Downstairs in the kitchen she told Mrs. Deeping, “They’re carrying on something chronic, just as if it was all a joke—him and Miss Nora. I’ll say that for Miss Carey, she don’t join in. And Miss Honor, she sits there and doesn’t eat anything you can call eating—just a pick here and a pick there, and pushing it about on her plate.”
Mrs. Deeping looked as severe as her plump, good-natured face allowed.
“You get this pudding up whilst it’s hot, and don’t go passing remarks about what you hear in the dining-room to anyone else but me! Miss Honor’s been timid from a child, and Mr. Dennis he didn’t ought to tease her the way he does. But there—he’ve got his troubles like the rest of us. When I hear that crutch of his and think how he used to go tearing up the stairs four steps at a time—wild as hawks he and Miss Nora was, and that full of spirits you couldn’t hold them—it’s all I can do not to cry. So if he can get a bit of fun out of anything I’m not the one to grudge it, and it’s none of your business.”
“No, Mrs. Deeping,” said Molly with her eyes as round as saucers.
When she put the pudding down in front of Dennis he began to ask her about the letter.
“It came by hand?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, was there a stamp on it?”
“Oh, no, Mr. Dennis.”
“How was it addressed?”
“‘Mrs. Maquisten.’”
“Nothing else?”
“No, Mr. Dennis.”
“Then it must have come by hand. Did you see anyone coming up to the door or going away?”
“Oh, no. It was lying just inside on the mat—put in through the letter slit.”
“You don’t know how long it had been there?”
“No, Mr. Dennis.”
“Molly, think! Did you know the writing?”
She stood there looking confused, shaking her head.
“Was it like any writing you have seen before on a letter to Mrs. Maquisten?”
“Oh, no, Mr. Dennis.”
“Would you know it again?”
Molly brightened.
“Oh, yes! It was ever so straight up and down, and as clear as print.”
Whilst he helped the pudding, and before Molly was out of the room, he and Nora were hard at it discussing handwritings and the possible authorship of the letter.
“You see, if we know who wrote it—a dirty dog if ever there was one, and I hope someone plays the same trick on him or her—we can make a pretty good guess at which of us is for it, and we can be thinking up an extenuating circumstance or so. Darling—” he turned to Carey—“you were the first to see her after the blow. Are you quite sure she didn’t say anything about the letter?”
“No, she didn’t, Dennis.”
“Did you see it?”
She shook her head.
“No.”
“Where was she—in bed?”
Carey said, “Yes.” She had a picture in her mind of Honoria Maquisten sitting up very straight, with a deep colour of anger in her face, and eyes that went through and through you. Her own colour failed, leaving her noticeably white.
“I expect she’d got it tucked under her pillow,” said Nora. “She won’t get rid of it, because she’s got to bring it out when she starts throwing aspersions.”
She and Dennis continued to discuss the letter with zest.
Suddenly Honor looked up again and said,
“Perhaps Ellen knows—”
Dennis turned his charming smile upon her.
“Clever, aren’t you, my sweet? Of course none of us would think about that! But she doesn’t know any more than the rest of us. You see, I asked her.”
“But I’ll tell you who will know,” said Nora, “and that’s Ernest Hood. Let’s ring him up and ask him.”
“Too late—he’ll have gone home hours ago. Besides she needn’t have told him. As a matter of fact I don’t believe she has.”
“Then how could he draw up a new will?”
“Quite easily. She could make him put down all the legacies and leave the names to be filled in afterwards when she signed.”
Nora stared, her eyes quite round like a kitten’s.
“What made you think of that, Den?”
“Just something she said.… No, I can’t remember what it was—in fact it wasn’t anything, and that’s why I can’t remember it. I just got the impression that she was keeping everything under her hat until the last moment, and then we were all going to get a surprise. Besides she’s done it before.”
It was at this point that Molly came in and said in an alarmed voice that Mrs. Maquisten was ringing her bell, and please would they all go up.
Nora sprang from her chair.
