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Silence in Court
Patricia Wentworth
CHAPTER ONE
She was so rigidly controlled as she came into the dock that she wasn’t Carey Silence any more, or a girl, or young, but just a will to walk straight and seemly, to hold a proud head high, to bar sight and hearing against all these people who had come to see her tried for her life. There was a moment when the grip she had of herself wavered giddily. Long ago when she was a child she had been taken up the winding stair of a castle and brought suddenly out upon the open top of the keep to see a river diamond-bright like a twisted thread among tiny fields a long way down, roofs like the roofs of a toy village, a clockwork car small as a beetle in the dust. A frightful giddiness had rushed in upon her then, little specks, and she was wrenched from them to this horrible height. The day had ended in complete disgrace because she had thrown herself down flat upon her face and refused to move.
Out of all the things that had ever happened to her this moment came back now—not in words, scarcely even in a picture, but with the memory of that sick moment when all familiar things had dwindled to a vanishing point. She beat it off. There was enough strength in her for that. The wardress who had come into the dock with her touched her on the shoulder and told her to sit down. She sat holding her hands in her lap and looking straight before her. After a moment or two it was not so bad. The worst of it was coming out into the dock and feeling all those eyes upon her as if she had been stripped naked and set there to be looked at. Well, they were looking. She held herself against them. The giddy moment was over, she could go on holding now.
She drew a long, steady breath, and then the wardress touched her again and she stood up whilst the Clerk read the indictment. The words went by her—odd cumbersome words, as out of date and curiously impressive as the crimson of the judge’s robes and the harsh iron-grey of his eighteenth-century wig. He had a little alert face like a squirrel, with bitten-in lips and small bright eyes. She found that she wasn’t attending to the words. They went by, and she knew it all so well. That is to say, she knew the meaning, but the words were cumbersome and difficult. They set forth that on the sixteenth day of November Honoria Maquisten had died of an overdose of a sleeping-draught, and that the said overdose had been feloniously administered by the accused with intent to cause the death of the said Honoria Maquisten.
The indictment was over. She sat down again.
Sir Wilbury Fossett, counsel for the Crown, rose to open the case. She saw him get to his feet, large, bland, unhurried, and a wave of fear came over her. It was like seeing someone stand up to shoot at you—someone quite calm and at his ease, quite terribly practised in the weapon he was going to use. Her heart thudded hard against her side, and she lost what he was saying. Then, as she steadied again, Cousin Honoria’s name came through.
“The accused is a relative of the deceased Mrs. Maquisten. She is the granddaughter of a cousin who was her greatest friend when they were girls together. Death robbed Mrs. Maquisten of her friend, and circumstances separated her from that friend’s daughter. A long estrangement ensued. Then one day Mrs. Maquisten saw in the papers that a young girl had been involved in a railway accident due to enemy action. This girl’s name attracted her attention. She rang up the hospital, made enquiries, and discovered that Miss Carey Silence was indeed the granddaughter of her cousin and early friend. A correspondence followed, and when it transpired that Miss Silence had been ordered a three months’ rest, Mrs. Maquisten wrote and offered her a home. This offer was gratefully accepted. On November 2nd, therefore, the accused entered Mrs. Maquisten’s household.…”
CHAPTER TWO
Emerging from Maitland Road into Maitland Square, Carey Silence looked first to her left and then to her right to see how the numbers ran. Over the top of her head the voice of Mr. Jefferson Stewart said,
“It’s on the left, if you’re not too independent to have me say so.”
