weak stuff to be killed by shock, or even by grief, but the task of breaking the news of Silas’s death to her was not one to which she looked forward. After a moment’s reflection she decided to postpone it until Emily had had her breakfast, and with this end in view, went off in search of Ogle.

  It was a point of honour with Ogle always to disagree with Miss Allison, of whom she was profoundly jealous, but her adoration of Emily made her on this occasion acquiesce in Patricia’s decision. In acquiescing, however, she took the opportunity to tell Patricia that she knew Emily far better than anyone else did, and could assure the anxious that Emily would bear up under this shock as well as she had borne up under all the other shocks incident in a long life.

  She was right. When Miss Allison, standing beside Emily’s bed, said: ‘I have some very bad news for you, Mrs Kane,’ Emily looked her over piercingly, and rapped out: ‘Well, don’t beat about the bush! What is it?’

  Patricia told her. Emily made no outcry, shed no tear. Only her face seemed to set more rigidly, and her eyes to become fixed upon some object beyond Patricia’s vision. Her thin hands, their fingers bent with gout, lay motionless upon the quilt; she did not speak for some moments, but at last she brought her gaze to bear upon Miss Allison’s face, and said harshly: ‘What are you waiting for? Is there anything else?’

  ‘No, Mrs Kane. Would you like me to go away?’

  Emily smiled wryly. ‘I suppose you want to stroke my hand, and tell me to have a good cry?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ replied Patricia frankly. ‘It is my business to do exactly what you wish. Only you must tell me what that is, because I’ve never faced this situation before, and I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Good girl!’ approved Emily. ‘I dare say you think I’m a heartless old woman, eh? When you reach my age you’ll know that death doesn’t mean so much as you think it does now. Go downstairs and make yourself useful.’ She paused, and for the first time Patricia saw a twinge of some emotion contract her features. ‘Clement,’ she said. ‘Yes. Clement.’

  Miss Allison nodded. ‘Of course. I’ll ring him up immediately.’

  Emily looked at her with rather a curious expression in her face. ‘He’ll come here,’ she said. ‘He and that wife of his.’

  ‘You need not see either of them, Mrs Kane.’

  Emily was shaken with sudden anger: ‘You little fool, I shall have Clement
here for the rest of my life!’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ admitted Patricia. ‘Still, if you can’t bear the idea of living in the same house with him, you could always have a house of your own, couldn’t you?’

  Emily’s eyes narrowed. ‘You think I’m going to be turned out of the house that has been mine for over sixty years, do you? Well, I’m not! When I leave it, it will be in my coffin, that I promise you!’

  Miss Allison, from what she knew of Clement Kane, thought it extremely unlikely that he would make the least attempt to dislodge his great-aunt, but she wisely refrained from saying this, and instead went away to inform him of the tragedy.

  She found Timothy downstairs, awaiting her. Silas’s death had shocked him into a silence which had lasted throughout breakfast, but he seemed now to be restored to his normal self, though he apparently thought it proper to speak in lowered tones. While Patricia talked to Clement Kane on the telephone, he stood watching her with a portentous frown on his brow, and as she put down the receiver he said in a voice fraught with suspicion: ‘I say, Miss Allison, will there be an inquest?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ replied Patricia.

  ‘Ah!’ said Timothy, with deep meaning. ‘Well, do you know what I think?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Patricia.

  ‘What, then?’ demanded Timothy, put out.

  ‘You have a sort of instinct that Mr Kane was murdered,’ said Patricia calmly.

  Timothy was disconcerted, and said rather lamely: ‘Well, I have. What’s more, I bet I’m right. Don’t you think I’m probably right? Honestly, Miss Allison, don’t you?’

  ‘No,’ said Patricia. ‘And if I were you, I wouldn’t talk about it any more. It sounds silly.’

  This damping rejoinder offended Timothy so much that he walked away, informing a Jacobean chair that some people (unspecified) didn’t seem to be able to see what was under their noses, and would look pretty silly themselves when the truth was discovered.

  Three

  Clement Kane, very gently laying the receiver down, sat for a minute or two without moving. To Miss Allison he had uttered conventional exclamations of surprise and distress, but when their brief conversation was ended, neither surprise nor distress was discernible on his face. It was singularly expressionless. He sat looking at the telephone, and presently drew a long, slow breath. He got up and felt in his pocket for his cigarette-case, selected and lit a cigarette, and walked across the room to put the dead match tidily in an ash-tray. He stood smoking for several minutes, then he stubbed out the cigarette, gave his cuffs a twitch, and walked upstairs to his wife’s room.

  Rosemary always breakfasted in bed. She said that she knew she was quite unbearable in the morning, and as she saw no possibility of improving, it was really more sensible to segregate herself in her own room. Clement found her with the remains of her breakfast thrust on one side, and a large box of carnations lying across her knees. He did not permit himself to look at these for more than a second: he knew who must have sent them, but it would be beneath his dignity, besides provoking a nerve-storm in Rosemary, to request her not to encourage Mr Trevor Dermott’s advances.

  Rosemary cradled the carnations in her arms; two pale pink blooms brushed her cheek; she said: ‘Lovely, lovely things! Isn’t it funny how some people can’t understand that flowers are quite literally a necessity to anyone like me?’

  ‘If they’re such a necessity to you, I can only say that I’m surprised you don’t pay a little attention to the garden,’ said Clement in a peevish voice.

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I’ve told you often and often that it’s just no use expecting me to do things like that. I’m not that sort. I wasn’t brought up to it.’