“Gosh—I’ll have to change! She’ll massacre me if I show up in uniform. Honor, she hates that thing you’ve got on worse than poison. Better come up too. Put on the blue she gave you. It won’t take you a second, and it’s no good asking for trouble. Carey, go on up like an angel and hold the fort.”
With profound reluctance Carey went. Going slowly up the stairs, she heard Dennis’s voice from the hall, reassuringly casual.
“She won’t eat you—and I’ll be up in no time.”
All the same, the reassurance had rather ebbed away before she came to knock on the bedroom door. She bit her lip, and felt a light dew damp her temples and the palms of her hands.
She opened the door and went in. It was somehow a relief that Ellen was there, and that Cousin Honoria was out of bed sitting up in her chair beside the fire. She wore a wrap that Carey had not seen before—multi-coloured brocade on a gold and silver ground, very magnificent. She wore the pearls, and, amongst all her diamonds, a brooch with a black pearl at the centre, and a ring with a black pearl between two enormous brilliants. The picture served to dim the other picture which she had carried about with her since half past two—Cousin Honoria sitting up in her bed with that terrible flush on her face. It had gone now. She was speaking to Ellen when Carey came in. Ellen tossed her head and said in her muttering way,
“Here’s the first of them, and if you ask me, you’d be better laying in your bed and quieting yourself down.”
Mrs. Maquisten’s eyebrows rose.
“I don’t remember asking you, Ellen.” And then suddenly she clenched her fist and brought it down with a bang on the arm of the chair. “You’ll hold your tongue, and you’ll do what you’re told! And so will the rest of them while I’ve got breath in my body!”
Carey had a shrinking thought. “Queen Elizabeth—that’s who she’s like—when she was old—the long face, and the red hair, and all those jewels.”
Ellen passed her and went out of the room, but a little later it opened again to admit Honor, her lank fair hair rumpled by the haste with which she had pulled the blue dress over it, the dress itself awry, hitched up so that it showed a finger’s breadth of washed-out petticoat. Dennis came next, the tap of his crutch sounding along the passage. And two or three minutes later, Nora, freshly lipsticked, freshly powdered, her copper curls shining. She wore her emerald dress, the emerald and diamond brooch pinned carefully on.
After her outburst Mrs. Maquisten had been calmer. The flush had faded from her face. The clenched hands were relaxed.
Molly brought in the coffee tray and set it down on the table which Ellen had put ready. Honor slipped nervously into her place behind it, and was grateful that Dennis, leaning against the mantelpiece and looking down into the fire, should to some extent screen her from Aunt Honoria. For once he was quite silent, his eyes fixed on the glowing coal. Nobody spoke. Nora hovered for a moment and then walked up to the tray and stood there. Carey was left sitting a good deal nearer the presence than she would have chosen. Honoria Maquisten set a steady gaze upon her, shifting it to Nora, to Honor, to Dennis. The silence went on.
In the end it was Dennis who broke it, straightening up and coming over to drop down into his usual chair.
“Well, darling,” he said, “here
we all are. Are you going to scold us?”
The tension relaxed. Honor began to pour out the coffee, her hand no more unsteady than usual.
Mrs. Maquisten said, “No—not tonight.” The ring had gone out of her voice. It sounded flat and tired. After a moment she said the words again—“Not tonight.”
Nora looked round over her shoulder.
“Coffee, Aunt Honoria?”
Mrs. Maquisten appeared to rouse herself.
“Yes, I’ll have a cup. I’ve to take some wretched sleeping-draught or other, I believe, but that’s no reason why I shouldn’t have a decent cup of coffee as well.”
Honor, usually dumb, chose this moment to produce a remark.
“Oh, but won’t it keep you awake?”
The deep voice recovered its tone. The eyebrows rose.
“I should have thought that was my affair, not yours, Honor.”
Carey thought, “How frightful! How long is she going to keep us here? How completely senseless Honor is!”
From where she stood beside the tray Nora turned and said,
“How will you have it, Aunt Honoria—black—white—saccharine—sugar?”