Carey tilted her chin and looked up at him. The look was a challenging one. If Jeff Stewart thought he was going to come it over her just because he had managed to find out when she was coming and turn up to meet the train looking about seven feet high and trying to be dictatorial about a taxi, he had got to be shown. Right there in the station yard she had got down to showing him. If she couldn’t afford a taxi or didn’t choose to afford one, that was her own private affair; it had nothing to do with Jeff Stewart. She was perfectly able to carry her suitcase. And wasn’t there a tube station not more than a quarter of a mile from Maitland Square? If she couldn’t walk a quarter of a mile it wasn’t much good her coming out of hospital, was it? At which point Jeff had laughed, a very interfering sort of laugh, picked up the suit-case with his left hand, taken her by the elbow with his right, and remarked peaceably, “O.K.—you win.” As this was the first sign he had ever shown of a tractable disposition, she concluded that it was the right way to handle him. Firmness—that’s what he needed, and that’s what he was going to get. She looked up and said,
“How do you know which side the house is?”
He appeared pained.
“Well now, what do you take me for? Your being Mrs. Maquisten’s cousin and my being your cousin, that practically makes me a cousin of all the Maquisten lot. Looked at like that—”
“Who’s looking at it like that?”
“I was. And I was getting all ready to fix it so you were too.”
Standing at the left-hand corner of Maitland Square, Carey tapped the pavement with her foot.
“Now, Jeff Stewart—”
“All right, all right.” There was a lazy smile in his eyes and his voice was lazy too. “If your Aunt Flora marrying my Uncle Jonathan Stewart down in Richmond doesn’t make me your cousin, what does?”
Carey tapped again.
“Nothing.”
“So of course I went right away and got acquainted with Mrs. Maquisten.
“You didn’t!”
His smile broadened.
“Very unbelieving sort of disposition you’ve got. Why, I was calling her Cousin Honoria inside of the first ten minutes. She’s got a much more logical sort of mind than you have. The minute I got down to explaining about Aunt Flora writing you to say I was coming over on lease-lend business and you were to be a nice affectionate cousin to me, she got interested right away and said you were coming to stay with her—which I knew, but thought perhaps better not say so. There she was, saying I must look upon them all as cousins and come and see you whenever I liked.”
Carey’s colour had risen.
“I don’t believe a word of it!”
“All right honey, you just wait and see.”
“And you’re not to call me honey.”
He looked disappointed.
“Certainly not.”
“Why not?”
An awful feeling that inside of five minutes this large American might be calling her honey in front of old Cousin Honoria whom she had never seen in her life prompted her to blandishment, a good deal against the grain. She lifted the long dark lashes which made the blue of her eyes seem even darker than it really was and said,
“Jeff—”
“All right, honey.”
Inside herself Carey was angry, but she also wanted to laugh. The laughter and the anger shook together in her voice. She repeated his name. “Jeff!”
He responded with gratifying meekness.
“What do I call you?”
“Carey.”
“Sounds sort of cold. But it’s just like you say, so long as I don’t forget.”
She began to walk briskly alon
g the left-hand side of the Square. The first house was 35, the next one 33. She said in what she hoped was a repressive tone,
“You mustn’t forget.”
Over her head Jeff Stewart’s agreeable voice remarked,
“I’m liable to—I’ve a very poor memory.”
He got no answer to this. Carey was counting the houses. If she let him make her laugh, it would be all up—she’d never be able to manage him again. But why she should want to laugh when she was furious with him was more aggravating than words could say. It was particularly enraging to notice that he was carrying her suit-case as if it weighed about four ounces, whereas when she tried to lift it herself it appeared to be filled with lead. That was the worst of men, they were so odiously, infuriatingly strong.
Jeff said, “You needn’t count the houses—I’ll tell you when We come to it. Wouldn’t you like the low-down on the family before we get there? You don’t know any of them, do you?”
She looked up, a little startled.
“Is there anyone besides Cousin Honoria? She didn’t say.”
“Well then, see how useful I’m going to be. Anyone else? I’ll say so!”
“Who?”—a little anxiously.
