by Jane Arbor
But Trevor stuck defiantly to his story and there was no choice but to let him go too.
Alice said wretchedly, “What is the truth, do you suppose, Sister? I know Jean wouldn’t lie to me for anything in the world, which is more than we could say of Trevor. But if they’ve chosen to believe his story, who is going to convince them of anything different?”
“We are, if only we can find some way to discredit it,” replied Sarah stoutly. “Meanwhile, I suppose we shouldn’t forget the really injured party, Mr. Pigott, and I’ve been thinking that, whether or not it was the children’s fault, we ought to sympathize provisionally, just in case.”
“You mean, you think there’s just a chance it was Jean and that I ought to go over and eat humble pie on her behalf?”
Sarah shook her head. “No. I’ll go myself. I’m in charge here and they’ll expect me to make some gesture. I’d rather do it voluntarily than be put on the defensive by any of them. I’m terribly sorry for Mr. Pigott and I want to say so .But don’t worry, Alice, I’m not wearing any blame or letting Jean shoulder it unless they can produce someone other than Trevor who saw her open that door and leave it open.”
A quarter of an hour later she had faced Oliver Mansbury across the desk in his own sanctum. As once before, she had asked for Mrs. Beacon, but he had been crossing the hall as she was shown in and he had asked her errand.
She had told him and had expressed her regrets for the catastrophe. And then, though her instinct told her that Trevor so enjoyed even unfavorable limelight that it wasn’t the best way to handle him, she had found herself agreeing to his uncle’s suggestion that both children should be arraigned and questioned until one of their stories ‘cracked’ under pressure. His hand on the phone, he had asked her permission to ring Alice to bring them over and to sit in at the ‘tribunal’ too. Then he had gone in search of the gardener, saying they must have the story of the open door at first hand. And now they were all there: Jean and Alice; Trevor; Oliver himself; Mr. Pigott; Mrs. Beacon, and the crowning irrelevance in Sarah’s eyes, Jurice Grey. What had she to do with it anyway? thought Sarah sourly.
“It’s all wrong. It’s all wrong! They’re making a—a spectacle of it,” was her inward protest. But already Oliver was questioning Jean and she was repeating her story in a thin, halting little voice. Then it was Trevor’s turn and, as Sarah had feared, he was blustering, enjoying himself immensely.
“And you still say it was Jean who went into the greenhouse alone?” asked Oliver?”
“Oh yes. She said she was going in, and I went away. ‘Cos we’re not allowed to go in by ourselves,” Trevor added with a virtuous glance at Mr. Pigott.
Oliver looked a little hopelessly at Sarah. “That’s been his version all along. So where do we go from here? The same denials, the same contradictions from each of them. And the fact still remaining that the place was found open this morning and the damage done!”
Sarah longed to say, “Well, what did you expect? A dramatic confession from one of them? Or a last minute intervention from Mr. Pigott saying he made a mistake and the door was shut after all?”
But all she said was, “Perhaps you haven’t made all the enquiries you might have done. Has the gardener been asked whether the house could have been left open by anyone else?”
“Oh yes. We’ve already ascertained that!”
Sarah said quietly, “Well, may I ask him again now?” (If they wanted a court-of-law they should have it!)
But when she put her question, Mr. Pigott said firmly that when the afternoon watering had been done at four o’clock, “no one at all would have call to go in to the hothouse after that.”
“No ‘call’ perhaps,” persisted Sarah. “But isn’t it just possible that someone did?”
“And who should want to?” Mr. Pigott countered.
Nonplussed, Sarah said, “I don’t know. But I was thinking—” her glance at Mrs. Beacon held a question—“mightn’t one of your walking patients have seen no harm in stepping inside and then have been careless about closing the door when leaving?”
Mrs. Beacon bridled. “At the moment I have only two convalescent patients. When they go out in the gardens a nurse is always with them, and you surely don’t suppose we haven’t questioned everyone on the house and garden staff?” she enquired icily.
