Poison in the Pen (The Miss Silver Mysteries Book 29)

by Patricia Wentworth

  Out of the darkness at her side he said, ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know—’

  He laughed.

  ‘A bit eleventh-hour, isn’t it?’

  He heard her take her breath.

  ‘Why did you go away?’

  There was a movement as if his shoulder had lifted and dropped again. The gesture came up out of the past, as dearly familiar as the tough lean body, the dark hair, the slant of his brows, the mobile mouth, the swift change of expression from grave to gay. He said, ‘Needs must when the devil drives.’

  ‘Jason, why did you go?’

  ‘My darling sweet, there is only one answer to “Why?” and that is “Because.”’

  ‘Meaning you are not going to tell me?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Got it in one.’

  She said in a low shaken voice, ‘Why did you come back?’

  ‘About time I did, wasn’t it?’

  After a little she said, ‘No.’ And then, ‘If you hadn’t come—’

  ‘You would have married Gilbert and everything would have been all right?’

  She took another of those long sighing breaths.

  ‘No. There isn’t any way out.’

  In her own mind she thought, ‘I’m in a trap. I can’t marry Gilbert. I can’t break it off. Not now. Not like this.’

  The church began to strike. The twelve strokes fell upon the air with a mellow sound. Jason said, ‘Well, darling, it is your wedding day. What does it feel like?’

  She put the flat of her palm upon the step between them and pushed herself up. She felt as if the weight was too much for her to lift. But she was no sooner on her feet than he pulled her down again.

  ‘No good running away from it, Val. You know you can’t marry him.’

  Having pulled her down, he let go of her at once.

  Her voice sounded lost as she said, ‘I must.’

  ‘You know perfectly well that you can’t! I’m not doing anything to influence you. I haven’t touched you. I haven’t kissed you, I’m not making any impassioned appeals. I’m just asking you what you expect to happen if you go through with this marriage. Who do you think is going to get anything out of it? If you’re thinking of Gilbert, I can imagine pleasanter things than finding yourself landed with a reluctant girl who is in love with somebody else. If you are thinking of me, I can assure you that I shall get anything you may suppose me to have deserved. And if you are thinking of yourself – well, I should recommend you to think again.’

  She did not feel that she had anything to think with. She put her face down into her hands and leaned forward until they rested upon her knees. She had no thoughts, only feelings. In retrospect the lonely ache when he was gone. Now and here Jason so near that her least, slightest movement would bridge the space between them. In the future beyond these passing hours of darkness a nothingness, a blank in which she could conceive of neither thought nor action.

  Time went by. He did not move or speak, but if they had been locked in one another’s arms, she could not have been more aware of him. In the end she lifted her face a little and said in a weeping voice, ‘Why – did – you – go?’

  He gave that half shrug again. This time it was followed by words.

  ‘I had something to attend to.’

  She went on as if he had not spoken, or as if she had not heard.

  ‘You came to meet me here. You didn’t say that you were going away. You kissed me, and you went. You didn’t write. You didn’t come—’ Her breath failed, and the words with it.

  He said, ‘It was tough for you. I always told you loving me was going to be tough.’

  She got her breath again.

  ‘People can’t just go away like that. And come back. And find that nothing has changed. If you are too unhappy you just can’t go on.’

  He said without impatience, ‘You knew I came, and went, and didn’t write.’

  Again she went on as if she hadn’t heard him.

  ‘I got a letter. Someone wrote it, but I don’t know who it was. It said there was a girl, and that was why you went.’

  ‘I can’t tell you why I went. There wasn’t any girl.’

  ‘There were three letters altogether. They were – nasty – as if slugs had crawled on them.’

  ‘Anonymous letters are apt to be like that. You could have had more sense than to believe what they said.’

  Her head came up.

  ‘I didn’t! Jason, I didn’t! But the slime got on to everything.’