“Well, Cousin Honoria—now don’t interrupt and say you know, because if you haven’t seen her you don’t. Is she the Queen of Sheba! I wouldn’t like you to think I was exaggerating, so I’ll just say she’d have had Solomon guessing and leave it at that. Then there’s her nephew, Dennis Harland—a couple of years younger than me, I should say—R.A.F.—got smashed up flying, and they’re trying to put him together again—not so bad now—gets about with a crutch. He’s there between treatments, getting home comforts. Amusing chap. But you’d better not find him too amusing. A bit of a lad, as you say over here.”
Carey lifted her lashes again.
“Thank you, grandpapa!”
Jeff Stewart continued without taking any notice of this.
“Robert Maquisten is another nephew. He doesn’t exactly live in the house, but he’s there a lot. He’s in business. Then there’s a niece called Nora Hull with a husband in the Middle East. She drives for some general or other. Pretty little thing—lots to say for herself—knows all about everything. And another niece, on the Maquisten side, Honor King—sort of girl you wonder if she’s anywhere at all when she isn’t there, but they say she packs parcels for prisoners of war. And then a rather controlled kind of a nurse—Magda Brayle.”
“How do you mean, controlled?”
Jeff Stewart considered.
“Kind of starchy,” he said. “Kind of ‘I’m a nurse, and don’t you forget it!’ Kind of ‘Here’s your nice medicine—drink it up!’ But Cousin Honoria keeps her end up.”
Carey laughed.
“You seem to have found out quite a lot in one visit, Jeff,” she said.
“Who said it was one visit. I went and called there at tea-time on Sunday. I lunched there on Tuesday, and dined on Thursday to meet Robert and Nora. You didn’t believe me, but you just wait and see—they’re practically my folks. Here we are.”
The house rose up before them, grey and large. Maitland Square had been lucky. There were gaps amongst the houses in Maitland Street, but the Square had escaped without damage. Number 13 had all its windows. Four shallow steps led up to the front door. A stone canopy overhead was chipped, but only slightly. The door had been painted black. The ornate brass knocker which had once adorned it had passed into salvage. Vaguely its outline could be traced upon the dimmed surface of the paint. The number 13 displayed above in white paint replaced the brass figures, which had also gone.
Jeff Stewart said, “Well, here we are.”
Carey walked up the four steps under the shadow of the porch and rang the bell.
CHAPTER THREE
A plump, fresh-faced girl of seventeen took Carey up to the first floor and along a passage, where she knocked upon an imposing mahogany door. A deep voice said “Come in!” The door was thrown open. The girl said “Miss Silence, if you please, madam.” Carey walked in.
The room was large, and lighted by two long windows opening upon a wrought-iron balcony. It contained a great deal of furniture, as much as any ordinary drawing-room, and Honoria Maquisten in bed. Actually it was only the bed that Carey saw in that first moment—the bed and Cousin Honoria. It stood opposite the door against the black wall between the fireplace and the farther window, and it was immensely large. Four silver columns rose to support a canopy from which depended heavy curtains of emerald and silver brocade. A coverlet of the same material concealed the bed-clothes.
Honoria Maquisten sat up straight against a heaped mass of green, violet, and blue pillows, with a shimmering silver wrap about her shoulders. Sitting there, she looked as if she must be immensely tall; her stiff, narrow shoulders were so high above the level of the bed, whilst the piled-up curls of a flaring copper wig raised this impression of height to the fantastic.
As she advanced Carey had time to be angry with Jeff Stewart. What was the good of saying that Cousin Honoria was like the Queen of Sheba and leaving it at that? The Queen of Sheba didn’t wear a vermilion wig dressed about a foot high in several thousand curls. She might, of course, have worn diamond earrings and more rings than you could really believe in, and it was quite likely that she dripped with pearls. Cousin Honoria was wearing five rows, and they were so large that you couldn’t believe that they hadn’t come from Woolworth’s.
