“Charles,-”
His hand pressed hers.
“Did you hear it?”
“Yes.”
“Charles-what was it?”
The silence settled again. That faint sound had reached them when the wine-cellar door gave way with a crash and set all the underground echoes calling.
Miss Silver flashed her torch round the well stocked bins, up to the low roof, down again to the flagged floor. At the far end a cask or two, packing-cases, a shred of white torn paper. She picked it up.
“They’ve been here, Mr. Millar. I think we’ll move those casks.”
On the other side of the casks and of that thick, deadening wall Margaret was listening as she had not listened since Freddy Pelham had left her in the dark alone. She could hear nothing.
But she had heard something. Suppose they came and went away again. The thought pierced to the quick. She tried to call out, but the terror of the thought took away her voice; it failed in a dry throat. She tried to tell Charles to shout. Her hand clung to his.
And suddenly the door swung in. The silence broke into harsh sound. The bolts went loudly back, and the door swung in. The noise was overwhelming. Archie’s shout shook the cellar, and a dancing, flashing ray struck her eyes like a blow. Darkness closed over her.
When she opened her eyes again, someone was giving her water to drink, and it was light. She looked at the light and wondered at it. Grey London light, but how beautiful! She drank again. Water-how lovely! Light-air-water! She drew a long, long breath, and came back from the half way place between dream and waking. She was lying on the sofa in the study. A little woman in a drab rain-coat was holding water to her lips in a cracked breakfast-cup.
Margaret took another lovely sip and sat up. She saw Charles, dusty, blood-stained, unshaven, his face smeared and dirtier than anything she could have imagined. He put down the cup from which he had been drinking, and came to her and kissed her. It didn’t matter how dirty his face was. How lovely! How lovely to be alive-to be together! The most exquisite happiness filled her. She began to cry.
Then all of a sudden she remembered Freddy Pelham, and her mother waiting in Vienna. She said,
“Freddy-someone must stop him!”
She sprang up.
“Charles-it isn’t too late! It isn’t, it isn’t too late-Archie!”
She turned to him with outstretched hands, and Archie Millar turned away.
Charles Moray put his arm about her.
“Better tell her,” he said in a low voice-he spoke to Miss Silver. Then, “Margaret-”
Miss Silver spoke in her colourless tones:
“Miss Langton, your mother is quite safe. Mr. Pelham has been-arrested.”
Margaret leaned against Charles. She felt weak and cold. Miss Silver took her hand and patted it. Her touch was kind.
“I bought a paper on my way here. Mr. Pelham was arrested in his flight. His aeroplane crashed in the fog. The pilot was picked up by a Channel boat. Mr. Pelham was drowned. Your mother, my dear, is quite safe.”
Margaret tried to say “Thank you.” She knew Miss Silver was kind. She knew that there had been deliverance. But she had come to the end of her strength.
She turned and hid her face on Charles Moray’s dusty coat.
Part of a letter from Miss Margot Standing to her friend Stephanie:
… I’ll tell you all about it at Christmas. We’ll have a lovely time. And you shall see Archie. We’re not engaged, because Papa says I’m not old enough to be engaged, and Archie says so too. Archie’s frightfully in love with me-at least he won’t say he is, but I’m sure he is. And Papa likes him most frightfully. I think I shall have a sapphire ring. But I don’t want to be married for simply ages.
Margaret and Charles are going to be married next week. I would love to be Margaret’s bridesmaid, but she isn’t going to have any because of her stepfather. He was a nice little man, and I expect she’s frightfully sorry about it. He was drowned in an aeroplane, so she and Charles aren’t really going to have a wedding-they’re just going to be married. I call it frightfully dull…
Patricia Wentworth
Born in Mussoorie, India, in 1878, Patricia Wentworth was the daughter of an English general. Educated in England, she returned to India, where she began to write and was first published. She married, but in 1906 was left a widow with four children, and returned again to England where she resumed her writing, this time to earn a living for herself and her family. She married again in 1920 and lived in Surrey until her death in 1961.
Miss Wentworth’s early works were mainly historical fiction, and her first mystery, published in 1923, was The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith. In 1928 she wrote The Case Is Closed and gave birth to her most enduring creation, Miss Maud Silver.
***
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Grey Mask Page 24