  He said with something that wasn’t quite a laugh, ‘Try yellow soap and a nailbrush!’ Then, with an abrupt change of manner, ‘Val, wake up! You can either believe in me or not believe in me. Whichever you do, you’ve got to do it blind. Your anonymous letter writer didn’t produce any evidence, I take it? Well, I’m not producing any either. If you believe in me you believe in me, and that’s that. If you don’t believe in me, we make a clean cut here and now, and I wish you joy. As I remarked a little while ago, it is your wedding day. Or not, as the case may be.’

  She cried out at that.

  ‘You haven’t even said you love me!’

  His voice did not change.

  ‘If you don’t know that without being told, there aren’t enough words in the language to get it across.’

  And all at once she did know it – deeply, surely, and with certainty. He had gone away and said nothing. He had come back, and he would say nothing still. Perhaps the same thing would happen again. Perhaps it would happen many times. Perhaps she wouldn’t be able to bear it – she didn’t know. But she did know that he loved her, and because of that she couldn’t marry Gilbert Earle. She got to her feet and stood there below the wooden steps, looking up at him as he rose too.

  ‘I must go. It won’t be my wedding day, Jason.’

  She went down the hill alone, as she had come. She knew what she was going to do, but she did not in the least know how she was going to do it. They had parted without a kiss, without a touch. What was between them was much stronger than kisses or the touch of the flesh, and she had so nearly betrayed it. She was like the sleep-walker who awakes suddenly on the sheer edge of some frightful fall. Another step and her foot would have been over the edge. The space of a few hours and she would have been Gilbert’s wife. Everything in her shuddered, and then sprang up exulting because she had waked in time.

  She came on to the terrace and back through the door which she had left ajar. As she passed between the folds of pale brocade and drew them close behind her, the darkness in the room was like a solid wall. She couldn’t see to take a single step, she couldn’t see her hand before her face. She turned her head a little to the right and saw, cutting the darkness, one bright streak. The door into Scilla’s sitting-room was ajar and there was a light there.

  She moved towards it without thought or plan. It drew her and she went towards it. When she was about a yard away she stopped, because someone was speaking, there in the lighted room. It was Gilbert Earle, and what he said was, ‘Scilla, what is the use?’

  And Scilla laughed.

  It was a slow, lazy laugh. She said, ‘Darling, I wasn’t really thinking about things being useful.’

  They must have been very close together. The two voices came from the same place. If they were not in one another’s arms, the voices would not sound so close. He said with a kind of groan, ‘We’ve been over it all before.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t face it.’ There was a light flavour of contempt in her voice.

  He sounded as if he had drawn back a little.

  ‘We always knew it couldn’t last.’

  ‘You always meant to eat your cake and have it, didn’t you, darling? In fact, to put it bluntly, you always meant to have Valentine’s money.’

  ‘I’m very fond of her.’

  ‘But just a little fonder of the money.’

  ‘You’ve no right to say a thing like that! I couldn’t afford to marry a girl who hadn’t somethin
g of her own.’

  ‘You couldn’t afford to marry me?’

  ‘My dear girl, there’s no question of my marrying you.’

  She said quite softly and sweetly, ‘Roger would divorce me – if he knew.’

  It had all passed too quickly for Valentine’s thought to take hold of it. There was a shattering sense of shock. She turned round and groped her way towards the other door. Her outstretched hands touched nothing until she came to it. She had made no sound, and she had not stumbled.

  She passed through the hall and up the stairs to her own room.

  TEN

  AFTER MISS SILVER had brushed her hair and arranged it for the night, plaiting and controlling it with a stronger net than the one which she used by day, it was her invariable practice to read a chapter from the Bible before putting out the light and composing herself to sleep. Tonight, sitting up in her warm blue dressing-gown with the hand-made crochet trimming which had already done good service upon two earlier gowns, she read with edification in the Book of Proverbs and the sixth chapter. Passing from a recommendation to avoid becoming surety for a stranger and the advice given to the sluggard to consider the industry of the ant, in both of which she wholeheartedly concurred, she came to the description of the man who sowed discord, and the inclusion amongst things hated by the Lord of –

  ‘A lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,

  ‘A heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief,

  ‘A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.’