She reached the side of the bed and put out a hand to meet the long, thin one which Was extended to her. It felt bony and hard in hers, and the rings ran into her. Some of them had slipped round, and the faceted gems pressed into her flesh with their little sharp points. She had come up on the inner side of the bed because Cousin Honoria was a little nearer to that side. The hand gripped and held her there with the light on her face. A pair of brilliant hazel eyes under plucked and darkened eyebrows looked her through and through. Not a muscle of the face moved. The long, thin features, the rather wide mouth, the chin a little over-weighted by the rest of the face—all were without expression. The carefully tinted skin, the carefully smoothed-out wrinkles, the brilliant scarlet lips, gave a blank effect. Only the eyes were lively, eager, and penetrating.
After a moment Hogoria Maquisten said in her deep voice,
“Take off your hat.”
Carey put up her free hand and pulled it off. Her head with its shining black hair came into view. There were two or three soft curls above the brow, and some more at the side and back, but the whole effect was neat, and trim, and shining, The black hair contrasted pleasantly with a naturally white skin and dark blue eyes well shaded with lashes of the same colour as the hair. With startling suddenness Mrs. Maquisten’s face ceased to be a blank. The cheeks puckered, the wide mouth trembled. Tears rushed to the eyes, and the deep voice said,
“Oh, my dear—you are so like Julia!”
You don’t really think of your grandmother by her Christian name. Carey said, “Julia?” and thought too late that it would have been better to say nothing at all.
Still holding her hand and pressing a diamond ring into it, Mrs. Maquisten said,
“My dear, dear Julia—your grandmother.” She brought her other hand into action and patted Carey. “My first cousin, you know, but we were just like sisters. She died too young. It must be fifty years ago, but I haven’t forgotten her, and I never shall. But your mother married Arbuthnot Silence, and we didn’t get on at all. A most opinionated man, though of course he was your father, so we won’t say any more about him, and it’s a long time ago. How old are you?”
“I am twenty-two, Cousin Honoria.”
The hazel eyes took on a tragic look.
“Julia died when she was twenty. And nobody told me that you were like her. It’s like seeing her again after all these years. Why didn’t they call you Julia?”
Carey felt very glad that they had not. Cousin Honoria was trying to make her feel like a ghost. She resisted with all her mi
ght. Julia was dead. She wasn’t Julia’s ghost, she was Carey Silence with her own life to live. She held tight oil to that and said,
“I don’t know.”
Honoria Maquisten let go of her hand and pulled herself up a little higher against her pillows. The wide mouth broke into a smile.
“It doesn’t mean anything to you, does it? But it’s a great pleasure to me, so you mustn’t mind. I won’t bother you about it. And you mustn’t mind being like Julia, because she was very pretty and everyone loved her. And that’s all we’ll say about her now, because I want to talk about you. Are you quite strong again?”
“Oh, yes.”
“But they won’t pass you for any of the services?”
“No. They said to come back in three months.”
“Yes, I remember you said so in one of your letters. You certainly ought not to rough it until you are quite strong. You won’t want to talk about the experience.”
“I don’t really know much about it. Mr. Andrews was going down to his constituency, and I was with him—I was his secretary, you know. And then the sirens sounded and the train stopped, and there was some firing. Mr. Andrews called out, and I think he pulled me down off the seat, so I suppose he saved my life. And the next thing I knew I was in a hospital all bandaged up, and they told me he was dead. He Was such a dear old thing. I loved working for him.”
“But you don’t want to go on being a secretary?”
Carey flushed.
“I thought I might try for a temporary post—”
Mrs. Maquisten said, “Stuff and rubbish!” Then she burst out laughing. “Come—I’m not in the least what you expected, am I?”
Carey laughed too.
“I don’t know what I expected.”
The hazel eyes danced, lighting up the long, thin face.
“Not me anyhow! A nice old lady, sitting by the fire In a shawl, with silver hair—portrait of a grandmother. No, a great-aunt—I never had any brats. Lord—how I hate white hair! Mine’s been red all my life, and red it’s going to stay. No, it isn’t a wig, though I expect you think it is. I’ve always had a good head of hair, and it’s nobody’s business where the colour comes from.”
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