Mrs. Maquisten tapped her knee, impatient fingers beating out an impatient measure and all the rings flashing.
“I said a decent cup of coffee.”
Nora smiled ingratiatingly.
“Meaning?”
“Milk and sugar and a dash of brandy. But I’ll have the sleeping-draught first, and then the other to take away the taste. Magda has left it all ready. You’d better ring for Ellen.”
When Ellen came in it was perfectly plain that she was in her most forbidding temper. Since the afternoon she had changed out of her woollen dress into a tight funereal garment of black artificial silk fastened at the neck with a horrible brooch containing plaits of human hair. Having shut the door a little more loudly than was necessary, she crossed the room to stand at Mrs. Maquisten’s side without taking the slightest notice of anyone else.
Honoria Maquisten continued to tap out that impatient tune.
“I’ll have my sleeping-draught. Nurse left it ready, didn’t she? I’ll have it now, whilst the coffee is hot.”
Ellen poked her head.
“I don’t hold with sleeping-draughts. I’ll bring you a nice hop pillow. Good enough to make anyone sleep, that is—and a heap better for you.”
At the familiar grumble Mrs. Maquisten relaxed. Ellen was an insubordinate old wretch who wanted putting in her place. After thirty-five years the game was still being played, and honours were just about easy. No satisfaction in quarrelling with people who flattened out. Ellen was cross and Ellen was tiresome, but Ellen was faithful, and above all Ellen wasn’t afraid of her. The old spark leapt to her eyes.
“A nice hop pillow—that’s what you want.”
“When I do I’ll tell you.”
“And my grandmother, she said to put in a bunch of all the other ’erbs you could lay hands on, and that’s the way I always done mine.”
“I want my sleeping-draught. You know where it is—on the bathroom shelf.”
“How should I know? I don’t hold with sleeping-draughts! And my grandmother said, ‘You dry them all together three days between Midsummer and Lammas and stuff your pillow good and full, and it’ll last you years.’”
Mrs. Maquisten burst out laughing.
“Ellen—you old wretch! I wouldn’t be seen dead in the same bed with your hop pillow! And I want my sleeping-draught before the coffee gets cold.”
“Then someone else can get it for you, for I don’t hold with it! There’s Miss Nora that runs up and down the stairs like a mad thing, and it isn’t what a young married woman ought to do. And there’s Miss Carey that you’ve been so taken up with. Let one of them fetch it if you’re set on taking it! I’m not giving you any sleeping-draughts—not tonight nor any other time! What’s that nurse for if it isn’t to do her work? And whose work is it, giving sleeping-draughts and such-like? It wasn’t what I was engaged for!”
“Ah—” said Honoria Maquisten. It was not so much a word as a long-drawn sigh. “I didn’t need them then, did I?”
They might have been alone. Ellen’s face twitched. She said in a softer tone,
“You take and have the hop pillow, my dear.”
The intimate moment passed, slipping away like water. Honoria Maquisten was laughing again.
“You and your hop pillow! Be off with you, you old villain! I’ll be giving you notice one of these days. Carey—go and get me the medicine-glass off the bathroom shelf!”
Carey was glad enough to go. The sooner the sleeping-draught was taken, the sooner this horrible evening would be over.
As she opened the connecting door and switched on the light she could hear Ellen’s grumbling voice going away down the room behind her, dwindling to a mutter, ceasing at the sound of the closing door.
The bathroom, which lay between Cousin Honoria’s bedroom and the one occupied by Magda Brayle, connected with each. There was also a door to the passage. With the exception of these doors, which were painted to match, the walls were covered with pale green tiles with a pattern of storks and waterlillies let in among them. There was a green bath, and a green hand-basin with a shelf over it. And right in the middle a medicine-glass rather more than half full of cloudy water.
Carey picked up the glass and came back into the room, clicking out the light and shutting the door behind her. Mrs. Andrews had been fussy about lights, so that she was very well trained.
