by J F Straker
Miss Mytton’s immediate thought was that it was a right she would gladly have waived. Swallowing deeply, she said, ‘I still can’t believe it. You, of all people! What on earth possessed you?’
‘I suppose you might call it self-preservation.’ Miss Justin hesitated. ‘No, that’s not quite true. There was another way out, only—’ She sighed. ‘It’s a long story, Emily. Are you sure you want to hear it?’
That at least was something on which Miss Mytton had no doubt at all. She would have preferred that the confession had never been made. But now that it had been made, curiosity demanded that she should know what lay behind it.
‘Of course I want to hear it.’ Some of the old assurance was back in her voice. ‘You and I have known each other since we were children. Occasionally you’ve done or said something that wasn’t quite you, but on the whole you’ve run pretty true to type, Clara. Never in my wildest dreams could I have envisaged anything like this. Either you’ve taken leave of your senses (and you seem sane enough), or — or what? I just don’t know. But I’ve got to know if I’m ever to have any peace of mind again.’
Miss Justin ceased her aimless wandering and sat down. Hands clasped in her lap, she sat bolt upright.
‘Do you remember when Mother died?’ she asked abruptly.
‘Your mother?’ Miss Mytton was startled. ‘Clara, that was ages ago. All of thirty years. What can that have to do with Cluster and — and William?’
‘Thirty-two years. I was away at the time, staying with my brother and his wife up in Yorkshire. Remember?’
‘So you were.’ Miss Mytton was pleased at the length of her memory. ‘And the news made you so ill that you didn’t come home for — oh, at least a month later. It may have been even longer.’
‘Six weeks.’ Miss Justin’s fingers bent and tightened, digging into the backs of her hands. ‘But it wasn’t Mother’s death that made me ill. I was having a baby.’
‘Clara!’ This was almost worse than murder. In the distant past Mytton ancestors had been known to resolve their problems by murder. They had even boasted of it. But illegitimacy — that was a different, more shameful thing. No doubt Mytton males had sired many a bastard, but certainly no Mytton female had ever mothered one. ‘I just don’t believe it!’
‘It’s true. That was why I was sent up there — so that the child could be born with no one in Cheswick the wiser. My brother adopted him, and when I was well enough I came home. And that was all there was to it.’ Miss Justin’s voice hardened. ‘Or I thought it was. Unfortunately I was wrong.’
The last few sentences were lost on Miss Mytton. Her mind was busily clicking the pieces together. She remembered how Clara’s brother had been killed in a rail smash, and that his widow had remarried and gone to America with her new husband. And it was then that Matt had come to live at Fir Cottage.
‘Matt!’ she exclaimed, so pleased with her deduction that her friend’s disgrace ceased to trouble her. ‘He’s your son, not your nephew.’
‘Yes,’ Miss Justin said calmly, a note of pride in her voice. ‘He’s my son.’
‘I should have guessed.’ If Miss Mytton felt a twinge of annoyance that Clara should have kept this secret from her over the years, she immediately suppressed it. ‘Only a mother would dote on a boy the way you dote on Matt. It’s lucky for him he wasn’t the type to be easily spoilt.’
Miss Justin took one last look down the path, but now the gate and the wall were hidden by the night. Slowly she drew the curtains together, and then walked across to the door and switched on the light. The photograph on the little table caught her eye, and she picked it up and looked at it lovingly.
‘He wasn’t, was he?’ she said. ‘That made it all worthwhile. Matt has given me more happiness than—’ She paused, seeking a simile. But invention failed her, and she ended lamely, ‘ — than anything.’
The suddenness of the light had momentarily blurred Miss Mytton’s vision. Now she looked critically, albeit fearfully, at her friend, wondering what differences these revelations would have made to her appearance. But although she looked with new eyes the picture was the same. Whatever the emotions that consumed her inwardly, outwardly Miss Justin was unaltered. Even the pose — the photograph clutched against her bosom in a fond embrace — was familiar.
I should have guessed, Miss Mytton told herself again. I would have guessed had it been anyone but Clara.
‘Does Matt know?’ she asked.