To that there seemed to be no answer and there was a small silence until Oliver began, “Well, it rather looks like deadlock,” only to be interrupted by Jurice Grey’s voice.
“None of my business of course,” she drawled, “and to date nobody has questioned me. But if you’re interested, I happen to have had a ringside seat on the whole silly business, and I saw this child,” she indicated Jean, “open the greenhouse door and go in, though whether or not she left it open when she came out, I didn’t wait to see.”
No one spoke. In a swift glance at the others Sarah saw their different expressions in a series of vignettes. Jean’s, flushed an ugly red to the roots of her hair; Alice Cosford’s, white, indignant disbelieving; Mrs. Beacon’s, calm and self-satisfied; Mrs. Pigott’s open-mouthed; and Oliver’s, staring straight into Jurice’s eyes.
“Why on earth have you waited until now to say this?” he demanded.
Jurice shrugged. “Dear Oliver!” she purred. “Because you were enjoying yourself so, of course! Doing your Perry Mason act, cross-examination, hostile witnesses, the convenient adjournment when you’re floored, the lot. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, I really wouldn’t!”
But as Oliver’s brows drew together in a frown and Alice’s eyes blazed, suddenly Sarah knew the truth as, mentally and visually she was elsewhere, namely on the staircase of Monckton, looking out across the Greystones gardens towards the greenhouse in question, fully visible from that vantage-point. In recollection she picked out the framework of the doorway, the door itself, the roof-lights, the condensation-shrouded interior, and felt a kind of exultation. This had ceased to be an arraignment of the children. Now it was an affair of unsheathed swords between herself and Jurice Grey.
As if the two of them were alone, she addressed Jurice directly. “You saw Jean go into the greenhouse entirely unaided by Trevor?”
“That’s what I said, didn’t I?”
“But,” said Sarah, carefully measuring her words, “Jean couldn’t get into the greenhouse without help. She couldn’t have opened the door!”
There was a smothered exclamation from the gardener and Oliver made a convulsive movement. Jurice said, a stifling a yawn, “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t know about that. I dare say she—”
But Sarah plunged on relentlessly, “She couldn’t have got in, for the simple reason that she’s not tall enough to reach up to the fastening. On that door, as I’ve seen for myself, the only latch is far out of her reach.” She turned to Oliver. “I daresay that was of intent?” she queried.
It was the gardener who answered. “Yes, that’s right. So the little’un couldn’t have—! Well, what d’you know? Why didn’t I think o’ that?”
But Jurice had turned upon Sarah, her face a white fury, her voice shrill.
“Are you,” she demanded, “calling me a liar?”
Sarah lowered her eyes before the baulked, vindictive face. She said evenly, “I’m saying only that you were—mistaken. Jean could not have done as you say.”
“Then it was the boy. It was Trevor. One of them went in as I watched from my bedroom window. But it was nearly dusk—how was I to know?”
“You said it was Jean. And it wasn’t dusk either. Jean was at home and in bed well before dark.”
The quiet words were crisp in the surrounding silence. But as suddenly as it had come, Sarah found all her exultant triumph gone. She had won—but at what a price!
Without ceremony, not even waiting for Alice and Jean, she went out of the room, through the hall, down the drive and so, blindly, she came home.
She had not seen Oliver Hansbury’s move as if to follow her. She knew only that, of deliberate
purpose, she had publicly humiliated the woman who was to be his wife. That was unforgivable and she had never felt so ashamed in all her days.
Alice’s thanks and Jean’s lighthearted relief were some balm, but she saw the rest of the day and all the days ahead for a very long time as ordeals to be endured, to be lived through somehow.
Where had all her happiness gone? Where, all her sense of fulfilment in the job she had chosen and loved? And why, if her love of Oliver Mansbury was worth any more than lip-service, had she driven his fiancée to that brief, bitter exchange in front of everyone? For his sake alone, she should have stopped short of that!
After lunch she gave Alice the afternoon off to take Jean to a Walt Disney film in the town. The other children rested until three, when she took them through their remedial exercises in turn and had been roped in for a game of Ludo before tea, and Martha came to the dayroom to say, “Mr. Mansbury has called and would like to see you, Miss Sarah.”
