“Mrs. de Winter had a hair appointment from twelve until one thirty,” said Mrs. Danvers. “I remember that, because I had to telephone through to London from here earlier in the week and book it for her. I remember doing it. Twelve to one thirty. She always lunched at her club after a hair appointment so that she could leave the pins in her hair. It’s almost certain she lunched there that day.”
“Say it took her half-an-hour to have lunch; what was she doing from two until three? We ought to verify that,” said Colonel Julyan.
“Oh, Christ Jesus, who the hell cares what she was doing?” shouted Favell. “She didn’t kill herself, that’s the only thing that matters, isn’t it?”
“I’ve got her engagement diary locked in my room,” said Mrs. Danvers slowly. “I kept all those things. Mr. de Winter never asked me for them. It’s just possible she may have noted down her appointments for that day. She was methodical in that way. She used to put everything down and then tick the items off with a cross. If you think it would be helpful I’ll go and fetch the diary.”
“Well, de Winter?” said Colonel Julyan, “what do you say? Do you mind us seeing this diary?”
“Of course not,” said Maxim. “Why on earth should I?”
Once again I saw Colonel Julyan give him that swift, curious glance. And this time Frank noticed it. I saw Frank look at Maxim too. And then back again to me. This time it was I who got up and went towards the window. It seemed to me that it was no longer raining quite so hard. The fury was spent. The rain that was falling now had a quieter, softer note. The gray light of evening had come into the sky. The lawns were dark and drenched with the heavy rain, and the trees had a shrouded humped appearance. I could hear the housemaid overhead drawing the curtains for the night, shutting down the windows that had not been closed already. The little routine of the day going on inevitably as it had always done. The curtains drawn, shoes taken down to be cleaned, the towel laid out on the chair in the bathroom, and the water run for my bath. Beds turned down, slippers put beneath a chair. And here were we in the library, none of us speaking, knowing in our hearts that Maxim was standing trial here for his life.
I turned round when I heard the soft closing of the door. It was Mrs. Danvers. She had come back again with the diary in her hand.
“I was right,” she said quietly. “She had marked down the engagements as I said she would. Here they are on the date she died.”
She opened the diary, a small, red leather book. She gave it to Colonel Julyan. Once more he brought his spectacles from his case. There was a long pause while he glanced down the page. It seemed to me then that there was something about that particular moment, while he looked at the page of the diary, and we stood waiting, that frightened me more than anything that had happened that evening.
I dug my nails in my hands. I could not look at Maxim. Surely Colonel Julyan must hear my heart beating and thumping in my breast?
“Ah!” he said. His finger was in the middle of the page. Something is going to happen, I thought, something terrible is going to happen. “Yes,” he said, “yes, here it is. Hair at twelve, as Mrs. Danvers said. And a cross beside it. She kept her appointment, then. Lunch at the club, and a cross beside that. What have we here, though? Baker, two o’clock. Who was Baker?” He looked at Maxim. Maxim shook his head. Then at Mrs. Danvers.
“Baker?” repeated Mrs. Danvers. “She knew no one called Baker. I’ve never heard the name before.”
“Well, here it is,” said Colonel Julyan, handing her the diary. “You can see for yourself, Baker. And she’s put a great cross beside it as though she wanted to break the pencil. She evidently saw this Baker, whoever he may have been.”
Mrs. Danvers was staring at the name written in the diary, and the black cross beside it. “Baker,” she said. “Baker.”
“I believe if we knew who Baker was we’d be getting to the bottom of the whole business,” said Colonel Julyan. “She wasn’t in the hands of moneylenders, was she?”
Mrs. Danvers looked at him with scorn. “Mrs. de Winter?” she said.
“Well, blackmailers perhaps?” said Colonel Julyan, with a glance at Favell.
Mrs. Danvers shook her head. “Baker,” she repeated. “Baker.”
“She had no enemy, no one who had ever threatened her, no one she was afraid of?”
“Mrs. de Winter afraid?” said Mrs. Danvers. “She was afraid of nothing and no one. There was only one thing ever worried her, and that was the idea of getting old, of illness, of dying in her bed. She has said to me a score of times, ‘When I go, Danny, I want to go quickly, like the snuffing out of a candle.’ That used to be the only thing that consoled me, after she died. They say drowning is painless, don’t they?”