“There’s a flask on the table by my bed,” Honoria Maquisten called over her shoulder. “Bring it here! I’ll put in the brandy myself for a change—Magda scrimps it. And now take the glass over to Honor, and scc that she puts in a lump of sugar as well as the coffee and milk! And bring a spoon!”
A feeling of relief began to spread. The party was nearly over, and nobody had been shot to pieces.
Carey took the glass over to the table and returned with it again. Honoria Maquisten stirred it, put in as much brandy as there was room for, stirred it again, and drank it off. Then she handed the glass to Carey and told her to put it back on the shelf—“Magda can wash it when she comes in. It’s her job.”
But Carey waited to wash the glass. That was one of the things that came out afterwards.
When she came back Mrs. Maquisten was sipping her decent cup of coffee with enjoyment. Nora was saying something, but whatever it was it never got finished, for Mrs. Maquisten suddenly rested her cup and saucer on her knee and said harshly and directly,
“That is enough about that! You are all here now, and I wish to speak to you. You can sit down, Nora. Carey, come round where I can see you! Honor, stop fidgeting!”
Dennis turned his smile upon her.
“What am I to do, darling?”
Their eyes met—hazel eyes, so very much alike, dominant anger in hers, something that resisted and would always resist in his, with a smile to cover it.
She said in what for her was a low tone, “Be quiet, Dennis.” Then, raising it, “I want to speak to you.”
But she did not speak at once. She let an unendurable silence fall. Honor had been fiddling with a coffee-spoon. She still held it between her fingers, but without any movement. Her eyes were fixed upon it. Nobody moved. The silence went on.
At long last Honoria Maquisten broke it. She said,
“You will all be here tomorrow at a quarter to two—here, in this room. I accept no excuse from anyone.” She turned her eyes on Nora. “It will come into your lunch hour. If necessary, you will plead very urgent private affairs. Her look travelled on, touching them all. “I have told Robert that he is to be here. Hood will be bringing me the draft of my new will. I shall have something to say to you all before I sign it. I have made a good many wills, but this one is final. I shall fill in the names and certain details tomorrow and sign the draft. I do not feel inclined to wait for Mr. Aylwin’s return. He might be delayed, and neither he nor anyone else will,
turn me from what is my decided purpose. And now you may go! Nora—ring for Molly to come and take away the tray, and go and tell Ellen to come and put me to bed!” She lifted her coffee-cup and drank what remained in it at a draught. “Put this back on the tray, Carey! And now all of you go! I-am tired.”
They trooped out.
At the door Carey turned and looked back. She saw Honoria Maquisten sitting up straight in her many-coloured brocade with its gleams of silver and gold and her diamonds flashing. The overhead light shone down on the piled red hair with its elaborate curls, on the long white face, the scarlet patch high on either cheek, the proud, set mouth, the brilliant eyes.
Dennis had turned too. He blew a kiss and called, “Sleep well, darling!”
The door was shut.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Magda Brayle came in at half past ten. Carey heard the click of the front door lock and turned to look. She was on her way up to bed, and she was very tired. She turned on the fourth step and saw Magda come in. That is to say she knew it must be Magda because she had just used her latchkey and come in with an air of being quite at home, but if she had seen her anywhere else it would never have occurred to her that they had met before. Magda was a neat starched outline, a set of colourless features, an apron and a cap. This was a very smart young woman in a fur coat which at any rate looked expensive, sheer silk stockings, and high-heeled shoes, her hair curled up in a pouf above her brow, pearl studs in her ears, eyebrows and lashes darkened, and plenty of bright lipstick. It was quite astonishing how different she looked. Carey found herself staring, and made haste to speak.
“I’m just going up to bed. I hope you’ve had a nice time.”
Magda hurried past her with a brief “Oh, quite,” but turned a little higher up to enquire over her shoulder,
“Did she take her sleeping-draught?”
“Oh, yes.”
One foot on the next step, Magda said,
“When?”
“Oh, about a quarter to nine. Yes, it must have been, because we got downstairs again in time for the nine o’clock news.”
“You were all there?”
Silence in Court Page 7