Sarah’s head jerked up, but her voice was calm. “I’m sorry. I’m busy with the children. Perhaps Mr. Mansbury could leave a message with you, or call again sometime?” she said.
That was rank cowardice, playing for time—for what? Moreover Martha’s glance at the Ludo board had not escaped her and as Martha left the room with a reluctant, “Well, I’ll tell him,” she knew Martha suspected the diplomatic lie.
Presently she sent someone to the kitchen to suggest to Martha that tea in the garden would be nice, then returned herself to the dayroom, sat at the card-table which held the Ludo board and for the first time since the morning deliberately thought.
She heard the chink of tea-things mingling with the children’s voices from the garden. But she hadn’t the heart to join them and after a time she rose wearily and went down the hall to her own room.
She opened the door, then paused, color flooding from her throat to her brow.
“I’m sorry. Martha didn’t tell me.”
Oliver said, “I asked her not to. I waited. I had to see you.”
“Yes?” The monosyllable was far from inviting.
He regarded her searchingly. “You’re not happy about what happened this morning, are you?”
“No. But does that matter? You got what you wanted. We know now that Trevor fled, not Jean Cosford.”
“And not only Trevor.” His tone was grim. “But like Miss Grey, you disapproved of the method we employed, didn’t you?”
“Yes. It was the wrong way to handle him altogether. I—ought to have stopped it. You can’t do anything with him by staging a showdown, putting him on a charge. It sets all his hackles up and then you’ve had it. But there,” she broke off with an empty gesture of her hand, “who am I to talk? Theories. Lately I’d flattered myself that we’d done something with him, that he was growing a community sense, that he didn’t lie any more. But after this affair, where have I got with him? Nowhere at all!”
She heard the rising note of near-hysteria in her voice and to cover up she drew a chair towards her and sat down. Oliver sat then too, his hands clasped between his knees as he leaned forward to face her.
He said, “If Trevor’s reactions to this morning’s setup are all that you’re worrying about, you can take it from me he’ll get over it. Anyway, the current emergency is bringing his people back from Cyprus before time, so that when he rejoins them he needn’t be my headache or yours after that.” Oliver paused, then added gently, “But how you hate the very breath of failure, don’t you? It seems to me you set yourself a target; take aim; and break your heart if you don’t score a bullseye every time!”
“But I wanted to succeed with Trevor because I felt you had challenged me to it,” she said unguardedly.
“Challenged you? I’d enlisted you as an ally with me, but I didn’t expect miracles,” Oliver returned. “Anyway, am I right that it wasn’t only your sense of defeat over Trevor that made you leave this morning as you did? There was something else you were distressed or angry about?”
She nodded. “Both, I’m afraid. I was hating myself. I behaved very badly to Miss Grey. If not in so many words, I accused her of lying when she may have been merely mistaken. So if you will, I hope you’ll apologize to her for me.”'
Oliver’s face darkened. “I’ll do nothing of the kind. Anyway, I’m not in touch with her and shan’t be again.”
“Not in?”
“I mean that she has left Greystones and I’m not concerned with her future whereabouts. After this morning’s scene there was no question of her staying under my roof any longer, and I asked her to go.”
“But I forced that scene on her! I deliberately tried to trap her, once I realized little Jean must be telling the truth.”
“You forced nothing. Even Trevor’s idiotic lie about Jean didn’t match the size and spite of hers. For what you don’t know and I didn’t until she admitted it later, is that, having seen the children peering into the greenhouse, she not only hatched her lie but went out herself and opened the door and, just in case the cats weren’t on the prowl last night, she overturned some pots and broke some flower stems in order to ensure that damage would be done.”
Sarah gasped. “I—can’t believe it! Why should she do such a thing? Why?”
“For malice against you. For—jealousy of you. She saw her chance to injure and denigrate you through Jean, and took it. It was as simple as that, and before she left she saw to it that I understood her motives very well.”
