A frightened dark man in a cook’s cap pushed past him and came into the room. It was one of the minor cooks. A Cuban, not a native of St. Honore. “I tell you something. I tell you,” he said. “She come through my kitchen, she did, and she had a knife with her. A knife, I tell you. She had a knife in her hand. She come through my kitchen and out of the door. Out into the garden. I saw her.”
“Now calm down,” said Daventry, “calm down. Who are you talking about?”
“I tell you who I’m talking about. I’m talking about the boss’s wife. Mrs Kendal. I’m talking about her. She have a knife in her hand and she go out into the dark. Before dinner that was—and she didn’t come back”
15
INQUIRY CONTINUED
“CAN we have a word with you, Mr. Kendal?”
“Of course.” Tim looked up from his desk. He pushed some papers aside and indicated chairs. His face was drawn and miserable. “How are you getting on? Got any forwarder? There seems to be a doom in this place. People are wanting to leave, you know, asking about air passages. Just when it seemed everything was being a success. Oh lord, you don’t know what it means, this place, to me and to Molly. We staked everything on it.”
“It’s very hard on you, I know,” said Inspector Weston. “Don’t think that we don’t sympathise.”
“If it all could be cleared up quickly,” said Tim. “This wretched girl Victoria— Oh! I oughtn’t to talk about her like that. She was quite a good sort, Victoria was. But—but there must be some quite simple reason, some kind of intrigue, or love affair she had. Perhaps her husband—”
“Jim Ellis wasn’t her husband, and they seemed a settled sort of couple.”
“If it could only be cleared up quickly,” said Tim again. “I’m sorry. You wanted to talk to me about something, ask me something.”
“Yes. It was about last night. According to medical evidence Victoria was killed some time between 10.30 P.M. and midnight. Alibis under the circumstances that prevail here, are not very easy to prove. People are moving about, dancing, walking away from the terrace, coming back. It’s all very difficult.”
“I suppose so. But does that mean that you definitely consider Victoria was killed by one of the guests here?”
“Well, we have to examine that possibility, Mr. Kendal. What I want to ask you particularly about, is a statement made by one of your cooks.”
“Oh? Which one? What does he say?”
“He’s a Cuban, I understand.”
“We’ve got two Cubans and a Puerto Rican.”
“This man Enrico states that your wife passed through the kitchen on her way from the dining room, and went out into the garden and that she was carrying a knife.”
Tim stared at him.
“Molly, carrying a knife? Well, why shouldn’t she? I mean—why—you don’t think—what are you trying to suggest?”
“I am talking of the time before people had come into the dining room. It would be, I suppose, some time about 8.30. You yourself were in the dining room talking to the head waiter, Fernando, I believe.”
“Yes.” Tim cast his mind back. “Yes, I remember.”
“And your wife came in from the terrace?”
“Yes, she did,” Tim agreed. “She always went out to look over the tables. Sometimes the boys set things wrong, forgot some of the cutlery, things like that. Very likely that’s what it was. She may have been rearranging cutlery or something. She might have had a spare knife or a spoon, something like that in her hand.”
“And she came from the terrace into the dining room. Did she speak to you?”
“Yes, we had a word or two together.”
“What did she say? Can you remember?”
“I think I asked her who she’d been talking to. I heard her voice out there.”
“And who did she say she’d been talking to?”
“Gregory Dyson.”
“Ah. Yes. That is what he said.”
Tim went on, “He’d been making a pass at her I understand. He was a bit given to that kind of thing. It annoyed me and I said ‘Blast him’ and Molly laughed and said she could do all the blasting that needed to be done. Molly’s a very clever girl that way. It’s not always an easy position, you know. You can’t offend guests, and so an attractive girl like Molly has to pass things off with a laugh and a shrug. Gregory Dyson finds it difficult to keep his hands off any good-looking woman.”