  He saw the sullen look descend on her face, and said quickly: ‘I know: I wasn’t blaming you. I didn’t come up to talk about anything like that. Miss Allison has just been on the telephone. Really, it is so unexpected, and – and shocking that I am almost unable to realise it. Silas is dead.’

  She let the flowers fall, ejaculating: ‘What!’

  ‘Yes – yes! A dreadful accident. Death must have been instantaneous, I understand. He took his usual walk last night in the fog – there was a considerable fog, wasn’t there? You remember we were obliged to drive very slowly on account of it? Well, as I was saying, in the fog he must have lost the path just where it winds close to the cliff edge, and gone over. It doesn’t bear thinking of, does it?’

  She fixed him with a wide, glowing stare. ‘Dead? Cousin Silas actually dead? Clement, I can’t believe it!’

  ‘No, it doesn’t seem possible, does it? I am very much distressed to think that such a thing should have happened.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she agreed. ‘But I do believe in being absolutely honest with oneself, and you must see, Clement, that it’ll make the most tremendous difference to us. It’s almost as though there’s a providence that steps in when one’s almost desperate. Like that thing Mummy took up last year. Right Thought, or something, where you simply fix your mind on what you want, and utterly believe it’ll come to you, and it does, as long as you don’t do anything about it.’

  Clement felt doubtful whether the exponents of whatever this odd creed might be would relish Rosemary’s description of it. Nor did he feel that fixing one’s mind upon the death of a relative could really be called Right Thought. He ventured to say so, but quite mildly, and added that, though he quite understood what Rosemary meant, he thought she should be careful of what she said. One would not like to seem callous.

  She brushed this aside impatiently. ‘My dear Clement, I know I have a lot of faults, but at least I’m honest. I can’t pretend to be sorry Cousin Silas is dead, because I’m not. Perhaps I am callous. Sometimes I think there is something inside me which is quite, quite cold. Not that I’ve any reason to mourn for Cousin Silas. I didn’t like him, and he never understood me. I suppose you’ll be the head of the firm now, won’t you?’

  ‘Well – I believe – that is to say, I know – that I shall have the biggest holding in the business. I really haven’t considered it yet.’

  ‘And Cliff House?’ she pursued. ‘That’s yours too, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said reluctantly. ‘I suppose it is.’

  She sank back against her pillows, clasping her hands across her eyes, her head a little thrown back. ‘No more poky, hateful houses!’ she said. ‘No more of this foul housekeeping! Do you know, Clement, I do honestly believe the sordidness of it all was killing the Essential Me?’

  His gaze dwelled on the lovely line of her lifted jaw. He said: ‘That’s all I ever wanted wealth for: to give you the things that will make you happy, Rosemary.’

  She murmured: ‘Darling, you’re terribly, terribly sweet to me!’

  He bent over her, crushing the carnations, and kissed her throat, and her chin, and her parted lips. ‘You’re so beautiful!’ he said huskily. ‘You ought to have all the things you want. Thank God I shall be able to give them to you at last!’

  ‘Darling!’ sighed Rosemary, gently disengaging herself from his grasp.

  He went away to the office, uplifted as he had not been for many weeks, thinking of his inheritance in terms of pearls for Rosemary, furs for Rosemary, huge, expensive cars for Rosemary.

  The news of Silas’s death was before him. In the outer office faces composed in decent grief met him; the head clerk, speaking in hushed tones, begged on behalf of the staff to offer condolences. He went immediately to Joseph Mansell’s room, and found him there with his son Paul and the tall, lean man with the goatee beard who was Oscar Roberts.

  All three were deep in discussion, but the talk was broken off as he entered the room. Joe Mansell rose ponderously from his chair and came forward, saying: ‘I’m glad you felt able to come to the office, Clement. This is a terrible business! Poor old Silas! And onl
y yesterday we were all at Cliff House to celebrate his sixtieth birthday! I know how you must feel it. I was only saying to Roberts just now that Silas was almost like a father to you. Poor fellow, poor fellow! It was that heart of his, I suppose?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Clement replied. ‘I only heard over the telephone, and I didn’t ask for details. Really, I was so shocked I could scarcely take in the bare fact of Silas’s death.’

  ‘No wonder, no wonder! When I heard of it I could not believe my ears. Bowled over! It doesn’t do to think of the years I’ve known Silas. Right from the cradle. He will be a great loss to the firm.’

  Paul Mansell, who had been contemplating his well-manicured hands with smiling complacency, looked up, and murmured his agreement with this sentiment. The fourth member of the party, observing father and son with a distinct twinkle of amusement in his deep-sunken eyes, said in a slightly nasal drawl: ‘Well, I guess talking won’t mend matters. I’d like to offer my sincere condolences, Mr Kane. Maybe the old man and I didn’t see eye to eye, but I sure did respect him. It seems out of place for me to be here to talk business today, but time presses, and I have to consider the interests of the firm I represent.’

  Joe heaved a gusty sigh. ‘Yes, yes, I’m sure we all appreciate your view-point. Silas would be the last person to want us to neglect the business, eh, Clement? Dear me, it will seem strange not to have him at the head of affairs!’

  ‘Strange and melancholy,’ said Paul, gazing at the top of the window-frame.

  ‘Yes, indeed. Well, we shall look to you now, Clement, to fill his place. Ably, I am sure, you’ll do it. We’ve often said, between ourselves, how like you were to Silas. You have his hard head, without his – how shall I put it? – conservatism! Poor Silas! He was getting old, you know. I’ve thought several times his years were telling on him. Losing grip – just losing grip a little.’

  Clement’s harassed look deepened. He said in his quick, worried way: ‘I haven’t had time to look to the future yet. I shall have to consider my position, of course; but at present I haven’t thought about it.’