“No, neither of us wanted attention called to us. What has it—”
“Just tell me about Thursday morning, will you?” The face opposite him was steadily losing its ingenuousness and becoming wary and inimical again. “I understand that you didn’t go with Miss Clay to swim. Is that right?”
“Yes. But I awoke almost as soon as she had gone—”
“How do you know when she went if you were asleep?”
“Because it was still only six. She couldn’t have been gone long. And Mrs. Pitts said afterwards that I had followed down the road on her heels.”
“I see. And in the hour and a half—roughly—between your getting up and the finding of Miss Clay’s body you walked to the Gap, stole the car, drove it in the direction of Canterbury, regretted what you had done, came back, and found that Miss Clay had been drowned. Is that a complete record of your actions?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“If you felt so grateful to Miss Clay, it was surely an extraordinary thing to do.”
“Extraordinary isn’t the word at all. Even yet I can’t believe I did it.”
“You are quite sure that you didn’t enter the water that morning?”
“Of course I’m sure. Why?”
“When was your last swim? Previous to Thursday morning, I mean?”
“Noon on Wednesday.”
“And yet your swimming suit was soaking wet on Thursday morning.”
“How do you know that! Yes, it was. But not with salt water. It had been spread to dry on the roof below my window, and when I was dressing on Thursday morning I noticed that the birds in the tree—an apple tree hangs over that gable—had made too free with it. So I washed it in the water I had been washing in.”
“You didn’t put it out to dry again, though, apparently?”
“After what happened the last time? No! I put it on the towel rail. For God’s sake, Inspector, tell me what all this has to do with Chris’s death? Can’t you see that questions you can’t see the reason of are torture? I’ve had about all I can stand. The inquest this morning was the last straw. Everyone describing how they found her. Talking about ‘the body,’ when all the time it was Chris. Chris! And now all this mystery and suspicion. If there was anything not straightforward about her drowning, what has my coat got to do with it, anyway?”
“Because this was found entangled in her hair.”
Grant opened a cardboard box on the table and exhibited a black button of the kind used for men’s coats. It had been torn from its proper place, the worn threads of its attachment still forming a ragged “neck.” And round the neck, close to the button, was twined a thin strand of bright hair.
Tisdall was on his feet, both hands on the table edge, staring down at the object.
“You think someone drowned her? I mean—like that! But that isn’t mine. There are thousands of buttons like that. What makes you think it is mine?”
“I don’t think anything, Mr. Tisdall. I am only eliminating possibilities. All I wanted you to do was to account for any garment owned by you which had buttons like that. You say you had one but that it was stolen.”
Tisdall stared at the Inspector, his mouth opening and shutting helplessly.
The door breezed open, after the sketchiest of knocks, and in the middle of the floor stood a small, skinny child of sixteen in shabby tweeds, her dark head hatless and very untidy.
“Oh, sorry,” she said. “I thought my father was here. Sorry.”
Tisdall slumped to the floor with a crash.
Grant, who was sitting on the other side of the large table sprang to action, but the skinny child, with no sign of haste or dismay, was there first.
“Dear me!” she said, getting the slumped body under the shoulders from behind and turning it over.
Grant took a cushion from a chair.
“I shouldn’t do that,” she said. “You let their heads stay back unless it’s apoplexy. And he’s a bit young for that, isn’t he?”
She was loosening collar and tie and shirt-band with the expert detachment of a cook paring pastry from a pie edge. Grant noticed that her sunburnt wrists were covered with small scars and scratches of varying age, and that they stuck too far out of her out-grown sleeves.
“You’ll find brandy in the cupboard, I think. Father isn’t allowed it, but he has no self-control.”
Grant found the brandy and came back to find her slapping Tisdall’s unconscious face with a light insistent tapotement.
“You seem to be good at this sort of thing,” Grant said.
“Oh, I ran the Guides at school.” She had a voice at once precise and friendly. “A ve-ry silly institution. But it varied the routine. That is the main thing, to vary the routine.”
“Did you learn this from the Guides?” he asked, nodding at her occupation.
“Oh, no. They burn paper and smell salts and things. I learned this in Bradford Pete’s dressing-room.”
“Where?”
“You know. The welter-weight. I used to have great faith in Pete, but I think he’s lost his speed lately. Don’t you? At least, I hope it’s his speed. He’s coming to nicely.” This last referred to Tisdall. “I think he’d swallow the brandy now.”
While Grant was administering the brandy, she said: “Have you been giving him third degree, or something? You’re police aren’t you?”
“My dear young lady—I don’t know your name?”
“Erica. I’m Erica Burgoyne.”
“My dear Miss Burgoyne, as the Chief Constable’s daughter you must be aware that the only people in Britain who are subjected to the third degree are the police.”
“Well, what did he faint for? Is he guilty?”
“I don’t know,” Grant said, before he thought.
“I shouldn’t think so.” She was considering the now spluttering Tisdall. “He doesn’t look capable of much.” This with the same grave detachment as she used to everything she did.
“Don’t let looks influence your judgment, Miss Burgoyne.”
“I don’t. Not the way you mean. Anyhow, he isn’t at all my type. But it’s quite right to judge on looks if you know enough. You wouldn’t buy a washy chestnut narrow across the eyes, would you?”
This, thought Grant, is quite the most amazing conversation.
She was standing up now, her hands pushed into her jacket pockets so that the much-tried garment sagged to two bulging points. The tweed she wore was rubbed at the cuffs and covered all over with “pulled” ends of thread where briars had caught. Her skirt was too short and one stocking was violently twisted on its stick of leg. Only her shoes—scarred like her hands, but thick, well-shaped and expensive—betrayed the fact that she was not a charity child.
And then Grant’s eyes went back to her face. Except her face. The calm sureness of that sallow little triangular visage was not bred in any charity school.
“There!” she said encouragingly, as Grant helped Tisdall to his feet and guided him into a chair. “You’ll be all right. Have a little more of Father’s brandy. It’s a much better end for it than Father’s arteries. I’m going now. Where is Father, do you know?” This to Grant.
“He has gone to lunch at The Ship.”