‘No.’ Miss Justin spoke sharply. ‘And he mustn’t know. That’s why I had to kill those two dreadful men.’
She spoke of her victims with no trace of remorse, so that Miss Mytton was beguiled into accepting this reference to their deaths without a recurrence of the horror that had previously consumed her. In the same matter-of-fact tone she asked, ‘Why? Did they know?’
‘William knew. His mother was Janet’s maid (Janet was my sister-in-law), and she was there when Matt was born. She knew all about me, but Janet said it didn’t matter, she wouldn’t talk. And she didn’t — then. But two years later she left to get married, and William was born the next year.’ Miss Justin sighed. ‘It’s odd, isn’t it, that Mrs Bright should have held her tongue all those years, and then, for no apparent reason, have told her son the whole story? Perhaps she thought it couldn’t do any harm. My brother was dead, Janet was in America; and William, of course, had never met any of us. I suppose she just didn’t know the sort of man her son was.’
‘And what sort of a man was he? It seems we knew him no better than his mother did.’
Miss Justin shuddered. ‘Evil,’ she said. ‘Evil and shiftless and — and cruel. Matt and I must have looked to him like easy money, and he wasted no time in finding us. Or me, rather; Matt wasn’t here, thank goodness. And when he found me he stuck.’ The shudder was repeated. ‘Oh, how he stuck!’
‘Blackmail, I suppose?’
‘Of course. He didn’t ask too much at first; just a job at an exorbitant wage. I think he was clever enough to realize that had he been too demanding I might have refused.’ Miss Justin took the photograph from her bosom, looked at it, and replaced it on the table. ‘Though I doubt if I would, you know. I’m not a rich woman, Emily, but I’d have given everything I had to keep him quiet. I very nearly did.’
How much of that payment, wondered Miss Mytton, was for Matt’s sake, and how much for her own? She did not doubt Clara’s love for Matt, or her willingness to make sacrifices for him. But she knew also that Clara’s position and reputation in the village were very dear to her. Clara would have paid, she thought, even had there been no Matt.
But then if there had been no Matt there would have been no blackmail.
‘Would it have mattered so much if Matt had learnt the truth?’ she asked.
‘Oh, yes! He idolized his father — or rather, the memory of the man he thought was his father,’ Miss Justin shook her head. ‘I couldn’t take that away from him.’
‘Well, you know best, dear. But go on.’
As if soliloquizing, Miss Justin went on. William’s original demands had not contented him for long. He began asking for increased wages, for small (and sometimes not so small) sums to buy this or pay for that. When others were present he played his part admirably, but alone with her he was a different man. There was a malicious streak in him which delighted in humiliating her. She was never allowed to reproach him for his laziness or incompetence, to refer to the reason for his presence there, to demur when he asked for money. He had a system of ‘fines,’ as he called them, enforced whenever she broke any of the rules he had laid down. If she objected to its imposition the fine was immediately doubled.
Miss Mytton was filled with pity. ‘Poor Clara,’ she said, in what for her was a subdued tone. ‘What a dreadful experience! No wonder you hated him. And yet to everyone in the village you always spoke so highly of him.’
‘I had to. If I had said he was incompetent and lazy you would have expected me to sack him. And I dared not do that.’
‘How did he spend the money? I never heard any rumours in the village that he was throwing it around. Did he bank it?’
‘I suppose so. I think his idea was to acquire a fat bank balance, and then, when he had got all he could from me, to move on and start afresh somewhere else. And I suppose that’s what he would have done if Mr Cluster hadn’t interfered.’
Miss Mytton had been so engrossed in the villainy of William Bright that this sudden switch to John Cluster confused her. She sat for a moment trying to orientate her thoughts afresh.
‘But Cluster didn’t know about Matt, did he?’ she said eventually. ‘He couldn’t. Not unless William was foolish enough to tell him.’