Sarah said slowly, working it out, “I’d sensed that she had never liked me. We just weren’t on the same wavelength. But, jealous of me? Why should she be? I hadn’t anything she could possibly covet, had I?”
Oliver’s eyes held hers. “She thought you had. She knew you had before I let her go for good,” he said.
The great thud of Sarah’s heart was a physical pain. “What?” she asked through dry lips.
He stood and came over to her, took her hands. “My love, for what it’s worth,” he said humbly. “Didn’t you know too, Sarah? Hadn’t you guessed?”
(She wasn’t hearing this! It wasn’t possible!) “Your? But you are going to marry her! Or you were—”
He nodded. “ ‘Were’, a long time ago. But we broke it off well before you happened to me. Since then, on my side there’s been nothing; on hers, I suppose, a reluctance to admit she hadn’t the power to get me back, once her evil genius had guessed that I had fallen in love with you.”
“But you aren’t! I mean, how can you be? You hardly know me!” Sarah protested wildly.
He clasped his hands lightly behind her back. “I know enough,” he said. “For a start, I know you’re brave and headstrong and feminine and exasperating and quite lovely in my eyes. In fact, everything I want in a woman tantalizingly there in you for me, when I’ve nothing to match to offer you. Not even youth to match yours—I can give you fifteen years at least. So no wonder you’ve never even thought of me as a lover, when you have other men at your feet, coveting you, competing for you. And yet, forgive me, Sarah, haven’t those perceptive antennae of yours betrayed you sadly? That clear-cut love you weren’t going to mistake or deny, hasn’t it tangled you with a man you don’t know to be free?”
Her frank eyes met his. “You mean Dr. Carrage? But there’s nothing between him and me?”
“Nothing? Oh Sarah, think again!”
“Nothing,” she repeated. “The link between us has only been Tony. Tony and friendship. I wasn’t even in his full confidence until a little while ago when he told me the whole story of his broken marriage, and that’s already mended now. His wife had deserted him and Tony for another man and disappeared from their lives. But he has found her again and it’s only a matter of time until the three of them are together for good.” She broke off. “But this I shouldn’t have told you, I suppose. It’s his secret and I promised him I would keep it until he has finally left Fareborough.”
Oliver said, “Don’t worry. It’ll be safe with me. But, only friends? That night when I had given Mar
tha a lift?”
“You saw him kiss me? Yes, I know. That night he had left Tony in my care again while he went to Belgium to bring his wife home. That night he was beside himself with relief and happiness and he would as readily have kissed Martha or Alice as me, I believe.”
“But he kissed you and thereby created a little hell for me,” Oliver insisted jealously. “Not that I’d a right to care either way. Because your not being in love with him doesn’t automatically cut me in, does it? Love you as I do, to you I’m still a kind of symbol of the hostility you’ve encountered from Greystones all along? You’ve never seen me as a man with hope and desire and worship directed towards you, only towards you, eh?”
Sarah said in a low voice, “At first you were just that—my enemy, I thought. But not for long. And not ever again, since—”
“Since when?” he prompted eagerly.
“Since—” Suddenly she washalf-laughing, half-crying. “That’s the silly part of it,” she bubbled. “I don’t know, I don’t know when I started to love you ... to love you for good and for ever. Those—those antennae, as you called them, didn’t do a thing for me when the time came. There was I in love with you and the things had never given so much as a quiver to warn me! Love? Clear-cut? Presenting itself as a rival to my career and me, calmly weighing the one against the other? Phoo-ey! When you happened, Oliver,” the sheer magic of calling him by name for the first time! “I just tumbled into love headlong, love for you.”
At that he drew her closer and pressed her face to his breast. As he stroked her hair he said, “If that’s true, my love, what a lot of time we’ve wasted, haven’t we? Too much. And if you knew and I knew, what was it that kept us apart?”
She lifted her head. “Jurice Grey, I’m afraid.”
“I am too. We shouldn’t have let her, but we did, and she knew exactly how to work on jealousy and suspicion and fear. And I have been afraid often, Sarah, haven’t you?”