  This seemed to her to have so direct a bearing upon the situation in Tilling Green that it engaged her very particular attention. Whether these were the reflections of Solomon or not, how strong a searchlight they turned upon the darker recesses of the human mind, and what age-old wisdom they displayed. It was some time before she closed the book and addressed herself to her devotions.

  When they were completed, she took off the dressing-gown and laid it across her folded clothes, after which she put out the light, drew back the curtains, and opened the farther of the two windows, reflecting as she did so how habits had changed in this direction. Her grandmother would never have dreamed of allowing the night air into a bedroom except during a period of summer heat. Not much more than a hundred years ago not only were the windows shut and the curtains drawn, but the beds were curtained too. Her common sense approved the change, though she considered that the young people of the present generation sometimes went too far in the opposite direction. Tonight the air was mild, and she pushed the casement wide. The night was not a dark one. The moon hid behind the cloud which veiled the sky. She could see the path to the gate, but not the road, or the grass beyond it. As she stood watching, a car came out of the Manor gates on the far side of the Green. It was followed after a moment by another, and another. There had been a party there on the eve of the wedding, and the guests were going away. Miss Mettie Eccles was one of them. She and Connie Brooke, who was to be a bridesmaid, would be walking across the Green together. So pleasant for both of them.

  She was just about to turn away, when she heard, first footsteps, and then the click of a gate. Not the gate of Willow Cottage, nor of Miss Mettie’s cottage on the left. The sound came from the other side. It was, in fact, the gate of Gale’s Cottage that had clicked, and Gale’s Cottage was the residence of Mr Barton who had been described by Frank Abbott as the chief mystery of Tilling Green. He had called him a quiet, harmless old boy who kept cats and would not have a woman in the house, even to locking his door against them and doing his own cooking and cleaning.

  Miss Silver leaned forward a little. She had not as yet set eyes on this next-door neighbour, though she had heard quite a lot about him from Miss Wayne. His seclusion, his cats, his nocturnal prowlings, did not commend themselves to the village. As Miss Renie said, ‘One tries to think kindly about everyone, but why go out at night?’

  It was evident that Mr Barton was returning from one of his rambles in the dark. She could just make out a tall figure standing by the wicket gate. It waited there for perhaps a minute and then moved on towards the house. The gate clicked to.

  Gale’s Cottage was the oldest of the cottages along the Green. Seen in the daylight, it was picturesque to the point of inconvenience. The roof sloped sharply, and since there were two storeys the rooms could hardly be more than six feet in height. The front windows were practically obscured by a growth of old neglected creepers. The entrance was at the side. By leaning farther out Miss Silver was able to observe Mr Barton’s approach to this entrance. Arrived, he produced a torch, which he held in his left hand. He focused it upon the big old-fashioned keyhole, inserted a big old-fashioned key, and opened the door. As he did so he turned the torch downwards and stood to one side. A large tabby cat walked through the beam and disappeared into the darkness beyond. A second followed it, nose to tail, and after that a third, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, a seventh. When the beam had lighted the last of the seven, Mr Barton himself crossed the threshold, shutting and locking the door behind him.

  Miss Silver became aware that the night air was not as warm as it had seemed. She retired from the window and pulled up an eiderdown which she had previously discarded. Afterwards there was some impression of voices in the road outside – Miss Mettie’s voice saying good-night, and a murmur of sound that answered it.

  ELEVEN

  THE MORNING OF Valentine’s wedding day came up clear and bright. There was still some cloud in the west, but the rest of the sky was of the enchanting shade of blue which makes amends for days of mist and rain. The girl who brought up the early morning tea put the tray down upon the table beside the bed. The curtains were all drawn back, and the room was full of light. She said, ‘You’ve got ever such a lovely day, Miss Valentine. I do hope it keeps up.’