Miss Justin perched herself again on the edge of the chair. ‘He told him when he was drunk. Not everything; but enough for Mr Cluster to guess the rest.’ (How strange, thought Miss Mytton, that she can still refer so politely to a man she hated sufficiently to murder.) ‘Or that’s what Mr Cluster said. He was waiting for me when I got home from the Maces’ party last Saturday. I think that’s why he came up here the night before, only he was too drunk to do anything about it.’ Her voice hardened. ‘He wasn’t as patient as William. He wasn’t prepared to accumulate wealth gradually, he wanted it at once. Five thousand pounds by Monday midday was what he wanted.’
Miss Mytton was too well-bred to express her concern by a whistle. Her lips went through the motions, but no sound came from them.
‘Five thousand pounds! So that was why you decided to kill him. Oh, Clara!’
‘No,’ Miss Justin said. ‘I was going to try and raise the money. I’d got so used to being robbed by William that it never occurred to me to do anything else. I thought about it all Sunday, and that evening I phoned Edward; I wanted him to advance me cash against some of my securities. But Edward was out.’ For the first time she showed signs of embarrassment. She turned to look at the dying fire as she added, ‘It was then I thought of you, Emily.’
‘Me? Good heavens, Clara, I haven’t got five thousand pounds!’
‘I didn’t think you had. Not available, anyway. But I’d worked myself into such a state that I just had to talk to someone, and it seemed natural to turn to you. If you couldn’t lend me the money at least you could advise me what to do.’ A warm glow swept through Miss Mytton at this unexpected tribute to her sagacity, but cooled slightly as Miss Justin went on, ‘I wasn’t going to tell you the whole truth, of course. Just that I needed five thousand pounds in cash by Monday.’
‘You didn’t know, of course, that I was away.’
‘No. And I didn’t telephone because — well, it wasn’t the sort of thing I could talk about on the telephone. So I just got the car out and went round to see you.’
Miss Mytton’s pulses quickened as she realized that they were reaching the meat of the matter. She was about to learn just what had happened in her cottage that Sunday evening.
‘Yes?’ she prompted, curiosity ousting all dread of what she might hear.
‘The cottage was in darkness,’ Miss Justin said. ‘I’d have thought you were out if I hadn’t noticed the front door was open. Then I heard a noise from upstairs, like someone snoring. I wondered if you were ill. So I switched on the hall and landing lights and went up to your room.’
And there she paused. Miss Mytton waited impatiently for the rest, so engrossed that she had not even flinched at the unkind implication that she snored. But the pause went on and on, with Miss Justin staring unseeing at the grate, in which only the faintest glow now showed.
Miss Mytton could bear the suspense no longer.
‘And Cluster was there?’ she said breathlessly.
‘Yes.’ Miss Justin turned to look at her. It was as though she had been waiting for that prompt to continue. ‘He was lying face down on the bed. I could see him quite clearly by the light from the landing, but I couldn’t think what he was doing there. I even suspected he might be an hallucination, that he and William between them had driven me out of my mind. But he was real enough. I touched him to make sure.’
She shivered, and closed her eyes tightly as though to shut out the memory.
‘I don’t know how long I stood watching him, and I don’t remember what I thought about. But I do remember going down to the sitting-room; it suddenly occurred to me that you might have been hurt or — or even killed. I knew how he hated you. But you weren’t there. And then I saw the knife on the dresser, and it gave me—’ Her body jerked as from a spasm. ‘So I went back upstairs and killed him. And then I came home.’
Miss Mytton felt cheated; it was almost an anti-climax. But she had not the heart to press for detail.
‘But to — to stick a knife into a man, Clara! Even a brute like Cluster!’ Unwittingly she was supplying the details herself. ‘How could you force yourself to do it? And then afterwards. Didn’t you feel simply dreadful? As though it were the end of everything?’
‘I don’t remember very much about it,’ Miss Justin said, almost apologetically. ‘I think I must have been in a sort of trance at the time. But I don’t think I felt dreadful, either then or afterwards. I remember Edward stopping to talk to me just after I’d put the car away — he had to stop, because Peter was in the road — and I think I behaved quite normally. I must have done, or he’d have made some comment. But he didn’t.’
At mention of Peter, Miss Mytton had realized that the dog was not with them. That was something to wonder at; she had never sat in that room during the past twelve years without Peter being present. But with such a glut of the unusual the dog’s absence seemed a trivial matter, and she ignored it.
