Diana Glass
The Help
The echo of the second scream hangs in the air. Miss Marple’s hands lift from the pile of wool in her lap like two startled birds.
I leap to my feet, instinctively taking one of Mrs Bantry’s walking poles from the holder beside the door to use as a makeshift weapon.
I step cautiously out into the hallway, bearing it in front of me.
The scream came from quite nearby, I think, perhaps only a few rooms along from Mrs Bantry’s.
A door flies open along the corridor and I see the intense young doctor, clutching a match for the glass paperweight I have on the desk in my room.
Eyes wide behind his glasses, hair mussed, he reminds me of a small boy who’s woken from a nightmare.
He gestures a couple of doors further down the corridor and together we creep towards the room in question.
We find the door slightly ajar. Catherine Narracott stands in front of the wardrobe, breathing hard, face blanched.
Behind her I glimpse a couple of woollen coats half torn off hangers, furs of various kinds – mink, winter ermine and fox – and a tangle of heeled shoes and boots disgorged from the shelves at the bottom.
And across the room the chest of drawers has been ransacked too: a froth of lacy undergarments and negligees in various pastel colours pulled free.
It is a scene of violation and a strange sort of violence.
‘He just burst in here …’
She gestures limply across the room, at the figure crouched on the floor, now busy looking under the bed. He glances briefly up at us like a cornered animal, some scavenging species, interrupted while feasting upon a carcass. His eyes are wild, his teeth bared. He looks deranged.
‘Disgraceful!’ the old colonel bellows. Several other guests push their way into the room behind him: the young doctor among them. ‘What on earth are you doing?’ the colonel shouts at the figure on the floor. ‘Explain yourself, man.’
But Bruno Crane doesn’t seem to have heard him. Then in one rapid motion, surprising for such a large man, he is on his feet and rushing across the room towards Catherine Narracott.
‘Where is it?’ he hisses, backing her up against the wardrobe. I see his spittle land on her cheeks. ‘You must know something. He was trying to take it all for himself, wasn’t he? I knew he would. I knew.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she cries. ‘Oh, get him away from me, please!’
‘He stole it all from me. Tell me where he hid it!’ He shouts this last into her face.
Then he seizes her by the forearms and begins to shake her, apparently still oblivious to his appalled audience.
She stands her ground admirably. Then two of the male guests lunge forward to seize Crane and drag him away from her.
He writhes in their grip like a captured wild animal.
‘Did you do it?’ Catherine Narracott cries. ‘Because you think he stole something from you?’
There is a stunned silence and Crane’s eyes widen. This, more than anything, seems to stun a little sense into him. ‘I didn’t kill him,’ he says.
I hear several people scoff. The scene just now seems to have confirmed his guilt. I look at Miss Marple, though. She is watching him with an expression of, I think, genuine curiosity, as though waiting for him to say more.
‘We should restrain him somewhere,’ the old colonel says. ‘Lock ’im up until the police come.’
‘The wine cellars?’ a square-jawed American guest says. ‘They have a lock. The vintages they have in there!’
Bruno Crane wears a different look of desperation now. ‘You can’t do that to me! I’m … innocent.’ He stumbles over the word ‘innocent’, though.
‘Pah! You can’t even convince yourself, man,’ the old colonel barks.
They heft him to his feet and begin manhandling him out of the room.
‘What is going on here?’ We turn to see the moustachioed hotel manager standing in the doorway. ‘My door!’ He notices the splintered frame of the doorway. And then: ‘What, may I enquire, are you doing to Mr Crane?’
‘Got to lock him up!’ the colonel says.
The little manager seems to grow in stature; his moustache positively vibrating with affront.
‘Mr Crane is a guest of the Grand Alpine. You will not lock up one of my guests,’ he says, in an outraged tone.
‘The reputation of this establishment is at stake. In any case I have just received – this minute – some very good news. The Swiss police are not far; they began the journey from Geneva as soon as I reported the tragedy to them. In spite of the wind and snow they will be able to take the train.’ And then as though he can’t resist this little boast: ‘Our trains travel in almost any weather. They will be here within the hour. They will decide who needs to be locked up.’