  Valentine said, ‘Thank you, Florrie.’

  She sat up and turned to lift the cup. If there had been less light, it would have been easier to face it. She felt as if the day that lay before her was a steep hill which somehow she must climb, only she didn’t know how she was going to do it. There was no firm, hard purpose in her, no resolve. She had come up out of deep belated sleep feeling light and relaxed. Somewhere far down there was a tremulous feeling of joy because Jason had come back, but how they were to cross all the things that lay between them, she had not even begun to think.

  But she would have to think. Florrie went out of the room and shut the door. She was a nice girl, and she was looking forward to the wedding. She was going to be disappointed. A lot of people were going to be disappointed. Maggie had got a new hat. She couldn’t marry Gilbert because Florrie would be disappointed if she didn’t, or because of Maggie’s hat, or the bridesmaids’ dresses, or Mettie Eccles’s new suede gloves. Just for a moment she could hear Mettie’s voice quite distinctly – ‘I’ve had the others cleaned so often, and I’m sure they must be ten years old, so I’m getting a new pair in your honour.’ Mettie would certainly be very much annoyed.

  She drank some of the tea, and found it warm and comforting. What was she going to do? She would have to tell Roger Repton that she couldn’t marry Gilbert. He would want to know why, and she couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t go to him and say, ‘I can’t marry Gilbert, because he is Scilla’s lover.’ It was a perfectly good reason, but she couldn’t use it. She couldn’t use it, because it would smash up his marriage. It wasn’t a happy marriage, but to know that Scilla was unfaithful would be a terrible blow. He had been a fool to marry her, and it is a terrible thing to find out that you have been made a fool of. She couldn’t hurt Roger like that.

  And she had heard what she hadn’t been meant to hear. She had stood and listened at a chink of the door in the dark. They might have been saying goodbye, and what they said hadn’t been meant for her to hear. She thought that she could tell Gilbert what she had heard, but she knew she couldn’t use it to break off their marriage, or to give Scilla away.

&
nbsp; She finished the rest of the tea and turned to put down the cup. It was eight o’clock, and everywhere all over the house and in other houses people were either up or getting up and the preparations for her wedding were going on. There was a pile of letters on her tray with the tea things. There would be telegrams and telephone calls, and eleventh-hour presents to add to all the others which would have to be written about and sent back. She picked up the letters that were on the tray and began to go through them.

  Janet Grant, in her characteristic sprawling hand, two words to the line and not more than four lines to the page.

  ‘Darling – so devastated – Jessica prostrate – can’t leave her – all my love – she sends hers.’

  Lexie Merridew’s mother – Lexie was devastated too.

  The next envelope was the kind you get in a village shop or a very cheap shop anywhere, the kind they sell with the lower priced Christmas cards. Odd writing too, very large and clumsy. She had not to wonder about it – she knew. And then she was opening it and taking out a thin crumpled sheet with the same odd writing on it. It had no beginning, and when she turned the page there was no ending either. It said:

  ‘You may not mind about his playing fast and loose with Doris Bell and driving her to take her life or about his carrying on with S.R. and if you don’t know what I mean you are more of a fool than what I took you for but you had better find out about his marrying Marie Dubois under a false name when he was in Canada or you may find yourself in the cart along of the other pore gurls he as led astray.’

  There were no stops, and there was no signature.

  Valentine dropped the letter back on to the tray and sat looking at it.

  The time was half-past eight.

  On the stroke of the half-hour Penelope Marsh jumped off her bicycle, wheeled it round to the garden shed, and opened the front door of the Croft with her latchkey. She was a tall girl with blue eyes, a brown skin, and very white teeth. She stood in the hall and yodelled to Connie Brooke, her partner in the little kindergarten school which was doing so well. When there was no answer, she called again, louder and more insistently. And then it came over her that there was something odd about none of the windows being open. The children arrived at nine, and they made a point of getting the rooms aired and then warmed up before they came.