“Didn’t anybody tell her about Nina?”
Sarah didn’t bother to separate the voices. She had braced herself against the cold for so long that there was a dull ache between her shoulder blades, and a deeper sharper ache until Harry Brendan broke his punishing silence. “There wasn’t any suicide,” he said in a short, hard voice. “Charles was pushed out of a window because he found out what Sarah just told you. Nina was killed, and Miss Braceway made the fatal mistake of trying to prove it, too.”
On the far side of the barn the quail fluttered as blindly as moths, in a self-destructive rhythm that plucked badly at Sarah’s nerves. Hunter said in a low bothered voice, “Harry, if all this is coming up, don’t forget that Charles—”
“—prepared the way. Yes,” said Harry. “He put a sedative in Miss Braceway’s tea, enough to keep her out of the way so that he could have it out with Nina. But he didn’t kill Nina and he didn’t kill Miss Braceway, so it follows that he didn’t kill himself in a handy fit of remorse.”
Sarah glanced involuntarily at Kate Clemence. The luminous gray eyes were wide, the pale handsome lips set— and that was all.
Rob Clemence said harshly, “It seems to me we’re throwing Nina’s name around pretty freely.”
Well, she had been his cousin, after all.
“Why?” said Evelyn suddenly and apologetically. “I mean why all this—why kill Nina in the first place?”
A swarm of answers seemed to fill the air like gnats. Because she was in a position of authority over the previous ruler of the farm, because she was intolerably pretty and efficient, because she was an unfaithful wife, because, used to the attentions of men, she might have scorned one man who couldn’t take scorning, or, more probably, laughed at a man who couldn’t take ridicule.
Milo shivered elaborately. He said mildly, “If anybody has two sticks I’ll make a small fire,” and nobody looked at him. Attention focussed on Bess, who had walked closer to Sarah with an air of decision.
“What do you mean, you were too late? Where was this— diary?”
“In the Silvers’ pen,” said Sarah, returning her gaze steadily. She put a finger to the searing scratch that curved out and down from her eyebrow. Only a faint smear of blood came away, it was almost dried. “You might look at Long John’s leg. It was bleeding pretty badly a few minutes ago.”
Bess might have stayed all night in the barn, crisply and courteously discussing the question of Nina’s problematical diary; mention of an injury to one of her birds sent her striding off to the stable at once, robe switching agitatedly around her ankles. The light went on there, followed by the metallic sound of the mesh door opening and the anxious croon of Bess’s voice.
Rob Clemence studied Sarah with his tufty eyebrows up. “Long John gave as good as he got, didn’t he?”
“I didn’t touch him,” Sarah said coldly, and gradually, stealthily, glances began to slide around. They noted the long scratch on Harry Brendan’s arm, the marks on Sarah’s face and leg; they were balked everywhere else by robes and pajamas and even, on Evelyn’s hands, the little cream-lined gloves she wore at night.
Something close to an answer shot through Sarah’s mind, and was blanked out by Kate’s cool deliberate voice. “How do you know there was another diary, Sarah? How do you know where it was? Forgive me if I say that I can’t believe Charles told you.”
Evelyn sucked in a breath of excitement, loud in the wind-brushed silence. Beside Sarah, so close that their shoulders touched, Harry drew in a slower and more dangerous breath. He liked Kate, and he had an old loyalty to her as he had to all these people, but with the peculiar inter-knowledge that had always existed between them Sarah knew that he was about to say something unforgivable.
She said lightly, “That’s asking quite a lot, isn’t it, Kate?” and then, because it wasn’t entirely a lie, “Charles did tell me.
The white face, beautifully chiselled under the carelessly cropped dark hair, turned involuntarily as though a blow had landed. Sarah tried to feel sorry and could not. Hunter said frowningly, “If you’re going by a diary—well, nobody goes unscathed in a diary, does he? That’s what they’re for.”
And suppose, thought Sarah suddenly, that that was exactly why the diary had been kept? If it showed Nina involved in one or more extra-marital affairs, and if she had been killed for a different reason, wouldn’t the diary be the perfect safeguard in case an investigation were pressed? It would point to this man or that; it would obscure any other issue.
A man had certainly gone to Dr. Vollmer, presenting himself as Charles Trafton, laying the foundation for Charles’s death. But suppose he hadn’t known that at the time, suppose it had been put to him that it was only a necessary measure to discredit anything Charles might say?
Hunter would have done it for Bess, Rob for Kate. In spite of the automatic mockery which he intended for wit, Milo might even have done it for Evelyn.
And what was it that had offered itself to Sarah’s brain before Kate dispelled it?
Bess called from the stable, her voice so controlled that the anger behind it was clear. She was already leather-gloved, she wanted Kate to bring the antiseptic from the wall cabinet. She looked taller and higher-headed than usual, coming back into the barn moments later. Her face was dangerously flushed.
She said in a clipped voice, “You say you didn’t touch him, Sarah?”
“No. I held him off with the stick. He flew at me,” said Sarah, “when I went to pick up this.”
She had been holding the jack in