‘And you still don’t feel anything?’ she persisted. ‘No remorse, for instance, or — or pity? Aren’t you even frightened?’
‘Not remorse. But I’ve certainly been frightened. I’ve lain awake at night and been absolutely terrified at the thought of what I’d done. Sometimes I couldn’t even believe that I had done it.’ Miss Justin took a deep breath. ‘What frightened me most was the possibility that I might be found out, that Matt would learn the truth.’ She gave a short, hard laugh. ‘But in my more optimistic moments I told myself it was most unlikely that anyone would even start to suspect me. You didn’t, did you?’
Miss Mytton admitted that no such thought had occurred to her. She had had a catholic range of suspects over the past week, but Clara had not been among them.
‘Did William guess what you’d done?’ she asked. ‘Is that why you killed him?’
Even as she said it she wondered at her own calm and the absurdity — improbability, almost — of the whole conversation. Here were two middle-aged ladies of genteel upbringing quietly discussing two murders which one of them had, equally improbably, admitted to having committed. Perhaps it was the very unreality of the situation which enabled her to accept it with a degree of equanimity. She had pinched herself several times to make quite sure that she was not dreaming, but even the pinches had not entirely convinced her.
‘Not right away, I don’t think,’ Miss Justin said. ‘He didn’t mention it when I saw him on Monday morning. He was probably uncertain how much, if anything, he had told Mr Cluster. Or perhaps, like you, he never got round to thinking of me. Perhaps he’d never have thought of me at all if he hadn’t found a note I’d started to write to Edward.’
‘Edward?’ Miss Mytton was startled. ‘You mean you actually wrote him a note saying you’d killed Cluster? Clara! How extremely stupid!’ She had begun to take such a personal interest in her friend’s exploits that it did not occur to her that this criticism was immoral.
‘I hadn’t killed him,’ Miss Justin said. ‘Not then. That was after I’d failed to get Edward on the telephone. I thought I’d leave a note at his house. But I never finished it; I tore it up. And William found the pieces when he emptied the waste-paper basket.’
‘What was in the note?’
Miss Justin wrinkled her brows. ‘I don’t remember exactly. But the gist of it was that Mr Cluster had found out
about Matt and wanted five thousand pounds. I don’t think I mentioned William.’ She sighed. ‘I ought to have burnt it, of course, not torn it up. But I didn’t know then what was going to happen, that it would be dangerous. And I was so worried—’ She broke off, and for the first time there was the vestige of a smile on her face. ‘The odd thing is that even when William read what I’d written he didn’t think it was I who’d killed Mr Cluster. He thought it was Edward. That’s why he went to see him.’
Even among so many startling announcements and revelations this one stood out challengingly. Miss Mytton promptly accepted the challenge.
‘But why, Clara? Why should William think it was Edward? I don’t understand.’
Miss Justin looked at her in faint astonishment.
‘Didn’t I tell you? Edward is Matt’s father.’
*
In the silence that followed Miss Mytton digested this piece of information. Until now it had not occurred to her to wonder about the identity of Matt’s father. She had not even thought of him as having a father — as though his had been another immaculate conception. Yet normally that would have been her immediate query.
Thinking back, she recalled that Edward had been a clerk in the employ of Ganton and Justin when she and Clara were girls. She had seen him occasionally when visiting their offices with her father. Then he had disappeared; and she had not seen him or thought about him again until he returned as a partner in the firm, prosperous and with a wife and family, on the death of old Mr Justin.
A family. Now she remembered something else, and she said sharply, ‘So that’s why you and Edward were so careful to keep Matt and Sybil apart! He’s her half-brother.’
Miss Justin sombrely agreed. ‘Although I don’t think the affection on either side was very strong. But I thought Edward ought to know. It would have been wrong to take the chance.’
‘Didn’t he know already?’
‘No. I didn’t tell him because I didn’t want to share Matt. Matt was mine.’ She gloated on this thought for a while. ‘Not that I need have had any qualms. Edward has never shown any particular affection for Matt, not even after he knew.’
